Brand and Butter
Always straight-talking (occasionally in-your-face), Brand and Butter is the no-BS branding podcast for modern marketers and business owners. Packed with clear-cut advice on the influence and power of branding - and how pairing associations, consumer behaviour, and design thinking can impact how we see, think, feel, and even taste.
Brand and Butter serves up refreshingly honest and never-dull conversations with some of today’s boldest brand strategists and architects. Sometimes funny, sometimes vulnerable (and often unapologetically blunt), this is the podcast that you wish you’d listened to before launch.
Tara Ladd is the Founder and Brand Strategist at Your One and Only, a brand and design studio here for brands who refuse to settle. Evolving brand identities to stay relevant fusing psychology, strategy, and design.
Brand and Butter
Connection Over Conversion: Build Loyalty That Lasts ft. Oh My Digital
This episode goes deep into the strategies of purpose-driven branding and the importance of authenticity in establishing human-centric connections in the digital world. We reflect on the important role that strategic marketing plans, tailored to individual circumstances play in building genuine engagement and driving business growth.
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We've got two special guests on the show today. They are the girls from oh my Digital. They help disruptors and purpose-driven businesses stand out, make an impact and profit with great digital marketing. They were founded by two marketers Hayley and Katie. Hayley is a process, big ideas and organization, with her passion for helping businesses kick their marketing goals simple and effective content and paid ad strategies. She's been working in the marketing industry for over 10 years, mainly in the retail and agency space, specializing in digital marketing. Today, she's your first point of contact at OMD and will help navigate your first steps with the best recommendations uniquely tailored to your business, without the bullshit. Now. Katie has worked across a wide range of industries, including nonprofit, fashion and tech, and today she takes care of all of OMD's amazing clients and their projects, helping her team do their absolute best while ensuring that they are always going above and beyond to support your business in every way possible. Stick around, they have got some great things to say.
Speaker 1:You're listening to Brand and Butter a straight talking occasionally in your face. No BS. Branding podcast for modern marketers and business owners. Here for those who want to understand the influence and power of branding and how pairing associations, consumer behavior and design thinking can impact what people see, think and feel. I'm your host, tara Ladd, the sometimes funny, sometimes vulnerable and often unapologetically blunt founder and creative director of brand and design agency, your one and only Hi, everyone.
Speaker 1:Welcome to this week's episode of Brand and Butter. I've got two bloody amazing people here today who I have been business buddies with since the beginning of You're One and Only, which is a good seven, nearly seven. What's a date? Oh my god, I missed the birthday. It was like five days ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's Katie and Hayley from oh my Digital. Oh my god, I just I was like, oh, I did that. I've done that so much this month, or I've just, yeah, probably I don't actually care. Now it's gone, it's gone, I've missed the moment, but, um, yeah, so they are digital marketers that, um, yeah, I highly value and respect. They really know their shit in this space and I think that, yeah, we have. We've already had a 20 minute conversation prior to this and we just thought we'd start hitting record because I think that it had some valuable stuff in there that we don't want to touch on again because we'll probably forget. So I'm just doing the mic over to the girls and let them, introduce yourself, and then we'll pretty much continue our conversation that you weren't part of five minutes ago, so take it away girls.
Speaker 3:So if you hear my voice, I'm kat Katie.
Speaker 2:I'm Hayley.
Speaker 3:And, yeah, we are a boutique Brisbane-based digital marketing agency who've been around very similar to Tara about seven years now I think a little bit longer than that and we really help disruptors and purpose-driven businesses stand out, make an impact and profit with great digital marketing.
Speaker 3:So lots of brands come to us, you know, often wanting to work with us and just saying, yeah, I want to start ads, I want to make more sales, da, da, da, da. Or I've heard about this tactic or this tactic and I feel like I should be doing this, and our job is really educating them on what their business actually needs to be successful long-term. So that's why we really like to work with brands that have a really clear point of difference. They're doing something really valuable that the world needs and that there's kind of some existing need, existing demand for, and we really help them scale up through email marketing, ads, social media, et cetera, but always starting with that purpose at the core of everything, and that's what we do, which is why we value Align, because we're very much in the same space.
Speaker 1:But I think it's. I guess when you've come from I know you, I know your backstory, so we'll fill everyone else in in a minute, but when you've come from working in corporate and working for somebody else, found it, like you know, appealing to a certain type of creative and only churning, burning out the same thing day in, day out and it was just kind of boring and the, the brands that were bringing the money, but there was no real heart in it and you kind of like well, I have so much creativity and so much that I can offer people. I don't think that my potential is really, I guess, at use here. And I think, as I mentioned to the girls prior to hitting record, is that I believe that the real big change and I guess the creativity comes from grassroots, which is those early stage, you know, startups and small businesses that are in that space, and if we can somehow give them a voice and some kind of visibility to be able to be put in front of the right people, then brands have a social responsibility for change as well.
Speaker 1:We've seen this happen. We've seen society change, as much as people hate hearing the brands jumping on the political bandwagon and things like that, I think that it's actually really important because we've surrounded you count how many brands you can see in your room just sitting in one spot we're absolutely immersed by it on a daily basis and I think if we can wrap the intention around why you're purchasing and make it a little bit more evident of why you're buying and why they align to your identity, then I think that, yeah, you are helping to contribute to things that that matter, rather than you know going and creating something or, in your case, marketing something that you find later on down the track doesn't align with your values and you go oh, that was a waste of freaking time absolutely yeah, and it's so transparent too when a brand is just doing something because they want to tick a box versus when they actually want to make a difference.
Speaker 2:It's really, really obvious when they're just trying to do it to make sales.
Speaker 2:And I think, especially with the generations that are coming up and growing up as the new purchasers they and you know, and influencing purchasers they are so much more savvy than we ever were when we were growing up as well, and they see through it all and they recognize when someone's just trying to sell something to them. And they are so much more conscious of purchasing with brands that are making the right kind of decisions and they yeah, it's just going to be more and more evident as brands grow up that they need to either move with the times and make better decisions or brands need to be designed or developed with those sort of ethical foundations and values in place. Otherwise they're just not going to survive. They're just not going to survive this new generation of people that want more and demand more from brands. They can't just put up a post once a year to kind of align with, you know, one kind of whatever political movement it is, and say that they've done their bit and then not do anything else for the rest of the year.
Speaker 2:They need to be living and breathing those values. Otherwise people just don't, they just don't see it, don't believe it anymore.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's been so interesting for us, like because we do have really strong branding and we've invested a lot of time and strategy into that. We generally do now attract businesses that align with our values. But we've definitely had, over the years, a few inquiries come through where straight away we can just say, oh my gosh, this business really does not align with us. This is not something we could, in good conscience, like help you grow your business, because we just personally, for whatever reason, do not believe in what you're doing or we think that it's having a negative impact on the world. So unfortunately, we just can't help you and we have definitely turned clients away because of that.
Speaker 3:But, yeah, I think it's really interesting and, like Hayley was saying, and like we were chatting about earlier, tara, like it has never been. We've gone through this period where it has never been as easy to start a business and so we've seen all this saturation, all this competition, but now we're coming through, like you were saying, there's so much competition now. So, yes, in theory it's easy to start a business because you can do so many things yourself there's all these great tech tools and it's accessible in that sense. But the competition has never been so high and, like Hayley was saying, consumers have never been so savvy and had so much access to choice and to information. So if you're just out here to make a quick buck, you will not last, and that's another reason. Yeah, like Hayley was saying, we often turn people away because we're like we just don't see this having longevity and we think you need to, like go back and think a little bit more deeply about what you can offer the world.
Speaker 1:Which is good business practice, because that aligns to your values anyway of you know helping people legitimately and not just, you know, to make a quick buck for you. You know you live and breathe it and you you act on those intentions. Um, what you said, hayley, about getting with the times, I think that that's a really important thing to know it's. I think what we're seeing right now is the evolvement of the next generation of, I guess, intention. Um, and where we sit within business, we saw this with the rise of web 2.0. And for people that don't know the terminology, it's just pretty much when social media came on, which is content, you know, user-generated content, versus just someone speaking at you, you were able to engage and start conversations which happened around what was it?
Speaker 1:2007, I think I joined Facebook. I know that my friend was like get on Facebook. And I was like what is Facebook? Like get on Facebook, and I was like what is Facebook? What a stupid name. And you go back and you look at all your memories of like you know you spoke about yourself in third person. It was like two years and then I was like, oh god, eating cheese, I think something is. I'm like this is so embarrassing.
Speaker 1:But it's just, and that's also a really good way of showcasing how we use and consume and evolve with technology. But it's also taking into consideration that traditional media used to be the way that we used to market you know radio, tv and print and then we saw the evolvement of digital people getting on with their DOS mode type websites that was staggered and pixelated and then we've moved on again. But this is something that we've notoriously seen is the evolvement of technology. It's nothing new. I remember everyone being doom and gloom when social media started to take over the world and they're like it's not gonna last, it's a trend, and then it's completely consumed. You know everyone's reality and I think it's really important to be a critical thinker in the way that you, I guess, guess see your brand longevity, because sometimes people can become very fixated in the way that they set out a business model Blockbuster Not to see the, I guess, see the potential to potentially adapt even big brands that are already categorically owning the space. We saw this happen with apple taking out nokia. Um, you know this was. Nokia's were in everyone's hand when we were younger, and um now, and then a bloody computer company came out and took everyone out with a with a phone.
