Latest / Wedding Pros who are ready to grow - with Becca Pountney / How to brand your wedding business like Air BnB - Summer series pt 1

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How to brand your wedding business like Air BnB - Summer series pt 1 · Wedding Pros who are ready to grow - with Becca Pountney

0:00
Becca: It's August and this month I'm bringing you a
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special series for the podcast.
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I'm taking you behind the scenes of the Wedding Pro membership and I'm going to
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be bringing out some of the best trainings that we have inside of that and putting
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them on the podcast so that you can hear what's going on inside the Members Lounge.
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Now inside our Wedding Pro Members Lounge, which is my monthly
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subscription membership, we have the Wedding Pro Success Ladder.
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This is a training program I built where I took all of the trainings we
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had And the new ones we've got coming up and I put them in a success ladder.
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That ladder is built in three stages.
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So we have the build stage, the growth stage, and the advanced stage.
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And all of the trainings are then put into those different stages.
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So you know what you need to watch for your business.
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So for example, build is for you.
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If you're quite near the beginning of your business and you're earning
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between five and 10, 000 pounds a year.
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Whereas if you're on a 25, 000 pounds plus, you might want to
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look at the advanced section.
0:51
Now within each of those sections, we then divide the videos up into get
0:54
visible, get connected, get booked, get organized and be calm and confident.
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So you can always find a relevant training for you.
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Now today I'm going to be sharing with you a training from November, 2022.
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It's part of the build program.
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That's the lower level of the program.
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And it's from the get visible section.
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My guest expert, Danny talks to us all about branding and
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how to have a stand out brand.
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So I'm going to hand over to Danny.
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Enjoy today's episode.
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If you do want to be part of the Wedding Pro Members lounge,
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I'd love to welcome you.
1:24
And in order to help you do that this August, you can get the first month
1:28
of the Members lounge for just 10.
1:30
Go to the checkout and use the code SUMMER and it will
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automatically apply your discount.
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Hope to see you inside.
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Enjoy Danny's session.
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I'm Becca Pountney, wedding business marketing expert, speaker and blogger,
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and you're listening to the Wedding Pros Who Are Ready to Grow podcast.
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I'm here to share with you actionable tips, strategies, and real life
1:51
examples to help you take your wedding business to the next level.
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If you are an ambitious wedding business owner that wants to take your passion
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and use it to build a profitable, sustainable business, doing what you
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love, then you're in the right place.
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Let's get going with today's episode.
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Right, let's get straight on with it.
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I'm going to bring Danny in to join me.
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Good morning, Danny.
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Danny: Good morning, Becca.
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Hello everyone.
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I'm jealous of Rosie's sandwich and I've been seeing all the comments.
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So yeah, nice lively morning.
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That's how I like it.
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Becca: I know.
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I wish I had Rosie's sausage sandwich as well.
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It does sound rather nice.
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Morning, Suzanne.
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Nice to see you.
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See you, great to see you guys here this morning.
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Danny, if people want to take a picture or share something on Instagram this
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morning, what is your Instagram handle?
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Danny: You will find me almost everywhere at The Actual Danny.
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And there is a story behind it, which I won't bore you too much with, but
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a lot of people assume that Danny is short for Daniel, but I'm the real
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Danny, so I have to make a point of that every time someone asks.
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So I just call myself The Actual Danny online, and people tend to get it.
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Becca: I love that.
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So you're actually Danny on your birth certificate.
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Danny: I am actually Danny with a, with a Y.
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Yes.
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Becca: Love that.
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What a great story.
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So if you're taking pictures or saying that you're watching this this
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morning, do make sure you tag the actual Danny on Instagram this morning.
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Danny, you're going to be talking to us about a subject that I'm
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very interested in this morning.
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It's all a bit elusive about how to brand our businesses like Airbnb.
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So I'm, I'm excited.
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Very interested to hear what you've got to say i'm gonna hand straight
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over to you because I know that what you've got is going to be golden
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Everybody if you've got questions as we go through if you've got comments
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do join in Pop them in the comments.
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Danny can see everything and then hopefully if my plumber's not here I
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will be back to take the questions, towards the end If not, danny will
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take the questions for you and I will appear when I can so danny over to you
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Danny: Thank you, Becca.
