Episode 70 // How do you know WHO to market to?

Sam Pagel (00:00.588)
Your brand anthem, part of your brand anthem is really understanding who it is that you’re supposed to be talking to and who is the best fit for you, right, and your brand. You are authentically and remarkably designed as an organization to serve certain people, not all people. You’re listening to the Remarkabrand podcast, where authentic brands win.

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All right everybody it is another episode of the marker brand podcast. I’m Mike Jones with David cosand and Sam Pagle. I’m so glad you guys are here again So we got sound effects today, that’s great. Thank you now. I don’t have to add that in post Thank you. Well you is I was just trying to help you time it so you knew exactly I’m just gonna leave that one in all right All right, but seriously folks. We’re doing a little episode today

Kind of in this long standing series we’ve been working around about inside out marketing. And we spent a lot of time last few episodes talking about the inside part, learning your brand, crafting your brand anthem, really understanding yourself, working on your own team to really exemplify your brand. Now we’re gonna make the big shift to outside, right? Getting to your audience. We’ll talk more about that in just a minute, but first, name 10 things.

Today we’re gonna name 10 ad campaign slogans that never saw the light of day. Oh, right. David, you start us off? Gillette, the best a man can’t get. Dang it. That was so just invert them all? Yeah. They should have gone with Just don’t it. Just put it right out of reach. Just put the…

Sam Pagel (01:56.49)
knots in every single can and Nike just don’t it just don’t That was great, too Try something else Cornflakes cornflakes They’re gravel They’re gross. That was good. That was good. Yeah, Tony the tiger got acquired by a gravel company

Maybe she wasn’t born with it. Maybe it’s Maybelline. okay. She knew that. Maybelline. It’s a little more truthful. She wasn’t born with makeup on her face.

Don’t leave home with it. GE Appliances.

Hmm.

Really, we don’t want you on here anymore. Twitter. This one’s a little obscure.

Sam Pagel (03:04.108)
What’s for dinner, hun? Manwiches? Manwiches. The frozen… manwich. It’s like the dude sitting in his armchair 1970s with the wife beater on. Hun, what’s for dinner? Beef!

Sam Pagel (03:27.91)
Shut it you door company

Sam Pagel (03:40.75)
Don’t throw us at your coach sports towels. Mmm. That’s a good one. Yeah, that was ten guys. That was really good. Is that really ten? I feel like you just cut it. You’re like, that’s enough. In post we need to add like someone counting. We round up. Find your frequency. All right, let’s get let’s get that. Now we’ve got that out of our system. Palette cleanser. All right. So we’ve been talking about inside out marketing, right? And

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about inside. In fact, we wrote a whole book about it, really, about the brand side. And then we’re starting to transition now into how do we start to take what we’ve built inside? We’ve even rolled it out with our team. We’ve got everybody singing from the same handbook. We talked about that last time. How do we get this brand now in front of people, right? In front of potential clients, in front of potential customers. How do we start to take it to the outside, but still do that in an authentic

and true way to who we are, right? We spent all this time building an authentic brand. Let’s really make sure we do it right. So, where do we start? I think that’s really the first question. I kind of wonder if you actually need to start still with some inside work, right? Your brand anthem, part of your brand anthem is really understanding who it is that you’re supposed to be talking to and who is the best fit for you, right, and your brand.

You are authentically and remarkably designed as an organization to serve certain people, not all people. Right. And so the first step probably still is some like research, like who is the best fit for us? So if you haven’t done that work, I do think that’s where it has to start. I think that’s a great point. I think there is a tendency to go into the market with your it’s just like, hey, we’re just going to talk about what we do.

we’re gonna talk about our product. Our product’s so great that we’re just gonna talk about it so much and everyone’s gonna love it and they’re gonna buy it so fast. you kinda, it doesn’t work. And what you said, Mike, you have to start with the people. Now we’ve talked about the people inside of your organization or your firm, but now we’re talking about the people that you’re intending to serve with your product or service.

