Spolier Alert: There's No Silver Bullet In Marketing

Jordan: My name is Jordan McFadyen. Welcome to the Marketing Mindset podcast. Now, this podcast is designed to help you navigate this cluttered world of marketing, and help you, challenge you to actually move away from random acts of marketing towards planning intentional marketing strategies. And we’re doing a slightly different format today, and we’ve brought Aarti onto the podcast today. This is the debut, I guess, of the podcast duo.

Aarti: Yeah. Hi, happy to be here.

Jordan: So, Aarti’s been on the Done By Nine team for a little while now. Can you give us, I know it’s really awkward, but can you give us that little intro, just around your background and some of your marketing kind of highlights, I guess?

Aarti: Yeah, for sure. I’ve worked in marketing for a very long time now, for over 12 years. And I’ve kind of gone from the start of working at a really small kind of startup to working for corporates. And over my time, yeah, I’ve worked for New Zealand businesses, businesses in Australia, and also over in the UK. Some of the highlights and things that I love about marketing is around creating kind of that integrated strategy that gets the marketing engine moving. And I think that this topic is a great one, because lots of businesses really do sometimes want to get that silver bullet, that one thing that works. But ultimately, it’s a combination of a bunch of things. And it’s about tweaking those things intricately so that the engine for your specific business actually does work. And for every business, that’s really, really different. So, yeah, when you kind of can get that engine to work, that’s one of my highlights. And I love kind of working with businesses to try and get that marketing mix right.

Jordan: Yeah, look, and I think that’s a really good intro to what we wanted to discuss today. So, obviously, Aarti and I and the rest of the team will go visit clients, and we’ll kind of work through their different strategies and kind of what they’re trying to achieve with their marketing. And I think it’s that reminder, and I think I say this on the podcast a lot as well, around that there is no silver bullet to marketing. And if there was a silver bullet, I always use that analogy that if we had clocked marketing, I don’t think we’d still be sitting here today working in marketing, because we have worked it out. And we’re now multimillionaires living in our villas in Bali, instead of working in marketing still. So there’s no, like, answer to it. There’s no, like, silver bullet. It’s about trying to build those fundamentals, yeah?

Aarti: Totally, and I think that a single strategy that you can work towards to have, to build out those elements and what they look like, is a massive part of that. And I think that misconception that this one single thing is going to completely revolutionise your business: sometimes that does happen, right? There’s a lot of businesses that they do get this viral piece of content, and they do get this amazing silver bullet, but it’s often an accident. It’s often completely luck. And it’s about all of the other things working behind that actually make that a reality.

Jordan: And I think the other thing just to think about is why some of the quick fixes fail in marketing: is that you do get a bit of a lack of an alignment with your overall business goals, and your marketing goals and your business goals may not align. They may not be true to where you need to be heading for your business. And also ignoring things like how complex your customer and audience behaviour is, and how that changes over time, and how you need to be always testing different formats and different ways of getting your message across and different social media platforms and everything like that. And I think also the big one around, like, brand consistency. And we even had a meeting this morning with a client around making sure that the email that’s going out from Mailchimp appears consistent with the website content and the social media and the event that’s being put onto LinkedIn, so that it all feels consistent. It feels like it’s the same brand. And I think that’s really important for us to always kind of remind ourselves, yeah?

Aarti: Absolutely. That makes a big difference, because if it’s disjointed, then the whole experience and that customer experience you’re delivering is really misaligned, and actually it’s quite confusing for the user.

Jordan: So let’s go through the actual actionable bits, because I want to try and get some actionable pieces out of what we should be having a bit of a look at. And I think it is having a look at that foundation of that brand strategy, and what those foundational pieces are that we need to be thinking about. And obviously that’s a core thing about what we do day to day, is developing brands and that foundation to a brand strategy that then businesses can evolve and grow over time. So, yeah, let’s chat about those components. What are those components of a strong brand strategy, do you think?

Aarti: Yeah, totally. So I think all brands need to start with that purpose, mission statement, those kind of values that sit behind it, of who they are and why they operate. And I think that people, more and more importantly, people are really wanting to know and learn about a brand’s story. Like, how did you start? What’s your story behind your company? And having that as the foundation behind what you do, and that kind of first piece that people read about, is super powerful, and you need to get it right. It needs to be compelling, it needs to be interesting, and it needs to be real as well.

