Be Your Own Brand - BYOB

How do some firms in your industry thrive year after year—even in today’s topsy-turvy marketplace? Are they just lucky? Or do they know something that you don’t?

What high-growth success looks like, including stories from the real world

• What today’s high-growth firms do differently
• How you can emulate these firms’ success
• How much you should spend on marketing
• How to build a powerful, high-growth marketing plan, step by step

I trust you would like answers to those questions and that’s what this podcast is all about as well as some of the things I do as a digital marketing consultant. www.kenmillerconsults.com

These are unprecedented times that will require unprecedented tactics, desire, and adaptation. Overnight, the playing field has changed. The strategies and tactics that brought you championship years in the past may not work as well—or at all, in these new times. Chances are, you are behind where you wanted to be. But the game isn’t over yet.

There’s still a second-half...still time on the clock. How will you respond?

You will hear conflicting reports about the effectiveness of email programs. The most often is that this is an outdated method, blah, blah, blah. True, email does not have the glamor and excitement some other venues offer but barring that, nothing I am aware of compares to the effectiveness of email. Your email list can easily be said to be your most important asset. I certainly believe that to be true.

Consider, average ROI for email marketing is roughly $38. For every dollar spent. Not too shabby! E-mail has the highest conversion rates at 66% which is more than social media and SEO marketing combined.

This data is from the Digital Marketing Association.

Well, you’ve got the gist of this subject and the accolades continue, but not to be too boring with this podcast let’s move on to:

1.The Problem with Online Marketing

As a small business owner, professional service provider and call yourself an account. However, to thrive and not merely survive you must think of yourself as a marketing first and accounting provider second.

As such, you face two major problems in exploiting the internet to promote your business online:

1. you want to be certain that it is an effective use of your time and will deliver tangible results-you cannot afford to waste your time going up a blind alley with something that doesn’t work. Unfortunately, I can guarantee that 90% of all small businesses are throwing good money after bad. Engaged in the hope this works marketing.

2. assuming you are satisfied that it can indeed bring results, you want to know what strategy works best for a small business like yours.

Tune in for the rest www.kenmillerconsults.com

I believe that “Being your own brand, is a FedEx moment. Absolutely, positively, must be there, for survival in today’s new market reality. This thing called “brand” is your lynchpin for achieving the success you deserve, in your chosen professional services practice.

Hello, and my name is Ken Miller I’ll be your host and disrupter for the entirety of the BYOB podcast. Curator of inspiring and energizing ideas, systems, creating your proxy you.

Great stuff in store for you straight ahead. It will be informative as well as entertaining as we journey this “road less traveled”.

We’ve all seen the ubiquitous BYOB on the party invitation and knew instinctively what that meant. Well, it has a new meaning of Be Your Own Brand. So when it appears on the party invite you’ll know they are referring of course to this podcast!

Be your own brand is certainly a whole lot more than the marketing and sales aspects that is so commonly connected. BYOB is about you and what makes you - well, you. The ole axiom of being your self ‘cause everyone else is taken is so true in today’s social environment. Even the Bard himself admonishes with the “to thine own self be true.”

It is with this in mind that we delve into todays brand episode and as just mentioned today’s social environment. Social environment today means Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, etc.

As Mark Twain quips the secret to getting ahead, is getting started. Let’s get started…

The social environment that exists today, didn’t exist ten years ago, maybe not even 5 years to the extent it permeates every inch of our society today. and therein lies the two edged sword.

So our definition of the social environment is Social media marketing. This is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for both practitioners and researchers.

If it only started and ended there, no problem. However; it doesn’t. Here is an excerpt from a newsletter I receive from Josh Stemle (Stimlee) and he writes as follows.

Hear the rest at www.kenmillerconsults.com

Must-have information for lawyers, accountants, financial planners, and all other professional service providers. ‘Business development,’ practice development,’ client retention…’ no matter what you call it; you need sales skills to do it successfully. No better place for you to be than right here for an insightful, value-packed, and informative sales how to. By extension then, gaining a lifetime of enhancement and enchantment! Taking you on a step by step journey from. Barely survive to thrive.

The name of the podcast is BYOB, but we have barely touched on the idea of a brand called you. The brand called you is at the heart of what I teach via this podcast and in training/workshop sessions.

Today. I want to ask you about your brand identity, your personal brand identity. What I'm not asking about is your LinkedIn profile or your website or your photo. And I'm definitely not asking about your color scheme or your logo, because that has nothing to do with your brand identity. According to Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame, Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. What are people saying about you and what makes you different out in the world? There are a bazillion business professionals out there. And frankly, they're all saying the same thing. And it just sounds like white noise. All of the time, relying on the same sources, the same empty means the same quotes, the same platitudes, the same formulas. It's the same. It's just this buzz, this underlying noise. And with all of the competition out there, how do you get seen?

I’m excited about our topic today and I’ll start with a quote from Steve Jobs of Apple fame. So much is attributed to Steve you’re never sure, but this is attributed to him. I quote:

That's been one of my mantras - focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” — Hans Hofmann

Nothing is more challenging than returning an idea to its essence after it is shared. We are driven to augment, to add our take, to offer input intended to make it better.

The result?