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Good luck with the plumber.
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I'll see you shortly.
3:49
Good morning, everyone.
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Thanks for joining us.
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I appreciate everyone that's been showing up in the, in the comments and stuff.
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Luckily, I can see them.
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Sometimes when I do these things, I can't see them.
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So I can see you.
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So please interact.
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I'll be asking you a few questions.
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I'd love for you to, to get engaged and let me know.
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Your answers to those and also if you have any questions going through, I'll
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tell you what we're going to talk about.
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And and I think it's really pertinent actually to this week because it's
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only Wednesday and already this week I've had about a dozen conversations
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of people that are sitting, waiting for some news to come out this week.
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I think tomorrow after, excuse me, I'm not very economically or politically
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educated, but I do know business and I do know branding and what if I what if I'm
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really important about this session this morning and all of you in your industry is
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that I think that we are about to go into a massive phase of opportunity where if we
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just position ourselves in the right way and communicate the right things, I think
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we will see out whatever dip or downturn that is going to happen over the next
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year or whatever their predictions are.
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And the reason for that is because despite the economy humans at a fundamental level
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have changed over the last few years.
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They've changed the way that they communicate and buy things and do things.
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And we'll get into that in a little bit.
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And I'm really interested in your input and your engagement in that.
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But really this is about finding a simple and effective way to sell to brides and
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grooms to be in your industry, because you know, It's, in my experience, it's a fact
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that people will buy inferior products and services from your competitors.
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If they communicate it more clearly but it's about giving the right message and
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it's really hard when maybe there's a lot to offer or there's There's a lot
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that you have to give It's really hard to find the right thing to say or the
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the right product to sell or positioning it in the right way So i'm hoping that
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in this session you're going to learn a little bit about buying habits You know
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the the how the world of marketing is is changing and i'll use airbnb as a as
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an example of that You because they've done something in the last year and a
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half, about 18 months that's massively changed their business as a case study.
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So it'd be really good to dig into that as well as a few other brands.
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And just and I'll share with you some examples, I think of really good ways
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to market products and services for the wedding industry for brides and grooms to
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be based on these changes of our buying behavior and those kinds of things.
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So this will be quite high level.
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It will be quite kind of Quite high level in terms of like nitty gritty
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won't be there, but you'll get some really good concepts, I hope, and,
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and start to understand what changes have been happening over the last
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few years in the way that we buy.
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And I'm hoping by the end of it that you'll be inspired enough to go away and,
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and create ideas and, you know, maybe even talk to each other and collaborate
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where you can and create new things and and really try to find the opportunity
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where it's, for a little bit of context, I work in two polar opposite sectors.
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So one side is working with small businesses to help them position
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themselves and brand themselves in a way that is conducive to
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whatever market they're in.
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So it doesn't matter what industry they're in.
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And that includes local governments and councils and charities and those
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kinds of people on the complete opposite end of the spectrum.
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I work with high growth startups.
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So ideation creating products, validating it in the market and then getting funding.
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And it's really bizarre how my weeks is sometimes formed because one day
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I'll hear You know, negative worried noises from small businesses about the
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future and what's going to happen and sometimes things we can't control And
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on the other side, there's startups that are being given millions of pounds by
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investors for ideas That have no revenue and no customers So I sit between these
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two worlds and it's really fascinating to see how One is affected and the
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other is affected by things like media news and, and those kinds of things.
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So but I'm staying away from that today but just to give you a bit of a
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context, but hopefully these high level concepts will get you inspired and
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start thinking about what you can do to attract more people and get more people
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buying from you over your competitors or, or even collaborating with them.
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So we've had a few more people join.
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So thank you.
8:19
Thank you, Linda, Amy.
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Welcome DC Dan and Francesca.
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Thank you for coming.
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I can see a few Facebook users.
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So remember to click the link just above my head and give some Oh, good.
8:31
I can promise it.
8:32
Good.
8:33
So make sure you click that link and just give permission and I'll
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be able to see your name and, and who I'm interacting with.
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Okay.
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Let's get into it.
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So.
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If you think back over the last couple of years, you know, maybe 2019, let's
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say, if you think about the things that you buy and and the way you buy them and
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I want you to think about if that has changed a lot, you know, think about,
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think about the way you buy things or products you've bought recently that
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you may not have bought a few years ago.
