What Elon Buying Twitter ACTUALLY Means For You! | It’s Not Magic. It’s Marketing

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Speaker 1:

Hi there. I’m Shama Hyder and… YouTube’s doing my intro for me. Hi. I think we’re officially live. Steph, can you give me a thumbs up if we are indeed officially live?

Speaker 2:

Not yet on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1:

Okay. Maybe it’ll take just a second.

Speaker 2:

There’s usually a little delay.

Speaker 1:

I’m so excited for today’s show.

Speaker 2:

Okay. Good to go.

Speaker 1:

Okay. Looks like we’re live across all the platforms. Thank you guys so much for joining this magical hour, where we talk about marketing and officially, it’s not magic, it is marketing. Thank you so much for joining and thank you for your patience, for those of you who popped in here a little bit earlier. This show gets livestreamed to over a million folks across platforms. And so, thank you so much for joining, from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for bearing with us as we iron out some of these technical challenges as we stream across multiple platforms.

Speaker 1:

I am Shama Hyder, for those of you who don’t know me, and it might be your first time joining. This is the live version of “It’s Not Magic, It’s Marketing”. I’m so thrilled that you have joined us. I am founder and CEO of Zen Media, a PR and marketing firm that works with companies across the globe. But very specifically, we specialize in helping tech-driven B2B companies on taking over the world. So that’s a lot of what I talk about even on this platform.

Speaker 1:

If you are listening to this later on the podcast version, please, I would love to hear what you think. Feel free to drop me a comment through LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, whatever your poison may be. Very excited for today’s episode. Usually, the way these go is I will pick a topic and I will talk about it. Usually, it stems from something you guys have asked, meaning the global audience has brought up a question, and other times it’s something I’m seeing with our clients, something that I feel like really needs to be addressed, whatever’s relevant.

Speaker 1:

My goal is always to connect it to you. So I love taking what’s next and connecting it for, what now? How do you actually use what is happening in the world to better further your brands, your businesses, helping your teams? So again, thank you so much for joining. If you are just joining us right now, welcome.

Speaker 1:

Today we’re going to talk about a few things. I do want to quickly say thank you so much. I recently had a birthday and your wishes and your presence have been overwhelming. In fact, if you see this gigantic… I say gigantic because if you’re on camera… And if you’re not, if you’re listening to the podcast, you may want to go look at this on YouTube, because this cup is about the size, roughly the size of my head.

Speaker 1:

I am a huge tea drinker. I love chai. And so, I got a lot of tea related items. In fact, I thought about calling this podcast originally Chai With Shama, but then I thought maybe it would offend the coffee drinkers and then we’d just be talking about tea and not so much about marketing. But maybe I should have, because that’s definitely right out of Elon Musk’s page.

Speaker 1:

It would be remiss to start the show and not talk about what everyone is talking about, which is Elon Musk’s buying out of Twitter. I’ve talked to multiple journalists this week who’ve been covering the story. In fact, I talked to a lovely reporter at Newsweek who did a piece on, “Will Twitter go the way of Tumblr or Myspace?” And I think that’s some of the fear. Absolutely not.

Speaker 1:

Look, I think, are we in for some interesting developments? For sure. I mean, Elon Musk is very much a maverick and I think it’ll be interesting to see some of the developments that happen. But I’m not scared. I’m not worried. I think he’s used to building brands. He does things his own way, but he’s also a prolific user of the platform and I think that makes a difference.

Speaker 1:

What I thought was fascinating by folks that had bought Tumblr before or what happened to Myspace… And Myspace was really early days, so they didn’t really face the challenges that I think platforms face today. The idea of misinformation at scale was not a thing for when Myspace was around. So I think we’ve come a long way from that. I think Twitter will have its own challenges, but I do believe that the team is up to it, and I think with Elon Musk’s leadership, however he decides to… Whatever direction he decides to take it in, I am very bullish on the future of Twitter.

Speaker 1:

But very specifically, the thing about Elon Musk, and look, it doesn’t matter if you love him, hate him. I never get caught up in these things because I feel like my personal opinion matters very little. What matters much more is, what does this mean for you? What can we learn? I generally love to just learn from everybody. I try not to get caught up on, do I agree with this person? Do I think they’re wonderful? Do I hate them?