Speaker 1:So it's, and, if anything, we've seen this um, the rise of brands and authenticity, but it is the time, and the time at the moment is that, now more than ever, more people. It will never get easier than today um, I say that in terms of, in terms of, I guess, saturation we're seeing. I think it's something like 50 of the population now have social media and it's just going to get to the point where that evolves out. You know it's. We had the older generation that still exists and they're still, you know, savvy. But not everyone is on like we are, like you know, and it's just becoming part of normal life.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, like you said, they are absolutely savvy because they know what they're looking for. They can see bullshit, they can see when people aren't being authentic, and so now we're actually seeing which I think is not a bad thing is um authenticity in what they stand for and believe in. Um, we're seeing real people coming out from behind the generic banner of a logo and we're seeing real life connections come together, which is what we kind of want, that human-centric connection which, if anything which is why I'm studying human behavior is has an opportunity to be lost now, with the rise of AI, and so I think that those that are willing to dive down the authenticity, human centric connection with an audience are always, always going to beat out those that stay safe and generic and use technology driven content to build an audience 100%, because they're just both nodding and they're like yes, we know this.
Speaker 3:And I do think, exactly like you said, that human element is only going to become more valued, like the more AI-generated stuff that's out there. Obviously, some of it it does have value in other ways. If it's entertaining or it's interesting or it's cool to look at, that's one thing, but if you think about those things that can't replace like an actual, real person talking about their life and their experiences, like that, people will still always want to connect with that. It's just like with social media. You know it might've taken a lot of our interactions online as opposed to always being offline, but if anything like look at our relationships, it's allowed us to build relationships that we would never have had if. If we were only relying on, like you know, going to networking events. Like we live in different states, you know we probably would never have met um. So I think it'll like open up a lot of opportunity. But yeah, like you said, that that human focus is is only going to keep being more valued and more important as well, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I was just going to say even how that's showing up is changing so much, how people are connecting is changing so much.
Speaker 2:Because I think you know how it might've been, say, three years ago, where people had a lot of like Instagram group chats or you know, like people might've been commenting a lot more on Instagram.
Speaker 2:There might've been a lot more on Instagram. There might have been a lot more conversation happening in the comments, whereas now that's kind of shifted and even like the platform themselves recognise that more people talk about more people send DMs and instead of sharing things to their stories, they might just share them directly to a DM. So everyone sort of says, oh, my engagement's dropped off on Instagram. You know the platform's reducing my reach. It's actually probably more just that people are using the platform differently. But even when you see in the way that people show up with content, now that's completely changed as well. So you'll see that the people who are doing really well on TikTok are those who are sharing their personal brand, who are showing their behind the scenes, who are kind of sharing more of that raw and authentic look at, know what goes on in their lives and a kind of um not being as fake and as um kind of like aspirational, as so many of those businesses who really thrived during covid um and then you know potentially have died off since um.
Speaker 1:You know they have really she said it a lot nicer than what I would have said it, by the way I wasn't gonna.
Speaker 2:I wasn't gonna say the words I meant.
Speaker 2:But yeah, look, some of those like get rich quick kind of coaches aren't doing as well now, because people just want to see the real thing.
Speaker 2:They want to know what the real you know, they see through all the BS and they want to know exactly you know how people are actually doing things, what the real emotions are behind everyone's days.
Speaker 2:And I think that's really evident when you look at brands that are doing really well on TikTok, for example now because they're sharing more of their team, they're sharing more of the everyday struggles that they have. They're just sharing more of the like, the real day, the actual interactions people are having. And that's why I see people going live on the different platforms do really well as well, because they can actually chat to people rather than just commenting and replying to comments like a generic response and things like that. So I think even that has changed. Even just how people are showing up has changed so much and that will continue to evolve as the platforms evolve and as people kind of like need more from brands or want more from brands or expect more. It's just going to keep evolving and I guess it's just a matter of like keeping up with it at the moment and finding out what works and a bit staying true to your brand values as well.
Speaker 1:So that's yeah it's funny that you just literally dived into that, because I was about to talk about an omni-channel approach, um, which, for those that don't know, it's just being in different places, because obviously, what you get from TikTok changes to Instagram, changes to LinkedIn, changes to Pinterest, changes to so many different, and they're just social platforms. By the way, um, I had mentioned it in um another conversation I had with a business friend the other week, where most of our content or most of our traffic from our website comes from organic SEO, because we've done the work to, you know, dive in and create those keywords and those things that that people are searching for, and I think you also need to look at and SEO sounds boring. That's the problem. Seo isn't the glorified pretty Instagram or, you know, tiktok video. It doesn't sound fun, but it actually is a.
Speaker 1:You think about where people are in that buying journey and you know they're already searching for something like it's not like Instagram, where they could be anywhere, you know, on the journey of potentially looking maybe six months down the time. But when people are searching in a search engine be that TikTok, because we know that the younger gen are now going there or being on Google, we're seeing warm leads like I'm looking for this now, and if you've got that in your website copy and throughout your, you know, whatever it is that you do, then that's what's going to come up. Also, take into consideration voice activated content. Like you know, it's not just about writing how someone would type. It's about writing those short-term keywords that people are hey, siri, can you find? I was waiting for my phone to go? I did. It went off.
Speaker 3:So, I just realized I just did it.
Speaker 1:Do you know what I mean? It's like? It's being really strategic and creating pages in the backend that may not be visible on the front end, that help you to drive traffic to your website. Blogs are great for stuff like this, so it's not always. It's about finding the platform that works best for you, which is what I think you guys do really well. It's just helping people to navigate. Why would you spend hours and hours on a platform that isn't delivering you the content and the conversion that you need, when you could be somewhere else just doing half of the work and getting the results from? They're nodding, and I know they have something to say, so I'm going to stop talking and let them jump in.
Speaker 3:I was just going to say we, we constantly find ourselves educating clients, you know, or potential clients, all the time when they come to us. And this is the problem, I think, is that you know, the sexy tactics get spoken about so much more, and so a lot of, like, small to medium business owners feel all this pressure. Like I need to be on XYZ social platform or I need to be doing XYZ kind of content, and it's like that's great, cause everyone's talking about that. Same with ads as well.
Speaker 3:Like ads, everyone always thinks it needs to be social media or ads, it's like one or the other, but we're like no, what about your website? What about your email marketing? Because if those things aren't also pulling, you could pull this time and energy and resources and money on these other things. But it needs to all work together, otherwise people are going to fall out of that journey. And I think to what you were saying about SEO as well.
Speaker 3:I think often people think SEO is keywords and that's part of it, but it's really just, particularly with the way search algorithms work now and have actually for a long time but it's it's about user experience. So the biggest well, one really big part of SEO that I think people forget is it's actually just having a website that's easy and user-friendly, like that's actually a huge part of what will help your SEO. So just think of SEO as giving your customers better experience on your website. If that helps make it make a bit more sense and it makes it a little bit more tangible for you to sort of see and think about how it works. But that's a really big part of it too that I think a lot of people forget and just remember, like how you feel using different brands' websites, like you probably go on websites all the time and you're like, oh, this is so annoying, I'll just go to another one.
Speaker 3:But it's like, think about your own. Like when was the last time you actually went through it and made sure it was easy to use and it didn't have errors and technical issues or functionality that wasn't working so anyway, To be completely honest with everyone listening, right now I'm in it like almost every day.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. That's so good and.
Speaker 1:I think. But that's important as well because it's relevance, right. You're constantly updating your website. Google sees that as well. Also, here's a tip to everyone Can you just change your image names to be something that's really relevant? So every single one of my? It's not image 5937. Google can't see images that actually read the content. So if you're writing like we would do, is your one and only underscore strategy, underscore, sydney design agency, underscore and then something else. All of those things are then contributing to the search engine of keywords. So you know, I know we didn't speak about it being keywords, but it is that. And it's also time and optimization, like reduce your image sizes and things like that so that the site loads faster. But you know, these are basic, basic things, right?
Speaker 3:Like and for accessibility too. Like people can't totally see the image, they can use screen reader and they can read the alt text on the image. So it's just little things like that Super important thing you text on the image.
Speaker 1:So it's just little things like that super important thing. You just brought that up um on. If anyone goes to our website, you can see that on the side there's a little toggle um that you can convert to contrast or you can change the size. So that's just on. Yeah, so that's on for visibility purposes. Yeah, it's free plug-in just download it, just sits there. It just helps people to be able and it actually tells you how many people are using it and it's surprisingly higher than you think. Yeah, another thing that I it's I don't know, I will send it to you. Okay, I will find it.
