Episode 63 // Marketing with Authentic Identity Builds Lasting Customer Relationships

Sam Pagel:
How have you set your brand up to be really this unique, almost like a person in that market or your industry, where people see you, they talk to you, they interact with you, you’re firm, and there’s just something that stands out, something that’s memorable?

Speaker 2:
You are listening to the Remarkabrand Podcast where authentic brands win.

Mike Jones:
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode. We are so glad to have you. I’m excited. Actually, this time we’re going to have all three of us on. We’ve got David Cosand across the table from us.

David Cosand:
Hello.

Sam Pagel:
He’s back.

Mike Jones:
And Sam Pagel, producing and commentating. Can he do it?

Sam Pagel:
Color commentary.

Mike Jones:
That’s the big question.

Sam Pagel:
Color commentary.

Mike Jones:
And Mike Jones as usual, and we just appreciate everyone listening in again. We are really excited for today’s episode. We have been talking a lot about Brand Anthem over the last few episodes, and we’re going to take a little detour on this one and talk about how Brand Anthem really needs to be founded on your authentic identity. We’ll talk a little bit about that, and how that can connect into your day-to-day marketing. This is probably going to be a multi-use that we’ll kind of cover over a while. We’ll see how long it takes, but we’ve been talking a lot about this and I’m really excited to jump in and dive a lot deeper with David and Sam on this one, but before we do name 10 things.

David Cosand:
Oh boy.

Mike Jones:
Sam, what do we got?

Sam Pagel:
All right, today I’m going to try to bridge the gap because it doesn’t really connect, but it really does. We’re going to name 10 things that pertain to marketing and building relationships and building a loyal fan base. We’re going to name 10 new sports team names because someday there’s going to be a need.

Mike Jones:
There’s some free ones right here, people.

Sam Pagel:
All right.

Mike Jones:
Get them while they last.

Sam Pagel:
David, you want to kick us off?

David Cosand:
Yeah, I’m going to go with the Denver Winglets.

Sam Pagel:
Yeah, I’m going to say Buffalo Shin Guards.

David Cosand:
All right.

Mike Jones:
Minneapolis Snowflakes.

David Cosand:
The Nova Scotia Klondike Bars.

Sam Pagel:
The New York Pizza Slices.

Mike Jones:
Canadian Rockies. Simple.

David Cosand:
The Alberta Buoys.

Mike Jones:
Buoys or boys?

David Cosand:
Buoy. Buoys.

Mike Jones:
Okay, buoys

David Cosand:
Its a good one.

Mike Jones:
Let’s go with Florida Men.

Sam Pagel:
Ah, man. I was-

David Cosand:
Florida man.

Sam Pagel:
… going to Florida Sinkholes.

Mike Jones:
I gotcha. I gotcha. I see where you’re going with that.

Sam Pagel:
That was mine. Florida Sinkholes.

David Cosand:
Florida, okay. The Saudi Arabian Snake Charmers.

Sam Pagel:
The Martian Clayborns.

David Cosand:
Yes. Are we at nine? I think that’s nine.

Sam Pagel:
Oh, one more.

David Cosand:
The Czech Check Marks.

Mike Jones:
Oh.

Sam Pagel:
The Czech Check Marks.

Mike Jones:
The Czech Check Marks.

Sam Pagel:
Take it home. I love it.

Mike Jones:
That’s nice.

Sam Pagel:
I believe they prefer to be called Czechia now.

Mike Jones:
Oh, okay. Then they can’t be the check marks. I’m taking it back.

David Cosand:
It’d be the Czechia Czech Marks.

Mike Jones:
They can’t have that one. There’s an asterisk on that one. You’re free to claim any of these unless you’re from-

David Cosand:
That one’s trademarked.

Mike Jones:
Czechia.

David Cosand:
That’s trademarked.

Mike Jones:
Czechia.

David Cosand:
Czechia. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
Find your frequency.