Speaker 1:

I would urge you to have that lens as well, because you’ll find that even… And especially sometimes with strongest personalities, people that you feel really trigger you in some way, there’s a lot to learn. And so, I do think that with Elon Musk, there is so much that we can learn. I want to talk about Tesla for a minute because always makes me cringe when people say, “Oh, Tesla doesn’t do any marketing and that they’re growing.” I think it’s such a misconception that Tesla does not do any marketing.

Speaker 1:

Now what Tesla doesn’t do is advertising, all right. Advertising is a very small part of marketing. So generally, for the public, when you think marketing, a lot of them will think advertising, it’s synonymous. But it’s really not. Marketing is so much broader than that. It’s how you communicate your message. It’s how you reach your audience. It’s price. It’s positioning. Its place. There’s so many elements there.

Speaker 1:

Promotion is one element of it. And then, within that, advertising is a very small sliver. So Tesla doesn’t do traditional advertising. Now, I could do a whole another, and maybe I will if you guys are so curious, podcast episode on why advertising is incredibly broken. I mean, there’s so many studies out there that talk about how badly performance advertising really performs. We call it performance advertising, but really most of it is non performance advertising.

Speaker 1:

But we continue to throw money at it just because I think historically it’s what people have done. And Google, your little weasel, it’s so funny. Every time I type in a company name, which, let’s face it, so many of us, when we’re trying to find something, we’ll just go to Google, type in that name. And the first thing that pops up is the ad. It’s the link to click to the company and it’s paid. So I always think, how much traffic would someone get? They already get, they just are paying for traffic they’d already have.

Speaker 1:

So I always find that fascinating. And I’m not the only one. There’s so much research done on this. eBay, a few years ago, stopped doing paid advertising and found that it actually saved them money, believe it or not. There is so much deceit and confusion with advertising, but it continues to be a thriving industry. Now I’m not saying all advertising is equal, but very specifically, performance advertising, programmatic…

Speaker 1:

I think anyone who’s even in these fields should be brave enough to say, “Hey, there’s a lot of stuff broken here.” But back to Tesla. So they don’t do advertising, but they do a ton of marketing. In fact, Tesla outspends their closest competitors three to one when it comes to R and D, so R and D being research and development. What does this mean? And is research and development really marketing?

Speaker 1:

Well, I’ve argued for a while now that marketing actually should be considered more similar to R and D than even sales, because marketing takes time and it takes effort and there is a hockey stick effect. At some point, when it’s done right, where the right moment occurs, there’s a tipping point. That’s where you see the crazy, crazy results. The ROI on that is tremendous, but it takes a certain level of patience, hence the name of this show.

Speaker 1:

I’ve had people say really like, “It’s not magic. It’s marketing,” how did you come up with it, or why did you go with that? I think it’s really interesting because it’s a two-fold answer. One, so much of marketing is viewed as magic. We’ll sprinkle some marketing on it. I think it’s interesting that marketing is always like butter, it’s like, slather it on, throw it on, sprinkle it, a dash of marketing is what it needs.

Speaker 1:

Oh goodness. Maybe I should make a TikTok out of this, all the different ways in which marketing gets applied as if it’s this extra layer that you brush on. And it’s not, and those who are real practitioners know that. So I think there’s that element, the sense that marketing is somehow this magical thing that you can just add on afterwards.

Speaker 1:

The other side of it is that when it is done correctly, it looks like magic. So if you look at Tesla, you look at some of these brands, it’s magical, isn’t it? That they’re not advertising and yet here they are, growing, outpacing their competitors. What’s happening? What’s the magical secret? What’s the magic sauce here? R and D plays a part in it. So we think that’s a big part of it, is that Tesla does an immense amount of marketing. They just don’t call it by that, and they certainly don’t do advertising, again, which is a small sliver of what marketing really entails.

Speaker 1:

I think the second big lesson that we can take away from this, the first being this idea that, don’t confuse advertising and marketing because they’re not the same thing. Thought leadership. Now, look, I know it’s become a buzz phrase in recent years, but personal branding matters now more than ever. I mean, Elon Musk is a master of this. He really is. But we are in the age of the creator economy, the ownership economy, where personal brands aren’t a nice to have. They’re a expectation.