Speaker 1:Yes, but there's another thing called speechify um that my friend told me, about, which I'm so I'm starting to screen readers a lot more because I'm able to kind of do and listen at the same time. So there's, if your words aren't, you know, set up for a visual, like the alt tag, for instance, as you said, and people are listening to because it's plugged in. It's like on my computer I just go through anything like PDFs, like emails, I could be doing something, and it will read my email to me. It's freaking cool actually. But if you haven't got things listed, you're going to miss the whole. It's the whole visual, verbal kind of alignment that you know. Build that out. But, coming back to what you said, which I think is really important in brands and values and I guess, telling that story, this is just and I will continue to sing about this until the day I die it's understanding the differences between brand and marketing, and so many people do not understand the two work simultaneously together but are just not the same thing, um, and I mean I always say that brand is who you are and marketing is telling people and educating people, um, to do that right.
Speaker 1:And there is different types of marketing. There's tactical and strategic, and so I think people think when they get a brand, is that they get the brand and it's done, and then they stop when actually, then you need to look at brand marketing which is actually telling the story, which is what you're speaking to here, which is not just sellable content, it's not just talking about your product, it's not just telling, like you know, your upcoming bloody promotion that you've got going on. That's sales. It's also, you know, promoting upcoming events, which is also tactical. It's the long game, right, it's the long storytelling of why it's hard to be in business, what you've done to change it, who the team are Like. You know there are so many things that people are buying into, and when you're pushing out a sales message, right, you're just looking at one attribute of a decision-making process. There are so many other things that people take into consideration.
Speaker 1:Do I trust this person? Am I, am? I am I going to want to? You know, give my money to this person? They might create the best. I kid you not.
Speaker 1:You may be speaking to the best visual identity agency that's going around, but if you do not align on a relationship level, the process is going to be horrible and you are not going to get the result that you want because, purely, you just don't see eye to eye, and so it's so sometimes the best is not always the one you should be working with, and they've proven this with Navy SEALs. They aren't ever the best soldier. They like kind of sit just under, because they ask them questions like you know. Know if you were in a, uh, a captured by an enemy, who would be the person that you trust the most to lead the team? Or? And they ask them all of these questions about trust and you know loyalty and because if you think you're in um a situation where that happens, you could be the best damn soldier but you could be an absolute dick and leave your team for you. You know, when they're doing like Navy SEAL stuff, they're like there's like a whole team mentality there. So they found, yeah, that they are never.
Speaker 1:I think Simon Sinek speaks about it that it's never the best soldiers that get the, it's always second down. And they've chosen this with. They've spoken about this with decision making. So like say, for instance, if I was to give you three wines and I said, okay, there's a, there's a red and a white and a rosé, and you both go red and I'm like, okay, great, red's now off the table. You can only choose between rosé and white. How many more white? Which one is the best one? Then you say white. It's like I say, how many white wines do I need to give you now to compensate for the loss of the red?
Speaker 1:And then, people go three and you go okay. So it's not that the second best is not not a choice, it's just that there's not a not enough of an offer. The second best can also win the sales game or the option to choose and get the job If they have a good enough offer to counteract the one that they think is the best in the first place. And that comes down to marketing.
Speaker 3:Yes, and I think people forget there are so many different like decision-making points that people are referencing. Price is one, brand is one, like the prestige of the brand is another. It could be convenience, like how accessible is it, how easy is it for me to get this thing? Like so many different things, you know there's hedonic needs, there's more functional needs, like, but people are using all those different things to make their decision and some of your customers, like each customer is different as well. So it's like trying to factor all of that in with your, yeah, marketing and brand too. But it's like you said, even we look at I know we talked about this on a Instagram live, we did a million years ago but it's like look at Apple, like, objectively, they don't have the latest features before other brands do, but there's still. People are so loyal to that brand because of purely the brand, how it makes people feel, like how it's seen by others, etc. So, yeah, product is one thing, brand is another thing and I really like how you said like marketing is how you tell people about it, but I also think of it as like your brand is how you make people feel as well.
Speaker 3:Like you said, it's not just visual, but that's such a big thing for us. Like we say, our values are, you know, being super honest with you, being super transparent for you, and it's one thing to say that, but it's also like how we do our reports, literally down to, like how they're structured. Every single month we go in and we're like how can we make this easier to understand? How can we put more information in here that shows our clients like what we're actually doing and working on and the impact we're making on our business, their business? Like it's how your business actually operates and how you actually work with people. Like that's, and then your brand should reflect that. It's not like saying, okay, here's what our values are, and then you put that out there and then you try to do it. You do it and then you say this is what it is, and if you don't, actually you aren't actually doing that in your business. A brand strategist can't pull that out and say because there's nothing to work with.
Speaker 1:So it's like it's what Shani from Wildspark and I had this conversation the other day, in that execution matters, so you can come up with the best damn strategy that you have. However, if you then don't execute that strategy as intended, cue you guys which, who know their shit, but a lot don't, and a lot of brands then take it and do it themselves then, it doesn't hit the same way, or you know it doesn't work because they just they just have no.
Speaker 1:Then it's, I guess we look at strategy as one whole thing. There's business strategy, then there's brand strategy, then there's marketing strategy, which then funnels into so many different subsets. You know you have sales strategy and advertising strategy and, um, you know, overarching marketing content strategy, like there are so many, so many different things, and it's, I guess, what I like to see it as it's. And people said what's the next best thing? Don't worry about it, let's strip all the bells and whistles from top line. What's your? What's your little flow chart? Look like here under the surface, because let's go back to black and white and boxes and lines. How are you doing this? You know where do you need to be, what channels do you need to be on? What are you? How are you saying it? Who's your audience? It's actually just that black and white.
Speaker 1:And once you then go, okay, that's the plan to the house, then you start to build it. But without the plan, you can't build the house. You're just chucking bricks on some shitty foundation. It's going to slide the hell away, um, once it rains, and I think that that's. That's just general consensus. For me it's like like one of the big. The first question that I ask someone that's ready to do a rebrand or a brand project is what's the goal?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we do a lot of work with goals as well, because we do find that like a lot of people come to us and they're like, oh, it's not working for me. I'm not driving any sales. And we're like okay, so what are you doing? And they's like, well, that's not a strategy, that's a tactic, like you're just putting, like they. You know, like so often people just confuse strategies what a strategy is versus what a tactic is and they're hearing people say you just need to, you know, post this and this many reels and this many stories. And it's like that's not going to work for everyone. That's not going to work for everyone. That's not going to work for every brand, that's not going to work for everyone's lifestyles and their goals. Everyone has such different needs. That's why, when we see these like copy paste strategies that get put out there, we're always just like we can't. And you know you can't just copy paste that strategy and hope it's going to work for you. I mean, it might work for you, but it's probably not going to help you with your long-term goals, because what you can actually put out, you could put together this incredible strategy, but if you can't actually execute it, if you don't have the time, the energy, the resources to actually do it, then it's not going to get you the results.
Speaker 2:And a big part of what we do when we work with clients as well as we kind of look at what their goals are, what's realistic, you know what? What are the audience sizes they already have? Do they already have a really good email marketing um system set up in place so that they can sort of attract more people and grow a list that they own themselves? They're not just relying on on instagram, which so many people do and you know, do they have a really great website that they can actually convert people on when we do attract them? Because so many people come to us and say, oh, we want you to. You know to grow, know to grow my following and it's like, okay, but why Like what? What is, what is the goal? Why do you? Why do you want more followers? What's the end goal? That can't be your only goal here. Like you actually want. You actually want sales and inquiries you know, that's the actual goal.
Speaker 2:So let's go back and let's work it out backwards from there and I think that's a big part of like what we do as well, as we always map that, map out like a marketing funnel because it's important to and this is where I think that brand piece and that building relationships piece we see so often fall through because so many people neglect that, that middle of funnel, which is so important for nurturing relationships. So, like the top of funnel is all of that like entertaining, all of the kind of like the cold audience where you're attracting new people. So a lot of people do that well. They might do like trends, they might do funny memes or they might do inspirational quotes and all of that kind of content. A lot of people do that really well and they've been doing that well for a while. So they're attracting these new people.
Speaker 2:But then when these new people land on their page, they're like oh, I don't know anything about you. You know I might see this funny reel, but then the next thing I see is is you know, all of these is um, promotional posts jammed down my throat. So they're like I have no, I have no connection with you, I feel no need to to follow your journey. I don't really care about you and they're going to forget about you and probably not follow you. So that's a big thing that we see, um, although the opposite. They just do all these promotional that they do any you know any of the top of funds. They're not finding new people. They're just sort of promoting to the same people over and over again.
Speaker 2:So it is kind of that like funnel, building out that actual strategy of making sure you've got enough new people. You've got that, you know, middle of funnel, kind of like content that's designed to share your brand values, that's designed to share why you're different to everyone else, what you're doing differently, how you're doing it all differently and getting them to know you, like you and trust you, and then from then they're going to naturally want to either work with you, refer you to other people and follow your journey from there. So that's kind of like, you know, if you don't have all those stages mapped out, then you're not going to see thousand inquiries. And that's kind of where we see a lot of people sort of saying that Instagram doesn't work for them. Or you know, whatever they're doing doesn't work and it's just because they're just putting out reels and they're not actually following a strategy.
