“Building A Powerful Brand” was taken from a Live Business Success Factory Webinar hosted by Nicola Cairncross with special guest Mark Donnan)
Nicola: Okay. Welcome everybody to this Business Success Factory webinar. I’ve got a very special guest on the line as you can hear and his name is Mark Donnan and I’d like to introduce him to you. He is — this must be his four, four, fifth webinar now. How are you getting on Mark?
Mark Donnan: Oh, I’m enjoying every minute of it.
Nicola: [Laughter] Liar. I mean, the technology is so good but when it lets you down it’s so painful. But we’ve got you there in the end today which is actually fantastic.
Mark Donnan: Oh, I’m sorry to delay everything but I’m here now. Well, we’ll try and makeup for it in, in quality.
Nicola: Yes. Now, some people know who you are and some people don’t. I met you and we started to talking about money, money making, money management and stuff but it turns out as I’ve got to know you better that you’re actually a bit of a brand expert and specialist, aren’t you? Tell us a bit about that.
Mark Donnan: Well, I have a lot of experience in branding. I would never actually call myself an expert per se because means I’m not willing to still be learning, I enjoy it and have been involved in sales and marketing brands and a number of different roles, global corporations as well as local corporations. I had a lot of success at a very early stage in my career which gave me a little bit of I guess a bit of authority.
I have some qualifications in marketing and I’m professionally qualified in marketing as well and, and I’ve been associated with some of the biggest brands both in the UK and across the globe which is really quite an honor.
Nicola: Mm-hmm. Yeah. You are the man responsible for Haagen Daaz, Tropicana and Viagra is that right?
Mark Donnan: One of the people, yes, one of. I was one of the first guys. I kind of persuaded restaurants to list and to market the product (Haagen Daz) that was there and I was there when they were taking the black and white shots when we decided to use to sell the product and that strategy is continuing even today.
Tropicana. It was another big brand. Well, it wasn’t at the time – neither of these brands I can remember were big brands when I was involved with them 15 years ago. But since then, you know, that got me into a number of other opportunities. I worked for a big confectionary company. I worked for a big pharmaceutical company and there it’s massive massive branded budgets, you know, many millions of pounds in some respects so that was all fantastic experience.
And I’ve also worked in a lot of smaller, more local businesses and particularly my focus nowadays really is all about helping to build smaller businesses after having done it all myself for myself a couple of years ago.
Nicola: So, tell us how, how you, how you got involved with your own company and how you went about because I think this is the kind of [thing] to be interesting to people listening.
How do you even begin to choose a brand? How do you — you know, I mean, when I have a new idea I just sort of pick a name, register the name, get a logo done and, and that’s how it works but I’m sure I should be thinking about other things, shouldn’t I, before I do that?
Mark Donnan: Well, there’s nothing wrong in going on gut instinct because ultimately at the end of the day, we all buy stuff. We’re all consumers. We all buy things. So, it’s okay to trust your gut. Your gut instincts often, are not often wrong but what professional market has learned to do is suspend their initial judgment, step back from that, put it to one side and then have a think about a bit of a scientific approach if you like, there’s a process to the way you can put your brand into gear, to think about specific aspects of your marketing.
I mean, I can show it to you what the difference is between a brand and what you’ve just said thinking about a fair picture on the name of the logo. There is nothing wrong with identifying and creating identifiable marks but brands and branding is not simply putting a picture to a name. Branding is a living, breathing organic thing which takes a lot of effort to, to build up and no effort at all to ruin when you think about Gerald Ratner and Ratners Jewellers and what happened to them.
You think about [Perrier] what happened to them. A lot of effort to build the mark but it doesn’t take much to bring it down. So, branding is a very, is a very specific set of thinking patterns and behaviors but I have to say that unless you have a brand, you’re not going to have a business that’s got any significant value because brands are what hold the intellectual property in a business.
Nicola: Oh, okay, this is interesting. So, if you think about most of the Spartan Marketing customers who are going to be coaches, consultants–
Mark Donnan: Yeah.
Nicola: — people who have written a book perhaps, you know. They’re solopreneurs really.
Mark Donnan: Yeah, yes.
Nicola: So, it’s hard enough to even get into the point where they’re earning a living let alone to be thinking about their next strategy and how to create value in their business. But I think Module 2 is possibly the best place to be talking about building a brand, isn’t it, because it will help them think bigger and and lift their head bit higher.
Mark Donnan: It is the next strategy. You know, you can, you can choose to have, you know, you can choose to have value in your brand. I mean, my grandfather was the first one that ever taught me about that, about the importance of branding. I didn’t know it was called branding then but I hold integrity and honesty very high up in the way brands need to communicate and he was just simply known in our village as Mr. Donnan and Mr. Donnan would do anything for you, you know.
He had a little grocery shop and his shop was always crammed full of people because he would go the extra mile and do things. So, for solopreneurs, as you just said, integrity and being consistent to your behavior is the most important thing. I m, mean integrity is one of those things that people bandy but I don’t mean integrity in terms of, you know, ultra honesty because I don’t mean being a priest or a nun. I don’t mean that kind of integrity.
I mean, being consistent to the values that you wish to portray because ultimately it’s the consistency and [conformity] to ever increasing expectations from your customers that will turn your distinguishing product, distinguishing logo into a power brand. Let me describe what I mean by that. If you think about a tin of coke, there’s absolutely no constitutional difference between a tin of Virgin coke and a tin of Coca Cola yet people could tell you blindfolded that they can easily distinguish taste between the two and Pepsi and Coke may have millions and billions out of that very proposition.