What seemed simple and clear at first is suddenly convoluted and complicated. Often barely recognizable. Sometimes for the better. Other times, not. I suspect the latter to be the default outcome.

How about a case in point. Generating Revenue.

Tune in the podcast for the rest of this story.

Hello and welcome once again to the ongoing, value packed “Be Your Own Brand Podcast. Today is Wednesday 5/27, 2020. May is gone. However, here is your pause for developing a “get more business” from my accounting, legal, architecture, etc. practice. By extension then, gaining a lifetime of enhancement and enchantment! Taking you on a step by step journey from. Barely survive to thrive.

The other day I was rummaging through some older articles I had written and came across this stat from a think tank called Forester Research. I reported this 2017 not sure of the origin date. Here is the quote, “By 2020 85% of interactions between businesses will be executed without human intervention”. Corona wasn’t on the horizon yet and here we are 2020 and I venture a guess spot on with that prediction.

As a review, my business focus is:  I am a sales and market development consulting firm for professional practice enterprises. IN actuality, my marketing efforts are not any different than what an accountant, financial planner, might be implementing. So what I recommend is not without some solid foundations in what I do for my own business growth. Certainly not a “do what I say and not what I do” kind of platform.

I hate selling as much as anyone and I do not do any selling at all. This is as much selling as I do these days. I can explain what I do and if that interests you fine, if not I hope you use the information presented here for the growth of your own practice. Win-win or no deal. A simple concept of “responsive selling”, which turns the default explanation of selling on it’s head. In fact it is the only acceptable form selling for today’s buyer.

Odds are pretty good that you & I share the frustrations of this lockdown business. If there is a silver lining to this nonsense it’s that we, you and I, have time to do so thinking about our businesses, our goals, and what might we do differently in the coming months. Without getting into too much crystal ball gazing, it’s a given that business tomorrow is not going to look a whole lot like business today. This is really nothing new, as this trend has been emerging for the past number of years at a pretty intense  rate. The lockdown has sharpened the focus of this reality.

So for the vast majority of us, this future is going to require change and even a whole lot of change. Humans are particularly adverse to change. the most expensive seven words you’ll hear in coming months is “we’ve never done it this way before! Conversely these next seven may be the most important words you’ll say today.

Here’s an excerpt from: ― B.J. Fogg, Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything. (good reading)

“After you put your feet on the floor in the morning, immediately say this phrase, “It’s going to be a great day.” As you say these seven words, try to feel optimistic and positive.”

BYOB is up and rolling again. It has been way too long since my last podcast but things have really been hectic around the shop. I have promised myself to do better, actually, a great deal better than the past record of podcasts. This podcast is a core function of my entire marketing plan for Ken Miller Consulting.

Speaking of core functions the very core of BYOB is debunking the premise “just build it they’ll come”. No one is more guilty of loving that idea than yours truly. No one has been more disappointed than yours truly with that premise either.

To jump right into today subject here’s an excerpt from one of my favorite books and authors.

Indeed.... that's a fallacy that many business professionals continue to fall prey to...the core message of Michael Gerber's excellent book, The E-Myth Re-Visited. Just because you're good a something, just because you hang out a shingle or create a website doesn't by itself earn you the rewards you think you deserve. One must always be marketing... which, for me, means one must always be creating, nurturing and sustaining relationships...in the real world and in the virtual world... because relationships are the real fuel of business.

Couldn’t have said it better myself!  Fact of the matter is I didn’t and Michael Gerber’s book is certainly one that should every small business practitioner should have on their shelf.

The question to ask, to thrive or barely survive?

What got you here, will not get you there and this is more true today than ever. Our business climate arrived today on steroids. Before corona it was changing rapidly but today it has been turned upside down in an instant and business will have to adapt and adopt. Or simple go away.

Small business is just a hotbed of advertising and business slogans that are of no differentiation whatsoever. Case in point I recently saw a very large billboard and I forget anything about who the ad was or about and remember only it proudly proclaimed that “our people make the difference”.  Now, I would hate to think that the company paid somebody big bucks to come up with an ad like that or a slogan like that.  so fast forward to this weeks podcast I'm going to talk about what we call table stakes differentiators or TSD's as will call them for the rest of the podcast.

There is an urgent need to differentiate today’s professional services firms. From the buyer’s perspective, most service providers are indistinguishable from one another, so buyers are very receptive to signals that indicate one firm is more qualified to solve their problem than others.

What separates you from other experts in your field?

Since anybody can monetize their expertise, it’s important to position yourself in the market and show people why they should choose you as opposed to other experts.

To figure this out, come up with 3–5 unique things that separate you — these are your competitive advantages.

Don’t settle for statements like, “I’m better.” Even if it’s true, better is not a brand — it’s a judgment call.

Choose traits few others have as opposed to opinions anybody can claim.

In my case, what separates me from most media consultants is my experience. I’ve been where you’re at, I know the difference between stuff that no longer works, and what today’s new market reality demands. My unconventional beliefs (Most people overpay of social management and underpay for strategy.) and my experience building audiences for my own projects such as my Be Your Own Brand marketing and other projects.

These points of differentiation won’t make you the right choice for EVERYBODY, but they will make you the perfect choice for SOMEBODY.