Speaker 3:And I think one little analogy I like to use if anyone is ever stuck on, like what is the difference between strategy versus tactics? Because, like I teach marketing students at uni and when they're like new to all of this stuff, they get really confused between, like, what's a tactic and what strategy. And I tell them, I'm like it's okay if you're confused, because in industry people use those words interchangeably and they use them incorrectly, so it is confusing. But the way like I like to think about it and explain it is, if you think about your, you know your marketing efforts, kind of like a road trip. So your destination, like where you want to go, that's your goal. Okay, it's what you want to achieve. Is it sales inquiries, whatever, that's where you're going.
Speaker 3:Your strategy is like your itinerary, or your your map. So it like tells you what you need to do. It looks at the big picture, it looks at the whole journey and like what needs to be done to get to your goal. And then your tactics is like how you're going to get there. So are you going to take a car, a plane, are you going to do a bit of both? That's what your tactics are. So your tactics are kind of like a means to an end, but you cannot choose your tactics correctly or choose tactics that will work or implement tactics that will work until you've done the strategy work first, and I think that's like 100%.
Speaker 1:That's like the best thing I've ever heard. Um, like it's, it's sometimes. I was saying this to my husband this morning yeah in that sometimes you have to really bring in a. You call it. Is it an analogy? Is that what they call annotation?
Speaker 1:yeah, you know when you kind of explain to someone in layman's terms what it means, because if you're in the industry you can kind of get stuck in the terminology and it's really hard to kind of break it down. But you know it's. It's kind of like just helping people to understand that you know a tactic is very, you know it can be very helpful if it's done correctly. But it's like if, let's just say, if you were chanel, the brand, for instance, they're not going to go and use a sarcastic and funny and vulgar you know trending reel because it's not going to align to the big grand plan of what that brand stands for and represents. Um, and I think that that's what you need to understand. What brand is? It's like? Okay, um, and how I explained it to someone else is that any big agency, any big brand, has someone that is a brand manager and then or multiple, and then someone that is a marketing manager that represents different areas as well. And so the brand person is always responsible to keeping marketing on their toes about what they can and can't do, because marketers sometimes not you guys, but sometimes have this idea of getting the results so much that they can detract from what the brand stands for to get the result that they're after. However, longevity, that can actually cause a bit of impact.
Speaker 1:You know, I saw a post on the weekend I'm not going to say the brand's name, but I saw a post on the weekend that went out that went against the values of what this organisation stood for, as a quick joke, and the response was exactly what I thought it was, and so it was deleted. But I'd done a few screen grabs because I was like this is going to get deleted. I'll tell you later who it was, but I was just like you can tell to get deleted. I'll tell you later who it was, but I was just like you can tell and as the minute that it came out, everyone was severely disappointed in what they said and how they said it, and I'm like that was a tactic gone wrong and this is now going to leave a bad impression. And a bad impression is 13 times worse than one positive. Like it is, it has so much more significance. So it's so important to stick to you know what you do and how to say it. Sorry, jump in there, love. No, no, no.
Speaker 3:I was just going to say like I think this is also something we try to like coach clients on a lot, because I think there's just so much comparison. I think a lot of the time you know a small to medium-sized business owner that is trying to do all of this themselves and doesn't have that marketing team and a brand manager and marketing manager, et cetera. I think they look at their competitors and they go I want to be as successful, or at least as successful as I think my competitor is, because you don't actually really know how successful they are. That's another story. But they see them and they go oh, they're doing this, so I have to do that too.
Speaker 3:And it's constantly just educating and it's like well in, you know, in some cases, yes, but in a lot of cases no. And also, if you just go copy everything your competitor does, there's no point in your business existing Cause you're not doing anything. You, you know, have this offering for a reason, because it solves a problem that someone else isn't solving or it does it in a different way. So that's what we need to tell people and that's why there's no point. Like Hayley was saying, you can't just copy paste what else someone else is doing.
Speaker 1:It doesn't work like that and that's really important, because I did a reel the other day about why you started business. I said why did you start business? Right, right and so for, for me personally, your one and over only was never to be a big brand agency with hundreds of people. It was just never my intention. And the intention for me is to build an agency of maybe five to seven people max just fucking amazing at what they do so that we just produce really high-end. I mean I would rather have a year-long wait list out the door than to take on and hire new people just to make that quota. That's just not. I would rather have a year long wait list out the door than to take on and hire new people just to make that quota. That's just not.
Speaker 1:I would rather be, you know that VIP, you know boutique agency and so the strategies built around that, you know it's not about. It's about that quality and it's about that intention, and so it's really finding those that align to our values and what it is that we stand for. And you know and I think that that's so important because the person next to you could be wanting to build that 100 person agency on the harbor, which means that they're probably going to take on different types of clients or they're trying to throw every strategy at the wall to kind of bring in revenue. And it's so important to lead with intention. And so one of our, one of our values is bold honesty and, you know, radical transparency. So you will see me get up and swear, you will see me get up and tell it how it is. I will not bullshit around, and that is literally from every single touch point that you see, from the way that I rock up at events, to these podcast interviews, to the terminology on our website, the way that we do our emails, the way I rock up to a masterclass, like it is through and through, and even through to our visual identity, which I don't know if anyone has even noticed.
Speaker 1:We have completely changed over the year. We also did it strategically, so it was a slow burn, so that people didn't even notice and no one did. So it was like that's a strategy that I'm gonna talk about later, because everyone was just like hang on a second, you guys were teal and white, now you're black, red and really like not the same. And it was intentional because we changed to revolutionize your brand, to align more to what we stood for. Shanee pegged that too, um, and so everything was about rebellious ballsy brands, and the only way to attract rebellious ballsy brands is to rock up and be a rebellious ballsy brand, and that is just who I was as a person. So it was not actually that. Um, we weren't doing it. It's that the perception that I'd had initially wasn't the right one that painted where we were today, and so I think we're in alignment with.
Speaker 1:What you guys do is that we've seen such a huge societal shift post-COVID is that behaviors have changed. It's not the same. If you think that people are spending money the same way, like question your own spending. What are you spending money on right now? I could guarantee you it's not the same thing you were spending a year on, a year ago.
Speaker 3:This is a big conversation I've seen happening as well. It's like, oh, if sales are slow, this is what you should do, and we have been talking about that as well. But in a lot of those pieces of content I see it's all about, like, what to do with your offers and again, all these like tactical things. But what we always say number one, the very first step is actually go back, look at what you are offering, because your customers still need something from you. They still have needs, they still have goals, they still need your help with something, but that something might be a bit different. So what can you do with what you're actually offering them?
Speaker 2:or focus on different offerings that you have that are more relevant to them right now, because sometimes too, like even your customers might be different or your customers needs might've changed, like we've even seen examples where, say, for example, brands that might've had mothers mothers as their ideal audience even mothers change. Needs have changed drastically in the last few years, depending, like you know, depending on whether they even like the working from home needs have completely shifted. So they are still used, like a lot of brands are still targeting, you know, working from home moms in the same way that they did prior to COVID, but their lifestyles are totally different now. Their needs are totally different, their mindsets are totally different. Everyone has evolved, but I feel like a lot of brands haven't evolved with their customers, or even just as the generations are growing up and changing. They're still marketing to the same people, but the people that they're marketing to are living a different lifestyle now. They're not out partying and drinking anymore. They're now at, you know, they're now starting families, but they're still trying to market to these people.
Speaker 2:So I feel like brands need to also recognize that, yeah, that also their audience is changing and they need to constantly keep re-evaluating who their audience is and what they want from them, and to be doing customer research and to be evaluating their own analytics and evaluating their own data, to like their own website data, their own Instagram and social media data, just to look at how people are interacting and see whether people even want the same type of thing. Because that's something we do every year. We go back and we have a look at our content. We have a look at our best performing content. We see whether it's even still going to work again. Sometimes we repurpose it and it flops because people just don't, you know, don't, don't like the same thing yeah, they don't the same way, it's just, it changes it's it.
Speaker 1:That's it to the core of everything that I've tested for the last 12 months. It's audience analysis. Um, and there's a reason why I've gone into all this detail about it because people just think that they know their audience when really they think that actually, to be fair, they think that they have a marketing problem, when the problem is they have a brand problem. And the problem with brand isn't that you look people assuming that brand, and I just let's give a quick summary here. Brand identity is not visual identity. Visual identity is your logo. You're what you look like. It's essentially what you would walk out of the house looking like, to create that perception of what you look like, right? So this is what you stand for. Hence why I changed the visual identity, because, if we're going to go out and be rebellious, teal and white just didn't do it for me. However, the underlay of who you're attracting, the way you show up, all of these things are centric to a brand identity. The value set that you align to, the direction, the vision, mission, values like the purpose of the reasoning as to why you exist should be, and it might be that over the past few years, that has shifted for you as the founder. If you're a founder and if you haven't done that identity work to realize that, then you're going to keep promoting something that actually doesn't even align to yourself and thinking it's an audience problem when it's actually a you problem. So the last 12 months I was speaking to Hayley and Katie about this prior is that I realized that there was actually an identity issue last year for us and in order for me, as the founder, to move the business further, I actually needed to go back and reassess what I wanted the business to do, because where it was going and what I had initially planned was slightly starting to skew. Add to that the I guess the intention of, and to be fully transparent. Let's look at one of the decisions I made was to let go of our studio, which we had, and that was done strategically. It took a while because that was an emotional purchase, but it was a previous uh box ticker for us to see like to signify success.
