Episode 73 // How do you get your marketing messages out?

Mike Jones (00:01.278)
Hey everybody, welcome again to another episode of the remark brand podcast. This is your host Mike Jones along with my co host Sam Pagels here back in the house. It’s been a little while since we’ve had one of these episodes. We’re excited to get one out and go on for everybody. I got a little different setup today. We’re trying out Riverside. See how this works today. But to get into the real topic, the real meat we’re going to be covering. How do you know what channels or how do you get your message out there?

Sam (00:08.159)
Sam Pagel.

Sam (00:12.709)
in.

Mike Jones (00:31.022)
How do you get your brand out there? And so we’re gonna be talking all about that, but first, we always gotta do name 10 things. What you got?

Sam (00:39.087)
Always, and today, today we’re going to name 10 ways to transmit or communicate a message, Mike. This could be anything from, you know, how they did it in the Stone Age to today, or maybe in the future. So I’m gonna start off with a glass bottle into the ocean. It’s always a good option. Yeah.

Mike Jones (00:58.622)
Ooh, ooh, that’s a good one. I was gonna go Stone Tablets, you know, go like Moses, Israelites, Exodus. I think that’s a good one, Stone Tablets. Permanent forever. Well, till you throw them down, I guess, at the end.

Sam (01:08.763)
Those are long lasting. Long lasting. Yeah. Till you throw them down in anger. I’m gonna say AOL, the dial up one, where you could get on and explore the worldwide web and send an electronic mail.

Mike Jones (01:30.318)
Electronic mail I like that but first you had to load the disk in the disk drive That’s the key We’re gonna go direct mail Maybe not as old well, it’s old not as old as time. Yeah pony express direct mail

Sam (01:31.592)
Yes.

Yep, get that disc in there, the one you got from Macy’s.

Sam (01:45.099)
direct mail. That’s great.

Sam (01:50.139)
Old school. I was just gonna say that, but I’m gonna go with my personal favorite, carrier pigeon, what could be better? That’s just the coolest way. Absolute coolest way.

Mike Jones (01:59.082)
I can’t hear her pitch in. Oh, I love it. Oh, I lost my video feed here. Hang on one second. Yeah, you can see me, that’s fine. I’ll have to find it. I don’t know where it went. All right. Let’s go… What do they call that? Do you remember those like…

Sam (02:07.666)
Oh, I can still see ya.

Mike Jones (02:25.13)
It was like old school before movies. There was like the carousel with the images on it and you would watch it spin and it would show like animation that thing. I don’t know what that’s called. Yeah.

Sam (02:29.979)
Oh, yeah. Mm hmm. Yep. I don’t know what it’s called, but that’s great. I’m going to say like a secret note passing that you used to do in fourth grade. That was always exciting.

Mike Jones (02:47.55)
Oh, I have a bad memory from that. All right. Not on the receiving end. I was on the giving end of very bad note. Oh, man. No, we don’t. All right. What number are we on? Like eight, seven. All right.

Sam (02:51.906)
Actually, I don’t know if I really… Oh no. We don’t need to get into that, Mike.

Sam (03:02.557)
We got two more, two more.

Mike Jones (03:07.478)
Uh, the beach, scrawling your message in the sand at the beach, uh, as a castaway on the island. Yep.

Sam (03:11.695)
Yeah. Yep. That’s great, Mike. And I’m going to finish this up with the kerosene lighting, a kerosene message on fire. And I think my favorite rendition of that is when the hero or the anti-hero does that somehow. And the detective has the lighter, and he throws it on the ground. And it’s like, how did what? How did he know to do that?

Uh, never really made sense. It was always the coolest way to send a message, but like that doesn’t, that’s not very practical if you really wanted them to read what you, what you were trying to get across.

Mike Jones (03:52.03)
Yeah. Bonus number 11. The invisible ink that you can only see with like the lemon juice and the candle, whatever. Yeah. Or the blacklight. But yeah. Anyway. Yeah. All right. We’re going to get into it here. Let me find my notes again. I messed everything up. Trying to move, move you around on my desktop here so I could see everything.

Sam (03:59.903)
Mmm the black light yeah, yep, that’s good. That’s really good

Sam (04:13.835)
Ahem.

Sam (04:19.807)
Just move me around. Do what you gotta do.

Mike Jones (04:21.486)
All right. So yeah, we’re talking about all about how do we get our message out? Right. So we’ve been talking about, uh, you know, all this, like how do we get our brand out? How do we craft a message? How do we find our audience? Um, what kinds of content should we be making? What types of media should we be using? And now we’re getting to this next stage and kind of putting together our go to market plan. And that is how do we actually get our message out? So really we’re talking about channels like

Where should we be putting our message? How should we be thinking about that in terms of a way that really is gonna be impactful, not only from an audience perspective, obviously, like we wanna reach people with our message, we wanna get our product and our services out there and make sure that people know that we can offer these great things, this great value. We’ve already talked about finding that specific audience and I think we even teased out, like, hey, one of the things you’re doing when you’re defining your audience is really thinking about what channels and where are they?

being where they are. And we are going to get to that. I want to talk about that. But I think it’s really important that we think brand first. That’s really what we’ve been talking about over the whole series of all these episodes is inside out. How do we start first on the inside and then move externally? That doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s the steps you take in terms of, oh, well, I can only do this one after I do this first one.

Maybe you can do both at the same time, but as you’re planning, as you’re thinking, as you’re prioritizing, remembering that great brands start from within, right? They’re not made just by external splashes of paint and interesting messaging that is dictated purely by the marketplace. Um, right. But it actually comes out of who you are as a brand, your unique identity, all that work that you’ve already done.

to really uncover who you are and what makes you remarkable. And I think you have to take that same approach when you’re thinking about your marketing. Not that you stop there, right? Otherwise you would never go to market, but that you really have to start internally first. So that’d be my like kind of first point here, maybe the introductory point is that you need to look internally first when it comes to channels. So I wanna kind of tee that up for you, Sam. I wanna hear what you think about this,

Mike Jones (06:46.862)
I’m going to throw this out there. This might be a little counter to what a lot of marketers think about, but perhaps your internal teams are the first channels you should think about when it comes to your own

Sam (07:01.703)
Yeah, I think there’s a really good application point from that in that you don’t have to run and jump to every new platform or trend. That’s really exciting in the marketing world. I mean, you probably if you’re a marketer, you know other marketers from other industries and other firms. And there’s probably buzz every single year about, oh, are you on this channel? Are you on TikTok? Are you on Facebook?

