In this episode of B2B Brand180, Linda interviews Ryan Kauth, business coach, fractional executive and founder of the Fractional Executive Podcast. They discuss the challenges faced by established founders and family business owners who are navigating the often-turbulent waters of business growth.

Ryan shares his experiences as a business coach and executive, and the lessons he’s learned over his diverse career spanning two dozen years in various industries. He offers an insider’s view into his teachings at top business schools, and the growth strategies he imparts to his students.  Ryan provides insights  as to why businesses plateau, the potential reasons behind a lack of growth, and the invaluable role of senior leadership in transforming stagnation into success.

Tune in to discover Ryan’s unique take on strategic leadership development, operations, profitability, and much more.

Thanks for listening to the B2B Brand180 Strategy podcast with Linda Fanaras, CEO/Strategist at Millennium Agency.

Follow Ryan Kauth at LinkedIn and visit his coaching website.

You can follow Linda at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindafanaras/
and Millennium Agency at https://www.linkedin.com/company/millagency/.

Linda Fanaras: 

Hi, I’m Linda Fanaras, host of B2B Brand180 and CEO of Millennium Agency. If you want to transform your B2B marketing into a powerhouse brand, then you may want to listen in. And if you like what you heard today, click like, share or subscribe. Today we’re going to talk to Ryan Kauf, the founder of the Fractional Executive Podcast, which is for founders and family enterprise owners of businesses that are under 10 million in annual revenue who are frustratingly stuck on their current plateau of no growth. And the Fractional Executive Podcast is a perfect place to listen in to learn how you can help accelerate your growth. So Ryan is a business coach and executive. So let’s get started.

Ryan Kauth: 

Hi, Linda. Thanks so much for having me on. As you said, I’m a business coach and executive. I do that via Fractional chief of staff services. And as you said, I work with established founders and family business owners primarily. And primarily in those, in that revenue range, although I do work especially with family businesses that are larger than that. My background is in various industries over the past two dozen years. In addition to that you know, one of the things you and I have talked about that I do is I teach university classes. So right now, I’m teaching a family enterprise executive ed class for a top business school. And then in the fall, I will be teaching undergraduate strategy capstone classes at another top business school.

Linda Fanaras: 

That sounds fantastic. So, I love the work that you’re doing on the Fractional Executive Podcast. Can you just tell me why you actually started that and what motivated you to, you know, position that podcast in that way?

Ryan Kauth: 

Yeah. As I’ve kind of looked back over the last, you know, two dozen years, the thing that I like the most is learning. And as you know, when you’re teaching, you actually learn a whole a lot, really. I grew up listening to radio, sports on the radio. I loved the kind of old-time radio, plays and things like that. And so obviously when podcasts started happening, I glommed onto that like really quickly and you know, we always all kind of have that bucket list, right? And one of those bucket list items for me was the start of podcast. And typically my bucket list is this notebook that I put over here, write down my ideas. Sometimes I go back to it. I probably should more than I, you know, that I do. And things aligned well. Time wise production company wise. And so I’m really grateful that I was able to start that podcast. The reason I chose this particular audience and the name is, first of all, Fractional executives are I would say more mainstream today. So the fractional executive podcast is actually not specifically for fractional executives, although it is indirectly. It’s really for established founders and family business owners who would hire fractional executives because most founders and family business owners do these functional roles inside their business. So they are actually multiple Fractional executives kind of all at once. And so there really wasn’t a podcast out there. And again, there’s many of them that was addressing growth issues for established founders and family business owners. And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to have on really good guests. Who could tell, who had functional expertise, but also became strategic CEOs, which is again, a very hard thing to do. Because honestly you can’t take a class to do that. And I wanted them to tell their stories about their struggles and how they did it.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah, that’s great.Because I think you know,you look at business owners in general and they’re running businesses in a certain type of way,and it’s hard to get over that threshold of growth. It could be something that’s holding them back mentally. It could be something that’s holding them back financially. There’s so many different aspects that could be holding these business owners back from growth. And I think it’s important to take a deep dive into some of those things.So it’s great that you help CEOs tackle that.So what are you actually finding that are the biggest challenges executives are facing

Ryan Kauth: 

today?when,you know,when I start working with an established founder,family business owner,the,one of the first things we start working on is their own.Founder or family business owner,executive leadership development.Now,granted,I am not an executive coach.However,part of being that strategic CEO is you have to be an over communicating strategic CEO that asks why questions and then how are we going to do it?Because if you don’t ask those questions,It’s really hard to become strategic and some people use the phrase of I’m working on my business versus in my business or I’m operating versus owning and what you need to get to at some point.And as you alluded to,there are things that hold that founder back.That’s probably you know,the,the number one thing, but as, as you know, and you work with founders and family business owners their marketing side, there’s also sales, business development, marketing issues. There’s operational issues. There’s org culture and org development issues, especially with talent in there. And as you alluded to, there’s financing issues.So we work with all five of those areas.And really when you’re stuck on a plateau of no growth, which every business will be at some point and multiple times,you know,throughout their their life cycle.We have to kind of diagnose what it is right now on this plateau.That’s holding you back. And once we diagnose that and have a plan going forward,we also bring in the other ones so that the next time you’re on that next plateau.You can be proactive and progressive to get off of it and not be reactive.And eventually calling a business coach and saying,I can’t,you know,I can’t get,I can’t get off of this current plateau right now,

Linda Fanaras: 

right?So are you finding that companies are at specific plateaus for different types of reasons,or do they tend to fall into very similar categories?I had some,I think at one point in time during my,business stage here.I was complaining to somebody that I was having a hard time growing and she said well You need to work on the inside of the company before you work on the outside of the company And I thought to myself,well,maybe she’s right,you know,maybe she has she has a point there So,what are your thoughts?Do you feel like people fall into very specific categories when they’re stuck in their growth?

Ryan Kauth: 

Yeah, there’s definitely similarities. For example, unless you’re an operational specialist or you were COO before, more than likely your operations were reactive. You know,I’m going to react to my customers rather than being proactive and building good management systems and asking questions like,Okay,we’re manually doing this right now.Is there a way to automate it but still have,you know,there’s this high tech part,but we’re a high touch company,you know,we’re a human interaction company.Can we still do that but automate,you know,some of these things so that we can leverage the good talent that we have and use them to interact with people rather than interact with systems.

Linda Fanaras: 

That,that makes complete sense.So what are some of the,I guess if you were to give companies some tip,you would give a presentation,for example,on,you know,here are some tips that I could give you executives or you CEOs that want to expand your business,but you feel stuck.What would some of those top line tips be?

Ryan Kauth: 

Yeah,the first one I would start with and the kind of the first conversation is what I kind of call growth, exit, other, and so it’s really that why are we stuck? But the real question is why do we want to grow?And then what do we want to grow?Because most founders and family business owners are looking at the top one,right? Because that’s kind of the vanity measurement feeds the ego. And the other,the other part is nobody really talks,likes to talk about how profitable you are.Nobody wants to talk about that. They want to talk about their sales. So it could be that you don’t grow your sales,but you grow your profit Slightly switching who you serve from a customer standpoint,right?So I mean you first start with the other What are all the things going on in your life family business owner founder and what are all the things that are going on?In the lives of your team that make this do we grow question be a definite yes, or do we now think about exiting? And there’s lots of different ways to exit,right?You can you know,you can sell to your employees.You can sell to a competitor.You can sell on the open market. Or maybe the exit really is we should be acquiring someone else so that we can grow that way and I think Most founders and family business owners are used to growing quote unquote organically and they look at this acquisition growth piece as something that’s not attractive or cheating, or not the right thing to do when in reality There might be more opportunities out there in, in that the challenge is nobody talks about those,right?So how do we find those opportunities? And as the CEO of your company, you’re probably having daily or weekly conversations with. Those types of people. And sometimes it’s just asking the question.

Linda Fanaras: 

You know, executive space, so many challenges today. And I think after COVID with the big digital transformation that we had enough, just in a blink of an eye, I think it’s smartened us all up. They have data privacy issues, security issues. They’ve got the remote workers and the change in culture and the demographics that are working today. I mean, how would an executive embrace this change and make it work for them.

Ryan Kauth: 

I think Linda, the, the example that you used about, you know, pre-COVID, during COVID, post-COVID because that’s so new and we’re not going to forget that, right? Very easily. I think that’s a great place to start and talk about things such as, “What did our customers do differently?” “What do they expect of us now?” Because it’s certainly different than it was five years ago. And when you’re having those conversations. Sometimes we have blinders on and what I mean by that is we’re just looking internally without looking outwardly.And so one of the ways to become a strategic executive is to understand what’s going on in your geography or your local area,what’s going on in your industry,and then what’s going on with your peers.In other industries and in your industry.So moving into some kind of industry association,some kind of peer group,those things are going to probably help you in business.More than all the classes you took in your MBA.Right.And,you know,I tell my college students that is,you’re going to learn more from each other,Mm hmm.Than you are going to from me in this class.Right.But,I’m telling you this because,if it’s an undergrad student,as you go get your MBA,or,Whatever executive education you’re,you’re going to go out there and get,that’s just the beginning,right?You’re learning this.This is the beginning.Now you have to go and apply it.And the first question really is,does this even apply to me and my organization?

Linda Fanaras: 

You know,and I have been part of CEO forums and the thing that I do love about it is,and your point is very good,is I think as a,as an owner or an entrepreneur of a business,you’re faced with different challenges as they come up and then you’re learning about those challenges and you’re trying to address them to the best of your ability in that way.Just put your practical expertise to that,to have good decision making,but with these CEO forums and groups,you’re able to learn about so many aspects of business and,and the natural.Problem solving setting.It can make a tremendous amount of difference whether you’re dealing with HR,cultural issues,whether you’re dealing with,workflow issues or whether you’re dealing with financial issues or,you want to sell your business,whatever those are,these,these points come up in those types of forums and you’re able to learn about them on the spot,which makes it an exceptional opportunity to just I Get educated.So no,that’s a great point.Thank you.So before we go to our next question,I just want to take a minute here and thank the audience for listening in.And you can help us grow our channel by liking subscribing and sharing B2B Brand180 Podcast with your colleagues.So I’ll move on to the next question for Ryan here today.And I don’t know if you’re finding that this is coming up as.Talent acquisition and retention.It’s finding that talent and hanging on to them as long as possible.When I started my career,if we didn’t stay in a job for10years,we were considered a job hopper.And that’s not the case today.I mean,we’re talking a year or every six months.So,What are you recommending to your executives around that topic?

Ryan Kauth: 

I think this is where your expertise comes in,Linda,as well,I really think that marketing and the folks in your business that are working with your talent,Typically,human resources professionals need to work together even more,because really,if you think about it,and again,my perspective is working with executives,but then I also am in these classrooms where there are traditional and non traditional age.B School students.Mm-hmm. And so what I see with them is,or ask them,is what is your professional network like right now?And the unfortunate part is I’ve got seniors who only know their roommates.And a couple of odd job bosses that have hired them and things like that.They haven’t done any good professional networking.And so if I’m telling them,you need to go and talk to hirers at a job fair or whatever that might be,or talk to the guest speakers that come in the classroom because guess what?They hire people.I then flip that with the executives that I work with and I say things like.Okay.How old are the hiring systems that you’re using right now?Are they the same things that got you hired?Great.That might’ve worked for you30years ago,but what about today?Right.Again,that same operational question.What about this?Can you automate?There’s lots of really cool startups that have launched in the last three years,probably because of COVID who are automating parts of these systems,but then again,there’s the human side of these systems,as well.You don’t know how many people I’ve heard colleagues who have said things like,you know,I applied for this job,had a few interviews and never heard back from them.So if you think about that.How many stars is that review going to get?Right.In today’s,in today’s world.And that leads to,okay,well,what is your hiring reputation right now?And when you have that candidate,right?You might get dozens,hundreds of applications for that one open position.How do you treat all of them?And then here’s the other part,right?Do you have an alumni network?Yeah,interesting.Yeah,because there are companies that don’t have an available spot for an emerging leader.And they go somewhere else.Would they recommend working where you are?Because what happens quite often is you can hire them back.What happens if the company they went to merges with someone else and they lose their job?Yep.Would you welcome them back?And so,the talent today has expectations.And if you don’t know what those expectations are,just like your customers,right,marketers understand this you also need to have that same kind of mentality.With the talent that you have and the talent that you’re going to try to attract and then hire and develop and retain.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah,that’s a great point.And you know,with this remote workforce that we have today,onboarding has become so much onboarding and training has become so much more challenging.And I feel like the learning curve is much.Higher than it ever has been before due to some of these challenges that we have today that,if you’re not in the office,you can’t run to somebody’s desk and ask them a question.You can’t sit down with them as easily to explain something.So we are using all these other strategies and sometimes that one on one.Really getting to see somebody,whether they understand what you’re saying or don’t understand what you’re saying is really important.So are there some tools out there that companies can consider or,or strategies that companies have used to overcome this?this challenge that we have today with the remote workforce and onboarding and training?

Ryan Kauth: 

Yeah.So,I mean,there are in sales,you have CRM,right?There’s the same kind of products for hiring and project managing those hires today.I think are actually easier to use than a CRM is pretty easy to use today,especially if you’re adapting,you know,something off the shelf for your company.Yeah,but,but then as you were talking about onboarding again,there’s systems for that as well.With some of those,those also will measure and try to figure out what your culture is like,and then maintaining the culture,and having those purposeful meetings with your direct reports and supervisors.Right.You know,again,today in our world of scrum meetings,right?Which is,you know,a real quick meeting.And then you’re questioning,do we even need a meeting for this?Or should this just be an email?There still needs to be interaction with supervisor and direct report.And now,again,in this work from home culture.How do we do that?Well,and again,there,there are products out there that are very specific for your industry.And again,there’s work from home.There’s people on the shop floor.I mean,there’s all these different ways that we go to work today.That have existed,but now are also changing and there definitely are products and systems out there,out there for that.And there’s experts who you can bring in to help you even develop those things,just like if you wanted to hire somebody to help you adapt your CRM and sales.

Linda Fanaras: 

Exactly.And I know there’s so many new tools out there today,and it’s hard to know what to take advantage of and what not to take advantage of.But you’re absolutely right.There’s some great tools out there.I think in your experience,are you finding that companies are talking more about sustainability and environmental issues?Is that coming up as a key point?Meaning You know,putting more friendly practices into their strategies,maybe reducing the carbon footprint or adopting renewable energy sources,minimizing waste.I think companies have a hard time sort of navigating some of these up and coming initiatives.And I’m wondering if you have companies that are facing that today.

Ryan Kauth: 

Yeah,absolutely.I think the challenge actually starts with Are we even talking about what we’re doing?So i’m finding that there are companies that are doing these things strategically.It’s part of their culture,right?Now we’re talking about okay.Well,are we telling people that we want to hire that we do this?Right and and again,you know,it kind of goes back to some of the things we learned way back when in business school,when we took that inner integrated marketing communication class,right?And are we not just telling our stories about what we’re doing for sustainability or what we are doing in an environmentally friendly way,but we need to talk about it.And we need to tell our employees and our clients and our prospects and prospects being customers and talent what we’re actually doing.Sometimes you see these annual reports,right?And you’re really like,okay,well,These are probably required by somebody.Right,right.But who actually reads those?So,take that content,and again,you know this,Linda,take that content and actually use it.The,whole important part of that,of the start with why movement,that’s not the important question.The important question is who cares?And so,if you’re not talking about what you do,you’ll never find out who actually cares about it.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah,that’s a great point.And I always like to talk about companies and determining what their core values really are and making that part of their DNA,frankly,because every company has its own value,you know,what they consider.important to them.They maybe they want to be authentic.Maybe they want to be environmentally.You know,they want to be a sustainable company or they want to focus on innovation.So they all have these very specific core values that they need to set as part of their DNA.And and if they can live by that and figure out who are they as a company?I think it can also help them.Attract the right talent and the right people that fall into that category.If somebody doesn’t care about sustainability,maybe that company is not the right fit for them.Maybe they don’t care about innovation.It’s not the right fit for them.So I think it’s important to get those core values determined,get them into place,making sure the employees are onboarded,understanding what that is and getting those points across.So,that’s really helpful.Because I think as CEOs,especially in that range,you know,we always say we’re in our own silo.What would you say if you were to give a CEO three pieces of advice to help grow their company,what would your top three answers be?

Ryan Kauth: 

Talk to your team,your leadership team,more than you do.As a group and as individuals,number two,we’ve all probably heard of the show undercover boss,right?Yeah.I think a lot of people watch that show to see who’s going to get fired,right?Which manager is going to get fired.But I think that show really shows how there are lots of CEOs who really,at some point along the way have just kind of lost it.They’re locked up in the ivory tower per se,and they’re not feet on the street.Figure out how you can not be undercover boss,but out in the open boss.Again,one of the,one of the examples I use a lot of is.Early in my career,I went with the CEO of the company I was working with to a manufacturing company.And sometimes when you walk in the door of a company,you can tell right away if that culture is good or bad.There’s a feeling,right?This CEO walked the floor of his manufacturing company,didn’t say anything to anybody.And I,I saw two employees who actually sneered at the CEO,like,Oh,that guy is back here.I hate that guy.Right.And I was in my first,my first thought was we can’t work with this company just,just because of that.Right.Tip number three kind of goes back to what we were talking about is continue on the road to being that strategic CEO.You have a mission vision values for a reason.How are you leveraging that strategically?You just talked about that in the,you know,in the,in the question before.And that goes on an individual basis,right?And when you’re thinking about being strategic,one of the ways to do that,besides peer groups and industry associations,is to lead in something.And it could be as simple as leading in your community.Right.You know,you don’t have to lead in your industry.You don’t necessarily even have to lead the world or be world class.But what if you just chose to lead in something In your community and then you were able to teach other ceos other founders other family business owners How you did that right and I think if you have that mentality I think that will help you Along that road of being more strategic rather than that functional expertise role where you’re reactively putting out fires every day,

Linda Fanaras: 

I liked what you talked about when you heard somebody talking me behind the back or snarling at the CEO,because I think when you talk to employees,you can get a vibe.And so that vibe is either positive or negative.Maybe they they look and act defeated,or maybe they’re They’re energized or maybe they’re happy you can get a pretty clear picture by just talking to the staff and understanding what the vibe is within the company.And I think that’s a good indicator for CEOs.As far as.you know,if they were to take an internal look on what they have going on and taking a look at their employees and seeing how they act and behave.I think that that can help them answer some,some big questions.So that was great.Thank you,Ryan.So I just want to wrap up here.I want to take a minute and thank you for listening today on behalf of B2B brand.180.And again,thank you,Ryan,for all your executive insights.And if you want to listen in with Ryan,definitely check out his podcast.It is fantastic.The fractional executive podcast.You’ll find it in a snap.And thanks for tuning in today And we hope you find that the insights and strategies shared will be valuable and actionable for you again.I’m Linda Feneres,host of B2B Brand180and CEO of Millennium Agency,where you can visit us at mill.M I L L dot agency.Or if you have any questions,it’s L Fanaras at mill dot agency,or just simply connect with me on LinkedIn.And just to help our channel grow and educate more B2B leaders on brand strategy,feel free to click like,share,or subscribe.Thanks again for listening.And until next time,happy marketing.

In this episode of B2B Brand180, Linda interviews Alexander De Ridder, a renowned AI innovator, CTO, SEO expert, and the co-founder of Ink. As a pioneer in Natural Language Optimization models and the creator of a patented AI method that demystifies Google’s content preferences, Alexander offers a wealth of knowledge. The conversation dives into the future of SEO and content marketing, particularly the role of AI in shaping these fields.

Alexander describes how B2B brands can take advantage of AI and natural language optimization to craft compelling content strategies, emphasizing the significance of trust, engagement, and brand authority. He also introduces the concept of content hubs.

Transitioning from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, Alexander explores the potential challenges and strategies for B2B brands. AI has a capacity to inundate the internet with generic content and Alexander anticipates a move towards a more interactive, user-focused web.

This episode is an essential listen for B2B marketers aiming to future-proof their brands.

Thanks for listening to the B2B BRAND180 Strategy podcast with Linda Fanaras, CEO/Strategist at Millennium Agency.

Follow Alexander’s at LinkedIn and visit his company website Ink here.

You can follow Linda at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindafanaras/
and Millennium agency at https://www.linkedin.com/company/millagency/.

 

Linda Fanaras: 

Hi, my name is Linda Fanaras, host of B2B Brand180 and CEO of Millennium Agency. If you want to transform your B2B marketing into a powerhouse brand, then you may want to listen in and if you like what you heard today, click like, share or subscribe. Today we’re gonna talk about AI content marketing, and there isn’t a better person to invite on the show than Alexander De Ridder, Ink Co-founder and CTO, a content strategist and owner of Natural Language Optimization model AI. Alexander invented a patented AI to reverse engineer what Google is looking for in content and made it free for all the writers in desktop software. He pioneered the movement of Natural Language Optimization. So welcome Alexander to the B2B Brand180 podcast. Thanks for joining me today.

Alexander De Ridder: 0

Glad to be here.

Linda Fanaras: 

Excellent. So, tell us a little bit about yourself. Take a couple minutes and do that, and then we’ll get started.

Alexander De Ridder: 

Yeah. Thank you. So, I was born in Baruch, Belgium. Best described as like, real world Disney. Disney Park. the city dates back to like a thousand years ago. And what I think is super cool there is you can go to the city hall and they still have archives from when the mayor met with the guilds like a thousand years ago. And you can see what they were discussing and debating and, you know, the politics of the day. I moved to United States in 2006. After studying computer science in Belgium I had the opportunity to work with a lot of great marketing companies. And work in the field of machine learning since 2008 as well. I saw that neural networks were coming around and making a lot of my ML work redundant and predicted the impact it was going to have on how search engines treat content and rate quality of content. We built an SEO agency around that. EDGY Labs, very successful enterprise oriented SEO agency. We have clients like toyota.com that we grew their SEO by by 12 million visitors per month in in the last six, seven years. And and have had a wildly successful run in November, 2021. So just about 16 months ago. We sold edgy Labs to an a multinational company called digital Transformation Company called Compass. And we spun out the technology component AI that we had developed for content performance. And so at is the core idea. Is that we are able to reverse engineer the top performing content because Google already decided that’s the content people want to engage with. That’s the information people are looking for. They’re already putting that near the top. Same thing for Amazon. Same thing for social media, same thing for Instagram. Whatever you search. Platforms have an incentive to give you the best, most relevant, most engaging content near the top, cuz that’s how they make more ad money, right? Right. So, by taking that content and reverse engineering it with ai, we are able to extract insights on how to make that content. Perform. And then we had we had the really cool follow up idea which we also patented is when AI generation was coming around, we figured, you know, these insights are a perfect match, not just to say to a human, here’s how you improve your text, but what if you can give these insights to an AI that writes and say, here’s what you should keep in mind when you’re writing. Or this is what you should keep in mind when you are trying to do edits of this text and make it better. So you can think of it like a magic button you could press that would make your text hyper optimized. And the results are really astounding because in a large data study, we prove that optimized content with our technology is 520% more likely to hit first page of Google. So, hey. Who knew? Oh yeah. Giving people what they’re looking for actually works. What a radical idea. And and yes. So right now we are inc. For all.com is my is my main focus. And our mission is to help every business out there stand out from the noise.

Linda Fanaras: 

I guess one thing that we know about is businesses do want to command a premium brand, and they do need precise and impeccable content, and you can’t just have a great idea, an amazing brand but you really need a strategy that works. So what would you say in today’s market are some effective strategies for creating amazing content using AI models and, and other factors?