Speaker 1:

And leaders aren’t exempt. They really need to be setting the tone. Here’s the thing that bothers me about personal branding. People see it as this gratuitous thing like, “Oh, I’m doing this to increase my clout.” But that’s not it at all. Personal branding done well is a very altruistic way to lead. It really is wearing your heart on your sleeve. It is very much about realizing that the greater your platform, the more good that you can do out in the world. The more you can help others.

Speaker 1:

Think about all the people that you are able to empower and lift up with you when you have a platform. I, by the way, strongly advocate this for women minorities, build your platforms because that is how you will be able to lift others up. Honestly, one of the reasons I continue to do these things, and I do so much media and I embrace the limelight, it’s not because I just automatically love it. That’s not my thesis or what drives me.

Speaker 1:

I think it’s really important to be what you want to inspire in the world. And I think it’s hard to be what you can’t see. Growing up, I never saw anybody that looked like me, forget leading a company, much less on TV. I mean, yes, I saw certain actors and so forth, but the idea that a woman could be a business owner, that a woman of color, just these examples didn’t exist for me. I love it when I get emails from young women, from all over the world.

Speaker 1:

It makes me so happy because I love that I am able to use my personal brand, my platform to inspire others. And hopefully just not through maybe even the message or what I’m sharing, but just to show them what’s possible. And so, this idea of this creator economy, leaders, I think have a special responsibility. It should be reeled with thoughtfulness, hence the word thought leadership.

Speaker 1:

Now I’m not here again to discuss whether Elon is a great leader or not a great leader. I simply want to look at, what can we learn? And so, let’s look at the thought leadership aspect. When we work with clients at Zen Media, and we work with so many CEOs of the top companies, and they understand this. So that’s the beautiful thing. Whether they’re CMOs or VPs, they get it. They know that they need to do a better job telling their story, and it’s going to make a difference.

Speaker 1:

It’s going to make a difference with the type of people, the attracted the company, heck just even attracting good talent, because let’s face it, that’s a really big deal, as it should be. They’re investors. They’re customers. This isn’t a optional thing anymore. The last few years, we’ve seen a shift, and the last decade, we’ve seen a huge shift. It used to be that the more important the leader, the more distant they were.

Speaker 1:

Like if you had to go through five assistants, please hold for Ms. Hyder, and then you’d get the other person, and say, “Please hold.” And so, the more gatekeepers you had to go through, the more important that person was. That’s how you knew they were a big shot leader. You held a lot on the phone. You waited. You had to do so much, so jump so many hoops.

Speaker 1:

Now it’s the exact opposite. The more accessible a leader is, the more open they are… And Twitter is a great platform. LinkedIn’s a great platform. The more engaged they are, the more accessible they seem… Remember, I didn’t even say they are. Just the more accessible they seem, the stronger they’re perceived as leaders. It really does come down to that. These are the things that I think are very important to keep in mind for what I believe Elon Musk exemplifies and teaches us. But overall, the way the world is changing.

Speaker 1:

All right. Couple of things that I love to look at when you’re thinking about building your thought leadership. Let’s say you get it and you say, “I want to build my thought leadership. What does it look like?” One, clarify the origin story. This is very popular in comic books or this is the origin story, how someone came about to become who they are.

Speaker 1:

A lot of times, it’s very helpful to have someone else. And so, we’ve had clients where they’ve shared their story with us, and it’s fascinating or I’m just like, “Wow, this is amazing.” But they don’t see it because it’s what they’ve lived. So it’s like, “Oh, that wasn’t a big deal. Yeah, sure. I remember rescuing a child from a burning building, but that was…” And so, getting that origin story right. Where does your passion come from? Why do you do what you do?

Speaker 1:

There was a fantastic doctor I met recently who runs Pandia Health, which is a birth control subscription service. What I loved about her origin story is that she is a practitioner. She’s a mother of two kids. As a woman, she believes very strongly in making these things accessible for other women. And so, I love that. So that origin story matters. And of course, Elon Musk has his origin story. I mean, the rise of the rise of Elon Musk.

Speaker 1:

It starts even before his PayPal Mafia days. So there was even a term for the folks that started out at PayPal with the original team. Peter Thiel, I mean, so many of them have gone on to do amazing things, but they’re called the PayPal Mafia. That would have been a cool group to hang out with back in the day for sure.

