[Speaker 2]
Hey now, welcome to another edition of the inside BS show. And this is a show I've had circled on my calendar for a long time. Well, at least for two weeks when we booked the meeting, you see, I am speaking to Caitlin Don today and she is probably one of the most effective and one of the most sought after experts in the field of, I'll say the field of branding, but using new technology for branding.

She has done remarkable work with my clients and she has given me some tips and I haven't even engaged her. And she's given me some tips that have already made perfect sense to me and will result in some, I'm sure some really good things happening for me online. I have to tell you that this may be the most important show you've listened to this week, this month, or maybe even this year.

Please join me in welcoming Caitlin Don to the inside BS show.

[Speaker 1]
Kate, thank you so much. Thank you for being here.

[Speaker 2]
So my introduction to you was through a client. And when I saw what you were doing for this client, I was like, how is one person doing all of this? And you know, then I, then I met you and I know that you have a team behind you, which is great.

But I, at some point in this conversation, we gotta figure out how you, I need to know how you figured all this stuff out, but take us through your background and what got you to be kind of the, the, you know, one of the premier experts in branding using what I would call new media technology.

[Speaker 1]
Thanks. You know, I think it all started when I, and I will make this as succinct as possible. I graduated from college on the very much in the recession, right?

It was early 2010. We were still feeling all of the heavy impacts of 2008 and everything that happened. And I went to work for a lender and we were very quickly as a regional lending company, snapping up smaller lenders and welcoming, welcoming them into our portfolio because a lot of them just weren't equipped to deal with the new legislation that came out after all of the fallout that happened in 2008.

And so you take this young person who studied marketing in college, you put them into this environment where things are moving incredibly fast. And very quickly I realized how impactful branding was to absorbing these portfolio companies, not only to communicate a unified message to our customers and our new customers who we were acquiring through this process, but also internal stakeholders, the employees, how do you get everybody rowing in the same direction and unified around a simple mission and a simple vision in a way that needs to happen quickly and effectively with a lot of money and people invested sitting at the table.

And so I was kind of thrown into the fire in that regard. And when you start at that level, and I was very fortunate to do so and have seats at tables that I should not have been sitting at, but my boss very much empowered me and believed in me. I started to see with smaller businesses how, Oh, if they only knew this, if they were only starting from here, they would save a lot of the growing pains and challenges that happen when you attempt to scale up a brand because we're starting at like the 50, 60 yard line.

And now I can see what would have been successful if we were starting and had the time at the 10 yard line. So I started working with smaller companies, mom and pop shops in my spare time in Baltimore, where I had my first job doing this very thing. And they started to experience explosive growth, open new, you know, venues, open new chains, and start to license and franchise that brand.

And in doing so, I also realized how pivotal personal branding was to all of that. And there was a very specific client that allowed me to see that, but I will pause on anything that I just said, in case you want to dive into any elements.

[Speaker 2]
Well, so I mean, part of what I, part of what there's, what there's a, there's a bit of cognitive dissonance for me and, and where it occurs is that you've referred to this as personal branding and your website, which is incredibly well done is all about branding. But for me and for what you've done with my clients and what you've done with some of your other clients that I've taken a look at is it's more than that. It's, it's also lead generation, right?

And it's, especially in the, in the B2B space, what you're doing with LinkedIn is pure lead generation. I mean, there is, I've always, my, my feeling has always been, Hey, there's a, you know, a brand will reveal itself through properly generation. If you're targeting the right audience and you're solving the right problem and you're hitting them with the right message, right?

A brand will reveal itself because it's driven by the people who you're, you're communicating with. So, you know, what I would say is your, you have this incredible in, and again, I'm just talking about LinkedIn and B2B. We can talk about B2C and some of the other stuff you're doing in a minute, but you know, you're, you're driving an incredible amount of high quality leads to people in the B2B space through what you're doing.

And the branding is kind of a by-product to me. That's the way I see it. Am I, am I off?

[Speaker 1]
Not off. Um, and yet I would say for us, that order is reversed. So it's to your point, a lot of people come to us and they say, I want to generate leads and they generally have leads in three buckets, leads in a B2B capacity.

