I’m so f*cking happy to announce that ​my book, Stand The F*ck Out, is officially available for PURCHASE​! To buy the book—and more!—DIRECTLY from us and support our small business, go to: book.stfo.io

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***

Some companies seem to have the magic touch.

On the other hand, many startups struggle for years to gain traction in their market. 

Why do some companies capture the attention of an audience while others get dismissed?

That’s right — it all comes down to building a phenomenal brand. 

But before we get into that, let’s talk about what it actually means to build a brand in the first place. 

Branding is a word that gets tossed around a lot in the marketing industry. 

The only problem? 

Nobody can seem to define what a brand is. 

Let’s clear up the misconceptions.

Branding is an emotional feeling about a company that makes them seem like the better choice against their competition. 

OK, I know what you’re probably thinking. “That sounds really vague. How can we turn momentary sentiment into something tangible?” 

That’s what I set out to learn when I interviewed senior marketing and brand expert Bernie Schroeder.

He’s the author of Brands and Bullshit: Excel at the Former and Avoid the Latter and has a marketing background that includes launching strategies for major companies like Apple, Amazon, Yahoo! and Adobe.

I invited Bernie to speak on the Everyone Hates Marketers podcast to discuss:

• Why branding matters in business
• The mistakes companies make with branding
• What happens when you ignore branding
• How to build a brand that attracts customers

Why Is Branding In The Digital Age Important?

Companies who ONLY focus on marketing tactics without a branding strategy become a commodity in the marketplace. 

Without a brand-building system in place, you’re unable to differentiate yourself from every other business that offers a similar product or service. 

This means any new company can pop up, copy your business model, and do it at a lower price than you. 

Do you see where we’re going with this? 

If you listen to my podcast, you already know that I like to challenge my guests to break their methodology down so you can walk away from each interview with a practical step-by-step.

What follows is the specific approach Bernie Schroeder uses to build a brand identity — whether you want to leverage the benefits for a brand you already have or you’re starting from the very beginning. 

Let’s dive into his step-by-step guide.

5 Steps to Build a Strong Brand

Step 1: Find Out How Your Company is Perceived

The first step in branding according to Bernie Schroeder is to figure out how your company is perceived in the marketplace.

Where should you look in order to learn this? 

Go to your customers. 

Bernie recommends getting a list of the top 100 customers and reaching out to some of them. 

Here’s why: Whether you're working for an agency client or you're an entrepreneur running your own business, you need to take a step back from what you THINK you already know about your customers’ perspective. 

We’re too close to our own business to see it the way our customers do.

Talking to your customers is important. While they don't always know what they want, they can tell you what they don’t want. 

In addition to that, customers can tell you what problems they’re suffering from and describe how it affects their own personal situation.

This circles back to the #1 rule of good marketing: Treat people like humans. 

Business is about solving problems for your customers [problems that are a real pain point].

According to a study ran by CBInsights, 42% of businesses fail because there’s no market need for what they’re selling.

Talk to your customers. 

Research the customer journey from their perspective (without leading them into what you think it looks like).

Bernie Schroeder explains that when you speak to customers, you must ask them simple questions. 

Your questions should be 5 words or less because if you ask questions that are too long they become leading. 

But the more simple the question? T...

I’m so f*cking happy to announce that ​my book, Stand The F*ck Out, is officially available for PURCHASE​! To buy the book—and more!—DIRECTLY from us and support our small business, go to: book.stfo.io

Free Shipping Worldwide • Ripped Apart by 70+ Marketers • Money-Back Guarantee • Secure Online Payment

***

For start-up marketing, how do you get something off the ground without outside funding? What’s required to launch a product?

Marketers and developers will learn a lot today!

In this episode, I’m talking to Rob Walling, a Web developer, podcaster, entrepreneur, and conference co-host about stairstepping your way up when it comes to bootstrapping.

Topics covered:

• How to launch a new software business without a lot of time or money
• Stairstep Approach: Build something small, a one-time sale product; find source of traffic or niche
• How to come up with useful product ideas for angles; use tools that show places that generate traffic
• Make money online by knowing SEO practices
• Optimize for an engine to provide a valuable resource for people searching for a specific term
• By using marketing to get to the top or to get in front of people, only to let them down - then you will not have longevity
• Utilize communities and marketplaces, online or elsewhere, that already exist and people are using
• Gain confidence, experience, and knowledge to improve and make money
• Process of building a simple plug-in: Research; come up with an idea; know where to go; teach yourself or outsource work; submit; and determine level of interest
• Acquire something rather than building it from scratch; leverage other people’s work
• Start something guaranteed to get traction by using an idea done before, several times
• Determine if a certain number of people are looking for the same thing
• Can you charge for it? Can you add something to charge for? Can you build something people are willing to pay for? Are you interested in building something?
• Rob’s Goal: Provide value to people in exchange for money; take that money to quit day job
• Identify that there are volumes of searches to sustain your objective
• Focus on a landscape with a lot of products that are not good enough; competition validates the market
• Go for the goal to rank #1; that’s the challenge
• Niche-down results in smaller opportunities but that does not matter initially
• Earning your first dollar is a life-changing moment, but it is still good to sell stuff; as the dollars get bigger, the more interesting it is
• Rob’s passionate about being ethical and adding value to people’s lives and making money out of it
• If you make money from an add-on, then launch more add-ons for diversification; if not, start over
• You have an audience, grow it slowly, offer solutions to their problems, and make a living
• Practice patience and maintain a long-term mindset; marketers get overwhelmed with the amount of day-to-day information available
• Set long-term goals because choices you make today, stick with you
• Marketers should learn to think analytically like developers; measure conversions, link dollars to spending on ads to how many people are buying, etc.
• Developers can learn from marketers that a product is not everything; customers and marketing are directly related to the success of a product; and talk about the benefits rather than the features
• Some marketers go for growth hacks - grow at any cost and just for the sake of it
• Marketers have a bad reputation because of overstepping bounds of ethics
• Good marketing goes unnoticed; bad marketing is in the news a lot
• Have an opinion, stand for something, and be real
• Define your enemy because when things get tough, fighting against it is the only thing