Speaker 1:Um, and to me, letting that go was, like you know, the sunk cost fallacy of you let something that you worked so hard to get go. It feels like you're a failure because it's so deeply aligned to an identity. It's actually not, because since then you'd think since five I hadn't even had RE. So we're talking 2019 when I got the studio. And then what happened to the world after that happened was everyone started to work from home. No one gave a shit about whether I had a studio space or not, because it was so common for people to. No one has said a thing since I let that go and it was such that probably I probably spent 25 000 more than necessary keeping this thing, what I thought that was needed.
Speaker 1:So it's like just these little assessments to go back and go what is actually needed for us to succeed right now. And going back to the drawing board. And it's the same with every single person. Like we talk about mothers changing behavior, mothers will spend everything on their kids. So if you've got a product and you're saying people aren't spending, but like one of the common things that I saw was like people are spending money on Taylor Swift tickets. It's like, yeah, because it brings a freaking, guaranteed good time. But spending money on a business venture doesn't necessarily mean, a it's going to work and B it's going to be a good thing to invest in. So there's two. Again, it's a risk analysis. It's not the same. It's apples and oranges. You're not comparing the same thing. And go and look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, for instance. Mothers are going to always put food on the table to make their kids happy. So if there's the last 50 bucks in their wallet, they're going to spend it on their kids rather than themselves any day of the week. It's that basic, instinctual behavior.
Speaker 1:So I get really sick of here's me going on a rant now. I get really fucking sick of people saying if you're not doing this, this is what you're doing wrong. Let's not say that because no one knows everyone's individual circumstances. Because if we go back to where I was and you guys know the story, most people listening probably know the story but I had a child that had liver transplant. I had 37 hospital stays in a three-year period. I then had another child during the lockdown and I can guarantee you that my thought process was vastly different to what it was prior to having those kids. You telling someone that they're not doing the same thing because you're living in a very different set of expectations and life, does not mean that they're doing something wrong. It just means that we need to then allocate a different set of strategies, um and tactics to align to what they can do with the, with the plates that they have able to spin at the moment. I know that you both have something to say here, so I'm going to stop talking.
Speaker 2:No. Do you want to say Hayley? Oh no, I was just going to say yeah, that's a big part of like we're always asking it's actually on our inquiry form where how much time do you have to dedicate to marketing each week? Because for us it's the same thing. It's like if they don't, if they're really time poor, then some of our services might not be for them and we have to maybe have to rethink the way that we work together and we will obviously never want to overwhelm people.
Speaker 2:So sometimes the DIY services coming up with strategy that they can implement themselves might be more beneficial, but some people just don't have time for that. So a lot of the time it is just finding out how much time you've actually got available to do what you need and taking that pressure off yourself, because everyone has such different, you know, um, goals and measures of success and we spoke about this on instagram recently, but so many people say that all the time they're like oh, you guys are really killing it, like you guys are doing so amazing. It's like well, yes, right now we are solely you know, mostly focused on the business. Neither of us have got kids, um, and you know it is easier for us to be focused on the business, because we don't have a lot of outside things going on to take our focus away, whereas when we, you know, eventually end up having kids, then, yeah, it's going to be very different for us and we'll probably be looking I have strategies yeah, but that's and that's.
Speaker 1:And it's funny because I was on a mom's podcast a couple of weeks ago and one of the questions was what's your advice to you? Know other mothers in business? And I said to drop your expectations, not your standards. And I think the biggest thing when you enter motherhood or a parenthood not just you know for moms but is that you think that you can do the same things that you could do prior to having children, when really you think that I like to look at it like you think of your brain, like a, like a pizza or a piece of cake, and everything that you're responsible for takes that part away from you. And when, the more kids you have, the more responsibility you have. You add your husband in there too, because he's a piece of cake, um, and then you look at the things that you need to actually, and then each thing if there's a disability, if there is, you know, an impairment, or there's a responsibility or a dying parent that you need, you may not have children, but you may be a carer, like we need to consider that as well. And then you add all these responsibilities. You could be sick yourself. You add all these responsibilities to what others aren't doing and what their capabilities are and you actually need to go.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's just look at it from my perspective, and Cherie from Digital Pic picnic actually gave me some solid advice the other day and she said, tara, look at your own metrics, don't worry about what everyone else is doing, and just look at what your monthly average is and just try and beat that monthly average the next time through. She said if you're getting an average of five comments, six the next month means you've won and it's a slow burn. And I was like, yep, I. That was something that I needed to hear, because you do. It's just a natural bias for us to go and compare ourselves to other people, but not knowing what that end goal is is also really important. If you don't know what the end goal is for someone else, then it might not be the same thing. You know, and I think that that's so important for me as a business owner, it's actually not to be a millionaire. I don't want to. If if, in fact, I started to, earn a lot of money.
Speaker 1:I would be that person that would just donate a shit ton of money away, cause I just, you know, I don't like, I don't feel like I need that, but I do want to earn enough money that I can live the lifestyle that I wanted, which means that you know to be being able to kind of go on a holiday with the kids without any kind of financial burden, have the time to step away and but also be creative in that space. It was literally nothing and I would pretty much had that pre COVID. So it's interesting when you look at it in hindsight, you're like you were chasing this golden egg and then you realize in you've kind of come on the. You had the golden egg to begin with, and so now I'm not even chasing anything bigger, I'm just chasing what I had prior, and I think that that's a really good realization.
Speaker 1:When you do identity work and if you're a brand and you have scaled from the other side of things right, you need to then look at how the brand has grown, because a business brand is different to a personal brand in the fact that your business brand is a set of people with personal brands underneath it and you need to actually appeal to an audience and you also need to showcase the culture, because culture is a huge player in branding that people just completely miss and if you've got an unhappy culture, chances are your branding isn't down pat, because you have to then go back and build a strategy that makes sure that you know that's why they have cultural people in hiring these days, because it's so. You know. You have one employer employee go out and say something bad about the business and that's like do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3:so yeah, not not to mention you know certain people in the business. If they're making things not enjoyable for the rest of the team, obviously like that's a huge issue as well and it is going to show through. So that's such a big thing for sure.
Speaker 1:And, like you said, processes I always talk about, I think people negate this.
Speaker 1:Like you might have really great content but then they come through into your email and they make an inquiry and you know maybe it's that you take too long to reply or you know that it wasn't.
Speaker 1:The expectations aren't met. Like we have to look at every single step of that user experience to know what a brand experience is. It's not just the identity of what that brand looks like and how they speak. It's that making sure that that follow-through comes from every aspect, which is where you guys take it, take it away right. Like it's making sure that it's staying in line and that you're in the right places and that it's coming through. And like what you said about the website is so important as well as paid ads. I think people think it's that this pay to play is is gonna, is gonna work for them, when really it's like well, no, because if your messaging is out or you know the website isn't optimized and you lead them to the wrong place, then all of a sudden you turn around say, oh, paid ads doesn't work for me, when really it was just you didn't have the right thing set up in the first place.
Speaker 3:It's like a constant, freaking evolution of optimization and testing yeah, yeah, and that's why we're so fussy about who will take on for paid ads. And if they're not ready, if they're not in the right place, we'll let them. We'll say this is what you need to do first, like go away. You need to get these things sorted so that they actually work for you, and then come back.
Speaker 1:All right. I think this is an important thing, right? Yeah, if someone was to come to you guys for a strategy session, what would that entail?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. So we do offer those now because what we did find it's, like Hayley was saying earlier, like we have a lot of people come to us and they might not be quite ready to outsource, and I think, too, like an agency isn't the right choice for everyone. Again, I think a lot of businesses feel that pressure, like that's what they need to do to get to the next level. And, you know, an agency can make sense if you're making enough, if you're profitable enough. We look at all of those things and look at what you want to get out of it as well, to make sure that the numbers actually make sense.
Speaker 3:But a lot of the time we will talk to business owners where maybe they're not quite in that place yet and that's not the right moves for them, and we'll just be really honest. We'll be like look, we don't actually think you need this right now or you need to sort out some other things first. But, like we were saying before, a lot of the time what they're doing isn't working, not because they're necessarily doing the wrong thing, but because they haven't done that strategy work. So they're basically trying to bake a cake without a recipe. They're just making it up as they go and it's not turning out and it's not getting the result they want.
Speaker 3:So the strategy session we find can be really good, and what we'll do is we'll actually sit with you for like an hour and we can either map out your content strategy or your email strategy or an ad strategy, whatever that might be, but we take you through all of those core things Like what is actually your point of difference, what are your values, what do you actually want to get out of this, what are your goals?
