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Mr. Biz Radio: Ride-or-Die Marketing

Unedited transcription of the show is included below:

Welcome to Mr. Biz Radio BizTalk for biz owners during the next half hour, Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth, a leading business advisor, and two time bestselling author will cover topic that'll help business owners run their companies more profitably and more efficiently. If you're ready to stop faking the funk and take your business onward and upward, this show is for you.

And now here's Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth.

All right. Welcome to another episode of Mr. Biz Radio with me, Mr. Biz, Ken Wentworth. And this week, we are going to talk about a topic that will relate with all of you specifically business owners and entrepreneurs, but we're going to talk about marketing. So I know we've covered marketing on the show different times and whatnot, but it's been quite some time since we have, and we're getting a new, fresh perspective from someone. And we're going to talk about you. Records is ready for this one, and we're going to talk about ride or die marketing. Oh yeah. That's what I'm talking about. And joining us this week is our guests who is a five time, not three, not four, five time Ord winning advanced digital marketing strategist who helps entrepreneurs develop value-based marketing campaigns that create ride or die fans for life. So without further ado, welcome to the show, Megan Brame.

Hi Ken. Thank you so much. You had to make me rethink my counting. Like how many times have I won? Three. Four. Okay. Yeah. Five. Definitely.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, it's a, you should kind of read one of those darn things then it just shows it, look, I wouldn't say anyone, but you know, it's, it's, it's much easier to be a one-time winner than it is to be a five-time winner. Right. So

That's true. Thank you. That's that's gonna make me feel good for the rest of the day.

There you go. There you go. Well, you should feel good about that. That's awesome. So, so Megan, tell us you know, we usually like to start out tell us about your entrepreneurial journey. What's what's led you to, to be where you're at now.

Well, I would say that, Oh, it's such a convoluted story as with so many entrepreneurs. I'm sure. My first company, I started right out of college and it was a skincare and candle company or home fragrance, if you want to be fancy about it. It was this industry, darling that I was running on my own, you know, got my name in the New York Times. I got all this cool press attention, really fun collection of fans and customers. But I was burning out from it very quickly. I wouldn't give up control of anything because I was too afraid to let people in. I was too afraid to let people in to see just the rat's nest of a backend system that I had, I had created. And it was me doing the marketing, the packaging, the product development, the bookkeeping customer service. It was all of me.

So about eight, nine years into it. I had a conversation with my husband. We were just talking about our day and he had said, you know, you don't really sound like you're that happy? And it just kind of like shocked me into thinking, wait, am I not happy? Why am I, if the, if I'm not happy, what is this person who knows me so well, think I sound that way. And it became this realization that I had turned this company from a dream job into a job I hated. And I had to find a way out of it. So I ended up closing the business and walking away from it. I could have sold it, but it was like a bad relationship. You know, you just want a clean break and move on, but I had to figure out, you know, what I want to be when I grew up now.

And I started to realize that what I really love to do is talk shop with other entrepreneurs and kind of just talk about both of our journeys, all of our journeys, I guess, and figure out it was just more of my compulsion of giving people advice. So instead of just forcing people to listen to my advice, I started charging for it. I became a digital marketing strategist and I focus solely on entrepreneurs who are in the digital space because that's where I come from. That's what I know the best. And that's the, all of the ins that I have, I guess.

No, it makes sense. It makes sense. So it's, it's funny. And I know Producer Allen's, you know, we've been doing the show for almost five years now and it's, it's interesting. I, we always start talking about our guests journey and almost every time it's, it comes out of a passion or a need that you see in the market. And so it's always interesting to me and they're all different paths of course, and, and, you know, get led in different ways. And sometimes it's failure that leads you to it. Sometimes again, it's just a passion project type thing. But so it's always interesting to, to hear that and almost always is one of those two things. So I think that's interesting, but it shows, I think that you're, you know, you're into it, your heart is into it. And it's interesting. You mentioned that your husband noticed that you weren't happy.

I feel like so much, so often us as entrepreneurs, it's just so easy. And I, especially, I can imagine with your business as it continued to grow, and you weren't, you were creating or a committee, one of the Cardinal sins of entrepreneurship as you scale, and you were not delegating, but that, you know, you see where that leads. And gosh, I see it so often in businesses that are, are, you know, struggle with that. So I guess now doing what you do now as a digital marketing strategist, do you find it difficult when you're, you're talking to a prospective entrepreneur that could be a client of yours that they don't want to delegate the digital marketing to you?