Mike Jones:
All right, Brand Anthem, marketing, and relationships. I want to kick us off and just kind of think about relationships for a minute, before we get into all the marketing stuff and tactics of Brand Anthem and all that fun stuff. We talk a lot about relationships at Resound. We’ve talked a lot about it in our book actually, and we outlined, I think some really important points of why your brand should matter, and one of them is for the sake of relationships, but I want to kind of take a step back. Think about that again. David, why is it that as a business who is trying to do business, I should care about relationships? Why do we keep coming back to that?

David Cosand:
Because ultimately you do business with people, and with people you must have relationships. Typically, the better the relationship, the quality of the relationship, the better your business, the better your business does and performs as a result of the quality of those relationships. Ultimately, we are just encouraging people to think about people first. That it’s about relationships first. It’s about connecting with these people first, before jumping straight into the dollars and cents part. Obviously, business, you need money to survive. You need to make a profit. Typically, that’s what you want to do, but where does that money come from? Well, it comes from a happy customer that pays you for a job well done.

Mike Jones:
The value you’re providing for them.

David Cosand:
Right. That’s why we keep stressing this. We’re never going to stop talking about how important relationships are and we fill a pathway to having a good quality relationship with your customers, with your audience, is by being yourself and being who you authentically are.

Mike Jones:
There’s so many challenging goals that as, either a business owner or especially in the marketing seat, that a lot of firms have and a lot of people we’re talking to are in, there’s all these other metrics that kind of get thrown around. Obviously, sales gets thrown around. How many closed deals do we have this month? Or how much have we invoiced? And then, you start laddering up into other metrics like, okay, well, how many impressions do we have? And what’s our social media following looking like today? How many likes and retweets? And I don’t know what the metric is on TikTok. I’m clearly showing my age, but whatever that is. Chinese dollar symbols?

David Cosand:
Views. Views.

Mike Jones:
Oh.

David Cosand:
Plays. Is that what they call them? I don’t know.

Mike Jones:
Views.

David Cosand:
I’m not on TikTok.

Mike Jones:
Views, plays, whatever they are. All these things. It’s not bad. I wouldn’t argue that you shouldn’t measure these things, or at least consider them, look at them, but we keep coming back to just remember, it’s the relationship that ultimately matters. Those others are substitutes for measuring relationship, and maybe if you add them up correctly and you think about them rightly, there’s a way that you can say, okay, we are building relationships. More people interacting with our content on LinkedIn might actually mean that maybe we’re building more relationships, but we own a business.

Sam Pagel:
True.

Mike Jones:
It’s so easy for me to get distracted with, what are the sales numbers, how we’re doing in terms of the goals that we set for the year? And just remembering time and time again, just how important it is that we invest in the people that we serve, and that we invest in the relationships, even when it maybe seems like this momentary investment we’re going to make in the relationship doesn’t have a direct payoff today. How is that going to lead to a sale? Who cares? Give someone value right now today, knowing that over the long term, our goal is to build these lasting relationships, not just any kind of relationship, but lasting relationships where they’re getting lots of value from us. We’re getting value from them, obviously, through some kind of exchange of services for money or whatever it is, but there’s intrinsic value to our relationship.
Hopefully it’s more than just dollars and cents, and that we want to continue to work with them and they want to continue to work with us, and I think every firm can resonate with that, especially firms. I think that we talk to a lot in professional services and particularly accounting, where the tenure of your relationship to some degree speaks to the health of your firm. A client who’s been with you 10, 15, 30 years speaks a lot to how much value you’ve delivered for them rather than, okay, they’re here and a year or two from now, they’re gone, and there’s a high churn rate. That probably speaks to the fact that maybe a relationship is not at the forefront of your minds as you’re working and you’re trying to market and get out there.