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And some of you may be scratching your head because it's not
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something that we're, we're conscious of a lot of the time.
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However I was very conscious about some of the changes in my purchasing decisions.
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Pre pandemic so as soon as the pandemic started, for for some reason I was
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Shifted into I think I don't know what to call it apart from like survival
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mode where I wanted to do the thing that bought in money for for the for
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the family to pay the bills and stuff so I was really focused on the business
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and almost to the extreme, to the point where I didn't want to do anything else.
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I got really frustrated if I had to do, you know, general chores or shopping or,
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you know, buying things from the shop.
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Like, cause it would take 20 minutes out of my day when I didn't, I wanted to
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spend that 20 minutes making sure that I'm doing the right things in the business.
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And a lot of my buying habits changed and I seen a bit of a trend.
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towards subscriptions.
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So a lot of what I use on a, on a daily basis is on subscription
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now, including my car.
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So I pay one monthly amount for cleaning products, for pet food
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for some supplies in the house.
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Shopping is generally delivered or we use meal boxes and those kinds of things.
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And even the car now, I use a service called Ontu, which is
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a subscription car service.
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So I got rid of our old car, and I now have a car and a monthly rolling contract,
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and I can get rid of it at any time.
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And that's really nice, electric as well, so it's good for the
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economy and all that kind of stuff.
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But from a buying behavior perspective, I realized that I could be a lot more
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useful, a lot more productive if I just made these simple changes in my life.
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So I saw a bit of a trend in subscription.
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So I'd be really intrigued to find out if any of you can pinpoint or pick out
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anything that you're buying now that you didn't buy before or any habit changes
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that you found through buying, you know, as long as a lot of it shifted online
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do you do a lot of it by subscription?
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Do you have a particular service for a particular thing?
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So I know I went to a company called small, For all of my cleaning
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products, dishwasher tablets, washing tablets, and you know, it's
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good for the environment and stuff.
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And they just come in the post like every, I think three weeks I've set it to you
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know, so they're on a constant drip and it's just made my life so much easier.
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And I think that the pandemic kind of pushed me into that that
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pigeon hole to, to do those things.
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So you might've noticed that you've made some habit changes.
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Doesn't have to be the same thing.
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But it doesn't make you think how you could adapt these kind of
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business models for what you do.
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I've seen a lot of people change their business models in photography,
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for example, or consulting services or design services and those things.
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Shifting to photography.
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more of a fixed package, fixed price kind of model.
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I've recently done it myself.
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I've seen other people do it with as I say, photography and those things as a,
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as an additional income stream sometimes rather than their only income stream.
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So it's a really great time to kind of diversify and to test
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different markets in those things.
12:13
So I'd love to know a dental treatment, John.
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That's a great one.
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Dental treatment.
12:19
I know it was really hard to get dental treatment during the pandemic.
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And you know, you're even making me think now, I wonder if there is a
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payment plan for dental treatment, you know, for regular stuff, because
12:29
most people just do it by appointment.
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I know my dentist is on about a two month waiting list.
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So so it's really difficult, but I wonder if, you know, a subscription
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or something like that can make it more predictable in that sense.
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So there's one thing.
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It's kind of what you buy and how you buy it.
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You know, the things that you buy and you know, either buying online or going
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to subscription and things like that.
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So and but most importantly probably is why you buy.
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So, give me a thumbs up or a yes in the comments if this resonates with you.
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Have you, over the last two years, changed why you buy things?
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And what I mean by that is, are you more conscious of your purchasing habits
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and where the things you buy come from?
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Are you much more conscious about sustainability and those things?
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Give me a thumbs up or a yes in the comments because I'd love to
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get a feel for where, where you, where you are sitting on this.
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I know for for, you know, the data out there even suggests that
13:36
people are asking more questions.
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You know, actually my wife told me this morning, so my wife's a florist.
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And she she did, like, a village Christmas market last week.
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And we're only living in a small village, and it's a good thing to the community.
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And she did, she's starting to do wreath workshops as we get close to to Christmas.
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And so she went to showcase them at the, at the village at the village
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Christmas market for people to pre order them and that kind of thing.