Actually, it’s very difficult to tell the difference. There’s very little difference between them. The difference is all in the branding yet you know before you buy a tin of coke what you’re going to get. It’s consistent. It conforms consistently to your expectations and the only way Coke are able to change your expectations is through their marketing and the branding messaging.
But they’ve consistently applied those messages to change and shift the expectation of the product consistently conforms with better expectation and it has to be able to be repeatable and done again and again and again and again. All the big power brands are able to do that. Now, therefore, what does that mean for a solopreneur? I like that word actually. I might borrow that. I didn’t know it was a real word. But what does it mean for somebody that–
Nicola: Yeah, American, it’s American word but people do use it.
Mark Donnan: Typical, typical but what does it mean for somebody that wants to stand out from the crowd, somebody that wants — well, a good place to start is to have a distinguishing logo. It’s called the meme and some of you may have heard me talk about that before if you’ve heard me talking. But a meme is something like a road sign that allows somebody to see it and translate their understanding of their world and what you’re offering in one picture. So, Spartan Marketing you’ve got the, you know, the very clear logo there.
You’ve got the helmet, the coloration is good and consistent and you know, you’ve got some reference to, to the Spartan philosophy. So, that’s, that’s a distinguishing meme. So, you’ve got the potential for a brand there but it’s currently not a brand. It’s only quite a new mark. So, the way to make that a power brand is now to consistently conform to ever increasing expectations and as everybody goes through the modules provided in Spartan Marketing that’s up to what it’s marketed as, it will subconsciously do that.
So, to go back to the tale of Coke, the difference between a tin of Coke as a power brand and Virgin Cola which is a strong brand, I mean, I guess compared to us it’s a power brand. The only difference is the brand name because the product is what the product is. Now, if you therefore break those values and this is why I don’t like personality branding or celebrity branding because if you break those values, you’re not being consistent and is very easy to destroy the value in the brand.
So, I’m very careful all the time to never mix up my personality with my brand. So, my preferred style I’ll give it just always to make sure that I’m identified with my brand but that the brand is not me. And I’m embarking personally on a journey over the past year or so, where I’m beginning to get a few people following me on things like Facebook and on the internet and I have to think very carefully with building that kind of presence because I as a human being will not be able to be consistent if I create a brand all around me.
You know, I’m going to make mistakes. I’m going to fail. I’m not going to ring somebody back when I said I’m going to. I’m not going to deliver through on a deadline when I said I’m going to because I’m human.
I’m flawed and the problem therefore if I make ME the brand is I’m just automatically set, to set myself up for failure because at some stage or other somebody else is going to have to start looking after me as a brand. Somebody else is going to have to start looking after the things I am saying and promising and they’re not going to be able to fulfill those at my business today.
But if it’s all centered around me, me, me that puts a big burden on me as the brand and whatever other rules I’ve got to fulfill in my business. Does that make sense?
Nicola: Yeah, absolute sense yeah. I went through exactly the same thing when I moved from being NicolaCairncross.com to the Money Gym because, you know, I wanted to just, just not disassociate myself from it but I wanted to build a brand around wealth creation that could stand on it’s own. The challenge came when we realized that by not having anyone friendly-looking on the front of the Money Gym, our subscribers and sales went down because it’s such an emotive subject, money. They wanted to connect with people–
Mark Donnan: Yes, I understand that and essentially those things would all be about channels and I’m guessing you guys would know enough about marketing, you know, the different channels of communication and different identities that you would embark upon. So, your brand would have to be able to be able to reach all the channels that is used to market to you. It has to be suitable for your — a billboard, a brochure, it has to be suitable for the internet.
And the danger, of course, the easiest and biggest danger we face with using our face is it’s fantastic and very powerful for things like you were doing on Money Gym and fantastic and powerful for things where people need to see visually like on the internet some level of social proof or some level of trust and reassurance because all they have, all else they’ve got to go on is a bit of meme.
But here’s the problem when you just use your face, you get old and if your business is a success, as you age, so your face won’t stay the same.
You know, authors use their faces on the back of book covers done like that, how many times have they keep the image the same because they’re stuck. They have to. And more often than not you see in the classics, the picture is more than 20 years old and people get older and they age and they change it and, of course, the problem with that is you got to change that every time to update it. And you’re not being consistent to your branding because you’re changing the look. Does that make sense? I mean, people changing for example a Facebook so, you’ll very rarely see me change my core branding on that channel because they show that that is important. But that’s because it’s about Mark Donnan if you like on Facebook and similarly for yourselves if you’re using Facebook as a strategy, however you build yourself a fan page or you build some other form of social media marketing my advice would be unless your meme is what you’re marketing, don’t use your face.
Use faces in your advertising. You use human [cues] and the intimacy of channels whenever you’re talking about communication. But what you’ve asked me to talk about here is branding and I don’t like using personal recognition as branding for all the reasons I’ve said and what happens if you, you know, you become big, you become a big celebrity and if you think about people like Jordan, you think of the people like George Michael, you think about people like, you know, the young guy that just won the competition on TV Get Me Out of Here.
All of those people live in a celebrity world and ultimately always they’re flawed personalities because we all are and therefore your brand rises and falls with the, the number of column inches and celebrity status you’ve got. So, that’s not good for business. What people want to buy from your business is the consistent conformance of ever increasing expectations that you can bring to them and therefore your service and your product and the offering that you’re bringing need to be backed up by you and you with your values, with your mission, I’m sure Nicola you’ll go through these in a different module but you’ve got to have values.