David Cosand:
Yeah. I find that in my own habits, in how I find and hire help, whether it’s a CPA or what have you, and there’s certain folks that we’ve worked with forever, or we’ll drive clear across town to go see a particular doctor that we’ve been with forever. We moved long ago. We’re not anywhere near this person, but I’ve got a relationship there, and that relationship and that history, that longevity, is more important than the extra gas I’m spending to get out there. I think you’re right. It’s also, when you’re in the other end of that spectrum, when you’re having a hard time finding somebody that you feel like you connect with for whatever reason, it’s like, man, I’ve tried these three different accountants and every year I seem to just not be getting what I’m looking for. That speaks to a lack of, like you said, a focus on relationships and building for that first, seeking to serve people well and to connect with them well, more than to just get another client and close another deal. We feel that as customers, anywhere we go and anything that we buy. When you’re treated like you’re just another transaction or you’re treated like you’re a row on a spreadsheet, you feel it.

Mike Jones:
Another object in your CRM database.

David Cosand:
Yeah, you feel that. We feel that. When someone’s taken the time to personally connect with you, and if you’ve ever had a really, it’s rare these days, unfortunately, but if you’ve had a good customer service experience where someone actually was like, I will personally take care of this for you, and they follow through on it and they get back to you, whatever it is, that speaks volumes, and then you have a great opinion of that company, that brand, whatever, just because of that one person focusing on you and prioritizing you. Relationships, it’s huge in business, and I guess our argument is that, that should be the primary goal always, whether we’re talking about marketing, whether we’re talking about sales, whether we’re talking about views, clicks, plays, retweets, whatever. The primary goal is to build long-lasting quality relationships.

Mike Jones:
Every business would probably say, yes, I would love to build strong relationships with my customers, so we’re basically saying, authentic identity is the means by which we do that. I have a question, and this might be leading into something else, but I’m thinking of the, let’s say the accounting firm who has partners that are really great. They’re smart, they’re personable, they’re friendly, they do great work. Their existing customers love working with them. Whenever they interact with them, there’s authentic identity there. They’re not being tricked, but then there’s this other side of someone who’s never heard of that firm.
They’ve never heard of their name, they’ve never interacted with them, but they need the service that firm provides, so how does authentic identity play into that when you don’t have that personal touch yet, when you haven’t interacted with those great people that are behind this digital wall of, I’ve never talked to you, but I need your service and I need this. And there’s obviously, tons of competition out there. How does authentic identity fit into that element of it? Because if you are a good business, your people are good. You’ve got good people, and if you’re able to somehow get in front of those people and talk to them, sit in a room together, things are going to go well, but that doesn’t happen a lot. That’s not how business works.

Sam Pagel:
Yeah. I think one of the challenges is what you just mentioned. There is no person typically at the front of the experience that you’re starting to build with a potential client before they become a client. Their first interactions are often with very impersonal assets of yours, your website, maybe an ad that you might put out there, or they heard about you from someone else, and so you don’t have the luxury of relying on the individuals in your firm to express all that personality. You have to rely on things like your name and your logo and your tagline and a video that you put together to explain who you are, and a lot of times, even more and more, so as we move further and further into this digital, I don’t know, is it digital first now? I feel like that’s so sad. It makes me want to cry. There’s so much more. Every client that you’re potentially going to talk to gets to own more and more of the initial relationship without ever talking to you.
They get to really do their homework and do their research and really come to know you, in a lot of ways when you don’t have a lot of voice in that. You just get to put some stuff on your website and put some content out in the world, put social out, put some ads out, maybe some video, maybe do a podcast or something. It’s like, how many things are out there that they’re going to interact with before they ever actually talk to a real person? Which goes to the point I’m trying to make, which is your firm’s identity has to come through loud and clear in all of those touchpoints as much as you can. You’re limited. We talked about that on a past episode. One of the reasons why we love video so much is because you can get so many sensory inputs in a video. You get visual, you get audio, there’s storytelling, you can see [inaudible 00:14:48]-

David Cosand:
Your production level.