Jordan: And I think the other thing, like, I 100% agree. And then that USP as well. Like, what is that one thing that you and your business does that sets you apart from others? And what is that one thing that, you may work in a niche industry, but what’s that one thing that your business does that no other business does? Even challenge yourself to think that they don’t do anywhere else in the world. So is it the way that you deliver your service? Is it a certain methodology that you have? Is it just your level of service? What is that USP that really defines who you are as a brand, you know?

Aarti: Yeah. Then I think the other really important part is that visual identity and design. When people look at your brand, it makes up who you are. So kind of having that visual identity that is consistent across all elements of where people are going to, but also makes sense. And these colours and fonts and all of these types of things actually help build that visual identity for your business.

Jordan: Okay. And I’m feeling already, as we’re talking, as a business, already the things that we’re mentioning so far do seem pretty overwhelming to try and have a think about. But I guess if we break it down and actually just try and establish some of those fundamentals, let’s kind of break that down and think about how we can also actually try and achieve some of these, and how we can actually research some of these fundamentals. Because what I would say is that, when you’re going in, obviously your brand story, I think having that documented, thinking about how you’re going to share that story, is really important.

Jordan: But then I do think that once you’ve got all of that nailed, we do need to take a step back and actually have a look at our audience, and think about, okay, who is that core audience that we’re trying to focus on? So what type of ideas would you kind of suggest in terms of being able to research audiences and things like that?

Aarti: Yeah, absolutely. So from that first part, interviewing, that kind of focus group kind of style, getting some surveys through to try and do an audience research. And lots of companies do that externally, but it’s just as easy to do internally these days, to kind of go out to an audience and a subset to see what actually resonates. And I think that kind of whole idea of pain points, and who you’re talking to, and how you’re solving a customer problem, is a really good way of looking at audience segmentation, and trying to find out where and who those pain points, appealing to, to then try and work backwards to try and say, hey, this is my target audience, or these are the personas that I’m looking for.

Jordan: Yeah, so true. And then the other big thing is, once we’ve actually started to do that audience research, and this is something that we do a lot, is then really trying to detail that buyer persona. And I’ve spoken about this in the past as well, and I try and think about how you can really, really try and niche that. And I listened to, or did I read it somewhere? It might have been listening to a podcast with Gary Vaynerchuk. And he had also said something really interesting around trying to really get your audience, but then try and break that down to as many different personas as possible, and really try and think about that 40 to 50-year-old male that enjoys surfing in the weekend and works as a chief technology officer at a SaaS company. So really trying to break it down, like really pinpoint who you’re actually trying to talk to, and trying to break down those personas. What type of things would you kind of work through in terms of breaking down and working for a persona?

Aarti: Yeah, I think, like you said, it’s about those little details that can help to really build out who that person is, what they’re doing on a day to day, what kind of pain points they’re coming up against, that will then turn into your ideal customer profile, I guess. So I think that being as detailed as possible, as you said, and getting into that nitty-gritty of who they are, where they like to get their coffee, all these little bits can help you build a detailed buyer persona that will then help you in forging the type of messaging that you deliver to them. Because, for example, someone who is, as you said, in IT is going to be very different to someone who is in HR, for example, in your language, and where they kind of are in terms of the digital media space. It’s going to be really different based on these personas.

Jordan: So true. And it’s going to change your whole strategy and where you’re actually placing. So when we’re actually working through a buyer persona, I also always try and think about what is that buyer’s journey that they’re actually going through. How did they first find out about your brand? What type of content resonated with them? What kind of sparked that interest? And then what’s a way to kind of build trust with that brand, or that product, or that service, or build that desire more, so that they’re like, actually, I do need this. Or actually, this is exactly how I need to be able to fulfil this desire or solve this problem, and kind of build it and change it from there.