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And one lady out of everything that was shown to her on the table and what
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was there that one lady pinpointed something that I think she she must
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have thought can't be eco friendly or sustainable or locally sourced or whatever
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because that's what my wife focuses on.
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So she asked if the oranges were grown by my wife and
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dried for the, for the wreaths.
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Now, I don't think she was being snotty with her.
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I think she was genuinely interested in you know, when you say these
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are 100 percent sourced locally from local farms and, you know,
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British and all those things.
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Does that include the more difficult elements?
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So I think she was testing and I think she was Genuinely interested in where
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where they come from and I think a lot of us are are moving that way if we haven't
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already I know there's a lot of thumbs up and yeses and absolutelys in the In the
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comments dave, not so much Not really, but you know, there's there's a trend, at
15:02
the moment that people are Thinking more about where they're buying things from.
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You Another quick statistic or a bit of data for you through the
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pandemic was about six months after the pandemic started.
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So I think it was like July, August 2020.
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There was a huge trend on marketplaces like Facebook marketplace, Vinted.
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And places like this where there was a huge surge of designer
15:29
stuff going up, going for sale.
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But a decline in people buying new designer things.
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And there was a suggestion that actually people were caring less about buying
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the things that were less significant to them anymore and buying more things
15:47
that they knew where it came from or that had a significant impact on their life.
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So there's a big surge of, of secondhand.
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designer clothes and handbags and stuff that went on sale they're
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probably still hanging around.
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And I think someone could probably make a business out of it now secondhand stuff.
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But yeah, there's definitely a surge of a lot of people being concerned
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mostly about where things come from.
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So I think it's important that we bear that in mind when we're trying
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to understand Our customers and what they're wanting from us and how
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we, how we go about our businesses.
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It doesn't even have to be the product, but how we go about
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business is really important as well.
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So let me have a quick look at comments.
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So yeah, I love that who gives a crap toilet roll.
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It's a great idea and grind coffee.
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Yeah, that's great.
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More concerned about sustainability Becca, also about spending money on memories.
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Yeah, so there was a huge, when COVID ended the travel industry
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went wild because people were really interested in experiences.
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I've got a friend who does a travel agent, but specifically for Africa
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experiences, and she went wild because there were just, it was, it was
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people looking for these, memories.
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memories or experiences they could have rather than just going on
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holiday for the fun of it, I guess.
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And there was a bit of that, of course, because we all need a bit of R& R every
17:00
now and again, but what I'm getting at in this part of what I'm telling you is
17:05
it's You need to start thinking about how the world has changed and how people
17:11
buy things from so from consumption or over consumption a lot of the time, you
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know, buying things for the fun of it, buying a lot of things for where it's
17:20
not needed creating a lot of waste.
17:23
We're moving away from that consumption mindset into a.
17:28
Participation mindset.
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So a lot of people are no longer looking to just buy a product.
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They're looking to become part of a community or a tribe or a set
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of people that do certain things.
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And I'll tell you a bit of a funny story about when I got my electric car.
17:45
So and this will explain it quite well.
17:47
So I got rid of my old car.
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I've got an electric car.
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It's on subscription.
17:51
And the first thing I did was like, I need to figure out this charging thing.
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So I went to my local Tesco's and in their car park, they have four
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charging bays for electric cars.
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And I pulled up to one of the charging bays.
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I took out the charger.
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I plugged it in.
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I downloaded the app.
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And as I downloaded the app an electric Jaguar backed up on the
18:11
other side of the charging station.
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The guy got out and he plugged his car in, and we both stood at the car to kind
18:18
of activate it on our app or whatever.
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And as I looked, he was looking at me, and he kind of nodded.
18:25
And I took that as like an acceptance into the electric vehicle community.
18:29
And I know it's a bit of a funny example, but Actually, it shows that there is a,
18:35
there is a sense that what we buy has much more of an identity attached to it
18:40
than it did maybe two or three years ago.
18:42
And I don't know if anyone's ever experienced something like
18:44
this, but yes, the EV charging community is hilarious, Becca.
18:49
It's, it's almost ridiculous.
18:53
The conversations that I run a local event called people planet point and
18:56
it's a sustainability in business kind of social event, if you like, and
19:02
yeah, the conversations I have, even in that group are quite brilliant.