Alexander De Ridder: 

Yeah, so the market is changing really quickly and we are kind of in the twilight zone in between web two and web three right now. Mm-hmm. So I, there’s actually different ways I could answer that, Linda. Okay. I could, I could answer this question from a, what should you do right now if you want SEO growth right now? And I could also answer it, what should you do right now in preparation of web three? Mm-hmm. So I’ll try to do a little bit of both. If, if you have a Venn diagram and you have those two circles, what should you do for today and what should you do for tomorrow? In the intersection of those two will you will find two words. And those two words are trust and engagement. Trust is important because, I’ll use an analogy. If you needed to have a hard surgery done, you wouldn’t just go to any doctor that pops up on Google Maps and go to the first one, you would do some research. Alexander, you have a flare for the dramatic. My website is not comparable to something like that. Well, you know, it’s the future of your business. The website is a gateway to your business. A website that receives no visitors means that it’s a website that it cannot conf convert visitors, and therefore is a website that cannot make money. And if your website is not trusted by Google, you know, Google is the one who shopping around to find a trusted doctor. And so, building trust today. Helps you get results today. But building trust today is also going to make your entity on the web trusted for that topic in the future. So then the question is, how do you build trust if it’s so important? Well, let’s again use the analogy that we continue on this analogy, right? You might trust a certain doctor. If it comes highly recommended by people you trust, Traditionally that takes the form of like, I don’t know, back links, If websites you trust linked to another website, It, it basically is like my grandfather said, right? Tell me your five closest friends and I’ll tell you who you are. And so the same thing is true for your site. Who are you associated with online? Is it with ka casino’s live broadcast in texas.com? I don’t know. I made that up. I, I don’t know. There’s ka casinos in Texas as such, maybe by the border of Louisiana. But depending on who you’re associating with, who you link to and who links to you, it kind of tells Google what your sphere influence is. A, a famous example. Of that is when Google kind of shadow banned or blacklisted Infowars as a website, right? And so every, everyone that links to Infowars immediately had a impact on their authority. So it wasn’t, it wasn’t just Infowars that was affected, it was every website that linked to it. when you are associating yourself with domains that frequently have bad user experiences in the eyes of Google, or the engines that you’re working with you will be considered equivalent in trust to them. The brand authority is also built by, not just by links or your reputation or who you hang out with online. This also based on the things you actually publish. Fact checking is very important for, for your, everything you publish online. And it actually goes even beyond fact checking because, even my 14 year old could have guessed that is important to Google. It is also reflected in your experience and expertise. So like, as a thought exercise, let’s think about this for a moment. If the only thing that you contribute to the internet is general cliches and knowledge platitudes mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And silly stories that are, off topic. Then it is hard for me to thank you or an expert. I will read that content and say, this is fluff. Right. And so much of the internet today is fluff. Correct. Businesses can c can build trust with search engines. By not, putting fluff out there, putting substantive, authoritative content. Mm-hmm. That adds information. Ads information. So this is a very interesting very interesting thing. Right. So Linda, let’s say you, on your podcast, you have many guests and your guests are talking about AI, and you have guests after guests telling you common stuff you’ve already heard five times over. Mm-hmm. Right? What will you think of that guest? Well, they didn’t add anything new, right? You’ll wonder if they’re really an expert. Mm-hmm. Right. And then you have Alexander on your podcast and he tells you really cool new stuff, right? Brings interesting angles and so forth. Like what is a person to think of that? This is a person that told me some interesting stuff, so I will trust this person. When they’re talking about that topic, they clearly gave you a deep thought, They clearly are speaking from experience and so forth, right? It’s actually quite easy for an algorithm. To discern if somebody is adding that new information. Right?

Linda Fanaras: 

That’s

Alexander De Ridder: 

interesting. And so you want to be associated with the idea of an expert in Google and other platform’s, eyes. And when you do that, speak from experience, speak from your expertise. And I’m not saying go and bore your audience to death with technical terms. I’m saying add something that is relevant to the topic that your audience will perceive as authoritative because you know this, because you say this, I will tend to trust you. Search engines work in a very similar way, and remember how we said I was going to try and answer your question from like Yeah. The present and the future. This Venn diagram of trust in the middle. The way that will benefit you today is that Google has an algorithm or principle called expertise expertise, experience, authority and trust, or E E A T I may have flipped the two E’s around, but they’re the two E’s, right? and it is going to boost your performance today significantly. And tomorrow your brand will already be associated with what is called topical authority. Whatever you talk about a lot, you become an authority on that topic. Now, this is an important concept to understand. I see a lot of brands fall in this wrap. I have adhd, I’m a generalist. I love to talk about philosophy and like deep questions, but then also about AI and then about marketing, and then about raising kids and, and I love to talk about everything. One of the things I hate the most about the internet today, Is that a pigeon holds me so much into a certain narrow area of expertise because I am so much more. Unfortunately, it requires a ton of self-discipline as a brand to stick to your authority, and you have to. But when you do that in that Venn diagram of the future, your brand will become synonymous and authoritative for a certain topic. And let’s do a thought exercise. If you needed to book a hotel tonight, what comes to mind? Quick

Linda Fanaras: 

Could be Hyatt. Marriott. Great.

Alexander De Ridder: 

Great. And if you wanted to book that hotel, what website would you go to? Go ahead. Expedia. There you go. Like I can ask different people, And they’re going to give me similar answers. May, maybe some people will say booking.com, maybe some people mm-hmm. Will say Expedia, And. What you are just demonstrating is called topical authority. When it comes to a certain hotel they have built authority and trust with with you, and when it comes to the website to bog the hotel, they have become synonymous in your mind with that particular thing. Your job as a brand and the topic of trust is to become the authority. Whether you sell ice cream in your neighborhood, Or you do heart surgery or you sell hotels, what is the first word that comes to people’s mind when they think of that topic in your context? if it is not your brand, you have work to do. Right. And so one of the ways that you can do that today, right? Obviously already covered some really useful things mm-hmm. That you should put, you should always fact check your information. You should make sure that you That you stick to one topic and don’t your, your topics are not all over the place and you need to make sure that you add interesting stuff that comes from experience and expertise that is not just generic content. These are practical tips you can take home and start working with today. There is there’s one other thing you can do today that works really well and that is something called content hubs. And when you, when you create a content hub on your site, you kind of force yourself into folder thinking, organizing your drive. Mm-hmm. It’s like cleaning your house. Nobody loves it. Mm-hmm. Right. But if your, if your hard drive or your Google Drive or Dropbox or whatnot is organized, then nobody in the team needs to ask, Hey Linda, where’s that file stored again? Right. Correct. It, it forces you to think in terms of structure. Mm-hmm. Because a subfolder and a parent folder cannot switch in order. There’s a logical structure why the parent folder contains different children as their folder. There’s a reason why the children and the parents don’t swap. It’s because one comes after the other. You know what it is called to search engines? It’s called the semantic web. It’s a web of meaning. It’s a web that makes sense, right? So when you create a content hub on your site, you’re basically creating a folder structure that is logical and that Google can interpret. And as it browses and crawls deeper and deeper, it says to itself, Hey, this website makes sense. And it crawls it and it makes sense. So how can you create content hubs? Well, you pick one topic that is extremely relevant for your audience. You do exhaustive keyword research, and with that, I mean you find every possible way that people can search for this topic. Questions about this topic, background information about this topic, but only this topic, right? And then you cluster them together with keyword clustering. And what that does is it groups all the similar searches together. So don’t create five articles about one topic. You know what that looks like, like Google. You know this, this guy at a party who cannot stop talking about his breakup. Right? Right. And like every conversation is about his breakup. If, if you have like five articles or five experiences as a search engine with a website, and they’re all talking about that one topic, You become boring, you become confusing. Like, what is this person really about? Is all they’re gonna talk about is this. You only want one piece of content on your site for one search intent, keyword, clustering groups, all the similar keywords together, so you don’t look like the, like the boring guy at a party. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Right. Once you do that, you create that folder structure on your site in what’s called the content hub, and you create. Organized content exhaustive about a topic. See, this is one more way you build trust, Linda, if your body of work reflects, speaks to your to your breadth of knowledge, right? So when you cover a topic in depth, that also tells Google, Linda knows what she’s talking about. So, this is some of the things you can do to build trust. And I, I have to point out something else. Your trust as an author is the same thing as your trust as a domain. What you write about on social media, what websites you author and put your name under, and, and you are published under so-and-so. Site directly plays a role into how Google perceives you as trustworthy. So be careful who you associate with online. Be careful where you are seen with what crowd you hang out with. Be careful what you talk about because you might just get what you want. Mm-hmm.

Linda Fanaras: 

Right. So interesting. Yeah. It’s a lot of great points that you brought up today, and I think, you know, SEO and AI is a little vague in most people’s mind, but just SEO in general is confusing and can be confusing, and there’s so many factors around that. I do have another question though relating to how some of the AI models like Burt and G P T three actually help, like how do they actually help search engines better understand the intent behind, you know, queries and website content?

Alexander De Ridder: 

here we’re gonna get into some of the interesting stuff. So if you’ve been listening and you thought this podcast was interesting, Well, this is the actual interesting part and the cool stuff but now we get to talk about the future. And so, I would pull out my citizen card for the future because I’m a citizen of it. Permanent resident green card in the future. Okay. The first thing that users need to understand about all this AI writing stuff and content is that people are only looking as far as their nose. Mm-hmm. They’re not looking beyond it yet. There is a secondary and tertiary impact on the economy, on the web and how everything is going to shape out and how everything’s gonna change as a result of it. Let’s just talk about the nose for a moment and then we can look beyond the nose. AI creating a lot of content. Well, let’s, let’s pedal back even a bit more. Let’s make some, let’s make some statements. Okay. AI can probably write better than you can. You can steer it to include information that you think should be included. Mm-hmm. So it does not necessarily have your expertise, but in terms of being a good writer, knowing how to use paragraphs and not, and not needing a spelling and grammar checker, and translating to Japanese like probably better than you, it can compose ridiculously well. How you steer it is up to you. Like, for example, you can give it an outline with some talking points and it is going to write your thoughts, your outline, your talking points, really darn well. That’s phenomenal, right? Now I highly encourage everyone to not waste time with things that you shouldn’t waste time on. Right. So, when I was in school, they told me to memorize everything and I was not allowed a calculator. Now my kids have a cheat sheet formula list for their math test where they can look up all the formulas. Mm-hmm. And they have a calculator. Mm-hmm. Why? Because the world has changed. A calculator lives in our pocket. We have it with us all day, so why wouldn’t we learn to use that? So same thing will be true for ai. Schools need to find ways to engage students. And, and measure their progress in a way that they know how to use AI in real life, otherwise they’re gonna fall behind in the marketplace. And and you know, there’s a Twilight zone right now mm-hmm. In between zone where some students can get really high grades by using AI and kind of hide it. But that’s kind of like cheating because that was not the intent of the education. Right. Right. Instead, schools need to. Embrace the change and find new ways to grade students. For example, instead of grading them on memorization, grade them on their skill of information retrieval, logical composition and fact checking and proofreading and, and, and critical thinking because a lot of what AI puts out may not be right. So you need to develop the spider sense mm-hmm. Skill. Mm-hmm. Of being able to say, now this AI answer is not what I was looking for. So ultimately, whatever you produce with ai, you have to own it. And it goes back to the trust conversation, So go ahead and use AI but own it. Don’t just put it out there and say, you know, right. There was the song wasn’t me, I was older. Right, right. Google caught me red-handed wasn’t me. Somebody needs to make a parody, the fake parody. Absolutely. Going back to, to the content, so the first, the first thing everyone listening should realize is if you’re not using writing, With ai like Inc. For all.com or chat G P t, you are missing out. Mm-hmm. You are actually honestly wasting your time at the job and you’re wasting your company’s time because it is so darn good. It is a tool. It’s like trying to cut your lawn with a scissor. Right? Right. Why would you do that? Sure, you can, and I’m sure the lawn would look perfectly. Perfectly beautiful. If you ever finish your lawn, you can get to start over on the other side because by that time it’s gonna be like two feet tall grass. And so at some point, use the, use the lawn cutting machine like please. So this is number one. Number two, this has an impact on the internet. The content supply and demand curves. So in economy, that’s how we determine the value of stuff, right? If there’s an oversupply, prices come down. If demand is very high, then prices go up. So these two lines work together. And in the content economy of the internet, there’s only so much real estate that can go on the first page of Google. There’s only so many products that be on the first page of Amazon when people search for something. So that top space is very competitive. And when you see an oversupply of content on the internet, every topic instead of a hundred articles now have a thousand articles. Right? That means the competition just 10 x. And so you need to get your game on when it comes to content performance, And so that’s what we [email protected]. We help people win at that. Game. So the gap between an exponential content supply and a linear content demand, we call that the content performance gap, but that gap is increasing exponentially. Mm-hmm. So that means that you need to really get your game on when it comes to the content performance and giving people exactly what they want and exactly that. Now, the, that gap. Will increase to an extent. There is something out there, Linda called the dead internet theory. I think it’s it’s a bit conspiratorial. I don’t, I don’t believe in that. But every conspiracy has like a kernel of truth. Mm-hmm. And a grain of truth in it that makes people go, huh. And then they end up believing the conspiracy. Right. The grain of truth in a dead internet theory. Is that AI can create so much content so quickly that ultimately it’s like the pipes of your home that get clogged and, and it’s hard for you to know what to believe anymore, who to trust anymore, and what was written by humans or with human effort or collaboration. Mm-hmm. And will was not entire social media accounts can be created with ai. So at some point, You’re browsing the internet, but maybe the only thing you’re reading is generated content. And that’s a dead internet. Because it means that it means that your voice you know, the brand 180 podcast may be drowned out. Oh, correct. Yeah. And, and, and when your voice is drowned out, well, that’s a problem for democracy, isn’t it? It’s a problem for human expression, because if you do not. If you have the freedom of speech, but literally nobody in the world can hear you because everyone is shouting so loud around you. Have you heard, have you heard, have you seen this? Like a kid where the sticks says, fingers in his ears. Mm-hmm. And goes, la la la, la la. Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah. That’s what it looks like. It’s like, I can’t hear you. I don’t care what you’re saying. That’s kind of the, the grain of truth in the dead internet theory. And so, So just to say that your trust as a brand is what is gonna really matter at such a time, because search engines will struggle with this, and that’s their entire existential crisis, is how do we continue to serve people. Trusted quality content when we have to index a thousand times more content when we have to judge that. And so the obvious shortcut, this is why, you know this is 100% going to happen. The obvious shortcut is I’m gonna look at how much I trust you and then, and then if I trust you, I’m going to give you a chance. And if I don’t trust you, and you look like you’re just putting generic content out there, written only with ai, but not with your expertise. Mm-hmm. I’m going to ignore you because you’re just spamming. You’re just spamming, right? And that, and that brings it to like, the final state. we’re entering a cycle right now, today as 2023. Go back 20 years. The dynamic web web two is just starting to emerge. But unlike 20 years ago, Technology and trends move a hundred times faster. So Facebook, WordPress, so much of what you use today was not possible. In 2003, it was unthinkable, and today, web two and dynamic sites have completely changed the web. What will happen with the internet? Is that it will get so full with generic content. Mm-hmm. That generic content won’t matter anymore. Instead, what people will expect from the internet is the interactive web. The dynamic web will be it or replaced by the interactive web. This the real web three, and it’s not a pipe dream. It’s already starting to happen. What does the web three look like? Web three looks like this. Let’s say I’ve got, I’m an Android person, I’ve had iPhones in the past, but I’m gonna go with iPhone because majority of business people in America have iPhones. Let’s say you have an iPhone that’s like four years old and you want to get a new iPhone, you go to the verge.com. And you see the article about the new iPhone and you’re browsing it to read if it’s any good. You wanna know what a new cool features are, but the article only compares it to the last year’s model. That’s not what I want. I want to know how it compares to my model from four or five years ago. That’s what I want. Now, I could go and hit the search button, look for an article from four or five years ago. And see how that phone that I own compared to la, the model before year before it, and then I can have two pages side by side and I can open a notepad and I can start taking notes and compare the two articles and I can make for my own judgment on how the two compare. Worse yet, I can go on the comparison on multiple different websites that answer. When you put it in those in that way. When you put it in that way you’ll realize how. Incredibly stupid. The current internet is, why would that, why would anybody think that’s a good user experience? Mm-hmm. I am wasting my time. I want to know how my iPhone compares to the new one. That’s all. Why do I have to browse five, six pages for that? It makes no sense. right. So the generative technology we have with AI today, Is able to read and understand every page on your website. It is able to understand what it’s about and is able to recompose and re and reconstruct the exact thing you’re looking for in one take. You visit the page and it will generate. The answer you’re looking for by reading all the available material and giving you the answer, you really want it without needing to browse multiple pages or websites. How great is such a web? So here’s, here’s a teaser, We’re working on something big in that space to help businesses get ready for that web three. Mm-hmm. It’s very early days. I can’t reveal it just yet. But if that sounded cool and interesting, and you don’t wanna miss the boat on that, follow me somewhere online so you’ll find out, Go follow my LinkedIn Alexander de Ritter, go and join our Facebook [email protected], whatnot. You’ll be the first to find out. Here’s he, here’s a prediction In the next four years, 60% of SEO traffic. To web pages on your site will be dis displaced and replaced with interactive web. Mm-hmm. So if you have a million visitors to your site, you’re going to get 400,000 visitors to your site instead. Four years from now that that’s 60% of traffic Will not be gone. They will not stop caring to buy your product. They will not stop caring to find out your information, but they will consume it differently through assistance like Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, and so, and Cortana, And search will look very different and it will, it will choose. It’ll work very much like you said that we did that thought exercise. Mm-hmm. Where would you buy a, a hotel room from? Right. Right. The first thing that comes to your mind, that’s the brand that’s gonna make the money. Mm-hmm. So if you want to get ready, I told you about that Venn diagram, now, yeah. Really, believe me, the best thing you can do today to prepare for that future is make sure that you become the brand. That search engines and users trust to answer them for that particular question. You do that today, you’ll be in the best position to be ready for what’s coming very, very quickly. And in the next four years, my prediction about web traffic will come true. You will, you will lose at least 60% of your traffic to webpages. And we already see it happening in some sense. So you, it’s not hard for someone to hear this, and believe me, because Google has this thing called zero click search. Mm-hmm. Where they show feature snippets or little widgets and they don’t send the traffic to your page. And the basic idea, Linda, is this, if the web gets so filled with generic content, why would a search engine. Ever give up that traffic. Right? There’s no point. They can generate it too. The only only reason they would come to your site is because you have something to offer that they can’t, a better experience, more trust, or a kind of data that nobody has. Mm-hmm. Right. So actually it’s gonna be a golden age for on the grand journalism as well. Because that’s fresh data. And that’s stuff that gen AI cannot make up. You have to have eyes and ears on the ground. So I’m excited what it can do for media, but that’s another day. All right. That was

Linda Fanaras: 

kind of a long answer. Yeah, no, no, that’s great. So I guess for our audience to, I mean, we talked a lot about content, we talked a lot about seo, we talked about trust. If you were to give aside from, from that point, Trust. What is another takeaway that you’d give to the audience in just maybe a few words or a few

Alexander De Ridder: 

sentences? Yeah, I, I’ll say that this is a very old piece of advice, but I think it becomes very important own. Your list. Own your list. If you’re not capturing your visitor’s email addresses, if you’re not talking to them, then you’re missing out because the noise out there in the world can come so become so big. if you have an engaged audience that you can reach directly and talk to directly, that is extremely valuable going in the future. Even if search engines dramatically, change of websites dramatically change, but you own an audience, You can directly speak to people that will matter. For the foreseeable future, humans are doing the purchasing online notis. So while AIs can help you with content consumption and creation, they can’t go and buy stuff or make money for you for the foreseeable future. I mean that this is gonna change at some point, but not right away. So humans is what you need to build relationships with. So if you are putting out social media content and not asking people to sign up for your list, then just stop what you’re doing. You don’t own them. The social media agencies or companies are going to. Dilute your, your, your, your audience with their ads and utter feeds and whatever pays them money. You don’t own your audience unless you own your audience, and Right. The best way to do that is with how would you meet a friend and stay in touch, right? You’d ask for their phone number and email name, phone number, email. That’s what you need. If you can stay in touch and then, then don’t, and then respect them like friends. Don’t spam them. Only bother them when you have interesting things to say. And build a relationship with people for the foreseeable future. People are carrying the purse and while they carry the purse, that’s where your economy for your business will be.

Linda Fanaras: 

That’s fantastic. Well, that was, that was great, Alexander. You provided some fantastic insight on AI and SEO and content strategy. I’m sure our audience has enjoyed it today. So, again, thank you for listening in today and on behalf of B2B Brand 180. Thank you Alexander for all of your, insights and To get in touch with Alexander Visit Inc. For All, and again, thank you for tuning in to B2B Brand 180, and we hope you found the insights and strategies shared today valuable and I, again, I’m Linda Fanaras, host of B2B Brand 180 and c e o of Millennium Agency, just to help our channel grow and educate more B2B leaders on brand strategy. Feel free to like, share, or subscribe, and thanks again for listening. And until next time, happy marketing.

In this episode of the B2B Brand180 Podcast, Linda Fanaras speaks with Dr. James Richardson, a seasoned entrepreneur and founder of Premium Growth Solutions, about expert strategies for CPG entrepreneurs looking to transform their ideas into premium brands.

With a focus on the consumer-packaged goods industry, Dr. Richardson shares valuable insights and actionable tips on product development, branding, and marketing.

You can learn more about Dr. Richardson and his work at https://www.premiumgrowthsolutions.com.

Linda Fanaras: 

Hi, I am Linda Fanaras, host of B2B Brand 180 and CEO of Millennium Agency. If you want to transform your B2B marketing into a powerhouse brand, then you may want to listen in. And if you like what you heard today, click like, share or subscribe. There’s no doubt that CPG marketing continues to grow, and e-commerce has really taken on a life of its own. Dr. James Richardson, PhD launched a book called “Ramping Your Brand: How to Ride the Killer CPG Growth Curve,” and it has received phenomenal reviews. So, in his book, Dr. Richardson outlined a four-part approach to thinking smarter about growth as a CPG entrepreneur. And during his time, he conducted years of research into how and why consumers pay for premium price CPG items and the intensive four P pattern analysis among top CPG brands that all reached a hundred million plus in less than 10 years. And that’s why I brought in Dr. James Richardson today from PGS Cultural Anthropologist Strategy Consultant and CPG expert so welcome James to the B2B Brand 180 podcast. Thanks for joining me today.

James Richardson: 

Thanks for having me, Linda. Well, you did a great intro, so I won’t try to add too much more. I call myself an anthropologist term business strategist because that’s, I think, what everyone can understand the best. But what I really do is management consulting for founders who are new to the industry.

Linda Fanaras: 

That’s great. So, I’m excited to talk today really about how to bridge that gap between CPG strategies and increased sales. CPG is a hot market, so I think let’s get started. I know that what we do know, one thing, James, is that if you want to command a premium brand, you just can’t have a great idea, but rather an amazing brand, brand positioning and strategy. So how do these CPG companies go to market and command a premium?

James Richardson: 

I think that overall, I can say that they do it by becoming an expert in their category and, on occasion that’s accidental, to be honest. They’re often geeks, who are super disappointed with something, with some category out there in the grocery store. And this can turn into a personal obsession, which then turns into a business. Most people in the world that I’m in are amateurs, essentially, with an expert understanding of a category’s deficiencies. And you know, I think those of you who are B2B marketers and work with clients who are in, who are selling, you know, not fast-moving consumer goods, you’re used to your clients being pretty sophisticated about their categories, right? And that, that is taken for granted, I think, by a lot of B2B marketers. But in my world, it’s insanely competitive. And so, you really do have to you have to tap into something behavioral.

Linda Fanaras: 

And that’s interesting that you speak about that because I think the behavioral part of CPG products or companies that develop products have to determine what the behavioral aspects are, and also have to message emotionally around that behavior in order to get them connected to the brand.

James Richardson: 

There’s a lot more emphasis on what is the emotional consequence of consuming the product that I can then exaggerate in marketing. Dr. Squatch soap, one of my former clients is a great example of that hyperbole, right? They created a three-minute anchor video on YouTube that has now over a billion views in three years and created a half billion dollar business in two years because they used emotion to tap into an audience that had never been addressed in personal care.