Sam Pagel:
You can see a range of production level across videos, so you get all that, but think about your website. Your website is primarily text and maybe some images, your logo’s there, you can get to see some colors and stuff. Is that the totality of your firm’s brand? Is that all of your personality? I hope not. I hope there’s a lot more depth to it than those things, but you don’t have a lot to work with, and so every one of those touchpoints, every one of those pieces of that communication becomes really, really critical to say, “Look, we are who we are. We have these strengths. We are dialed in on helping these kinds of people with these kinds of problems. We might be a really good fit for you if you fit in that category that we’ve carved out for ourselves.”

David Cosand:
I’m thinking about services, we talked about accountants or what have you, any industry where you have the opportunity to get that net promoter score up, too, if you have the privilege of customers that are willing to give you feedback or post a review somewhere, because reviews are huge right now, so if you’re soliciting reviews and asking, “Hey, if you don’t mind, would you post a review after we’re done here with…” Hopefully it’s a good one, but hopefully you’re not manipulating or gamifying the system, but you’re getting honest feedback from customers, and if it’s good feedback, that speaks volumes.
I think a lot of the times, the metrics that we’re after for those types of businesses, CSAT, like a net promoter score, how satisfied are your customers and how willing are they to tell others about your business and rave about you to their friends? Those reviews speak volumes, but then, how important is it that you’ve got that complimentary, authentic brand experience to back that up? Because if you have a bunch of five star reviews without a well put together website, or without a well put together brand, it looks shady. It’s like, is this an MLM scheme or something like, what’s going on here? Why do I see all these five star reviews, but I can’t find anything about these guys online, or I can’t develop that trust or that feel for this relationship before I even talk to you.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. It’s huge.

Sam Pagel:
Trust is built, one, on just consistency. You say something and you deliver it every time, and that can happen even in your very superficial things in your branding, like, hey, we use the same color every single time.

David Cosand:
Sure.

Mike Jones:
It’s always us.

Sam Pagel:
Trust is also built on expressing the uniqueness of your firm. Yes, consistently, but uniquely with creativity, with interest. There is trust built when a firm in particular, a brand, really understands who they are, what they are best suited in the world to do, who they’re best suited to serve, and then finds every tangible way to express that consistently in everything they do. It’s the consistency side of it, but it’s also the interest side of it. It’s the, yeah, this all makes sense to me. You can be consistently bad or consistently boring or consistently vague.

Mike Jones:
You can.

Sam Pagel:
And it doesn’t produce trust. So having an actual, this is who we are, let’s put our stake in the ground and rally around it and say, “This is who we are and what we stand for. This is our authentic identity,” and we’re not going to stray from that, and we’re going to lean into it in every point of communication.

David Cosand:
I think there’s a lot-

Sam Pagel:
That builds a lot of trust.

David Cosand:
I’ve kind of always thought in the terms of a business that’s out there that’s telling a really tall tale that they can never live up to, but I think we’re starting to see, especially in accounting, law firm, all these professional services industries, that it’s kind of the opposite with their marketing. What they’ve put out there in the world is so much lower than who they are as a firm, actually, and a lot of times, there’s not a lot of control over that, and I’m thinking of just a simple example could be, hey, maybe you’re the accounting firm that really doesn’t care about pleasing people, relations, relationships, there’s no love. It’s just, we get it done. Tax don’t care about your feelings. That-

Mike Jones:
That’s a great tagline right there. Somebody needs to grab that one.

David Cosand:
But if your website says, we’re the accountants who love and care and nurture, and there’s a smiling guy with a handshake on the homepage, and then you call them and it’s like, “What do you want? You want some taxes?” And it’s like, what?

Mike Jones:
They’re buying taxes.

Sam Pagel:
Yeah, you want some taxes? Versus,-

David Cosand:
No, I don’t.

Sam Pagel:
… if they were honest about that or they were at least accurate about that on their website, collateral, whatever, and you call them and you get that answer, it’s like, “Yeah, I want some taxes. Let’s go. I don’t care about the fluffy stuff. I just want you to do my taxes really well.” I think there’s this, you can undersell yourself a lot, too, in the way that you market to where you’re not necessarily being purposefully dishonest.