Plus, where are you at? Are you in the metaverse? Can we meet on the beach in the metaverse? In a cone of silence? But I think the application point here is.

Mike Jones (07:31.222)
The metaverse.

Mike Jones (07:42.966)
No, no, before you go there, before you go there, I gotta tease this out. The Beach is an actual app that you have to download onto your virtual phone that you have in the metaverse that you access through your actual in real life VR goggles.

Sam (07:55.937)
Oh, wow.

Sam (08:02.847)
But you have to have the metaverse VR goggles to put on your avatar first to go to the beach. It’s a little bit like, yeah. It’s like Inception. Where does it end? No, the application point here is that you don’t have to jump on those trends when they appear out of thin air.

Mike Jones (08:10.908)
There’s VR goggles to wear VR goggles.

Mike Jones (08:16.566)
the inception of VR goggles. All right, sorry, that was totally dumb. That’s what we do here.

Sam (08:29.319)
Obviously stay ahead of those and maybe there is a trend that you’re like, oh, this is totally us. Our audience is there, our people are there, we need to get on there, that’s great. But just because everybody at your son’s junior high is on TikTok doesn’t mean that your accounting firm should have a TikTok account. So you do really need to know first and foremost your brand and what your brand believes in and who you are as a brand.

And then you have to know your people and you have to know how to communicate that with your people so that there’s also not this like, you know, internal fight of like, Hey, why aren’t we on Tik TOK or Hey, you know, my son’s on Tik TOK and there’s millions of kids on there. Why aren’t we doing this? And it’s like, Oh, hold on. Like that should need to be a question because we’re all on the same page here. So there’s so much trouble and chaos that can be avoided by doing the foundational things right.

like establishing a strong brand, a good foundation, educating your team, your people, your leadership on what your brand is, making sure that when new hires come in, they know immediately. That’s the first thing that they’re doing on day one is, hey, read through our brand handbook, our remark book. So the foundation there, you know, we’ve talked about that on every one of these steps, right? From…

Starting, like how do you start with that foundation? How do you start building that foundation to, what do you even say in your marketing? And now talking about these platforms where you have things to say now, you wanna talk to the world, now where do you go to start communicating those things?

Mike Jones (10:15.446)
Yeah, and I think if you start internally first, you think even from a channel perspective, thinking about internal channels first, you’re gonna find that when you do go externally, it’s that much easier because you’ve already empowered everyone in your firm to be saying the same things, thinking the same way about the brand, knowing what kind of your keywords and slogans are, what your values are, your personality. So you mentioned like,

you know, your brand handbook or as we call it, a remark book, right? That really covers not just the do’s and don’ts of your logo, but really covers like, hey, who are we as a firm? What is our mission, our purpose, our story, our anthem, however you want to describe that? What are our values? What’s our personality? What are we out to do? Right. What do we offer the world? How do we talk about the services or the products that we bring to market? And then, you know, even

thinking through like how do I craft messaging that’s within our brand personality? So maybe some voice tone mood guidelines. Those can be really helpful for everyone in your firm, not just your marketing team. And that’s a great place to start. So having some kind of handbook or remark book or have a digital version of that, put it on your intranet, have it in your onboarding, maybe do some like content provided by your leadership, right, maybe some videos or emails that go out when someone’s first.

brought on board or if you’re releasing kind of a refresh to your brand, maybe that’s going out to everyone, maybe some town halls have discussions around it. So these are all channels, right? Your intranet or any type of like internal wiki, emails out from leadership, your town halls are all hands meetings. These are channels, right? These are actual channels where your brand needs to be established first and foremost internally. And then what’s really interesting is that when you start to do this thing, oh, another

swag. Right. I think that’s an easy one for a lot of marketers to get excited about is, you know, oh, we’ve got the new logo or we’re refreshing our brand messaging. Let’s put it on like some mugs. Let’s put it on shirts. Let’s put it on posters. Let’s put it on, you know, whatever you think, notebooks, whatever pens, get fun, get creative, think about things maybe that people actually use. I won’t just get thrown in the trash tomorrow. But these are all elements that people in your firm are going to use when they go talk externally.

Mike Jones (12:40.618)
or when they write an email, or when they go to an event. And so now your internal channels become the first point of interaction, even externally. And of course, if everyone’s doing that consistently, saying the same things, looking similar, using the right colors, using the logo consistently, it’s on things that you’re providing for them to wear, to use.

Big one I’ve been seeing a lot of is even just thinking through like your zoom experience, right? Do you do you have branded elements in your zoom experience? It could be yeah backdrops like a digital backdrop that they can kind of, you know, green screen into or think about like actual in real life elements that you can put in the background. You know, like we have the neon sign are behind me, although I’m blocking it at the moment. We’ll work on that for next one.

Um, you know, and there’s some other like colored elements, like right here, as I look at my screen, you can point at it. Um, that actually has our slogan on our tagline. So, um, you know, just incorporating elements into your day to day work. That really exude the brand and it provides a point of interaction, even externally as those people represent the brand. And I think that’s.

I don’t know how to stress this higher. This was kind of almost a light bulb moment for me. I’m like, yeah, we do these things. We talk to our clients about them. I almost want to be like, you must do this first. Like almost make it like, this is the formula. You must brand and find all the channels you’re using internally, maybe even first, or maybe even like…

Sam (14:16.016)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones (14:31.594)
whether it’s like time-based first, but it’s your first priority, right? And so then we’ll get into things. So what are some of the other things, Sam, as we transition out of internal, how do we start to think about external channels to our firm, or at least externally facing channels? Maybe it is still things that our firm has control over.