We sell high end services and consulting and we want to bring people in the door and serve them. Leads in a speaking capacity. We work with a lot of authors and thought leaders who want to drive speaking engagements and serve people through that and leads in a knowledge product space.

So I want more listeners on the podcast. I want more purchasers of the book. I want more buyers of the online course.

And yet, like you said, if you're starting with lead generation, but you have not gotten so painfully, and I say painfully because it is an excruciating exercise for many people, clear on the niche you're serving and what's keeping them up at night and getting into the psychology of their heads in terms of, I'm not sleeping because I can't figure this out. And you're not speaking to that and your fundamental brand messaging, your lead generation will never fly. And so we start with branding because everything from a marketing standpoint, the breakdowns are always revealed in the branding.

It's usually as simple as, and simple is not easy, but still, it's usually as simple as, are you targeting the right person? Have you really gotten clear with the problems and challenges that are driving them? And are you empathetically speaking to that?

Not trying to solve for that in your content, but speaking to it, identifying it, calling it out and showing them there's a better way. If you don't have that down, I don't care how much money you spend on Google ads, on SEO, on people coming in and creating content on LinkedIn, it simply will not convert. It simply will not convert.

And so it is that base branding that you were talking about, that we start with and we see everything fall in alignment with that. As soon as that's uncovered. Most of our clients when we're working with them in a personal branding capacity say to us, the biggest thing I got out of this was clarity and confidence, the clarity of what's really bothering my audience and how I can be in best service to them.

And the confidence to speak to that where I'm not trying to solve 20 different problems. I'm just trying to solve the 20% of problems that hold 80% of the pressure on them that I'm uniquely positioned to release.

[Speaker 2]
So we are in complete agreement as to what you do. I think we, I think we are just calling it different things. And here's the reason why.

And here's the reason why I keep pushing back on this because I spent, I spent a lot of money on a postgraduate education in communications and was beaten up about the rational and the emotional elements of branding. But what you're talking about, what you do and what I do is we match the message to the audience with the exact right delivery system, right? And that message has to enter the conversation taking place.

And I didn't invent in the mind of the prospect and I didn't invent this. That's a, it's a, it's a marketing axiom that goes back to time immemorial. And that's what you're saying here.

But when we, but if we, if we put it behind the veil of branding for like Madison Avenue types, right? And I know there's nobody on Madison Avenue right now, but it's a euphemism for advertising, right? But Madison Avenue types are going to want to do some diagram of the rational and emotional.

And they're not going to talk to you about hitting a market niche. They're not going to talk to you about entering a conversation that's going on in the, in the mind of the prospect. What they're going to try to do is they're going to try to get you to create, I don't mean you, I mean you to create something that will manipulate the the perception of the audience and what you're doing, which makes you so successful is you're figuring out what the perception of the audience is.

And then you're saying to your client, no, no, no, go over here and this is the way they speak and this is what they want. So this is how you need to enter that conversation. Right.

So for me, like, and it's just a, maybe it's just a Dave Lorenzo thing and maybe everybody who's listening is like, Dave, just leave it alone already. But for me, it's, you know, it's all about what you're teaching is outstanding marketing that enters the conversation that's going on inside the mind of the prospect. That's, and this is what, you know, this is what is the essence of getting people to respond.

So it's, it's just good direct response marketing, whatever, whatever you call it. And look, you're successful. So call it that, call it, call it personal branding, but it, it works because it's driven by the client.

[Speaker 1]
Well, and I think you're absolutely right. And I'm glad that you're continuing to go back to this because it's something that whenever I keynote or present, it's almost counterintuitive or paradoxical and people you're absolutely right. Get hung up and you can spend years studying branding.

And what ends up happening is a lot of people take branding to be very self focused. What are our colors? What's our tone?

What's our position? Me, me, me all the way home. That's what the brand ends up being.

And a lot of these textbook definitions say, Oh, a brand is the desired perception of your company in the mind of a client. And all of it is so me centered and you lose the person you're serving in the process. There's a famous quote that says to command is to serve nothing more, nothing less.

