Generating Demand with Brooks Szewczyk

In this week's episode, Lee Murray sits down with Brooks Szewczyk, Demand Gen Marketing Manager from Yardstick.com. Together they discuss the power of shifting from lead gen to demand gen and branding in marketing.

Brooks shares his experience of implementing a demand gen engine for a small university and how it helped them build a relationship with their audience. They also discuss the importance of building a strong brand and understanding customer needs for companies to succeed in marketing.

If you're tired of ineffective lead-generation tactics, this is the episode for you.

Thank you for watching. If you are enjoying what you hear, please consider sharing it with a colleague or a friend.

Have a guest recommendation, question, or just want to connect? Go here: https://www.harvardmurray.com/exploring-growth-podcast

Connect on LinkedIn:

Lee - https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehmurray

Brooks - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brookssze

References:

Yardstick.com

Alice DeCourcy's book The Diary of a First time CMO - https://open.spotify.com/show/0Bo1LTJYqCvjEs9Ev7jxMW?si=c48237eeea5848fe

Dan Sanchez's Brand Diagram - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/brookssze_about-two-years-ago-my-friend-dan-sanchez-activity-7036017276596199426-HJzp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

#ExploringGrowth #BusinessGrowth #GrowthStrategy #BusinessAdvice #BusinessRelationships #BusinessTips #BusinessStrategy #ScalingRelationships #LeadGen #DemandGen #Branding #Marketing #SEO #AudienceGrowth #InboundLeads #CEO #CustomerFeedback

Speaker 0 (00:00:00) - Welcome back to the Exploring Growth Podcast. So glad you're here. This episode we're talking about moving from lead gin to demand gin, and diving into all that things that are branding. So that's what you're working on right now, this episode's for you. All right, welcome back everybody to Exploring Growth podcast today. I've got Brooks Sevick with me today from yardstick.com, and, and I'm excited to have him here. Um, how he got here was through, um, a mutual connection, Dan Sanchez. I've mentioned Dan's name on this podcast. Seems like every single time I I I get on here some kind of story I've had with, you know, talking with him on LinkedIn or, or I having him on here. We had such a great conversation. So now we're here with Brooks. I'm excited to have you on. Thanks for coming on.

Speaker 1 (00:00:48) - Yeah, I'm really excited to be able to go through some of the stuff we've got planned and and to be on the podcast. Thanks for having me, Lee.

Speaker 0 (00:00:53) - Yeah, sure. It's great. I'm excited about talking about, um, this topic today. So what we're gonna do is kind of drive towards demand gen like, and branding as our, you know, that's where we want to end up and kind of settle on that. But to kind of tee that up, we were talking a little bit before we hit record and you know, we both agree that, you know, lead gen has been this thing that we've used for a number of years and it's been, been sort of the redhead stepchild. It's been beat up a little bit. And, you know, for, for good measure, I mean, I think Leg Genin has still has its place depending on where, what kind of company, what kind of product you have, um, in, in the marketing strategy. Uh, but for the most part, marketers today are moving away from lead gen and they're moving to a more relationship based, uh, marketing approach.

Speaker 0 (00:01:46) - And it, what that is, is demand gen, which can also be described as branding. I think some people in certain, um, kind of niches will, will pull those apart and, and, and say branding is one thing and demand gins another. But for all intents and purposes, talking generally here, um, you know, go getting away from getting, um, ebook downloads, right. It's the best way to kind of summarize that and getting more to building a sort of, um, I would say superficial, but some, but much more genuine or authentic relationship with your audience. Um, so that they see you as credible. They see you as this, um, brand or this, you know, expert that whenever they do have a problem, it just makes perfect sense that they would reach out to, to you to solve it. So, um, so let's do this first. Why don't we kind of just touch on, you know, um, like what was, from, from going from Legion to demand gen? Um, and maybe talk a little bit about, you know, why did you make that shift, um, and when, when did that happen? And then we'll kind of Yeah. You know, work towards, towards the demand gen topic.what made the shift for you