Sam Pagel (06:05.24)
You start with the people. Who’s the right type of person who’s going to be interested in this? Is it the, you know, the rural mom? Is it the businessman? it the business man? Does he wear beige suits? Does she have three kids? Like you got to ask those kind of like, it’s kind of funny, but you got to know those things. You got to know how to talk to those people. I’m a firm. I’ve got some clients I’ve worked with for a long time.

We’ve maybe been around for 30, 40 years. Maybe we’ve gotten through this process as a rebrand, right? Where do I start when I have some clients, but we gotta launch this? What do I do? How do I go to market in a way that’s like true and authentic? How do I find those people, right? How do I, what questions do I need to ask maybe that will set me out on the right step? Where are those people? Where do they hang out?

What events do they attend? If they have certain problems or certain challenges that they’re faced with, where do they tend to go to find answers for those problems? And you wanna be there. Because that’s how you meet them, that’s how you get in front of them. So, go to the same events, find out what, know, where they’re getting their information, their news, their… I mean, and this also plays into online, like, how do we get in front of the right channels and the right…

The right eyeballs at the right times, that’s really tricky. But I think it starts with just an intense focus on who this customer is, where they’re at, and really profiling them, getting to understand their attributes, what are they like. What do you guys think of just maybe picking some of your best clients in your roster and asking them? Yeah, think there’s a huge advantage to obviously already being in business for a decade, two, three, four decades. You have

real life examples of probably your ideal client. So what’s worked well in the past? Okay, this type of person. Okay, we’re starting to see some patterns here. We’ve got three clients that we just seem to naturally work really well with. And here’s the similarities between those three people. So yeah, go look at that. And obviously not every client that you’re

Sam Pagel (08:31.512)
going to go after is going to be the perfect fit. But if you can start to see some patterns there, types of people, what problems are you solving for them when they’re really happy with your work? What happened? How did you make them happy and kind of start seeing those patterns? Yeah, I’d even say like you can go all the way back to like pre agreement, right? How did they come in the door? How did they find you? What activity led to them finding you?

Sometimes too, I think it’s helpful to just ask clients like, what are you participating in this year? What events are you going to? What media are you looking at? Where do you get your news? Where do you get insights for your business? Who are you even talking to within your firm to find resources, right? So like where are the connections even within the firm itself that you’re helping, right? I think those can be really helpful tools if you already have clients.

Obviously, if you’re in startup mode, it’s a little bit different, but I think most of our audience is probably more on the experience side. But I think you still have to be asking that question all the time of like, where do I find my best fits? Right? Where do I find the best clients for our firm? Where do I find the best customers? And that will change over time too. I think one of the things I’m seeing a lot, especially in accounting firms right now, is there’s a dramatic shift in generations.

in terms of leadership and decision making in a lot of the clients of accounting firms, right? As new generations are taking over leadership and management roles within the client, the end client. And so it’s like where they’re finding things, where they’re finding resources, where they’re finding, you know, their next accounting firm or a referral, that that’s going to change over time. And I think you got to constantly be asking that. So

What else like maybe okay, I’ve asked some of my existing clients I’ve gotten some good ideas and maybe some places where they’re hanging out where they’re asking questions. Maybe there’s Events that they’re going to maybe there’s online resources that they’re looking that they’re looking to for help maybe there’s certain associations or membership in certain organizations where they share ideas back and forth Okay, so I’ve got a few of those ideas

Sam Pagel (10:54.262)
Where else could I go? Is there any other place I could go to kind of help me figure out where to start getting my brand out in front of the right people? Like what media should I be considering? Like how do I know? Well, I think we should be clear. Sorry, rewind just a little bit. Don’t be afraid to go to those those long standing clients of yours and like actually have a real conversation asking them these questions.

We’ve heard from several clients like, yeah, we thought this thing, but then we talked to our customers and they were like, no, that’s not you at all. Like, this is how I see you. so you gotta go have those real conversations and you can’t just assume like, they love us because of this. Go talk to them, go ask them. They’ll talk to you about that stuff. That’s a huge key tool when you’re either in the middle of a rebrand or you’re kind of, you know, trying to figure out who you are.

Go talk to your clients. They’re seeing you from a completely different light than you see yourselves. And that’s a really helpful tool. So, sorry, what was your question again, Mike? Yeah, like what other resources besides my own clients can I go to to find where I should be putting my marketing out into the world, right? Like where should I be showcasing my brand? How do I find where those places should be?