And whenever I'm giving keynotes, I always say to brand is to serve nothing more, nothing less, because you're right. If you start out here with people and your brand is so about them and where you can just meet them where you're at, it's going to be phenomenally more successful than if you go through these corporate branding activities that are all about you and your company. You're missing the pivotal point that makes the whole thing fly, which is the customer.

And so you're right. I think it's important. A lot of the work that I do is a reeducation and a reorientation of where the focus of a brand should be.

And I think inherently what we all learn sets us up to fail. We're living under the perception that my brand, my personal brand is about me. When really, if you attack it from the audience's perspective, it takes a the pressure off of you and B cuts to the core of what's actually going to resonate with people out in the world, regardless of medium that you're serving up that content.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. And you know, the people make it harder than it, than it really needs to be. It's like starting a business based on what you're good at.

That's a, I was just going to say a bad word. That's a terrible reason to start a business. You should start a business because somebody came to you and said, I need this.

That's why you start a business. You don't start a business because you're really good at something. Because what if nobody needs what you're really good at?

[Speaker 1]
I mean, And you're so true. That's exactly how I started all of my businesses. So with the branding business, people just kept asking me, can you help me?

And after a while you get hip to the fact of, well, I could do this for somebody else or I could do it for these clients. But also I am a huge fan of beta testing. So when I launched my online course about LinkedIn and lead generation on LinkedIn, I will tell you something.

I had zero course developed. I just had an email list of 2000 people. I emailed them and said, I'm putting together a program and I want to know what your biggest challenges with LinkedIn are.

And then I would just receive the information. Then I emailed them again and said, I've collected your feedback. Here's the core challenges.

Here's what the program is designed to solve for. If you want to get in, there's a baseline entry price. I'm going to build it with you agilely based on your feedback.

We'll do a live version of it and you can secure your seat. Two days later, I had seven cold people buy the uncreated program for $500 just based on them hearing you're talking about a challenge that I told you I had an issue with, and you're telling me there's a better way. And I don't care how good somebody tells you an ideas until they vote with their wallet until they're so bought into the value of something, then it's not market proofed.

And so you're absolutely right. I, if I was going to start a business and I'll tell you, I thought about starting a business at the same time I started my brand consultancy. I thought I was going to have a blog about women's wear in corporate America.

Truly. It's like almost laughable where I thought my like passion project would be versus what the market was telling me it was struggling with, which I realized I had unique experience to speak to. And that's where it was.

And six years later, it's grown like double year over year. So I completely agree.

[Speaker 2]
All right. So we we've, we've pretty much beaten that to death now. And if anybody's still with us, thank you for staying along now.

I'm just kidding. That was really, that was actually very valuable because basically what we just did was undo all the damage that's been done to people who've taken a college level marketing course in the last 20 years. We basically just deprogram them and help them see what this is really all about.

So let's, let's move into your, uh, you know, I've come to know you for your focus on LinkedIn and I've seen you get incredible results with LinkedIn. I've also spoken to other people who claim to be LinkedIn gurus who don't get nearly the results that you get. So what, what is it that helps you get such great results for people on LinkedIn?

Is it just that you take more time understanding who their clients are?

[Speaker 1]
You know, I think it's probably dependent on the results that people are after. That's not to go back to kind of a meta approach to it, but a lot of people see influencers on LinkedIn, people who are getting hundreds and thousands of likes on their statuses and they think, okay, that breeds success on the platform. So I need to go follow them.

And while that content may be incredibly engaging, if you don't first reverse engineer what you're actually after, you won't have the prescriptive plan to do it. And so I think the reason that we have found ourselves uniquely successful in a B2B lead generation standpoint is because from the moment somebody comes and starts working with us, we say in 90 days, how many leads, what package pricing, what types of clients do you need to close or generate to make this worth it and to make it worth your time and investment. Where a lot of people are just going for surface level engagement.

I think a lot of us are kind of caught up in this thing that's happening now, which is do I have to post incredibly vulnerable Facebook like statuses to get traction on the platform? Because they're seeing people with hundreds of thousands of likes do that. But I will tell you, we had a client who came to us with 800,000 followers, Dave, 800,000 followers.