19:06
But yeah, but it's a great example of moving away from consumption,
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you know, even when it comes down to fuel consumption or emissions
19:14
or waste or carbon or, you know.
19:16
Climate change, whatever it might be into a identity of we're we're doing
19:21
something bigger You know that yes, it might just be a car, but there's a
19:25
there's a bigger thing attached to it So I think we need to take notice of that.
19:30
So let's talk about Practicalities so how this is shown to us in maybe
19:38
bigger companies now one thing to say before I go into this is I've always
19:42
been a big fan of smaller businesses.
19:44
I've always worked even when I was employed 15 or so years ago I always
19:49
worked in smaller companies family run businesses usually less than about 15
19:54
to 20 employees, so really small and And I really enjoyed that so I I don't
20:01
really have a lot of experience in like corporate world Apart from maybe one or
20:05
two projects I did And the reason I'm telling you this is because if we do, if
20:11
I do look at large companies, corporates, and you know, these global organizations,
20:17
the one thing that I do really like about them is that we can almost follow
20:20
in their footsteps or read between the lines about what they're doing.
20:24
If they take, if a big company like Procter and Gamble or Unilever take a,
20:29
make a big change in their marketing, it's usually because they've got a load
20:34
of data, like tons and tons of data that is telling them they need to change.
20:40
So I want to give you a couple of examples of how they've done this.
20:43
You may have seen it, you may have completely missed it, and
20:46
hopefully me bringing this to light and, and into, into the world.
20:48
And into this conversation, you'll notice it a little bit more and
20:52
then adapt it for your own business.
20:54
So the first example of this is Colgate.
20:57
Now Colgate's adverts on telly have always been about bright smiles and
21:02
big teeth and, you know showing your teeth and yet there is a friendliness
21:07
and hygiene element to it all.
21:10
But for the most part, to advertise or market their products the way that
21:13
they would do it is through features and benefits and the, the kind of, the
21:18
smaller Elements of what toothpaste can do for you or toothbrushes can do for you.
21:23
Until pandemic hit funnily enough.
21:26
And six months into the pandemic, they must have had tons of data to tell
21:31
them that behaviors were changing and the things people buy were changing.
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And and if it wasn't the things that were changing, it was certainly the
21:37
reason that they buy things were changing, most importantly, and
21:41
their adverts completely changed.
21:42
And they created a set of adverts.
21:44
I think it was four or five.
21:47
different videos that they called smile stories.
21:51
And they didn't talk about toothpaste or toothbrushes.
21:55
There was no products in the adverts.
21:57
There was no, you know, brushing teeth, bright white
22:00
smiles, looking in the mirror.
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There was none of it.
22:03
smile story about real people in real situations that were fighting adversity
22:10
that changed the way that they thought about their situation through a smile,
22:15
like the power of what a smile could do.
22:17
So if you always hate toothpaste adverts, I don't know why you would
22:20
hate toothpaste adverts, but But yeah, they're definitely sometimes annoying
22:24
with the way they're represented.
22:25
But if you, if you just once you finish this video, I'll maybe put
22:29
some links underneath with the videos from Colgate and a few others.
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But the, the, the vast difference in the way that they market
22:36
their products is so different.
22:39
You, you would hardly recognize.
22:40
So so Colgate smart stories is a great example of how people are
22:45
changing how they market to people.
22:47
And the Airbnb case study I'll talk about in a minute as is another
22:50
really good case for that with a bit more data and statistics.
22:53
So that's the way Colgate have changed now, Airbnb, their old model of
22:59
advertising and marketing trying to get their brand out there was like
23:03
a lot of people do buying customers.
23:06
And what that means is, you throw money at advertising and marketing, whether
23:11
it's like Facebook ads, Google position to put you at the top of Google it could
23:16
be online magazine adverts, so the kind of banners that you programmatic stuff.
23:22
They will do it through that.
23:23
And the reason that I call that buying customers is because you can see the
23:28
direct correlation between I've spent 1, 000, I've got two and a half grand
23:34
back, or you can see that 3, 000 people have clicked this ad and 27 have bought
23:41
something for 300 or whatever it might be.
23:44
You can see a
23:45
direct correlation between The information that you get from buying
23:49
customers through advertising, it gives you that direct return on
23:53
investment, which is why it's really hard to quantify that against branding,
24:00
which I'll come on to in a minute.