Speaker 3:What does that look like? So they actually have a strategic plan to move forward and a lot of the time, if they are DIYing, now that they have that guidance, they actually can DIY a lot more effectively, whereas before they might've been struggling with it because they had no roadmap, they didn't know what to do, they were lost or what they were doing. They were just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks and it wasn't being effective. But once you've got that strategy, oftentimes that'll make all of that a hundred times easier and you actually might be able to do it yourself if you just have that little bit of guidance. So we try and offer that as like a middle ground for people that just need to get from one point to the next I think that's so important to do.
Speaker 1:This is why I've created the laboratory, which most people know. I've been harping on about this for ages. But, like I think it's so important that in those early stages of business, or even if you're in a reposition because everyone needs to understand that, if they do go through a rebrand, you're essentially starting again. Um, and I think people think that the same audience is just going to instantly love them. But but you're not, because every time and this is where everyone's stuffing up at the moment right. So this is what I say all the time Consider the market like a set of steps. Everyone, regardless of who the heck you are, unless you're in bloody utilities has taken a step down right. So where you were, you take a step down, as has everyone else. So if you're now trying to speak to that audience, you need to then understand why they're on that step, what's made them, but also the set of emotions that come with being on that step right. So if you've taken a financial hit, it's not just the matter of invest in something that gets you back in the green, it's not because you just may not have that fund, those funds anymore. And when you don't have funds. What comes with that? This is what I just spoke about at uni SA, by the way, it's why it's fresh on top of mine Emotional dissonance.
Speaker 1:It's like you know, feeling like you should be in a certain place but you're not there. And then there is a whole identity attachment to that right. You can't do the things that you were doing before. You're not showing up the. You need to have a rebrand. If you are lost and overwhelmed and confused, you need to look at your strategy. Now don't confuse rebrand with a complete overhaul of everything. A rebrand just means that you're editing part of your brand strategy and that could mean a repositioning, which is what we did, where we changed things from just being pretty open because, let's face it, we had people just being just inquiring, like it wasn't like an issue before, except then, when the market became quite condensed, we actually needed to be very specific with the type of people that we wanted to attract. That meant that we had to say in our content scaling businesses.
Speaker 2:So we didn't say for businesses, we said for scaling ballsy.
Speaker 1:So we didn't say for businesses, we said for scaling ballsy, like ballsy brands ready to scale. So we've identified and pinpointed the type of people that need to then come and work with us so they prime right. Priming for those that don't know it's when you specifically mention who you're talking to. I don't know if anyone's seen local area marketing, but they may say, hey, and then your suburb, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're like, hey, they're talking to me, I live in that suburb. That's what happens. It's called priming. They do this in emails as well, when they, you know, automate your name into it. It's a way to get you to pay attention and it actually works, regardless of what you think. Your brain is biased to many things and it fucks you over in so many different instances. But we're also seeing, also saying, off the back of that is people buying from scarcity, because they're in this whole place of an identity shift and they don't want to be there anymore and they're trying hard to get out of it. And it's just like.
Speaker 1:I like to look at it like you're running a marathon, right, you cannot expect to cross that marathon line from day one of training. It is not going to work. It is a and let's. Let's put this into tap. Right, we've got tactics and we've got the mission. So the brand strategy is we're going to run a marathon, right, that's the strategy. Then you've got the marketing plan, which we're running. We're going to figure out the training plan. We're going to have speed training, we're going to have endurance training, we're going to have heart rate training, we're going to have all these different types of trainings that it takes for you to be the best by the time you cross that finish line. And then you have tactics what heart rate monitor are you going to buy? What clothing fits best? You know? What shoes are you going to wear? What socks give you less blisters, like? All of these things are tactics that they don't make you a better runner, but they can help you to, you know, to enhance the performance, and so that's what we need to kind of also look at for the long game. But if you're not knowing you know where you need to be changing or shifting what's going to happen is that you're just going to be running with no finish line, no plan, no, nothing, and you're going to have no idea of how to get to that end, you know. So the messaging has changed for everyone because people have changed.
Speaker 1:And so look at and if you don't know, go back a couple of episodes. There's a whole thing on it, but it's psychographics. We need to be looking at psychographics, not demographics. If you have demographics, downplay your 35-year-old person that lives in this suburb and has three kids, a dog and married cool. That changes. So, specifically, if you think about the middle of COVID, you could have had someone that was a doctor versus someone that was a pilot, and both of those people would have had extremely different circumstances based off the environment that we're living in right now, and so how you would market to those two, even on paper being the exact same demographic, is very, very different.
Speaker 1:So then you look at psychographics, which you know is the internal, external motivators that the selfish desire. I always say this people that buy teslas don't buy teslas because they're environmentally friendly. They buy them because they want you to know they have a fucking Tesla, and so there's an egocentric desire in every single reason to buy, always. So what we say in terms of branding and marketing on a wider scale is that you sell the feel good message, right, you talk about the things that they will get from it and in the sales you actually speak to the selfish desire that will get them across the line and that may be, you know, do good for the environment. You know you're a great person, and then you get them in the door and then you talk to them in the sales and you go. People will be really jealous of you once you drive this car down the street. That's what they want, right, that's the hook. So it's.
Speaker 1:There's two different messages, different subsets, different ways to get to them. It's understanding audience. When you know your audience on such a deep level, you're going to know the language that you're going to need to use. However, if a person is environmentally friendly, you will be able to get that from the authenticity in what they say to you, and then you can drive home a different message and so. But you're never going to know that.
Speaker 1:So, if someone's suffering financially, this is what I'm actually noticing at the moment is that a lot of people that are helping will go out and talk about how much money they're making and they will tell them how they've got a solution, except they're actually not in the same circumstance, and so they're talking to them from a place of privilege, right, that makes me so angry, I know, don't tell me about it right? So they're talking from a place of privilege to these people of you. Know you're not earning, no're not trying hard enough or you're spending too much time with your phone, except they've actually got, they're comfortable, right. When you're financially like in a place of financial strain, you act and behave very differently. You are stressed, you're anxious, like you need something that's going to make you feel safe. You don't need someone that sits there on their perch and says you're not trying hard enough, that sits there on their perch and says you're not trying hard enough, like, fuck off. Like honestly, fuck off. Because I was like and and you guys know from personal experience, this has happened to me and I've come out of it. But I can talk to this space of how I felt and that's why, from day dot, it's always been an emotionally and an empathetic driven message, because you have no idea what someone else is going through and off the back of there are a lot of people in a lot of really bad situations and the people that are in the positive situations are probably in the top fricking 2%, and I think it's ignorant for someone to stand up to and say shouldn't you just attract the right type of people? Great, go, do that. Except, the product that you're actually selling isn't attracting those people. It's actually trying to attract the people below you. Therefore, you need to change your messaging to apply to those people, or you're going to look like a dick, and I think that that's that's what you need to actually like.
Speaker 1:If this is, let's make no mistake. Let's go back to COVID for a second. What was the message? What was the prime message that people said as soon as everyone went into lockdown? What was the message that brands put out we're all in this together. Yeah, we're not. We weren't, but that was the message that people need to hear.
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Speaker 3:It's like I like to say you know, we're actually not in the same boat, like we're on the same ocean, but we're in different boats correct you know. So it's like, yeah, the external environment may be the same, but we're all got a different set of circumstances and privilege, etc.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and that doesn't mean, I think, a lot of people are sitting here going, oh well, I shouldn't, I shouldn't do xyz, no, you actually shouldn't. If you are playing a higher, yes, yes, and I think and that doesn't mean I think a lot of people are sitting here going, oh well, I shouldn't, I shouldn't do xyz, no, you actually shouldn't. If you are playing a higher game and you don't want that, that level, then you absolutely need to speak a different message. But don't go out and try and target the audience that is in that space of emotional turmoil with a product that you're saying is going to buy the dream without having empathy in what you're delivering, because it makes you look like a snake. Yes, said it called it. I just think it's really inauthentic. And, yeah, I just see there's a lot of profiteering off a lot of people's vulnerabilities at the moment. And it doesn't sit well with me, and I think with you guys, is that we've been in the industry for so long.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, I've been in the industry for well, eight, nearly 18 years, um, and so you see the trends of what's happened. Like I was in gfc, I watched the gfc happen. So you watch the rise and fall of things and what we're seeing is just the fall of this era. Right, so it's just, it's not that it's. You look at any economic chart and things go up and down all the time and, like you know, we were at any economic chart and things go up and down all the time and, like you know, we were just in that time where things went up. If you happen to buy a house pre whatever the heck we've gone through now, then you just happen to be in a really good place at the right time trying to buy a house. This is why you see that dynamic change with audience, like you know, boomers and and the younger generation of buying a house and they're like well, we had that 13 15 interest rate hike back in the 1980s.
Speaker 1:I'm like congratulations, not the same thing my dad loves to talk about that, oh my god, that one, that one time it's like, yeah, but like, look at what else has changed in that that period. And you know it. And so it's just coming from that place of um confirmation bias of this is my. This is the way it is, this is the only it, and so it's just coming from that place of um confirmation bias of this is my. This is the way it is, this is the only way it is. It's like hang on a second, have some conversations with people.