So 200,000 short of a million, almost rarefied error on the platform in terms of how many followers this person had and told me in five years, they never generated a B2B. Oh, I believe it.

[Speaker 2]
A hundred percent. A hundred.

[Speaker 1]
I believe all of the content was about engagement and none of it was about actually solving challenges, identifying with those high value clients, pain points and pulling them into an ecosystem where you can solve them. And so, you know, while I haven't taken a lot of other self-proclaimed LinkedIn gurus courses on the platform, I think if you're debating working with somebody in a LinkedIn lead generation capacity, you have to first ask what's the track record and what results end of the day, bottom of the line results have you generated with other clients. And if those are just engagement and virality for the sake of virality and dare I say vanity, then that's fine.

But you need to go into it knowing that that's what you're going for here. But if you're after real valuable clients, ones that are shopping on the platform, four out of five decision makers with decision making authority, they don't have to go ask anybody in a corporate space for permission to buy your services. If you want those individuals, it requires a completely different game plan, not just posting a selfie of what you did the last weekend.

But it starts with what we were talking about in the beginning and going back to deprogramming is understanding them. What's actually the core motivators of those individuals and having your content speak to that?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, no, I, you're, you're a hundred percent right. Um, I, I, um, I'm on board with that. I was one of those people.

I mean, you, you know, my LinkedIn story, I had like 30,000, uh, followers. I actually had 30,000 connections and I had to pay a virtual assistant to go in and get rid of, I gave the virtual assistant a list of the people I actually knew and I said, anybody who's not these people, get them out of there because I was not interested in seeing or commenting on people I didn't know stuff. I just, you know, it was, or people who, people I didn't know or people who I didn't want to know, they weren't my ideal client.

I don't know why I ever accepted them in onto the platform in the first place. And that, you know, if we're, if I'm going to ask you some granular questions, you know, this is like a chicken or the egg question, right? Do I, do I accept people on LinkedIn that I don't know?

Or do I accept people on LinkedIn that I don't know who I want to engage with already have engaged with? What is the, for lack of a better term, the right way to go about accepting connections? I mean, followers, anybody can follow.

That's fine. If you, all of you out there listening, watching, follow me on LinkedIn, that's great. But unless I know you or unless we're working together or unless I have a, I can solve a problem for you, I don't necessarily think I need to be connected to you.

Is that the right approach?

[Speaker 1]
Dependent, you know, for me, I, and this is where the client avatar mapping and knowing everything about your, who you're going for is so paramount in the beginning, because while I agree with you, there is the case for, if I know my prospects so well, and I know who their strategic partners and spheres of influences are, and that person shows up and asks to connect with me. And I know that while they may not be my perfect prospect or a current strategic partner or a current client, but that they are reminiscent or they signify someone who is a strategic partner to my prospects. I will accept it because all of a sudden what I did was get access to their network through my content.

So I'll tell you a story. Never forget a gentleman who had a class action law firm reached out to me cold on LinkedIn. And he said, I've been following your content for a while because my friend Aaron follows your content and comments on all of it.

And he's the smartest guy I know. And so if he thinks your content is good, you must be extremely good at what you do. And I need to talk to you about my branding breakdown.

Now, Aaron, I had never met, I had never interfaced with, and he was somebody who I knew ran in circles with lawyers from what I could see from his profile would have an influence, would be a sphere of influence on those individuals. And it was exactly that. I started posting content, he would engage with it.

And then his 5,000 connections would see everything and then start to work themselves towards me. So I think the right question, you're asking the right questions. I would encourage you on a connection standpoint, right?

Followers go for it, set your auto default option on your profile to be follow not connect. But when it comes to connections, you always want to be thinking, is this person somebody that my perfect prospect would engage with? Because if so, then it does open me up to impressions and awareness from a vetted source from them.

If they're seeing a trusted individual engage with me, that's going to be an extra vote of confidence and help establish my authority and credibility faster than any other marketing I could employ.

[Speaker 2]
I love it. I love it. All right.

So this next question, I want you to think about for a minute. Why did you choose with your business to employ a done for you model or your model is kind of done with you or done with you model versus just a pure consulting and advisory model. Don't answer.