24:02
So marketing and advertising is very much has to change with the way that
24:08
we've changed why we buy things.
24:10
So instead of ads and buying covers like Airbnb used to do where they
24:14
were, you know, just throw millions and millions at Facebook advertising,
24:19
for example, to get people onto the platform and booking they noticed a
24:23
shift as well through data and they cut 50 percent of their marketing budget.
24:29
Intentionally, so they had started to see a trend between buying customer kind of
24:35
advertising and brand kind of advertising.
24:38
And when they saw it, they changed their ads.
24:41
So they completely, and I mean completely, scrapped buying customers.
24:47
No more Google ads, no more Facebook ads.
24:50
I think they've started a little bit of it now, but the context
24:53
of the advert is different.
24:55
But they completely stopped it.
24:56
They'd slashed their marketing budget by 50 percent and
24:59
they started to market brand.
25:03
So what is brand?
25:05
So I know a lot of you will maybe have an idea of what branding means.
25:11
You may have I tell you what, stick it in the comments.
25:13
What does branding mean to you?
25:16
If you could define it in some way, what is branding?
25:19
And I'll comment on that in just a second.
25:22
But the way that we advertise has changed from this kind of very data
25:27
driven, ROI driven buying customers to brand marketing, which is more
25:33
about the underlying why people buy and just amplifying that to the world.
25:39
So John image brand accompanies personality.
25:43
Yeah, that's that makes sense.
25:44
Recognition is great mark.
25:47
So if it's a color, a font or an image, it's how we recognize a brand visually.
25:52
Yeah, that's great.
25:54
What people perceive you to be.
25:55
So that could be again, like a personality or reputation, for example,
26:00
a lot of people refer to it as you know, Jeff Bezos from Amazon is often
26:05
quoted saying that Your brand is what people say about you when you're
26:08
not in the room, which is valid.
26:11
I break brands down into four areas and only one of them is visual.
26:17
So branding is about strategy.
26:19
It's about your vision, what you want your company to become, the change
26:24
that it wants to make in the world, and how you're going to make that
26:27
change, how you're going to do it.
26:29
Like a uniform, something that is instantly recognizable.
26:31
That's great.
26:32
Yeah.
26:32
Recognition is definitely important that that recall of a
26:36
visual brand is really important.
26:38
So strategy number one messaging number two.
26:41
So, you know, when I say that people will buy inferior products from your
26:44
competitors, if they communicate clearer than you, it's true.
26:48
We have to understand that.
26:49
Be able to formulate a message that is clear and communicates
26:53
the value of what you do.
26:55
So messaging is a really important part.
26:56
That's number two.
26:57
Number three is behaviors.
26:58
How much do you understand about the journey that your
27:03
customers go on to buy from you?
27:05
How much do you understand about that?
27:07
And how much do you understand about the emotions linked to each stage of that?
27:12
One of the most important parts of branding is understanding that
27:16
journey and how people feel at different parts of the journey.
27:19
So you can make sure you're there when you're needed most.
27:23
And I think that's, behaviors is probably one of the areas of branding
27:26
that I think most people miss, or they spend zero time on, and I think it's
27:30
probably the most important thing.
27:32
So that's number three.
27:33
So we've got strategy, messaging, and behaviors.
27:35
And finally, identity.
27:36
And these are like, like what you said.
27:38
So so Mark, font, color, image John image.
27:43
That's that's what I'm talking about here.
27:45
The visual things, the logos, the fonts, the colors, that's your visual identity.
27:49
But you know, you can't really get there unless you understand
27:53
behaviors and messaging and what the strategy of the business is.
27:56
So it's a, it encompasses a lot of it, but essentially it is the
28:00
foundation of everything you do.
28:01
And if we could split up say sales, marketing and brand
28:08
Transitional, you know, it's, that's when the sale happened.
28:11
But marketing is almost the connection, the way that people get to know you and
28:16
and, and get to you, whether it's to the website, whether it's to a store
28:19
or an event, whatever it is And then branding is the why people buy from you.
28:24
It's the real foundational stuff about how people make decisions to buy from you.
28:29
And I think what Airbnb realized is that they needed to stop the
28:33
transactional stuff in order to build marketing around branding that helped
28:39
people become part of the story.
