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232: Building Effective Brand Strategies to Avoid Common Pitfalls with Guest Erin Andrea Craske · Imperfect Marketing

• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Hey there, welcome back to another episode of Imperfect Marketing.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, Kendra Korman, and today I'm really excited to be joined by Erin.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: She's a leadership and business coach.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: She has been in business strategy.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: She was working for international, multi-level companies just huge, impressive background.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: We'll have a link to her website.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: You can check out a lot more about her there.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: But recently she wrote a book on brand and business strategy, really focusing on mistakes businesses make with their marketing and branding.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Erin.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you very much for inviting me.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Thank you, kendra, I'm really pleased to be here.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: So let's go ahead and start talking about these mistakes businesses make with their branding, their brand strategy and business strategy overall.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Well, you see, while I was writing the book, I had multiple interviews with different businesses and what I realized?
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: That most businesses make exactly the same mistakes.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: It kind of has created a pattern, and strategy is one of them.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: So strategy is probably going to be a solution.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: But the mistake is more about focusing on best practices, focusing on addressing how-tos, instead of trying to understand the why behind an issue.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: You're now in the root cause.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: That is missing, while businesses try to applicate whatever they learn here and there, and that leads to a situation where, whatever they do, it doesn't really bring much return.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: So they try something else and they try something else, and it's very often they start changing directions.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: And the problem with it, apart from it, actually makes it much more effortful to run a business, it also depletes resources and it also creates disengagement and it creates unhappiness and it brings overwhelm.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: So, altogether, that thing that I describe like running like a headless chicken is one of the symptoms.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: It's exactly coming from the lack of strategy, but over-focus on best practices and immediate activities.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: But it's not the only one thing where strategy really plays a role.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Another mistake that businesses make it's about focusing on return on investment versus profitability, so it's all about short-term impact.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: It's all about getting immediate cash back instead of investing into the consistent growth of their brand and or business.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: And it's another thing that makes it really challenging for a business to grow further, because this leads to changes in category, changes in consumer behavior.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: It diminishes the margin.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: So the whole thing about immediate return investment doesn't allow for continuous growth.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Both both things are linked to strategy in business.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about because that's really interesting what you're talking about with ROI or return on investment.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: So talk to me about, like what?
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: How should they be focusing, then, on marketing or initiatives that move the needle right or that are going to move them forward, if they're not focusing on ROI?
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: Well, the thing is that they're going to move them forward short term and then it's going to return back to where they were.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: That's the problem.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: There's no compound effect of the activities.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: If you only focus on short term, you're immediately going to get whatever you invest hopefully more but then it's going to return back to the starting point.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: So it's going to create this pattern.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: That, again, is not sustainable.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: But the problem with this pattern is that you start conditioning your customers on buying products only on discounted items.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: Then you're going to condition them to buy a certain cycle, so you're missing the cash flow back.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Then competitors start noticing that this is what you do, so they start also pressing prices down and the whole category will go down in profitability.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Many other things are going to happen, but the most important one, there's no compound effect from such activities.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: So you're reducing your margin every time, with every new promotional opportunity, you're earning less and then you're thrown back exactly where you were.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: And again, because every activity is going to come with your investment of resources, whatever they are human resources, money, time it's irrelevant, they're all resources.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: So ultimately, what you're going to be at, you're going to be depleting yourself, not getting as much return as you'd like to have when we talk about longer term.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: That's the problem.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Yes, short term it may work and you may have some cash back, but longer term it is not sustainable for business, so that's the only concern about it.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Apart from that, again you're going to be running like a headless chicken, you know, being trapped in a hamster wheel, just doing exactly the same thing all the time.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's definitely not good, because there I saw this cartoon that someone had put up.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: It must have been a webinar or something I attended and it had like two stands that people were selling things out of.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: One was the magic pill and one was like the hard work, dedication and, you know, consistency or something like that, and everybody was in line for the magic pill.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: But the question is does hard work need to be hard, and where does this hardness come from?
