359: Branding Your Company Inward - with Karley Cunningham

Social Capital

Meet Karley

Business Growth Accelerator & Brand Strategist Karley Cunningham takes businesses from overcrowded, competitive spaces into blue ocean territory where they can confidently stand out and thrive as brand leaders in their sector. Her international client base benefits from accelerated growth, profit and stability as her innovative Surefire Method provides them with a sure-fire strategy and toolkit that enables them to charge a premium, attract ideal clients, and outpace their competitors.

What is the strategy before the strategy? And how has it helped motivate business motivated business owners to accelerate their growth and success?

One of the questions we get a lot from business owners and leaders or a management team at the top is how do we align everyone and everything? And what they're essentially asking us is when they're delivering when anybody is coming into a touch point with their company, how are we ensuring that people are acting in alignment? And that they're making the right decisions? This is delivering the right customer experience? Or it could be a supplier experience? How are we strengthening those relationships and building our reputation with every touchpoint? And so the strategy before the strategy is a piece that we recognized about three years ago, that was saying, Well, how are we guiding everyone and to simplify? Sometimes when I say strategy, I know people's perception, their brain goes, “Oh, no, this gets complicated.” And this is what I tell people: to think about strategy as the overarching “how”. It's just how we go about doing everything. And so business owners and leaders are often feeling like they're walking around all the time telling people okay, don't forget that this is our purpose for existing. And don't forget that this is who we are. And this is how we need to show up. And if we look at the higher levels in management, each manager is in charge of the strategy for their departments. So when you've got marketing, doing one strategy and HR doing another strategy, and I know, for you in digital marketing, that's probably your worst nightmare, because all of a sudden, you've got two brand things going on. Yeah, yeah. Right. So we looked at, okay, how can we give them a simple strategy to align everyone and everything? And it's a simple set of questions. If you can empower your team with these questions, anybody at every level, then they'll start thinking about making purposeful and aligned decisions. And it's simply that if they're going to make a decision, consider or take an opportunity, make an innovation or take an action, they need to ask themselves: will we be acting in alignment and living our organizational purpose? If we do this thing, will we be acting in alignment and living our values or guiding principles? Will we be acting in alignment with our brand character and making people feel the way we want them to feel? And ultimately, if we're making this decision, is it going to move us closer to achieving our short mid term goal and inner vision?

What is the thing that you found most businesses are missing, that prevents them from filling their pipeline and closing the deals or bringing in new customers?

This was shocking to me when I went back and looked at our past client list because I like data, and I'm sure you'd like data. And I realized that 98% of the businesses that come to us to help them build their brands, help them get core clear communication, don't have a clear understanding of who their target audience profiles are, who their target audiences are. And I'm not just talking about clients, there's also some misses in there as well. But when I say, people will come to us with a persona, a slight description, but we need to go really deep, understanding the problems that we solve for our ideal clients, understanding their mindset, and what they believe and what their worldview is. And often the other misses are, yeah, we all have clients, but we all have strategic partners. And we all have suppliers. And so, because the brand is holistic, and it's your reputation, we need to ensure that we know what all of them want and need from us. And so the thing they're missing is deep and clear profiles, so that everybody knows how to speak with the people they're talking to.

Lori: Yes, you are speaking my language right now. And this is something that I spend a lot of time with our customers and our clients with, and just in my general education, and messaging overall is, if you're trying to be everything to everybody, you're going to end up being nothing to nobody. You have to get very, very clear and super laser focused on who it is that you're trying to capture the attention of. Because once you get that clarity, it's so easy to lash out and say it's so easy, it makes it a lot easier to craft the message that is going to resonate with that specific individual audience group, whatever.

Absolutely, absolutely. And I think the other thing is, companies will often go to let's define what we do, especially if they're making a pivot or a shift before getting clear on okay, if we're going to make this pivot or shift in our in our business, because I know a lot of us have been doing that over the last two years. Thanks, pandemic. But if we're going to make this shift, do we need to consider a new audience? Do we need to go back and revisit? Are we still serving the same clients? Have they changed? Has their worldview changed? Have their problems changed? So we can't really define what it is that we do or what business shift we should be making? Before we understand what problems we're solving?

Lori: Yep. Yep. I agree 100%. With that, it's focusing on the problem. And the audience are the two most important things that I preached that I would agree with you 100% are the biggest areas that a lot of businesses forget to put any attention on. At the end of the day, I mean, it's a lot. I hear a lot of people preaching the features, as opposed to how's the solving my problem?