28:42
So obviously I was here last time.
28:44
Story is a massive part of branding story.
28:46
Storytelling is really simply A way to invite people into a story
28:52
that they want to be part of.
28:54
And that's a really good distinction between just telling a story.
28:57
A lot of people, when they think about brand storytelling, they think
29:00
about telling their own brand story.
29:02
When really we're looking at, at allowing other, it to become other people's story.
29:08
So what we're looking at doing is inviting people into the story so we
29:12
can help them to a successful outcome and avoid some kind of failure.
29:15
And that's really an important distinction to make.
29:18
And.
29:19
What I think Airbnb have done really well, and and it's proven to be, I think
29:23
they're up 200 and something percent in terms of revenue from doing this by
29:28
cutting 50 percent of their marketing budget, is by starting to tell stories
29:32
of experiences on their platform.
29:34
So rather than rather than marketing a specific venue or specific city or town or
29:42
cottage or treehouse or whatever it might be, that has a, has a nice ooh moment.
29:48
You know, we see it on Facebook or online and we go, Ooh, that's a nice place,
29:52
but it has no emotional connection.
29:54
And what they've started to do is they've started to tell stories or
29:56
invite people into their stories.
29:58
So instead of now just showing you a potential place you could stay,
30:03
they're telling stories about families meeting up in cabins at Christmas.
30:08
They're talking about they're talking about, you know, when people have
30:12
children and they get their first night away in six months or whatever.
30:18
They're telling stories about even like business events like retreats and hiring
30:23
a place for a retreat and how Impactful that is on growing your business if you
30:27
have that time out to work on the business They're telling stories and this is what
30:33
I mean by brand marketing they're finding a link Between the emotional connection
30:39
that we have with brand and giving us a logical reason to buy So usually have
30:44
all the logical reasons, the prices, the positions, the dates, whatever it
30:49
might be the emotional connection that we have that this emotional decision
30:53
we make to buy is created through telling stories and inviting you
30:57
into that circumstance or that story.
31:00
So that's, that's probably the, if I was going to say one thing you take away
31:04
from today is just to understand that.
31:07
The reason that we buy things have changed.
31:11
So the marketing that we put out there to attract customers and get them to
31:15
buy from us has to change with it.
31:17
And the way that we change that is through more emotion and getting people involved
31:23
in the story we're trying to tell.
31:26
Okay, I feel like I've been talking for a long time, and I think we'll
31:32
probably just go for another five minutes to kind of speed it up.
31:35
If anyone's got any questions, put them in the comments, I'll
31:38
answer some questions at the end.
31:39
What I would encourage you to do, because we are industry
31:43
specific here, get really selfish.
31:46
I'm really specific.
31:48
You know what?
31:49
I run this company.
31:50
What can I do?
31:51
For example, and we'll try and come up with some examples in this talk.
31:54
So get really selfish.
31:55
Ask questions specific about your business.
31:58
Tell me what you do specifically and what you're trying to achieve
32:01
or the question that you have.
32:03
Okay, so.
32:05
That's Airbnb.
32:06
They went from an old model of buying customers to a new model of
32:09
building brand and telling stories.
32:11
It's the long game over the short game.
32:15
And a lot of, a lot of the pushback I think I get from a branding perspective
32:21
is people People ask about the ROI because they've seen the return on
32:26
investment for a paid ad, you know, so they have this, this attachment to how
32:31
much will I get for the amount I pay?
32:34
And brand is more about the long game.
32:36
So it's really important to understand that when you tell stories, you're
32:39
inviting people into this story to create an emotional connection.
32:44
And it doesn't mean that they're going to buy right at that moment in time.
32:48
You will get more custom from it in the future because the recall
32:54
will be much easier because they've listened, they've digested, and then
32:59
they recalled your brand because it had emotional effect on them.
33:03
And that's just something you'll have to trust me on.
33:05
So I often get the question, what's the ROI of branding?
33:09
And my answer is kind of the same as parenting.
33:12
So there's, there's no mother or father in the world that has ever said you know,
33:19
I want to see, when we have this child, I want to see my return on this, you know?
33:23
We just don't, isn't it?
33:25
So what we do is we do the right thing.
33:27
We do what we think is best for our children.