Sam (14:54.503)
Yeah, yeah, I think there’s a couple different categories. We want to talk about owned channels, owned media, the things that your brand you own. So, for example, you’re probably the biggest one is your website. You are hopefully owning that, you know, owning the content on there. You’re not beholden to, let’s say, a social media platform that could change algorithms like you own that space, you own that content.

Um, we, uh, we talk a lot about owning your own email list, uh, and how building that over time, uh, is, is kind of a big deal. Uh, again, that’s something that you own outright. It’s not going to change, uh, on a whim, like, uh, you know, a Facebook page or a LinkedIn page could. Um, but yeah, I think, you know,

kind of an overarching thing as we get into this kind of own space and even paid space later on. You can’t be going on to these channels saying one thing and having the rest of your brand, the rest of your firm, the rest of your company, not knowing about that and just doing their own thing without knowing like, hey, we’re saying this over here. And then when customers come in and experience the brand, it’s two different things. It’s black and white.

We’re getting crushed here. People are not getting what they thought they were getting. So that’s where starting with that internal first before you start going out into the world and trying to engage with potential customers and clients, you’ve gotta be on the same page there. And hopefully, your team is engaged enough, maybe not everybody in your firm or your company, but hopefully your team’s engaged enough to where they’re seeing those things or interacting with those things.

Mike Jones (16:25.719)
Hmm.

Sam (16:50.235)
They’re producing content for the website. It’s not just one person at your firm You’re rallying the troops there because they’re excited to talk about their expertise So yeah, I’d say you know website is at the top of that list for sure It’d be hard-pressed to find you know a viable business these days. It doesn’t have a website I think there are some that are still out there Somehow there’s they’re surviving without a website

Mike Jones (17:18.67)
I don’t think anyone we’re talking to is not thinking about their website at some level. Yeah. And I think the other point I want to make on that is just as we talk more about, okay, we’re kind of alluding to these like three categories of content and three categories of channels, right? There’s owned media and the channels that support that like your website and your email list. We’ll talk about a few others here. Then there’s, you know, paid media, things that you have to pay someone to be on, right?

Sam (17:23.416)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (17:48.95)
That could be a sponsorship or that could be ads on an ad network. That could be, you know, YouTube pre-roll, the pre-roll ads on YouTube before a video shows. Or if you want to go real traditional, think like even direct mail, because you have to pay to be in that mailbox, or even, you know, print signage that you pay for or billboard or that kind of thing. I don’t think most of the firms we’re talking to are thinking about a billboard.

It may not be the right fit. We’ll talk about why that might not be in a minute. And then there’s earned media. So you have owned, you have earned, and you have paid, or owned, paid, and earned. Those are very traditional buckets to think about the media and then the channels that are available within those types of media. I also think that those are helpful. I would not jettison them because they’re traditional. I think they still really fit. Now there’s some.

Nuance in our digital age where some channels start to actually cross over into all one two or even all three of those buckets and we’ll talk about that but um, the reason that I think you should start with owned is at the end of the day they all point back to owned media And so the channels that best support your owned media are ones you actually own right, and if you think about like what

really is strategically the most important channels long term for your business, for your brand, for the firm you’re trying to create and build and scale. It is ones that you control. And so like your website is critical because it is still the best place to control an experience that someone’s going to have in the journey. It might not be where they find you first, right? But it’s where they’re going to end up eventually.

And you could say, okay, well, they’re not going from my web. They’re not going directly to my website. They’re going to landing pages, maybe administrated through some other system. Great. I don’t, however you want to slice that, um, that kind of syntax is fine, but somewhere you are controlling an experience that someone ends up on. Um, even if that’s like a phone call, right? And so like, if the first thing they’re seeing is, you know, Hey, my call to action on this ad or out in this paid media or earned media that we’re putting out in the world.

Mike Jones (20:07.938)
is to give us a phone call, right? Well, they pick up that phone and they’re calling you. Did you know that the phone itself is the channel, right? And so thinking about like, how do we answer the phone? Is it consistent? What happens if our phone lines are all tied up and they can’t reach anyone? What does that system feel like? What does that experience feel like? And so like, just thinking through like, there are channels that maybe you don’t think of as channels because they’re not marketing channels necessarily. And I think that’s why it’s really important to think about owned.

Because sometimes we forget that owned channels, the ones that we actually control, are much broader and bigger than just marketing, where it’s all about, oh, the prospects that we’re trying to get in front of, new people, new relationships, new businesses that we want to get in front of that we don’t already have an experience or a relationship with. Well, they’re all using your phones at some level, even if that’s a direct cell phone line.

Or even the inbox, like they’re sending direct emails. Maybe you put your firm’s partners on your website and each partner’s email is right on there. Well, that’s a strategic decision you’ve made to make email one of your primary channels for that level of interaction with those potential clients or existing clients. So thinking about that, even like your client portal, those are all places where…

You have control that is a channel that you are having communication You are marketing to people with and so thinking through like okay, that’s what it is I think the other thing that is really important in this is the age-old own your own list kind of Value that every marketer that I’ve ever Learned under has preached over and over to me and I really do believe that That mantra or that value is still

Sam (21:43.675)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones (21:57.454)
critically important to create businesses, great businesses, great brands, look to own their own list, their own contacts with people and not simply allow other platforms and other channels to be the only way that they can get in front of people. And there’s a lot of strategic reasons for that. One being you don’t own those channels. And so if they go away or they decide, hey, we don’t like you anymore, we’re just gonna make it really hard for you to get in front of people or they can change the price on you to get in front of their people.