Speaker 1 (00:03:00) - Yeah, sounds good. And, you know, on your, when, when your thoughts on brand, there are spot on demand is a, a part of brand. If you think, um, what it, what it means to have a strong brand. Some people think it's just that you're a brand identity, but I think it goes a lot deeper into what you believe the problems you solve and who you solve them for. And that's really what demand gin is. Yes. At least good demand gin. Um, so the ma the thing that made a difference for me, I was a marketer. Uh, I was in charge of marketing for a small university, really into the lead gin model and running the, the lead gin hamster wheel. Mm-hmm. , we all kind of know how it, how it goes. And I think B2B was probably the first to really move to a dimension demand gen model mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 (00:03:42) - . And we started to implement that again, to mention Dan Sanchez. It was his, uh, his idea. I kind of came after him in the university and, and he got the ideas rolling with that. And the thing that changed my mind was that I started to understand we had a problem with Legion every single year Right. Hitting our numbers. And the problem was that we had a really small market, incredibly niche college, and we were eating up so much of that market. And so we started to build this demand gin engine within our, uh, our school. And it was really heavily reliant on, on content. So the school was a missionary training school and we thought we need to, instead of just trying to grab people who are wanting to be missionaries through advertising, which is what we were doing to, to get leads, it was incredibly expensive mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 (00:04:31) - and getting more expensive every year, getting more difficult every year is we also could tell just through data, through studies, um, that less and less people were interested in that kind of thing. We said, we need to take the offensive and we need to help people understand the importance of missions. We need to help people mature in their faith, and we need to be the school that, um, has that kind of influence. Mm-hmm. . So if you think like the essence of marketing is influence, and for a long time, marketers were able to get away with having a really crappy amount of influence and just putting ads on Facebook or Google or whatever it might be mm-hmm. , um, and running for, uh, you know, white paper or, or whatever. Yeah. And that's, that's not really any kind of influence. That's just picking people off one by one.

Speaker 1 (00:05:13) - And so we started to build up this, this engine that had an actual influence on people and we were able to measure people's maturity in their problem and solution awareness for what our school offered. So over the two years that I was in charge of marketing there, the website that we had built, we built a media brand within the comp within the school. The website that we built moved from, I think it was like 8,000 monthly visits when I got there to over 600,000 when I left. That made an incredible difference on, even if you just wanna look purely at lead gin numbers mm-hmm. , which I wanna measure things by the, what happens at the bottom of the funnel, not at the top, but sure. Even if you just look at those lead gin numbers, we replaced all of our paid advertising leads with organic inbound leads that were a higher quality.

Speaker 1 (00:06:00) - And that's because we played the long game, we did the work. Now, in that time, I saw what it meant internally to have to fight for a demand gen model because it's a lot of upfront work with not very much upfront results. Mm-hmm. , it takes time to build. You just gotta keep saying the results will come, the results will come. It's gonna take these repeated actions over and over again for us to actually have influence. Cuz you can't have someone trust you the next day. Right. And that's, that's what you have to build. So I saw the results for that. It was, it was a hard fought battle to be able to, to do it and, um, and made a bet and it paid off in the end. And so that was the biggest thing for me. It's, I actually genuinely got to see it even before Chris Walker and Refined Labs started doing a really good job at promoting DemandGen mm-hmm. , we just happened to be doing it before we even knew what it was called. And it made a world of difference for, for us, that's what what really changed my mind. And then I start to get on LinkedIn and listen to podcasts as I always do, and start to realize there's categories around the thing that we just did mm-hmm. and, and we, there's words for it. And so that's, that's kind of how we ended up in the demand gen space.

Speaker 0 (00:07:11) - That's great. So that's a great story and I think such a great example. I appreciate that. Um, if, if we look at that story, that timeline, um, when you went from seeing a need to change to what we're, what you would now call demand, demand gen at the time you're, you know, like we're just gonna move to more influence. Um, did you stairstep that towards more influence where you kind of ramped up your influence type of tactics and ramped down your gen, uh, you know, um, lead gen tactics? Or did you just say, okay, we're gonna throw that out and, and try this?