I think maybe one step before that even is perhaps considering like as you’re defining who your ideal client is, write a persona for them. Yeah. And start to fill that in as you’re going to these different resources and finding like, okay, where do they hang out? Where, where should I put my brand in order to be where they are? Right? Cause the reality is like, no one comes to your brand. Usually you have to go put your brand where

your ideal clients already are. So having that persona, right? And that could be things like demographic data that can be problems that they’re encountering, key values that they have. That could be some like psychographic kind of information about how they think. You know, when you get into the demographics, you can do all the stuff like income and job title and type of firm that they work for, size of company that they work for if you’re going B2B.

Sam Pagel (13:15.95)
But that’ll start to give you a little bit of a roadmap of like, okay, if we wanna find the perfect client who fits this persona, and you might have a couple different personas, that’s okay. Now I know kind of maybe where I need to go look for that kind of person. And that might give you a little bit of a focus, a target when you’re thinking about, okay, I gotta do some media planning. I gotta actually understand where I’m gonna put media. And it’ll inform your messaging for sure, right?

I need to have content that actually resonates with that type of person. I need to address the problems that they’re encountering. I need to think like them when I’m putting my content out and I’m putting it together. Yeah, I think I think there’s some some really great tools out there. Let’s for example, let’s just say we have three insurance agencies that we work with and we’re typically being contacted by the CFO or the controller.

these companies and we just work really well with those people. We’re able to speak their language and we know their industry. OK, how do we find more of those people? LinkedIn, go spend an hour on LinkedIn and, you know, find other CFOs and controllers of insurance companies. That’s not hard to do. know, maybe you find 10 that seem to be, you know, company size is right. Dig into them a little bit, you know.

stock them a little bit online. And then again, just look for those patterns. Like look for the patterns of like, is there a certain like age range that we seem to talk really well with? A season of life, you know, just all these different, and some of that can be kind of like personal type things because to be honest, like if your service or product is improving them on a personal level, they’re gonna love you and.

If you’re making their job easier to where like, hey, I go home happier at night because your accounting services are so good. You should know what that looks like and what that type of person, how their lives are just kind of welded together. Yeah, and it’s interesting how your brand definition and your understanding of your target audience, that can help narrow your focus on which channels you choose.

Sam Pagel (15:43.246)
because like, you know, your target audience may or may not be hanging out on Reddit. I mean, they might be like, they might be a Quora person. a Reddit, you know. Or, you know, it’s interesting how the brand of these channels and these like forums online or even TV or whatever, radio, you know, they have their own brand and their own kind of tribe, their own audience personality styles. So really you can go, well, does my brand fit that medium?

Does my message and who I am and how I portray myself from my brand definition, my brand anthem, does that really fit with this kind of medium? And that’s an interesting thought, because if you do all that work, but then you put your marketing out on something that’s completely jarring, like you’re on some punk rock, I don’t know, message board or something, maybe you don’t want to put all your ads there, you know what mean?

So and it’s same thing with the audience are trying to attract like do they hang out there? Yeah, you know do they hang out on I mean are they spending all their time on do they watch YouTube? maybe they don’t yeah, maybe they don’t remember podcast people right and which podcasts yeah, which podcasts Yeah, I think the other thing too I was thinking is even just looking for like-minded brands that are advertising and marketing to those same people Maybe a different service or product obviously like you don’t want to necessarily go

Talk to your competitors, probably not gonna tell you. Maybe they will, I don’t know. Maybe you got a good relationship with another firm. And that’s another thing you can do is talk to other firms in other markets, right? So they’re gonna give you ideas of where they’re seeing success if they’re targeting in a local area. Like, we get a lot of value out of the Chamber of Commerce. Or, no, actually we get a lot of value out of doing local public radio ads. You know, it’s like.

There’s a lot of options there. They might tell you what’s working in a local area that you’re not going to be competitive in because you’re not there. Right. And so they’re willing to share that info with you, but also going to like partners or maybe there’s like a software company that’s also targeting the same types of people ask them, Hey, how are you getting in front of where you’ve seen success? Are there events you’re going to? Are there ads you’re running somewhere? Even just look for their ads.