Um, yeah, I don’t want to be beholden to everyone else outside of our business to get in front of the right people. And so at some point, like you gotta get people to give you enough information about themselves so you can have a conversation. You can develop a relationship with them. It’d be like, I don’t know, it’d be like dating where you only ever have conversations with a mediated like friend. It’d be like, no one wants that.

at the end of the day, eventually like you’re like, Hey, I know you say that I’m going to like going out with this person. Can you just give me their numbers so I can like ask them out? Right. Or like facilitate the connection so we can go out and I can get to know them and they can get to know me without you passing the message back and forth. Um, that’s, it’s a poor metaphor in one regard, but I think it’s really apt, right? In a lot of ways like marketing.

sales, the relationship aspect of business is kind of like dating. It’s like getting to know one another and saying, do I trust you enough? In this case, to give you some money and then you give me some value. Hopefully you’re not getting married in that transaction. That’d be kind of awkward and weird. But yeah, so take that metaphor way too far. But that’s why I think your website is so important. That’s why your email list is so important.

Sam (23:37.855)
Hehehe

Mike Jones (23:51.274)
your CRM, while it’s not technically a channel that you are messaging on, although you could certainly make a case for some of them that you are sending messages through them, but they’re the place that you’re storing all that information about that relationship. And so I think there are an extension of your channels, making sure that those are really set up well to serve you so that you can know like, are we engaging people well?

What are their kind of reactions? How do we know if we’re engaging them well through our emails that we’re sending? Whether that’s a big mass email to a bunch of people on a list or it’s one-on-one emails as we kind of facilitate a relationship at a more sales or business development level. And then I think another aspect of this is thinking about your referral partners as a part of that equation, right? And we’ll get to this in a minute. I think referral partners kind of fit more in like an earned media category in terms of channels, but…

You have to have them as part of this overall equation of what channel should we be on? And then are we providing content to them that really engages them to engage their clients with conversations about you? Right and saying oh, you know, I think I know somebody that can really help you with that problem or that challenge So what else?

Sam (25:05.759)
I think there’s a big one on social, right? I mean, that’s always kind of the ever-changing, ever-growing. There’s always new platforms coming out. Maybe we could talk through just a couple that are kind of there and have been there for a long time. Maybe platforms that once were less useful and maybe are now kind of becoming more useful, especially for brands and businesses. I think a big one, yeah.

Mike Jones (25:09.611)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (25:30.25)
Yeah. Well, before we get there, hang on one second, Sam. I think we need to tee up that social networks are probably the biggest channel that straddles multiple categories. So we’re talking about owned, we’re talking about paid, we’re talking about earned. They have an aspect of owned sort of in that you publish content to people who essentially have said, I want to hear from you. Sort of a,

Also earned, right? Because they have to opt into that. You’re earning, but you’re not really earning their media at that point. You’re just earning their attention, which is all marketing. But then you also have an opportunity to pay, to have content pushed out. You could call it boosted posts or whatever. They’re ads, really they’re ads, right? Whatever format they actually look like. And then there’s an element of earned within social media, which is that people can react and that gets…

made more visible to maybe their followers or people you have in common or even your own followers, your reach gets higher when they react to it or when they comment or when they actually share it themselves. That’s very much earned media. So I do think it’s really important that there’s an understanding that social is all three types of media. And so it’s a really critical channel for a lot of firms. That being said, there are ways to…

use it incorrectly or think about it incorrectly. And I don’t know if we’ll get to that in this episode, but we should cover that at some point. Maybe over-investing in social or certain social channels. But yeah, go ahead, sorry. I just wanted to make sure we teed up that it covered all three categories.

Sam (27:12.731)
Yeah. And I think there’s, there’s maybe two elements here that, you know, everybody is, if they’re on social, they’re probably posting on social, especially if it’s a business type of a social account. Um, there’s two elements I think Mike that we’ve learned, uh, in the last year or two or three that, uh, really shouldn’t be overlooked, uh, in your social media strategy. And the first one

I would say is just don’t forget about one-to-one outreach. You’re posting all these things one to many, but don’t forget about the value of like, you’re able to go find people, and I think LinkedIn is maybe the best example of this, where you can go find someone at a specific company in a specific role. You know that role because they have it on their page, and you can request access to that person. You can…

Mike Jones (27:41.15)
Hmm.

Sam (28:05.727)
go send them a direct one-on-one message. And there’s a lot of power in that if it’s done the right way. Obviously, you don’t want to be the guy who’s spamming everybody and just

Mike Jones (28:17.39)
With great power comes great responsibility. Ha ha.

Sam (28:19.871)
diving into DMs with all the sales tactics, right? I mean, nobody likes that. Has that ever worked? I don’t think so.

Mike Jones (28:26.998)
That that needs to be an I got to write that one down. We should do an episode called diving into DMS. I like that.

Sam (28:33.535)
Diving into DMs. Don’t do it. Don’t dive into DMs.

Mike Jones (28:40.126)
Uh, yeah, there’s probably a whole series of episodes on, on one to one messaging, particularly on LinkedIn. We’re learning a lot about that and how to do it, how not to do it. So, yeah.

Sam (28:49.875)
Yep. The other thing, Mike, is actually one of our partners here at ReSound pointed this out a couple months ago. And there’s data on it. But generally, the idea here is personal accounts versus brand accounts, a person versus a corporation or a business. Which one do you want to interact with more or naturally gravitate towards more? It’s always going to be…

The person, it’s the people. So not forgetting that also in your social strategy of like, yeah, your business page on LinkedIn or on Facebook or Instagram probably needs to be posting content, but don’t forget about the individuals in your firm, especially the leaders, the thought leaders who might have some equity in that space already, they need to be posting content and they need to have maybe their own…

individual strategy that’s fueled by the brand and the marketing because their networks are going to be stronger than the brand’s network on those social platforms. So not forgetting, again, it all goes back to people, right? Are you just trying to drum up business or are you trying to serve people in your marketing? And so that’s a big one where, you know, that…

Kind of goes hand in hand with that one-on-one outrage. Hopefully your brand is not doing that with individuals. That should be the partners of your firm. Maybe you have a sales team. It’s the people who are subject matter experts at your firm who can go out and do that. That’s just natural for them. But now you’re giving them a platform where that’s very powerful on something like a LinkedIn.