Linda Fanaras: 

Mm-hmm. And that’s a fascinating case study that you presented there. And I do think that’s where a lot of CPG companies do go wrong. They get focused on the features and, you know, you may talk about the benefits, but no, it’s really more than that. It’s more about the emotional aspect that ties them – the one key item that they can hang their hat on and say, okay, what is it about that product that really makes me want it and makes – it will make me feel good-

James Richardson: 

Yeah, and I think that the challenge is that – the challenge I’ve always seen is that – because that’s often taught, that’s like taught at Kellogg, right? People get MBAs in Consumer Marketing. They all go into the CPG universe. They’re taught to wind up with an emotional sort of positioning, and I think that’s great for advertising. But that won’t, that won’t actually create a premium brand, by itself. You have to design an actual thing whose consumption experience is elevated and modern. And if you can’t, you know, so you can’t just do this with a new flavor of Ritz cracker. So, the problem that I’ve seen is that the emotion has to come out, to come from an innovative consumer experience that the consumer is now consciously aware of as they’re consuming it. And it’s also emotional, but it’s emotional from the product innovation, not the arrogance of an established brand. So, so that’s a lesson even for folks who are working with, like, established durable goods companies and you’re the marketing agency, it’s still a lesson you can apply to an incumbent brand because if you want to actually do something innovative, you actually have to engage in something they call creative destruction, you have to be willing to attack your own business. And you should do that under another trademark. But – that goes without saying – but very few consumer goods companies want to actually do that. They’re more likely, I found, more likely to acquire my clients after they scale than to, than politically inside those companies to come up with: “Well, Ritz is gonna, Ritz isn’t growing anymore, so we need a new cracker. Let’s just create a new brand.” They almost never do that.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah, and I think with some of these CPG firms and companies, it’s, you know, it’s challenging to start, to be a startup and to define a space in the market that they can take advantage of and then potentially, or eventually compete with some of the larger brands. And that takes time and obviously, and money. But it is that strategy to be able to innovate a brand or a product that is different and that makes it unique and allows them to, you know, use them to leverage and grow their brand.

James Richardson: 

I think you’re right. I think that the challenge is what do you do with traditional principles of branding? And I think that, what I’ve noticed is that the branding can be really powerful in making you appear essentially bigger than you are. And more professional and cool than you are. But in my world, the growth is mostly product experience driven. So, the brand actually has to honor that. But if you’re not innovating, I don’t know. I haven’t seen a lot of companies that get to the actual scale in my industry, just off a branding layer and no product innovation. Usually if they did, it’s because they had a great sales team.

Linda Fanaras: 

So, I did notice in your book you had mentioned something you said, “Don’t hit the gas too early. Successful CPG startups manager rolling iterative experiment until key KPIs appear, you should learn this art.” So, what do you mean by that? Can you speak to that a little bit?

James Richardson: 

So, the crash rate is a little higher in CPG than in durable goods. And the crash can happen real fast, like within six to nine months if you go out too fast with the wrong thing because they didn’t take the time to study their fans-

Linda Fanaras: 

Right, exactly.

James Richardson: 

-to learn what were, what are the aspects of the consumer experience and the design that are really driving repeat purchase and fandom, I mean, it’s often not what caused the founder to create the product. This is a real problem with amateurs, is their non-objective approach to innovation. It’s literally subjective. It’s literally birthing it from their heart into the universe as a critique of the category. But their critique is often off centered from what’s going to generate the growth. So, most of what I do is get people to realize, to reframe what they have. I come in and say, “No, that’s not actually your edge. Your edge is this.” I often have to come in and sort of help people better understand the thing that they have so that they can get it on a growth. The one thing that’s in my book that I’ve learned at least, is that usually it’s about a mass market outcome. From the user experience, that’s what unlocks the growth and that’s what gets them the correct positioning. Dr. Squatch is a great example. They started marketing as just another over pressed soap bar. They marketed as a natural, non-processed soap bar. Well, that had been tried for 40 years, but that didn’t create any business for anybody. There’s probably 20 brands doing that. Because the minute you put it in that box, there’s just this tiny audience that even wants to listen to you. But once you reframe it as: “We’re gonna modernize your masculinity in the shower,” now you have a huge audience.

Linda Fanaras: 

Right. You’re connecting, you’re making a connection.

James Richardson: 

So it’s the same product, same formulation, same attributes. You’re just connecting them to a different outcome through great storytelling.

Linda Fanaras: 

Great point. Companies, you know, we know they love to be everything to everyone, and steady velocity growth is essential to ramping up anybody’s brand. But what I’m curious about is how do these CPG teams actually learn how to sustain that in key geographies, key demographics, so they don’t have to buy like premature distribution to obtain some growth with their sales.

James Richardson: 

So, there’s a bunch of different ways to do it, and I think that the presumption here is that you’re not going to start off with a mature marketing budget. And that’s actually true with big companies too. They’re not going to assign $30 million advertising campaign to a new launch. That almost never happens unless the CEO came up with the idea. So, what people do is a combination of cheap tactics, which take more time. They take years to have an effect, and they precede the market. So, they’re actually building awareness nationally through PR, free, like appearances in targeted media, right? And even in events. And they’re using out of store event sampling, and then marketing to also build awareness. That’s when they get in the market. So, it’s – what I tell my clients is that when your tool is appearances in the media that are earned (so free) your team just pitched people and you go, when that’s your tool you have nothing to lose doing that years ahead of becoming a national distributor. Nothing to lose, as long as you can maintain it. Because what happens if you have an interesting product, it’s design will cause intrigue with the right people. Some of them want to buy right away and go to your website and pay the extra shipping. And so, then you start building, these geeks will start appearing in major cities, which is great because you can activate those people later. When I work with my clients, I tell them to use cheap techniques to build the awareness before you show up in stores. That includes using online sales. Online sales if you can afford them. Because it’s better to be – the way that you become a cool premium brand in almost any category is that people have heard about you for a while. And you’re exclusive and they can’t get in touch with you. They can’t get a hold of you. That’s what causes brands to have a premium halo.

Linda Fanaras: 

So James, what I’d like to do now, just to wrap it up, is could you give me your perspective and provide maybe three key takeaways for an innovative CPG brand that you think that you could help our audience with?

James Richardson: 

Yeah, I, the first is design a modern innovation in a category that you know really well and are passionate about and get it into the market. Then let it soak. Talk to your fans who are repeat purchasers and learn what are the outcomes in their life that, that your product is fulfilling really, really well? What makes it cool to them and how do they feel about it? That gives you the material to develop the kind of messaging you want on your package you want to hand your branding agency and your marketing team. And then three is don’t add distribution until you’ve figured out your out-of-store and in-store marketing playbook that is creating irrationally high velocities for a small business. And that’s all going to be benchmarked to your specific category. But when you’re selling 2, 3, 4, 5 times as fast as the startup next to you, that’s how distribution will come to you. In a natural way that’s a lot more effective.

Linda Fanaras: 

Well, that’s great. So again, thank you today for listening in and on behalf of B2B Brand 180, thank you James. And just to recap, he works with CPG companies who are experiencing growth and want to continue that growth, and maybe they want to get their brand on the ramp to success. So just check out his book. Here’s a great quote that I want to share: “This book illuminates both the strategy and the tactics that can put a CPG entrepreneur on the path to success.” To get in touch with James, visit www.premiumgrowthsolutions.com or visit rampingyourbrand.com to buy his book, which is available on Amazon. I’m Linda Fanaras, host of B2B Brand 180 and CEO of Millennium Agency, which if you’d like to visit us, visit mill.agency, or connect with me on LinkedIn. And to help our channel grow and educate more B2B leaders on brand strategy, feel free to click, like, share, or subscribe. Thanks again.

This special edition episode of B2B Brand180 provides five essential tips to create a successful pharmaceutical brand strategy. Linda Fanaras, CEO of Millennium Agency, discusses how to identify your niche audience, build a brand and messaging architecture, use content marketing to boost awareness, execute a push pull marketing strategy, and optimize your strategy with data.

Listen in to learn how to create a distinct brand that is authentic and relevant for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

 

Linda Fanaras: 

If you want to transform your B2B marketing into a powerhouse brand, then you may want to listen in, and if you like what you heard today, click like share or subscribe. Hi, I’m Linda Fanaras, CEO of Millennium Agency, and I’m your host today, and I’m excited to bring you 5 tips for a successful pharma brand strategy. Let’s get to it. We have a lot to cover today. So, we all know that the pharmaceutical industry has undergone significant changes in evolutions in the last decade, but even more so in the last three years since the start of Covid-19. In 2023 alone, there was a 1.1 increase in the size of the US biotech market. The biotech industry is now $152.4 billion and demands for rapid innovation and groundbreaking solutions have been fueling the industry with no signs of stopping. Pharmaceutical brands are having to think outside the box in the lab and in the office to ensure that they are top of their market and with the widest influence. Biotech and pharma marketing has become incredibly competitive, and businesses can no longer rely on their products or solutions alone. In an industry where there is generic or dupe for everything, the biotech industry is no exception. Biotech brands are forced to get creative with their marketing and customer experience in order to compete. However, that is easier said than done. Whether you’re a small scaled biotech startup or a big name pharma industry leader, having a strong brand can make or break your success in the industry, and your customers are demanding more every single day. But are you prepared to give them just that? Crafting a well-constructed, unique, relevant pharmaceutical brand can be difficult, but not impossible. Positioning your brand cohesively and creatively will provide the right foundation for growth and success. So, let’s explore the keys to successful biotech and pharmaceutical brands. Number one, make sure you identify your niche audience. All industries have niches and the specific biotech market you serve is your niche. Do you create life science solutions for specific illness? Are you an innovator in lifesaving medication? Identifying your niche audience will help you correctly position your brand. Different brands have different audiences, and your audience will depend on who you are, what you do, and what value you bring to the table. The biotech industry is massive, and knowing exactly what space you occupy allows you to establish a brand that is accurate and engaging for the right audience. An ill-positioned brand will fall flat as it’s just not reaching the right niche. To get to the right engagement, you must make sure you are speaking their language. That is, their consumer language. What are their interests? What are their concerns? What’s their problem, and what are they hoping to solve with your pharma drug? Knowing the answers to these questions and more will help you successfully position your brand and can also be used later down the line when it comes to new product launches or brainstorming sessions. While patients may not be technical, your customers can be highly educated, whether they are healthcare professionals, wholesalers, hospitals, care centers or pharmacies. These customers work with highly sensitive conditions or illnesses and are looking for highly sensitive solutions. Pharmaceutical firms need to be able to understand their customers and their patients thoroughly in order to effectively position their brand. They’re looking for the right solution for complex, critical challenges. They’re not looking for the glitz and the glamor, but rather the key medical information and essential data. However, to catch their eye, there still needs to be a certain level of eye-catching engagement beyond medical data. Essentially, biotech and pharma branding must be creative yet tasteful, ensuring that the essential information and regulations do not get lost in the mix. Number two, build a brand and messaging architecture. Establishing a messaging architecture from the start will make doing business far easier and having a stable foundation to build upon will set you up to ensure every aspect of your biotech or pharmaceutical business is supported by concrete values, processes, and more. Your brand design includes visual elements such as your logo, photography, and color palettes, as well as more emotional messaging elements such as brand positioning, key messaging, differentiators, and content marketing. Data is also incredibly important to building your messaging architecture as it serves as the factual guidance and logic to your decision making. Create a brand that is relevant to your brand and your products and services, using the colors that are distinct and can be directly associated with your brand. This will allow your customers and their patients to immediately identify your brand generating familiarity and loyalty. Your core value should be the guiding light by which you operate, communicate, and do business. It shows your customers, employees, and stakeholders what you value and prioritize. As a biotech or pharmaceutical brand, you may value quality of life and transparency, but how are you going to convey that message? Your core values should be reflected in your messaging, imagery, and even new product launches. Showing your customers what you stand for allows them to connect with your brand on a more personal level. Instead of being a cold, faceless corporation, you are open and communicative. Always including your customers in the process. Having a strong messaging architecture will ensure that your brand is ready to go to market. Whether you exist in a highly saturated market or have just broken into a new sector, a strong messaging architecture will ensure you hit your market running. Number three, use content marketing to boost awareness. Content marketing is one of the best ways to reach new customers while also engaging current ones. Relevant content allows you to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise while simultaneously providing your audience with useful data and information they are looking for. The biotech and pharma industries are highly technical, so your content marketing must be comprehensive and up to date. Publishing medical reports, white papers, case studies, and thought leadership articles that are relevant to your products and market is one way to successfully use content marketing, but there are also other ways in which your brand can benefit. For example, publishing your own content not only gives you a dedicated platform to demonstrate knowledge and expertise, but also serves as a tool you can use to add value in partnership. Having a designated platform for blogs, announcements and content on your website, not only allows you to publish your own work, but also that of others. You can partner with non-competing biotech and pharmaceutical brands and exchange guest blogs, podcast appearances, social media highlights and more. This drives their audience over to your website, introducing new potential customers that you may not have reached otherwise. And if you have a copywriter in-house, you may be able to use and create your own content internally. However, depending on who hosts your website, you may need to connect with a third-party service to publish your content. Hiring a marketing agency that offers both content and website development and management services can help you streamline the process and ensure success. There’s a lot more to content marketing than simply finding a topic and writing a thought piece, especially in biotech. Successful content marketing uses SEO, which has been crafted and outlined using reliable data and speaks on relevant topic. Biotech and pharmaceutical content marketing specifically must be very well organized and crafted to hold relevance. Content marketing can be a powerful tool in successfully marketing and branding your pharma business. Number four, execute a push/pull marketing strategy. Integrating a push/pull marketing strategy for your biotech or pharma brand will help you stay connected to your audience and their needs, your direct customers, HCPs, pharmacies, hospitals, insurance companies, and other related parties. However, that doesn’t mean that you should only be focusing on their needs and demands; a successful strategy will include the needs and demands of their patients. A push/pull strategy means your market to patients to ask them to directly ask for your products while also understanding the benefits that you bring to the market. This will boost your reputation as a biotech or pharma brand that is open and communicative, giving you a positive reputation amongst direct customers and patients. Number five. Optimizing your strategy with data analytics. Launching your brand may seem like the finish line, but a successful brand is never truly complete. A successful brand is always being optimized and adapted to keep up with the current market. A stagnant biotech brand will quickly get left behind. Your product, services and branding should always be moving forward. Data analytics provide insight in the productivity and success of your branding so that you can adjust as needed for optimal results. A successful biotech brand is well-known, adds value to customers, and stays up to date with the industry. Data analytics can help you create a brand that is authentic and relevant and can also help you monitor key performance indicators. If you have a high open rate on your emails, but low engagement with links or attachments, that could be an indication that your email content is falling short. On the other hand, if you publish a Google ad that is targeted toward lead generation, that results in high landing page traffic and click through rates, that could be an indication you executed a successful campaign. All data is useful, but it’s all about how you analyze it. Data analytics are particularly useful in biotech branding for understanding your own success, but also identifying opportunities, optimizing strategies, and getting to know the competition, and having the ability to foresee potential changes in your industry through data analytics can put you at an advantage. Being able to also gain insight in the competition’s success allows you to operate offensive and do better than them before they can anticipate it. Data analytics can help your pharmaceutical brand reach the top of your industry and stay there. There’s no doubt biotech branding is complex. Navigating the regulations and compliance issues with the biotech industry requires significant attention to detail. Establishing and maintaining a successful brand is possible. All businesses start somewhere. But what matters is how strong your foundation is. Taking the time to conduct research, establish clear processes, and create relevant, engaging content will secure your brand at the top of the market. And once you’ve established and launched your brand, you must be able to optimize your strategy to remain competitive. There are no stagnant markets, especially in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry. As a highly technical team, branding may seem like the lowest priority. This can’t be further from the truth. Successful branding drives business. Hiring a niche branding agency that specializes in pharma or biotech branding and marketing can help take the strain off your internal teams, allowing you to focus on your life-saving medications and revolutionary solutions. Biotech and pharma branding is very specific and dedicated branding firms will have the knowledge and background needed to know how to successfully position you and engage the right audience for the best results. And what’s more important is that they can also optimize and manage your brand, ensuring you stay relevant in your market. Biotech branding is only as complex as you let it be, and a professional branding firm can help you make sure you do not get lost in translation. That wraps it up for today. Thank you so much for listening about how to brand your biotech firm. Thank you for listening in, and if you like what you heard, press the like, share, or subscribe button. Thank you.

In this episode of The B2B BRAND180 podcast, Sarah Noel Block, CEO of Tiny Marketing, shares key tips to guide SaaS companies on their content marketing journey. Sarah focuses on organic marketing and believes that all marketing is content marketing. She provides actionable tips on how to create a content marketing strategy when time and budget are limited. Thanks for listening to the B2B BRAND180 Strategy podcast with Linda Fanaras, CEO/Strategist at Millennium Agency.

Sarah’s LinkedIn profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahnoelblock
Sarah’s personal website:
https://www.sarahnoelblock.com/
Content Marketing Webinar
https://my.demio.com/ref/9dg1Ajo5O1selfYW

 

Linda Fanaras: 

If you want to transform your B2B marketing into a powerhouse brand, then you may want to listen in. And if you like what you heard today, click like, share, or subscribe. Hi, I’m Linda Fanaras, CEO of Millennium Agency, and I’m your host today and excited to bring Sarah Noel Block, founder and CEO of Tiny Marketing, and she’ll be talking about optimizing content marketing. Sarah will share some key tips to guide SaaS companies on the right path toward their content marketing journey. As one of the most powerful marketing strategies SaaS companies should really learn how and where to start, and along with the right actions to leverage the potential of content and expand its reach. Let’s get to it. Hi, Sarah. Welcome to B2B Brand 180 podcast. Thanks for joining me today.

Sarah Noel Block: 

Thanks for having me.

Linda Fanaras: 

So, I’m looking forward to hearing about your SaaS content marketing strategies and insights, and how it can really help transform the content marketing journey specifically for B2B companies. So, let’s start out with a quick introduction. Sarah, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Sarah Noel Block: 

Yeah, so I work with SMBs to help them streamline their marketing and develop systems that work with even really tiny marketing departments. I focus on organic marketing, so content marketing is key. I think it’s Seth Godin that says that all marketing is content marketing, and I completely agree with that.

Linda Fanaras: 

That’s a great point actually. So how, when you talk about content strategies and, and helping these companies, how do you go about it? How do you better understand that ideal customer that, you know, clients are actually looking for?

Sarah Noel Block: 

The first thing I do is have a kickoff call with all of the stakeholders involved in the company because they know better than anybody else who they’re targeting, especially the sales team and client-facing people. They need to be on that stakeholder call. So first I’ll talk to them and then I’ll make sure to interview their actual customers. So many people are afraid of having these conversations with their customers, but nobody knows what their pain points are, what they’re seeking out of a solution more than the customer. So, first thing I do is I put out a very comprehensive survey, send that to their whole customer list, and then I have a conversation with at least three of their customers, one-on-one, so I can dig deep into it.

Linda Fanaras: 

That’s great. That really probably uncovers a lot of the pain points that maybe you wouldn’t necessarily figure out on your own. So, it’s great to get that customer feedback. I’m sure there’s surprises that come up during that journey as well.

Sarah Noel Block: 

Oh my gosh, yes.

Linda Fanaras: 

I can only imagine. So, once you speak to the ideal customer and get the survey back in and then analyze the data, then what is your process to build those content themes that your customers actually care about? Like how do you tie those two things together?

Sarah Noel Block: 

Yeah, so I think of it like a Venn diagram. There are the services that you offer, and then there are the problems that they have, and where that meets in the middle, that’s where your content themes lie. So, I always recommend pick about four overall content themes that you’ll create around, and that should be what you talk about. Those are the problems you solve, and really focusing in on that across all channels.  A lot of times, yeah, people mess up by talking about too many things and then they’re known for nothing. So, having those content themes keeps you in a good box, where you’re not floating around and talking about everything. So, you become known for this expertise.

Linda Fanaras: 

When you talk about those content themes, are you looking at pain points? What would be a good example of a content theme from your perspective?

Sarah Noel Block: 

A content theme for myself, for example, might be, like, I talk to one person marketing departments, solo entrepreneurs and small businesses that have no marketing departments. So, one of those might be how to, work through – how to really market when you’re really time constrained and you don’t really have a budget. So, everything is through that lens. And then how can that be solved? So, I’ll talk about repurposing, for example, within content marketing. So, we can talk about how you can get the most with the littlest amount of output, the littlest amount of output on time, and the littlest amount of output in budget, because it really lies in what that pain point is for them and what my service is.

Linda Fanaras: 

I think that’s a good point because what happens is during the process is, I find that clients like to talk about a lot of different things and then it does get very confusing. And when you’re done reading something, you don’t really have a clear understanding of what they’re really getting at. So, I think having one key focus area, to have that theme helps really push that message out in a more effective way. So, I do like what you’re talking about there. You know, companies also talk about a brand voice. I love talking about this because I think every company has their own brand voice and they may not know exactly what, what does that mean? What do you mean a brand voice, and why does that matter? Like we’re who we are. So how do you tie in that brand voice with the actual content? You know, I know some companies think they’re funny or others are super academic. How do you tie in that brand voice, and what would be some examples of actually putting that into action?

Sarah Noel Block: 

Yeah, so when I’m building a content strategy for a client, one of the things I do is I have this one sheeter that is the client voice. It includes words they would say, words they wouldn’t say, how they want someone to feel after interacting with them, their tone, examples that showcase their voice really well, and it matters because your brand is a personality and content marketing is all about building that Know Like Trust factor. And if you sound like a different person every time you’re posting on social media or on an email, it’s like, well, who are you? Especially when you’re working with contractors to fulfill that content. It can get really convoluted, but you need to be a personality, your brand needs to be a personality. And having that one sheeter that you can hand off to any of your contractors, that makes it a lot easier and makes sure that you’re – you sound like the same person across all channels, no matter who’s writing.

Linda Fanaras: 

I think that’s a great point because when we go through our brand strategy process with our clients, we have to really distill who they are, and sometimes they don’t really know unless they go through that process to figure out, okay, well as much as I’d love to be this, you know, fun, crazy company, that’s really not how we are built. That’s not who we are. So, we’re more professional. And then tying in the way you speak with who you are can really make a difference. It starts to tie all the pieces together in a much more effective.

Sarah Noel Block: 

Yeah. Speaking of that, you’d want that brand voice to tie to any external people that are client facing, so that voice comes across no matter who’s saying it.

Linda Fanaras: 

Exactly. So, it’s very, very consistent and I’m, you know, I’m assuming like we put it into our brand and messaging architecture guidelines as really like who are we? What’s our personality, how do we speak, so on and so forth. And from that you can really start to have a voice that is used across all the mediums that you choose to use. So yeah, I definitely like that. And I think that’s a big oversight by a lot of companies. It’s like, let’s try this. Let’s try that. Well, you have to decide who you are first before you go down that direction.

Sarah Noel Block: 

Yeah, there’s that and a lot of times they don’t tie it to customer service or sales, people that are interacting with the customers. They need to follow those brand guidelines too.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah exactly. So how do you actually get the most from content, when you have a small team that you’re working with, how do you handle that?

Sarah Noel Block: 

Yeah, so I usually, when I’m working with SaaS companies, they’re usually coming to me at the very beginning when it’s like a founder and one other person, and they need to figure out how to really build out their brand when their brand spanking new and don’t have the budget. So, I always recommend creating this core piece of content. What is something that you can commit to doing once a quarter, once a month, once a week, whatever it may be. What is that one thing that you can commit to doing? And then take a look at that core piece of content and how can you repurpose it in as many ways as possible? So, I recently did a podcast episode where I broke down how you could take one 60-minute interview with an influencer or a subject matter expert and then turn it into 64 net new pieces of content. So you’re not like restating the same exact thing over and over again, you’re just using it as your foundation for your content for the quarter. You’re showing up every single weekday with new content, but it’s not going to take you a million hours to do.

Linda Fanaras: 

Oh, that’s great. So, what would be an example of grabbing 64 pieces of content? Are we talking about social content? Are we talking about writing blogs from that?

Sarah Noel Block: 

All of that.

Linda Fanaras: 

All of that?

Sarah Noel Block: 

You can take that one influencer interview and repurpose it into weekly newsletters. You can turn it into blog posts. Podcast episodes. You can break down that video into shorts and clips for YouTube. There are so many different things that you can do with it. You can even compile a couple of those and turn it into a new e-book if you were talking about a certain theme. So many things you could do. It was episode 27.

Linda Fanaras: 

Okay. Okay, fantastic. No, that’s great for the audience to know. How do you work with your, you know, clients on tying in their content with their SEO goals? Do you have strategies in place to help them with that?