Sam Pagel (17:56.524)
Do some Google search, do some Twitter. I think Twitter’s a great place to kind of see where people are talking about things in your industry. If they’re active on Twitter, LinkedIn also. If you’re part of industry, like membership organizations, like associations and stuff, just paying attention to their forums, their emails, and just kind of like constantly sniffing. It’s like constantly hunting for like what’s, where are people referring

back to within that industry. And I think that kind of leads to this larger thing of like, this is kind of a campaign, right? So there’s like your initial like, we rebranded, we need to launch that. I think there’s some basic things you can do and maybe we take a whole episode and talk about that. But I think when you’re talking about like, who are we really trying to get in front of? I think you have to approach it more like a campaign and say, hey, for the next 12 months, we’re going to be

concertedly trying to reach one persona. And I mean, if you’re large enough firm, okay, fine, you got multiple personas, you got multiple campaigns, right? But each persona should get one campaign kind of budget and one campaign strategy. And you do your research, like go find where these people are, and then start putting together some ads, putting together some messaging, putting together other types of content to get in front of them.

And then really you got to give it enough time, right? I think that’s why like if you have some of your assets already for your brand itself, you can leverage those. I think like we’ve talked about this in past episodes, but if you’ve got like a really solid book that explains kind of our way of doing business, you can then take that and kind of rinse and recycle for different industries or different persona groups that you’re going after.

and create some really interesting content. I think that’s the other part of this too, and we’re kind of jumping ahead a little bit here, but like, how are you gonna deliver like great value even before they ever sign an agreement or a contract with you? Like your marketing has to be super valuable. So that’s where I feel like that persona comes in so well. Like if you really know exactly how people are thinking,

Sam Pagel (20:18.84)
that you’re trying to get in front of, you can start to think like, okay, what are some things we could develop? Some content we could develop, maybe some tools, some free stuff or freemium type things that we can put in front of them, maybe reports, white papers, research, industry research you can do. All sorts of really interesting ideas can come out of that. If you can know that person well enough to know all their problems, like from,

when they’re sitting at their desk, to when they’re going to pick up their kids from school, whatever that looks like, you can start to serve them, you know, like, like you said, Mike, before they’re even a client of yours. that’s not just like, our ads make them laugh or we’re giving away a free ebook. That’s our, that’s our thing. It could be like, Hey, are you, are you like actively building relationships with those people? And that could look like, Hey, we’re going to

we’re gonna be a part of this association or this group of insurance companies that are centered around this one thing. We’re gonna get in there and we’re gonna, hey, we’re gonna do some volunteering or hey, there’s a group of nonprofits that a lot of these companies are really active. We’re gonna get in there and we’re gonna serve these nonprofits. Whatever that looks like, are you gonna get in there and kind of

Do some of the hard work to build relationships. And not the type of relationships where it’s like, hey, see what we’re doing? You better be our clients, because we’re working really hard over here. It’s not the type of relationship where it’s like, every Friday you get a call from that person, hey, are you ready yet? Are you ready yet? Are you ready yet? sales. No, don’t even talk about sales. Go and serve people, and do it with the right heart and the right mindset.

And we’ve seen that. I mean, that just works. just you’re building relationships and maybe it’s not even the companies there that become your clients, but you’re building a good reputation with the right people. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that comes back to like, you’re in the business of serving people, right? And so even your marketing needs to serve people, even the way that you approach someone who you’ve never met, you know, maybe is in your target, right? That’s that’s the kind of person that you need to work with.

Sam Pagel (22:45.708)
you want to work with, how do you serve them from like day zero? So every message you’re putting in front of them, whether it’s a marketing message or it’s an outreach message, like directly into their inbox or on LinkedIn, or you’re putting ads in front of them, or you’re at a trade show or you’re at a conference, how can every single thing you deliver say, I care about you, I want to help you, here is value. You don’t have to pay me yet.