Jordan: And I guess it helps with going as far as, like, product development, and actually testing: is my product, my service, as good as what it can be for that particular person? Or your marketing messages. And it goes back to making sure it then connects with that USP that you’ve got as well, making sure that that buyer persona actually gives a shit about that USP that you’ve also put in there, and making sure that that’s really clear. And also that big one around channel selection as well. Like, if you are going for that, I don’t know, 50 to 60-year-old chief technology officer of the SaaS company, they may not be on TikTok just because everyone else is on TikTok. They may not be there, but there might be a subsection of your audience. There may be a subsection that is on there, or that they are on LinkedIn, or are on Facebook. And instead of just spraying your message everywhere, trying to test and be really detailed about where you are actually trying to put your marketing efforts at the end of the day.

Aarti: Do you think there’s a risk sometimes of having too many personas?

Jordan: Look, honestly, I think some of maybe core personas, this is what I think. If you have, like, a core persona, so let’s say, and we will do this on a client strategy, won’t we, where we’ll have like two or three core personas. We’ll even name them. We’ll put up some cheesy stock images so they actually have a face. And I guess that really helps with then making sure you’re reminding yourself that these people exist when you’re actually putting out content and things like that. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong about then breaking that down even further, and putting it into, like, subsections. And that’s obviously getting pretty detailed. But I think the more that you can get detailed, obviously the better. And obviously that’s going to be a staged process as well, over time. I think if you’re just kind of kicking off and just kind of building those buyer personas, if you could have two or three. And then once you really start to get down to the nitty-gritty, then start to really get into, like, subsections of those buyer personas.

Aarti: Absolutely. I think there’s a level of, like, building those personas so that it’s achievable within a strategy. Doing too many subsections when you’re just starting out can be quite hard, and also quite expensive when you’re trying to appeal to each different audience. But I think that, like you said, when you’ve got some key or core buyer personas that you’re working towards, then once you understand these audiences better, you actually realise that they do kind of peel out into their own subsections, which is what we see often with our clients.

Jordan: And this is why it’s so important, around the whole topic, which is there’s no silver bullet. Like, all these things that we’re kind of working through and working out as you go through this process as well. And it will change, and it will kind of adapt and develop. Like, you could think that you’re going and you’re trying to search for a CTO, a chief technology officer. But then at the end of the day, the CFO might be that person that you need to actually get the buy-in from, to, A, get the actual deal done. Obviously using maybe the CTO as, like, the influencer or something like that, to be able to influence those decisions. And you’re trying to keep it towards the actual sale.

Aarti: And I think also getting the actual data of who your customers are, and who’s actually buying from you, is a massive one. So when people are just starting out, sometimes they think that one persona is who they should be targeting. But once they’re six months down the line, they think, okay, actually these are the people that are actually buying from me. And it wasn’t that core persona, it was someone completely different. So, as you said, just making sure that you are constantly, this evolution of marketing, not just setting the marketing strategy and leaving it. It’s about changing it, developing it, growing it as your business grows and changes, and as all of these other developmental factors happen.

Jordan: And the other big one to think about is that age-old competitor. Obviously you’re in competition. There are other people that most likely are offering a very similar service, or they’re competing on a similar desire, or they’re trying to help people that have got a similar pain point to what you’re solving at the same time. And I think it’s really interesting, and always trying to think about how we can evolve, and how our brand sits in relation to our competitors. When you think about competitor strategies, what type of things are you looking for?

Aarti: Yeah, I’m pretty old school. I always love starting with a SWOT analysis. I think a comprehensive SWOT analysis is a great place to start, with looking at the strengths that you have versus the weaknesses that you need to be aware of. Again, opportunities and threats to your business. And I think that analysing your competitors is a massive advantage to your business. You need to be able to understand what is their USP, so that you can start to look at what your USP is in comparison to that. And you can use strategies and ways to make yours kind of look better, feel better, and be more comprehensive, I guess.

Jordan: As an example, we’re consulting a new e-commerce brand at the moment. And last week we went through all the competitor analysis we’re having a look at. There’s some pretty core competitors that they’re up against, and they have a pretty big hold of the market. And the other thing that I like to do is doing a bit of spying on where we think that their strategy is likely. And the things that I am looking for is, like, going to tools like the Facebook ad library. And you can have a look to see the amount of creative. On Facebook ad library, it tells us, okay, clearly they’re going after a certain persona. We then have a look at the ads on there, and the language being used on there is dedicated to a certain persona. We then have a look to see how long have the ads been running for as well. And you can actually start to identify and say, well, these ads have been running since March this year. So clearly they’re doing well and converting well for them.