Speaker 1 (00:07:48) - Well, lead gen was ramping down no matter what we did. Okay. Things were getting more expensive. And so that was the problem is that every year we'd be in the same space going, we're just, we've just got a little bit of a gap between where we need to be and where we're at with Legion. Yeah. Um, and what we did at that school, we went all in on one area. We went all in on building, uh, SEO and acquiring traffic that way. Mm-hmm. . So now, now in my new role, we're, we're going very different than it was seo. Now we're going with social, with podcasting mm-hmm. , um, with community building, stuff like that. So there's a lot of different avenues you can go with building that community. But, um, when we were building that media brand at the school, like I said, we went all in on Bloggings.

Speaker 1 (00:08:33) - So of course that's gradually building up the amount of blogs and mm-hmm. , uh, keywords that we're winning mm-hmm. that answer specific questions. And then the second thing that we did that was the biggest step for us if we're talking about stairsteps, is we started to capture some of that demand and help to nurture people through greater. So we, based on the articles that they were reading, the kind of things they were interested on the website, we, we said, they're probably about this spa. They care about this kind of topic, this is the kind of thing they're looking into. Mm-hmm. . So we built quizzes to help figure out a little bit better what kind of content was best to deliver for them. So it's really, uh, stuff that quizzes that would be fun for them to take, like where am I in my discipleship journey or things, things of that nature. And then based on that, we're like, okay, so they've kind of got a weakness in their understanding of theology proper, but they've got really good understanding of the need for evangelism or, you know, might, might, so they sort of

Speaker 0 (00:09:24) - Raise their hand, uh, to kind of sh identify where they are on that gen journey, I guess.

Speaker 1 (00:09:29) - Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. And so based on that, they got a really fun result. And then we were able to give them content that we've tested with each different kind of audience, and we know this is what, not only what they're gonna wanna consume Yeah. But this is what they need to hear to move to the next step. Yeah, that's great. Over repeat. So, you know, 15 articles and emails later. Yeah. And they've kind of, we can see they're, they're engaging and they've got a better understanding of this. Now is the time for us to keep moving them up, you know? Yeah.

Speaker 0 (00:09:55) - I love that. So, I mean, you have to have spent a lot of time with what I'll call your buyers, right. Um, you have to spend a lot of time with them getting feedback and listening in order to be that dialed in. I mean, and it sounds like a very dynamic approach where if they end up with these answers on this quiz, they're going down this, this path. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 (00:10:15) - . Yeah. I mean, we did, I did a lot of surveys, which I've since come to think it's, it's actually a lot better to have quantitative data, qualitative data, I mean, and really talked to people mm-hmm. . Um, the good thing with that was we had a college of students that were right in our market and there were the kinds of people that would be reading that stuff. And so, um, every time we'd get new students in on campus, every time I could, I'd be sitting down and talking with them. Yeah. Um, and the other good thing was the team that I had at the time was staffed primarily by students at the college. And so they were the people who would kind of un they, they were the ones who would understand where this is. So I'd, I would, uh, get them together and talk with them through the changes that we were making, the quizzes, things like that. Have them test it out and read through the content, get their ideas on it. That was really helpful at the time. Yeah. I, I probably undervalued getting on a, a Zoom call and talking with the people that were actually engaging on the website mm-hmm. and I'd, I'd go back and change that if I could, but

Speaker 0 (00:11:13) - Yeah, no, you know, all of this really is, um, sounds very similar to, um, someone I follow on LinkedIn, Alice Dei at csm. You're probably familiar with her. You,

Speaker 1 (00:11:29) - I'm reading her book at the moment, actually. Yeah,

Speaker 0 (00:11:30) - That's what I was gonna mention. The, the Diary of a first time C M O and I. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:11:35) - Right over there actually.