Hm that's an excellent question. I don't think I run across it that often because usually by the time someone's coming to me, they are fed up and they need help. The they're trying to dig themselves out of the mess that they've created. And so I'm very sympathetic to those types of entrepreneurs, but I've never knock on wood. I've never really had someone ask me to justify what I would do for them more help them realize what their vision is, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm also curious. So I run into it every once in a while have someone coming to me and they'll say, Hey, you know what? I need a CFO. They start talking to me. And the more I talk to them, I feel like you're not really going to be a great client. And I don't mean that in a mean way.

I just mean that they're talking the talk, but they're not going to walk the walk. So they're saying, I need a CFO, but they're not going to really listen to what I have to say. They're there, they haven't come to that realization fully. Yet you run into that at all. Cause probably a lot of times you, you, I'm guessing that some of your clients are entrepreneurs who have been bootstrapping and been doing the digital marketing on their own.

Absolutely. And especially, you know, so many of the entrepreneurs that I run to myself we came about and the peak of hustle culture, you know, where it was, you keep working, you just keep working until you figure it out. And so I find that there are oftentimes that entrepreneurs are coming to me because they think that they need someone to do their digital marketing, but they're not really sure what that means. And they're just kind of going with the, Oh, well, I should have somebody doing digital marketing, but they don't have the rest of that sentence figured out I, I need somebody to do my digital work getting because blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. I do know what you mean, actually. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's an interesting, I guess, I guess with what you do and hopefully with what I do as well, as, as you mentioned earlier in alluded to is they come to you at some point, most of them are just frustrated because they maybe, maybe reach the point that you did when they're unhappy trying to do that, you know, bootstrap that digital marketing piece. And they're just not achieving the results that they, they think they could or should be achieving.

Absolutely. And I think that also marketing is such a black hole for some people, you know, just time and money and effort and you know, 10 Twitter followers, isn't going to equal $10. And so figuring out how to make marketing work for you just becomes this gargantuan task that so many people just kind of avoid completely. And then that's where I come in.

Yeah. And I think it's really important. And we'll, we'll get into this. We're almost up against a break here, but we'll get into this more in the, in the next segment, after the break. But you know, digital marketing marketing in general is one of those areas. You know, anyone who's been a little listener of the show knows. I talk about all the time is one of those areas that I suggest you do not try to DIY because having someone who lives and breathes it every day, the results they can achieve are, are going to be far in a way above what you're going. More than likely unless that's your area of expertise. So we'll get into more of that. In the second segment here, we're gonna hit a break again, we're talking with Megan Brame. You can find out more about her at meganbrame.com. It's B R A M E.com. So we're gonna hit a break here, we'll come back and give the Mr. Biz tip of the week. And we're going to continue to talk with Megan about digital marketing

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All right, welcome back to the show. It is time for the Mr. Biz tip of the week. This week's tip is if the pain of losing is not greater than the joy of winning, you are playing a game you will eventually lose. How about that? That's a, that's deep thoughts by Mr. Biz. So good. Look, I, I found this over the years, many of these tips have come from personal, you know, for me what I've seen in my own career, my own you know, my businesses now and as well as of course working with clients or anything, but it's super, super important winning is, is obviously very important in business and in life. But at some point you start to become immune to it. I almost look at it as akin to when I was in a corporate world and people would say they have higher attrition with employees and they'd say, Oh, we gotta to pay more.

We don't pay enough. Money's a short-term motivator. And I feel like, in some cases, winning can be that as well. If you are winning all the time, you almost, you don't become immune to it. I mean, but you get used to it. And so it's not that those first 10 wins mean more to you than wins one 50 to one 60. And so that's why I think the pain of losing has to be greater than that joy of winning, because I think you never get immune to the losing, right. That always stings. It always hurts. So that's why I think that's important. So that is the Mr. Biz tip of the week.

Now let's get back into talking with Megan. So Megan, tell us a little bit more about what you do. Where do I start? I just have this vision of cornering someone at a cocktail party and just there you go, there you go. So what I do is I help entrepreneurs devalue develop, I call value-based Marketing initiatives.