Features and benefits. I came up through this in this industry in software and tech. I was working with Rim before anybody ever knew what a Blackberry was – now I'm really dating myself. But yeah, and that's all we used to put on the – you know, I don't know if you remember those days or where you're at, but we used to mock up the software box when the software was a CD ROM. And they were like we were always listing the benefits and the features. Yep. It's like no, tell me what this is going to help me achieve. What's the ROI? What is the emotional value gain that I am going to get as your customer? People shop on price, they buy on value. Tell me the value.

This is one of my favorite ones, especially when I go to marketing folks. tangling up my words here, especially when I'm on with a marketing podcast, is it's interesting when I say I'm a strategist and branding expert, people will go “Oh, so you're in marketing,” and I'm like, well, yes and no. If that's what helps them understand the context of the work that I do, sure. Great. And it gets me in conversation. That's fantastic. But ultimately, I believe the branding has split off from marketing. So it's kind of been, you know, developed by really smart marketing people back in the madmen ad agency days, they were putting personas around products. And so often brands are thought about products and the way big companies, Coca Cola, Pepsi, you know, insert big company – Johnson and Johnson – is they talk about their brands, you know, Kleenex is the name for tissues, right? So we're talking about big brands. But when it comes to small to midsize businesses, if we're talking anywhere from, you know, micro, and micro business run by entrepreneurs all the way up to I would say 25, even 30 million. We're often talking now about companies, what is the brand of your company, and so we're no longer branding products, we're branding people. And so I know I've gone off on a bit of a road here, but let's tie it back to branding is no longer just a marketing action. If you're branding the products, great. It's a marketing action, it's a marketing tactic. But branding a company, and when you're talking about people, it no longer serves us to have the marketing person tell everybody else in the company who we're going to be and how we're going to be because no business leader who is driving their company forward really wants to be told who they are and what they're going to do. So the brand moves up. So the paradigm shift is, think about branding as a strategic activity. And think about your brand as your reputation times your exposure. So that if you're leading by example, if you're demonstrating your values, if you're clear on your value proposition, if you're clear on your purpose for existing beyond making money, and you're constantly exposing your people to this, it's almost like putting a watercolor in the center of the company. if we imagine the divisions all surrounding them, and you the more you execute on those actions and share that wisdom of the company, this is who we are, this is how we operate. This is our way of being and doing. Because we want people to say this about us, the more action you take, the watercolor starts to spread out and people lead by example. So branding, as much as marketing can be responsible for building the brand, to your audiences and to your existing clients. Imagine if everybody in the company was in alignment, and talking about the company in the same way and acting in the same way. That watercolor just that color just bleeds out into everybody at touches. So the paradigm shift is to take brand and branding activities, and put them in the leadership house and lead by example.

Can you share your most successful or favorite networking experience that you've had?

This is absolutely one of my favorite topics. I'm a raging extrovert so I can't wait – I know the US has been open for a while so I can't and we're in Canada, we're a little more hesitant. You know, we're a little more conservative than all y'all down there – But I cannot wait to get back in person. And meeting with folks and I know some people are just like, No, no, I want to stay in my cocoon. So hopefully what I'm going to share is going to resonate with some of our introverted friends as well. But my favorite networking experience was one that I had really early on, as I was building my first business, I'd moved across Canada, I'd been working freelance and I thought I'm gonna stay here. I'm gonna set down roots, I'm gonna build a business. And so learning to network was key and critical, too, because I didn't know a lot of folks out here. I knew the folks that I mountain bike with, and some of their friends, but I was like, wow, okay, now how do I connect with people in the business world? And the event I went to was a learn to network event, there was one really amazing piece of gold that the presenter taught us. And it was this: treat every business card like you would a $100 bill. And how I turned that lesson into success still helps my current business almost 20 years later. And so I'll tell you a little bit of that I'll follow the line of the story. So at one event, after that event, I started keeping all the business cards that I had, and also marking them as to which people I wanted to stay in contact with. I met this gentleman named Ray Williams, and I kept his card. And he's really impressive. And I just, I really valued how he interacted with people at networking events. He was warm, he was welcoming. He was always asking, “How can I help you?” And it turns out that he became my business coach. And so the value just from that was he helped me grow and overcome my self-limiting beliefs. But one of the other things that he did, and still does, we're just serving a client he referred to us to about a month ago, just started working with them is that he has referred me to business ever since. And so I did some quick calculations for this interview, knowing this question was coming. And in the safe 15 years that he's been sending us referrals, I would say that he's sent us over $120,000 in business. But that's not it. There's a compound piece of this, one of the clients he referred us to, has become a close strategic partner. They've become our wealth advisor. And they are also one of our top referring partners, and they've sent over $130,000 in business our way. So if you calculate that hanging on to that one $100 card, it's turned into over a quarter million dollars for the businesses that I've read.