Speaker 0 (00:11:36) - Yeah. So I, I didn't read the book. I, I went to the podcast, well not the podcast, but the audio version of it on Spotify. Mm-hmm. , just cuz I didn't wanna wait to read it. I wanna just go ahead and start, you know, jumping in. So I listened to it. Um, I think I've listened to it all the way through and now I'm kind of going back through and listening to some specific chapters. But she talks about her, obviously this is the, the diary, like this is her journey of doing exactly what you did. And it's funny to hear your story, you know, um, coming from a similar role. These, these are different organizations, right. Similar role and, and, and experimenting with very similar, um, strategies. Um, I don't know how far you've gotten in the book, but do you see the parallel there? I mean, I think that she's, she's basically saying the same thing that you're saying now.

Speaker 1 (00:12:26) - Yes. Surely. I've, I'm probably only like 15%. I just got the book Oh yeah. A week ago. But I have been reading it. Uh, and I, I certainly see the parallels between us. I, I would say she's, she's probably a, a a bit ahead of me in most areas, . But, but yeah, I've been really, uh, loving reading that book. It helps me to kind of think through also like, where am I at now? She's probably encountered a lot of the issues that I'm currently trying to, to, to get through. So,

Speaker 0 (00:12:51) - Yeah. Because, you know, switching over from a lead gen, uh, model to a demand gen or branding you, your team changes, your approach changes how you ask for money from finance changes, you know, the metrics you're measuring completely change. And, um, you know, I I think it's, um, I think it's interesting if anybody, um, I'll, we'll try to leave a link in the description. Anybody wants to check out that book? Um, I thought it was, it was awesome. I mean, it's, I love getting an insight into, uh, what I would call more of an operational C m o as someone who's in there, you know, doesn't have a problem picking the phone and talking to the buyer, talking to prospects. Yes. Like you were just saying, I think that's so invaluable to spend that, that time where you may wanna go back to the whiteboard and, and kind of, you know, work on high level stuff when you can really get the answer talking to, to the end user. Mm-hmm. .

Speaker 0 (00:13:43) - So let's turn, let's sort of like move over into to, you know, branding and demand gen and you know, we were talking before we got on here about some of that. Um, maybe give some examples of what, how you've seen that work and like how are you utilizing that right now? Like, you know, this, this audience who's listening to this are gonna be CEOs and lead marketers of mid-level companies. So, you know, they have a small marketing team as they're building, they're building a brand. Um, they may have a sales team that's supporting a lot of the revenue and now they're being asked to, to carry some of the revenue. Um mm-hmm. , you know, they're, they're kind of all, all sides of the spectrum. So, you know, maybe speaking to to, to that audience on this topic would be, would be helpful.

Speaker 1 (00:14:26) - Yeah. You know, I remember, um, previous times sitting with president of the organization and he's saying there are, there are schools winning right now. How are they winning? Because we're like, the industry's in decline, the industry's in decline. Mm-hmm. , how are some schools doing really well? Mm-hmm. and you move, I've moved on in my career. I'm a, you know, in a, I'm a B2B marketer and a SaaS marketer now, and it's the same story industries in decline. Some companies are winning, how are they winning? That's the question. Mm-hmm. , if you're a ceo O that's probably the qu kind of question you wanna be asking is how are some people winning right now? What are they doing? Mm-hmm. and those companies that are winning, it's, it's nine out of 10 times brand. Mm-hmm. , they're winning because people know and trust them already.

Speaker 1 (00:15:15) - If you did a case study Correct. And looked at those brands that are really winning right now, you would, you would realize that not every time, nine out of 10 times they're winning because they have organic or direct source inbound. That's, that's where things are coming from mm-hmm. . And that, that's like the middle of the funnel thing when we're talking about inbound behind all of that is they've done the work to make people problem and solution aware, to make people trust them and understand that they're credible and to be memorable and to be influential on their audience. And a lot of times that's not just talking about the thing like problem and solution aware. To me that's demand gen is kind of middle of the funnel. Yeah. You have to step one step above and think audience growth. That's

Speaker 0 (00:15:56) - Right.