Identify what your values are and lend your business the values that you think are important for the brand but not from your perspective. This is where one of the things that you got to think about it is once you think about a meme, how much you think about your logo, for example, what you now want to do is avoid being a hairdresser. Forgive me if there are hairdressers on the line I don’t mean that but hairdressers are local businesses focused on the local community who use personality within them in terms of the way they end up talking.
And therefore above the door, other than the big professional ones that are now turning into chains, they come up with things like curl up and dye and, you know, clip and curl. They come up with funny little twists and monikers around what the service is. Well, they’re limited as well because he can’t grow those. You know, they’re limited within that hairdressing niche and therefore, that’s why you see people like Tony and Guy, they have memes rather than those kind of funny little monikers because they can then branch out into other products like beauty, like makeup, like their hair products that they want to be able to sell, that they’re not stuck with specific limitation on their brand.
So, when you think about a brand for your service, you got to think about your plan. I know this Module 1 was about your plan and you bring everybody back to the plan in Module 10. So, with branding you have to incorporate all of the other aspects of your plan because your brand is going to need to communicate to multiplicity of channels not just one social media channel. Does that help?
Nicola: Yeah, okay. So, let’s think about this in terms of, of business then. So, the idea is you think you’re going to be offering one thing and you’re going to be doing on thing to build your business but you’ve got to be aware that there are lots of different ways you can market your business and your brand has to not be about you but it has to be able to work across lots of different channels which are the ways you’re going to market but it also has to be able to grow into other products and services ideally.
Mark Donnan: It has. And I tell you what, can you show me — can I take control of the screen and I can show the diagram which sort of explains a little bit more what I’m trying to, what I’m trying to say?
Nicola: Yeah, that will be great. That will be great. Okay. You getting control–
Mark Donnan: Can you see my screen now?
Nicola: Yes, I can. Yeah, we can see very clearly.
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Mark Donnan: Okay. This is a diagram that I would use so I mean, if you’ve got the ability to take a screenshot of this do so if you haven’t, I’ll send a picture of it over to you Nicola and you can, you can give it to the guys but there’s a scientific way that marketers and branders measure their branding, you know, right from asking people how they feel, how they, how they react, how they interact. So, a strong brand is — I’ve changed the names of these so that you can sort of get the color coding of them.
But a strong brand has to be able to be chosen quickly, happily and confidently. So, let’s start at the top of this diagram and I’ll explain it. A strong brand is something that the consumers’ first choice. They choose our brand before somebody else’s out of a need or a situation. That’s the first thing you’ve got to think about. What’s the need they’ve got? Not the emotion, I’ll come to emotion in a minute but what’s their need and what’s their situation because that is what your brand is going to communicate to, need and situation.
But they’ve got to be able to do it on three different measures. They’ve got to be able to do it happily, confidently and quickly. Now, these are not just words, so let me explain what they are. I’ll start at the left hand side of the diagram quickly. It has to be top of mind. Okay. So, top of mind means awareness and are they there? Is it in their mind straight away? So the only way to do that is with reputation. So, they have to be able to think yeah, I’m thinking about business marketing or using internet marketing for my business, yeah, Spartan Marketing, that comes to mind.
I’ve seen that and I’ve seen that a few times so that must be good or somebody has been able to, to, to recommend.
So, people don’t necessarily understand why they were able to choose things quickly but it comes through being top of mind.
But how do you get that? Well, if you could follow the line down to the bottom, they’ve got to have strongly reared association of the brand and the only way they do that is through consistency and the integrity of their consumption and communication, through repetition of their consumption and communication and the reliability of their consumption and communication.
So, quickly, happily and confidently are all anchored on the bedrock of you being consistent to the things you’re promising, how often you can repeat the message of the things you’re promising and how reliable you are about the things that you’re promising and don’t forget your clients will consume the integrity of the consumption and the integrity of the communication. So, what you say about your product and what your product does have to match. Does that make sense?
So, the strongly reinforced associations will only happen if both the consumption and the communication of your marketing has integrity, consistency and reliability, reputation. Sorry, consistent with your reputation and reliability. So, if you come to the middle of the diagram there in the green, confidently, how does somebody choose a brand confidently? Well, they choose it confidently because it had clear and well-differentiated branding and which means it limits the number of alternatives that, that’s available.
So, they’re not thinking about a number of other people as well as you what do say they come across this specific need or situation. So, your brand is therefore, find some clarity in their mind space. Now, forgive the [market ease] of some of these words but what that means is that the richness of your brand of your logo. Now, Spartan Marketing could become something that has got quite a lot of that richness. It’s got some possibilities there.
The uniqueness of your brand, how unique is it? How strong is the mind space cloud? How does it stand out from the crowd? And can it have well-defined boundaries? Or does it just continue to go on and on and on? So, when people come to think about it, their situation at the top with the relevant need that they’ve got, they’ll say yeah, I can confidently choose that particular brand. And then you’ve got on the far side, you’ve got happily and not just really means can they relate to it?
You know, some people will relate to your brand, other people won’t buy this. Some people want BMWs when other people want Mercedes. It’s because they’ll have a specific affinity to those individual brands and car brands but be some specific brands in the supermarket that you purchase because you’ve got an affinity towards them. Actually since I launched Tropicana I’ve never, not had it in the morning other than when I’ve been in hotels that don’t serve it. It just stays with you.