Speaker 1:

The second thing is establishing a manifesto. It’s what you believe in and what you want the world to know. In Elon Musk’s case, it’s this idea of free speech. I mean, this is a hill he’s willing to die on. Now he said recently that it’s not just free speech broadly, it’s within the bounds and the rules of what the constitution allows. And so, now of course you have the Supreme Court that judges certain things when we have gray areas.

Speaker 1:

Bringing it back to you, what is your manifesto? What is it that you believe in? That’s really going to help craft that framework for where you take your brand and your company. The third is crafting a narrative based on this manifesto and origin story. This is one of the questions that we get so often. Well, people will say, “Well, aren’t people going to get tired of hearing the story?”

Speaker 1:

The answer is if people message you and say, “Boy, I’ve heard this story one too many times,” standing ovation for your marketing team because that almost never happens. I mean, think about how bombarded we are. In fact, were just on a call with a client last week who asked this question and he’s a serial entrepreneur. He’s got his own investment firm.

Speaker 1:

He publishes amazing content on LinkedIn and on social platforms. And he was generally worried that he was putting too much content out there. I said, “No, no, no, no, no.” I would love for that to be a problem for any of you watching, listening. That’s a great problem to have. The fourth element of this is creating pillar content. This is an example, by the way. Pillar content is content that you can then take, breakdown, reproduce, use in snippets.

Speaker 1:

And so, when we do this live show, or this one-hour podcast, Q and A, whatnot, we’re then able to break this apart. My team takes this, they cut it into pieces that goes on YouTube. There might be something to tweet about. There might be another little piece that comes out and it’s perfect for LinkedIn. That’s creating pillar content. The other part of it is so important. It’s amplifying this content, which is through consistency and commitment.

Speaker 1:

This is where social media comes into play, where earned media comes into play. It’s thinking holistically about how you get your message out there and how you stay in front of the audience that really matters. Look, Elon Musk is a master at this. I mean, he really does teach a master class on branding and marketing. And often, the most polarizing figures do because they’re not scared. They’re not scared of what people say. And so, there’s a lot that we can learn from them based on that.

Speaker 1:

The third aspect that I think is fascinating about specifically Tesla too, is that how much they focused on growing their share of voice. Now, SOV is the hill that I will die on, is my marketing hill, because we know that the higher your share of voice, the higher your market share. I mean, there’s so much research around this at this point. Your share of voice is pretty simple. It just means based on your marketplace, your categories, how much does your audience talk about you over your competitors? That’s the percentage.

Speaker 1:

And so you look at Tesla, compared to other electric cars, vehicles in the industry, just even by 2016, they had 83% of share of voice. Today they have more share of voice than all their competitors combined. That’s staggering. It’s a staggering amount. If you think about that in terms of dollars, so how much would this have cost them? Again, the data that I’m pulling from is 2016, so it’s a little bit older. I don’t know, quadruple it because at least we know that that’s very quantified data.

Speaker 1:

But Tesla earned more than two billion worth of free press. And we know this because there’s a metric called AVE, which is advertising value equivalency, which pretty much means if you get an editorial piece, let’s say, in the Wall Street Journal or Forbes or Anchor or whatever it may be, if you were going to pay to get an ad in that same space for that same word count, whatever it is, and the price that you pay for that, that’s essentially very roughly what you compare that paid media to.

Speaker 1:

Now I don’t recommend this as a metric to measure your overall media efforts, but it is nice and it gives a little bit of precision for those who really want to say, “How do I compare apples to apples?” If you look at that minus third party credibility, because, look, it doesn’t matter what you say about yourself. To some degree, it’s what other people say about you that’s always going to matter the most. In fact, I will tell you, one of the most gratifying things for me is when people share my content or they tag someone else because they think it’ll be useful.

Speaker 1:

One, I love that altruistic nature that when people read something, they think someone else that they care about should have this information. That’s always very moving for me. Two, it so genuinely touches me because I really, really do appreciate that they’re sharing my content, that they’re helping that reach. And so, I know that that piece, coming from someone’s colleague, is going to be more trusted.

