278: 5 Ways to Strengthen Your Brand
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Summary:
Do you have a strong brand for your pet business? Why should we be concerned about it? Our brand is being built as we operate our business so the process of strengthening our brand is purposefully steering it to better position our business in the market. We share 5 ways to start building a stronger brand today. Plus, Natasha O’Banion with Automated CEO answers, “Should I take business and marketing classes?”
Main topics:
What is a strong brand?
Why you need to strengthen your brand
5 ways to build a stronger brand
Ask a biz coach - automated CEO with Natasha
Main takeaway: Focus on the relationship with the client more than just producing content for them.
Links:
More than our logo: https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/146
Design and Branding: https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/191
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, clients, brand, pet, service, people, social media, customer, talked, messaging, easy, price, marketing, associates, promoting, posting, company, buy, work, building
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Meghan 00:10
Hello, I'm Meghan. I'm Collin. And this is Pet Sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hello, welcome to episode 278, about strengthening your brand. Hello, thank you to pet sitters associates and our awesome Patreon members who support us financially with just a few dollars every month. Thank you to our long term supporters like Jennifer, Teresa, Alicia and Katie, thank you all so much.
Collin 00:40
Yeah, we really, really appreciate it and can't do this without your support.
Meghan 00:43
So we have spent time talking about building a brand and what it means to find your brand in your business. Those are back on episode 146 and 191. So importantly, your brand is not what you say it is. It's the feelings and emotions that your customer experiences, having used your service or your products that can be hard to work through though, because we say our business means XYZ, we say our business stands for things like easy booking or professional updates or outstanding customer service. But do your customers actually feel and experience that on the back end? Have you asked them lately, if you haven't, you can use a Google Form to send out a survey to them and ask about their experience with the company. Tons of big name companies do this all the time. Whether you buy supplements online, or shoes, or even pizza, companies ask for a follow up, it may not just be a review it just how was your experience. So we should be doing the same. And you can even send those in your weekly email or your monthly email and make sure that there's an option to keep them anonymous as well, in case people don't want their name attached to their feedback, because without knowing exactly what your customers are experiencing or feeling, you'll probably never really know if you have the brand that you want. Because we all know what we want out of our brand. But the customer on the other end is that what they are experiencing, someone may tell you eventually what they think and feel about your company and what emotions your branding evokes for them. And but it may come out in a negative review or an awkward interaction. So we really want to try to catch those before they land on your Google My Business Review, or Facebook review. And so a great example of this is when you say it's easy to book, that's great. We all want that we will all want the great customer onboarding process. But if you've never actually gone through your own booking process, yikes. Well, I mean, then it may not be as easy as you think it is. Or if you sometimes get questions from clients of how do I do this? Or what's the what's the best way to book then you may need to show them or walk them through it yourself. Because if you have never ever tried to onboard yourself as a new client, you don't know what that experience is like. So is it easy? Is it difficult are there is it kind of clunky, and you need to make it more efficient, you don't know unless you try. And so that's just one example. But that process is actually the process of strengthening your brand. It's the process of looking at what you say your brand is or what your company is, and trying to make it better. And so we're really going to talk about five ways to strengthen your pet business brand and start really retaining the clients that you actually want to work with.
Collin 03:42
The first one is going to sound a little weird here, and it's be a Purple Cow in Seth Godin book, Purple Cow actually, he writes that the world is full of boring stuff, basically brown cows, which is why so few people pay attention to anything going on. Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product and your service and your company. To be perceived as valuable. Your Brand has to stand out from the herd basically being a Purple Cow. It's not just about being crazy and zany just because you want to be different. We've all seen those businesses that are way over the top. But actually, when it gets down to the nuts and bolts, they're no different at all, especially they're no different where it actually counts. So where are you already strong? Are you strong and customer service? Are you strong in your communication and your onboarding? Then identify what other companies are messaging and talking about in your market. Then message your strengths that you don't see being mentioned, mentioned the things and message the things that you are already strong at because they are core to who you are.