Like that’s not what we’re doing. We’re helping first and then we know that eventually that’s gonna turn into business because we have great services that we know they need. But the first step is just build a relationship. Yeah, I think, you know, when we talk about professional services like accounting, law firms, highly regulated and a lot of competition and you know, you’re probably not gonna blow somebody away with like

here’s all of our services and descriptions of what we do. Like, they’re probably the same as everyone else. So what’s the differentiator there? What’s the, what’s going to like, you know, put you over the edge versus another firm? Well, it’s probably going to be that relationship. I mean, that’s going to be the strongest facet. Yeah. Just speaking from experience, mean, there’s, there’s companies in that world that I wish I heard from more often. And if I’m not actively like,

go open out their website or checking to see if they’ve got some kind of marketing or YouTube videos or whatever. I don’t hear from them. I, know, it would be helpful if they took a proactive approach with their marketing or with some tools that could check up on me. Like, hey, so I’m thinking about like financial planning. I’m thinking about insurance. I’m thinking about accounting throughout the year. There’s, yeah, man, I would be so excited to hear from them. Even just once or twice a year.

when it’s not tax time or when it’s not Christmas or whatever it is. And I know everybody’s busy and everybody’s got clients to take care of and miles to feed and bills to pay. But gosh, even if your marketing was doing some of that lifting for you, right? If you had some tools, some checklists or some kind of wizards or something that you can take your customers through, whether I’m a paying customer or not, there’s…

Sam Pagel (25:07.586)
things throughout the year that those touch points are so valuable. And then yeah, it reminds me of like, yeah, these people are experts. Maybe I should schedule an appointment or whatever it is. Re-up, upgrade my relationship with them, whatever that looks like. yeah, free tools on websites, how hard is that? Your investment is minimal. And probably half of them are stuff you’re already using with your clients right now.

It’s like, okay, take that spreadsheet, that little calculator that you use with the client that you built like 10 years ago. Yeah. And, you know, obfuscate the personal stuff. Sure. Brand it, make it look nice, put it out and then start delivering some messaging around that so you can help others. I do think that this is probably the point at which you go, man, there is so much value in going really deep on a particular industry.

with your brand or a couple industries and just becoming really experts at that type of business or that type of industry. then I think you have a lot more value to bring to the table in your marketing. If all you’re talking about is like generic accounting services or generic law firm services or like, know, even within law, it’s like, okay, every firm at least specializes to some degree in some kind of law, right? It’s like, you’re not going to find

personal injury lawyers doing corporate. Like that’s just not how it works. But even like, how narrow can you get before it’s like, we don’t have enough business, right? Then maybe take it back one more step, go one step up. like, is there an industry? Is there a type of business? Is there a size of business? Is there a location or geographic area? I think those things really make for really

Not only impactful marketing, but just really helpful marketing. And that has to go beyond just putting the industry on the home page of your website. You work with these people. have to be experts. Yeah, you do. And you have to show that before they become your clients. And that goes back to what you were talking about earlier, Sam. Like, you know them inside and out. You know, you know what’s going on when they’re trying to take their kids to school or what’s going through their mind when they wake up in the morning and.

Sam Pagel (27:32.136)
Yeah, and I think within their business right if you’re doing B2B You’re gonna learn the cycles of their business, you know when things are up and when they’re down Yeah, you know when they’re engaged and not engaged you know when Like just there’s those there’s those weird cycles that are just kind of industry specific and that means that your marketing then can be timed Right. It means that again, you really know you really know them

And therefore you can deliver great value at the right time in the right place. Rather than this kind of shotgun approach that I think is hard. I think a lot of firms maybe are in that boat, David, where like, we put out all this content, we put out all this marketing for like five years and it just didn’t do anything for us, right? It didn’t have as much impact as we thought it would. It was like, yeah, because you just did it on a calendar based on like this month, this day, right? Instead of like,

What actually is most helpful for our particular niche at this particular moment? Yeah, it’s like if they send us like snow tires ads right now It’s June 30th. It’s 107 outside. That’d be funny. We’re living in Phoenix. Hmm Probably not the right time of year to be yeah or Christmas lights or something. I don’t know Yeah, like you sound tone deaf, right? Uh-huh So it’s the same thing if you know your client really well, you know the industry really well, you know what their problems are You know what’s keeping them up at night

now versus in six months or three months ago, you don’t sound tone deaf. You can be sensitive, right? You sound like you know what they’re going through. There’s an empathy there. So yeah, I think that’s really important. And then know what kind of channels make sense for that kind of message, too. email versus social or whatever. This is why copying and pasting your competition’s marketing doesn’t work.