Resources mentioned:

• Rob Walling on Twitter
• Startups for the Rest of Us podcast
• Drip
• MicroConf
• Google AdWords
• Ahrefs
• Market Samurai
• Jungle Scout
• DotNetInvoice
• Justin Jackson - Marketing for Developers
• Shinesty
• Rand Fishkin - Step-by-Step Guide to Inbound Marketing
• Copy Hackers
• Inbound.org
• Ultimate Sales Letter
• [email protected]

***

→ Buy my book: book.stfo.io
→ Join 14,000+ weirdos who learn to stand the f*ck out with my daily (Mon-Fri) emails: everyonehatesmarketers.com
→ See my pretty face on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisgrenier/
→ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3p4wL4r
→ Leave a review on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7iEF1qovZZiaP1iRtxGARo

Finally...

If you're curious about putting your brand in front of my 14,000+ daily newsletter subscribers and/or podcast listeners, email me: [email protected]

🤘

I’m so f*cking happy to announce that ​my book, Stand The F*ck Out, is officially available for PURCHASE​! To buy the book—and more!—DIRECTLY from us and support our small business, go to: book.stfo.io

Free Shipping Worldwide • Ripped Apart by 70+ Marketers • Money-Back Guarantee • Secure Online Payment

***

Surprisingly, companies still need to be convinced to focus on their customers before making money.

Treating customers badly is no longer an option. In this episode, learn how to earn your customers’ love and admiration, as well as grow your business.

Today, I’m talking to Jeanne Bliss, president of CustomerBliss. Jeanne describes how companies focus on sales goals, internal KPIs, and and other metrics, and tend to forget about their customers - who actually drive all of those metrics.

Topics covered:

• Convince companies to focus on customers - earn your right to grow by keeping more customers than you lose
• Customer Map: Identify your new customers
• Figure out and understand why customers leave
• Identify why a customer turned away - dig into data about orders and renewals
• Business tends to be about getting something from customers; grow by delivering value to them vs. getting something from them
• Framework for earning customers’ love and attention
• Step 1: Build customers’ assets (did you earn the right to grow - ask your customers?)
• Step 2: Recreate company’s work (what are a customer’s goals and journey?)
• Heart and Habit: What’s in your heart is your values and the habits you are being forced to use at work
• Step 3: Pick a couple things to focus on and build from the customer’s life and goal; redesign the customer’s experience to build on that goal
• Co-creation: Company and customers meet and work together
• Train managers to not contradict customers or defend, deny, or explain away actions
• Step 4: Map current experience from customer’s view; start with customers’ emotions and needs
• Step 5: Redesign experience and ask customers to provide feedback
• Convince customers to spend time with a company; tell them the company’s leaders want to listen to them
• Keep up with technology, customer, and other changes; one thing that does not change - are you reliable?
• Customers prefer companies that do not fear honest feedback from them
• Jeanne watched how well her dad treated customers as a shoe store owner; she was inspired by him
• Marketers have a bad reputation; it’s not marketers as people, but marketing as a way to get something from a customer vs. what you want to deliver and earn
• One bad practice marketers do that should not be done is selling too soon; let customers absorb information about your product and brand before pushing them to buy something
• Marketers need to learn about the blending and engagement of marketing and customer experience so that they become united, not isolated

Resources mentioned:

• Pre-Order Jeanne's New Book on Amazon!
• CustomerBliss
• Jeanne Bliss on Twitter
• The Chief Customer Officer Human Duct Tape Show
• Chief Customer Officer; Chief Customer Officer 2.0; I Love You More Than My Dog; Would You Do That to Your Mother?
• Customer Experience Professionals Association
• David Darmanin: Avoid Marketing Best Practices at All Costs
• Intercom CEO on Twitter
• [email protected]m

***

→ Buy my book: book.stfo.io
→ Join 14,000+ weirdos who learn to stand the f*ck out with my daily (Mon-Fri) emails: everyonehatesmarketers.com
→ See my pretty face on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisgrenier/
→ Leave a review on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3p4wL4r
→ Leave a review on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7iEF1qovZZiaP1iRtxGARo

Finally...

If you're curious about putting your brand in front of my 14,000+ daily newsletter subscribers and/or podcast listeners, email me: [email protected]

🤘