Speaker 1:

It’ll automatically have more credibility because it’s coming from someone who they know has their best interest at heart. They may not know me like that, but they know their colleague has their best interest at heart, or their parent, or whoever it is that shared that. So third party credibility is just incredibly, incredibly powerful and just very underrated.

Speaker 1:

I also think we’re facing something very interesting right now. As we all know, there’s a lot of economic uncertainty across the board. What this translates to is that buyers become even more skeptical. They’re, let’s say the other S word, scared. They’re scared because they don’t want to make the wrong decision, especially if you sell big ticket items. Many of our clients, FinTech, manufacturing, healthcare across the board. They have bigger ticket items. It’s a B2B purchase, a B2B seal, meaning there’s generally multiple people involved perhaps in the decision process.

Speaker 1:

It’s a longer sales cycle, even without anything else. And so, now you’ve added that layer of uncertainty to that. And so, one of the things that matters, especially now in this climate, is making sure that you are doubling down on that earned media, on that third party credibility. Honestly, I’m not seeing this just because I run Zen media and we do PR. There’s plenty of times where I tell companies, “Listen, you need to wait till you have a product market fit. You need to wait till you have your ducks in a row because you’re just going to amplify.”

Speaker 1:

If you have something good, you’re going to amplify that and it’s going to go out there. If you have something that’s mediocre and you’re just not quite sure about, take the time to really perfect that. When I say perfect, I don’t mean 100%. But make sure, again, that there is product market fit, that your audience is responding positively. And then that’s how you know you can take it to the next level.

Speaker 1:

But right now, that third party credibility, that keeping your brand name out there makes a huge difference. In one of these future episodes, I’m going to cover the idea of messy middle and how people buy. This is just tip of the iceberg stuff, but people buy so differently today. I love learning from, let’s face it, like Google, LinkedIn. These guys spend millions and millions of dollars on R and D, and by all means, you should be the beneficiaries of that. You should use that research to your advantage. I certainly do.

Speaker 1:

And so, if you look at what Google calls the messy middle, it’s how people make decisions. So something may trigger something, like they triggers a buying moment or like, “Hey, we really need to look at something,” which is we really need… I’ll give an example. If someone says, “We really need to have more content. We need better content to support our sales process and for our marketing efforts. So then that begins the search, and now they’re looking.

Speaker 1:

So they’re evaluating, they’re exploring. Let’s say they reach out to us at Zen Media and we’re talking and they’re looking at other firms, and other individuals are throwing in their ideas, do we do it in-house, whatnot. So imagine an infinity loop that’s going back and forth. And then something happens over time through multiple touchpoints, they make a buying decision.

Speaker 1:

But why it’s called a messy middle is around all of this, this miasma of exposure exists. And that exposure, the more someone sees your brand, the more they trust it, just by virtue of having seen something over and over, visibility, consistency, breeds trust. Familiarity breeds trust. The more something is familiar to us, the more we trust it. So eventually as they make their decision, even if logically they’re thinking, “Oh no, we checked X box and Y box,” the amount of exposure that a brand has, has inevitably, inevitably influenced that decision in buying process.

Speaker 1:

And so, your job is to make sure that exposure is there, that they think of your brand when those triggers happen. And as they evaluate and as they explore, that you’re constantly top of mind and not an annoying in their face way, but in a way where they feel like you are the only choice, you the right choice. And so, what happens at many levels, for some firms, it’s even just getting a seat of the table, where we see clients who say…

Speaker 1:

And this really breaks my heart, where they say, “We have a better product, a better service than our competitors, but we don’t even get looked at because our competitors are so much bigger than us. They have such a bigger digital footprint. This is where I feel like it’s your responsibility to make sure that you are matching that digital footprint, the best of your ability, that you are getting invited to that proverbial deal table, because that’s the first level. Then it’s winning the business.

Speaker 1:

So anyways, on that note, let me open it up to your questions. I have Stephanie Chavez, our president at Zen Media team. Thank you so much for helping me out, Steph. We have so many questions that I think it’ll be really helpful, and I asked Steph to help moderate. We are working on this, by the way. Eventually, I’d like for you guys to be able to ask your questions where I can see you and hear you. But this is like our fifth episode in. So we’re just going to try different things and see what works. Steph, you have questions for me?

