Latest / The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson / Building a Strong Brand Voice with Ross Kimbarovsky

Transcript

Building a Strong Brand Voice with Ross Kimbarovsky · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

• 0:00
  3, 10, 1, 0, ignition, liftoff,
• 0:08
  Ending small business failure.
• 0:11
  Welcome to the Small Biz Chat podcast with a number 1 small business expert Melinda Emerson.
• 0:17
  Bolinda's goal is to end small business failure, and she'll give you the information
• 0:21
  you need to succeed and live the life you've dream of.
• 0:25
  Now here's the small biz lady herself.
• 0:29
  Melinda Emerson.
• 0:31
  Hi, everybody.
• 0:32
  I'm Melinda Emerson, the small biz lady.
• 0:34
  And what welcome to the small biz chat podcast.
• 0:37
  I'm a small business lady, America's number one small business expert, and I am excited to
• 0:42
  welcome you to today's show.
• 0:45
  Today's show, it's all about developing your 2021 business strategy.
• 0:49
  If you need a new strategy for where your business is gonna be going in the New Year?
• 0:54
  Well, we've all been affected by the pandemic, and you're in the right place.
• 0:58
  Small Bish Pat is really it's a live peer to peer interview show.
• 1:03
  That gives small business owners a way to get and share valuable information and advice.
• 1:07
  The mission of small business chat is to end small business failure.
• 1:11
  And today's show is featuring 3 live guests, and we are also broadcasting from my small
• 1:16
  visited Facebook page, my YouTube channel, And we're streaming live on Twitter via Periscope.
• 1:23
  On small business chat live, our goal is to give our small business audience An opportunity
• 1:28
  to hear sage advice from multiple angles to grow your business and take it to the next
• 1:33
  level.
• 1:33
  So with that, I would love to introduce my guest And now it's time for us to have a smart
• 1:40
  conversation about branding and marketing.
• 1:43
  You know, 2020 has been a heck of a year, but one of the things that has been really
• 1:48
  important is for brands to start thinking about things like brand story.
• 1:53
  And my next guest is the perfect expert to talk about this.
• 1:56
  Ross Kombrowski is the founder and CEO of crowdspring With more than 220,000 experienced
• 2:03
  freelancers provide branding and design services before founding cross thing he
• 2:08
  practiced law for 13 years as a successful trial lawyer.
• 2:12
  He also counseled and represented clients from small Internet startups to Fortune 100
• 2:16
  Companies.
• 2:17
  And complex disputes involving intellectual property.
• 2:21
  He also founded several other startups, including startup foundry, quickly legal and
• 2:25
  respect for more information we can head over to crowdspring.com to learn more.
• 2:31
  Alright, Ross.
• 2:32
  So, you know, the world's most successful companies make great products, but a huge part
• 2:38
  of their value wise and their brand What is the most important thing that small business owners
• 2:43
  should understand about building a successful brand?
• 2:46
  Most business owners actually misunderstand what a brand is.
• 2:50
  I think that's probably the single biggest lesson.
• 2:53
  So a brand is the sum total of the experiences your customers and prospects have with your
• 2:58
  company.
• 2:59
  Problem is most business owners, particularly small business owners, think that their logo is
• 3:04
  their brand.
• 3:05
  And a logo is a small part of a visual identity.
• 3:09
  So anything that you, your employees, your customers can see is your brand identity, but
• 3:14
  your brand is so much more.
• 3:16
  And so the important thing is you're not done creating a brand when you have a logo or a
• 3:21
  website.
• 3:22
  You need to invest in email in communication and building a voice in building relationships
• 3:28
  with your customer from the customer support person who answers an email to the
• 3:31
  receptionist.
• 3:32
  They answers a a phone call.
• 3:33
  And that's the single biggest lesson I think that small businesses really misunderstand, and
• 3:38
  it's an opportunity for them to truly build strong brands when they can cover every
• 3:44
  interaction with a customer.
• 3:45
  But isn't really about understanding your brand strategy in order to improve your branding?
• 3:51
  Cause I feel like you know, logo website email, that's almost like collateral materials, right?
• 3:58
  Isn't it really about thinking through your overall brand strategy first?
• 4:03
  Whether you're you're 100% right because at the end of the day, if you do nothing, you still
• 4:08
  have a brand.
• 4:09
  And that's that's the thing about brands, but the brand that you have is not particularly
• 4:14
  strong and likely won't reflect what you do.