Sarah Noel Block: 

Yeah, I try and make it as simple as possible. I use Ubersuggest to track their SEO and where they’re at. And Ubersuggest is nice because it also shows me the low hanging fruit. What are the easiest keywords that they could rank for number one quickly? And I’ll focus on those first, so we can get those easy wins. And then Google Search Console. It has content ideas in beta right now. Yeah. So, if Google is telling you, “Hey, you could rank for this pretty easily,” then listen.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, you use those as tools and that, that’s probably a good thing for the audience to know as well as Ubersuggest. And also, the Google Search Console would be two great resources and tools to share that they can use to improve their SEO if they’re hoping to do that with their content. So, I like that idea. I think that’s fantastic. Now, you must have, I mean obviously you’ve created a lot of resources. Are there any resources that you can talk about that you might be able to share with the audience as well?

Sarah Noel Block: 

Yeah, so I will share this with you to put on the show notes page, but I have an on-demand webinar, “Five Ways to Increase Your Content Marketing ROI.” So, what I do is I break down one of my actual clients, how much they spent on content marketing, and what we were able to actually create lead-wise, how much money they actually made from content marketing, I show you my whole process with real numbers in there, so I’ll share that with your audience.

Linda Fanaras: 

I think that’s great. Can you provide some initial tips before they jump into something like that? Just curious, like how you would. you know, help them. I know you do your discovery, I know, you uncover the keywords. I know you build out multiple sets of themes and content blocks. Are there, and then you obviously have to set up the analytics to track that back, I would assume.

Sarah Noel Block: 

Yeah. I use Google Data Studio for that to create a dashboard for it. I usually start working with my clients with a messaging and content strategy so we can have the foundation there and that’s when we figure out your customer avatars, your brand voice, your content themes, how you should be talking to your customers, what words they use to describe you. We dive real deep and that’s the foundation. And then from there we have quarterly content planning, build out exactly what makes sense to create that quarter, and then some clients work with me on a monthly basis for execution on that.

Linda Fanaras: 

That’s awesome. So, do you have any other tips that you can share with the audience on SaaS content strategies?

Sarah Noel Block: 

Yeah, SaaS? Work with partners. I have a few SaaS partners that I work with as a service provider. They’re a product. We have the same audience, so it makes sense to collaborate with them because you share the same audience and you’re basically doubling, if not tripling the amount of people who know who you are. So especially when you’re a startup, partnerships are key.

Linda Fanaras: 

No, that’s a great idea because, like you said, you’re leveraging the same audience and if you could build a strong partnership program and a lot – or a strong partnership –  and I know a lot of these technology firms have these fantastic partnership programs, and if you can get ranked and become top of mind, it’s a great way to generate leads and generate a referral system for yourself. So I like that idea.

Sarah Noel Block: 

I mean, referrals and affiliates are great, but also doing these partnerships in content marketing is, like, key.

Linda Fanaras: 

Valuable. Yeah. No, that’s great. That’s awesome. How about any other tips that you’d like to share today on content marketing, especially on the B2B side? What other good takeaways would be great for our audience to hear?

Sarah Noel Block: 

I would say consistency is key. When you show up regularly and people can rely on you to be the teacher and teach them how to solve their problem, that’s when you – the leads become easy. They’re coming to you. You don’t have to do any cold outreach. You don’t have to do any outreach at all because you’ve built your reputation as an educator, as someone who knows what you’re talking about, you know how to solve their problem, and the leads will come to you. So consistently showing up and educating, teaching, being selfless, it comes back. It’s like good karma.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah, you helped somebody and then guess what? It comes back in all kinds of ways. Sarah, it was great to get a lot of those tips and I think that they’ll find some value in this on how to build out a really solid content strategy.

Sarah Noel Block: 

Yeah. So, I will share the “Five Ways to Increase Your Content Marketing ROI” on-demand webinar link with you so you can share it on the show notes page. And, um, also anyone who’s listening, if you want to check out my podcast, it’s the Tiny Marketing show everywhere you listen to podcasts and also on YouTube.

Linda Fanaras: 

That’s fantastic. Well, let me thank Sarah today, founder and CEO of Tiny Marketing, while she provided all kinds of great key tips to guide these SaaS companies on the right path toward their content marketing journey. Thank you for joining us on Brand 180 Podcast. If you like what you heard, press like, share, or subscribe today.

Linda Fanaras joined Tycoons’ Austin Peterson and Gary Braun to give insight into the world of branding and marketing. They talked about the importance of authenticity, professionalism, and how to find the “white space” in the market.

Tune in to listen to them discuss making sure you don’t cut corners on what’s important, finding the things that can set you apart from your competition, and not forcing something that doesn’t fit.

 

Introduction: 0:07

Welcome to “Tycoons of Small Biz,” a podcast where small business owners are celebrated as the backbone of the American economy. Each week, we introduce you to tycoons who share their stories and advice so that small business owners may learn from their experiences. “Tycoons” is powered by Backbone Planning Partners, and Pivotal Advisors. Join us now as our hosts connect you to today’s tycoons.

Austin Peterson: 0:37

Good afternoon tycoons, and Happy New Year 2023. Welcome to “Tycoons of Small Biz.” This is our first episode of 2023. If this is the first time you’re listening to our podcast and you’re wondering what it is that we do here at “Tycoons of Small Biz,” we are a podcast that’s put together by small business owners, for small business owners. And our sole purpose here is to share the stories of people who are truly the backbone of the American economy, and allow them to talk about themselves, talk about their business, share it, you know, what it is that they do for their employees, for themselves, for the economy, etc. So, with that being said, we hope you enjoy listening and hope you come back and rate us and you know, do all those sorts of things that podcasts need to have done. But today we definitely have a tycoon of small biz on the podcast with us today. We’ve got Linda Fanaras, CEO of Millennium Agency coming to us from Manchester, New Hampshire. Linda, welcome to the show.

Linda Fanaras: 1:29

Thank you, Austin. It’s great to be here today. First day after a holiday.

Austin Peterson: 1:34

Yeah, yeah. exciting to be here. Exciting to start a new year. We talked a little bit before we got started, I just went out for a run during lunch. I typically do it in the morning, but I got home from the Rose Bowl last night at 1:30 in the morning. And so, I slept in a little bit this morning did not get up and do that run before the day started and thought, “You know what, I’m gonna still get it in during the lunch hour.”

Linda Fanaras: 1:59

That’s fantastic. I wish I could say I was there as well.

Austin Peterson: 2:05

Well, you live in a different area of the country than I do. Manchester, New Hampshire, Gary in Minnesota, it’s a little bit colder outside for you guys. You know, it’s 59 degrees here right now. So, it was actually even a little bit warm to go out for a run at noon.

Gary Braun: 2:22

I don’t think I want to hear any more about that.

Linda Fanaras: 2:24

I don’t either.

Austin Peterson: 2:29

Alright. Well, Linda, you’ve listened to the show, you know how the show goes, we kind of start by having our guests tell a little bit about themselves, personally. So, whatever that means to you, where you grew up? Are you married? Do you have kids? Where did you go to college? Whatever you’d like us to know about you personally, we’d love to hear it.

Linda Fanaras: 2:45

Sure. Yeah, I’ll give you a little bit of information about myself. My name is Linda Fanaras. Obviously, I own Millennium Agency and have owned it for about 24 years now. I actually came from the high-tech industry. So, my first job out of college, I won’t make this too lengthy. But I was in tech support for about two years or so. And I realized, at some point for me, maybe I’ll move into marketing. So, I did. I moved into marketing and did a lot of research and campaign planning, which I found was fascinating and fantastic because it’s amazing how well that actually works once you do some research and you decide like, “Okay, what areas of the market are available for this company? And how can I tackle those areas of business?” And that just set my career off, so it was great. We were the accounting and business software company, we got bought up by Great Plains then we got bought out by Microsoft and, and I started my company shortly thereafter. So that’s the short version of my career. Personally, I have three kids, they’re all grown up. They’re all college educated, they’re working. They’re off my payroll most of the time. Not all the time, but most of the time, except for transmission goes or some other crisis happens, the phone starts ringing. But yes, I have three kids and I split my time between New Hampshire and Boston.

Austin Peterson: 4:09

Awesome.

Linda Fanaras: 4:10

Yeah, it’s cold- it’s as cold there too.

Austin Peterson: 4:15

Yes, yeah, it is. I mean, you can see in my background, I’m a big fan of Boston, specifically the Red Sox. I’m really a baseball fan first. And that’s, that’s why I fell in love with the Red Sox. I grew up outside of Salt Lake City. And so, I have no reason to be a Red Sox fan, other than as a kid whose parents did not have cable television, the only three teams that got coverage on the news were the Red Sox, the Yankees and the Cubs. You know, you kind of chose one because back then, there was no affiliation of a team anywhere near Salt Lake City. There weren’t the Colorado Rockies, there weren’t the Arizona Diamondbacks, there weren’t any of those teams, you know? And so, I chose the Red Sox and, my gosh, I had, uh, I had a very tough childhood and adolescence and early 20s as a Red Sox fan while the Yankees won a lot of World Series, but-

Linda Fanaras: 5:07

I bet you did.

Austin Peterson: 5:09

Yeah. But I love the city of Boston. That’s really what I love about them is they’re, they’re true baseball fans.

Linda Fanaras: 5:16

Yes, yes, absolutely. I went to a few games this summer, and it was fantastic. I get the opportunity to walk there and enjoy the game and walk back. And the great thing about baseball is, you can go with some friends, you can talk, you can watch a game, you can have a couple of drinks, you could still talk watch a game, so it makes a great- makes it fun. Absolutely.

Austin Peterson: 5:38

Yeah, I believe it’s the best ballpark in professional sports. So, it’s, it’s awesome.

Linda Fanaras: 5:44

Agreed.

Austin Peterson: 5:45

All right, well, let’s, let’s jump to the business side. Actually, before we jump to the business side, I’m gonna do this just because it’s the new year. I didn’t plan this ahead of time. But I was thinking about this just a few minutes before the show started. I’m not a huge New Year’s resolution type of a person. I don’t really set a bunch of New Year’s resolutions. But I do write a business plan for my business every single year. I do it on one page. And I make it very, very simple, right? It’s just kind of broken up goals, strategies, tactics and actions, obstacles to success, and then the last thing is personal and professional development. So that’s where I kind of put the New Year’s resolution type stuff on there. And one of the resolutions for me or one of the things that’s on there for personal development this year is I want to lose 30 pounds. I’m not a very, very large person, but I really should weigh about 30 pounds less than I than I weigh right now. And that kind of gets me back to what I weighed in my 20s. Right. And I’m approaching my 50s now. So, if I can get back to that, I think that would be a big, big deal. So, I’ll toss it over to you. Are you a New Year’s resolution person? Did you set any?

Linda Fanaras: 7:01

You know, obviously, I have set some goals for work. And we have some strategies in place. In fact, we do set them, I set them corporately, and then I also set them with our staff on a quarterly basis. So, everybody can stay up to speed. But I do love the fact that you put everything in a very simple format, and you get everything down on one sheet. And you can just keep that top of mind. So definitely for business, we focus in on three key industries manufacturing, tech, pharma, and we’re planning on growing those markets this year. People question obviously, the economy. However, our feeling is you just gotta keep your head down and just keep running, no matter what. So, our resolution this year is really to grow our business in those three key sectors and focusing on primarily branding and lead generation. And me personally, you’re gonna be a little jealous, I did already take off those few pounds that I wanted to, which I’ve had for the last several years. So those are gone. So, I think this year, I’m going to get focused in on really getting in great shape and eating healthier and working out more. And I think all of that will help me stay focused on achieving some of these other goals. So yes, absolutely.

Austin Peterson: 8:19

Yeah, no good for you, losing those pounds already. Gary, how about you?

Gary Braun: 8:24

You know, I gotta commend you though, Austin, because very few people we’ve dealt with- we’re closing in on 400 clients that we’ve worked with- and very few of them get down to the personal level and have a plan like you’ve talked about. They just show up, they start working hard, and it makes it really hard to know whether you’re on track or not. So, I commend you on that. Yes, we have business plans. We’ve got our initiatives identified and everything else. I’m not gonna bore you with all of that. But we’ve got our plan put together, I feel pretty good going into the new year. I’m with you, got to take off- the holidays were really good and not good to me at the same time. I had a really good time, but man, I gotta take off some poundage now.

Austin Peterson: 9:06

Yeah, it’s funny you say that. I was out for a run prior to the holidays, you know, maybe, I don’t know, first or second week of December. And I saw a neighbor and I was coming back, and I was at the end of my run. So, I’m kind of in my cooldown walk, you know, and I walked past this neighbor and his wife and they’re out there on the driveway stretching, right? And he says, “Oh,” he says, “I’m heading out for that same walk so I can take some pounds off so I can put them back on in the house during the holidays. And I said, “Just to be clear, I was running before I saw you. I was just walking at the end.” So, that’s funny. Well, yeah, actually, last thing I’ll say about that, so on the business plan thing, one other thing that I find helpful and hopefully some of the listeners find this, you know, beneficial, your clients, whoever may find this beneficial: that one page thing, it just, it makes it so succinct, so easy to remember. But on top of that, it hangs on the wall by my desk in my office. So, you see it every single day, and you start to see, you know, am I doing what I said I was going to do daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly. And it kind of holds you accountable because it’s right there. It’s not saved in a folder. It’s not you know, somewhere else. It’s, it’s there visible and ready to be seen.

Gary Braun: 10:26

In Austin, do you have somebody to help you keep accountable, or is that just your own accountability? Because everybody knows you’re supposed to do that, but it’s like going to the trainer at the gym. We all know how to run, we all know how to lift stuff, but when they hold you accountable, that’s when it really happens. So, who holds you accountable?

Austin Peterson: 10:44

Yeah, now I’m just, now I’m just gonna sound like I’m bragging, but we had a, we had a meeting week before last with our team. So, we’re a pretty small group, but the four of us got together and we each shared our separate business plans that then, you know, compiled to make the full business, you know, for the business plan. And we shared those things with each other to be able to hold each other accountable throughout the year. So yeah, every member of my team knows that- what I didn’t tell you is the end part of that is lose 30 pounds and either train for a half Ironman, or to try out for American Ninja Warrior. So, we’ll see where that ends up. But my business partner Landon and I work together… oh, when was that? January? I think it was the 1st. We were together- or no January 2, we were together. No, Saturday we were together on the 31st. And we talked, we were looking at dates for half Ironmans to do together to kind of push both of us.

Linda Fanaras: 11:51

I think that’s great. You have something to look forward to, something to focus on, that long-term distance goal, which always helps. Yeah, that’s fantastic.

Austin Peterson: 12:05

So, give us a little background on Millennium here. What are your tip- there are so many, I don’t want to lump you in with all, but there are so many digital agencies out there. So, tell us who you guys are and how do you really differentiate yourself?

Linda Fanaras: 12:19

Yeah, I love that question. Because you’re right, agencies, there are so many different types of agencies out there. There are digital agencies, SEO agencies, regular branding agencies, and we all sound the same, but how are we different and how do we differentiate compared to others? So, we are primarily a branding company. So, we focus on building brands for our clients. So, what does that mean? So is that just a, it’s not a logo; it’s a look, it’s a feel, it’s a selling proposition that actually differentiates you. Within that, and the reason we are a branding firm is we believe that it is vital to have a very strong brand and a key message in order to drive leads effectively because to your point, we sound like everybody else. And every company sounds like everybody else, depending on what they do, you know. So, the idea here is really trying to find the, what we call the “white space” in the market and saying, okay, here are our competitors, here’s what they all do, here’s what they all say. Now, what part is not taken, like, what can we grab onto that maybe another agency in our competitive field has not taken? And then, drive the focus of the company based on that differentiator. So that’s primarily what we do. We work with our clients to build a brand that differentiates them in the market. And we are focused on some key industries, meaning manufacturing slash- and I say manufacturing, tech and pharma. They are primarily all manufacturing. If you think about it, they’re all making something, right. So, we are hyper focused on those industries. And those are the industries that we can really help these companies grow where we’re involved more successfully and more intensely into B2B markets, which not everybody has a core competency in. You know, you’ll see somebody say, “Oh, can help you, you know, quick, put up a quick ecommerce website.” Well, that’s not really what we do. So, it really is the focus of the branding, building a selling proposition that differentiates you, determining that “white space” in the market and then driving the leads, you know, based on some of that preliminary data that was determined on the front end.

Austin Peterson: 14:43

So, talking to a lot of CEOs, business owners, a lot of salespeople, and I ask ’em, I bet I’ve asked no less than 1000 salespeople, “Why you versus your competitor,” and I get generic answers back like, “We have awesome customer service. We’re really good at relationships,” fluffy stuff that everybody out there in the market can say. So, give us an example- how do you find this “white space” that you speak of? What-

Linda Fanaras: 15:12

Yeah, like, let me give you like an example that people can identify with. I mean, I think that, like, for an example, a lot of companies will say, “Hey, we have great service,” like, how many times do you guys hear that, like every day of the week? “Oh, we have good- our pricing is fantastic. We have the lowest pricing.” Really? Yeah, you and everybody else. So, the idea here is if you take a company, like I like to look at FedEx as a good example, because the differentiating factor with them is when they came up with the overnight delivery guaranteed. There was no one- that’s a, that’s a “white space” in the market that nobody grabbed onto. And they said, “Okay, we’re gonna make this happen. And we’re going to build our business model around really making these deliveries,” and then they’re competing with like, okay, now, you know, we get the United States Postal Service, you know, all these other companies are catching up to some of the things that they established in the market. So, they were able to identify, like, really “white space.” If you’re looking at a company that says, “Oh, we’re your trusted advisor,” or, “We’re your partner,” you have to come up with a different way of- well why? Like, so? I always say, so why would I- I do, I ask the same question here- It’s like, okay, why would I do business with you instead of somebody else? “Oh, we have great service.” Well, what do you mean by that? Like, how do you have a great service? Are you gonna call me back in three minutes? Are you gonna call me back in 60 seconds? You’re gonna email me within the same day? I mean, can you give me some detail on that? So, drilling down into some of these factors that people don’t really think about, that’s a little bit more granular can really help them differentiate themselves. And that’s the work that we do. It’s not something that we, you know, like, wake up in the morning and go, “Hey, let’s do this for Gary’s company. Great idea.” It’s, it’s a process, it’s really a process to figure out, “Why are you different,” and then how can we hang our hat on that for, for one of our clients’ companies, their organization?

Gary Braun: 17:09

Do you find companies that have a really hard time finding that “white space” because they really are similar to everybody else? What do you do with them?

Linda Fanaras: 17:19

It really helps to get- we go through a pretty multi-step process- we have kind of this proprietary process that we put our clients through- and by the time we get to the end of that, it’s amazing what comes up. Like, they’ll say things and they’ll say, “Gosh, I never even like thought we did that. Like I didn’t realize like how important that was,” because they’re hearing themselves, they live it every day, right? It’s sort of like, Austin’s you know, like he’s doing his annual plan and executing it, but you just do it, you’re doing. You’re not thinking, and we get our clients to really think, and we help them strategically think, in ways that they haven’t thought of before. So that is sort of the uncovering factor to help them figure out like, how are you different? Why would somebody want to do something? Just to add one more point to that is, you know, as you said earlier, it’s like, “Oh, we have great service.” Okay, it’s not that you have great service, but the key is to establish a way to say that in a very emotional way. Because if you drink Pepsi or Coke, I don’t know if you’re a Pepsi or Coke drinker. Maybe neither, because they’re soda, we were just talking about weight loss. But, if you are one or the other, there’s a reason. And the reason is, it’s an emotional reason. So, you might like the feeling that Coke gives you. Maybe it makes you feel like you should put your pajamas on and sit in front of the fireplace. Or maybe you have a Pepsi and you’re like, I want to go for a run out- you know, you get different feelings, and that’s what we have to get our clients to think about, is what feeling do we want your prospects to have when they think of you so there’s an actual spot in their mind, when it comes down to that.

Austin Peterson: 19:03

I think you’ve covered a lot of a lot of great, you know, things there. So, I mean, obviously, having a strong brand is vital. I think now today, it’s probably even more vital than ever before, specifically because a lot of people are gonna start to do things remote only, there’s a, there’s a, you know, an opportunity to do things differently. And so, I think that brand matters, but so, you know, talk to about us, to us, why you think it’s vital now, but take that a step further and say, you know, because people say: “We’ve got to build a brand,” right? Well, that doesn’t mean much to a lot of people. You know, when they say a brand, they think Coke is the brand or Pepsi’s the brand, or Pivotal Advisors or, you know, Millennium Agency is, that’s the brand. Well, no, that’s the name. That’s the logo, but, you know, define “brand,” and then why is it critical to have a strong brand now?

Linda Fanaras: 20:00

Yeah, so a lot of companies think, “Oh, we need a new brand.” And they, you know, they might think that’s a logo, right? Or it’s a, it’s a new product launch. But what it is, is it’s really defining your “look” and your “feel” of your business and putting the words behind that “look and feel.” And you’re kind of marrying and guiding the two of those to build an identity that people can really wrap their head around. And it feels like fluff. And it sounds like fluff. And it’s hard to articulate, because- however, if you think of something like a Pepsi or Coke, or an Amazon, or FedEx or whatever the company may be, you have a very specific thought in your mind about those companies. In order to get to that place you do have to go to that, through that process of defining, okay, what do I look like? What does my brand feel like? What do we sound like? What’s our culture like? It’s not, like, just being talking heads, like, this is what we are, but you got to live it every day, like internally in the company in the organization, you have to live it every day. Amazon’s a great example. They look at every day as like a new day, like a clear day. Like, you’re like always solving problems, and you’re always addressing, like, you’re always kind of moving the needle, it’s like incremental improvements, which is a way to, sort of, think. It’s a culture. And it’s really putting all those pieces together your look, your feel, your messaging, your culture, your core values, and then pushing that out into the market, which can take some time because sometimes you think, “Oh, well, we just went through this long process. Now we’re launching our brand. Now we should be okay.” Well, now, once the brand is defined, now you’ve got the messaging defined, you’ve pushed into the market, you have to do that for some time, in order to penetrate the market. So, they really understand who you are and what you stand for. So, there’s an investment in your company, in your look, in the look and the feel of the company and the messaging of the company in order to really, you know, establish that. So, I don’t know if that cleared that up. But that’s basically- there are multiple components to it. It’s a visual, it’s a feeling, it’s the words, and it’s getting all those pieces together into the market into one cohesive, not fragmented way, so people have a clear understanding of what you stand for, and why they should do business with you.

Gary Braun: 22:28

Related to that it kind of ties in with what you just said. You said people might think of it as fluff and you know, logos and colors and whatnot. And I’m sure you see this, a lot of small business owners say, “Well, I can either put all my money into brand, and I only have so much of a marketing, or I could put it into SEO or pay per click or email campaign or I can go to a show or whatnot.” What would you say to those people? Why invest in brand- because they only have so much of a marketing budget to spend.

Linda Fanaras: 22:56

Yeah, yeah, that’s a great question. Because we get that a lot. I think, you know, our clients will say, you know, “I want to put some money behind digital, I want to-” well we have to generate leads, right? So, we take a look at the website and go, “Oh boy,” like, the minute somebody hits this website, they’re gonna leave this website. So, the idea here is to, you know, establish your company so maybe you look a little bit more mature, especially if you’re a startup then just, like somebody, you know, created a quick little website for you, or you had a friend do a logo. So, you really want to make sure that that brand is professional, it’s solid, and it makes it something you’re proud of. Because if you’re not proud of it, it’s hard to like stand by your own company. And we do see that too, like, companies will be like, our website is just like, terrible, like, it’s just terrible. But in this case, it’s really making sure that that brand is solid before you start driving leads to an identity that is not impressive. So that’s why it’s so important to put some money, you know, behind that brand. I mean, not spend tons and tons of money, but it needs to be professional, it needs to be clean, needs to be cohesive. It should be modernized to make sure it utilizes all the best practices that are out there today.

Gary Braun: 24:20

Well, and frankly, it’s the groundwork because without that, then even if you are going to do pay per click or email campaign, if you don’t have your cohesive message, if you don’t have your differentiation, you can kind of flush your money your money down the toilet.

Linda Fanaras: 24:35

I’m always like, it’s like kind of like building a house without the foundation right? It’s like okay, let’s steal the house but you don’t have the foundation. You know, we’re gonna probably have to go back and figure that out with the house and put the foundation in at some point. So why do it later instead of, do it now.