And we talked about it a little bit earlier before, but so many of my clients come to me because they've either dabbled in marketing or they're just afraid of it altogether. They think that, you know, I did this Facebook ad campaign and nothing happened and well, okay, what did you do with this exactly? How did this work? And so it's my job to help people come down with these details of what aspects of marketing do they need to understand for their specific business? You know, I don't like giving people ideas that involve a whole ecosystem. Like you need a LinkedIn strategy and Twitter and Facebook and things and said, it's my goal to show people where their ideal customer is, how they use these different marketing platforms and how you can use that to your advantage. So that's usually where I come in and when I say value based, I mean that I want my clients to create conversations with their customers because that's how these customers get invested in your business and become your champions, the ones that just support you through sicker thin and ride or die. And that's my goal. Whenever I talk to somebody, where are we, where have you started? If you have started at all, what kind of goals are you setting for yourself and where does marketing come into play with that?

And I think that's great because I think several things you said there, I agree with you a hundred percent. I agree with all of it, but I mean, stick out that it's very, very important. And, you know, I was alluded to it a little bit towards the end of the last segment, but you know, again, for me, as a, as a CFO, I look at it as the, again, for me, marketing is one of those things that even if you're trying to DIY it yourself, and even if you enjoy it more than likely, you're not going to achieve the same results as someone who lives and breathes it everyday, like Megan, because when you think about it, you could, you might be going along and saying, man, I'm doing great. I'm running, you know, as you mentioned, Megan, I'm running this Facebook campaign, I'm getting a 30% ROI. That may sound great, but hiring someone like Megan, you might get a 300% ROI.

Oh. And you know, as, and I'm sure you'll agree with this too. As the entrepreneur, you should be focusing on product development or business development or things like growing the business and leaving that kind of stuff to other people to do that for you.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's one of those things that happens when you get too far away from the core of your business. And again, it's easy to do as an entrepreneur, especially when you're a solopreneur and you're bootstrapping and trying to figure these things out on your own.

I completely get that. But someone like, you know, hiring a digital marketing strategist can pay for themselves multiple times over. And just that example I gave earlier that, you know, they're going to get a much better return on, on what's going on because they know the Facebook algorithm, just you picking on that. It changes all the time. Well, you know, someone like Megan is looking at this and seeing it living and breathing it every single day. Whereas, you know, you're checking it twice a week. Right. Right. And so you don't have your finger on the pulse, like someone you know, a digital marketing strategist like Megan, Megan would have.

So I think it's super important to make sure that, you know, you can, you can actually DIY your business but not to its detriment. And there's certain aspects to it. And marketing is one of them that I feel very strongly that you should not be doing that. And the other thing I'll mention why, you know, marketing is, especially in today's day and age, the digital marketing side is so important is the idea of omnipresence. You know, if you have the best product in the world, the best service, but no one knows about it, you're not able to help anyone. Right. I mean, I, and I'm sure that's part of your strategy.

Absolutely. And I think that another part of that, that comes along with it is a little bit of a mindset work, too. A lot of people get afraid to market their products because what if it doesn't work or what if someone has a bad experience or I feel guilty charging for this, it's so easy for me to do. And so more times than not there's usually a session where I'm talking with my clients about, we have to change the way that you're thinking about selling and the way that you're thinking about how your product or service is working in the marketplace, because instead of worrying about the fiscal part of it, and you have to start worrying about the transformation that you're offering and the currency is just an exchange for that transformation. And I think that once people start thinking that way, it opens up more opportunities for them, but do you

Oh yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent for sure. Yeah. I think again, people miss the boat on that it's to some extent and some of it's just because again, I, you know, I'm not making excuses for folks, but, you know, as a business owner, especially as I mentioned beginning entrepreneur entrepreneurs, solopreneur, you know, maybe getting into the same situation that you mentioned that you were in with your first business and that you've got your head in the weeds because you're trying to do 12 different things at the same time. And what that means in most cases is you're not doing any of them very well. Right. And the ones that you don't enjoy, or you're not seeing results from, you're not having any wins in, you're gonna, it's just human nature. You procrastinate those things.

And I think so many people get tunnel vision too. Of I see all of my competitors on Instagram, so I need to be on Instagram. Well, if you actually look at it, you realize that your competitors aren't Instagram because they saw their competitors on Instagram and so on and so forth. And no, one's actually sure what they're doing at all. So it's sort of like, it becomes this thing of, you need somebody that's in the field, financial marketing, whatever, who you can bounce ideas off of and get a perspective that is not as attached to the baby of your business.