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: Because I presume that if you have everything planned and if you have the optimized processes within your business, if you have transparency and communication, if you work in the process of continuous improvement which means that every day just make it a little better and a little better, and a little better, when everything is well organized, where does the hard work come from?
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: That's just, you know.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: It may be a rhetoric question, but in reality I think that we make it more challenging than it is supposed to be, and definitely by changing directions all the time and focusing on one way for another way, but another way, but another way.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: That's going to make it more challenging than it is.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I definitely think that we make things harder as a rule and we're constantly sabotaging ourselves.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Right, I mean, you could be growing your business, everything is good, everything is on track.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: You're following the strategy and the plan that you initiated at the beginning of the year, and then you go to a networking event or a conference and everyone's like I'm making all my money off of Instagram.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: And they're like, okay, let's do a new Instagram.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: And it's like you diverge and you go off track.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: You sabotage yourself and your business and your business results because then the other things that you were doing they're now suffering because you redirected allocation to this week's new shiny object.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: And it's exactly what I'm talking about when I mentioned best practices and changing directions, because they're always something new and somebody going to definitely say that this oh my God, I tried it myself, honestly, you know, I had certain activities planned for my practice and then there are so many people recommending something that will definitely work usually what they're promoting, what they sell, right, so that is really important.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: And then you believe, well, I don't any longer.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: But it's like just this one thing and that's immediately going to work out.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: And then, if it doesn't, just another one.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: And this is how the mentality because you really don't know where you're going, you really don't know what works, what doesn't, especially in the beginning.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: So you start actually jumping on all possible scenarios that are offered to you because everything sounds like a last resort, and this is how you start depleting your time and your money in your business.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: It's exactly how it works.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: And, okay, in my particular case, I know where I'm going because I have a strategy right.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: So I still have a destination and I'm moving towards it.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: But if you don't have one, it will become, you know, like moving, like that.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: You know you're going one direction, you are hitting that end, you're turning back, you decide to go another direction.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: You're feeling stressed, you're getting lost At some point.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: You're getting depleted, you know no more water, no more food.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: You still haven't reached the destination and, as a result of the whole thing, you're going to give up because this is as much as left to you.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: And this is exactly what businesses are doing when they choose a road of no direction.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think the strategy is key, because if you have a strategy and you have goals, and you have goals that are supporting your strategy, right you know, and then you have tactics that support that.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: I tell this story often.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: When I was working with one of my clients, I called all of their managers out in the field and I said so what are your goals?
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: I said more business from existing customers.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: The marketing department's number one expense was advertising and trade publications.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: I'm like why are we advertising and trade publications?
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: We know all of the people we want more business from.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: We have their email address.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: We have their mailing address.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: We did direct mail and we ended up bringing incremental millions of dollars of revenue from direct mail because we knew exactly who we wanted to talk to.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Absolutely yeah, the tactics were not matching up with the goals because nobody had asked them what their goals were and nobody realized that that's what it was, and it became a bit of an ego play that didn't move anything forward.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: You know, I actually witnessed a similar situation.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: I was talking to a brand, very, very well-known brand, highest level of awareness, and it's quite reputable, so their level of reputation was really strong on the market.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: It was a brand with heritage and they couldn't drive sales.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: So, basically, people weren't buying and they were investing into mass awareness non-stop.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: And you know, it's like I was saying, guys, if the brand wasn't converting before, why exactly is it going to convert now?
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: It's like flogging at that horse.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: This is exactly what you do, because if you can't move from awareness to consideration, from consideration to purchase, so your problem isn't awareness, your problem is at consideration stage, so you do need to do something about your brand, right?