So, you have to be able to have an affinity and there’s a saliency to that affinity which actually gets measured top of mind and to quickly measurement gets measure as well as in terms of top of mind. How quickly can you recall a brand? I’ll give you an example of how this, how this can happen because if you think about a brand called Skoda, you all remember a brand called Skoda 15 odd years ago. Skoda was a laugh, a laughing stock. It was the butt of all the jokes yet Skoda brand had a 98% recall level. I’m not surprised.
I remember being in school and all the Skoda jokes were doing the round. But it had a phenomenal brand recall level. The only issue is it was negative connotation for the brand. But everybody knew what Skoda was. Everybody knew the Skoda jokes. And it’s probably one of the most powerful brands at that particularly time but for all there are reasons right because the cars were rubbish. Well, they were perceived to be rubbish and actually that was only a perception because the cars in Europe were winning awards but in the UK nobody like them.
We were laughing [0:24:55][Inaudible], you know, Third World, you know, Russian cars in the world were nothing like that. So, they spent a long time going through a massive rebranding campaign and if you can go back in your mind and remember some of them as I mentioned them to you, first of all struggle laughing at themselves and they had people not believing that they were in a Skoda showroom and they would run away, run across the figures or run over the showroom and gradually over the years, they started to change the way people thought until they got to the stage where they run through show factories and the robots and people not believing and then there’s a woman, there was one particular one where a woman knocked at the door of a Skoda owner and was looking for marriage advice because he was a very clever guy because he obviously owned the Skoda and she saw the Skoda in his driveway.
And they moved the brand from being a laughing stock to now if you look at the Skoda’ advertising and you look at the accolades for it, it wins awards all over the world for the quality of its build and the quality of its cars as well as the quality of its marketing. But it took them over a decade to make that transformation. So, you’re going to start from where you are today as a solopreneur. You’re going to be something. Your brand is going to be something and branding therefore for you is going to be able to come out of what are your personal values.
What matters to you most because your product, your company, your service is going to be anchored in those thoughts, those beliefs and I’ve talked about integrity. You know, I also think things need to be simple, push button. People need to understand things really, you know, in five seconds flat they’re gone. So, the marketing and communication need to not be complex. Ironic isn’t it when I’m going through all these levels of complexity on the phone with you.
And therefore when you think about what brand do I — what kind of brand I want? Here’s some top tips I guess I already gave you. Two colors like Spartan Marketing has been done. It’s always good two tone is quite a fashionable way to go. Try and avoid these 3D jelly logos and icons because they will, they will tire with fashion. Keep them on your website if you want to have them but not in your branding. And so two-colored–
Nicola: The little men everyone sees everywhere.
Mark Donnan: Pardon?
Nicola: The little jelly men, the little one–
Mark Donnan: Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with those. Those are good to reinforce your brand messages but they’ll be 70s, you know, with all the back of those–
Nicola: Yeah.
Mark Donnan: — and, you know, they now go to fashion. Yeah, brands need to be updated but more often than not, I’ll use a very simple meme and sometimes I won’t use a meme at all or I will use a particular font but I think will be able to, will be able to build it today but grow. So, if you’re — I would look on all the kind of things. Is it possible that the guys on the line could just give me an indication of the areas that they’re in. I’m going to tailor this a little bit by way of example. A bit more beneficial I think–
Nicola: Yeah, I’ll — I can–
Mark Donnan: Just tell me the areas.
Nicola: Yeah, okay. Yeah, well one lady is in Fertility Help so she helps people who are trying to get pregnant.
Mark Donnan: Right.
Nicola: And she’s got a real world business and an online business.
Mark Donnan: Mm-hmm.
Nicola: One lady is — she is trying to position herself as local business marketing expert but she’s really struggling with, with pining down who she aims at. You know, she just go out she could work with everyone and she could do everything so yeah, customer servicing and deciding what to offer is another issue so I’m coaching around that.
Mark Donnan: Okay.
Nicola: And then next is a, is a chartered accountant who’s come out of corporate life and he’s got a nice brand straight away. He’s going to be a cashflow consultant.
Mark Donnan: Oh.
Nicola: And he’s going to work with businesses to manage their cashflow and to manage their working capital more effectively.
Mark Donnan: Well, fair play to Jeff taking a branding course because the nemesis of marketing is usually the Financial Director because they like to see things in black and white rather than actually all the airy fairy stuff. So, fair play to Jeff for, for him and I hope some of these makes sense. Okay. Well, if you think about really all three of those things, what, what you’re looking for there is what you do is you start with what is the need of my clients. What’s the need of my clients?
So, you think well, I’ve got business and I want it to mean something and therefore what’s it going to mean to my client? That’s a good place to start for your overall branding. And also don’t forget it doesn’t have to be overly clever because your brand is going to grow with you over a period of time. It just needs to be distinguishing and it needs to stand out. It needs to be able to be chosen quickly, happily and confidently. The strength of those are going to happen over a period of time.
Let me see, oh I’m looking at the wrong one. I should have went up. So, I’m showing you some old slides, forgive me for that. So, if you think about then the consumer brand pyramid, your product and, and, you know, the fertility help one is going to be very easy. It kind of does or it doesn’t so it’s got some product attributes. What is it that you provide the people? I get you pregnant or I help you or I show you how to get pregnant. There may be a number of different ways but you do that.