Think about it because I need to remind the folks that are listening and watching that we are brought to you by some drowsy corporate advisors. So for over 35 years, some drowsy corporate advisors has been helping folks all throughout the United States and you've heard me talk about them before here on the show. They do great work in some of the nuanced areas of accounting that most people don't think of until it's too late.

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Go there right now. All right, Kate. So I asked you a question before we started.

Go ahead. Let's have it.

[Speaker 1]
For me, when I started to work with these businesses on the corporate branding side, I realized that the founders of the company were uniquely positioned to talk about their experience in growing a business in a way that only they could and an audience would connect with. And you see this time and time again, Sarah Blakely and Spanx, like the equity of the corporate brand is always correlate to the equity of the founder's brand. If you raise that intentionally, the corporate brand will rise along with you.

Now, the problem with that is founders are extremely busy people. We're chief bottle washers. We are solving fires every single day.

We're doing a number of things. And generally what happens is content creation falls to the last thing on our list. We know we should do it.

We know like exercise. If we consistently do it, we'll get better and better results. Exponential gains.

It's like an investment. But in the myriad things we have to do on a day to day basis, it always ends up falling to the last part. And so going back to identifying a hole in the market, there were many other consultants, myself starting included that were talking about how to tackle LinkedIn, but they weren't tackling the biggest issue with founders, which was, I just don't have time.

And so when my now operations director and I looked, we thought, what would be the biggest value add? What's the problem we're really solving aside from clarity and getting the right message to an audience. It's saving people time and translating and simplifying their message in a way that truly connects to an audience.

And I really think that that is why we've grown and why we found successes because we're so laser focused on the fact that that's actually our clients challenge is the time and the getting it right. And they don't have time to learn how to get it right. That we stepped in and said, we can do this for you.

So it goes back to knowing your buyer, knowing their true pain points and then providing a solution that speaks to that.

[Speaker 2]
And you know, to be candid, people just don't do the work. I mean, I've been consulting people for the better part of my career now over 30 years and one to 2% of the people do everything I say, you know, maybe 15% do half of what I say. You know, 45% do something and the rest do nothing.

And that's just the harsh reality when it comes to the advice business. And I think, you know, when you can provide even some, like you guys do pretty much everything, but the person just has to answer your questions. But when, you know, when you can provide some services and you know, at least get people started, you see those results go way up.

But when you guys do everything, that's why you can stand behind what you're, what you're, you know, proposing to them because they know that they, they can't screw it up because they don't have their hands in it. So it's the difference between teaching them to bake a cake and actually baking the cake and giving it to them. Right.

That's.

[Speaker 1]
Yes. And there's still an incredible amount of buy-in and trust that that fosters, right? When you're speaking as somebody on a platform and some people, I would actually argue most of us, our biggest thing that keeps us off of creating really good content aside from time is fear.

And so when we can step in and say, no, we've done this for other people, we'll show you how this plays out. We're going to eliminate that fear you have of putting yourself out there because you're always at risk when you put yourself out there of feedback, whether it be good or bad, we take some of that pressure off of them. So it's just help us get you to the other side of fear.

You're going to start to see that snowball roll down the other side of the hill and grow bigger and bigger as it does it. But we got to get you over that initial tipping point where you're reticent to do this, or you have a bunch of really good reasons and excuses that you're not doing it.

[Speaker 2]
So take people through, and we're just, I'm talking just about LinkedIn now. We'll talk about Instagram, Facebook in a sec, briefly about B2C cause it doesn't interest me as much as the LinkedIn portion does, but it's my show. So, um, let's, uh, so take us, take people through the process.

So first there's a discovery phase where you do all the work that we talked about. You make sure that you're in the mind of their client. Take people through what that looks like.

[Speaker 1]
That's right. So generally when we start working with a, an author, a founder, we do an extremely in-depth onboarding process. So we send a questionnaire, we do market research, we examine strengths, weaknesses and trends with their stated target audience.

Sometimes we interrogate who their target audience is. You say you're going for that person. Is that really who you're going for?

Are they active on the platform? Do we see that they are invested in this channel? So there's that.