Speaker 1 (00:15:56) - You can't just come in and start talking about, this is the problem, this is how we fix it, this is the problem, this is how we fix it. I mean, that'd be a good step for a lot of companies that aren't even doing that now, but you also need to go a little bit higher, build an audience of people that trust you, build a community. And, uh, and so that's, that would be my advice to CEOs is if you're thinking, why are we not winning? And I wanna pour a ton of money into Legion, maybe step back and think it's, it's gonna be hard to get outta this rut right now. And you're gonna have to do a lot of hard work. Mm-hmm. , and this might take some time, but if, if that's the case now, do it now. Invest in brand now invest in building a brand.

Speaker 1 (00:16:31) - And I think it's important to talk about what brand is. Cuz when I say that, I'm not talking about like this ethereal idea of brand consistency where everything looks the same across platforms or whatever. I, I don't, that's not what I mean by brand. What I mean by brand is that you have really strongly held beliefs as a brand. Mm-hmm. , you, you've identified who your enemies are, you've developed some sort of ip and you're the champion, you're the thought leader for that. And to do that, you have to identify who your audience is. And it, it, there's a, there's a huge model that you have to follow to build a great brand. And it's a lot more than just how you look. And now's the time to start building out that influence, I think.

Speaker 0 (00:17:10) - Yeah. That's all really well said. And, and I think all a hundred percent true. I think you said it a little bit back, the good delineation between demand, genin and, and brand is to think about the po problem solution on the demand gen side. But as you step back into branding, it's really more thinking about the person that has the problem. Right. Um, and humanizing your messaging. Um, but the only way you can do that is if you know that buyer, if you know what it is that they're, if you know the, the context in which the problem, uh, I is set, set forth, um, you know, that's, that's the way I always, I always try to think about it and, and I couldn't agree more. I've worked with so many clients where we'll literally just say, okay, before we put together any kind of legitimate strategy, the first thing we wanna do is get in front of people.

Speaker 0 (00:18:01) - And, and we've done it in every different way surveys to, to, you know, coffees, to dinners, whatever. But, you know, when you sit across a table from someone in person at, and this can happen a lot of times just for practical, um, you know, reasons. Like, you could go to a conference and invite three or four people to, to dinner. You sit across the table from them and you have a good solid hour and a half, two hours, three hours to just sit there, enjoy some really good food and get to know the person. You know, you're gonna, you're, they're gonna reveal everything it is that you need to know. Uh, it's just, it just happens. They, and in fact they tell you usually too much. Um, and you, you know, as long as you're making notes in your mind or in a paper and you're, you're going back and digesting and saying, I can't believe that they are coming at it that way.

Speaker 0 (00:18:48) - I didn't know that this was the problem they're trying to solve internally and why they even have the problem that they have to solve with me. So if you are doing that, I mean, I don't wanna speak for you, but it seems like that's the hard work that has to be done. And then translating that to marketing strategy and marketing efforts is the next piece. Um, if you're doing that, then you're gonna win on brand because it's gonna reveal itself and you're gonna have to do something with it. You're gonna have to either say, Hey, we're just not really gonna do anything with what we learned. We're just gonna keep doing what we've always done. Or, you know, there's something there. And maybe if we were to speak to that, um, then the story about our vision, the story about our uniqueness is, is gonna be much more relatable because there we're taught, we're speaking their language.

Speaker 1 (00:19:38) - Yeah. You mentioned a lot of good ways to get in front of people and have those kinds of conversations. I thought maybe I'd just add on two more that I've found super helpful these last probably about, probably about a year. The first is I have been recording podcasts with people who are directly in our icp. They're people that I, whose opinions I care about and that are probably the kind of people who would buy from us. And afterward, I always take them through a post-interview where it's just a conversation and I'm asking them, what is the biggest problem that you're facing? That's a strong one. What is important to you? Um, and, and I'm just, what I'm doing is I'm digging for things that help me to know how to hone in my content better. Mm-hmm. . So I'm what's actually resonating with people and what's not.