But ultimately it’s all about, you know, the end goal is clearly the production successful production of a child. So, there’s a clear goal there which gives you something to hang it around. In terms of local business marketing, well that’s a wee a bit more different isn’t it? It’s not as big. I’m sorry. It’s not as clear what local business marketing is all about other than local business marketing is more of a connection. So, there’s a hint and a tip there.
And when you’re looking and thinking about cashflow and cashflow consultancy, well there’s also quite a strong need in there as well but more often than not I would find people don’t really understand how do they cashflow forecast or understand, you know, the real importance of money and cash in their business [0:30:45][Inaudible] or if they’re bigger businesses, they don’t necessarily have a grip of all the other things where cash can leak and the metrics and everything that goes in and with all of that.
So, and again, it’s a little bit, it’s a little bit narrower than local marketing because the subject area is focused but it’s not as narrow or as niched as the fertility help. So, the fertility helping brand can all be about helping [somebody] identify with the brand but link the brand to their need. So, that’s going to be an easy one isn’t it? But start to avoid things that looks fatal or childhood or things like that because they’re often done by, you know, an animal fertility expert. You know, think about that kind of sperm kind of imagery.
You don’t really want to get into all of that. You want to give them a sense of, of a connection to what fertility gives them and local business marketing is all about, is all about profit and customers. It’s all about growth. It’s all about connection and community and therefore, you’re going to want to be able to have a brand that shows that level of success. The people want success. Who do you aim at? You aim at people who want more sales. You aim at people who want more, you know, more people to come through their door and therefore your brand–
Nicola: Yes.
Mark Donnan: — needs to be able to instantly stand out from everybody else that stood and because you have a competitive market. And for a cashflow consultant, you can be quite clever with that if you got a niche into that specific area, you can actually target right down into the aspects and benefits that come from them. But if you look at this diagram on the screen, it will help you with that. So, you’ve got some functional benefits in those three areas. You know, you either got cash or you haven’t.
You either get pregnant or you haven’t. You know, you’ve either gotten sales, customers coming through your door or you haven’t. So, you’ve got some functional benefits in there as well. And I love when people when they teach marketing say that people buy on emotion and they do. People make buying decisions. They do make buying decisions on emotion. But they also suffer from buyer’s remorse because of those emotions.
So, people have unique qualifiers after they’ve made an emotional decision. They then got what called convincer channels and they use — it’s for a different webinar I guess whenever Nicola gets to it but the convincer channels are a whole set of subsystems after emotion that help them to reconcile whether they’ve done the right thing or not and this is where your branding comes in because your brand needs to have a personality. What does it mean by that?
Your brand almost needs to be able to grow into being a third person. If you’re in a company, the empty chair in the room, what’s the personality of your brand? Do you want it to be slightly serious, you know, cashflow is that really serious? Or actually, is it liberating because cash is the lifeblood of the business. You know, as the fertility brand, is it going to be really sensitive to the struggles and the needs that somebody is in, and then while they’re trying to get a lot times to become pregnant and relate to that or actually is it going to be all about children and happiness and [0:33:43][Inaudible] and laughing and does it have a personality that gives hope?
Does it have a personality that gives fun, give enjoyment and what this, what kind of personality does the local marketing, local business marketing position have? What kind of personality is that? Well, that’s got to be all about you. Is it [0:33:59][Inaudible]? You know, hey dude [0:34:00][Inaudible] for that marketing and I — I don’t know if it’s a man or a woman but, you know, I hope you have another beer if it’s a woman but, you know, that’s what a grungy internet marketing look that says I’ve got a personality so I don’t really don’t care with the corporate world anymore. I’m so loose and successful.
I don’t even need to shave or they’re going to be actually where, you know, where we’re much more into the ability drive people and stand behind your brand. And, you know, for me the local marketing one is going to be a little bit more corporate than it is about being a specific individual because you’re going to be to show–
Nicola: Yeah.
Mark Donnan: — your clients that you can deliver for their brand whilst equally buying in some distinguishing feature of your brand. But at the top and I’ll finish with this is brand essence. What is the essence of your brand? This is one word. What’s your brand essence? What does it stand for? In one word, what does your brand stand for? Oh, am I still online? Am I talking to myself?
Nicola: No, you’re here. Can you hear me?
Mark Donnan: Yes, I can. Yeah, you know, what’s your brand? What is your brand essence? What’s your essence stand for? And that is coming from your values. The best place to bring that is coming from your values. What is the one thing that you stand for? What’s the one thing that you would not break or violate for any man, woman or child? Because you going to lend that probably to your brand. Why? Because–
Nicola: I think–
Mark Donnan: Sorry, Nicola?
Nicola: Yeah, I was just going to say is this a rhetorical question or do you expect me to answer definitely. [Laughter].
Mark Donnan: No, it’s a bit of a rhetoric. It’s a bit of kind of [tech] really because, because from you know, let’s say for the sake of argument that fertility is to have integrity, a kind that needs to integrity, customer targeting, local marketing needs to have integrity. But they’re all in a very different way. You’ve got ethics all wrapped up in there. So, I don’t know the guys and all, all but pick a value that matters to them and that’s what you’re going to start communicating as the core part of your brand and whatever color, shape, font, picture, logo, main features needs to be able to be reflective of that particular, that particular value and you can see therefore, that you can bring that all the way right through the product attributes. You will by the time I guess you finish the Spartan Marketing.