It does not. Yeah, and I see sometimes I’ve also seen companies that are services firms, it’s B2B, it’s relationship based, but they go and they buy some kind of like prepackaged set of email blasts and videos that someone put together. And I think that’s like, it feels like you’re doing the bare minimum. Yeah, yeah. It’s not branded. It’s not.

Sam Pagel (29:53.31)
Anyone in your industry could have sent those videos and and they probably are yeah, and it’s better than nothing I’ll give you that yeah, and maybe you don’t have time or you know you just haven’t yeah, but you’re not that sophisticated yet Maybe so you found some package that okay. It’s good enough, but man. I Well just a little bit more effort. Here’s my challenge to that that type of firm Yeah, and I’ll be honest like I work with someone Personally who does this?

Right, they put out regular monthly updates and it’s generic content they bought, right? Yeah. And it’s kind of helpful and it at least puts them in front of me every month. Sure. Right? So it’s like, okay, I’m hearing from them. It’s a touch point. Here’s what I would challenge them or anyone else doing that kind of stuff. How can you add one easy layer of personalization? Put your brand on it in some way, or form. So.

Okay, let’s say you put your logo on it already. Can you take it one step further? Could you put a brief three sentence intro that you actually wrote, right, from your firm before you get to all the like templated content, right? The generic stuff that you bought, right? Yeah. Could you record your own like video? Doesn’t have to be professionally done. Take an iPhone, get, you know.

You’re managing partner. Mike, I don’t feel comfortable. I don’t have time for that. OK, fine. Can you do a podcast? Can you do like someone somewhere in that? Take a photo. Do something that makes it your firm’s piece of content and reminds me that my relationship is with you, right? With your brand. so I, you know, I can empathize. can I can understand. You’ve got a lot of stuff going on.

You’ve got kids at home, you’ve got a business to run, you’ve got clients that are upset, you’ve got some construction out the front door. I get it. You don’t have time to do all this marketing stuff. Do then, instead of the bare minimum marketing, do the bare minimum branded, authentic marketing. Because just like you’re saying, you take a photo. It’s a photo, it’s real, it’s from your office, it’s from you in front of, whatever. That at least feels more real than the repackaged.

Sam Pagel (32:14.112)
videos that everyone else is sending in your industry. Yeah. That everybody else is getting just like that three sentence blurb. Yeah. Something. Find your bare minimum viable personalized authentic branded marketing. Minimum viable branding. Yeah. I think that’s a thing. MVB. I really do because I understand people are busy. Yeah. They don’t have an unlimited budget and time. But what’s the minimum viable branded authentic thing that you can do? Yeah.

And I think it’s somewhat also like as you grow as a firm, how can you continue to layer in more authenticity? Right. So it’s like, could you get to a point where like you or you hire a ghostwriter, content writer, someone on your team is going to actually write or produce like a video every month or write a little newsletter article or you provide those insights. If you still need like the template,

Content to start from that’s fine use it as like, know The bullet points that you need in order to unblank the page, but then write it with your brand guidelines So they’re actually establishing your brand as different and exceptional and remarkable in comparison to everyone else Yeah, and put your spin on it. What’s your spin? What’s your take? There’s got to be something interesting that you can say about it. That isn’t just like

Okay, it’s the same regurgitated statement that everyone else has already made. I think the same goes for like, you can use that almost anywhere in your marketing of like, take anything that anyone in your industry is talking about, whether it’s your clients are talking about, your competitors are talking about it, it’s kind of in the industry news or whatever, take it, quote it, and then write a response from your brand’s perspective. And really like own that your brand

uniquely suited to serve a particular audience or set of audiences Uniquely right in a particular way like show people that that’s a that’s a quality tactic mic if like you find maybe like some back channels of where those people are talking and asking questions and I’ve got this problem. What do you guys do about this and You’re you know, you’re not in there to like

