242: The Psychology of Marketing- Understanding Consumer Behaviour | Jennifer Sutton

When was the last time you reviewed your target audience? 

When was the last time you sat down and took a look at who they are, what their desires are, and how you can reach them? 

Need to do it again? Because remember, this is not a “set and forget” thing. We have the perfect marketing expert to share more about the psychology of marketing and how to understand consumer behaviour.

Join me as I chat with Jennifer Sutton to bring you great insights into two marketing brains to help your small business connect with your audience and build more trust.

If you LOVED this episode, make sure you share this on your Instagram stories and tag us @contentqueenmariah and @brightcomarketers.  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS 👇

  • Why you should review your target audience profile 

  • How to understand the psychology of marketing 

  • Why data is important in your marketing 

SHOW RESOURCES 👇

If you like this episode, don't forget to share it to your Instagram stories and tag me⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @contentqueenmariah⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!

Other than that, enjoy - chat next week 💕

ABOUT THE GUESTS

Jennifer Sutton is a 3x founder and 4x mom. Jennifer is an accomplished marketing and advertising expert who has dedicated her career to helping businesses grow and thrive. After two decades of working in large advertising agencies, she decided to take the leap and establish her own marketing and advertising agency in 2013, Bright Marketing, growing it into a multi-million dollar venture, a testament to her business acumen. 

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

This is episode 242, and we're talking all about psychology of marketing and understanding consumer behavior. And I've got an amazing marketing expert, Jennifer Sutton, to talk more about this with you. Welcome to the content queen podcast. I'm your host, Mariah entrepreneur. Storyteller, digital nomad, creative content bootcamp, and founder of content queen.

I'm here to teach you how to share your unique story, create content, and market your business with strategy on the channels that work for you, but also help you build trust. Each week, I'll deliver a story to help you connect to a powerful strategy around marketing, business, and content creation. And I'll also be joined by amazing sales and entrepreneurs who are here to share their own expertise with Along with their journey to help you with actual steps to create aligned marketing through the power of storytelling and content strategy.

Let's do it.  Hello everyone. All right. Perfect reminder from this episode,  the power of continuing to grow. Continuing to learn and evolve. One of those things is through the power of audience connection.  Your audience is always evolving, so you need to always evolve with your audience and learn more about them all the time.

So if you've done, you know, an audience profile years ago, it's time to do that. dig it back out and review it. And I'm guilty of this. I have done these things and I remind myself all the time. I've got to do it again and again and again, and really understand my audience more with time. So  if you haven't reviewed it, your audience strategy, you've never done one before.

This is a great reminder. And remember you're not alone because even marketers, even we go, Oh yes, I've got to do that again. But I did it not so long ago.  Good reminder. And obviously with that. There's a level of psychology, a level of understanding of your audience that you're going to continue to evolve and learn with time.

So I have a perfect guest to come and chat today, Jennifer Sutton. She is  a three time founder and a four time mom. Jennifer is an accomplished marketing and advertising expert who has dedicated her career to helping businesses grow and thrive. After two decades of working in large advertising agency, she decided to take the leap and establish her own marketing advertising agency, Bright Marketing, which is here to help grow multimillion dollar ventures.

And she has a wealth of knowledge that I'm so excited to share with you today. Welcome Jennifer to the podcast. I'm very excited to talk to you today. Can you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do?  My name is Jennifer Sutton and I'm the CEO and founder of Bright Marketing out of.

South Carolina and we're a full service marketing and advertising agency that was really founded with the idea that we could serve the business community in a better way. Being more nimble and agile to today's marketplace not having a, what we call a set it and forget it media plan. One that is rooted in, in data and  Analytics and truly an ROI driven  mindset.

So that is what we do. We work with clients all over the country, even out of the country, and help them with understanding the planning frameworks between the branding,  marketing, and advertising. Three different planning frameworks. They all have to work together, but they have their own systems and discipline of thinking that a lot of businesses like the big guys get it, but a lot of the, the up and comers and the wannabes and just small businesses that don't really have never really been a part of the marketing industry that we try to help and educate and inform.