Nicola: Yeah, okay, so, for example, mine is about cutting through the clutter, the overwhelm and simplicity and, and honesty in marketing. So, yeah, I can see how, how then that would lead you then to choose certain images, make your website look a certain way, make your marketing material you look a certain way and the kind of product that you offer would have to follow that through wouldn’t they?
Mark Donnan: Well, for me the brand essence that I can see as you’re projecting it on Spartan Marketing, it’s affordability. It’s affordability.
Nicola: Oh definitely, that’s so
Mark Donnan: So, that’s why.
Nicola: Yeah.
Mark Donnan: But that’s the — what’s the one word? Now, you gave me a half a dozen there. Those will be values of your brand.
Nicola: Yeah. [Laughter]
Mark Donnan: Those will be, those will be the personality traits of your brand. That’s cool. But what’s your brand essence? Well, Spartan Marketing tells me it’s about low cost marketing or low priced marketing but not low quality. So, therefore it’s about–
Nicola: Yeah.
Mark Donnan: — affordability. It’s all about affordability–
Nicola: Yeah.
Mark Donnan: — and value. Yeah? See, you didn’t even know that.
Nicola: Yes, yeah.
Mark Donnan: And it’s also purposely you seen coming out of the — just coming out of your because you, you know, in the little time we’ve got to know each other, you’re a person that has got, you know, high integrity and you like to give a lot of value. You know, you don’t like this, this part of this, this industry that just sort of promises things and doesn’t deliver and that’s coming out–
Nicola: Yeah.
Mark Donnan: — in the way that you chose to use the, the moniker of Spartan Marketing. Do you want the screen back?
Nicola: If you’re ready. Okay. Cool. Okay. Good stuff. Right so, think about all of the things you’ve talked about and the rest of the modules are all going to be about showing people what’s available in each area but my real key thing is to try and get people to choose perhaps one or two things in each area then do it consistently. So, can we talk a little bit about your business coaching background? So, I know you have had worked with private clients, what do you see as the biggest issue with people who are trying to build a brand in those, your clients you worked with?
Mark Donnan: I guess some of them fall into two camps. You know, somebody just don’t value yet and saying well, what’s the point and like put words in, but generally they come from the type of people who need the — give me the facts, give me the stats, show me the numbers. They’re not always accountants, of course, but because, because everyone is a different person. So, you got two camps of people who say look I don’t actually get this but I see the value in all of this.
Tell me what that, show me what that looks like. And then the second camp are the only almost diametric opposite of that. They are people that could spend all day talking. They can spend all day positioning themselves. They can spend all day talking about what they could do, would do, should do but don’t actually do and therefore the hardest thing really is to cut a path between those two areas and without question the, the biggest challenge that I always have to overcome is fear.
As they can relate to the intellect, they can relate to the integrity of what I’m saying but they’re scared that it won’t work or they’re scared that it won’t work for them or they’re scared that their particular situation or their particular circumstance is somehow different and I don’t understand that and I’ve never come across it before and their, the uniqueness of their own individual and their own individual problem is obviously too insurmountable for somebody like me to fix.
So, generally I always have to overcome that particular aspect of where a person’s that narrow mind that actually in some aspects of what they’re doing, they are the expert but me I’m the person that can almost get inside their mind and bring out what they really good at doing and then help them to actually do it. I don’t do the stuff. I help them to do it and sort of stand back and watch. Did I answer your question?
Nicola: Yeah, I mean I, yeah, I mean, I find the hardest thing is getting people — you nearly touched on this. It’s about they’re scared to commit. They’re scared to commit to a target market. They’re scared to commit to certain look. They’re scared to commit because they worry that they’ve put all their eggs in one basket. That’s — they’re cutting through the clutter and getting very later focused on their marketing is, is the most difficulty thing I find.
Mark Donnan: Well, your marketing, it’s interesting because marketing is really, it’s just a word for communication. It’s a just a word for, you know, communicating in a way that other people understand that. And if you do it this way in terms of your marketing, if you do it in this way, you’re point of view ever because you’ll always get it wrong. I had launched products and had marketing messages and done things I would have never thought would be successful.
From my own perspective looking at it as a middle aged man, looking at some of the things that we’ve used in my career, I would have thought that will never work ever. And one of the things for example, there’s a confectionary brand called Starburst and there was a brand new music festival called V and it was the first year of this massive night because the first year of V and I was in charge of that particular brand ice cream area and one, one of the up and coming young marketers in the team decided to build a bicycle, a tricycle I should say with a freezer in the back of it and ride it around this field.
So, and doing a sort of ice cream promotion. I thought he was nuts. I thought there’s absolutely no way anything like that would work but you know he knew the young market better than I did and then next year we took probably half a dozen of them because it was highly highly successful. So, you can never tell if you look at it through your own lenses what’s going to work. But what he did was he looked at the festival go-ers point of view. They’re all on the field. They’re all thirsty. They’re all tired.
They don’t want to walk anywhere so he would take the ice cream to them and he couldn’t get an ice cream van in so he build the bike and it’s gorilla marketing tactic that we ended up using and it worked very very successfully. So, always look at your brand through the lens of your customer’s eyes. Ask them what they think. Ask them what they feel. Ask them what they want. Ask them what they need. More often than not, they won’t know by the way. They will have no clue that they need what you’ve got to offer.
Nicola: Yeah.
Mark Donnan: So, this thing to get people what need, you know, find what they need then build a product and give them what they need is nonsense because more often than not people don’t know what they need. But the words they use when they ask the question, the reactions you get when you ask the question is giving you vital information with how you then need to position your communication to demonstrate to them that they do need what you’ve got.