Speaker 1 (00:20:24) - And I'm getting ideas for things to try a lot of figuring out what people care about. Mm-hmm. , what beliefs you need to represent is just trial and error. That's right. I think completely the second thing is you, if you are leading a business, you want to understand who the problems people are facing that you need to solve, go to social media and interact with them. You wouldn't believe the insights that you could get just by reading the LinkedIn posts. So true of the, of the founders CEOs that you're trying to serve or whoever they might be. You know what, whoever the the owner is that you're trying to get to go, go read their stuff and interact with them, have conversations you wouldn't believe the insights you could get from that. So tho those are two places. If you're doing something like a podcast or you're regularly talking to or interviewing those people, just say, Hey, would you have five minutes for a quick like, interview of some sort and just rapid fire, gimme your thoughts on this kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (00:21:15) - Yeah. Who are you listening to? What are the problems that you care about right now? Yeah, I kind of, so we developed that out, tested the questions over time also to figure out what gives me the best insights. Sure. Um, and then I would also add, you kind of have to know how to sift through the things that people say. Some people are gonna be incredibly comp, they, they're gonna give you the things that you, they think you want to hear. That's just human nature. You have to find the people who are going to give you critique and be honest with you and who are trustworthy. And also just go back to those people. Keep getting insights from them. Keep asking them for their thoughts because tho those are the people that are gonna give you the stuff that's gonna really help you. It's like, I know, I, I take ideas to people for what if we start talking about this, what if we, what if we really built a model around this and they're the founder CEOs we wanna talk to.

Speaker 1 (00:22:03) - And they're like, that's, that's awesome. I love it. This is a good idea. And roll it out. No one cares . But then I think back to the people who were like, you know, that that might not resonate, that might get people excited. It might not actually resonate in the end because of X, Y, or Z. Those were the people that I needed to go back to the second time. Yes. And ask them again. Yes. Okay. What do you think about this? I, because those were the people that that told me the truth. Uhhuh . And um, so that just a few things that that came off of what you said there. Yeah.

Speaker 0 (00:22:30) - And I think, you know, whoever's doing this on your marketing team, they, they have to have this sort of sixth sense, uh, skillset. I think, I mean, if we really dig into this, because you have to be reading between the lines a lot of the time when people are giving you answers, um, they're only telling, they're only giving you the best answer that they can give you. You know? Right. They're, they're being truthful. They're, I think people are gonna be completely honest with you as far as they can, but, um, you have to be able to read between the lines and, and see what's, what's really, what are they really saying? And, and then be able to sort of aggregate that qualitative, uh, those qualitative thoughts, um, to see patterns, you know, to see a pattern between okay, here's what we think they're all really saying, or it's, or it may be directly very obvious and that connects in this way. Um, I think that's a real skillset, you know? For

Speaker 1 (00:23:24) - Sure. For sure. You know, there's, we've mentioned Alice De Corsi and Dan Sanchez. I would also throw in Ryan Paul Gibson. Okay. I, if you're gonna go follow him on LinkedIn, his big thing is how to conduct good customer interviews. Oh yeah. And there was a time probably about two years ago, I went through everything, like his last 100 LinkedIn posts and just took notes on him, . And that was incredibly helpful for me. Yeah. Um, so I'd definitely go through and just look, look through the stuff he's putting out. It's super helpful. You know, there's an example that, I'm trying to remember where it came from. It may have come from the book the mom test, or it may have just come from a friend of mine, I'm not actually sure. Yeah. Where, if I'm remembering correctly where this came from. But there was a, a survey, they were trying to figure out what color a book cover should be mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 (00:24:08) - . So they asked everyone, pick the color you think looks best for this book cover. And then they asked them at the end, we're gonna tell 'em, we're gonna send you a free copy of the book. What color would you like? It was overwhelmingly yellow or orange. I actually, I think it was orange. Orange Yeah. On what people said the book cover should be. And then overwhelmingly black, they chose for their own copy. Interesting. So they, they chose two different colors because their mindset was different the first time they're answering what, what would be best. And the second time they're answering what do I, I want, that's for me. Right. Yeah. And you're like, well, you're the person we care about. Yeah. So you should have probably answered black. So it comes down, you have to, it's answering, asking really good questions. And um, and also just looking at what people interact, are interacting with. That's the other thing. If you're, if you're trying to figure out what's resonating fig, just look at the statistics behind your engagement on social or whatever platforms that you're, you're putting content on. Yeah. That'll tell you a lot about what people want to hear as well.