Meghan 04:52
Well, and we've talked about this a lot before. If you are a dog walker, there's a dog walking down the street there's probably 10 More dog walkers down the next street So differentiating yourself between your existing market and obviously, that's you. And we've talked about that before, because there's no one like you and you do your business differently than everybody else. But it can be difficult when you are trying to differentiate a dog walker from another dog walker.
Collin 05:15
Yeah. But again, it has to be come down to something that's actually substantive. It can't just be Oh, I wear blue shirts, and everyone else wears yellow shirts. What do you have that differentiates you that actually makes you stand out where it counts where people are looking for. So it really doesn't take much for this. If you have five years, if you have one year of experience of walking dogs, and maybe caring for reactive dogs, shout that from the rooftops because if you're messaging it that's going to speak to your strength is going to attract the clients that you want, because nobody else out there is messaging it the way you're going to be doing it that way. And when we work through this by identifying your strengths, see what kind of messaging is already out there. And then adapting your messaging to promote your strengths, it means that you're going to be different without having to change who you are. And then again, that that difference actually has substance behind it.
Meghan 06:07
The second aspect to strengthening your brand is being everywhere. So brand building is really a never ending process, you always want to refine it, make it better see where you can improve. And so your target audience will always expand rather than be stable. It's really vital for pet businesses to be omnipresent and shiny as customers look for really inexperienced tailored to their needs. But it also has to be backed by genuine personal interaction as well. We always talked about the relationship aspect to our businesses. And when we talk about being everywhere, that can obviously be social media. But that's also like boots on the ground marketing. So going to events, or putting out flyers in coffee shops, and business cards and vet offices and word of mouth, and yard signs and branding your vehicle that you have. And so we can build this type of brand only when considering everything from the logo to your color scheme, to even your tagline your mission statement, everything that we've talked about, that your business needs as far as branding. And so in order to stand out, a brand must be built on good consistent online presence. And it's not trying to please everyone, but it's producing value good content that helps pet parents, it's also good to associate with other strong brands. So if you are fear free certified, many, many pet parents know what fear free is. And so using that to your advantage, or if you are insured, posting that on your social media and your website, well, it's also
Collin 07:41
local brands as well, if there's a vet if there's a groomer, or if there's a dog trainer that you know, is really popular that people have positive associations with, just by associating with him. So putting on a community event or doing shared cross posting or interviews before blog on each other sites, that helps this process as well.
Meghan 07:59
And a minute ago, I had said to be everywhere on social media, that does not mean that you need to blow each one of those up, you need to be posting every day on every single platform and going hog wild on social media. Obviously, that's not what that means. But because social media isn't the be all and end all to your business. But there is such thing as social proof. So if you try to Google a business, but they don't have many reviews, their website is outdated, and they haven't posted anything on Facebook in a while. If you are like me, you'll probably try to find someone else. Especially if the website the website is big for me, if it looks like it's built in the 90s, I'm not going to probably not gonna go with that company. But when a business has a ton of engagement and a strong online presence, and they're posting, maybe not every day, but at least frequently. people, including me tend to go with that company because they are really active and wanting more eyeballs and people to see their stuff. The third
Collin 08:59
part of growing a strong brand is to focus less on content, and more on connections. Strong brands have something very striking in common here. They have a loyal connection with their clients. So they focus on building the relationship with the client more than just producing content for them to see. So Megan just talked about making things and posting things to social media and making content for advertising. But when we view what we do as How am I building a relationship, how am I making a connection, and we put that first and foremost, we really start to bring in a lot of this loyalty. And actually this is something that big companies are focusing on right this instant, because they know clients and customers are tired of seeing everything go up in price. So they've shifted their marketing to focus more on how the service or item will make that person feel their messaging also focus on what the brand stands for and what makes the brand stand out compared to others.