Jordan: And we can tell that obviously they’re actively in this account, because there are lots of different creatives. So we’re trying to look at all those different kind of things to give us any ideas. And so obviously it’s the Facebook ad library. And then if we then have a look at, like, Google search, there’s obviously a lot of tools where you can kind of crawl people’s websites and see what potential keywords they’re actually getting traffic from. Google will also tell you what ads they have running as well, using the Google ad library. So we can get a really good understanding about where potentially they’re investing their marketing, and either learn as much as we can about what they’re doing, or how can we differentiate from what they’re doing, to make sure that we are hitting our core persona and not trying to infiltrate theirs too much, and what that point of difference is, you know?

Aarti: Yeah, absolutely. And what would your advice be on people that have, so say, for example, they’re entering a market, and someone is nailing it, and you look at their digital footprint: they’re spending X on Google Ads, they’re spending X on Meta ads. And you think, God, they’re doing a great job. What would your advice be then for this business that is wanting to basically come in and do a wee takeover or something?

Jordan: USP and niche. 100%. I reckon if you’ve got that thing that makes you different, and that real smaller audience, and if you start, and this is the other challenge, especially if you’re starting a new business and you’re up against a business that’s potentially been around for a long time, they’ve got a real hold of the market, you’re clearly, most likely, not going to have the same marketing budget that they have, or the advertising budget that they have. So really, if you can niche down, that means that your advertising dollar is going to be much better spent. So if you can actually go to Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or Google and actually be able to define your audience, even down to 34 to 40, or 34 to 45, and really niche down. Taking this example of this client from last week, one of the USPs is literally the aesthetics of their product. And it’s a very niche market that they’re going for, so they can kind of get that in front of the people, to essentially show something that is going to be more aesthetically pleasing and longer term and sustainable over the long term as well, because they’ve built a product that is much more sustainable than what’s currently on the market.

Aarti: Yeah. And I think then that all adds into their visual identity and their content, and the messaging that they’re talking about will be about the aesthetics, right? And then that suddenly starts to appeal to the right audience, and it’s all coming full circle.

Jordan: Definitely. And the other one I wanted to talk about was the brand voice. Now, going right back to that client we just spoke about before, so they’re on whole different things: Mailchimp, LinkedIn, they’re doing events and things like that. How do we keep a consistent brand voice, so that when someone sees your content, they just know instantly that they’re kind of watching and seeing your content, or seeing your email, or something like that? What would be your suggestions on that?

Aarti: Yeah, I think that a consistent tone and a personality is so important to a brand. And I think that it impacts so many different areas of the business, but also for your customer. It’s being able to have those same lines across your business. And I think that this often comes down to the team as well. Everyone needs to kind of be talking and using that same language. It doesn’t matter who you’re talking to, whether it’s the office lady or the CTO or the CEO, everyone’s got that same style of, dare I say, elevator pitch. But everyone knows what that personality and consistent tone is. And as you said, going back to this company or brand that we’ve been working with, it’s very disjointed.

Aarti: And as soon as you go on to the different platforms, you’re seeing a different message, you’re seeing a different story, you’re seeing a different style. And it’s super confusing, and it just makes the brand also feel really unpolished. And I think that that’s another layer and level: customers and users, they have really high expectations now. And I don’t think that that’s something that people are considering, that, wow, that they use, they’re really expecting a great user experience from all platforms and all devices and wherever they see you. So that tone and personality, and that consistency of that, is super important.

Jordan: Yeah, cool. Okay, so let’s round up, because I think we’ve chatted about a lot. What are the steps we’re going to take from here? So I think the big things that we want to get across is, when we think about a marketing strategy, I think the core thing we need to remind ourselves, marketing strategy is making sure you’ve got a really clear USP and you’ve got a really clear audience. And if you can get those, and that’s essentially, like, the very baseline marketing strategy. And so if we can get those core fundamentals right, then it’s about actually building that action plan, and build what we would call here is, like, our Marketing Blend, yeah? And so we are then looking at all the different things that we can blend together to actually help us reach our business and marketing goals. So what’s the next things we should be looking at after we’ve got our audience, we’ve got our USP? What are some of those other things that we need to just kind of, as a bit of a checklist, what we need to be looking at next?