Mike Jones (30:39.586)
Or if it’s not natural, because I mean, you know, I think especially when we think about our professional services friends, especially in accounting, right? The partners or maybe the, you know, high level professionals in the firm who are client facing all day, every day, and are probably somewhat comfortable or have at least like an idea of like, okay, I know how to do one-to-one when it’s in person, right? Network, I speak.

We sponsor different things and we go show up at events. We’re kind of the face of the company in different ways or face of the firm. But when it comes to digital, a lot of them are very uncomfortable because it’s not a channel that they maybe grew up with or it’s one that just kind of scares them because there’s a lot of bad ways to utilize it. Finding partners that can help you with that or get training on that even. You can find, there’s lots of…

Consultants out there that can help with you with training. There’s internal trainers, you know as a marketer I think in the firm that a lot of times falls on you to train your people on how to network Digital networking should be part of that process digital one-to-one outreach Should be a part of that process and I would argue and this is like a whole nother episode or maybe a series One to one outreach on a channel like LinkedIn needs to be thought of in the same way that you would do one to one outreach at like a

happy hour or a networking event or a conference or trade show. You want to approach people the same way, just because it’s a different channel, a different type of media when it’s digital, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t also create relationships and really think about relationship first. How would you walk up to somebody and introduce yourself that you’ve never met before doesn’t know you from anyone at an event?

Maybe they do know you somehow maybe you were speaking or you were sponsoring and you got a little you know Two minute talk or like something that kind of breaks the ice a little bit, but that’s also a part of it It’s like break the ice find a way to introduce yourself No one wants to be sold to at a networking event Nobody wants to be sold to in their first one two three or eight interaction on LinkedIn, right? So Just thinking that through and just saying hey, I’m here to build relationships

Mike Jones (33:05.134)
I’m here to network, it’s not about the sale ultimately. It’s really about just creating relationships and adding value to people. In the same way that I know so many firms think about their own in-person outreach, it’s the same thing. So unless you’re a firm that really likes to smile and dial on the phone and just cold call people all day, maybe that’s your firm’s…

personality and you just need to lean into that on like 10 good luck with you. I hope I’m not on the receiving end of that. Uh, but, uh, yeah, I think for most friends is like, yeah, relationship first and approach all of your channels that way. So, and that’s the other part of this with like social media in particular is like, it’s social media. So be social comment, interact like.

Sam (33:37.374)
Ha ha.

Mike Jones (33:55.742)
Don’t make everything a sales pitch or even a marketing pitch. Like have be a real person, even in your firm’s interactions, right? At the brand level. So maybe you’re on the brand account and you’re interacting with other brands or you’re interacting with people commenting on your posts. Be a be personable in that. If you think about like really great brands on social media, what are some of the things that they do?

Sam (33:59.315)
Be a real person.

Mike Jones (34:22.766)
do that makes them great, that really makes them stand out. One of the things is they use humor. Another one is that they act like people. They’ll be snarky at times, or maybe they’ll be a little bit, I mean, be tasteful, fit within your brand personality, but use a little snark if that’s appropriate. Or be factual, and maybe your firm is all about.

Sam (34:27.945)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (34:34.793)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (34:49.858)
Uh, like stuff in a certain area, like, Oh, we’re all about Houston and we know all the restaurants in Houston, go find people who are talking about Houston, looking for a restaurant and just drop a comment. And if it’s not a potential client, who cares, right? Be like a person on social networks. Um, I think you’ll develop just, just rave engagement kudos.

And it’s really going to actually express your brand because other people who are perspective clients are going to see that stuff. So what are some other channels, Sam, that we should be thinking about?

Sam (35:25.243)
I think YouTube is a big one. Still, you know, to take. It does, yeah, you know, everybody’s talking about TikTok, but YouTube is still massive. YouTube is still one of the biggest search engines in the world, especially if we’re talking about service businesses, professional services. You know, how do I do this? How do I do my taxes? How do I what do I do with this 1099? Like there are there are so many search results.

Mike Jones (35:28.03)
Yeah, video is huge and it needs to be a bigger part of a lot of firms.

Sam (35:54.015)
from YouTube, because it’s owned by Google, that are showing up in those results. And not that you should try to grab low-hanging fruit like that, but start with a strategy. Again, go back to the core foundation of what we’ve been talking about, and develop a strategy that fits within your brand there. But video’s huge, and video can really be a powerful, kind of, I’ll call it a fuel for your content generation, because what we’re doing right here, Mike,

where we’re talking on camera together, we’re recording the audio of this, we’re going to use this in a lot of different ways. It can sometimes be the easiest way for, again, your subject matter experts, the partners of your firm, the most experienced people and team members at your firm who might not be able to sit down and write a blog post or might not be able to sit down and write up the next intro for your next month’s newsletter.

But they can talk, they can talk about their expertise. And so why not record that and put it on YouTube and start doing that over and over and over again and start building up some equity there. There’s some other channels too, Mike, like if you really wanna dive deep, Reddit, Quora maybe, like maybe there’s a strategy there where, those are places where people are going for opinions or to get answers to their questions.

Mike Jones (37:00.979)
Yep.

Mike Jones (37:10.282)
Ooh, yeah.

Sam (37:20.923)
And maybe there’s a strategy there for your brand where it’s like, hey, we’re going to be the accounting firm on Quora. When somebody has an accounting question, we’re going to be on there and we’re going to be answering those. That could be kind of an interesting thing. Obviously, you don’t want to do that without vetting it, making sure that it’s the right spot. But hey, maybe there’s a partner at your firm who’s like, oh, I love Reddit. I’ve been on Reddit since 1994. I’ll totally do that. I love it. I’m already on there every day. It’s like, OK, great. Thanks. Go do that, John.