Sam Pagel (34:35.018)
Ambulance chase as it were but you know, you’re providing answers to some of those issues But then you’re also like hey three other people were really interested in this I’m gonna write a quick blog post or I’m gonna you know make that this month’s email that I send out You’re kind of using rear rear rear rear real real real world People real rear. my god, you didn’t say rear view people

Real world people with real world problems and you’re addressing those. Yeah, I think there’s a case made in that statement about how important it is if you’re in the marketing position in a firm, you have to be talking to people like actual clients or the types of people you would be targeting as clients, not to sell them, not in a business development way, but in a, just want to know what’s going on.

I want to understand you. want to understand how people that we want to get in front of think, what they’re talking about, what’s interesting to them, what’s got them concerned, what’s got them up at night. I can think of a lot of ways that like we’ve done that and I’m sure there’s lots more that we haven’t done. One of which is just like run a podcast and literally interview as many people as you possibly can, right? And you’ll start to find like trends. You’ll start to hear what’s concerning to people.

It can be a great lead gen tool too, right? Like it’s a great way to get your brand in front of people, start building relationships, but it’s also a great research tool. I’ve gotten so much value out of the various podcasts that we’re involved with, whether it’s this one, bringing guests on, or in specific industries, standing up podcasts or working with associations, stand up podcasts for them and interview people or just hear what’s going on. Listen to those podcasts. That’s another great thing to do.

Set up calls with people if it’s one-on-one with specific clients and just say Maybe it’s like twice a year as a marketer in the firm. You just go. All right. I’m gonna pick our top 20 clients I’m gonna reach out to every one of them and say I’d like to do a 15 minute call with you. This is not a pitch I’m not selling you anything from the firm. I just want to check in and hear what’s got you know, what are you hearing in the industry? What do you what are people talking about? What are they concerned with?

Sam Pagel (37:02.506)
is like the labor market an issue is, know, everything’s like we got more work than we know what to do with or maybe there’s not enough work or maybe there’s this regulation that’s being released. Like, what is it? What’s got everybody kind of excited or concerned or scared? Whatever it is, I think that’s a great way to stay in front of kind of what’s going on. Obviously, we’re getting into a lot more here than just where do you find your prospects? How do you get your marketing out?

Just to recap, I think a few places that you need to be thinking obviously have your persona Build some really tight personas to the types of people that you’re trying to reach user existing clients as templates for that I think that’s a great idea Think about digital and non digital experiences places you need to be right so you can think about all the standard like Big level high level places you need to be you need to be a you know find a ball on Google

You need to be findable within your industry or if you have a particular niche that you’re looking to get into, be listed in those places. Be on LinkedIn, be on social media, the right ones. Don’t over invest there. It’d be a total time suck. But then think about like kind of real world experiences. Are there events that you need to be at? Are there things that you can create even? Different collateral, different content, different experiences that you can create and invite people into.

We’ve seen a lot of success for that with some of our clients. So I don’t know, what else? Before we wrap up.

Sam Pagel (38:38.072)
Hockey boards advertising. Hockey boards. Yeah, should I be advertising my B2B professional services firm at the National Hockey League in town? The local hockey rink. At the local high school football field. Again, if you know your persona, you can answer that question pretty easily. Yeah, all my clients are left-wing enforcers, so yeah. Yeah, then I’m gonna be there. Yeah, if you find out like…

Bunch of your clients are like all super into your local hockey team. Why would you not be there? I’d get a booth And invite me start your own team. Start your own team. Great idea But yeah, it goes back to just knowing your customer. No and being obsessed with their pain points Yeah, and then you know where to talk. Yep. Yep. I love it All right. I think we got this one pretty good. We got lots more questions next time I’m excited about talk next time about okay now that you kind of know

where to go, you gotta figure out what to say.

Sam Pagel (39:48.078)
The Remarca Brand Podcast is a project of ReSound and is recorded in Tempe, Arizona with hosts Mike Jones and David Kosand. It’s produced and edited by Sam Pagel. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and at Remarcablecast.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,

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