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: So it's exactly the same thing.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: It's like when we have the funnel it sounds like the only solution that we have for everything is to drive awareness, invest into awareness, you know, disregarding all other stages or, even worse, not understanding what are the things that unblock different bottlenecks, because on every stage is going to be something different that we need to pay attention to.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: There's no one size fits all, yeah, but awareness it seems like a magic pill for everything.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Right and it's like no, it's not.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: People are at different stages and you really do need to think about that.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, we literally just had to get on the consideration list when they had something come in and stay top of mind.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: That's why the direct mail and the email worked so amazingly well.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Social media didn't even need to be done, mostly because we already knew who we needed to talk to.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: We didn't need that extra reach.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: We already had their contact information.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: There was no value really in anything else they were doing and it was a ton of wasted time, money and effort.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Again, going back to what you're talking about, about the fact that we make things harder on ourselves because again, we're sabotaging ourselves, thinking, oh we need to do this or oh, we need to do that, maybe not, maybe not.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: More often than not it's going to be maybe not.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: So when, when you have your strategy and you're reevaluating tactics, or evaluating tactics or trying to move your brand forward, are you revisiting it on a daily basis, or are you building a plan and then just sticking to it?
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: How do you recommend that people work forward towards their strategy?
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: There are different things.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: There's one thing that is strategy, that is your differentiation, and another thing that is strategic planning.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: So you know, just to make things clear, to reconnect with strategy, the easiest way is to figure out where your strengths lie and if you don't have your value proposition shaped and still on your brand positioning or whatever kind of shapes your strategy, the easiest way is to look at what works, what doesn't work, who you serve, why they buy, and then create a strategy based on what you already have and where you're strong at.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: With regards to strategic planning, it's just a matter of starting and ideally it's going to be long-term, at least as a destination, because you really need to know where you go.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: One-year horizon is not enough.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: You will reach it very quickly, but you need to have the direction.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: So that's the first thing.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: And, with regards you mentioned, you know whether we do evaluation or whether we look at numbers.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: One thing that, even if you don't have a strategy, which is probably going to make it really more challenging for a business there's one thing that I also noticed businesses don't do.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: It's evaluation and evaluation of an activity.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, it is about numbers, but numbers are not enough.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Like everything in business.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: You need to know the why behind your numbers If something worked, why it worked, if it didn't, why it didn't.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: So you really need to have transparency of what you're doing right and what you could improve, and only from this place of constant evaluation of your activities you will be able to have stronger rationale to progress one or another direction again, without wasting your resources on trial and error, because there's one thing that I keep on saying that trial and error isn't the only teacher.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: Failing isn't the only teacher, because you can't avoid failing if you prepare your journey well in advance.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: I like that and I like how you're talking about the why.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Why did it fail?
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Or why did it not succeed?
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: Or why wasn't it as successful as we wanted it to be?
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Why was it successful?
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Why customers buy it.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Why they don't buy it.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: That is even more important.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Why they don't buy it.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I ran two ad campaigns earlier this year, one in January and one in March.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at my calendar Um and one in March, and the pretty much the same ad campaign, almost the same audience, had probably 80% better results in January than I did in March.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Well, why Right?
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: What's the question?
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Not much changed, so it should have performed about the same.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Someone who is much larger than me was advertising to the same target in March and so I couldn't reach the same group of people for the same price and because the cost just went through the roof for that audience because they were driving it up, because they had so much like 50 $60,000 in the in the market for advertising and I had nowhere near that.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: But that question of okay, okay, what was different?