Mike Jones (37:47.646)
Yeah. Lean into your advocates or someone who’s really active already on a platform that engages them at a personal level and they like it. It’s intuitive to them. And yeah, maybe that’ll spread. Maybe you can formalize that, right? Okay. Like we found somebody who’s really big on LinkedIn on your firm. They really like using it. We’ve helped kind of facilitate that for them. Oh, they’re getting success with it. Maybe others will jump on or then you mandate it. And you say, all right, we’re all doing LinkedIn. Here’s how we’re doing it.

It worked for this person, our firm and this partner. I was thinking too, like ultimately a lot of this owned actually helps you with another channel that is kind of straddles owned, earned and paid and that’s Google and other search engines. So, you know, publishing content on your website, making sure that you’re, that’s a really primary piece of your channel strategy. And then these other sites, whether that’s social networks or Reddit or Quora, YouTube.

All these other places are really going to help you become a higher ranked, higher indexed, higher value resource for people looking for your type of services and products, the problems that you are helping people solve. So I think those are really big ones. On the owned category, I think there’s one more that we should talk about and that’s Amazon.

I think maybe this is an untapped one and interestingly enough Amazon actually Kind of carries the gamut as well of owned earned and paid So obviously you could publish your own book or books on Amazon And that is a form of owned media that book itself obviously you could just offer that on your website, too But why not put it on Amazon or some other directory site like that? Marketplace and let people find it But it’s also earned

Because you’re getting reviews through readers. And there’s probably a strategy there that you need to consider. How do we go get those reviews? How do we make sure that people who are engaging with our book, whether we’re trying to use it as an actual sales thing, like, hey, we’re selling our book, or really, your book is probably more of a marketing tactic. But also, there’s a paid portion of that. You can actually advertise directly on Amazon for your book, or maybe you have some other products.

Mike Jones (40:12.218)
Think creatively about that, but Amazon could be another part of your channel mix as you’re thinking that through. Again, I would start with things that have highest value over time. Again, your website, your email list, maybe the drip sequences of emails as people go and download different resources or engage with you at events. How are you responding to them over time? Maybe there’s either automated sequences or just there’s some…

Kind of thinking at least of like, okay How do we engage with people over time as they enter into our list and we want to nurture those relationships? Again social media is a big one. So alright, I think I think we covered own pretty well. There’s probably lots of other ideas I’d love to hear from listeners. What other owned channels are you thinking about but we should talk about earned channels

Sam (40:55.987)
Yeah. Yep.

Sam (41:04.199)
Earned media, this is where you cannot force people to do what you want them to do, but you can provide value and people will respond to that. Obviously, social’s a big part of this of like, hey, you wanna engage with your audience in a non-transactional way, so you’re gonna put out maybe a…

Maybe you’re putting out an e-book and people are responding to it on social media or you’re, you know, hey, we’re going to put out these really cool infographics on Instagram and ask people what they think. So social is a big one here. Don’t think, Mike, we’ve talked about, like, actually getting published elsewhere. Obviously, it’s easy to publish on your blog post and publish on your social channels. But are you are you being published elsewhere?

Mike Jones (41:51.446)
Yep. That’s a big one.

Sam (41:59.579)
Um, and other publications, maybe publications that are industry specific, hopefully, um, maybe in an association’s publication, um, those things are very tactical, very impactful. Uh, a lot of thought leadership can be gained from those, but again, it’s, it’s earned, you can’t just say like, Hey, I’m going to publish in your thing. It’s like, uh, no, um, now that can get into paid as well. Sometimes we know it’s pay to play. Pay to play.

Mike Jones (42:25.398)
Yep. There’s a way to pay to play. Yeah. For some places. Yep. Yeah. And this is where like your owned media really has to be set up well first, right? So if you’re not already publishing, you don’t have great content and you’re not already putting out really impactful messages that help inform people and provide value to them and give them insights that maybe are a little bit unique and different from everyone else in the industry.

you’re unlikely to get that earned media, right? So people are less likely to share your content. And that’s the same message I saw from the other guys, right? Or you’re unlikely to get published in a third party when you ask, because you do have to ask. Or you’re unlikely to speak at an event, right? So having credibility through your owned media is so critical. That’s why it really matters that your owned media is at least thought through and established up front.

Before you jump into earned or even paid so I think I think those are really important And then I you know I was thinking about this. I was like I think you could probably put referral partners in this category as well Right there. They’re one that you need to nurture that relationship You probably need to produce content just for them, but think about where they are if you don’t have their email addresses How are you gonna earn that right to be in their inbox? How do you engage with them over time?

Sam (43:48.679)
Yep. Building your referral network over time. That takes trust too. It takes like actual, you have actually have to do good work. You don’t want to burn that, you know, do you want to burn their reputation by doing a terrible job once they do refer you? So yeah.

Mike Jones (43:53.591)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones (44:04.618)
Yeah, and those could be referral partners that are tangentially aligned with your business, maybe another service provider or something like that. Or even your own clients are essentially referral partners at some level. And so engaging them, what kinds of channels do you need to be on in order to engage them? And think about even internally within their company. So yeah, engaging your direct client to give them messages.

Sam (44:15.099)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (44:34.35)
probably an email, right? Or some kind of newsletter, some kind of regular update from you, or maybe some individuals within your firm that they work with, maybe they’re sending them regular emails. Obviously they’re having meetings, or they’re probably developing that relationship on more one-to-one basis. But then think about like, what do you need to give them that they can use to share your message more broadly within their firm, or with colleagues in other firms, or other companies?

And so I think there’s an aspect of like, you need to think about the channels that they’re involved with either within their company, maybe their own intranet or how do they share messages? Maybe it’s Slack. Um, and then how, how do they even share externally? If whether that’s social emails, are you making it really easy for them? Uh, you know, do you have easy share links on all of your resources? Um, I think here’s one that I think is really untapped by a lot of, a lot of brands.

especially the ones that we’ve been working with or been talking to. It’s like so often we produce all these resources that are about acquiring new client relationships. So we might create an ebook or a white paper or a new case study or put out a video. We then put that out maybe in a newsletter. Okay, some of your clients might see that. A lot of them probably gonna gloss over it, right? Because they’re not paying that much attention. They’re trying to get their work done.