And then we need to get underneath of who they are, what makes them unique, their unique experiences and their value proposition, just like you would a corporate brand. So how do you talk? What's your tone?

How are you delivering this? And what is your experience make you uniquely positioned to do for that stated target audience? We map all this out, we map out their brand, and then we start to create the content for them.

Now, as we create that content, that's really sticky and reverberating with their target audience. If we've done that onboarding part right, we're in the minds and the psyche of their target audience. We're also congruently building your network.

And even if people are at a point where they say, Oh, I've intentionally backed off of building my network, generally eight times out of 10, you can really accelerate your results by identifying who you want in your network and inviting them as you're pushing out that content. And that's what I love about LinkedIn. It's the only platform in a B2B manner where you can reverse engineer your audience to be the exact person whose pain points you're solving, and then just serve them up content as you do so.

So we create that content, we deliver it to our clients. And of course, like anything on the first set, that's what we call it. The first bout of content, you're going to have heavier feedback because we're learning your voice in the way that you would say something.

But then we kind of get to this alchemy and rhythm where the content is flying. It's on the platform. The audience is resonating.

And we can actually peer into the backend to say, Hey, so-and-so at Sandy spring bank is checking you out. We've seen 12 people from there. It's time to pick up the phone and make an offline activity or make an intentional play here.

And it's that data that LinkedIn serves you up. That does it so well. Then as your content is flying and the audience is building, you get to lifetime.

See, like I was saying earlier, actually see what's working, what isn't and get sharper and sharper. So by month three and four, it's really flying and perpetuating itself. That's the general process.

When we start to work with a thought leader. Now, again, we work with three different kinds of thought leaders. Once you want those B2B clients, one who wants to want to do that, but from a speaking engagement side.

So then it's knowing what's keeping meeting planners up at night. What's keeping associations and bookers up at night and or authors. That's what's keeping your reader up at night.

What is keeping organizations up where they would want their people to read this book? How do you enter kind of the zeitgeist of their psyche? So a little bit different of a playbook, depending on what the ultimate aim is, especially in a, you know, 90 day world, because that's how we operate, but that's generally the framework of how we go.

[Speaker 2]
Well, God bless you for working with those other two groups of people because they're, they're going to wake up one morning and realize that there's only one real business out of all three of those. And it ain't speaking and it ain't writing books, speaking and writing books will get you the real business. That is the third one.

But if they want to, if they want to have you go at it, with them, God bless them, travel 70 days a year and go give your speeches. And you know, that's fine, but that's a lead generation tool as well. Writing the book.

You want to sell a hundred thousand books. God bless you. Good luck.

But that's a lead generation tool to only one of those three is a real business. But I digress.

[Speaker 1]
And you're so right. Because when we start with them, we always try and get them to, and I think the reason we do uniquely well versus other shops that just go for You shake them. That's not our business.

That's right. And let's just start at the top of the mountain. Like let's start at the top of the mountain.

Cause you're going to catch all of that in the tailwinds. Like if you start up here, it's going to resonate so much more because at the end of the day, that's the thing that actually gets people to move.

[Speaker 2]
Standing in front of people and talking is not a business. It's lead generation. Writing a book is not a business.

There's a reason Barnes and Noble is gone.

[Speaker 1]
That's right. Going, going back to your sponsor and business valuations. I, you know, when it comes to the valuation of a business, one of them is going to look a lot different than another.

If that's your core.

[Speaker 2]
So listen, um, I gotta, I gotta make some of the listeners and some of the viewers happy. We got to talk a little bit about Facebook and Instagram. I mean, I'm on there.

There's a lot of people on there. Um, we're not talking about B2B now. Let's talk about B2C.

What, uh, what, what should people be doing with, uh, with the evil empire of Facebook and Instagram? Um, listen, for business people, it's the greatest thing in the world. I can find out everything about you from those platforms.

But as a, as a person who likes privacy, that's horrible. Anyway, so Facebook and Instagram, what can B2C people do with Facebook and Instagram?