• 4:17
  So you should be deliberate because if you look at, for example, the values of the world's most
• 4:21
  successful companies, whether it's Apple or or Airbnb, one of the most successful startups
• 4:27
  that's just filed to go public.
• 4:29
  They invested a lot in a strategy to build those brands, and and there's 6 things you can
• 4:33
  do to to build that strategy.
• 4:35
  Number 1 is to really document your mission statement, your vision, your values, what your
• 4:39
  business is about.
• 4:40
  Number 2, determine your target audience to your market and understand your competitors.
• 4:45
  This is where a lot of business owners fall flat.
• 4:48
  They assume they have no competition, but in reality, we all have competition.
• 4:52
  Number 3, and this is a tough one is define your unique selling proposition.
• 4:56
  What's your special sauce that makes your business different?
• 5:00
  Number 4, find a good, memorable name.
• 5:02
  Number 5, create all the visual assets, the the brand identity, your logo, your website, your
• 5:07
  business cards.
• 5:08
  And finally, develop your brand voice because without strategy, you're just doing things that
• 5:14
  ultimately are not going to build a strong brand unless you get lucky and let's face it.
• 5:19
  Most people don't get that lucky every single time, so you have to take proactive steps.
• 5:25
  Now, one of the things that I see a lot of people don't think about is, like, there's
• 5:30
  these different brand types now.
• 5:32
  Right?
• 5:33
  So you've got the, you know, experiential brand, the service brand, the disruptor brand,
• 5:38
  innovative brand, conscious brand, and, like, the style brand.
• 5:42
  Right?
• 5:43
  So there's there's these types.
• 5:44
  How can a startup brand or even an existing company process or really reinvent their brand
• 5:51
  as they're thinking about sort of like these archetypes that exist already?
• 5:56
  Like, how do you think about it in terms of that?
• 5:58
  Well, first of all, there's no right type of brand at the end of the day.
• 6:03
  Your brand is largely based.
• 6:04
  If you're a small business owner, if you're an entrepreneur, your brand is based on you.
• 6:09
  And what you can do.
• 6:10
  It's your voice and and how you approach the market.
• 6:13
  So so one way that you can assess whether you're a new company or an existing company
• 6:19
  what kind of brand you have and where your opportunities lies to do something called a
• 6:23
  SWAT analysis.
• 6:24
  And it's done with by Big Corporations, but it's a really useful for small businesses and
• 6:29
  and startups too.
• 6:30
  And Swatstones for for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
• 6:35
  And each of each of these involves a series of questions that you ask yourself and your team
• 6:40
  if you have founders or if you have employee people, about your business and where you may
• 6:44
  be falling short.
• 6:45
  That will help you to define what's special.
• 6:48
  And it also includes asking questions of customers if you already have customers because
• 6:53
  the way people see your brand is actually much more important than what you say about yourself
• 6:58
  because your brand image is what ultimately sells products and services, not what you say
• 7:02
  about your company.
• 7:03
  You know, I once heard somebody say your brand is what people say about you when you're not
• 7:08
  back around.
• 7:09
  Like, that's really what what your brand perception is.
• 7:12
  And that's a great way of of putting.
• 7:14
  So, you know, one of the things I see small business owners in particular is they don't
• 7:19
  really have a unique selling proposition or a unique value proposition.
• 7:23
  And I wanted to talk to you a little bit of because there's a lot of just okay out there,
• 7:28
  and nobody falls in love with the just okay brand.
• 7:31
  And so I'm wondering, like, have you seen this?
• 7:33
  And and what is the curfiness?
• 7:35
  So I see this all the time, and, of course, you see this because you talk to tons and tons of
• 7:40
  small businesses all the time too.
• 7:41
  And one of the reasons this happens is because as business owner, as entrepreneurs, we tend to
• 7:47
  fall in love with our solutions and not the problems.
• 7:50
  And when you fall in love with your solution and not the problem, you tend to become
• 7:55
  fascinated about what you do and you're drinking your own Kool Aid effectively.
• 7:59
  The people that fall in love with a problem, fully understand what problem they need to
• 8:03
  solve, who has it, why they have it, why they're struggling, tend to build really strong
• 8:09
  solutions, And when they do that, they evaluate what is unique about what I do.
• 8:13
  So as an example, Apple makes nice products They're really good.
• 8:17
  They're expensive.