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: That went wrong here and it was very interesting because it had nothing to do with my stuff.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Now I know when that person advertises, so now I will be staying away from those times and it's little things like that that you really have to dive into to better understand what's going on, so that you don't repeat those issues again everybody become professional in measuring conversions, but it seems to me that still people are not bothered to understand why conversions don't convert.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: You know, that is absolutely incredible.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: I know so many companies that invest in Google Ads and they have customers coming to their websites and not progressing any further and instead of understanding why they are not progressing to where they're supposed to be, the companies continue to increase their spend on Google Ads.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: You know, it's something that absolutely, I really, yeah, I found it fascinating.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: It is because I think your question was just absolutely perfect.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: It may not be even anything with you related to you.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: It may be the environment.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: It's like you chose the wrong month for the ad burst and now you will know, but it's going to save you so much money and trouble longer on.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: You know now that you understand what you're doing yeah, it's crazy, right so, but it's you know, asking yourself those questions, diving into it when, especially when you're not changing much, right, that allows you to track back to as you test and evolve and work towards things.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Very cool.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: So tell me a little bit more about your book, yeah, and what it covers.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: My God, the book is.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: Actually it was intended to be a textbook.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: I don't like the word textbook because it's too scary, so it's more like a reference book, I believe, and it covers everything that I learned over 20 years in business.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: I'm talking about different strategies, business communication, brand portfolio, market entry, growth basically all strategies you know, that marketing, that shape the direction of where business can go.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: And the interesting thing about it I wanted to make it as easy read as possible.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: That's why I don't call it textbook, because it's not academic, it's far from it.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: It's all in bite-sized information.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: It's skimmable reading.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: It's really easy language and I was trying to give as much overview of everything for new to business or already in business brand owner to know.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: So, reading the book, you're going to get all information you need to know.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Okay, it may be a little bit superficial level, but it's still enough to run a business and understand what you do and, more importantly, why you do it, because I was giving christian out behind every recommendation.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: And then, if you'd like to go further, deeper and explore additional topic, there's a list.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: You know you can go and just get additional information, but but to get a broad overview of how to run your business, including extended marketing mix, including all possible frameworks and examples and research data and coaching questions.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: So it's like full blueprint, you know, for running a business or launching a business.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: That sounds fantastic.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: So we'll definitely have some links in the show notes on how to get a hold of Erin and how to connect with her, how to get a copy of her book and everything else with it.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: I really like your perspective on the fact that we make things more complicated and that you're really not going to move forward if you don't have a strategy because you don't have a destination, so you don't really know where forward is.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: So very, very great.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for all of your time today.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Before I let you go, I do have a question that I ask all of my guests.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: This show is called Imperfect Marketing, because marketing is anything but a perfect science.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: What has been your biggest marketing lesson learned?
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: What a great question.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: You know I have so many lessons learned over 20 years talking to so many businesses.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: It's just lesson after lesson after lesson One, it's not like it sticks out.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: For me, marketing is about psychology.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: It is psychology first and foremost.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: That is the lesson that I'm trying to share, or to teach, because marketing is about understanding your customer psychology, their behavior, but also their feelings negative feelings and positive feelings and their emotions, because without it, you won't be able to sell your products, because you don't earn from what you sell.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: You earn from what your customers buy.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: Your customers sponsor your business, not your sales, and if you want them to buy what you produce, you need to walk in their shoes and you need to understand the way they feel and the way they think.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: And so for me, marketing, especially strategic marketing, is about psychology, and that's my biggest lesson.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, my favorite thing is yes, it's about psychology, it's about knowing your audience, but I loved the fact that you said you don't make money from what you sell.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: You make money from what your customers buy.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: There's a big difference there.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Right, it's a big difference that I think a lot of people overlook.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: There is a big difference because if you accept this way of thinking, you will see that all the operation, the way you run a business, doesn't serve what you try to achieve.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: Because another mistake we talked about mistakes earlier Another one is putting too much attention on sales and instead of accepting business as a holistic organism and we believe that sales is our primary function in the business, no, your brand strategist is your primary function.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: Sales are supportive.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: It is another supportive function, together with HR and logistical.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: You know all others, but your business is driven by your brand and your business is as successful as you can see as your brand P&L.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: Your brand bottom line will indicate the success of your business, not your sales.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: I just feel that hopefully, that is transforming the way some people are thinking about their business and what they sell and how they are planning, moving forward, and they decide they want to plan and have a strategy that is going to help them grow their business or get their business to where they want to be, because it isn't always growth right.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: So thank you so much, Erin, for joining me today.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate your time.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: For those of you listening or watching, wherever you're listening or watching, if you would rate and subscribe wherever you are, we would really appreciate it because it would really help us out.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: So if you learned anything, if you help us out, that'd be great.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: In the meantime, have a great rest of your day and we'll see you on another episode of Imperfect Marketing.