I love it. I love it. And I love that word not set and forget because of course there's a lot of yeah, what happens in, in our industry is yes. A lot of it's like, okay, deliver, goodbye, deliver goodbye. And it's never making changes, being adaptive to the current client. So I love that. And what everyone really enjoys on this podcast is hearing the origin story, you know, the founder's journey.

So I would love to hear a little bit more about. How you got started into business, why, and where you got to where you are right now. Yeah. And I'm going to take you back on my date myself here. So I am actually doing what I got my degree in. So I graduated from Indiana university with a degree in marketing communications, political science.

But in specializing in polling, so understanding consumer and people behavior.  And I literally went from college right into working with advertising agencies, worked inside the media department  and then the research departments. And so working in, you know, larger agencies, working on big global brands, our media, you know, our media programs were 20 million, 50 million, 100 million and really got to understand how advertising works and media planning.

I was one of the first digital media buyers in the country. There, you know, we, we worked on committees to establish what's now the IAB, which is the Internet Advertising Bureau, which sets all of our standards for ad sizes.  Back in 1999 And 2000 when all that was kind of being discovered and learned.

So yeah, I, I've spent, I spent 25 years working for ad agencies. Like I said, grew up in the media department and the research departments, but because I really understood data looking at, media consumption, but also really understanding the medium. I was the one that was, you know, and my team were the ones that would put together the frameworks of, of the briefs and the insights.

to give to the creative team to produce really good work which is an art in of itself. And so I grew up in the agency world became, became more of an account planner, brand strategist, and then I got kind of, I hit the glass ceiling or I would say the glass ceiling kind of hit me. And.

Realized I, it's probably time for me to, to, to  start my own company, which I did in 2013. And again, it was, I recognized that I, I held a special gift of, you know, really taking that the science of marketing and branding and advertising and really making a seamless bridge to the art.  of marketing, branding, and advertising.

And so, you know, it's like the, the big guys were doing it. But I noticed the little guys weren't.  And I thought, well, you know what, maybe that's kind of my niche of I can help those growing brands, those, those aggressive scale up brands who want to be like the big guys, but have never either worked with an agency or maybe haven't had the team.

To give them those type of disciplines and, and processes and just that level of thinking. So yeah, started the agency in 2013. And we've grown year over year ever since and really kind of find that that niche of, you know, We, we bring big agency thinking, big agency discipline, the tools, but we do it in a boutique and a boutique price tag and a, and in a value package.

So  that is what we do, and that's my story. And yeah, it's been, it's been a journey. Mm-Hmm.  , it's been a journey. You know, being in media now for 30 years, just watching  the, the, the spectrum of. How that landscape has changed obviously with social media and that convergence digital with all the the tactics that have emerged out of digital and, and,  but I'll tell you what we find where, where the discipline is lacking is in just Like basic media planning, the basics of,  you know, where should I place my message  to deliver to the right audience?

A lot of companies have kind of jumped that step and just have jumped into, you know, it's a trend tactic versus a strategic or, or doing something with  intentionality and That has been, I think, that's been lost over the last decade that we've seen just exploded. Come  on people, it's like, let's go back to the basics.

It's a lot of stuff. It's not rocket science. It's just thinking through the planning process,  right? Yeah. Yeah. And I find that that's what happens. You know, we're, we're filled with, you should be doing this. You should be doing that. Jump on this train. Yes. And we, we just follow. And sometimes it's not always.

Relevant to what we're doing and I think one of the things that we want to talk about today and I think that sort of going back to that sort of foundations and strategy and framework is understanding the person that you're speaking to because I think what happens is we do this kind of, you know, basic demographic who I want to work with type of vibe and then we sort of put it away.

And then forget about it. And I think going back and revisiting that and really just understanding if you can understand the person that you're marketing to, it's a lot easier to market to them when you know  who they are, what they do, what's their motivations. Exactly. So,  and I think obviously psychology comes into this a lot because it's just the study of a person, right.