David Cosand:
No.

Sam Pagel:
But your identity is not portrayed as who you are authentically.

Mike Jones:
Or being as pointed and specific as you could be, and I know that the tension is there. To do that means taking some risk, saying no to certain kinds of clients or certain kinds of-

Sam Pagel:
Well, it takes effort, too.

Mike Jones:
… projects, and it definitely takes effort. That’s for sure. What are the pitfalls that happen when we’re not using our authentic identity? I think we’ve started to touch on this, that lack of specificity, that lack of leaning in, but what are the pitfalls? How do we know that we’re not being clear? What are maybe some of the signs?

David Cosand:
Yeah, disconnect. You feel those disconnects with your customers or potential customers. You lose deals.

Mike Jones:
Yep.

David Cosand:
Right? You’re like, what’s wrong? Not something’s not clicking or just customers had different expectations. They went in thinking you were the, we don’t care. We’re just going to get your taxes done, and then you ended up being the lovey, fluffy, and this mismatch of expectations and what they actually walked into. That that’s jarring, and most likely it’s not going to result in a successful business.

Sam Pagel:
I think there’s a longevity issue, too, with your relationships. You start to see people not sticking. Clients aren’t sticking around.

David Cosand:
Right.

Mike Jones:
They may-

Sam Pagel:
That’s probably a direct result of the, hey, it felt one way before when you inked the deal, and then three months in, it’s just feeling different.

David Cosand:
Right.

Sam Pagel:
Maybe not, don’t feel like necessarily got sold, like bait and switch kind of thing, but just like, oh, this isn’t all I thought it was going to be.

David Cosand:
Or you get the clients that were in a hurry and they just needed to pick somebody, so they went with you and you find out that you were their second or third choice anyway, and so they’re probably not going to stick around. Yeah, the longevity is definitely going to be a problem.

Sam Pagel:
I think another one that, we kind of have to talk about it. It is business, so we got to talk about money. If you’re winning consistently on cost, you’re the cheapest, that’s probably a good indication that your brand, your authentic identity isn’t working for you, and you’re having to find shortcuts to help you get the deals, to get the clients, and to keep them. I think that’s an easy one. It’s not a fun one. It’s easy to find, it’s less easy to fix, but you have to understand is this who we are? We’ve become the low cost provider because we’re not willing to lean into our brand and our true authentic identity.
I think most businesses would be able to tell you what their ideal customer would look like if you asked them, and I think if you’re not getting any of those through your marketing avenues or even just your messaging, whatever you’re telling people, there’s probably a good indication that you’re just not saying the right things to people. What are you communicating? We’ve dealt with that where we get some leads that come in and we’re like, how did you find us and why did you think we could help? We’ve gotten to a point, thankfully, where we can be like, “You know what? It’s just not a good fit for us. Here’s some other people you could work with,” but if that constantly kept happening and that’s all we’re getting, and then we’re forced to work with those clients, that’s just a recipe for disaster.

Mike Jones:
Especially if you’re feeling the pressure that you have to take those deals. I think it’s one thing to be like, okay, we get a handful of those here and there. If you’re getting a lot, then there probably is a question about the positioning, and your messaging probably isn’t on target, but if you’re getting a handful here and there, but you’re in the seat where you can say no, you can redirect them and say, “We’re not a good fit for you. I don’t think we can serve you the best that you need because you don’t fit our demographic. You don’t fit our industry that we’re focused on. You don’t fit the size of client that we’re working with. You don’t fit the problem set that we really are specialized in,” and you can say, “Here’s three other firms that might be a good fit for you.” I think that’s actually a very telling sign. I think it’s a really good point, Sam, of just, that’s a really telling sign that the brand is starting to really work.

David Cosand:
You’re maturing in your sense of self, of your own identity.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
Yeah.