Lori: I love that. I love that you broke it down that granular to get to the ROI of the business card out. That's fascinating. What a great story. That is, and I've never heard that concept to have. Treat every business card you receive. Like it's $100. Bill, it's a really interesting way to look at that. But also, what's interesting, with the world of COVID is, you know, do we have business cards anymore? Is it necessary? I mean, it's easy to connect with people on LinkedIn, get emails, you know, texting whatever, Slack. But I still find some value in it, because there's always those situations where it makes sense to still have the business card.

How do you stay in front of and best nurture your network or community?

So I'm a bit of a nerd. And like I said, I like data. And so I developed myself, a system based on tiny marketing actions. And it's funny because everybody always says to me, when they see how I track it, I track it in a day planner, it's a physical one, it's quite big. And I use tiny little stickers. And so the system is that for days of the week, I take time to execute five tiny, tiny marketing actions to keep connected to people in my network. So it could be sending an email and saying, Hey, Christy, how are you? We haven't talked in a while. Is there anything I can help you with? It might be sending Joe ”Hey, Joe, I saw this article and I thought of you.” It's just creating little touch points that are quick and easy to execute. It might be commenting on people's social media posts, engaging in a direct DM, Twitter, there's lots of different ways to do it. But understanding how the people in your network who are going to nurture your community and support your business, how do they best like to connect and communicate and so, every time I do five, I put a sticker in my book and I have a couple other actions like one is public exposure. So this would be an example on a podcast interview. And I track those by month. And it's funny, everybody goes, Karley, you know, there's an app for that. I'm like, well, here's the thing. I know what works and motivates me, and one having the physical book on my desk in the morning. So I can't avoid it. Because for me out of sight, out of mind, but if it's there, I'm like, sure I do it. If I don't do it first thing in the morning, I set it to the side of my desk, knowing that it needs to be off my desk before the end of the day. It’s not perfect, I don't always get to it. But that's why I go four days of the five day week. So I give myself a day off. And also the app for when my mom would pre-going-to-school, she would give me gold stars when I was a kid pre-kindergarten for doing things like learning to write my name or doing simple math or doing educational things. So I will work for a gold star, which is why I use the star. But yeah, it's a system. And it's great. And people know that that's how I stay top of mind. That's how I tell them in my community. I'm here to serve you. How can I help?

What advice would you offer the business professionals looking to grow their network?

Okay. Spending time wisely, and choosing the right watering holes where the ideal people are that you want to connect with and be hanging out with? And where are they investing their time? Go invest your time with them and show up in the same spaces as them, 100%. There may be some folks who maybe aren't building a business or driving a business, they listen to this for the networking tips. They might be in a company at a level where they're like, “Hey, I don't have to do business development.” But think about if the pandemic or future events were to affect your company, and you're gonna get laid off, who's the community around you that's going to help you find a job? Who are the other people? Do you need to be connecting with people in your industry? Maybe you're going to different conferences where you're learning skills, or you're upskilling? Or you're looking to shift industries, knowing who you need to connect with and making intentions to get to those watering holes, which means where are those folks hanging out? is super smart.

If you could go back to your 20 year old self, what would you tell yourself to do more or less of or differently with regards to your professional career?

If I think about when I was first building the business, it would be follow up, follow up follow up. And what I mean by that is, you know, we talked about the five tiny marketing actions. I didn't start doing that until about five years ago. But the following up is if someone hands you their business card or they use the LinkedIn connection app or they reach out to you on LinkedIn, don't just connect with them. By hitting click, really connect with them, start a dialogue with them and then continue to follow up with them from a sales perspective. And you might know the stats more than I do. But I last remembered when people do remember anything, it takes seven touches to make a sale these days. I know the number used to be seven. And you might know from digital marketing, like how many times you have to touch someone before they will consider you or remember you or purchase from you depending upon what you're selling. So people are busy, continue to touch them in ways that create value. And here's the other thing I've had people say to me, even when I'm like this one too many emails is this one too many check ins is this one too many, you know, leaving a voice message to say, hey, just checking in on that proposal we delivered. Let me know how it's going, we need to change it. Often they will say to me, thank you so much for following up because I was so busy. And I had my head down. And you were on my list. But you just did the work for me, and here we are.

Connect with Karley

https://www.linkedin.com/in/karleycunningham/

https://www.bigboldbrand.com/surefireaudit/