Aarti: So yeah, so I think starting to look at, you’ve got the objectives, you’ve got your USP, you’ve got your audience. Now, where are those people? So looking at channels is a really massive one. So where are those people in the digital landscape? Where are they in the physical landscape? And kind of looking at how your marketing strategy can then start achieving your goals. Is that to generate new leads? Is it to build a bit of a brand profile online, so that people can actually know who you are and what you do? So kind of aligning all of those tactics back to the marketing strategy then starts to build out some of those tactics that you try to do.

Aarti: And, as you talked about, our blend document, we kind of split those out into key core objectives. So each marketing goal has a whole line of different tactics to execute and achieve that goal. And it’s not something, as you say, that happens straight away. It’s a stage, and it’s a lot of different tactics that help to build out the strategy. It’s not just one tactic that we’re going to go out and say, hey, TikTok, we’re going to make a reel that goes viral. And I think that we’ve been asked that before, haven’t you?

Jordan: All the time. I don’t know why it is such a thing, that it’s like, yeah, well, all we need is that one piece of content to go viral. And if we think about that, for every one business that goes viral on TikTok, there’s 200, 500 other businesses trying.

Aarti: And failing.

Jordan: It’s just not a strategy. It’s not a strategy. A strategy of not, we just need to go viral. Because obviously, if you went viral, obviously, that would be…

Aarti: I thought it was easy like that.

Jordan: Exactly. And I think the main thing I think we need to get across here is that we also need to just be really agile. And that’s the thing. Even when we’re meeting with clients and we’re reviewing how things are going, things go up and down all the time. Markets will change. We’re in a tough market at the moment. Your audience will change.

Aarti: Seasonality.

Jordan: There are so many things. And I know that it then becomes difficult. And as business owners and, well, marketing managers as well, there’s obviously a lot that we’re trying to think about at any given time. But I think if we can just go back to those fundamentals, just have that USP, have that audience, have that plan ready to go. You’ve always kind of got that to go back to. So when you do get flustered, or you do kind of get, I don’t know, slightly out of control, you can always go back. It kind of gives you that centre, right?

Aarti: I think so. It’s kind of something you can always refer back to, change and tweak as you need to. But it’s your kind of foundation blocks, as you’re talking about, to make sure that everything, all the execution tactics that you’re actually running, are always coming back to those main key kind of foundations. And I think that’s kind of one of the most important things we wanted to get across here, is that it’s not just a TikTok reel or something as fickle as that. It’s about how all of the tactics that you’re running go back to the tone of voice, your personality, your audience and your USP. And there’s so many different elements to that. It’s not just one, as you say, silver bullet that’s going to get you through.

Jordan: Awesome. And look, obviously, that’s what we do here as well at Done By Nine. And it’s what we do, our bread and butter each day, is trying to work through those different USPs, and try and sit with people, either consult them or actually build out the strategies and help implement them, to find who those customers are, those personas, what the USP is, trying to challenge you a bit more, trying to have a look at your competitors, see how they’re kind of working as well. So if you do need a bit of help in terms of that, obviously, you can get in touch with us at the time.

Jordan: But I think the main thing also to get away is, if you haven’t got that strategy, which is, again, that USP and that person, that’s where I’d start. Make sure you’ve got that documented. And it’s amazing how many businesses we speak to who don’t have some of those fundamentals either done, or they haven’t re-looked at them recently, and they’re struggling to figure out why isn’t our marketing suddenly working? It’s maybe they need to go back and have a bit of a look at that. So if there’s one thing you take away from this is that: be agile, go back to that strategy piece at the start, and keep reiterating, keep testing and keep trying new things as well.

Jordan: Hey, thank you so much for joining us. First episode. That wasn’t too bad, was it?

Aarti: I hope not.

Jordan: No, it was good. It was good. And we’ll see you on another episode of the Marketing Mindset podcast.