And you talk to their specific situation and talk to them through filters that they’re looking at you rather than you’re [0:43:23][Inaudible] and coming up with your clever brand or your clever mark or your clever service. Now, as a business I wouldn’t necessarily know for example, I have got problem with my cashflow until the bank tells me I’ve got no money left. But–
Nicola: That’s interesting. Jeff actually said you’re spot on about potential clients overcoming fear.
Mark Donnan: Oh thanks a lot. Actually I asked because you’ve faded a little bit and so I wasn’t sure if there was, if there was a question in there as well and one of the things that strikes me about the strategy you’re embarking on it’s not specific to branding although branding is going to be important but it’s probably going to be more of like your background and your, and your, the proof that you can bring to the service. But have a think about widening your offering because you’ll know better me with the cash is about containing cost but also growing sales affordably.
So, as feedback — if you’re looking to grow, if you’re looking at their cashflow consultant rather than a cost cutting consultant then you’re going to need to have some strategies for building and growing sales as well as cutting cost. Does that make sense?
[Opens Up Line For Questions / Comments and SK speaks up]
Nicola: Yes, we can hear you loud and clear.
SK: Oh brilliant.
Nicola: Are you having issues with knowing, knowing how to position yourself and [0:48:00][Inaudible] on you?
SK: Exactly and it was very interesting listening to you Mark because everything you said about, you know, the biggest issue that people have about fear, it was spot on.
Nicola: And you’re feeling that fear or your clients are feeling that fear?
SK: No, it’s because I’m feeling that fear and therefore I can’t relate to my clients I think. The reason for that is that I know I can do a good job but how do I let my clients know that I can do a good job for them.
Mark Donnan: How do you let your clients know that you will do a good job for them? Well, obviously–
SK: And why would they choose me? Yeah.
Mark Donnan: Yeah, why would they choose you is always a good one. More often they’ll choose you over somebody else because you’re there. One of the things is if you’re in front of somebody and you want to have — and you do your marketing when your client acquisitioning, do you do it face to face or do you do it just remotely?
SK: Remotely because I, yeah, I’m not — if you put me on a spot and say what do you do? I freeze.
Mark Donnan: In terms of face of face communications?
SK: Yeah and — yeah, I guess in terms of face to face communication. I’m all right once I know someone but–
Mark Donnan: Uh-huh.
SK: — initially first off is a complete stranger came up to me and said to me [0:49:16][Inaudible] what do you do? I said well, now, what DO I do? And that’s not good.
Mark Donnan: Okay. Okay. And why do you think you can do a good job?
SK: Because I know, I know what I’m talking about. I know how–
Mark Donnan: Because you know what you’re talking about.
SK: Yeah.
Mark Donnan: If you know what you’re talking about, why do you freeze?
SK: Chicken and the egg.
Mark Donnan: Okay. Chicken and the egg, so you know what you’re talking about but you’re not confident about what you’re talking about.
SK: Yeah, I guess that’s what it is.
Mark Donnan: Okay. You need a script.
[0:50:00]
SK: Okay.
Mark Donnan: What you need to do is you need to read a book by Michael Daniel Priestley which is all about how to become a person of influence–
SK: Yeah, I’ve got that.
Mark Donnan: — but you need to identify — so you’ve got that. That’s great work.
SK: Yeah.
Mark Donnan: But then you need a script and you need the power of luck script until you’re so confident about that script, you know it backwards and forwards so that you can then start to move away from that script and position yourself in the way that you want.
SK: Okay.
Mark Donnan: You need to be able to adlib but you need to be able to, you know, a script will give you what’s known as Roman columns and–
SK: Yes.
Mark Donnan: — and that’s the ways orators use to remember all their long script. They would mind map a column, a Roman column as chapters. I still script every major presentation and pitch that I go to every single one and I practice every single one at least 10 times before I go out of the house because–
SK: Mm-hmm. Okay.
Mark Donnan: — I’m not going to follow that script but I’ve now let my ears hear my voice talk. So, because of that my ears hear my voice talk. When I go to talk in front of the client, my inner voice doesn’t go on shut up you’re talking nonsense because ears–
SK: Okay.
Mark Donnan: — have already heard what the voice has got to say which means I can go off script and I’m not going to get that doubt.
SK: Okay.
Mark Donnan: Does that make sense?
SK: Yeah, that makes sense.
Mark Donnan: Let your ears hear your inner voice speaking and audibly do it. I would do mine in front of mirror audibly do it then you’re not going to freeze as readily whenever you’re actually in the zone.
SK: Mm-hmm. Okay. Got that.
Nicola: And I think, I think the other thing that’s going to give [0:51:26][Inaudible] the confidence is a few client success stories because she’s, you know, she knows how to build websites. She knows how to market herself — well, market her clients online but I think because she’s not very confident yet, she’s [0:51:39][Inaudible] very effectively. Well, that’s setting up a lot of vicious loop because all the time you’re not marketing yourself online effectively.
You’re feeling not very comfortable not going out and positioning yourself as an expert and the other thing is you’ve got no client success stories because I know when I taught the Money Gym — you know, when people come up and say what do you do and I say I’m a wealth coach and they, they’d immediately focus on whether you were rich but immediately and immediately I can start talking about success stories of my clients.