Meghan 09:59
Well, and we've talked about this Before be when you're crafting your social media posts, be relatable be us the emotion side of things. And that's pretty easy to do when we have adorable puppies and kitties that we are caring for and then posting on social media. It's pretty easy to get that those those feelings and those emotions wrapped up if there's a cute cat people like Oh, and here's my cute cat too.
Collin 10:22
Yeah, strong brands are personable, they are human, they have a connection. They're very you use a really good earlier making relatable. So is the client at the center of your business? Go ahead, look at your website, look at your social media posting, how much time do you spend talking about you versus the client
Meghan 10:39
on that goes to last week's episode about social media of it's the 8020 rule 20% of the time, you really should be talking about you, but 80% of the time, you need to be talking about the issues that the pet parent faces.
Collin 10:50
And when the client is at the center of our business, it changes so many of our own personal perspective. And from the business side of things, it makes the business become more approachable, because we're speaking their language, we're speaking to their problems if you just said, and we're not just talking about how awesome we are, though, we are awesome. Again, we are focusing on the client because they are what makes our business go round.
Meghan 11:12
Something that is also awesome is pet sitters associates. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, pet sitters Associates is here to help for over 20 years they have provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. And since you work in the pet care industry, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom and running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today. At pets@llc.com. You can use the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off today, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again, at pets@llc.com.
Collin 11:49
Strong brands also have a strong understanding of the four P's. Now in order to position your brand perfectly in front of your customers, you must understand and adopt the four P's which are product, price, promotion, and place. And we could probably do an entire episode on each one of these. But in summary, you must understand your product or for us in pet care, it's usually the service. So it doesn't matter what you sell, or do. It's crucial that you have a clear vision of what your product or service is, and why it's unique from others in your space.
Meghan 12:19
That's kind of what we just talked about. How are you different from the other dog walker down the street?
Collin 12:24
Yep, the second one here is price. So your pricing decisions must include how your price determination will impact your ability to provide them the your profit margins demand in your marketing strategy. But price elasticity considerations will directly influence the next two piece. But
Meghan 12:41
before you do that quick reminder, raise your prices. You don't need to do that you are worth it. And you must do that.
Collin 12:50
Thank you for that very important reminder, it's always something that we should be focused on is our price because it is crucial to our business, not just whether we have clients, but whether they pay a price that supports our business and our ability to live. So thank you for that reminder. The next p here is promotion. Once you have a service, and the price has been decided you have to promote it the right way. This includes elements like public relations, advertising, email, marketing, social media, and so much more. And the whole point of these pieces that we're gonna, that we're talking about here is that they are all interconnected. So you know, your service, you know, that product, you have set a price, then we go about promoting it appropriately. Because we've been able to identify the clients that are at the center of our business, like we just talked about.
Meghan 13:36
A great example of this is we had considered promoting our business at a home and garden show. And I thought, hey, people have homes, and they have pets, probably. So this is a great way to do it. We ended up not doing it. But we had gone to the event. And I'm glad we did not choose to do that. Because there the turnout wasn't really that great. And also it was in the middle of the day, we are trying to target busy professionals. And so the audience, there wasn't really a good fit for our business anyway. So it turns out, it was a good thing we did not do it.
Collin 14:08
Well, that's a good lead into the final p here is place. So where is an ideal place for displaying your service? Because it's essential to converting the potential customer into an actual customer. So what is this talking about? Like when is this client was this potential customer going to encounter your service? It doesn't always happen online that conversion isn't always on social media. It may be at an event but if there's nobody attending the event, that's a bad place to be to try and convert them. So a lot of times we try and get in front of them where they are experiencing that pain point. And that's why having a Google My Business listing is so critical, because that pops up right when somebody is needing a dog walker and they go in and type that in that solves their problem right there.