Gary Braun: 24:52

So, I’m sure you have all kinds of great stories, but where are some of the areas that people really fall down on branding? You got a lot of small businesses listening today. So, what are some of the common mistakes that they make that you can catch somebody right now and they can go, “Oh, crap, that’s me.” What are some of the things that you see that they don’t do well?

Linda Fanaras: 25:13

Yeah, I would say, I mean, they might, like, create their own logo that’s not very professional. That’s kind of a big thing. Because that seems like it’s an expensive, it’s an expense that they don’t want to do this one, that’s easy, I can, you know, I can do this myself. Or they might do a quick little website that doesn’t really function or has a lot of 404 errors and things like that. So, we find like the fall down spaces are basically in the general “look and feel.” And then the other thing that we see is that when they do, like, if they do have a website and a logo, and they have materials, their materials will look different than their website. And we see that a lot. So that can be very challenging, because as a potential customer, you’re seeing multiple pieces from this company, you won’t even think they’re the same company. So that’s why it’s so important to make sure that that those things are very cohesive, not fragmented. And the messaging is clear and concise. So that’s the big, I think that’s sort of the big area that I see, you know, companies falling back on is, is the fragmentation of the brand.

Gary Braun: 26:20

Yeah, I see that. Different looks, different feels, different messaging. It just, it affects a company’s professionalism. You know, you want to partner with somebody who gives you that feeling that you were talking about before-

Linda Fanaras: 26:35

Yeah, it makes you feel like the company has it together. You know, I hate to put it into simple form, but it’s almost like, you know, going out and you’re getting ready to go out and none of your clothes match. And, you know, you’ve got red sneakers on and a pink blouse, and, you know, a big hat on and nothing’s like, you know- like, whoa, you know? Rather than like something that’s totally put together, that’s something that’s memorable. I mean, although the person would be memorable, but, like, you want something professional, memorable and cohesive, and that’s the idea.

Gary Braun: 27:09

And you know, you just described Austin’s running outfit, right?

Linda Fanaras: 27:12

Is that how he dresses? That’s what I thought, you know, I was wondering.

Austin Peterson: 27:17

Oh yeah, no, definitely.

Linda Fanaras: 27:22

You know, the hat, I told him not to wear the hat. But he just keeps going “I’m gonna wear the hat.”

Austin Peterson: 27:29

Yeah, I usually run in a fedora actually. But it is what it is. You know, I wanted to actually add something to something both of you guys use the word ‘professionalism’. I think that sometimes that word is misunderstood or misused in the way that people build their brands and their websites. So, what I mean by that is, let’s pick, whatever, let’s pick an industry. Let’s pick banking, for example. Right? So banking, everybody kind of knows that when you walk into a bank, the executives of the bank are going to be wearing probably three-piece suits, wingtips, you know, white shirt, tie, all those sorts of things, right? But that doesn’t mean that every bank has to be that way. Or that every person in pharmaceutical sales or you know, whatever. You can be professional, but still intentional and true to who you are and what you’re doing. Right? So, I mean, so my industry, not to use me as an example, but our industry is pretty buttoned up as well, right? Yeah, I go to conferences, and people give me grief about not wearing a white shirt and tie and those sorts of things. But that’s not- I love wearing suits when it’s appropriate, and I feel like it’s warranted. But that’s not true to who I am, right? Most of my clients are very successful business owners, but most of them in the blue-collar trades type area, right? And so, I walk in with wingtips and a three-piece suit, they don’t want me there, right? They feel uncomfortable with me there. So, I wear more casual clothing than most people in my industry. And our website reflects that. Right? I don’t put a suit on just to have the picture on the website. I’m wearing what I normally wear on a day-to-day basis, right? If I stood up, you’d see that I’m wearing like gray plaid pants, a louder color, right? That’s, that’s who I am, and my clients know that, they expect it, I walk in wearing a pair of you know, I’m wearing jeans and a nice shirt. I still look nice, but I’m wearing multicolored vans shoes, because that’s who I am, right? And I’m to a point in my career that if anybody’s choosing to work with me based on what I’m wearing, that’s not somebody I want to work with anyway, right? So, I think that there’s, there’s this belief that you have to pretend to be somebody that you’re not really. And you can be authentically yourself and still build a great business, even, excuse me, even in an industry that expects you to dress a certain way.

Linda Fanaras: 30:20

Yeah, that’s a great point. And I think you’re right, I think a lot of people, I mean, although you are established in your career, so you’re, you’re probably at the point where, like you said, you know your stuff, you know? You’re great at what you do. So, and you’re confident with that, and that- and you’re not, probably, trying to prove yourself in any capacity. So, you’re you, which is a great place to be. And I do think that people should be authentic, because that is, you know, that is their selling proposition. And it helps them also differentiate themselves from others that are in the market, because I think you’ll find, you know, we find we find like, I’ll just say we find “like” clients, like clients like us, and the more like clients we find, the better relationships and partnerships we have with them. And my guess is you probably feel the same way, and that’s, that’s a great place to be, it really is.

Austin Peterson: 31:18

Absolutely. Well, let’s, let’s move on to how to find that “white space” in the market. You say you got to find that “white space,” how do you guys- you mentioned kind of a proprietary space, or a proprietary process that you guys go through to find that “white space” so, you know, you don’t have to share how the how the soup is made, so to speak, but kind of what is that process? Actually, you know what, before we do that, let’s have a quick break, we’ll hear a quick call to action for our audience, drink some and water, and then we’ll talk about the “white space.”

Austin Peterson (Intermission): 31:54
Hey there, tycoons. Austin Peterson here, co-host of “Tycoons of Small Biz.” If you think you have what it takes to be considered a tycoon and you’re wondering how you could become a featured guest, please follow and then message us at “Tycoons of Small Biz” on LinkedIn. We’d love to have a conversation with you to see if it is a mutually good fit, and if so, we’ll get you scheduled for an interview. If you’re unsure about being a guest on our podcast but are contemplating selling your business over the next few years and you’d like to know what your business is worth, please also follow us and then message us on LinkedIn for your no obligation, informal evaluation of your business. We look forward to hearing from you and thanks for listening to the “Tycoons of Small Biz” podcast. And now, back to today’s program.

Austin Peterson: 32:34

All right, tycoons, welcome back. We’re here with Linda Fanaras, CEO of Millennium Agency. We’ve unpacked, I feel like, quite a bit already. But, Linda, like I said, right before the break, let’s talk about how you help people find that “white space” in the market. Give us a little more information.

Linda Fanaras: 32:52

Yeah. So, the white space is really trying to identify space in the market that your competitors have not tapped into yet, especially if you’re in a company… If you’re in the type of industry where everything feels like a commodity. You’re competing with a lot of like companies, almost in, I like to say, perfect competition. It doesn’t have to be perfect competition. But in this case, when you’re analyzing white space, we do take our clients through a pretty detailed process. But to give you an overview, there are many different factors that you need to actually evaluate and analyze. First of all, you want to figure out maybe your top 5 to 10 competitors. And you can build out almost like a matrix system or some sort of a graph system so you can track this data and really look at, okay, how are they positioned in the market? What do they say that they use to differentiate themselves? And you identify what that is. And then you’re like, okay, what does their branding look like? What is their look and their feel? How do they segment and target their different audiences? Who are those audiences and who do they go after? Because all these things I’m mentioning are ways that you can start to define and uncover that “white space.” And then, you can also look at what are my products and services mix that- what are they offering for their products and services mix? So you have to do some digging. What’s their price point? What’s their company personality? Are they the white shirts and the blue suits? Or are they more casual and fun loving? So how are they doing on, like, customer satisfaction? Like if their satisfaction is low, theirs is great. So, you start looking at these things, like loyalty. So, you start looking at factors that maybe you wouldn’t necessarily look at before, and you start digging into that and you define them, and you document them. I also like to add into that the actual… I don’t know if you’re familiar with the PESTLE analysis, which you probably remember from your college days, but you look at some of the things that are going on in the industry. So, if there’s things in the industry that’s impacting business or your typical type of business, like if there are any political issues going on, the economic landscape is changing. Real estate now would be a good example, that’s changing. Maybe technology is changing, legal is changing, environmental factors are changing. And you look at all these different pieces and then you’re really at this point figuring out, okay, what can we innovate? What’s available to us that we could take advantage of that maybe we couldn’t before? Once you put these pieces together and you start to analyze these different things, you’ll have this framework that you can use to pull factors out that will help you start to differentiate. Then you can build off of that component. That’s kind of a… I mean, for small businesses, I know it sounds a little complicated. You don’t have to do that big deep dive, but I think at the very least, if you did the competitive analysis, how they’re positioning themselves, what they say the differentiators are, and then trying to find out why yours are different, it can help you establish a spot in that marketplace that will allow you to innovate in a different way.

Gary Braun: 36:16

I love that. You touched on it a little bit, but I find even the segment of market that you go after can be a big one. I think about a client that we had, they were in the background screening world. They all do the exact same thing. They all go, and they send people to the courthouse, and they pull records, and they do online stuff. They all do the same thing. But when a client of ours said, but we’re going to specialize in healthcare and transportation. And they had on their website, here’s our transportation solution, here’s our healthcare solution. And when they went to all their competitors and saw, well, they’re kind of jack of all trades. Hey, these guys get us because they’re transportation. All of a sudden, they wanted to work with them. They created an identity. They found their “white space.” So even something as simple as, “What segment of market do we want to go after?” can help you with that “white space.”

Linda Fanaras: 37:07

Exactly. Because that company can go in and say to those prospects, “Hey, there’s no learning curve with us. We already get your space. We work in your space. You’re going to save a lot of time. You’ll save a lot of money, and we can help you get there faster.” That is a selling proposition. And it’s a good example of one because it’s relatively straightforward. And you’re right. I think that’s a great way to tackle something like that.

Gary Braun: 37:34

Yeah, because people want to buy from people or partner with people that get them. So, the more you can relate to them, the better your win rates are going to go up.

Linda Fanaras: 37:44

Yeah. I know with a lot of small businesses, especially as you start out, you want to be a jack of all trades. You want to be able to offer… “We want to offer everything so we can generate as much revenue as we can. And if anybody calls us, we can say yes,” and that’s great. But at the end of the day, everybody knows you’re not great at everything, right? So, it’s really identifying like, okay, what can we be great at? What should we be great at? And then let’s focus on that space and let’s go after that market because it becomes much easier to find your market and sell to that market once you figure out that this company is a good example that you mentioned, Gary. They could find that market, they can go after it, they could target it, they could message to it. They have case studies that prove it. They have the credentials and they’re selling process is easier and it’s easier on the other side, on the prospect side, too.

Gary Braun: 38:38

Yeah. Have you found that business owners are a little afraid of that sometimes? They feel like they’re decreasing who they’re going after?

Linda Fanaras: 38:47

Yeah, that’s a big one. The thing is, it doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t take business from other sectors. It just means you have a focus, and that focus allows you to market more effectively and find your customers more easily. And that’s obviously the goal of many business owners.

Gary Braun: 39:08

I was looking at some of the work that we had done together before we got on the podcast. You talk a little bit about how you guys help decrease CPL and increase CLV and cost per lead and customer lifetime value and whatnot. Do small businesses, your manufacturing clients want, do they even know what their cost per lead is or their lifetime value? And how do you help them there?

Linda Fanaras: 39:33

Yeah, we have to get them to dig into that a lot of times. No, the answer to that is no. Yeah.

Gary Braun: 39:40

And why do they need to know?

Linda Fanaras: 39:42

They have to know. A great example is we just did… We had a relatively small… They do laser cutting business, and we were doing some email marketing for them, and we’re doing it. That’s it. And we’re going through the analytics, and she’s like, “Wow, we got that customer from that email, and that customer from that email, and that customer from that email.” But you have to be able to figure out where they’re coming from, and then you can track how long will you keep them. Usually laser cutting business, they’ll have them forever. So, the cost per lead might be X amount, but then the customer lifetime value might be huge. So, knowing that from the onset will help you figure out, like, alright, for every lead we get, it’s going to cost us X amount. It will cost us $500, $1,000. But our average customer lifetime value is $50,000. And knowing that data really helps companies, I guess, feel good about their marketing.

Gary Braun: 40:43

Not just randomly trying different things.

Austin Peterson: 40:52

Yeah, it makes them feel good about it. But the flip side to that is, like you said, they might have a pretty big customer lifetime value. And if you build your marketing based on that’s a $50,000 lifetime value, and you build your marketing budget based on accumulating a bunch of people at $50,000, then you think, “Oh, well, it’s no big deal to spend $25,000 to acquire that customer then because my lifetime value is $50,000,” and you grow yourself right into bankruptcy.

Linda Fanaras: 41:24

Exactly. I think this is also interesting because sometimes the first knee jerk reaction for a lot of companies at the end of the year, they’re like, oh, we have to cut our budget for next year. Well, the problem is, if you cut your budget your sales will go down, you know? So, as long as you recognize that that will happen, if you want to grow your business, yes. So, unless you’re wasting money, which is not the case here, but if you want to grow your business, you need to figure out what that cost is per lead and what you really should be backing that marketing plan up with and how to drive enough leads to increase your business revenue.

Gary Braun: 42:09

That’s a really good point. And there’s been lots of prognosticators out there talking about how we’re going to have the big recession here in 2023. It’s coming and people are shoring up their budgets. They’re probably just trying to do that process right now, and people have made cuts. I agree with you 100% you can’t cut your way to growth. That’s not going to happen. So, how should business owners think about what to invest in? How do I measure whether it’s working or not? How do I look at my ROI? How do you help them with that or what should they be thinking about?

Linda Fanaras: 42:46

Yeah, those are all good questions. So, the ROI, they’re doing a lot of digital work that can be tracked pretty easily. You want to be able to try to track your leads as a process. So, your leads are coming in, let’s say they’re coming in through digital, you’re tracking your clickthrough rates, your conversions, and your close ratios, and then you’re figuring out, okay, for every lead I generate, like I said, for every $500 I spend, I’m generating a $3,000 sale. So, it’s important to be able to really track that because, I mean, marketing is a process and it’s a cumulative process. And that’s where I think a lot of companies get hung up because they might try something, “Oh, that didn’t work. We’re not doing this anymore.” But the idea is figuring out what does work, eliminate what doesn’t work, and add on something else that you can pilot or test to improve the process. And that’s what is an important part of the marketing strategy. A piece of any business is to not just give up, it’s really just defining what works, what doesn’t work, and how do we build off of what’s working, how do we eliminate what’s not working, and then take it from there.

Austin Peterson: 43:55

So, I’m going to give you a harder question. This is bugging the crap out of me. It’s hard to attribute what’s working and what’s not working sometimes because I’ll take our business. I might go do a speaking event, and then somebody signs up for our newsletter or our blog, and then they talk to… maybe they see something online about us, and then they talk to somebody who refers us. Which of those is responsible and how do you attribute which one works or which one doesn’t? It’s always a puzzle to me.

Linda Fanaras: 44:26

It is. It is interesting because you may have to touch that person eight times and over the course of two years before they actually- before it actually triggers. And so that trigger event, you obviously want to track that because it’s probably a timing thing, right? It’s not necessarily- maybe they didn’t need you two years ago, but they need you today. What triggered them to make that conversion? That’s the important part of what I was saying earlier is that you don’t want to just give things up. You want to keep that process going because you never know when your prospect will actually need your services. So, if you go dark, which a lot of companies tend to do if they get nervous, they go dark, which is the worst thing to do because people forget about you. Then, when you come back alive, you’re starting over and that’s not really what you want to do. You want to keep that going. So, to your point, give a presentation, maybe do a digital ad, maybe send an email marketing thing, maybe do something else to trigger them. They’re ready. You’ve taken them through that journey, maybe organically, not strategically, but it’s worked.

Austin Peterson: 45:38

Yeah. And obviously all contributes, I think Gary’s point, unfortunately, though, is it’s hard to track, really, or at least check a box where that lead came from, right?

Linda Fanaras: 45:50

Right. Exactly. Where did it come from? I’m assuming the first touchpoint, my guess is you are tracking that. So, if you track the touch points, you’re able to track, okay, we got this person and we did X, Y, Z. We sent out whatever, five different things to this company, and this is how we’re able to track it. And then they convert it at this point in time.

Gary Braun: 46:14

I’m so black and white. I want it to be like, the lead source was this. But it’s a lot more of a science than that.

Linda Fanaras: 46:18

I know. It is. You obviously want to track the last one that triggered them because it’s a timing issue.

Gary Braun: 46:26

Who is your ideal client? Who is the people… You said pharma and technology and manufacturing, but are you targeting a particular segment? Is it small business, larger business?

Linda Fanaras: 46:37

We usually like to work with clients that are at least $5 to $10 million in annual sales, which is a good size because at that point they did… and then we do work with clients that are smaller, maybe a couple of million as well, that might not have any inhouse marketing support. But we definitely like to work with clients that really need a company that can actually build a budget, track their budget, and then execute on that plan and budget annually and then report back. Because that way, I don’t want to sound like we’re control freaks, but it gives us a holistic view of what’s going on, what they’re doing, what’s working, what’s not working, which is everything we just talked about so we can make the necessary adjustments as we need to. And that could include a multitude of different things. It could be SEO, it could be email marketing, it could be digital ads, it could be anything.

Gary Braun: 47:32

So, what’s the trigger, Linda, for the small business owners out there that are listening? What is the trigger for them to say, “Maybe I should take a step back and look at brand. Maybe I should take a step back and look at this.” Is there something that they should be looking at their business to say, I need to give Linda a call because this is going on?

Linda Fanaras: 47:51

Yeah. I think if they take a step back and they look at their website and their logo and they read what’s on their website and they read their marketing materials and they say, “None of this- it sounds way too fragmented to me. Nothing really connects. The dots are not connecting,” then definitely I would say, yeah, it’s time to probably call Millennium. I think a lot of things can trigger a conversation. It could be that messaging is not right. They don’t know exactly how to find their target audience. Maybe they need to position themselves. Maybe there’s some issues with the competition. They have these marketing challenges that they don’t know how to tackle, and we can help with the other half.

Gary Braun: 48:37

I love your “white space” concept because if you go… anybody can go do this. Go look at your competitor’s websites and if they’re saying the exact same thing as you, then it’s not good. I did this with an accounting firm once. We were going through a similar exercise. We didn’t call it “white space” or anything, but we were going through a similar exercise. They said, tell me all the reasons we should work with you, or somebody should work with you. And they said, “Well, we’ve been around since 1927, and we’re really good at tax, and we’re really good at audit, and we’re certified in this,” and they went through it, they had like 20 things on the board. I’m like, that’s really good. What I didn’t tell you was I went to your competitors’ websites last night and I’m going to pull up their websites, and if it says the same thing you gotta yank it off the list. I pulled up the first one. It says: “been in business since like 1913.” Okay, that one’s gone. “We’re good at tax, we’re good at-” They had one thing left at the end, so they had not found their “white space.”

Linda Fanaras: 49:37

Yeah. Actually, I’m writing a book on that right now as we speak. So hopefully, it’ll be ready by next year- this year now, I can say. So yeah, sounds good.

Austin Peterson: 49:50

Yeah. So obviously, anybody who’s listening says, we need Linda, we need Millennium Agency. How do they get in touch with you?

Linda Fanaras: 49:58

Yes. They can email me and it’s [email protected]. Nothing after that, no dot com or anything. So, it’s [email protected]. Or they can visit the website at www.mill.agency, and through there they can definitely reach out. Thank you so much.

Austin Peterson: 50:25

Yeah. Linda, I really appreciate the conversation. I’ve picked up a few nuggets of- and that’s really what we’re all here for. Our intent, like we said, is to tell the stories of small businesses, but we’ve got business owners and, ourselves included, who are listening to this and learning along the way. So, I really appreciate it.

Linda Fanaras: 50:46

That’s great. Thank you, us. I picked up some tips too. I’m going to put together that one-pager and put it right on my wall.

Austin Peterson: 50:54

Well, good. That was worth the price of admission then, right?

Linda Fanaras: 50:57

That’s right. Awesome.

Austin Peterson: 51:00

Well, thank you, Linda. Gary, Happy New Year. Thanks for being here.

Gary Braun: 51:04

Happy New Year.

Linda Fanaras: 51:05
Thank you so much.

Outro: 51:06
You’ve been listening to “Tycoons of Small Biz,” a podcast for small business owners by small business owners. Join us every Tuesday at 1 PM Arizona time for an introduction to another great tycoon. And be sure to follow us on our social media channels for links to all of our episodes and great content.

Linda speaks with Riccardo Porta, Global Director of Customer Experience at Dow, and Jim Tincher, Customer Experience Expert and best-selling author, about the real-world implementation of customer experience at Dow to create more profitable outcomes.

During the episode, Riccardo, Jim and Linda explore how Dow applies customer experience (CX) principles to the B2B space, and how they measure success using CX benchmarks. They also discuss how Dow uses customer insights to drive innovation and change.

Links mentioned in this podcast include:

Heart of the Customer’s Do B2B Better: https://heartofthecustomer.com/dob2bbetter/

Dow’s CX Benchmarking for B2B: https://corporate.dow.com/en-us/seek-together/cx-benchmarking-for-b2b.html

Thanks for listening to the B2B BRAND180 Strategy podcast with Linda Fanaras, CEO/Strategist at Millennium Agency.

 

Linda Fanaras: 

Welcome everyone. If you want to transform your B2B marketing into a powerhouse brand, then you may want to listen in now. Hi, I’m Linda Fanaras, CEO of Millennium Agency, and I’m your host today and excited to bring Riccardo Porta, Global Director of Customer Experience from Dow, a material science leader committed to delivering innovative and sustainable solutions for customers in packaging, infrastructure, mobility, and consumer care. Welcome, Riccardo.

Riccardo Porta: 

Thank you, Linda, for having me here.

Linda Fanaras: 

Absolutely. And I have Jim Tincher, Customer Experience Expert and best-selling author of “Do B2B Better” and “How Hard Is It to Be Your Customer? Using Journey Mapping to Drive Customer Focused Change.” Welcome back Jim. It’s great to have you back.

Jim Tincher: 

Linda, I’ve been looking forward to coming back again, so thanks for having me.

Linda Fanaras: 

Awesome. Well, let’s get to it. So, you’re both going to share some insight, knowledge and some key tips on how to keep B2B customers happy, which we all want to achieve, particularly in this day and age. So, let’s get started. Why don’t we do a quick introduction with you, Riccardo. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you.

Riccardo Porta: 

Sure. Actually, this year marks my 20th year in B2B chemical material science manufacturing at Rohm and Haas and Dow. I spent most of my 20 years in supply chain and operations, and I started to get interested and involved in CX about five years ago. Why five years? Because that was the time where Dow and DuPont actually went through this complex merge and spin transaction. And as a result of that spin, Dow, which is 125 years old company, emerged as a new Dow, how we call ourselves, Dow, Inc. four years old company. We have a new passion, a new ambition, and a new CEO. In fact, one of the first things that our new CEO put in place was to state out “What is our ambition?” We want to be, as you said at the beginning, the most innovative, customer-centric, sustainable and inclusive material science company in the world. So, when people ask me, “What’s your job at Dow?” What I like to say is, that’s my job. I want to turn that ambition into a reality, into very real, pragmatic actions that we can all take to advance towards that customer centricity. And, and that’s really what I do at Dow today.

Linda Fanaras: 

That’s great. I mean, that’s all, that’s what we all should be focusing in on, is how to make that customer experience more effective and positive. And you, Jim, do you want to give us a quick, overview of yourself for the listeners who have not met you yet and obviously about what you do?

Jim Tincher: 

Sure. So, I’m the CEO of the organization called Heart of the Customer, and we help organizations better improve their customer experience and make sure that they are selling more as a result, that they’re less expensive to serve, that we’re upselling. That customer experience becomes a business discipline. And when I was writing “Do B2B Better,” I spent a lot of time with Riccardo and his team at Dow, and he does an excellent job of not just improving the customer experience, but showing how you could be a healthier company as a result, which is why I was excited when you agreed to bring him on today.