Speaker 1:Look, read the room, um, because if what you're saying, um, you know is, is confirmed by people that are in the same circumstance as you, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're right.
Speaker 1:It just means that you're confirming your own bias by getting the same narratives delivered to you by people in the same predicament. Go outside of that space, have conversations with other people outside of your what we would call an algorithm, and you will get the real world results. And this is what's happening at the moment is, we're seeing a lot of subsets having different conversations and with that comes a threat to their identity, so people get defensive. So it's a very I'm just very careful with what I'm saying at the moment because but also not if you know what I mean, um, and which is, I guess, more over on my personal brand stuff, because I can't talk about this stuff on your one and only. But it is very much calling out societal issues and change and how we're behaving and it plays into everything we do as brands and and how we're behaving, and it plays into everything we do as brands and how we market.
Speaker 3:And I think it's a really good thing, because it's not necessarily to say every single person doing that is, you know, intentionally doing something malicious, but maybe they're just a bit misled with like how they should be messaging it all and packaging it up and communicating with their audience. So I think it just if people can listen to it from a place of I want to do better and I want to serve my audience better, then they should really be just listening to you and taking on board what you're saying. To be honest, the one that gets triggered by it and has an issue with it is probably doing the wrong thing.
Speaker 1:Oh, totally.
Speaker 1:But I loved what you said before when you were talking about, like you know, identifying the issues in the strategy.
Speaker 1:What I actually really think that startups or beginning stages or even people in a rebrand, you know, in that like crucial moment of of you know, making a change and doing some growth is is actually getting a bit in the nitty gritty, right it's.
Speaker 1:It's so at the moment, I'm writing code for the website Like I've gone back to startup, like scarcity, right, so I've had to scale back. I'm getting back in the code. I'm having conversations with people like I'm doing that nitty gritty stuff. But you know what that does it finds the problems. It finds the problems and it makes you understand how to solve them so that when you do get bigger, you can then understand what made those things happen, where the problems were, where the gaps were, cause I can guarantee you, if you're in one place and you're so close to being here, there's a bridge, there's a gap, there's a bridging gap that you need to fill, and what I see is that, like you said before, about offers and finding an offer that works, sometimes it's actually not about finding a new offer, it's just about making your offer better.
Speaker 3:Yeah, or it could be something you already have, but it's just like oh, maybe you have this thing over here that's actually more relevant right now, so talk about it more. It's not this other thing that nobody wants right now.
Speaker 1:That's what we've done. So we've moved more away from visual identity, which is obviously we can do that, but it's actually more about the creative strategy and figuring out ways to develop that. You know, because if you think about a visual identity, that's great. Now you go out to the market and you look great, but you still have no idea what you're doing. You've spent all this money and you've got these beautiful assets, but you're actually not understanding anything. And this is what I see a lot of businesses looking for the best designer but not actually the best strategist. Like, if you work with a strategist, it doesn't actually have to be able to roll that out across the board, but like, yeah, I think getting into the nitty gritty just helps. You ask questions, like you're more on that front line.
Speaker 1:If something's not working and people are getting the shits because it's taking too long, then you're going to know that there's a capacity issue or you know that timeframe is an issue and that there's probably a want in speed and time from the client and you're not meeting those expectations. So how do you? How do you solve that? And I think that that's just. It's actually. It's so glorified that the problem is so much bigger than what it is, but it's always, always the smallest things. It's like we talk about employees wanting more money. Most of the time, they just want more time. We've seen people and I said this too, too. I said this so many years ago like so many years ago, if my boss had allowed me to work from home, I would have taken a pay cut. Wow, well, you think about it. When I was traveling to the city every day, that was 15 hours of time a week wow, back home, oh, sydney, yeah two days.
Speaker 1:Yeah me getting a pay cut. Working from home saved me two days of time.
Speaker 2:Wow. I think it all comes down to like asking the right questions and like asking the right people the right questions, too, because I think a lot of people just go straight to social media to put up like polls or questions, stickers and things like that, but they aren't necessarily your customers or they aren't necessarily the people that are actually influencing decisions. And I think, too, you need to go a bit deeper than that. Like Katie and I, for example, we regularly ask our clients for feedback, so we give them feedback forms to fill out and we ask them questions like does the experience that you receive from us reflect what you see on our socials or what you see on our website, or is it? Have we met the expectations that you had of us when you started working with us? What do you like, what do you not like, what doesn't work, what is not really working for you? And we ask all of those sort of questions to find out, you know, because we want to make sure that, if we are putting out a certain image of what it's like to work with us, that that is reflective in what they're actually getting.
Speaker 2:And we go one step further as well we ask our team the same questions. So we actually, when a team member leaves us, we actually have an off-boarding call and we ask them off-boarding questions. And we sort of ask them questions like would there have been anything we could have done differently to have kept you and would you come back? Is, would you recommend us to a friend to work with us? You know, um, is there anything process wise? Is there anything, um, you know, work wise in terms of the kind of work you were doing, that we could have done differently, that you would have liked more um. And we ask all those questions and we ask them about current team as well. We constantly check in with them. So we have performance reviews, but they're more like, you know, just like check-ins to see how they're going. But we do that.
Speaker 1:But we do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, kind of like proactive check-ins to see you know how they're feeling, if they like the work that they're doing. And you know, in the case of some of our team we've been able to you know they've gotten a bit stagnant with what they were doing, they weren't really enjoying it as much no-transcript able to have this open conversation where they felt like they could chat to us about that, and we've been able to structure the business in a way that you know it's going to benefit the business and it's going to benefit the team and our clients are going to be happier because we're all happier and I feel like a lot of the time it's just asking those questions because without knowing, without asking those questions, you don't know, because that's a big part of you know.
Speaker 2:We've had the same issue with trying to decide whether to get an office space. We want an office space because we want to be able to film content and it goes for us filming the behind the scenes content with the team and being able to create that team rapport and have that team time together is really important. But none of us want to work full time from an office.
Speaker 2:So, we want to. We need to find something that gives us that balance. So you know but that was something that you know we asked the team. We're like, do you even want to work from an office? Like, do you ever you know how often would you want to work from an office? We just sort of assumed that they might want that, but we didn't actually know. So we thought, you know, in times like that, it's really important to actually ask the hard questions. You might not like the answers, but if you're out there making these decisions and these huge decisions that might be impacting your customers and your clients and your audience, but you don't actually have any data to base it on, you could be totally tanking your brand without even knowing it.
Speaker 1:Yep, a hundred, any data to base it on, you could be totally tanking your brand without even knowing it. Yeah, 100. Couldn't have said it better myself. I lit literally. When was that? March, I think.
Speaker 1:So I started to take action february it was march, kind of rolled around. I sent out like essay of questions I to my favorite clients. Yeah, um, so there was, there was a choice of the client that I wanted to attract, right, so I made sure that the questions were sent to the clients that I wanted to attract, um, and I said also rip it apart. I said there's no feelings that are going to be hurt here. See this from an outside perspective. I want to see, and because they trusted who we were, they were able to deliver a really honest and thankful for us.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, a lot of the time it was um, there was a time restraint so that we were missing time. Like there was reasons for this, obviously during that time. But, um, when we go back and we look at it and I scoped time, I'm like there was a lot of um things that we were doing to make up for certain like time losses which was actually impacting you know all of, and so there was. It was just able to identify a kink in the process that we didn't realize was happening when someone brought it to our attention. And I think you just have to swallow your ego a little bit, like we're all. Like I said, we're stuck in our own biases and thinking that we're amazing at what we do and everyone really loves what we do, except we're just not um, and I love the fact that you asked your team. There are so many people that don't take on board what their team want and what their team, and I think that when you have a team that is so driven by initiative because they're reaching the same values and the same goals and on the same path to do the same thing, you get buy-in, and not only that, you get suggestions. So when the team were, we had the team um prior we were all like firing, why don't we try this? Like, why don't we do this? And they would give me the ideas that I didn't think of. And you know, like you said, about asking them what they wanted to do, we tried to span that out. You know, the issue with that is that you sometimes don't want to just give them all the good stuff and not do the good stuff yourself, because then you can become a little bit resentful. So it was just a finding that balance, but I think that that's, yeah, it's. It's honestly just it. Sometimes it's the smallest change that you need to make, and for us it was that.
Speaker 1:I think, for service wise is that I actually just cut everything out. We're now we now do three things, that's it. It's like it's like, um, you know, strategy, um, it's like insights and and like diagnosis pretty much. And then there's like visual execution. That's it bang, bang, bang.
Speaker 1:And now everything that we do it fits into those three things and nothing further than, like you know, we had things on environmental displays and websites and all this, and I was like I actually don't. I fucking hate designing websites like I with a passion. I don't want to do it anymore. So I got rid of it and so now I actually align with so many other people. I'm like do you guys want to be my website? People like like here are like suggested people and that actually works really well for our clients, because then they get to choose who does that version of what they want and it's just such a curated experience but also gives so many different other businesses the option to kind of have input, and it's just actually a really cool collaborative process, also great for marketing when everyone shares the project at the end, by the way.