33:30
And we just hope to God when they get to teenagers, they're not shitbags.
33:34
That's basically it right and then we try and fix this stuff when we get older.
33:38
Okay, so So if you're thinking about what return you're going to get from producing
33:43
content around stories then Unfortunately, you're not going to see I spent a
33:49
pound on this and got three pounds.
33:51
But you are going to see a massive
33:55
Who wants to fight with you as being the people that they want to buy from.
34:01
So that's really important.
34:02
So long game of a short game.
34:05
One other thing to mention on this is John Lewis ads and all these emotional ads that
34:09
we've seen over the last couple of years, you wait for Christmas ads to come out.
34:14
I guarantee you they won't have the same emotional effect as they did a few years
34:18
ago because we're almost desensitized to it now So we've seen so whether you've
34:24
seen them or not They've been around and things like the colgate ad at b& b
34:29
mile and their ads and those kinds of things Have slightly desensitized us.
34:33
So the ads this year I get the feeling All you'll see over Facebook is, yeah,
34:38
not as good as last year or the year before and those kinds of things.
34:41
So bear that in mind and, and you, you'll be recording me for that statement, I
34:45
imagine when Christmas comes around.
34:48
So a final couple of things just to touch on is just some simple effective
34:53
examples of how you can sell more to brides or grooms to be in your industry.
34:59
And some, some examples of how you might be able to do that.
35:02
So one of the trends that I'm seeing is, extreme personalization.
35:07
Did I say that right?
35:08
Extreme personalization.
35:10
There you go.
35:11
A great example of this is a company called Songfinch and you can speak to
35:17
a musician or songwriter at Songfinch about how you met your other half.
35:24
how you've grown together, when you got married, what you think about
35:27
them, they'll interview you and then they'll write a song specifically for
35:31
your circumstances, professionally recorded, on Spotify, sent to you in
35:36
a file, all those things, and you get to show your loved ones a song that is
35:40
specific to them, has their names in it.
35:43
Specific situation and all these you might have seen Instagram posts about
35:46
this kind of stuff, but that's an amazing Trends that I'm seeing this
35:50
kind of extreme personalization where people are going out of their way
35:54
spending a lot of money It's not cheap to have these things personalized and
36:00
what an amazing thing for a wedding.
36:02
So that's one example
36:06
But for you, everyone in this room, everyone watching this video, even
36:09
everyone on the replay, if you see this later what you're looking
36:12
to do is create stories that your clients can see themselves in.
36:15
And some examples of that might be for marketing purposes, talk about
36:19
how, Your clients got together, you know, don't just talk about that.
36:24
You photograph their wedding for example, but talk about how they
36:29
got together and the story behind it and those things It's really weird.
36:33
It's such a subtle logical thing to change but it will have a
36:37
huge difference on how people see you as a company and as a brand.
36:41
So whether you're a photographer or a wedding planner or whatever
36:44
it might be, share those deeper meaningful stories that they share
36:48
with you as part of the process.
36:50
And you'll see a real, a real change.
36:52
You'll see a real growth in, in people engaging with you and talking about you.
36:57
And remember, it's not just about the people that see it, it's about
36:59
the people that see it, comment, share it, and other people see that.
37:03
Especially on social media, so just a bit late.
37:05
And don't, one of the, one of the best ways to market any business, that you
37:11
can do it in, in, in your business, is not only promoting all the good
37:15
stuff, but fighting back against other things that you don't believe in.
37:20
So, if, for example, You think married at first sight is the
37:25
worst concept ever, right?
37:27
Some of you might love it, by the way.
37:29
I, I, you know, I watch it.
37:31
I don't know if I love it or hate it.
37:32
I think I love to hate it, maybe.
37:34
But if you think that married at first sight or love is blind or those kinds
37:38
of TV shows are the worst concepts and you have, you know, You know, some, some
37:43
thoughts about it and opinion about it.
37:44
Share why you hate them because you will attract the people that
37:49
are like you and that want to work with you because you have these
37:51
opinions about this kind of stuff.
37:53
So don't be afraid to fight back against evil as well as, you know, talking
37:57
about all the good stuff as well.
37:58
I
38:00
Becca: really hope you enjoyed today's sneaky look inside
38:03
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38:05
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38:08
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