It swaps the, the attention from me in whether I was a millionaire to the fact that this client with this. I told that client that and they went and did this. You know, it really does help to get some client success stories under your belt. So, you might want to offer your services to meet just two or three local businesses to get–
SK: Yeah.
Nicola: — the stories going.
SK: Yeah. You have this spot on again but then — but this is just the whole, the whole issue of being able to market myself because I don’t — I can’t identify myself with a brand that is as per se. [0:52:42][Inaudible] because I don’t know how to market myself I feel that I can’t — the client has a brand. I can market the client’s brand but you know, I’m going round and round in circles as you say. Yeah.
Mark Donnan: This issue is not one of confidence. There’s something else going on here and this is about you not trusting the outcome of your judgment.
SK: Mm-hmm.
Mark Donnan: You say that you do but you don’t and therefore getting what the things that Nicola had just said of getting some clients on board and having a script that will give you the confidence to come across in the way that you want to but actually why you’re doing this in the first place. You’re doing this in the first I assume because you believe that you can add value.
SK: Yeah.
Mark Donnan: But you don’t believe that you can add value. So, you’ve got a, you’ve got a conflict somewhere going on between your performance, the doing and your belief which is the motivation that drives you’ve got for doing it.
SK: Yeah.
Mark Donnan: So, you’ve got something a little bit deeper there in terms of, of which the things that Nicola has just said will help you overcome them without any shadow of a doubt and help them to overcome them. But you’re doing this because you believe in yourself, what you did. You’re doing this because you believe you can add value but your frustration is being to communicate but you can’t add the value because of that confidence challenge. Therefore, you need to punch through that–
SK: Mm-hmm.
Mark Donnan: — in terms of your right of performance and almost paint the mask on. Ladies are very good at masks. You know, they put the makeup on they become somebody different. It’s harder for men to do it. So just imagine then taking on the persona of your brand and talk as your brand instead of talking as you. If you talk as your brand, you can become a completely different person and you–
SK: Okay.
Mark Donnan: — don’t have to worry about the personal feedback and the personal nature of that critical inner voice because–
SK: Mm-hmm.
Mark Donnan: — if you take on the personality of your brand, it’s your brand talking isn’t it?
SK: Mm-hmm.
Mark Donnan: So, that, that’s the persona that we all have the world model and the way we often know and the way that we operate. So, you believe very strongly that you can deliver power and brand and branded value to your clients. So, talk from that position of confidence as your brand.
SK: Mm-hmm.
Mark Donnan: And that will overcome that as well.
SK: Okay.
Nicola: Good stuff Mark. Thank you very much Mark.
SK: Very helpful, thank you. Yeah. Thank you.
Nicola: Good stuff.
Mark Donnan: Okay. You’re welcome.
Nicola: Okay. we’ve really come at the end of our time now even though we started a bit late we’ve gone on to make up for it which is rather fabulous. Thank you very much for your time. [0:55:39][Inaudible] and Jeff, if I had to ask you just for one light bulb moment, what would it be and take away? What are you going to do perhaps differently as a result of listening to Mark speak today? [0:55:49][Inaudible] do you want to go first because you’re unmated.
SK: What am I going to do? I think this last bit of communication that we have is to really — that is what I think I really need to focus on and come away with getting to clients that I can work with–
Nicola: Yeah and to work on your offline brand that way?
SK: Yeah, that’s right.
Nicola: And get your online brand nice and strong so that you could go out too. That’s what I used to do in the early days when I was so nervous. I used to — I’ve got my online website and Mark touched on this quite a bit when he was talking about it. You know, make it really simple for people. Don’t give them too many choices.
SK: Mm-hmm.
Nicola: You know, have a strong brand online and then you just people your business card and say go to my website, have a look–
SK: Yeah.
Nicola: — because you’ll let the website does the talking initially until you got all that confidence. Yeah.
SK: No, that’s right. And to work through that KPI Book and get my script in place. I think–
Nicola: Yeah.
SK: — that has to be the number one thing to do now.
Nicola: Yeah, absolutely. And that book is fantastic. Mark and I both believe in that book 100% so. And Mark if you could send us the couple of slides that you shared with us today, I’m not sure it’s on the recording but I did it’s not on the screen for a while but if I could make those as downloads it should be — that will be really brilliant. Thank you very much.
Mark Donnan: We’ll do.
Nicola: Jeff, what’s the, the one thing–
[Cross-talk]
Jeff: Yeah, can you hear me?
Nicola: Yes, yes. You faded then and now kind of shocking Jeff but go for it.
Jeff: Right. Okay. I’ll speak a bit now for you anyway [0:57:28][Inaudible]. Thanks very much. [0:57:38][Inaudible].
Mark Donnan: Yeah. So, anyway Jeff yeah.
Nicola: That’s good stuff okay we need to get your strong brand that you can use now in personal networking. Then that’s what we need to work on with you Jeff.
Jeff: Yeah, certainly.
Nicola: Thanks.
SK: Thanks.
Nicola: Thank you. Yes I’d like to add my thanks to that Mark you’ve been absolutely brilliant as always and shared lots of great content and, you know, that I’ve put you on the spot a bit this morning asking you to join us.
Mark Donnan: That’s okay.
Nicola: Thank you very much for doing that and for battling through the techie challenges. It’s a real pleasure. Thank you very much.
Mark Donnan: No worries.
Nicola: Okay. All right guys thank you very much for joining me for another fantastic webinar and I look forward to speaking to you again next week. Thank you very much. Bye.
[0:58:52] End of Audio