But if there’s something really critical that you think might be of value to them and others in their company that you’re trying to develop relationships with, or in other companies that they might know, do you have a plan to like reach out to them and say, Hey, maybe it’s one to one. Maybe it’s, you know, whatever professional in your firm is working directly with them and saying, Hey, Joe, we’ve been working together a while. I thought you might really get some value out of this new, uh, report or ebook or case study that we just put out.

And is there anyone that you can think of that might be of value? We think maybe it’s a best fit for these kinds of people. And so essentially giving them an opportunity to refer you, obviously you want to do that within the context of the relationship, how you feel about that, maybe in the lifecycle of the client, how deep are you, how trusted are you with them. So consider all those things. But I think that’s a great opportunity to earn more attention.

Sam (47:00.475)
Yeah, you mentioned Mike, Amazon with reviews, you can obviously get reviews elsewhere. Maybe it’s not on Yelp, and maybe it’s not on Google. Those could be good for your company or firm. Maybe there’s more industry specific review platforms. Or maybe it’s just getting testimonials from your clients that you can use everywhere in your marketing. That’s some of the most important content that you can get is

Mike Jones (47:22.381)
Mm-hmm.

Sam (47:30.183)
just really great testimonials. It’s it’s social advocacy. It’s peer reviews. It’s, you know, people telling other people that you do a really good job instead of you just telling people that you do a really good job. So those are those are things that also shouldn’t be overlooked. And hopefully those testimonials are aligning with the things that you’re already saying in your brand. Those are those are huge.

Mike Jones (47:44.546)
Imagine that.

Mike Jones (47:53.386)
Yeah. And think about where those are going to live. How are you going to use them? You know, one of the things I think about is like, OK, you got the testimonial maybe like through an email one on one with one of your clients. Where does that live? Right. Obviously, internally, you probably have like some kind of archive or database of those repository. But then, like, are you using them within your marketing?

Do they have a home somewhere on the website like if someone wanted to like go find 18 testimonials? Could they find them or are they scattered throughout the website in strategic places? Just making sure like hey, we’re thinking about these channels Maybe that’s even social right take a take a one sentence or a one-liner out of that quote Put it on a social post put that out there. Maybe it’s a special place in your newsletter or some kind of email I just I think that’s

Sam (48:40.467)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (48:46.806)
Part of what I really want to get across is like just thinking through not just the type of content that you need to put out, but like, okay, well, how are we going to use that? What channels does that need to go out? How do we promote that in ways that are relationship building? Not just like, oh, Tudor and Howard and everyone’s like, eh, whatever. But like, how do you add value even when you’re putting out a testimony like that? So I think it’d be really important now to talk about paid before we wrap up with today’s episode. Everyone’s favorite channel.

Sam (49:14.972)
Everyone’s favorite channel. Paid media.

Mike Jones (49:18.57)
Paid media, so ads, right Sam? Is that it? I just gotta pay for ads?

Sam (49:23.067)
That’s all I want to see is ads, every day, all day.

Mike Jones (49:29.462)
Now I think it’s important that you think beyond the ads when it comes to pay and I think there’s a lot of places people are thinking or forget about that are paid. One is sponsorships, right? Every time you pay for a sponsorship of an event or some association or even a charity right or a nonprofit if you’re sponsoring something they’re doing, that is essentially paid media and those are channels you need to be considering. I would hope you’re thinking strategically about those. I’ve had a lot of conversations with…

Sam (49:38.335)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Jones (49:57.966)
clients about perhaps a lack of strategy when it comes to sponsorships, maybe just kind of like willy nilly. Oh, we like this, this nonprofit, or we think this is going to be a good thing for us or like, our kids baseball team has shirts, we can put our logo on. So why not? And there’s a time and place I’m all for like, the donation or the gift that is just because you care. That’s fine. Right?

But from a marketing perspective, you should at least be considering those as marketing opportunities and then leveraging them as far as you can. So if you decide like, hey, it’s really strategic for us or we just we just really want to donate. We want to sponsor a particular nonprofit. Are you then at least getting the most value out of that beyond just the like, oh, we feel good and we’ve contributed to a cause that we care about. But also like, are you getting a link back on their website? Are you mentioned in their newsletter?

Sam (50:49.192)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (50:55.894)
Is your logo showing up where it should be or where it could be? And just really making sure that you’re leveraging those sponsorships, which are paid media to really showcase your brand, showcase what you do well, showcase how you deliver value for others, the best that you can.

Sam (51:12.327)
Yeah. And I think you can kind of marry the sponsorships to, uh, sometimes it is just like, Hey, this is a nonprofit that we really care about. We’re going to sponsor their event or whatever it is. There’s a lot of sponsorships in industry specific associations as well. Industry industry groups. And there are ways to get into those groups and get, you know, acclimated and get to know the people really well. Um, that takes time. It takes a lot of effort, takes a lot of, um, sacrifice.

Mike Jones (51:20.278)
Yeah, that’s fine.

Sam (51:41.735)
sometimes to come in and not just be the guy handing out business cards at the next event, but actually like producing value for that group as, you know, maybe it’s the accountant in the group or it’s the, you know, the industry specific thing for restaurant owners. And you’re coming in as a vendor. Um, a sponsorship can be a way to kind of fast track that. Um,

And again, you have to do it the right way. You don’t want to be the shirt salesman who’s standing in the corner with the booth and just saying like, can I come buy some shirts? You know, here, put your logo on pens. It’s going to be great. Yeah. Business cards for everybody. You guys are going to love these business cards. Doing that in a tactful way to where, again, you’re producing or providing value to that group. Figure out what that looks like for

Mike Jones (52:17.41)
Take a business card, take a business card, take a business card. Ha ha ha.