Linda Fanaras: 

Excellent. Well, thank you. So, we’ll get started. So, we’ll talk about, the book, “Do B2B Better,” it’s a way to drive growth through these game-changing customer experience, and Riccardo, I have a couple of questions for you because it looks like there are four key actions that the book talks about that are based on the customer experience flywheel that I actually wanted to bring up today. Number one, link everything to business value. Number two, identify an emotional “north star” that you use as a design target and that you measure. Number three, connect the customer ecosystem data, behavioral, operational, descriptive, and financial data to your analysis. And then four, use deliberate change management. Riccardo, I would love you to speak to these a little bit and feel free, Jim, to chime in as you’d like to as well.

Riccardo Porta: 

Absolutely. When I was lucky enough that Jim shared with me an advanced copy of his book just before he was published. And when I start reading it, I loved the framework that he used around those four exact points because those are not only all the things we do at Dow, but Jim found a way to put a structure that is easy to explain to people that are not CX practitioners. It makes it easy to maintain and also organize around. So, I really love that framework built around those four points. And maybe if we start from the first one around, it’s all about business value, right? That’s I think, where everything starts and ends. It’s being able to demonstrate and explain both to internal stakeholders and outside, how the CX work leads to better business outcomes. This is important because a lot of programs, particularly in B2B, a lot of CX programs don’t even start, or maybe they die just after they’re started because of inability to prove that business value. So, for us that we were lucky, our CEO I mentioned before, put customer centricity as an ambition, as a reason why we exist. And that gave us kind of the leap of faith to at least get the work going because it took us some time. But at the end, we are now in a position where we have data that shows how customers that have a better experience, and I can talk about how we measured that, customers that have a better CX also grow volume, revenue margin more and faster compared to customers that have a lower type of experience. And that’s how you prove the value.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah, that’s great. And I’ll ask Jim this question, so you know when we’re talking about linking everything to business value, how would a company actually figure out what business value means to them? Because it could mean anything, frankly, depending on the size of the business and what they’re dealing with as far as their customer base or their channels are concerned. So, could you speak to that a little bit?

Jim Tincher: 

Sure. Let me frame it up a little bit, because many of your listeners probably have a customer experience program somewhere in the bowels of the company. And in our research, most of those customer experience programs, their goal is to get customers to move their mouse a little bit more to the right when they fill out a survey. And that’s nice and all, but they don’t actually tie it back to do those customers order more and do they stay longer? Do they cost less to serve? Which is where one of the reasons they wanted Ricardo on here is they do a good job of proving that. And it comes back to the philosophy, is that the reason we do customer experience is not to improve survey scores, it’s to create an environment where customers come to you first, so that for Riccardo, one of their key outcomes is a customer who will do joint innovation, who wants to work with Dow to bring new products to the world. Now, that’s obviously not an everyday accomplishment, that’s their home run. But also, they want to create an environment where they can show that when customers say it’s better to work with Dow, that their order velocity improves, as well as they order across more categories of products. And that’s what great customer experience is, is that we show that when the experience gets better, so does the bottom line.

Linda Fanaras: 

So, which brings me to my next question, which is identifying that emotional “north star” and Riccardo, can you speak to, I’m just curious, how would you go about determining what that is? How do you design that and how do you target it and measure it in a way that actually ties back to the actual customer and back to revenue?

Riccardo Porta: 

Yes. We found that what Jim says in his book about the importance of the emotional “north star” is absolutely true. Our customer journeys can be very complex, very long. They have different touch points that involve different personas, and it can be very complicated to separate out the noise from the, what we call the “moment that matters.” What are really those touch points in the journey that have the biggest impact on customer behaviors in terms of buying more, staying longer, or operating in ways that are less expensive to serve? And what we learned is what Jim also shows in his research, is that those moments that matter are the moments that are charged with high emotions. In a recent study we did, for example, we measured two emotions, enjoyability and confidence, those are the two we mostly measure at Dow. And in a recent study we observed that customer confidence in a product being available, when they come to us and place an order, what is their confidence that product is available when they need it? That confidence is a huge, huge impact on their overall experience with us. When they lose that confidence, it doesn’t matter if our account team does a great job, it doesn’t matter if product quality is great, doesn’t matter if you have great technical support. When they’ve lost that confidence, their entire journey, it doesn’t look easy, enjoyable, nor is it. And as a result, they are in a deal that they regret having made. And as a result, we see those volume revenue margins shrinking over time and vice versa when you have confident customers. So, that’s important of emotions.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah, that’s a great point. Did you want to say something, Jim, to that?

Jim Tincher: 

Yeah, I’ll go a little bit deeper on that because what Riccardo’s saying is probably not language most people are used to hearing out of customer experience. Notice he didn’t say, are they likelihood- likely to recommend us to common management. He said, are they confident in us? And my favorite one is when I met Riccardo’s, boss, the Chief Commercial Officer, Dan Footer, we were working on their complaints journey and he said to me, “Jim, my goal is to create a complaints journey that’s enjoyable.” I’m like, “Well Dan, a chemical ordering complaints journey you want enjoyable,” but that’s what Dow measures and they can show that when customers are confident and they say it’s more enjoyable to work with Dow, those customers want to work more with Dow, which is what we should all be striving for.

Linda Fanaras: 

So, one of the big factors here, taking that customer ecosystem (how are they behaving, the operational aspects, the description), like tying all these elements together, and I’m envisioning maybe like a hub and spoke model, how do you tie all this together so you have a solid analysis of whether this is working or not? Because you could talk to a client or a customer and they sound like they’re happy, but frankly they might be mad about something else that just happened that you’re not even aware of. So how do you tie all these pieces together to create a system that’s true and accurate, and that actually measures some of these aspects of the B2B customer experience? I can start with Riccardo. That would be great.

Riccardo Porta: 

Sure, sure. I think that’s absolutely essential for, you know, survey, as Jim also says, is not the end point of a CX program, it is the starting point of a CX program. Voice of Customer is one of the many tools that you can use to diagnose and help you identify problems, pain points or areas of opportunities. But then, once you have identified, used the VOC and survey response to identify those areas, then you need to make hypotheses, and then you can use your own operational data to validate those hypotheses, test those hypotheses, and that way you had a lot of added value by combining your survey and VOC information with your operational measures. One is, of course, is you can cover the customers that typically don’t answer surveys. We all know response rate for surveys can vary, but they never, you know, cover the majority of the customers. Your operational data, your transactional data does go down to the very detailed level. Every customer, potentially every order. So that’s one advantage. You extend that coverage, and you have a very representative view of what’s going on. And the second thing, it gives you a dictionary, a way to talk back to your organization in using the terminology, the KPIs, the scorecards that they’re familiar with, and you can help make the bridge between this is your scorecard and KPI, and this is how your performance against this KPI will impact the customer experience, which, ultimately, will impact customer behaviors. So that ability to translate CX measurements, VOC measurements, back into the KPIs that every function and every group within the company is using is fundamental to get engagement, to get ownership, and to ultimately drive improvement.

Jim Tincher: 

And when Riccardo and I first met about four years ago, we were working on the product availability and delivery journey. Pretty common journey with manufacturing. And at that point, I think Riccardo, you were just fairly new into customer experience at that point, and definitely still had your supply chain head on as well. And when we shared the voice of the customer on certain paths along the journey, the first place Riccardo went is, well, we have data that matches here. That, for example, on time delivery or how often the customer changes the date or how often we change the date, and that’s just how Riccardo thinks, which is fabulous, is that he translates between that voice of the customer and the voice of the business, which for anybody listening from customer experience, that’s absolutely critical to be able to speak to them in the language they like. The founder of Proside, drawing a blank on his name right now, but he has a quote that I love, which is: “Executives speak three languages: finance, finance and finance,” and the ability to translate the customer behavior into those financial pieces, that’s what’s so magical.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah, that’s a great point.

Riccardo Porta: 

And I would add to that, Jim, that at least that’s my feeling, right? How do I get to know myself when I think we are moving the needle and making an impact is when you find yourself changing in the guts on how your company operates. You change your process, you change how the work gets done. For me, that’s a much more impactful, a much deeper impact on CX versus, you know, let’s change the bottom on the, you know, web order screen on from here to there. It’s still CX, it’s still user experience, but it’s a completely different ballgame. And to be able to get into the guts of how your company operates, you have to talk that language. You can’t talk CX language only.

Linda Fanaras: 

You know, the last component of this is actually using deliberate change management. And to your point, it’s not about adding another survey and not executing on that. But how do you get this in motion? Because every time you have to make a change like this, you’re really, depending on the size of your company, you may be turning a ship because it’s a lot of work to make substantial changes in an organization depending on their size. So how do you implement those changes fast enough to keep that customer happy while also instituting these changes internally.

Riccardo Porta: 

It is indeed, Linda, a lot of work and it’s, in my experience, the hardest part of driving CX transformation is not about, you know, what do we do next? It’s not technology, it’s not interpreting the customer feedback. The hardest part is always to drive that change, and convince people that if they do the work differently, it’s good for them, it’s good for the customers and good for business, and that’s very energy draining. There are different ways, tactics you can use to get people on board. One I would like to mention, for example, is journey mapping. We use that as a great way to show people first, give them visibility of how and what they do, how that impacts customer experience, but also help them understand what we’ve always found, which is most of the time when you have a customer pain point, you have an employee pain point on the other side of the fence. So, when you address the pain point for the customers, it’s also a way for you to make the employee’s life easier. Give them easier information, easier access to information, easier tools and processes so they can… respond to customer inquiries, for example. So that’s a great way to show to your people what’s the value, what’s the need for them to improve the customer experience.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah, that’s great. Jim, did you want to add to that at all?

Jim Tincher: 

Well, yeah, and one of the things I like about what Riccardo and the whole program at Dow is doing is that, first of all, their challenge is that they have tens of thousands of employees to influence and a very small team to do that. And so, what they do, instead of, again, just using survey, they actually understand what does this individual care about? And that might be inventory turn, that might be increased ebit, things that don’t intuitively match customer experience, but it’s tying it back and finding out how it does impact. At our conference, right off the bat, Riccardo intimidated everybody by walking through 25 minutes how he answered the role of inventory in the success of the business and how it impacts the customer experience, which is marvelous to be there and to see that happen. If you want your executives to think more about the customer, then you have to show how the executive will be more successful by thinking about the customer. And if you don’t make that link, then they’ll give you attention for a day or two, but then they’ll go back to what they’re working on in the past. But if you can take the time to understand what motivates that executive and draw the line between customer experience and their success, as Riccardo said, that’s the hardest part about customer experience. But when you do it right, that’s how you get a transformation to happen.

Riccardo Porta: 

And if I can add to that, Jim, as you said, it’s very tough to get that executive sponsorship and support and understanding that about the customer experience is good for customers, but also good for business. And it’s part of that why we also as Dow, right, we are chairing what we call an advanced manufacturing CX consortium for B2B companies. Our goal with that consortium is really to help establish a benchmark for measurement of CX and also over time show that companies that have superior CX also have above average return for their shareholders. That will help us build the case for CX across B2B and help all B2B companies to grow their CX programs and value to customers.

Linda Fanaras: 

You know, I do have, I have a question because I think customers can be emotional. So, let’s say you’ve got this customer experience going on, everything’s looking good, it’s been pretty solid for a while, and then maybe something happens that throws their emotions off and all of a sudden you are just no good, and things are not going their way and they’ve totally flipped their perception of you, regardless of what the data says. How do you deal with that? How do you deal with those types of instances?

Riccardo Porta: 

Yeah. What we have seen is a couple of things. First is, our data shows that it’s much easier and faster to lose trust and confidence than it is to gain trust and confidence. Uh, we have seen that from data that when your performance towards customers deteriorates, very quickly that translates into that deterioration of emotion, confident plus whatever the one you measure. When you bring that operational performance back up, it will take time for that trust and confidence to go back to where it was. So that’s a key learning for us because it shows how critical it’s to maintain, it’s much easier to maintain and sustain than it is to regain. And at the end, I mean, there is no secret or one single recipe, right? How do you regain trust and confidence? It takes a lot of energy, a lot of efforts, it’s a lot around communication, being proactive and walking the talk in our experience.

Jim Tincher: 

I think also you go into that and a little bit differentiation between trust and confidence. Our research shows that often confidence comes into, for example, systems. Confidence that you’ll deliver on time, confidence that your products will be right. Trust seems to be more human generated. And so, the role of your account manager, your seller, whatever you call that role, that works for your customers, that’s the other part. And we break trust into two parts: functional versus emotional trust. So functional trust is that yes, your systems will work, but it needs to be paired with an individual is giving that emotional trust. Somebody who is able to form the strong relationship and help your customers feel that yes, your company has their back, and you need both hats. You need your system to be working well and to be in place so you can deliver to excellence every time, but you also need to have that individual who is providing that trust at the same time.

Linda Fanaras: 

So, my last question is, is I wanted to ask about the AMCX consortium and why does that matter for B2B companies that are interested in doing CX? And what is it exactly?

Riccardo Porta: 

Thank you for asking, Linda. Yes. As I say this consortium, the goal of this consortium is really to bring back together key minds and top leadership in B2B CX to achieve a few things. First thing is to set the standards for measurement of CX in B2B. We don’t aspire to create the nominative rankings of company A, B, C, D, and what is the best and what is the not as good as the others? Like sometimes it exists for B2C, that’s not our goal. But our goal is, for example, to be able to, for each of the participating companies, to answer questions like the ones we got during COVID. For Dow, like for many other companies, I think during COVID we saw a deterioration of CX of course, as a result of disruptions in supply and all of that. And a lot of questions we’re getting from the board, from our seniors leaders was, “Should I be worried about this deterioration? Is it going down more than others, faster than others?” Nobody can answer those questions today for B2B, because there is no comparison, there is no way to benchmark, right? So that’s one of the gaps we want to close. And the second one is the one I mentioned before, we want to prove over time and with data that better CX is good for business outcomes, so that the executives of the future in B2B will be able to more comfortably make that leap of faith like they’ve done for diversity, like they’ve done for sustainability. Nowadays, I think everybody agrees that diverse leadership teams deliver better ideas and better decisions, and that’s because we have the data to support that statement. We want to get the same thing on CX so that we can help all B2B companies to invest in CX. And we are open to, you know, if more companies are interested to join, I can provide the informational link. You can just Google AMCX B2B, and there is a contact us page for welcoming new members.

Linda Fanaras: 

Okay, that’s great. Do you want to repeat that one more time for me?

Riccardo Porta: 

Yes. AMCX, like Advanced Manufacturing CX, Consortium B2B. You Google that and it will send you to our contact us form. There is no cost to join and again, we are driving together the uplifting of B2B CX.

Linda Fanaras: 

That’s great. That is fantastic. Thank you both, Jim and Riccardo. That was excellent insight on keeping our B2B customers happy. So let me just take a minute and thank Jim Tincher, author of “Do B2B Better: Drive Growth Through Game-Changing Customer Experience.” And our guest today, Riccardo Porta, Global Director of Customer Experience from Dow. Thank you both for joining us today on the Brand 180 Podcast. If everyone has liked what they heard, please press like, share, or subscribe today.

Linda speaks with Davina Stanley, author and consultant, on how to effectively communicate organizational decisions, strategies and results. Davina draws on more than 25 years of experience helping leaders and teams to clarify their thinking so they can communicate complex ideas.

Linda Fanaras: 

Welcome to the B2B Brand 180 Strategy Podcast. Hi, I’m Linda Fanaras, CEO of Millennium Agency, and I’m excited to bring a communication expert in to share insights, knowledge, and key tips. If you want to transform your B2B marketing into a powerhouse brand, then you may want to listen in. Learn how to position your brand from the competition and uncover that “white space” in the market. I’m happy to introduce today’s guest, Davina Stanley, who turns mid-career experts into great communicators. A veteran communication specialist, Davina launched Clarity First Program, and “The So What Strategy” book, which we will learn about today. So, let’s get into it. Hi Davina. Thanks for joining me today.

Davina Stanley: 

Absolute pleasure. Lovely talking with you.

Linda Fanaras: 

We are very excited. So, do you mind sharing a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Davina Stanley: 

Sure. I live in Sydney, Australia, and I help executives across the board to communicate a whole lot better. My background is, is a little unusual, I suppose. I started out as a kindergarten teacher, originally teaching four year old boys and decided that as much as I adored them, I didn’t want to spend my days in the classroom with 25 of them all at once. And I moved through a series of steps into corporate communication, and I’ve been really lucky. You know, I married a fellow who wanted an international career. So, I’ve lived in many places. I’ve lived in Hong Kong and New York, and Tokyo, Melbourne and Sydney. In fact, I’ve lived in Hong Kong twice. So, you know, I’m, I’m really fortunate. I’ve had quite an adventurous life, I think.

Linda Fanaras: 

Fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. So, I learned and read a little bit about your Clarity First Program, and I think it would be great to educate the listeners on how does it really help executives? Because I think often executives feel like, you know, they are good communicators in most cases, but how do you feel like it actually helps executives?

Davina Stanley: 

Yeah, I think it focuses on the inputs even more than the outputs, if you like. When we think of communication, we think of, you know, what we see, what we hear. But what we do is go right back to the source and say, okay, well what’s the messaging? What is your, what is your idea that you need to convey? And we dig quite deeply to help people really work out what that messaging is, and very often people can, if they’re charismatic, can engage an audience with their personality and, and really, you know, bring people along the journey, which is a fabulous skill. But what we do is we add to that by helping people to clarify their messaging, clarify their thinking. So we use thinking tools that come out of management consulting to crystallize that message and make sure that when they are delivering it, whether they’re really confident in their presentation or not, and some people that I work with are not, they’re, you know, they’re very good thinkers, but they’re not necessarily the charismatic sorts of people. They can really engage an audience because what they’re saying is really valuable and they can get it across really, really quickly.

Linda Fanaras: 

So are you thinking more along the lines as, as an executive communicates that they really have to identify exactly what they’re going to say and how they’re going to say it?

Davina Stanley: 

Absolutely, and I think in many organizations this work’s done collaboratively too. So, an individual, whether they are an analyst, at the more junior levels, a mid-level manager really has to engage people above them, below them and beside them. They’ve got to be really good in all directions, but they need to get a bit of a consensus around what a message might be before they actually get a decision, let’s say. And so, we have a technique where people organize their messaging in a really tight way onto a single page so that they can have some really easy conversations. Well, easy as in it’s easy to have the conversation, the conversation itself might not be easy if the ideas are controversial, but it’s really an easy way to facilitate a conversation around the thinking so you don’t get lost in, you know, loads of detail. For example, a lot of people use Google Docs or Word, and they’ll use track changes, or they’ll live edit a document. We’ve got, you know, lots of PowerPoint slides or lots of, you know, pages of prose, and all they end up doing is looking at the minutiae. They, they lose the big idea, the big thing that they’re trying to get across. And it takes a lot of time. So we help them do it much more quickly and focus on the big idea, the “so what,” as we call it, rather than, you know, spinning wheels around, you know, “Oh, not this word or that. That’s a little d- no, I don’t like that word.” Or, “Oh, I think maybe this belongs here, not there.” Rather than actually guys, you’ve missed the point, you know? You’ve missed the point.

Linda Fanaras: 

Well, it’s interesting what you’re saying because there are a multitude of different leadership styles, and I think sometimes people feel like they should be a certain leadership style, but that’s not their natural tendency or their actual personality. Yeah, so as a leader, it’s important to identify what leadership style works for me, and then how do I identify what to say and how to say it. That works for me because trying to obviously be someone else, let’s say I have no problem speaking my mind where somebody else might be very non-confrontational. I think identifying exactly what needs to be said in a clear, concise manner can really make all the difference in the world.

Davina Stanley: 

Absolutely. And having a bit of a sense too, of what your audience is looking for in terms of their style, you know? If you have a really hard message, I worked with two clients yesterday and they both had really hard messages and they were about both about budgeting and, in both cases, they had a real problem with the money. They needed to do something for maybe half what they’d been given, and they needed to deal with that. And so, thinking about, well, what’s the best way to engage that other person? And you know, do they like to have some time to think before the conversation? Is that really important to them or does that not matter? Are they really happy to have the conversation on the fly? Having a good sense of those kinds of things can be really helpful too.

Linda Fanaras: 

Mm-hmm. And bringing up budget is a good example because I think that’s one of those things where, uh, leaders might have difficulty speaking about, or let’s say you had to ask for a larger budget numbers or it’s an expense issue, and trying to explain why something was done. Having a set of key talking points and messaging points will be instrumental in making sure that that comes across in a very positive way.

Davina Stanley: 

Absolutely. And elevating them so that they’re in a hierarchy. So, the most important thing gets delivered really quickly and really easily, and you know, if you only get, if you know you get squeezed, you go and you’ve got half an hour booked with your manager to go and have the conversation and suddenly you’ve got five minutes, what do you do? And that happens quite a lot. So, if you know what those top line messages are, you don’t forget because you get caught away on, on a narrative, you know, building towards the tension point if you like. It’s like, no, hang on, we’ve only got five minutes. No worries. Here’s, here are the key things that I wanted to discuss with you. At a really high level. And you know, we hear people all the time saying they get caught like that and they end up only needing five minutes. They didn’t need half an hour after all, you know?

Linda Fanaras: 

Right, right. So, it looks like you have a couple different programs available for leaders. You have a basic program and an express program. Are you able to explain what the difference is between them?

Davina Stanley: 

Mm-hmm. Absolutely. So these, the basic and express are self-paced learning courses and basic is just three modules with some simple tools to give you an overview of our approach. So, for somebody who wants just a sense of it, who doesn’t want to go too deep, but just to have the general idea, if you like. The express course goes deeper onto all the elements that we talk about. It gives you those three basic modules, as well as a series of ideas on how to structure your thinking, how to organize your ideas. And so, they’re our two self-paced courses, and I also have a cohort program, which we call the Clarity First Program, and that’s where people come on board, they come for six workshops, and they have opportunities to work in small groups for coaching as well around real life pieces of communication. That’s where people get to interact and really explore the ideas and engage with them, because conceptually it’s not that hard, but as soon as you start trying to do things, you know, it becomes much more difficult. There’s always a big gap, isn’t there, between, “Oh, that’s a good idea. Yeah. I get that,” and actually being able to do it. Yeah, yeah.

Linda Fanaras: 

It sounds good until I have to actually do it right. Exactly. So can you, I know that the book actually covers – the book that you have – covers seven, I would say commonly used communication patterns that people use in business. Can you, can you talk about what a few of those are and speak a little bit about that?

Davina Stanley: 

Perhaps, first of all, I might talk a little bit about where they came from because it might be like an unusual idea that there are, common patterns, if you like, for core communication, you know, corporate communication is, is quite difficult. Whether you’re in a small business doing B2B messaging or whether you are convincing an executive of something, there’s a lot to sort of tie together. But what we found was, my colleague and I have been using these techniques since both of us were at McKinsey, the management consulting firm, and we realized that we were using very similar stories. You know, we’d work with a client, and they’d start telling us about the message we needed to convey, and we’d sit there and say, okay, alright. And we have a picture in our heads. We say, okay, well maybe you could do it like this or like this or like this. Maybe you could talk about the criteria that you need to meet or maybe you could tell them about the problem and how you can fix the problem, make that the primary anchor for the story. Or maybe you need to talk about it via some options. You know, there’d be three ways. Let’s say you could do this, and Jared and I were talking, and we said we wonder if we’ve just got biases. We wonder if we’ve got our own preference as to how you tell stories and whether we are just pushing our clients in a particular direction based on our own preference. So, we sat down and talked about it and realized that we were using very similar stories. There were some differences, but ultimately there were some really common threads. And so, we have a number, I’m thinking which one to tell you about. Let’s, let’s use “Houston, we have a problem,” because it’s got a great name – we gave them all names to try and make them more memorable. And Houston starts off with “Houston, we have a problem,” and then it’s got three steps to it. So firstly, “Houston, we have a problem.” It uses what we call a deductive structure. People have heard of the technique, Minto Pyramid Principle, they will have heard of that before. “Houston, we have a problem,” however, the best way to fix it is this, therefore, fix it, you know, use, implement the fix, and you get to your action plan at the end. So that’s one way of doing it. Another way of doing it would be to flip it to be more positive, because Houston can be quite confronting. You don’t want to use Houston if you’re speaking with, let’s say the- let’s say you’re talking about improving a system because it’s just out of date. You just need to upgrade it. And the person who created the system is the person who’s going to have to approve, because they’ve been promoted since they created the system, is going to approve the change. You might not want to go in and say, “Hey, this, this program, it just doesn’t work anymore. It’s terrible.” You might not want to start like that. So, you might turn it in a different way and use a positive version of that, which is “Opportunity Knocks,” which is, “Hey, we have an opportunity to capture a whole lot more value by doing all of these things. However, we’ll need to upgrade the system to, you know, achieve that.” “Oh, okay. Yes, I can see that.” “So, okay, here’s how we think we should upgrade the system.” So, you’ve got basically the same story, you could tell it those two different ways.