[Speaker 1]
You know, at the risk of disappointing your audience, I heed my own advice, which is the riches are in the niches and LinkedIn is my thing. And so I want to start with this as I could tell you backwards and forwards, how to build an entire business on LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram as somebody who's in social media and branding. I'm very aware of, we work with it, but first and foremost, not where I like to spend my time, not my forefront.

Having said that, I think it goes back to, and at the risk of, you know, beating a dead horse, like we were saying, you got to know why you're there. So making business in a B2C capacity try and happen on Facebook, unless your buyer is, I would say upper gen X or a baby boomer. And you know why they're there, which is to keep in touch with family, post their word or results, which is like all of my Facebook feed.

Now just people paying, playing the word.

[Speaker 2]
Oh my God.

[Speaker 1]
That guy just cat talk about a business who just exited that guy cashed out on that game to like the sum. I think like a couple seven figures good for him. It was a good day in his world, but yeah, they're like in the spirit of community Farmville, Farmville wordle games, people commenting on their, you know, grandkids posts, unless you're serving up a product that uniquely speaks to that, or you're pushing conspiracy theories, get on Facebook.

Um, or you do, and you do so intentionally. And the same thing with Instagram, you gotta know your buyer and who's on that platform. Instagram, it's going to be more millennials, but even the Z's are, they're fleeing.

They're on Tik TOK now. And so without going into too much particulars, I think you need to know that those are your buyers. If you're on those platforms and you need to be paying attention to the type of content that's resonating with them as it relates to your product or service.

But the key mistake I see people making is thinking I have to be on every social media platform. And so I'm going to try and just push the same type of content out to all these channels and the people who are very much invested in each of them, because we all have our favorite platform where we spend time. They can sniff out a spray and play strategy within a second of seeing a post and you've lost them.

And so it's better for you to just say, great, I'm going for boomers. This is who, this is going to sound so stereotypical, but I'm going for boomers. I'm going for a woman who's playing mahjong, who has her like community club and she's posting wordle.

And I have a product for that. And so I'm going to go heavy and deep on Facebook because I know she's there versus someone who says, I'm going for engagement rings and I know my shopper is thinking about it or trying to get their significant other to think about it. And so I'm going all in on Instagram and you got to attack each platform with that level of ferociousness and intentionality, because if you try and do a little bit on each one, they, they smell it.

They know it. Your etiquette will be completely inappropriate to the platform. And you'll sit there thinking, well, we're doing a lot of things, but we're not seeing any results.

[Speaker 2]
You're spot on. So you're so right. Uh, you know, I'm, I'm putting up stuff that I'm repurposing from other places on Instagram just to, just to have something there, just to have a presence there.

I'm not, you know, I'm not really trying, although I will say, and I'm curious to get your opinion on this. Um, what are, what are your thoughts about like retargeting your, your audience with ads on Facebook and, uh, Facebook and Instagram? So like, for example, you know, you're, you're connected to people on LinkedIn, they opt into, uh, you know, now LinkedIn has the newsletters and you and I were talking about this the other day, but they opt into your, to your off LinkedIn newsletter, to your, you know, to your email newsletter, you're doing a weekly email newsletter.

They opt into that from LinkedIn. Let's say you take those email addresses and you retarget them with ads on Facebook and on Instagram, basically following them around in the creepiest of creepy ways for, you know, a month and they buy something. I mean, you know, it's another way to stay in front of them.

And that's what Facebook and Instagram were built for. And you know, LinkedIn has that capability too. It's just cost prohibitive for most brands.

What do you think about, you know, just using Facebook and Instagram, people want to be on there if, you know, just in case somebody's on there, let's throw some, throw some ads in front of them.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. I think again, time and place in terms of your intention to the funnel, it's when people think that it's the top of the funnel content and they're meeting their prospect there. That's the issue.

And so if you have a set aside and your budget affords it and you know, okay, this is going to help me get to, let's say the six to seven critical impressions I need before somebody takes an action. And I started the relationship here, but I'm really like pulling it forth on these. Yes.

They are an affordable action to get you to that tipping point, but you just have to know that and assess it accordingly. Most people are thinking I'm going to throw up a few Instagram ads and I should have leads coming at my door or I'm going to throw up a few Instagram organic posts and no, I'll tell you exactly what leads you'll get because I get them on a daily basis. Random people saying, I have a jewelry line in Austria.