Yeah. Well, and, and I, I don't want to give it away or we won't have about a minute left in a second, but I know then in the last segment we always pick the brain of our guests. And I know we're going to talk about you're going to give us some tips on how to rethink our strategy, but you know, one of the questions I get all the time, and I can't imagine you don't get it a bazillion times, are people asking, what platform should I be on? You know, you just mentioned Instagram. I get the question. People are like, should I be on Instagram? I'm like, where are your customers?

I will tell you after I got in, when I was in corporate, I got into a fight about this, like go in your corner and calm down fight.

Oh, that's awesome. Well, again, I don't want, I don't want, I can't wait to hear about that. That's going to be good. Yeah. It's going to be good stuff. So again, this week we're talking with Megan brain, you can find out moreat meganbrame.com and her last name is spelled B R A M E. www.MeganBrame.com.

Definitely follow her on social media, a lot of good stuff out there. But as we've been talking about, when we're talking about ride or die marketing, and we're going to, she's going to give us tips. And then last segment here, coming up after the break about how to rethink your marketing strategy. So what, how do you, even if you're thinking everything's going well, what are some things that maybe you should be looking at that you haven't considered in the past, that she might be an eye-opener for you? So definitely just make sure you stay tuned and we'll continue to talk with Megan after the break on Mr. Biz Radio...,

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All right. Welcome back to the show. So Megan, talk to me, let's talk about rethinking our marketing strategy. What are some, what are some things that entrepreneurs out there should be doing right now? Even if they think, as I mentioned before the break, they think everything, ah, I think I'm thinking I'm good on the marketing side, what are some things they should be considering to rethink?

I think the biggest thing is to stop getting FOMO, fear of missing out. I think that one of the biggest detriments that I see with marketing is people stretching their businesses way tooth and trying to be everywhere. You can't be everywhere. It's not an effective solution. Even, you know, giant conglomerate corporations. They might have a, a presence on every platform, but if you pay attention, you'll see that there's a couple, one or two that they really go hard on and really dedicate their selves to. And I think that that is something that a lot of entrepreneurs seem to miss because they feel scared or that they're going to miss an opportunity or that everybody else is there. So I should be too. And it just becomes this just mountain that you can't climb on your own. And so it's much better to just instead of hiking up a mountain, go find a Hill that you can work, start working on and move from there.

Yeah. And I think too, you know, the other thing to consider is it could be what you had mentioned earlier is that a lot of your competitors are on say Instagram, for example, because they see everyone else and say, Oh my gosh, I need to, you know, I need to be there. What that might be doing though, is that could create an opportunity for you on a different platform because they're spending all their time and resources on Instagram, but maybe there's an audience out there. There's a Hill, as you mentioned out there on Facebook or on Twitter or wherever, it may be YouTube, wherever it may be. And it would create an opportunity because everyone else is flooding in this example to Instagram. Whereas this creates a nice little carve-out Hill for you to climb and master.

And the funny thing is so many times when I've done data analysis for my clients, it will go on Instagram, for example, and we'll start looking at their competitors. And we realized that their competitors aren't actually being that effective on Instagram. Like they might be buying likes or they might be buying followers or something. And so they look very impressive. But once you start looking into the data, you realize what we're talking about before, where they're just sort of on there, because they felt like they have to be on there because maybe their competitor was on there. And it's just this chain of follow the leader and the leader doesn't know what they're doing. So it becomes just this fear of like, well, I see people on here, so I have to be on there. Well, not really where you have to be is where your ideal customer is and you have to use that platform the way that they use it.

So we were talking about before the break, when I was a director of marketing communications, I would get into fights with the sales department about where our presence would be most of the time. Well, both of the times that I was a director it was service-based, it was professional service based industries. And one was a recruitment firm and the other was professional certifications. They wanted to be on Instagram. And I would say, no, we're not going to be there because no one's going on Instagram, looking for jobs that are going on, LinkedIn looking for jobs. No one's going on Instagram to look for professional IOT certifications, they're going elsewhere. So rather than trying to be on Instagram and make it work for us in such a way that is so complicated and complex, let's just where the low hanging fruit is and use LinkedIn or whatever platform, Twitter, the way that our customers are using it and create lower that barrier of entry.