Meghan 14:51
So and it also depends on who your exact target audience so if you're targeting retirees in a wealthy community do Do in the newspaper, the black and white newspaper that millennials don't read anymore. But they do. Well, they read it and they see that, hey, you know, wait, this is a business that looks good. And I didn't realize that this was a thing. And I need somebody to watch my cat. Yeah.
Collin 15:18
So as you can see, just rocking one of the P's won't do you much good. All four have to be firing on all cylinders. Because let's say you have the best dog walking service in the world, which we know you do. But if you're not promoting it, who will know about it, and if no one knows about it, that's not a strong brand at all. Not only do we have no business, but that's not a strong brand. Well, and
Meghan 15:40
if your prices don't match your service, if your service is ideal, but you charge $15 a day for overnight care, you're going to attract probably not the best clients in the world, and you're going to lead to burnout. Yeah. Which is why we always want to pursue excellence in everything that we do as a pet business. So number five is sweat the details. It's about focusing on the last margins and the details of your processes and services always trying to figure out how can I make this more efficient? How can I make it better? Did you just get software? Awesome. That's 90% of the way now, are you optimizing it? Have you tried to book yourself as a client? Are you using all of the features? Are you trying to smooth out the steps? Are you trying to make it as easy for the client as possible? Your onboarding process should have no hiccups in it at all. You want it to be easy and smooth for your potential client? If you've added a new service, awesome. Are you trying to streamline it? Are you taking additional trainings to do it even better? So sweating the details also means looking at the messaging and the connections that you're making in your community? Yeah, I
Collin 16:46
have a really hard time with this one, I tend to write a caption and then send it off without a second thought. I don't even really give it a second glance
Meghan 16:54
to proofread it. Well, most of the time, you're talking to texting anyway. So yeah,
Collin 16:58
exactly. Which is not okay. It's not okay to do that. Because then what Megan does is she takes that and she works out the details. She focuses on that last 10. Or maybe, let's say honestly, just sometimes 40% and makes it as excellent as possible. So why why is this important? Why not just 80? Or 90%? Why can't that be okay? Because your clients notice. And honestly, just these days with the commoditization of technology, and everything that each business has, it's much easier to put in minimal effort and get 90, maybe 80% of the way to the finish line. So more and more businesses are doing that the bar has been raised, which is awesome. That's exactly what we want. But very few are looking at the remaining 10% and trying to make it better. And whatever that is, whether it's the onboarding process, whether that's the service, whether that's our messaging, whether that's our spelling, and our grammar, or whatever that
Meghan 17:51
is, yeah, I will say that clients do notice we have a lady who is part of a local Facebook group. And we had written what we thought was an amazing caption. And she read it and she said, you said this word incorrectly, this word is not a word. And so people do read these things they do notice, but remember that Done is better than perfect. So we are not all perfect, we can craft great social media posts. But at the end of the day, just having it done is going to be better than perfect.
Collin 18:24
Sweating, the details is all good and fine, until it starts preventing us from being able to produce work and make those connections. So if you feel like you are being limited or you are overly sweating the details and impacting your ability to do work, then definitely it is time to start focusing on just producing content because we are not trying to stop ourselves in the moment here. We do need to continue to be working.
Meghan 18:48
So why do we even bother with creating and strengthening our brand? Well, because clients are doing more research than ever. As pet care continues to go mainstream, more people find out about it. Clients are really faced with a lot of options, especially if you live in a big city with a lot of other pet care businesses. The modern consumer is willing to buy from you, but they really crave value, what can they how can they get the most bang for their buck? How are you going to really, Creek come in and solve their problem to the maximum point. So when they are searching for the most value, they consider things like research. So about 67% of the buyers journey is completed digitally. And we all know this because we all go to Google and type in best Chinese restaurant near me and it comes up so they are looking for digital ways to solve their problems. So they have a lot of information on their side about which companies have what they want and which companies can best solve their problems. The second reason why we want to help strengthen our brand as much as possible is because of what I talked about earlier Social Proof. Having a great service sometimes isn't enough word of mouth is huge in this business. But also so is the mighty Google, the mindful customer looks for reviews online, they look for social media profiles. And like I talked about earlier, if yours hasn't been updated in a while, a client or potential client may go somewhere else.