Linda Fanaras: 

Mm-hmm. So, you create a different pathway, yep.

Davina Stanley: 12:11

Yeah, exactly. Or you might say, well, there are a number of ways for us to improve our performance around this particular issue. However, improving the system is going to be the best way to do that. Here’s why. So, let’s do it. So there, you know, three different ways, perhaps, you could tell that one story. There are many more, but you, you very quickly get the handle of the patterns, and then you can look at them and think, oh, you know, we’ve got a little tent. They’re in the book. Of course, we’ve got a little thing that we give people that put them on a page. And so, you can just have a look and think, “Well, I’ll just have a go with that one. I’ll just have a go with ‘close the gap,’ see if that works, and just really loosely sketch it out,” and you think, “Oh, that’s not quite right. Okay, I’ll have a go at ‘watch out,’ I’ll try that.” You know, and just try them very quickly, and that helps you finesse your messaging and helps you sort of click as to what it should look like. And then you can just go forward and say, “Right now I’ve got it. Now I can color it in,” if you like, “I can fill it in because I know what the general flow should look like.” And it’s fun, it just helps. It’s a shortcut. So, we want people to understand the principles, the thinking principles, so they can really critically assess the quality of their messaging and their thinking. But then, at the same time, we want to help them get started quickly, you know, to balance those two things out.

Linda Fanaras: 

That’s interesting. And I was just thinking as you were talking because there are so many different types of leaders and there are so many different types of styles. So, for example, an up-and-coming leader might be a little defensive if they’re trying to get a point across, or another leader may be shy and non-confrontational and need to get their message across. So, when you’re dealing with people like that, that have very specific personalities, how do you try to get these people to embrace your concept, to really change their personality and their behavior to address these needs that we’re talking about today?

Davina Stanley: 

So, I think I don’t ever get anyone to change their personality. So, I help them understand their style, their working style, you know, whether they’re a driver or amiable, expressive or analytical, and what drives them. And I help them think about their audience. So that’s all about the delivery too. So, whether you have, let’s pick the story that I was playing with before. You know, you’ve got a system that needs upgrading and you need to invest some money to do that. That circumstance, that recommendation doesn’t shift. And you believe because you’ve done the analysis that that’s the idea that you need to convey. And so, mapping the thinking out so that you’ve got a really tight case that demonstrates why this is a good idea to invest, you know, $10, won’t be $10, but in a new system, let’s say. Then you sit there and you say, okay, how are you going to deliver that? How do you actually work with that person to get it across? If you think your stakeholder is going to be really resistant to your idea, then what you might do is say, okay, well perhaps I’ll talk to some other people first, you know, who might influence them on my behalf. Or perhaps I’ll have a one-on-one conversation with them because I’m a bit, you know, I really don’t like presenting in front of groups, I’m really not confident. So what I want to do is make sure that before I get in the room, everybody knows the key ideas because I’ve worked with them one-on-one, and so I’m walking into a really open door. I’m walking through an open door. I’ve done the work before I get into the room. So I think a lot of that is not so much about whether you have your message early and then have some supporting points that you can deliver really quickly, but rather how you engage them, how you stakeholder manage. And you know, whether you lead with questions to open up the conversation, whether you like to dive straight in, whether you want to have a bit of a warmup chat before, all of those things can be managed. But the essence of the message and delivering the message to people who are time poor and who want a really quality idea that’s really well thought through, I think that’s pretty universal. It’s pretty universal.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah, I like what you said. I mean, I think what you’re saying is depending on the style, you know, it might be easier for somebody that’s non-confrontational to start with a question to get the ball rolling, or it might be a style for somebody else to tell a story to get the ball rolling or start with a positive statement to get the ball rolling. So, there’s all kinds of little tactics to get there, but what do you think some of the biggest communication mistakes are that leaders make? There’s probably a lot. We all learn as we go.

Davina Stanley: 

Oh, we do! We do. I continue to learn, you know? Absolutely, I love it. The biggest ones. Well, firstly, I think, well we talked about one already, which is to work in documents to create a paper. You know, you’re thinking about senior leadership decision making, papers or board papers, let’s say, or even marketing communication. To work on it in Word, in Google Docs and try and edit it together without a structure, a thinking structure, I think is, is a really big mistake because it just takes an awfully long time, and the message gets really muddied. So, I think that’s one. I think another is to assume that as a senior person you can’t improve. And when I say can’t improve, I don’t mean get a little bit better, but materially shift. And so, I think that’s, that’s- sometimes I work with people who say, oh, you know, “I shouldn’t need this now. You know, I’m, I’m a vice president or a president, or maybe even in the C-suite, I shouldn’t need this now.” Right? But actually, they’ve just never been taught. They assume they can leverage the people around them and just pick up a few tips and tricks rather than go to the real heart of the matter, which can be quite difficult, yeah? That’s two. I’m thinking I should give you three, shouldn’t I? I’m just thinking what’s, what’s a good third? I’ve got many in my mind. What’s a good third? Okay, here’s the third one. That it’s all about the documents themselves. Right? That actually we shouldn’t be focusing on- or not so much that we shouldn’t, I think people haven’t thought that they can really speed up their process for working so that they as a leader, don’t need to rework their team’s communication for them, often at nights and at weekends. You know, I talk with leaders in big organizations who routinely take hundreds of pages home every weekend, you know, their Sunday afternoon is spent rewriting, let’s say, 500 pages of other people’s stuff. And they just assume that they have to because their people can’t, can’t write. But if they have a collaborative process, they can actually shift that and get most of it done during, you know, during sensible working hours, let’s call it that. I think that’s something that people just, it doesn’t occur to them that that’s possible.

Linda Fanaras: 

Right. So, some traps I think that people fall into, I think we had spoken about before, maybe topics and structure as an example, or the reality of biology. Do you want to speak about some of that a little bit?

Davina Stanley: 

I think biology is a really good one. We all know what it’s like when we open up an email or a paper, a document, and you take one look at it and you think, oh my gosh, this is going to be hard. You know, you just look at it and it’s almost visceral. You feel this “Oh, Gosh,” and very quickly we make a decision within fractions of a second almost as to whether we are going to read something or not. And I think people don’t realize that, you know, it’s just an email. I’ll just build something out and send it off, or it’s, oh, we always do it this way, we’ll just, you know, pull it together quickly and send it off because it’s efficient for me to do. You know, and what they’re doing is protecting their own biology by not pushing through and, and thinking, and when I talk about biology there, what I mean is this: our brain is about 2% of our body weight, but it uses about 20% of our calories. So that instant response is quite primal. Where we look at something in our bodies looking at it, well, I guess our eyes are looking, our body’s responding and saying, “That’s too hard. This thing isn’t worth all that effort. Save your calories for something that really matters. This is not a clear and present danger or something that’s really worth investing in.” So, you’ve really got to push through quite consciously to, to read something. So, if this awful email, let’s say, doesn’t come from the CEO or somebody really important to you, then you, “Ugh, I’ll look at it later.” And you very rarely do, you know? How often have we got inboxes that are full of emails that we just don’t look at because they’re just too hard?

Linda Fanaras: 

Right, right. Yeah. If we have- it takes too much time. Yeah. It’s like I can’t get to that right now. I don’t have enough time.

Davina Stanley: 

Exactly. Exactly.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah, no, I see there’s a lot of that. So many executives are, I think they are great leaders, but maybe they don’t have very good communication skills. So, employees may look up to them, but their communication skills or effectiveness is really not that great. Is there anything else that you could add to that?

Davina Stanley: 

Look, I think, you know, clarifying that you really do have a problem and then working out how to shift that productivity dial is really key. I like to talk about improving the clarity of the message so it jumps off the page, the quality of the message so that when it jumps off the page, it’s a really valuable message. And velocity, which talks about the speed, the speed of the operations around that message, creating it, delivering it, and then acting on it. So just focusing on those three things.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah, that’s fantastic. And I think, if I was to summarize what we’re saying today, it’s really for leaders who are looking to improve their communication skills and identifying who they are as leaders and how to develop a strategy that gives them the tools they need to communicate more effectively. So, taking their style or their personality and coming up with some clear and concise messaging that actually works within their personality style. And start to execute that in a way, so whether it requires having to talk to maybe a difficult employee and having talking points around that.

Davina Stanley: 

Exactly.

Linda Fanaras: 

So, whatever, yeah, whatever the case may be, but really being in preparation for whatever that conversation is. That’s fantastic. Excellent. Let me thank Davina Stanley who turns mid-career experts into great communicators. Check out Clarity First Program and “The So What Strategy” book at clarityfirstprogram.com or Google ‘Davina Stanley.’ Thank you again for listening to the B2B Brand 180 Strategy podcast. And if you like what you heard, press like, share, or subscribe.

Linda interviews Robb Atkinson, Director of Marketing/Public Relations at Memic about the latest best practices in B2B marketing strategy.  Tune in to discover high-value B2B marketing ideas that can help accelerate your own organization’s growth.

Linda Fanaras: 

Welcome to the B2B Brand 180 Podcast. Hi, I’m Linda Fanaras, CEO of Millennium Agency, and if you want to transform your B2B marketing into a powerhouse brand, then you may want to listen in today. I’m very excited to share with you our guest, Robb Atkinson, the Director of Marketing and Public Relations at Memic. Memic Group provides workers’ compensation insurance to employers with an emphasis on workplace safety. They have been growing year over year, so let’s find out how they did it. Hi Robb. Welcome to Brand 180.

Robb Atkinson: 

Hi Linda. How are you doing? Thank you for inviting me onto the podcast today.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah, it’s great to have you. So let’s start out. Do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do at Memic?

Robb Atkinson: 

Sure. As you mentioned, I am the Director of Marketing and Public Relations for Memic. Memic has actually got a great story. First founded in Maine 30 years ago, we were literally born out of a crisis. The entire government shut down as a result of the worker compensation situation in Maine. It got to a point that it really, the governor at the time, Governor Kean joked, he said it became, worker compensation became a retirement plan for lawyers, which really kind of says it all. It really got out of hand and people started abusing the system and as a result, carriers started leaving the state of Maine. It got so bad, as I said, the government literally shut down 30 years ago over the 4th of July weekend. And that’s when Memic was born. So Memic is a mutual insurance company that’s headquartered in Portland. We started in Maine and really had a crisis to tackle because safety in the workplace was not good. Incidences were soaring and costs and premiums were soaring as well. Fast forward now, 30 years later we’ve been credited with drastically solving that problem. We have reduced workplace incidences by 50% in the marketplace, and we’ve drove premiums down by 60% in the marketplace in Maine. So it’s really, yeah, it’s really a tremendous success story. Our market share is close to 60% in Maine, and as a result of that, we realized we had something to offer to the rest of the nation. So now we are licensed in every state in the nation. And we are really focusing though on a core group of states along the East coast. That’s where our eastern region focuses on, and now we do more premium outside of Maine than we do inside of Maine. So it’s really growing quite nicely and it’s really an exciting story.

Linda Fanaras: 

That’s great. That’s great to hear Robb. So, you know, it’s so interesting because in the insurance space, obviously some people think insurance is insurance, right? It doesn’t matter if it’s worker’s comp, general liability or some other type of business-related, you know, insurance. I think it’s challenging for a lot of insurance companies to differentiate themselves and they have to take a hard look at themselves to figure out like how should they differentiate themselves in the marketplace? How have you guys really been able to do that? Did you put a stake in the ground and say, “Hey, we’re different because of these reasons?”

Robb Atkinson: 

So it’s interesting, we, we did. In Maine, it, the obvious one was it was a crisis and we needed to focus on safety. We really have shown that through our loss control efforts, the people who go out and work with businesses on the ground and, and make them safer, that if you follow our safety plans, we’re going to make you more productive and even more profitable. And what’s even more exciting, and during times of great resignation, we’re actually, we actually have a stickiness factor. So the safer your company is, the more likely an employee’s going to be a part of that company and for longer. So it has a lot of holistic health benefits for the organization as a whole. So, moving forward though, as we stretch out of Maine, we realized that not every state is in crisis. So, what’s an award-winning safety you know, a worker’s comp carrier that focuses on safety do to get that value proposition? And really what we’ve learned is that for the, again, it goes back to safety is that the like-minded insureds who want safety and want to grow and want to be more productive and more profitable, we are a really great investment for them. Yeah, a lot of other carriers will play the price game, right? And they say, “Here, your premiums are cheaper with us. Don’t go with Memic.” And what we’ve learned is that when we show them the total cost of coverage, like if they have claims, what our total services is, it really becomes a no-brainer for them in that when you look at the total cost of coverage, we have a tremendous value and we’re a partner. And that’s, that’s the other thing, that’s the other thing I really want to mention is the secret sauce for us is trusted partnerships. We want, we want to be working with our agent partners hand in glove. We want to be working with our insureds and be that trusted resource for them. So for us, the secret sauce of trying to make our brand different is really through trusted partnerships and allowing us to be that expert in their lives to help them be better.

Linda Fanaras: 

Right. You know, the markets are getting so cluttered and competitive these days. There’s, you know, we have digital, we have still traditional media, we’re going to have the metaverse around the corner. What kind of tactic do you think just general companies should take when they position themselves in the market? Do you think they should take more of a practical approach or more of an emotional approach to differentiate themselves? What works better from your perspective?

Robb Atkinson: 

So that’s interesting. So we’ve experimented with a, with a little bit of all of that, but you know, when we realized that for us, we’d love more, we’d love more insurance agencies to represent Memic, without a doubt. But we really want the ones that are like-minded, who like working with us, who appreciate our value proposition. And so, when we talk about the emotional componentry of it, it goes back to that relationship again. We’d rather have a better relationship with fewer agencies and to prove why we’re good partners day in, day out than to be, you know, on everybody’s dashboard and just be another, you know, a logo on their system that they can click and get a rate from.

Linda Fanaras: 

Right, right. And it does also make a big difference when customers have an emotional feeling toward a brand that makes them more loyal to that brand if they get a feeling around that brand. So if you’re a trusted partner and you stand by your brand promise, however you may show that, whether it’s through service or whether it’s through. Fast response time, or whether it’s through pricing or other strategies. I mean, those, it’s that feeling that people get and, and is trying to get that across to the market as you, as you try to increase sales and, and move this along.

Robb Atkinson: 

Yeah, I think you hit the nail right on the head. And I do want to put in a shameless plug for our landing page, thememicdifference.com, and we actually have all of our information there. But there’s a video there that I’d love everybody to watch because it tells the history a little bit about why worker compensation insurance is so important and what Memic did that made us different and where we’re heading now as we go for our 2025 goal and our 2030 vision.

Linda Fanaras: 

Fantastic. So aside from insurance, just in general, on the B2B marketing strategies that are out there today, what strategies do you think are working and what do you think is not working anymore?

Robb Atkinson: 

So, it’s funny, it’s like, there’s no surprise that email marketing, uh, you know- full disclosure, Memic works with Millennium group and work- we work with Linda and she’s excellent at helping us craft emails that are really cutting through the clutter and helping us move the needle. We recently just put one out, just the other day, got a tremendous response. We can track that response because we drove to thememicdifference.com, and we can see the numbers spike. Our underwriters are telling me that they’re getting that information back to them. It’s, it’s really good. So that’s one way of doing it. There’s no secret sauce in there, but, you know, some other things that, just again, forging those relationships, like looking to have events, regional events with local partners for doing something special, whether it’s going to the US Open for New York agents or, or something like that where we can really be a good community partner and get excited about events happening in their backyard. I think people really appreciate that. And so, we do a lot of that. And it could be small stuff too, Linda, like we just did a branded Dunkin’ Donuts card, and I don’t know if a lot of people know this, but you can go work with Dunkin’ Donuts and they’ll let you put anything that- it’ll look like your company credit card, but it’s got the Dunkin’ Donuts logo in the corner and we just pushed these out at an event on Friday, and the reaction was wonderful. People loved it, and it really turns that, that whole thing about what’s value, right? You know, so, so before, you give somebody your business card, you hope they keep it, there’s probably a shelf life to it. Maybe they’re going to scan it, you know, whatever. But now, the idea is, you get these Dunkin’ Donuts gift cards for $10, and those will go into their wallets and it’s going to have your contact information on it. It’s going to have maybe your picture on it, it’s going to have possibly your phone number. And the best part about it is when it runs low, say, call me, I’ll refill it. And if they’re being a good partner, why wouldn’t we do that? So, you know, you, you look at the cost of acquisition strategy and all of that, it really makes. Why not? Wouldn’t you do something like that?

Linda Fanaras: 

Right. And every time they use that card, who are they going to think of? You, of course. I mean, I think it-

Robb Atkinson: 

That’s right. Yeah, and then-

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah, go ahead.

Robb Atkinson: 

Oh, and the best part is then they’re sad too when it’s over you know, it’s like, “Oh man, oh no.” You’ve got to call the person up and “Hey, yeah, I need more coffee. I need my Dunks.”

Linda Fanaras: 

That’s fantastic. Oh yeah, no, I know. I’ve been going to a lot of conferences lately and you go from table to table to table, what do you see? It’s always the same tchotchkes, right? You’ve got the USBs, you’ve got the notepads, the pens, the cups, the this, the that. I mean, imagine if you’re able- imagine if you’re able to get something like a Dunkin’ Donuts card. I mean, that would be, that would be a treat.

Robb Atkinson: 

Yeah. And we’ve talked about this before. It’s like, just from a good person on this planet’s perspective, the amount of plastic at these trade shows are shocking. And the amount of things like- I checked in the other day at the Hyatt where a big event was happening, and I was given a gift bag from one of my competitors. And I got to tell you, it was filled with… it looked like junk. There was like, I was like, I didn’t- it looked like somebody cleaned out their desk with old plastic stuff and, “Here you go. Aren’t you excited to be part of our company?” And I was like, we’re totally missing the mark sometimes. And what, instead of volume of tchotchkes that we pass out is understanding what the value is of your company and how do you translate that into everything you do, especially with the tchotchkes and, and just being a good global citizen and reducing your plastic footprint has got to be something we all start, got to start talking about. Because those trade shows are just, it’s piled high.

Linda Fanaras: 

It is piled high and you’re so right on that. I mean, if you stayed, if you happen to stay till the end of the conference, you can be sure that they’ll be just like throwing you their specialties, promos at you so you can take them home so they don’t have to. So, I totally agree with you on the Dunkin’ Donuts strategy. I think that’s a great idea. Yeah, no, I do. So I think there’s a lot of challenges in the market today, obviously, as far as hiring employees and, and keeping them and recruiting them and keeping them happy. Are there strategies that you can think of that you think would help companies learn about how to build a culture and a strategy and something that would keep employees engaged in the long run? Because I think that is the hard thing to do today.

Robb Atkinson: 

Yeah, I think tools like LinkedIn and Indeed are certainly still, you know, quivers to be used, you know, to shoot your arrows and you should be using them. But I think it’s got to be a much more in-depth look at your company, and one of the things that we’ve done is where, actually today launching a new landing page for our careers and HR people, which has a more robust kind of who we are as a company, more about our testimonials from people and specific jobs and really just more of a rich environment. And the other thing too is we’ve really had to shift it from just putting out like the Indeed Ads and LinkedIn, and we’re doing commercials and using things like everything from, we’re experimenting with OTT in New York City. We’re experimenting with, we’ve done some ads in Maine that have just been fantastic on the local television station and a really well-done television ad has really driven the needle on help in hiring. We’ve done geofencing, so we’ve even circled some of our competitors when we’re having difficulty finding certain jobs, you know, and also just looking at trends in the marketplace to see what groups of people are moving in the workplace and how can we capture them to get them excited about insurance. You know, it’s funny, I’m relatively new to the insurance world. My background is in television and marketing and I, I, but I love it. And, you know, it’s funny, the more people I get excited about insurance, the, you know, it’s, I feel like I’m on a mission because it’s really a great opportunity. A great, usually they’re great companies and it’s somewhat recession proof, right? You know, typically, you don’t see the dramatic downturns in a recession like you do everywhere else in the insurance world. So, great company, great benefits, and great industry, great people.

Linda Fanaras: 

That’s, that’s fantastic. I know, it’s becoming more and more challenging for companies to recruit and retain their employees, and I’m always looking for new ideas and strategies to keep that in place. We’ve had some clients in the past start to really build a culture that works. There’s been so many changes about creating these sort of collaborative environments, open concepts, and then now many people are not even in the offices to be able to take advantage of that. So they’re working from home and trying to figure that out. So I’m always looking for sort of innovative ways, how do we connect employees with the corporate world in a way that is meaningful and is, it is, it does become more and more challenging every day.

Robb Atkinson: 

And I, I think, I think one of the big things is, and I know you’ve done work on this in the past, is like making sure that the company understands their values. Making sure those values are shared among the employees. And then you can kind of use those success stories within the company to help attract like-minded, potential employees when you go out and do your recruiting efforts. And that’s been really successful for us too, is like, you know, a lot of people just don’t want to work for another company anymore. They want to work for a company they believe in, right? They’re doing the right thing, has transparency, empathy, all these things that people like to talk about. But you know, when a company actually does those things, it’s really a difference in terms of somebody’s, how they want to be a part of that company and what that culture is of the company and becoming a part of that is, is really important to them.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah, no, that’s absolutely true. Are you seeing any changes in the market? I mean, obviously the economy is at a very new place right now. Even, you know, the world in general, there’s a lot going on. So how do you like brands like Memic, what are you guys thinking about? Is that impacting your business at all? Are you taking that into consideration as you move forward from a B2B marketing perspective?

Robb Atkinson: 

Yeah, absolutely. All those things are on our watchlist and we monitor them to make sure that, you know, and do threat assessments to make sure that what we’re doing is mitigating those things and that sometimes require us rolling up our sleeves and working harder and digging deeper with our trusted partners. But I will say though, the third quarter was good, was very strong. We think, we think fourth quarter’s going to be strong too. So, and I think they just came out with a 3.2 growth in the third quarter just announced, so, yeah. So, I mean, I don’t think, I don’t know how, if it’s going to stay at that level, but we certainly saw it and were encouraged by the trend it’s going. And the hiring portion of it helps us as a worker compensation company, because obviously the more people on the rolls of a company, the better, the better we’re going to do. But I think overall the economy has been, the challenges, they’ve been difficult, not insurmountable and we’re working through them like everybody else. But again, certain sectors are, are probably faring better than others in this economy.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yep. No, that makes complete sense. Are there other marketing strategies or tactics you think would be helpful for the audience to learn about that you’ve maybe tested? I know you do a lot of email marketing. I know it looks like you’re doing some OTT and digital marketing as well. Are you using anything else that you think might be of value that might be a little out of the box?

Robb Atkinson: 

Well, like one thing that we could talk about is, again shameless plug, plug for Millennium, but Millennium is helping us reach target agents in a specific market. And we’re doing it through delivering cookies to specific individuals. And again, it’s all about creating those relationships and things like that and overcoming obstacles. But, if you can really get in with somebody and show them your value and show them your willingness to be a good partner and they’re on that same bend, you’re going to succeed every single time, I think. And that’s really a play for the long haul. It’s not the quick, easy play, unfortunately because, you know, I mean, just think about how long it takes you to form trusting, lasting relationships in your life, but when you do the effort and make it work, I think you’ll find that it’s going to pay dividends for years to come.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah, and that’s actually a really great point because people can hide behind their email today. They don’t have to respond to you. They don’t have to pick up the phone. So I think when you use strategies like, you know, maybe they’re customized cookies with logos and a key message. And you’re sending what I call the high value gift kit. Chances are very high that they will talk to you because, frankly, they most likely probably feel a little guilty if they don’t. So here’s a chance to really get your name across, build some brand, and be able to get that introduction that you’ve been trying to get and hadn’t had much luck doing. So I, I do love those types of strategies. It’s a little bit out of the box. It’s not typical. But they, they do really work well. We’ve done them in the past, especially for the high-profile companies that you might be trying to go after.