Yeah, I think it's great. I, you know, like you said, and not necessarily, you know, just because they want to go to Instagram, it's not necessarily to not be on Instagram at all, but don't put all your eggs in that basket. You know, like I said, I, I, that's what I tell people all the time, I'm on a clubhouse a lot of times, and we run a strategic business advice room a few times a week and we get that question fairly often in regards to, you know, again, what platform should I be on? And it's, I feel the same way. Like you should beat where your customers are, first of all. And, and I love what you said, you should be using it in the same way that they are. I mean, I think that's really important

Distinction and then you can eat there's, you know what am I trying to say? There's good parts and being disruptive, right. But if you're starting out or you have a limited time limited budget, whatever, don't put all of your eggs into this disruptive basket, go to where the lowest hanging fruit is and work that to your advantage.

Right. Because then that's going to potentially fund your ability to be more disruptive. Right.

Right. And that's what talking about disruptive and what you were saying before. I love that everybody's on Twitch now. I love that entrepreneurs are moving onto Twitch as a platform. I think that that's brilliant and a great way to utilize a platform in such a way that people are already organically using it, but adding a new niche to it. I think it's brilliant. And I'm so excited about that.

Well, Megan sadly, you're making me feel bad cause I can barely spell Twitch. Right?

You're on clubhouse. They'll look at you like that is incredible. I am not on clubhouse. So I applaud you for going on there.

You have, I, I did claim the Mr. Biz handle on triller. So I have that, but that's, as far as I've gotten on

Triller, I guess, along those lines, what are your thoughts on today?

Take your talk is great for people who are targeting a younger audience. If you are targeting someone that's gen X or baby boomer, they might be watching Ted talk, but they're not watching Ted talk for what you're offering, unless your business is funny videos or, you know, parodies or something like that. If you have a professional service business or a product based business, in my opinion, I don't think that Tik TOK is right for that demographic. I think that you're better suited on something like Instagram or Pinterest. Gotcha.

Yeah, I can, I can speak from my house. Mrs. Biz, she'll binge watch TikTok and I will find - I'll be in my, somewhere in the house and I will hear her laughing uncontrollably. I will usually find her on the couch, in the living room with a glass of wine in one hand and her phone watching Tik TOK, watching funny videos on Tik TOK and the other. So yeah, she's, she's, she's not consuming it for professional,

Right?

So what are some other things that we should be thinking about? Our marketing strategy in regards to maybe maybe some ways that we should be looking at changing things.

So I always recommend that people don't start with advertising. I think that a lot of people want to jump the gun on that and get really like, let's just go hardcore. Let's do everything. We'll start Facebook ads and Google ads and all of these things. And in my opinion, I don't think that advertising is a strategy that you should start with. I think that you need to really nail down your organic marketing so that you understand what the message is that you're delivering, who you're talking to, how they receive information and how you can help them. And not only will that help lower the frustration of the advertising campaigns, but it also ends up being way cheaper.

Sure. Well, and I love that you said that, and honestly, that tells me a lot about you Megan, in a positive way, because fit well, think about someone in your position to say you shouldn't do, you know, you shouldn't start with advertising you. If anything, you would think if you were the cheesy sales person, you'd be saying she should be doing lots of advertising. And by the way, I can help you. But I love it because I think you're exactly right. It's once you, if you're able to figure out in an organic way, what resonates with your audience, then when you move to paid, that returns on are going to be infinitely higher.

Absolutely. You'll know what you're doing. And you have, you have the system down Pat already. Now you're just adding a little boost to it. And you know, like you were saying, it's not in my advantage. It's not in my interest to tell people to go spend a bunch of money because they'll never come back to me if they don't want, if it doesn't work for them. So I'd rather just make sure that I can give people a solid strategy. That's actually going to work for their business.

Yeah. Yeah. Well then again, that says a lot about you compared to unfortunately, enough people that in the, in the business world are not thinking that way. Unfortunately, so, well, Megan, we've only got a few seconds here left, unfortunately, but anything else you want to leave us with? And some parting wisdom. Okay.

I would love, and we talked about this a little bit more, but I would love for people to download my free marketing audit spreadsheet because it can get them started on figuring out what kind of ways there they should be focusing every quarter on their marketing. It's really cool. I've been using it for years and for my clients and it's totally free. I think it's going to be in the show notes, but it's meganbrame.com/marketingaudit. You can get it. And it's one of my favorite tools. So I hope it helps somebody on the show too.

Awesome. Well, we appreciate that. Very good. Very good. Well, Megan, thank you very much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

It was my pleasure. Thank you so much, Ken. This was so fun.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well guys, thanks for listening. Have a great week. And don't forget as always cash flow is King!

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