Collin 20:19
Strengthening your brand means you're better able to connect with a client's identity and preference. Clients are mindful that of a relationship between their purchase decisions in their own personal identity. They're looking to make these decisions that suit their personal their own personal brand. What do they view themselves at? What do they want to be associated with,
Meghan 20:41
which is so important to know exactly your target your ideal client, you can speak directly to them, you know, where they shop, where they go to eat, what kind of things they buy for their own pets, what kind of pets they have, what neighborhood they live in, there's so many different things to know about your ideal client. And the more that you can nail down exactly who it is, the more that you're marketing, your social media, your emails, your boots, on the ground flyers, everything that you do is going to speak exactly to that person.
Collin 21:12
All these factors play a critical role in the purchase decision of the modern client. And they're all about more than just the service. We've talked about this several times. At the core of the search when the clients are looking for you. They're looking to form a bond with a brand that they perceive as high in value and high connection with who they
Meghan 21:31
are. And there's no better industry to really highlight this than the pet industry. People see their pets as family as their children. And so the relational aspect, the emotional aspect is so easy to kind of play into here.
Collin 21:49
So how are you building and strengthening your brand? We'd love to know, send us an email feedback at Pitzer confessional or everywhere on social media.
Meghan 21:56
On our Ask a business coach segment with Natasha opionion, she's going to answer should I take business and marketing classes?
Natasha 22:03
I don't say so. I mean, I'm never not learning. My family gets on me all the time. Because I have 1,000,001 courses in my email yet we bought a course Oh, we bought and I bind them all the time on my Instagram courses, social media courses, I buy marketing, mindset, finance, there's no end to how much I pay for elevating myself. Number one, this allows me to provide even more great tips for you guys and more insight, because I'm not giving you advice from a one way mentality. And that's really what hurts. But when you get into these marketing classes, and you see what people are doing, and what's working, even if you can take just a small piece, right? So the little baby piece, from what, from what they said, it really can go a long way, the success of Brenda and Ruby has always been using different models that I've seen throughout the world. I'll go on a cruise ship, and see they offer loyalty points and loyalty rewards. And I'm like, Oh, how can I put that in my business? How can I turn this? Because I see how well it's working and I want to buy it? Why shouldn't I put those same ideas in my business? And you'll learn that in those high level classes, learning
Collin 23:10
for different perspectives. And then I think that really key aspect of going, okay, maybe I can't apply all of this to my business. But maybe what are some weaknesses that I'm experiencing? or new things that I'm trying to implement? Can I do those in different in better ways?
Natasha 23:23
Yeah, I mean, I took a class on doing a memberships just online. So it was like, This is how you're gonna have a monthly membership group. And I took a class and that was really valuable. And that's really what sparked me to go hardcore on subscription boxes, because I was like, Oh, if I can duplicate this for business owners, I can duplicate the same thing for business to consumers. Let me implement. So there's so many ideas that you do grab that you just have to keep an open mind. And it helps the bottom line for sure and helps the client experience. They're like, Oh, if I can just use you and get everything I need. Why not?
Meghan 24:00
If you would like to join Natasha's monthly membership group, you can do so at automated ceo.com and use the code P SC 20. For 15% off. Whether this is the first episode you've listened to or the 270/8 episode, you've listened to a lot of episodes. We are very appreciative that you took your time today to listen to this. If you ever have any topic suggestions or people you would like us to interview, send them our way we'd be happy to interview them,
Collin 24:27
including yourself, you can go to pet sir confessional.com/be, our guest
Meghan 24:33
we want to thank pet sitters associates and our amazing Patreon members for supporting this show and we will talk to you next time. Bye