Speaker 2:

I do. I have one from David, what is the link between B2B marketing and sales?

Speaker 1:

David, I could do another podcast. In fact, I could do a whole another series on B2B marketing and sales. So thank you so much for your question, David. Let’s talk about how it’s done now. At most companies, there is no marketing. It’s just sales. Either marketing is subservient to sales, meaning they’re like an on-demand collateral center where sales, like, “I need this one sheet.” “Here you go.” “I need this.” “Here you go.”

Speaker 1:

Or they’re all going after that same what they call low hanging fruit, so the audience that’s ready to buy. And so we talk about this 95-5 rule, which again, all of this backed by science, LinkedIn actually shared this research, which said, of your entire market, only 5% is in the market to buy right now. 95% are not looking for what you have to offer. They aren’t. Marketing’s role really is predominantly for that 95%, that when they think about, when they are ready, when they move from that 95% to the 5% they think of you. They are ready to buy.

Speaker 1:

The big difference in this is also intent. Look, what you see in B2B right now is a lot of folks chasing low intent buyers, meaning they’re not interested yet. I believe it was Gartner that did this research, and someone correct me if I’m wrong. But I believe it’s Gartner. But they said that in B2B, prospects are over 60% through the buying process before they even reach out to sales. I mean, that really tells you something, which means…

Speaker 1:

By the way, all the research shows, across the board, that they don’t want to engage with the salesperson until they’re way further in the sales process. They want to self educate. They want to understand. They want to do all their own homework. Remember, before, it wasn’t really possible, because even with the internet, you just didn’t have the information. So you had to engage with the salesperson early in the process to get the info that you wanted.

Speaker 1:

That’s not the case anymore. You can do all your research more or less and then decide, “Hey, this is who I want to go with.” Or maybe you have it narrowed down to one or two whatnot. Marketing’s job is to really create that demand. It’s to make sure both, yes, that you’re funneling, so you are capturing the demand that… The market that’s ready to buy. But then you’re also getting that market excited, that wants to buy from you, that wants to work with you.

Speaker 1:

And so, I think that’s really the difference between marketing and sales. Right now, most companies aren’t doing it that way. But I think the ones that are, are just going to be heads and shoulders above the rest.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Thank you, Shama. David, I hope that answered the question. Next one is from [inaudible 00:31:40], do you think Elon’s share of voice strategy is so successful because he’s so polarizing?

Speaker 1:

Short answer, and thank you so much for your question, yes. Look, is polarization a strong magnet for word of mouth? Yeah. It gets people talking. Why do you think that at these Met Galas and these Oscars, that celebs wear these ridiculous outfits? I mean, some of them are over the top. And it’s not necessarily just because they think they look amazing, or their stylist thinks they look amazing. It’s because they know that that’s what people will talk about the next day.

Speaker 1:

It’s the pink Swan outfit. It’s over the top. And so, Elon Musk, in that way, is quite the master at creating those moments. But he’s not alone. I mean, we’ve had a series of folks with polarizing opinions. Now, if the question is, do you have to be polarizing to be able to see that same scale of visibility? I would argue that you don’t. Now, first of all, I would argue that you don’t need the scale Elon has, well, unless you’re trying to build the next Tesla. You really don’t need it in that same way.

Speaker 1:

Now do I think it’s important to have that manifesto and things that you believe in? Absolutely. By the way, I want to clarify, that doesn’t mean that you have to take really strong political views or you have to have very strong philosophical ideals. Cool if you do, but that’s not what’s really important. Your manifesto may be that it’s very important to have a workplace where employees feel like they can thrive and be their fully productive, happy selves, and that’s plenty.

Speaker 1:

There’s plenty of grain against that, where you can sharpen your sword, if you will. So great question. And no, I don’t believe you have to be that way. I mean, if you look at even Mark Cuban, I think he’s another good example. He’s not nearly as polarizing as Elon Musk is. Now some may say, “Oh, he’s polarizing.” But not nearly. On a scale, I think he’s much more subdued, yet he’s constantly in the news. He understands marketing so well.