Robb Atkinson: 

Right. Because in a B2B world, we don’t, like I said earlier, we don’t need every single agent in the country, but we do want the best ones and we do want ones that are like-minded. And that’s really the other part about doing those campaigns is there’s lead qualification, right? So sometimes it takes an investment. And hearing a no sometimes is probably even more valuable than the yes, because then you’re now spending time, effort, and money marketing to somebody who isn’t invested in, in your success. And, and that’s something, we’re looking at right now of like, there’s a lot of different carriers out there. People have different relationships and if we aren’t perfect for everybody, we get that. But, you know, I think it’s important that we both recognize that and go work with people who they want to work with. And when you do find those like-minded things, you’re not chasing bad leads, you’re not waiting on calls that aren’t going to happen, and it’s just a much more productive lifestyle, I think.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah. No, that’s actually a great point is trying to figure out whether they truly are interested whether to get that that no versus the yes. And like you said, I think getting the no is equally as valuable as getting the yes. And I think a lot of people that go after and try to drive leads, like to hang on to those people there, those leads that are, might be maybes, and those are the ones that most likely will not translate into potential sales. And you can spend a lot of your time trying to chase those without much ROI. So I absolutely like that point that you made about, hey, if you have to go after the no, go after the no. If you’re getting the yes or-

Robb Atkinson: 

Yeah, and then, right, and then better yet, you can report back and say to your, you know, your senior management, “No, those people that, that’s not the right company for us. We’ll do better if we double down with these guys.” And, from a marketing point of view, I appreciate that so much better because the more narrow our focus is, then we can do those highly specialized gift boxes. We can do trips. We can do, like I mentioned, like, you know, US Open trips or something like that, you know, that provides high value, allows us to build the relationship. And that’s something I think that’s, that’s worked for us really well.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah. That’s great. Well, thank you, Robb. This has been fantastic. You’ve given that some great insight. Thanks for sharing information about Memic. That’s been great to hear what’s working, what’s not working. So I just want to thank Robb Atkinson, Director of Marketing and Public Relations at Memic for joining the B2B 180 podcast today. And if you like what you heard, just press the like, share or subscribe button today. Thank you very much.

How do B2B organizations create exceptional customer experiences? Linda speaks with Jim Tincher, author of “Do B2B Better” about best practices in B2B customer experience design.

Thanks for listening to the B2B BRAND180 Strategy podcast with Linda Fanaras, CEO/Strategist at Millennium Agency.

Linda Fanaras: 

Welcome to the B2B Brand 180 Strategy Podcast. Hi, I’m Linda Fanaras, CEO of Millennium Agency, and if you want to transform your B2B marketing into a powerhouse brand, then you may want to listen in. Here you will gain the latest insights on how to position your brand different from the competition and uncover “white space” in the market so you can craft a B2B marketing strategy that drives new opportunities. Today I’m excited to have our guest, Jim Tincher, customer experience expert and best-selling author of “Do B2B Better,” he is a nationally recognized customer experience expert and keynote speaker. So let’s get started. Hi Jim. Welcome to the B2B Brand 180 podcast. Thanks for joining me today.

Jim Tincher: 

Thanks Linda. Glad to be here.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah, it’s great to have you. So why don’t we get started. You can tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Jim Tincher: 

You betcha. So, always been customer-focused, often working in business-to-business brands, whether that is corporate training, manufacturing, and always had that customer focus. And how the organization can actually make more money through a better customer experience has always been my focus. Back to my first job out of college. I worked for a printer manufacturer and was going on my first vacation. I asked if I could visit a customer while I was there. That conversation confused my boss, but that’s always been my approach is how do you get the customers, how do you understand more so that you can give them better products, better solutions, and create a healthier company? And that’s just always been my focus. I started the company nine years ago. It was nine years ago two weeks ago, and where we really help organizations, especially in the business-to-business space, understand more about their customer needs, what are the moments of truth in the relationship, those critical moments, and how do you do better against them? So you create an outcome where customers want to spend more with you, stay longer, and also interact in ways that are less expensive for both you and for them.

Linda Fanaras: 

That’s fantastic. You know what I really liked about what you spoke about is the fact that you interviewed quite a few companies, and I’m wondering if you could speak to that a little bit. So you didn’t exactly sit behind, you didn’t sit in a coffee shop and write your book, you know, just based on what came to mind. You actually did your research, which I think is fantastic. So maybe you could speak about that and how that process was and how valuable it was for the book.

Jim Tincher: 

You bet. So we actually started out first, there was some research that showed that most programs are not very good at customer experience. And let me define that, first. Customer experience is a deliberate process of managing your customers experiences with you, but creating that- a better experience for them, making it easier to work with you, more pleasurable so that they will return and come back to you with buying more, by staying longer. And we started out in a conference room, my leadership team, we read some research saying that most programs are not good at it and B2B is even worse than most. And so, we did actually put together our ideas, you know, kind of in the conference room what we thought it was. But we knew that probably wasn’t right. And so, we wanted to go through a deliberate process. And we interviewed over, spent over 200 hours interviewing business-to-business leaders to understand how they do this work, whether they were really effective or ineffective, surveyed hundreds more. I also got a chance to shadow three programs. UKG, they are a software firm. They do HR and other payroll software. Dow, the advanced manufacturer and Wolters Kluwer financial services, they have- if you ever get a mortgage, you look at the bottom of that mortgage, odds are Wolters Kluwer’s name is there because they help banks stay compliant.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah. That’s great. That’s fantastic. You know, it’s interesting, I was talking to a marketing expert, and they said to me, “You know, you guys do brand B2B marketing strategy?” And I said yes. And they’re like, “That’s actually really hard compared to B2C.” Like B2C is easy, B2B is really tricky, and you have to really understand what you’re doing. So it’s great that you came out with this book. Can you talk about what customer experience is? I think it’s a word that people throw around a lot. They don’t know if it’s part of the cadence nurturing process. They don’t know if it’s actually the engagement process of how companies work with their customers. Maybe you can just speak to that a little bit and give us some examples of like a B2B versus a B2C type scenario.

Jim Tincher: 

Sure. Beause you’re right, it’s much more complex. So first of all, customer experience at its most basic is the perceptions your customers have of all of their interactions with you. So how they feel about interacting with your sales team, your account management, your customer service team, your ability to deliver products on time, or to have software that works well. All of that rolls up into their perceptions of you. The practice of customer experience is to improve those perceptions through working across the organization to create a more pleasurable experience, an easier experience for your customers, more pleasurable sounds really soft, and most B2B programs are not soft, but there’s quite a bit of research out there that it’s actually the emotional connection with a client that matters the most. They’ll forgive you a lot if they feel you have their back. And so, it’s how do you create that perception? How do you work across the organization to create that consistent belief that your company is there for them?

Linda Fanaras: 

Yeah. I love that. That is so true. I talked to my staff about that a lot. It’s, it is about perception. It’s about making them feel as though they’re the only ones that you’re talking to, like they’re your only customer or your only client. And how do you do that through a great customer experience? And I think that’s what you’re speaking about here is building out programs to actually accomplish just that. What would you, what would you envision as like a really amazing customer experience program? It has to be multifaceted, sort of this omni channel strategy? I mean, what do you see putting some of those pieces together? If we were to take a technology company as an example, or a manufacturing company as an example.

Jim Tincher: 

You bet I, I can talk about each of those, two of the case studies – there are four case studies I use throughout the book as well as a lot of other ones I bring in – but these four companies do things really well consistently. And so, I’ll speak to two of them, which is Dow, the advanced manufacturer and UKG, the HR and payroll software provider. They have very good programs and they’re what we call change makers. We found that maybe one out of five programs in B2B is a change maker. The vast majority are what we call hopefuls. They’re doing good work. Maybe your organization uses a net promoter score or does other survey work and they hope it matters, but they can’t prove they’re creating that environment where customers want to work with you more. But Dow and EKG are great examples of programs that can show that, “Yes, our work is creating more profit for the company because customers want to come to us first.” Two interesting things about B2B. First of all, depending on your sector, retention may not be your biggest issue. You know, for example, Dow rarely loses clients. It’s not about retention as it is often in B2C, it’s more about shared wallet, and reducing cost. How do we get our customers to order more from us? Dow has certain products that are unique that customers can’t get anywhere else, so they’ll always use them for that. But how do they win in those extra products? Similar UKG, ripping out your payroll provider, that’s a big deal. And that’s probably multiple millions of dollars. Yes, they have retention that they want to focus on. They clearly do. But it’s more about how do we help our clients understand we can solve more of the problems through additional products? And how do we make it easy on our customers so that both of us are spending less money in this relationship on operational issues. And what they do is they understand overall both organizations have a ton of data. Most B2B programs do, and often what happens, you have the data people over at some other silo way over there. You have your customer experience people over here looking at surveys and let’s not ever have them talk to each other, you know, Heaven forbid that, and it’s all done in isolation. But Dow, for example, we had a conference couple weeks ago and Riccardo Porta leads the customer experience program, and he talked about a question he was given: “What is the role of inventory in my business and what does customer experience have to say about that?” That’s a really good question with something we always work on in, in manufacturing is, what is that right level of inventory? Clearly, if you can reduce inventory, there’s a tradeoff, you get much better working capital, but you’re at risk of not having the product when your customers want it. He spent 25 minutes just walking through how he answered that question, looking at the availability to promise, ATP, when somebody orders in following that through to say that when you reduce inventory past a certain threshold (he listed what that was, I can’t share that), that what you actually do is you decrease confidence – they measure confidence – in your customers, which means they order less from you in future quarters. It was a marvelous way of bringing together the organization’s data and then working to make decisions on choosing the right level of inventory to create customers who feel more confident ordering from you in the future, and therefore do so. Very advanced level. Most programs don’t even think about that.

Linda Fanaras: 

Right. Very interesting.

Jim Tincher: 

And he’s able to do the math. Yeah. UKG is another example. Roxie Strohmenger was, was there, and she talks a lot about confidence. They measure that, it’s what we call an emotional north star, and she shows that when a customer is confident, they’ll still call you the first time an issue happens, but a non-confident customer calls you every time that issue happens. A confident customer will flip over to self-serve, solve the problem on their own, saving both you and them time and money. And so, she’s able to track that actual, how many times are they calling you, as well as link confidence to future orders, and be able to really create this structure where you know that if you increase survey scores, which is what most customers programs look at, they’re able to prove that actually creates higher EBIT for the organization as a result.

Linda Fanaras: 

So are these companies instituting different marketing tactics and people tactics as part of this customer experience? How are they actually going about creating a program that actually works? So I know, you know, we spoke about some different things here, but what are the actual tactics around that?

Jim Tincher: 

Sure. Well, we identified four of them. The first one is to actually link the work you’re doing to financial outcomes. That sounds really basic yet it’s hard to do and both Dow and UKG are examples of organizations that do it. Most can’t. But they show that that when customers report better survey scores, which is how most customer experience track the experience, that it also relates to all these outcomes, such as increased order velocity or upsells. So they start with actually creating a linkage between customer experience and the health of the business. It feels a little funny to say the way to start creating a better experience for your customers is to show how you’re making more money. But we all know that’s what executive responds to, is how do we make more money? That’s what executives are responsible for, and they start with creating that link. Now, the one that’s going to drive a lot of your listeners crazy is the one about an emotional north star, to actually measure emotions. And most of our B2B clients have a hard time with that because they see the, the decision-making experience as being rational, that it’s all based on price, value, but it’s not true. And so, when I met Dan Futter, Dan is the Chief Commercial Officer at Dow, and we were helping them work through their complaints experience. If you’ve ever had a complaint with your vendor and they don’t resolve it quickly, I think we all know that’s not a good outcome. And they wanted to understand more about their customers and how they could build a better complaints journey. Okay. All makes sense. And I met with Dan. He said, “Jim, my goal is to create a complaints experience that’s enjoyable.” I said, “I’m sorry, Dan. You meant effective or easy, right?” “No, I want it to be enjoyable.” Now, Dan has the data. They don’t measure likelihood to recommend or net promoter score as many do. They measure customer experience on three questions: How effective is it to work with Dow, how easy is it to work with Dow, and how enjoyable is it to work? And their data shows that if it’s effective or easy, yeah customers act a little bit differently, but when a customer says it’s enjoyable to work with Dow, then their behavior changes. Their order velocity goes up, they order more products, and what’s a home run to Dow is they’re way more likely to work with Dow to create new to the world innovations. That emotions lead to this future behavior, very few programs track that, but both Dow and UKG does. UKG measures confidence and they can show when customers are more confident, cost to serve drops quite a bit. And likely to order more goes up. They also then bring in that data so they can look at, for example, ATP, availability to promise, is a Dow measurement, they look at actual calls to the contact center, open complaints, they bring all that and they have a comprehensive view of the experience. And then the one that’s missing most often is they have a deliberate approach to change management to show how everybody matters. When I was talking with Riccardo, he talked about one of their biggest challenges was to help the teams that are in manufacturing actually at the plants understand how they impact the customer experience because they’re so far removed. Another person I interviewed for the book, Sam Wegman, is with Univar. They’re a distributor for Dow and other chemical manufacturers. And she started her career in accounts payable and she thought there was no relationship whatsoever to the customer in accounts payable. You might think the same thing. Your listeners probably, “Well, yeah. There is no relationship.” Then she got promoted to customer service and she realized that she was getting complaints because they didn’t have inventory because accounts payable was trying to delay payments to save on cash flow. So her decision with accounts payable to delay payments actually ended up hurting their customers because they didn’t have inventory. And so, she’s now made it her mission to help the entire organization understand how their role specifically impacts customers.

Linda Fanaras: 

You know, the one thing that I find very um, interesting is you take this sort of B2B, you know, how to do B2B better, what this customer experience is, and you talk about the emotional connect, which is extremely important. In fact, that’s how you devise your actual brand and you devise your brand messaging. So you take examples like Amazon as a potential, although they’re not necessarily B2B, but you know them for their variety of products, their low prices, their overnight delivery, and there’s a feeling, there’s an emotional feeling that you get with that brand, and you get that emotional feeling with every single brand that you work. And the idea here is I think, what you’re speaking about, is whatever that is needs to just penetrate through the entire company, through every experience that they have with their B2B customer. Because if they can make all that unite and match up and marry up, then they are really ahead of the game and so much beyond a lot of their competition. So it’s taking all those pieces, wrapping it up and executing on it and doing it successfully. So I, I do like what you, you’re saying there on the emotional component. I think that’s a very huge piece that people maybe underestimate.

Jim Tincher: 

Guaranteed. In fact, most people think of Amazon as about being easy and they are no question about it, but they actually measure trust. And the, when Jeff Bezos was in front of Congress, he reported that Amazon was the second most trusted brand in the US after Apple. And so, they measure trust as their emotional outcome. Another example, we work with a software company that for them it’s confidence. And when we look at- we actually measure six emotions. Confidence being one of the positive ones. Frustration, the negative, and for all those in software out there, exhaustion. If you’ve ever implemented software, you know, that can be exhausting. It doesn’t speak well to the implementation. Somebody says they’re exhausted, when we see people say they’re exhausted, so many bad downstream behaviors happen. They’re never going to buy you again. If they have any say in it, they’re going to advocate against you. They’re going to cost you more money as well as you try to recover from that. And so, when we measure, we see somebody that says, “Yes, I’m exhausted,” all the alarm bells go off because this is a relationship that’s highly at-risk.

Linda Fanaras: 

Right. Yeah. Fantastic. How do you measure, like, large companies that might be dealing with different target audiences in the B2B sector? Do you envision those being treated differently? How would a company tackle something like that? Because usually I would think that what you’re instituting as part of this experience has to be kind of across the company, across the board, but what happens when you’re dealing with different types of target audiences?

Jim Tincher: 

Well, that’s, isn’t that the amazing thing about B2B, that you have that? I used to work at Best Buy, and it was big news to us that you had to worry about both the husband and the wife. That was news to us. Like, oh, we’ve got two people to worry about. Hey, I think every B2B relationship would, every B2B company would be happy if they only had to work with two stakeholders at a company, right? It’s more like 2000 or more, depending on the size of the organization. And that takes a deliberate approach to understand and to report on the behaviors and the sentiment of the different roles. Now, ideally in your CRM, you’ve identified different roles for each of the different people. They are the economic decision maker. Of course, economic decision maker makes the ultimate decision and then doesn’t pay you much attention after that, often, depending what your role is. You’ve got the user. Users matter, but maybe they matter a little bit less than the others. Then you have your influencers. And so, this is a fairly simplistic, you can get much more advanced, but let’s use that as example. Your influencers matter because they often have the ear of the economic decision maker, and if you aren’t measuring them and how they interact with you, then you’ll be in for a surprise because you think things are great with the economic decision maker, but he or she has a rebellion on their hands from all the influences that are frustrated. And so, what the great programs do is they deliberately measure each and they track. They also do it by role. I did some work with the, the Grand AV – they were one of our case studies in the book, Laurie Englert leads the customer experience program – and we did reporting based on role. And the installers, who was their direct customer, absolutely loved them. Who didn’t love them was finance, but they were okay with that because they were the most expensive provider. And so, they were not trying to optimize for finance to love them, but it was still great to be able to measure that. What was most important was that the installers, the ones who actually recommend their brands, were absolutely in love with the brand. They were able to track that and maintain that relationship and see how it compared with others.

Linda Fanaras: 

Right. What you’re really saying here is if you’re looking at customer experience, it’s, it’s really connecting the customer, their experience to the financial aspect, and measuring that against their emotions and really getting a handle on the operational behavioral and all the financial stuff that goes with that to, like I said, package it up and make sure you have it right. What’s the best way for a company to go about something like that? It sounds like a big ask. It sounds like a big job to be able to do that successfully. Is there a way that companies can get started with some on a smaller scale to start to build a, a program internally that actually does track that?

Jim Tincher: 

Yeah, It, I guarantee if we, if we got all of your listeners in a room, 90% of them are doing very little if any of this. Most programs simply put out a survey. They may look, okay, last year those who gave us a high score on the net promoter score survey, they stayed with us longer than those with low score, and that’s where it all ends. If we look at Dow, UKG, Haggerty’s another one we interviewed, all these programs it took them about two years to build this solid approach, and most of them, not all of them, started with one thing very specifically that most don’t. And by the way, when I share this next stat in customer experience circles, they hate this stat. And that is don’t hire somebody from the outside to run your customer experience. Hire somebody from the inside who cares about customers but has learned how to drive change in your organization. Most people take somebody, “Oh, they did customer experience for a competitor, let’s bring ’em over here.” And they’re not able to move the needle because you are different from your competitor. If we look at uh, Riccardo, he came from supply chain. Probably not what you would be thinking. But he has this wonderful ability to tie the data together. Now, Roxie did come from the outside, but she was a consultant, and so she knew how to work across organizations. She’s, I think, our only example of a change maker who came from the outside. We look at Nancy. She is, Nancy’s with Haggerty. She led their marketing organization and moved over to customer experience. Laurie Englert as well, came from marketing. It doesn’t matter where they came from as long as two things are true: they have a passion for customers, and they know how to drive change in your organization. It’s far easier to learn how to learn customer experience than is to learn how to get your executives to change their opinions. And so, take somebody with a proven track record for that and then start building the infrastructure so they can really understand the behaviors of your clients and how it’s impacted by your operations and vice versa. So they need to be comfortable with that data and bring all that data together so they can understand it. And then it comes down to some of the blocking and tackling of building surveys, and so on. But those are the big things, is somebody who understands your business and cares about customers. Start there/

Linda Fanaras: 

That makes sense. I mean, it looks like you would have to integrate your dashboards, your, any sort of journey mapping software that you may have, any sort of analytics and start to really track that on a holistic level to make sure that you’re optimizing that B2B customer experience. So that’s great.

Jim Tincher: 

I’m so glad you brought that up by the way, dashboards. Okay. That surprised me about the power of a dashboard. It was nowhere on my list of things to think about when I started doing these interviews, I started tracking following people around and because most customer experience dashboards are just survey scores and the executives look at it once a year, just before bonus time, and that’s all they ever look at it. But when I was out at Dow, Jen Zamora used to lead the customer experience program. She’s now in a global change management role at Dow, and she was sharing what is my favorite business problem ever. I tell all of my clients, “I want you to have this problem.” They created this dashboard that brought together the operational data, for example, on time delivery and to get it right, along with the sentiment to answer all the executives questions about customer experience in one spot. Jen shared to me that they had a thousand licenses for the dashboard, and they ran out of licenses because it created such a compelling dashboard that all the executives were logging into it. They had to start telling lower-level executives they couldn’t look at the dashboard. Now, I want all my clients to have that problem because it means you are creating compelling information and you’re getting everybody on board the customer experience. They ended up having to go back to Qualtrics, the survey vendor that they worked with, and negotiate for unlimited licenses for the dashboards. I talked to Riccardo a couple weeks ago and four years later, they actually, two and a half years later, they still have almost a thousand people per quarter logging into the dashboard because they’re creating that compelling information that answers the questions executives. The power of a dashboard, I didn’t expect to be one of the outcomes. That’s powerful.

Linda Fanaras: 

That’s very, very powerful. So what would you say is the biggest takeaway for, our listeners here today? What do you think they should really take away regarding this customer experience? If you were to give them like a couple of key things to do or recommend, what would you say?

Jim Tincher: 

Well, first I would say if you have a customer experience program, give it a hard eye. What we found was that most programs, what we call the hopefuls, they report on sentiment. Here’s what customers said. They said they’re likely to stay with us. They said they’re likely to recommend us. They said, they said, they said. That’s what hopefuls do, and they’re not adding value to your organization. A change maker analyzes and changes behaviors. So if you have an existing customer experience program, look at what they’re doing. Are they talking about sentiment, or are they showcasing behavior and are they changing it? That’s the first thing. Now, if you don’t have a customer experience program, or if you find out your program is not doing what’s needed, then I would look for that passionate person inside your organization, somebody who cares about customers and who has a proven track record of making change in the organization, and I would put them in charge of your customer experience. Strongly recommend. It’s at least at the vice presidential level. You can get some change to senior director, but that’s hard, but vice presidential level and say, “We’re gonna give you the data you need,” that’s the third thing, is give them the data. Help them bring that data together from your different systems so they can help understand where your operations are supporting your customers and leading them to want to buy more from you, and where maybe your operations are letting customers down, and so you can make a deliberate decision. Where do we make changes to our operations that will have the greatest return for our customers that will come back to give us the greatest return to the company. So number one, look at your existing program. Are they actually reporting on behavior? Second of all, if not, or if you don’t have one, put somebody who knows how to drive change, who loves customers in charge, and then third, make sure they’re looking at the actual data combined with the sentiment to see where you’re creating outcomes, where customers want to spend more with you and stay longer, and where you’re just creating more costs for you and your customers instead.

Linda Fanaras: 

Yep. That’s great. What would be a process for a company that just wants to get started? So they have somebody, but what does that person do? They have to figure out ways to really measure this and build upon it in a very, effective way. And because it’s, I think it’s something that’s very niche., the question might be is “Where do I start? Yeah, I have somebody. Now what?”

Jim Tincher: 

And it does, it’s a little bit of a, if you use a college example, a 201 class. Yeah. There are other sources. I like the Customer Experience Professionals Association to really help a new person get started and they’re a great resource overall. But my book will help you understand where to take it to the next level. So they may be- take them six months as well to get started. Now, my organization also worked with the CXPA, the Customer Experience Professional Association, to map the first-year experience of a leader to see what they need to be working on. So I would say if you have nothing, get my book, but then also talk to the CXPA. As you hire your person, that’s where they can really get some great resources and then the book will start to make sense and they can start implementing that change. It’s very much of a how to do this filled with case studies. I like to say that if I took out the case studies, it’d basically be the length of “Goodnight Moon.” It’s all about the stories and how real groups do it. So yeah, it’s CXPA and the book together.

Linda Fanaras: 

Fantastic. Awesome. I just want to thank you Jim Tincher, author of, “Do B2B Better.” It’s a way to drive growth through game changing customer experience, definitely pick that up. And thank you for joining us today on B2B Brand 180 Podcast. And if you like what you heard today, press like, share, or subscribe. Thank you very much.

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