Sam Pagel:
Yeah, that’s good. How can we start to apply authentic identity in our marketing? We can go back past episodes, we’ve spent probably hundreds of hours talking about how to find your authentic identity, and maybe we’ll come back to that and connect people into some of those ideas, but let’s assume you’ve done some homework. You’ve got some idea of your authentic identity. You have that brand anthem that we talked about a few episodes ago. You really know the story you’re trying to tell, but now you’re actually having to employ that in your marketing. How do you start to do that? How do you take authentic identity from ethereal thoughts and ideas and maybe a brand handbook and really start to go, this is how it applies to our nuts and bolts in our day-to-day?

David Cosand:
Yeah. You really have to know. It reminds me of great actors and actresses that really know their character really well, and so much so that they could be put on the spot giving an interview on Fallon or whatever, and immediately, that character can just flow out of them naturally. In this case, it should be natural because it is who you are. You’re not trying to be another character. You’re just knowing yourself all the better than you had previously. The more that you are understanding who you are and what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are and what to avoid, the more that you can just let flow naturally. Now, of course, you have a team most likely that has to also know who you are, and in a lot of cases, there might be a founder who’s like, “Well, this is just secondhand. This is just natural for me. Let me do all the marketing,” but you got a team and you need to let the team do the work.
They’ve got to just live it. They got to understand, they got to study it and know how their brand responds in every situation, in every single marketing channel. That’s the challenge upfront is, making sure that they’re educated, that they’re all on board, that they’re aligned on who we are, how we speak, why we believe this, why do we behave this way, and then allow that to come out in your marketing, and then you probably need to audit it before it goes live on site or out in the marketplace. You want to make sure that, hey, just a couple of checks. Does this feel like us? Does this sound like us? Does this sound something that our brand would say? Hopefully, everyone in the team has a good sense, “Yeah, that feels on brand, that feels like that’s us,” or “You know what? Hey, I might tweak it here or there just to get that tone right.” It’s important to take that extra two seconds. It’s probably not two seconds, but get the extra pair of eyes on it, make sure it feels natural, and it feels authentic.

Sam Pagel:
Yeah, I love of all what you just said.

David Cosand:
Just the beginning part.

Sam Pagel:
But the beginning part was I think something that maybe we even miss, miss a little bit sometimes of how important it is that your own team, both your marketing team and the rest of your firm really believes the identity that you’ve gone and done all the hard work to uncover, and is owning it. I think there is this kind of continual reflection back on your identity and saying, “We’re going to put it in front of ourselves over and over and over. We’re going to look at different points of it. We’re going to talk about it. We’re going to flesh it out.” When we say we have this core value or this fundamental belief as a brand, what does that look like day-to-day? What does that look like day-to-day for someone in the marketing team? What does that look like day-to-day for someone on the tax team or the advisory team, or even in the back office, administration, and accounts payable, accounts receivable, that kind of stuff.
I think that that’s just a really missed opportunity to understand that your marketing always starts from the inside out. It starts with your people and without starting there, or at least continually coming back to your people inside your firm and reinforcing the brand over and over, and I don’t mean just like, we looked at the brand handbook, every annual all hands meeting or the annual retreat or something. Like, all right, here’s the CMO doing their brand handbook review again. Oh, man. I don’t want to put that down. I think that can be a wise thing to do, but think about how to make that more interesting. How can you maybe take a piece of it and really dive deep with it, workshop it, maybe add some discussion to it? I know a lot of firms do onboarding with their brand, take your brand handbook and apply it in your onboarding process.
That’s great. Do that, but how are you reinforcing that over time? Even doing workshops, specific teams, and we’re getting in the weeds here. There’s lots of ideas there. I wanted to make sure we didn’t miss that. I think that is a huge opportunity for firms to really level up their authentic identity and the usage of it, of just know it. Know it inside and out and really believe it. Everyone in the firm needs to believe it. Sure. Do the swag, get everybody excited about it. Do something fun, cool every year with some new promotional item that people actually want. Don’t do any more pens, please. No more pens. What else? How else can we start to employ our authentic identity in our day-to-day marketing? How do we do audience selection? How do we find the right people to be putting our messaging in front of?