Speaker 0 (00:25:07) - Yeah. You know, and I don't want it to be missed. You, you, you mentioned, um, just going to LinkedIn and, and looking at, um, buyers and influencers and just reading the comments. Um, that's a huge one. I mean, it's, it, all it takes is I think that skillset to see, to see patterns, you know, read between lines and just sit there and give it the time. Um mm-hmm. . And I really think that that is, uh, a huge way to learn. Even if, if you're, let's say you're right now thinking, okay, this is not working for me. We gotta go try something else. Well go spend a bunch of time in the comments section and just dedicate that time to reading and learning and making notes. You're gonna come a come away with a lot of really good insights.

Speaker 1 (00:25:51) - Mm-hmm. . Yeah. It's good.

Speaker 0 (00:25:53) - Yeah. In fact, you might come away with some things that challenge you so much that you realize like, oh wow, we have a lot of work to do here and I don't really wanna go back to the comment section cuz I, you know, it's too much truth going on in there.

Speaker 1 (00:26:06) - Yeah. I mean I've seen that, I've seen that a lot of times with, with content that I was creating, launched a podcast eight months ago or so mm-hmm. and realized really quickly I'm looking at what everyone else is engaging on. There's one particular topic that all of these people are engaging with more than any other, and we weren't covering it at all. So you start to talk about it. Yeah. And people, people wanted to hear it. There's even at, um, at yardstick we were testing, tried to figure out how to phrase this category that we feel like we're creating mm-hmm. and start talking to customers of ours and then talking with them about that category. And they, they don't understand our terminology at all. And so we're like, okay, that's not gonna work if they don't even have a little bit of understanding on. And so we, we have to go back to the drawing board and, and rephrase it, which we did. And now we take this new phrasing back to them and they're like, this is the way, this is a lot better. Yeah. They understood it.

Speaker 0 (00:27:01) - That's great. And, and I, I think that, uh, opens up an opportunity for you to start building IP around it, uniquenesses around it, and, um, long tail or short term short, short tail seo, but long tail eventually, uh, to be found for those phrasings for those, um, titles in that. Right. I mean, that's kind of full circle back to what we were saying before.

Speaker 1 (00:27:22) - Yeah. That's what I mean when I say it's important to have IP and, um, and then to have that problem solution aware, uh, content that, that helps people to go deeper with what you, what you offer.

Speaker 0 (00:27:35) - What else can we say about brand at this point? I mean, is there anything else that we've, that we we've missed that you really want people to know?

Speaker 1 (00:27:44) - You know, there is a model that Dan put together of a 20 point, it's like a 20 point brand checklist. Okay. For, uh, what you need to have to have a solid brand mm-hmm. and maybe it would be just best to link that in the show notes. Okay. That is something that people should really go and look at. Cuz I think you're gonna look at that and be like, I thought brand was two out of these 20 things, . Um, and, and start to build out brand based on that. The, the thing that I would say for brand to invest in brand is that it is the most resilient growth mechanism that you could have. Um, and it's also the most scalable. So the, the tactics that you use to grow that are not brand mm-hmm. that are not organic or direct. Those things are really hard to scale. At some point, you kind of hit a wall with them and it's not to say you should never do them at all, um, but that you have to invest in brand early on if you want to get past that wall.

Speaker 0 (00:28:38) - Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:28:39) - So brand is gonna be resilient throughout an economic do downturn. Brand is going to be resilient when you start to hit a wall. And it brand is the only thing that's gonna be able to scale the, when you have the typical lead genin model, growth is one to one. It's however much work I can do. Mm-hmm. on ads or outreach or whatever it might be. Brand is not one to one brand. Brand is is exponentially scalable over time.