• 8:19
  Why do they sell so many of them?
• 8:20
  And why do they sell them at a higher price than their competitors?
• 8:23
  It's because they invested for decades in the customer experience.
• 8:27
  And the people that buy Apple products expects high quality, expect high performance, expect
• 8:33
  beautiful visual design, and that differentiates them every small business needs
• 8:37
  to find that special sauce.
• 8:39
  Oh, yeah.
• 8:39
  I would absolutely agree with you, and I would define apples brand as a style brand.
• 8:44
  There's style, their design is integral to their customer experience, which is what would
• 8:50
  make them more of a style brand.
• 8:52
  So if you want to establish your brand voice, is that different from your brand story, or is
• 8:59
  it the same thing?
• 9:00
  Well, your brand voice is literally how you communicate with with your customers and
• 9:05
  prospects.
• 9:06
  So if you're building a fun, funny brand, Your brand voice is the way you talk to people on
• 9:12
  your website in your email communications, in your voice mail greeting on your social posts.
• 9:17
  And one of the things that I think a lot of small business owners forget is that your brand
• 9:22
  voice has to be national.
• 9:23
  In other words, if you're starting a business or running a business, and you just don't have
• 9:27
  that sense of humor that is needed to carry off a funny voice, then you either need to find
• 9:33
  somebody that does or change to a slightly different strategy because it's really hard to
• 9:38
  execute an effective voice and meet the needs of your target market.
• 9:42
  If you don't have that innate ability to talk like that.
• 9:45
  So so it's really the attitude with which you communicate.
• 9:48
  We expect a certain type of communication from banks and insurance companies and lawyers.
• 9:53
  We expect a different type of communication from from fun, young startups, and small
• 9:58
  businesses who are who are fun and irreverent.
• 10:00
  And and, ultimately, If they do that effectively, they create loyalty, and that's
• 10:04
  what what what ultimately is important to building strong brands.
• 10:08
  Our last question How do you suggest that small business owners sort of like stay updated on
• 10:14
  the latest tools and even branding trends that are out
• 10:17
  there So there's lots of of publications, of course, lots of blog posts and and
• 10:22
  conversations on Twitter about these topics.
• 10:24
  The thing about trends and and this is this is those 2 important concepts.
• 10:27
  Number 1, you should definitely be aware about what's going on and and try to find ways to
• 10:33
  ignore fads because fads, if you remember back in the dot com days.
• 10:36
  It was a fad to attach dotcom to your name, and that quickly became a disaster.
• 10:41
  Then it became a fad to have three-dimensional logos.
• 10:44
  And that that was a disaster.
• 10:45
  So So the best thing you can do is when you hire somebody to help you with design, hire
• 10:51
  somebody who has the experience and the credibility to be able to steer you away from
• 10:56
  fats to give you a custom design.
• 10:58
  Because at the end of the day, the problem for most small business owners is they under invest
• 11:04
  in good design.
• 11:05
  And and we believe that good design is good business.
• 11:08
  When you under invest in good design, it actually ends up costing you a lot more in the
• 11:13
  mid to long term and can hurt your brand.
• 11:16
  So find credible designers who can help you build a strong brand who can help create
• 11:22
  consistency who will give you unique custom designs as opposed to forcing you to use
• 11:27
  generic, confident designs.
• 11:29
  You know, that's the best way to build a strong brand.
• 11:32
  Thank you so much, Ross.
• 11:34
  I think that that was invaluable advice because I think there's all these people out here, you
• 11:38
  know, using clip art or using free business cards thinking they have a brand.
• 11:42
  And they do not.
• 11:43
  So I am so glad that you have finally co signed what I've been talking about for years about
• 11:49
  branding and good design.
• 11:51
  And thank all of you for joining me tonight.
• 11:54
  Please head over to my blogs as soon as your own boss.com.
• 11:57
  We'll have more information about all of my guests tonight.
• 12:00
  And, certainly, I want to leave you with this.
• 12:02
  My mission of small business chat is to end small business failure.
• 12:06
  But here's the deal.
• 12:07
  You never lose in business either you win or you learn.
• 12:11
  Good night, everybody, indopla.
• 12:15
  Thank you for listening to the Small Biz Chat podcast with Melinda Emerson.
• 12:20
  For more resources and small business success strategies, visit succeed as your own boss.com.
• 12:26
  Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcast and join us next Wednesday.