David Cosand:
I think authentic identity is obviously not just about how you look or how you talk, it’s also who you want to be talking to. It’s giving your firm permission to say, “We’re not going to care about the whole world. We’re really just going to focus on this specific piece of the market or this specific industry, and we’ll talk to people outside of that, but we’re going to really lean into this,” or even just the services you offer. There’s always going to be people that ask you to do something that you’ve either never done or we’re just great at that, but there’s revenue there. Let’s try it. It’s giving you and your firm permission to say no to those things, so that you can do the things that you’re really good at even better, and serve people well in the markets and the services that you really want to lean into.

Sam Pagel:
Man, that has so many benefits that I can think of in your marketing when you start to really understand who are we best able to serve, and again, not that you have to turn away anyone who’s anywhere outside of that category, but when you’re deciding how are we going to spend our budget this year? Where are we going to put ads? What conferences are we going to attend? What product content are we going to put out in the marketplace, and what publications do we want to get that in front of? Where’s our managing partner going to go speak this year? We talked about writing a book. Maybe you decide you’re going to write a book on your positioning or something about your firm, or you’re doing something really interesting within your set of services. Maybe you have a unique process. Well, who’s that book going to be written to? Everybody? Any business? Man, it’s shooting yourself in the foot before you even start the race.

Mike Jones:
It gives you so much power when you can really lean in, and it doesn’t have to just be industry. I know there’s a lot of firms out there that’ll fight me on that. They’ll say, “Oh, we do niche marketing and here’s 10 industries that we’re in because we’re big. We’re a big firm and we can serve a lot of industries, and that’s how we grow.” Okay, that that’s fine. Do that. Have different industries, have different teams focused on each industry. That’s fine. That’s a perfectly valid, very acceptable, and clearly, it works to some degree, but have something about your firm, about your identity that’s uniquely you. If it’s not industry, that’s fine. You can be in a bunch of industries if you want, but you need to find something else then. Maybe that’s geographic. Maybe that’s a certain kind of problem that certain firms have, or maybe a certain size of firm that you help, a certain size of company that you’re uniquely suited to help serve.
I like your idea, Sam, limiting your service set. Have you really focusing in on a particular set of services that you can offer across industries, but where you’re really become known for this tighter set. We’re the firm that really is, it’s the audits, and I don’t have no idea if that’s a valid market for CPA firm. You need to do your homework. Understand what are we really good at? What are our people really good at? What are our processes built around? Again, do your strengths and weaknesses assessment. There’s lots of preamble here we’re not covering. We’re assuming you’ve done all that stuff, but then lean in and own it. If it’s audit, say that everywhere. Don’t confuse people and start saying other stuff, too. Audit and, and-

David Cosand:
And.

Sam Pagel:
And this. It’s like, oh my goodness. You do everything, which means you do nothing.

Mike Jones:
It’s like the Batteries Only story, that then becomes Batteries Only Plus.

Sam Pagel:
Batteries Plus Bulbs Only, Batteries Plus Bulbs.

David Cosand:
I love that store.

Mike Jones:
And some other stuff probably.

Sam Pagel:
But see, even in that. Okay, let’s beat up. Well, you’re beating up Batteries Plus. I actually think there’s some strategy. I think it’s a little weak. It’s a little bit of a weakness on their branding. It’s very limiting because they branded around a product.

David Cosand:
A product category.

Sam Pagel:
So when they want to-

Mike Jones:
If they have to pivot, if there’s not enough in that market or it’s like, wow, we really want to get people in the door more often.

David Cosand:
Why do we have so many bulbs laying around?

Sam Pagel:
We got to add bulbs to the list, but I’ll guarantee you, they have a lot more than batteries and bulbs, too, right?

David Cosand:
Yeah.