Sam (52:34.287)
you and your firm and your brand, how you do that, you can get creative with that. But sponsorships can be a way to pay a certain amount, to kind of get more front and center. And when done right, that can be really powerful because you’re kind of paying your way in. But then you’re saying, hey, I’m not just I’m not here to sell. I’m here to provide X. Here you go. And then people really respond well to that.

Mike Jones (53:01.666)
Yeah, create an experience, right? And then also like have something to say that is meaningful and of value to others. So that’s again, where like, if you don’t have really great owned content, ads, sponsorships, association memberships, activity that you’re doing to get in front of people that you’re paying, basically you’re paying for eyeballs.

Those eyeballs have to go somewhere and they have to actually engage with something that’s meaningful and has value to them. And that ultimately is going to be owned content at some point down the line, right? They click on the ad, they end up on the landing page or they engage with you at a booth. They end up engaging with content you’ve created, whether they’re in the booth or in, you know, in an email later or some kind of resource you have, they get some excited about, you know, initiating a relationship with you or you’re speaking at an event.

that you paid to speak at, right? Like maybe you ponied up some money and you said, all right, it’s really important for us to be in front of this audience. Do you have a really compelling message? And have you delivered that already in owned content, in owned media ways before you ever get on that stage? If you haven’t, it produces an opportunity for people to kind of second guess you and go, I don’t know if this person really knows what they’re talking about, right? They’re not proven at all.

And so you have to work that much harder to jump that hurdle of distrust and you’re already paying to be there, right? And there is a level of distrust that automatically comes with paid media. And I think that’s a really important point as we talk this through of these channels. There are certain channels or certain types of media on certain channels that people discount and they say, yeah, you’re here.

But we don’t want to listen to you as much because we understand that you paid to be here rather than earning your way here, right? And so there is a level of like, yes, paid media is important. It can be really valuable. It can be really helpful. It has a place, but it has to be done right. And you really need to have some kind of like excitement already building for what you’re doing on the owned side or on the earned side.

Sam (55:22.195)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (55:24.47)
before you go crazy with advertising, right? I think there’s a way to do all three at the same time and really have a good symbiotic relationship between all those channels. It’s also where I think there’s a lot of opportunity to say, hey, let’s focus on what channels we’re gonna be on, right? Let’s not try to be on every channel all at the same time, all the time for everyone. Let’s maybe focus on one or two or maybe three channels at a time where we can get really good about owning that channel.

And really being all over it, owning the audience on that channel before we move to another channel. So if you’re thinking like social media, think about what’s your highest value social media channel. Doesn’t mean you don’t do anything on the others, but maybe you put a lot more energy and creativity into one for a while. Right. Or maybe it’s, Hey, we want to be a part of association. There’s a particular association that’s going to get us in front of a lot of people that we wouldn’t need to be in front of a lot of prospects. Go all out on that association.

or on that event or on that sponsorship and do all of it as much as you can, as much as your budget will allow so that you can really own that channel. If you don’t own a channel, if you’re just kind of like, oh, we put a little message out here on this channel and we put a little bit out on this channel and we put a little bit out on this channel. That just is only going to go so far. It’s really going to dilute your ability to be in front of people consistently over and over and over again.

with different kinds of messages in different ways and different media types. That’s how people want to engage with a brand, right? They want to engage not just the same message in the same format on the same exact placement every single time, right? We all ignore banner ads. Why is that? Well, because we’ve been trained. That’s an ad and I’m not going to look at it. But if I do a banner ad and I have an organic social post on that channel and I have some boosted

posts right there showing up in the news feed. If I’m doing some earned media where people are talking about us, or really we’re engaging them, or commenting back and forth, man, now we’re really starting to build some credibility, right? And we’re building reach, we’re building the ability to get in front of people and earn that trust. Take that, you know, in any channel, that could be an association, that could be a particular publication, right? That’s where like, if you’re going to be in a pub, publication.

Mike Jones (57:49.518)
Not the beer drinking pub. Although there’s a strategy for that too, I’m sure. You know, like think about how we’re going to earn some media in that publication through organic content. Right. And we’re going to pay to have some ads, right. You just get a lot more leverage if you can do that. So that’s my, I think final point. I don’t know. There’s probably more, but what else? What are you going to wrap up with Sam?

Sam (58:11.579)
Yeah, I hope. Well, I, I hope all of this is painting the picture that there’s no magic bullet or a single button you can click to do this. Well, it does take work. It takes careful work. It takes a team. And I don’t think one person can do this. And that’s, and that’s why we keep preaching like, Hey, you’ve got to build this house on a strong.

foundation. If you skip that part, if you skip that brand level, eventually it’s just going to fall apart and you’re going to make yourself work way harder than you need to produce things that ultimately are not going to provide value and not matter. So this is not impossible by any means, of course it’s not impossible, but it’s also not just a light easy thing to do. It takes time. It takes equity.

It takes service, takes some sacrifice, and it takes a strong brand. But it’s possible, and anybody can do it if they do it the right way.

Mike Jones (59:22.55)
Yep. I think that’s great. I love it. I’m inspired, Sam. All right. We’re gonna wrap up today’s episode. Thank you so much for sticking around. Next time, we’re gonna be talking about how do I keep my content interesting, right? How do we get creative and make sure that people are actually looking and listening to what we put out there on these channels that we’ve been talking about. So I know Sam’s really excited about that one because this is right up his alley. But we’ll be jumping into that on the next episode. So thanks, everybody.

Sam (59:27.112)
Mm.

Sam (59:48.779)
It’s gonna be fun. You know what, Mike? We should make that one, we should make that episode interesting for people.

Mike Jones (59:56.598)
Really? You want to make it interesting? I thought we would just talk in monotone the entire time.

Sam (59:58.611)
We should. We should try it out. We should try it out.

Mike Jones (01:00:04.79)
That’s how we can intro it though. And we can do a before and after.

Sam (01:00:11.453)
There you go. Hey Mike, what’s going on? Let’s talk about some marketing stuff.

Mike Jones (01:00:17.332)
Love it. We’ll see you all next time.

 

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