Speaker 1:

I also see him not overspend on advertising, by the way. Very interesting when you start putting these together. Tons of earned media, understands the importance. I mean, think about it, him just being on Shark Tank, what a great opportunity for visibility and attracting the deals, which is what he’s looking for. He’s looking for deal flow. So it makes a lot of sense. Great question though. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

All right. The next question is from Kevin, is it helpful for those who aren’t Musk and they’re talking about personal branding?

Speaker 1:

Yes, absolutely. My goal with using Elon Musk for this is to help sketch out some ideas and framework for what works well. But personal brands don’t have to be loud. Susan Cain comes to mind. She an introvert and literally wrote the book, Quiet. I mean, her whole work revolves around the power of introversion and a world of extroverts. I believe her latest book, which I haven’t read, but I’m excited about is Bittersweet.

Speaker 1:

And so, she takes the opposite end of the spectrum, where she doesn’t believe in being very loud or in your face. She thinks there is a cadence and a power to the more quiet, what we might even call perhaps more subdued. So you don’t have to be that loud. You don’t have to be that polarizing. What you do have to do is the things that I outlined, which is having your manifesto, understanding your origin story, making sure that narrative is pulled together, and then sharing it consistently.

Speaker 1:

Look, at the end of the day, what you want to do with a personal brand is provide value, and be known as a category leader in your field. When people think, who do I want as an investor, why do they think Mark Cuban? Why would he be a great investor? Even if he knows nothing about your industry. Because there’s certain things you think of him first, or at least one of the top five, I think if you poll the US population, especially as an investor. And so, it’s what space do you really want to occupy in people’s minds? But great question.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. All right. This next one comes from Sarah. Can you explain a little bit more about share of voice, AVE, market share, and how that directly leads to more sales?

Speaker 1:

Sure, Sarah. Look, no company has market share without having sales. What that means is they are the market leader, so they have more revenue than their competitors. That’s given. The idea of share of voice is how much people talk about you. In fact, just today, I shared an article with our head of search, [inaudible 00:36:43], and we were talking about even your share of search.

Speaker 1:

And so, let me see if I can actually find this because I thought it was rather fascinating, because even if you look at search terms and how much your company name gets searched over competitor names, it makes a huge difference. And so, here it is. It’s share of search represents 83% of a brand’s market share. This is for Marketing Week, and this was some research done by James Hankins from IPA, which I thought was really, really interesting.

Speaker 1:

So even just looking at something like Google searches and how many branded searches, this is by the way, really low hanging fruit. If you just look at how much branded searches go up for your company name, that tells you that your earned media is working, that your share of voice is going up, because people are searching for you by name. And that’s a lot of honestly what we do with clients. We want to have people search for them by their name.

Speaker 1:

Think about, how many times do you use facial tissue versus Kleenex? Generally, you would say, “Hand me a Kleenex.” You don’t talk about facial tissue. And so, even though Kleenex is a brand, but they’ve done such a great job that they’re now mired in our minds within that category. So all of this placed together.

Speaker 1:

AVE, again, just a really nice way to measure apples to apples. Am I a huge fan of this metric? No, but until we have something better, I think it works. I think it’s very easy for people to look at that and say, “Okay, if we had advertised in this publication, or this podcast, or whatever, this is what we would have paid.” Instead, we got that earned organically. By the way, I think there is a lot of overlap and will continue to be, with PR and paid. It’s just about finding those right opportunities where it makes sense.

Speaker 1:

The goal is always to get in front of your audience and consistently stay in front of your audience in a relevant and meaningful way. Is that always going to be super easy to measure and immediate? No, but I think that’s a fools errand anyways.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Thank you. All right. The next question is from Lee. This is goes back to the sales and marketing conversation. How do you get sales and marketing alignment?

Speaker 1:

I think by making marketing… And maybe I shouldn’t say making, by letting marketing do marketing and letting sales do sales. And so, I’ve actually did a post not too long ago on LinkedIn where I talked about, maybe we shouldn’t be so focused on having alignment. I feel like we treat sales and marketing like two sides of the same piece of bread, and I’m not sure it really is. I think what marketing does can be so much broader than that and really should be. It’s much more encompassing.