Sam Pagel:
And they can do that. They don’t have to advertise all those other things. They just know once you’re in the door, we’re going to be able to sell these other things because you’re going to need them.

David Cosand:
Someone at some point decided, oh, we need to put bulbs in our name.

Sam Pagel:
Yeah. That’s the real-

David Cosand:
I want to know that story. Batteries Plus is great. Yeah, it’s batteries and some other stuff, but you know they’re focused on batteries.

Sam Pagel:
It gives you the target. It gives you, what’s the center bullseye of the target?

David Cosand:
I got to go in for batteries.

Sam Pagel:
It’s batteries, and if it’s anything else, it’s like, well, it’s got to be tangential to batteries.

David Cosand:
Which, bulbs makes a lot of sense.

Sam Pagel:
Bulbs do make sense. I can get down with that. And they both start with Bs, so there’s alliteration and-

David Cosand:
We understand the temptation and they couldn’t resist, so they had to put bulbs in their name.

Sam Pagel:
Yeah.

David Cosand:
I actually had a friend who managed a bunch of Batteries Plus stores for years, so hello, Steve. Yeah.

Mike Jones:
That’s fun.

Sam Pagel:
What were we talking about? Oh, your audience, right?

David Cosand:
Yep.

Sam Pagel:
I think your authentic identity can even help with audience targeting, and just think about that. You’re loading up your next LinkedIn ad, or you’re loading in your Google Display ads and you’re like, oh, man, what keywords are we going to put in? Or how are we going to target this, what job titles, what industries? Just having those answers right off the bat and just saying, “Nope, these are the ones. We’re always into these. This is who we are,” just make things a lot easier.

Mike Jones:
I think there’s just a lot of efficiency out of that.

David Cosand:
I think there’s a lot of other things that we can get to and we’re going to get to them. We’re going to do, I think a lot more of these podcasts on this, about, how do you link your authentic identity to your marketing? That’s really what we’re talking about and drive those relationships. I’m curious. I would love to hear, if any listeners want to chime in what they want to hear about. How do you link those things? Maybe give us some stories of how you’ve done it or maybe some challenges you’re running into. How do you link your authentic identity as a firm with your marketing? Because again, we know. There’s so many different data points, so many different metrics that everyone’s screaming at you to, oh, do you have a report on how we did with this one social post that we put out three years ago? It’s like, okay, do that, but don’t get distracted, at least not too much.

Sam Pagel:
I think even, and this is to me, it’s a little bit more of the fun stuff of, we always preach, figure out your firm’s personality traits. Figure out the values of your firm, so what does your firm actually believe in, even when maybe your market changes or your services change, but your values, your beliefs never change. What are those things? And then, what is the guidelines that verbally, that you talk to? How do you talk? How do you sound? Are you exciting? Are you boring? Are you fun? Are you more serious?

David Cosand:
Nobody’s boring, Sam.

Sam Pagel:
Somebody might want to be boring. And then what do you look like?

David Cosand:
Straight laced.

Sam Pagel:
Yeah, straight laced. There you go.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

Sam Pagel:
That’s a good one. It’s a good trait.

David Cosand:
Yeah.

Sam Pagel:
What do you look like, and for whether it’s you or the person who’s doing the marketing for your firm, what constraints are you putting around them so that they can do that well and consistently? Hopefully, the constraints are not bad constraints. Hopefully, they’re good, but how have you set your brand up to be really this unique, almost like a person in that market or your industry where people see you, they talk to you, they interact with you, your firm, and there’s just something that stands out, something that’s memorable.

Mike Jones:
The Remarkabrand Podcast is a project of Resound and is recorded in Tempe, Arizona with hosts, Mike Jones and David Cosand. It’s produced and edited by Sam Pagel. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and at remarkablecast.com. If you’d like more episodes, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you prefer to get your podcasts. To contact the show, find out more about the Remarkabrand Podcast or to join our newsletter list to make sure you never miss another episode. Check out our website at remarkablecast.com. Copyright Resound Creative Media, LLC 2022.