Do you want to promote it on your Instagram? And me saying, absolutely not.

[Speaker 2]
Can you mention something totally irrelevant to what you, what you talk about on your podcast? And you know, can you mention, can you, can you mention CBD gummies on your podcast about business? Yeah, that would be fantastic.

Let me do that.

[Speaker 1]
Makes complete sense for my audience.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. So Kate, I want you to do something now. I want you to think of three things that people should take away from our time together today.

It was, it was too short, but you know, I mean, it is what it is. So come up with three things people should take away from our show today. Before you do that, once again, I want to remind people that Sandrowski Corporate Advisors has been kind enough to sponsor our show.

They sponsor all of these shows. If you are thinking about getting a divorce and you maybe you've hired an attorney, maybe you are a family law attorney, and you are a little suspicious that somebody on the other side is playing a little fast and loose with the finances. I want you to have your attorney, or if you're the attorney, I want you to call Sandrowski Corporate Advisors.

Why? Because they know this space inside and out. They can get into the finances and they can find what should be there or what was there and has been moved.

It's called forensic accounting and they do this all day long. There's really almost nothing they haven't seen in this space. So if you need help with this, give them a call at 866-717-1607.

The other thing I want you to think about is if you're a lawyer and you're in a contentious litigation matter, and you need help with the financial aspects of the contentious litigation matter, I want you to give Sandrowski a call. And here's the reason why their folks not only do the work, but they can stand behind it and testify in court. They have several experts who've testified in court over and over and over again, and they're professionals.

And by the way, they've been on both sides of the equation. So before you think, Hey, they're going to get pigeonholed as plaintiff side experts, no way. They go where the work is and they will only testify to what they find.

So if you need litigation support, Sandrowski is also the folks to call. Give them a call at 866-717-1607. And again, download your free revenue roadmap guides, my gift to you.

You want to build a book of business revenue, roadmap, guide.com. Enter your contact info. Use the same guide that I use with my clients.

You can customize it for yourself. My guest today is Kate Ledon. You can find her at brandwisemedia.com.

I'm also posting her email address down in the show notes. You can reach out to her. I strongly encourage you to do so.

Okay, Kate, what are the three things that we should take away from our time together today?

[Speaker 1]
Three things. Number one, branding is not about you. It's about your audience and what's keeping them up at night.

A quick way to cut to the core of this and my favorite empathetic exercise, write a diary entry from the perspective of your corporate buyer. The person who signs on the dotted line, write in a day in their life, talk about what people don't understand about their day. It will move you closer to connecting with them than almost any other marketing activity I've seen done.

So that's number one. Number two, like anything with branding and marketing, consistency is the ultimate thing you can be doing. I think a lot of people are waiting for the player, the playbook that's going to tip the scale when really it's the accumulation of a lot of micro moments of continuing to provide value that will ultimately have somebody reach out to you.

So when you're looking at things, don't look for the silver bullet. Look for the consistent framework that's going to get you there. And number three, like we were talking about part of knowing your audience and being consistent is not going for a platform paralysis is what I'll call it.

Looking at all of the things that are available and thinking, I need to do all of these things. You're better served going narrow and going fast where your buyer is and acting and showing up and respecting the etiquette of that platform, whether it's Google SEO or PPC, whether it's LinkedIn, whether it's Instagram in a very intentional way because spray and play in today's world that's continually getting more niched and more into micro communities will not serve you when it comes to lead generation market.

[Speaker 2]
Fantastic. My guest today was Kate Ladan. She just gave you the three things you need to think about.

But if I were you, I would go back through the last 45 minutes and listen to this show over and over again. In fact, just forward over all the stuff that I said and only pay attention to what Kate said because she's on the money. She knows what she's doing.

Kate, thank you so much for joining me here today. It was a pleasure having you. Thank you, Dave.

All right folks, that'll do it for another episode of the inside BS show. We'll be right back here again tomorrow with another edition of our show. Until then, here's hoping you make a great living and live a great life.