Speaker 1:Um, so like, if you think about it from, I guess, the wider scheme of things, it's like make it cognitively easy for that people to be able to go. That's what they do, and I know that. Let's see if it worked. But for the last 12 months, for me it was about making sure that we were seen as a psychology driven agency that focuses on, you know, visual execution and strategy. And now I'm getting people say, oh, she's great, like, you know, she's great strategy, like they're really good with psychology, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, but in that time we had to then push out content that aligned to that, which took a really long time. People don't just go bang. It's like this whole nurture process realigning with an audience, finding out who it is like, figuring out what's working. And now I can say it's been nearly one whole year later that it's finally started to come to fruition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a long game every day of the week.
Speaker 3:And so many people just aren't willing to work on those things that will pay off long term.
Speaker 3:It's like, unfortunately and I think part of it, I have to say as well, is like, I think, for a long time, thinking back to maybe 10 or 15 years ago, like it was so easy, maybe not even that long ago, maybe five years ago like people would be like oh, I just made an Instagram account and I just grew all these followers overnight just by engaging with people and that was how I got sales on my Shopify store and I did it all myself.
Speaker 3:And it's like that's awesome and that worked for you so many years ago. But things don't work like that now and I think there's so many people selling courses, et cetera, or sharing these things based on what worked for them years ago, but they're sharing these really tactical things that change all the time, rather than the strategy things that don't change, and so I think people feel like, oh well, I should just be able to do that as well, and so they expect it to be this overnight success, when it doesn't actually work that way, and we know because we haven't been an overnight success and we've worked yeah, and we know that.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, yeah, I love yeah, and I love what it's almost like a win when we see each other win as well, because like you've seen the work, like it's gone in, so it's kind of like you know it's it's a long, it's a long game. But coming back to what you just said, then I saw this morning there was a reel that was of this girl like putting something on her.
Speaker 1:She was drinking like a green smoothie. She was like, um, my husband told me that if I was to get to 10,000 followers in 30 days, that, um, you know that he'd buy me coffee every day for 30 days or something, right, she's at 80,000, right, um, and I think that that's hilarious, but I also think it's very dangerous, because there's people in the comments going I'm just here to see your husband buy you coffee, or I'm just here now.
Speaker 1:Exactly. And so now what you've got is 80,000 people, and so even one said I'm going to be wondering why I'm following you in six months time, but I hope he buys you the coffee. And so I'm just sitting there going well, that's great. Now she's got 80,000 followers. Instagram thinks that she's gone really great. She's going to put content out that speaks to her business. That's going to have absolutely no alignment to whatever it was that people followed her for, and she's going to actually tank because the people that are following her aren't following her for the business. They're following her because they want to see her husband buy coffee and unless that becomes part of the brand story, it's not going to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's needs to now be really strategic into how she wraps this up into the brand story, cause I think that her husband now needs to become a character in the fucking story in order for her to sell her product and become relatable with her audience. And I'm just like it's cool that you did that, but now what's your goal? Because you've got the attention, but it's now like, what do you want that attention to do? Because going viral isn't great unless the virality is aligned to the strategy that's going to monetize whatever it is that you're doing. Otherwise, you're just going to be these people. It's gonna look like you haven't worked and you're gonna actually be in a worse place to begin with going viral for the wrong reasons will hurt your business more than it helps your business like time oh my god, we speak for ages um this.
Speaker 1:This is like a five-part series by the way yeah anyway. So I guess what's the biggest takeaway that you want people to see right now? Like I think, what? What are you seeing that people are doing and making mistakes that you just kind of want to identify to help them to get on the right track?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think really put your blinkers on when you are scrolling through social media and reading, like social media tips. Some of them can be helpful, but just remember when you're looking at them, like they're not customized to you and where you're at in your business. So just remember when you're looking at them, like they're not customized to you and where you're at in your business. So just remember where you're at and don't be afraid to ignore all of that and just go back to the basics of what am I doing? What makes me different to competitors? What do my customers need? Talk about that. That's what you need to do first and foremost as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that that's bang on the money. What about you, Hayley? Same advice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think probably's bang on the money. What about you, hayley? Same advice. Yeah, I think probably. Yeah, a big thing is just trying to spend less time comparing yourself to others. So definitely, like, if you need to mute accounts, if you need to block accounts, um, especially competitors, if they're someone that you're finding that you accidentally, yeah, yeah, we've had to block competitors just from like, without even realizing that you're.
Speaker 2:You know you're consuming their content because they're posting so frequently that you're starting to adapt their mannerisms or adapting their content style or their messaging and things like that. Block it out so that you have that creative space to be able to create your own unique messaging. Stay true to your own brand and, yeah, just stop comparing yourself to others, because you just don't know what. You don't know their story.
Speaker 1:You don't know their goals. You don't know their story.
Speaker 2:You don't know their goals, you don't know their debt, you don't know. You know you don't know their stress levels. Just because they're putting up you know, these videos of them smiling and happy and achieving things, it doesn't mean that's the actual reality. Everyone can put up a highlight reel. So, yeah, absolutely. I think just sticking true to what you want to achieve, um, and just staying in your own lane and only comparing yourself to your own success and what you know your past self, is probably the best, the best piece of advice.
Speaker 1:I think that's so important because I was recently told by someone of a competitor who actually really respect and they were saying, yeah, like they're making a lot of money and they're doing really well in terms well, they the money for the business. They had a lot of money and they're doing really well in terms of, well, they the money for the business. They had a lot of money coming in from the business, they'd grown the team, they were getting some reputable work, except the founder's lifestyle hadn't changed. They were still.
Speaker 1:Because then and I think people need to understand that every phase of growth becomes a new, different identity set that you need to step into. And so when you start to hire people, you move from creative to then people manager or to delegator, um, and like people, please ask in some instances and it's like you need to forward, think what the predicament will be once you then get to this space. What does that, what does that look like and what frameworks are you going to have in place? Because that next stage you could grow super quickly, but if you then move into a place that you're not ready for could actually be your demise as well. We've seen people, we saw this happen during cover, people's businesses grew quite rapidly.
Speaker 1:Um, and then what did they do? They hired quickly and then it all fell apart, and so it's just making sure that you understand what that level is, because managing people is hard and with that, get more mental load, right? So then you've got to think about other bodies and their emotions and what they're going through at the same time as running a business and your own emotions and everything else that you've got and, I think, keeping that into consideration. So this person had grown they've grown massively. Their brand was actually they've grown to too many people. I that gave me instant anxiety when they told me 11.
Speaker 1:And I was like, oh, this is just um, and I think we had five at the time. I was like this is, this is getting like to max. I'm I don't think I could do any more than this, unless you had to hire someone else to manage the team. Um, and they said, yeah, they were still working all night, still doing the grind, not having a life, and I'm'm like that's not what it's about, like it should be able to run without you, especially without many people. So there's obviously it doesn't mean that, because everything looks great. The salary, her salary was still the same too. She hadn't paid herself anymore.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, and it was like, oh man, like I felt so shit for her like yeah, it was just like build it so that you can leave it. Um, not build it so you can just become more involved. That's the kind of. So thinking about the strategy and what it what it is that you actually want also entails thinking about the hiring that you're going to need to do. You know who do you want to fill this spot. If you hate this job like fuck, I know which jobs I want to get rid of, let me tell you like.
Speaker 1:But I yeah, I've got a list that is on my list, yeah, right so you have the list get rid of it so that you can stay doing the things that you love, or you'll resent the out of your job. Like so yeah, the strategy is not just um, you know, marketing strategy, it's business brand strategy. It's like growth strategy and sales strategy. There's so many different things and if you don't know what any of this means, go to bloody a chat gpt and ask it to give you a summary of what they mean. Like honestly, are you for everything?
Speaker 1:like just get it to give you a summary. Um, but anyway, um, it's been amazing chatting to you guys today, as usual. Um, let them know where can everyone find you so we mostly hang out on Instagram or TikTok.
Speaker 3:you'll find us at oh my Digital Also. If you Google oh my Digital, you will find our website as well, which is quite handy and breaks down everything we do. You can download our service guide, which will break down all the ways we can help you and what things cost as starting price. So we have that again transparency, so you know what you're in for and you can see if it might be the right fit for you. And yeah, we'd love to hang out with you on socials where we share honest, very honest posts. Yes, we share highlights, but we also like to keep it real and have those good conversations on there with other business owners as well, which is really awesome.
Speaker 1:I love that and I think if anything's to show if you're listening right now is that how much we actually align with our businesses, and I think that that's something you take into consideration is that when you lead with intention and by values, you attract like-minded people um, not just to work with in terms of suppliers, but also in terms of clients and audience. And when, yeah, people, it's just natural that people attract who they are like. They will go to people that are like them. Think about your own friend set, and so the more you're yourself, the more you're likely to bring in the people that you. You know your vibe attracts your tribe. You know what they say? Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 3:All right girls. Thanks so much for the chat today. Thank you, tara. Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1:Did you like that episode? I hope so, because if you did, why don't you head over to whatever platform you listen on and rate and review? It's much appreciated and helps others know what we're about. If you want to follow us, you can find us at yourwannanonly underscore au on Instagram.