Speaker 0 (00:29:08) - Yes. It definitely takes on a network effect. And I, I think to the point of it being, um, providing sustainability and scalability, I think that's the most strategic thing that you can do, which is why you should start with it first and start building it alongside everything else you're doing because everything you do with brand can be deployed against your buyer in a other tactical ways, um, all the way through the sales pipeline. Yes. Um, so there's a, there's a lot, there's a lot of, there's a lot you can do with it.

Speaker 1 (00:29:44) - Yeah. And I, you know, the essence of it is do people lo have affinity for you? Do they care about you? Do they love your brand? Mm-hmm. people, some people get a little bit, they don't like those terms. Like, I'm a brand and people aren't gonna love me. Mm-hmm. , it's not true. People do love brands. Mm-hmm. , um, if you're gonna solve their issues, that's, that's what it comes down to. Do they care about you? Do they like you? Um, that's right. I like the word affinity for that. You know, it's like it's, and what that creates is just this word of mouth, which is still the best way to grow possible. Yeah. You know, I remember, I think it was from 2008, Gary Vaynerchuk was giving a keynote speech at, I don't remember where it was, somewhere in New York, it's horrible audio.

Speaker 1 (00:30:28) - And he said, you don't realize it, but word of mouth is changing right now. And he was like two years ago, the most someone could do is talk to their friends about you. Every once in a while they may tell like four or five people, he was like, now you, some random dude in the middle of nowhere could tell 4,000 people about you in five seconds. That's right. Just by tweeting. Right. Yeah. They could, they could send you to their whole comp, like the whole company via Slack or whatever it might be. Just engaging with your content, word of mouth has changed incredibly. Yeah. So there's a lot of opportunity there. And, and I would add you don't generate word of mouth by, by lead gin.

Speaker 0 (00:31:05) - No, it's true. But I, I would add too that if that happens or when that happens, um, the impact is so great if you've done the work on the front end to really know who those 4,000 buyers are are, you know, maybe even if it's a, a bigger audience, a a total, you know, addressable market so that when your message is re is shared referred, it is compelling. So Yeah. You know, being able to do the work is why they would share it and is why it would be received by who was shared too.

Speaker 1 (00:31:38) - Yeah. That's really good.

Speaker 0 (00:31:40) - Yeah. This is great. Well, um, hey, I've enjoyed this conversation and we should probably do it again. Um, but, uh, we're, we're getting kind of like, uh, little past the 30 minute mark. I like to keep everything right around 30 minutes. And, um, you know, uh, what we'll do is we'll link, um, of course yardstick your LinkedIn. I'm gonna link that book from, um, Alice and Dan's, uh, brand checklist. We'll link that down there. Anything else we need to, to put down in the show notes for people to find you?

Speaker 1 (00:32:12) - Uh, I don't think so. That'd be great.

Speaker 0 (00:32:15) - Cool. Well, thanks again for coming on. It's, it's been a great conversation and uh, we should definitely do this again.

Speaker 1 (00:32:20) - Yeah, I'd love to. Thank you, Lee.

Speaker 0 (00:32:22) - All right, thanks. Thanks for listening to this week's podcast episode. I'm so glad you're hopefully getting some value from this and a lot of other people are too, apparently because, um, it's starting to grow. I'm starting to get lots of feedback from all the listeners on LinkedIn and various different, um, platforms. One of the ways that you can engage further with this podcast and with the ideas that are shared here is through our email newsletter, which we've just pretty recently launched and getting some really good traction on. And if you go to harvard murray.com and click on exploring growth at the top, you'll see a little, um, spot right there. You can enter your email to sign up for it. So that's something you wanna do. Please do that. Also, if you are getting value from this, please go to Apple Podcast, Spotify, leave a review, hopefully five stars. We've had some spam lately, so that wasn't fun. But hey, it'd be awesome if you guys went and left your thoughts on, um, you know, what kind of value are you're getting from this. But hope you're enjoying and we'll see you on the next one.