Speaker 1:

A lot of times what you have marketers do today, which is collect leads, sales can do that. This is not 2004 where you need… It’s very easy to pull this. I think what marketing is really, when done right, is but building that love of your brand, where people trust it. This is marketing’s value, where ideally done right, sales becomes an order taker. Look, I don’t know any salesperson that says, “Boy, I really wish I had to work harder for that deal.”

Speaker 1:

No salesperson is going to say, “I wish this was more challenging.” So that’s how you know your marketing’s working too, by the way, when sales becomes a lot less of a struggle. It’s more effortless. It flows easier. The people coming into the pipeline are qualified. They’re interested, they’re engaged. Marketing’s already pre-sold them to some degree.

Speaker 1:

But I really do think the power of marketing is more in what I’ve called the Jaguar effect, where it builds, where it’s slow. And when that moment hits, the results that you get from what you’ve been doing are going to be more than anything else, more than a new product, more than a product market launch, more than hiring someone. The impact that you get is just so ridiculous ratio wise, but it takes patience.

Speaker 1:

And that’s the name of our show, is It’s Not Magic, It’s Marketing. But thank you. Thank you for your question. And thanks, Steph. I think we’ve got time for maybe one or two more.

Speaker 2:

Okay. I have one here from Nick. Nick’s question is, is PR a long-term strategy or is it… Can you do a short-term campaign?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Great question. By the way, just I can’t get over how big this mug is. Guys, this thing is gigantic. Well, hope you can see it. Okay. Sorry. I don’t want to get squirreled. And this is why I don’t do a podcast about tea. Although we do spill some marketing tea. All right. I will save the mommy jokes.

Speaker 1:

Nick, great question. PR is a long term strategy, but can definitely be used as a short-term tactic. And here’s what I mean. If you have a product launch, if you’re trying to get… Look, it’s called news for a reason. It has to be newsworthy. It’s something that is happening. Now it’s usually a good agency will connect the dots. So our clients don’t always come to us and say, “Oh, I’ve got this big announcement.” Sometimes they do. But a lot of times it’s our job to connect the dots to what’s happening in the world and tie in their message. It’s a big part of what PR is.

Speaker 1:

So there’s that. There’s the tactical, how do you make the message relevant? How do you get attention to something that you are trying to do? PR as a strategy and as something that just has enormous return on investment is when you commit to it as a long-term initiative. And so, there’s nothing wrong with bursts of PR activity or campaigns. The challenge sometimes I see is people plug in and plug out PR as if it’s not something that is consistent.

Speaker 1:

So it’s not like advertising. It’s not like you’re running these ads, you’re getting the clicks, fake clicks, whatever. Some of them convert. Some don’t. Media is really about building relationships and understanding that it’s… And by the way, when I say media, I don’t just mean traditional journalists. I mean influencers. I mean people in your space. I mean analysts. I mean anybody who has an impact or influences your buyer’s decisions, that’s PR. Much more broader than I think what traditional PR traditionally consists of.

Speaker 1:

This is a much broader approach to PR. In that way, I think it’s a long-term game. And look, we’re talking about Tesla today, Tesla, Airbnb, these companies have doubled down. I mean, and they’re no dummies. These companies, they’re top of their game, and it’s because they understand that it’s not just about… The tactical is nice. You take advantage of, when you have those moments, you go all out. But being consistent in sharing your narrative and keeping that origin story out there, sharing that manifesto over and over, I mean, that’s really where you see the crazy returns.

Speaker 1:

Great question, Nick. Thank you so much. Thank you, guys. Everyone who joined, I’m so appreciative. Thanks for hanging out with us. I know there’s going to be more questions than we have time to answer. Join us next week, same that time, possibly same that channel. Would love, again, your thoughts. Send me a LinkedIn message, Instagram, whatever. Choose whatever platform I’m on.

Speaker 1:

Send me a message. I genuinely love hearing from you. If you leave questions, I will do my best to answer them in our next episode. So thank you again for joining. David, how do we connect? Check out zenmedia.com. Ton of content on there. If you think we can be of help to you, send us a message. The team is amazing. It’s not just me. Our clients think it too. I’m super proud of us.

Speaker 1:

If you want to reach me, send me a message. Again, I try to walk the talk. I’m very accessible. I try to respond to everything in a timely manner, and I apologize if I don’t get to your message right away. But some way, shape, or form, I will respond. Thank you again for joining us today.

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