And, and how their brain works. And I think that gets lost. Because  And, and there's sort of, you know, there's this balance between, and depending on the type of business, but we speak to a lot of, you know, solo entrepreneurs smaller businesses that sort of create their own content. So of course it's them, they've got to be energetic.

They've got to enjoy what they're doing, but they also have to think about the person on the other end as well. You know what I mean? So it's that sort of that balance, but I would love to hear more about, yeah, marketing psychology and consumer behavior. And you've shared a little bit about, you know, working on that, but I would love to know.

More about, you know, what it is, how it connects, how marketing and psychology connects, and how this can be of benefit to small business owners, entrepreneurs that are kind of looking to learn more.  And that's where, you know, we get a lot of clients that come in and go,  you know, I've got my problem and I have an advertising problem.

I don't think I'm either getting  The, my return on ad spend, or I'm not generating enough leads and sales. And we start, you know,  doing a deep dive, doing an audit and we're recognizing of, Ooh,  they have a marketing problem as in, you know, we're they're generating leads, but it's getting stuck in their process of their pitch isn't right.

Or if it goes to a sales team, the scripts aren't done well, or just literally processes. are broken. It's not even getting to the team. So that's why we say there's like a, you know, marketing problem or we find as we start digging deeper and going, well, we're looking at your message and  you know, who are you trying to reach?

And we start, you know, going into the branding  process, which is understanding  what you're, you know, who you are as a company your brand how you want to be positioned. What's your differentiator. And we find that a lot of companies and we're talking to, like, we work with companies that are sometimes 50 years old and have never asked that question.

So it's not just the, the small guys, you know, I mean, so I also want to give a break to folks that are, are, if they're just starting out or if they are solopreneurs or if they're small, smaller businesses, look, even some of the. The people you might aspire to be,  they're all, you know, a lot of people are making that mistake, like they jump through the process because a lot of people think a lot of companies, a lot of owners think that brand is just the visual identity  versus really understanding that the brand is really about.

The, the heart, the soul, the why behind the brand. It's the what,  what do we want to convey and who are we trying to convey it to? And it starts with, what's your differentiator? What makes you special against everybody else in the marketplace? And sometimes you have to go, well, I gotta, I gotta know who I'm marketing to and, and there's a difference between segmentation, where you can kind of take the market, your landscape, your consumers, and break them up into, you know, typical demographics, right?

Like Boomer women versus Gen Z. You know, women or you trying to reach Gen Xers in general or, you know, you can kind of break up your segments, but really understanding what problem are you solving from your company, your brand, and who are you solving it for? And who, you know, so you kind of look at the marketplace to go, Whoa, I can solve.

these people's problem in this way, I can solve these people's problem this way, these people, and then you start looking for those insights, those those umbrella, right? The ones that are like, Oh, now we're starting to see some some similarities across all of our segments. And I don't think people take the time to really look at the  consumer landscape or their target landscape in that manner.

They're looking at then, because they jump to the targeting process, which is what's the lowest hanging fruit, right? Where do I want to spend my time, money, and energy?  And so we isolate. So a lot of times our brains, we go directly to who I want to spend my time, money, and energy versus just taking the time and going, what problem am I solving in the marketplace and who would benefit?

From that solution,  what pain points, like, am I, am I am I solving or what desires?  Are those people gaining? So you kind of flip that and you really outline that. And then you can go through, okay, now I only have this amount of money or this amount of energy or this amount of, you know, what's the low hanging fruit.

And then you start defining who that we need to position ourselves against. And defining again, it's that what message, what do we want to convey?  The marketing framework is then how do we want to convey it? How am I going to serve it up to this type of an audience versus this type of an audience versus this type of an audience?

So like if you're a brand that has, maybe you have a distributor that you have to sell into or a retailer that you have to sell into versus, You're not selling direct to consumer. You've got to think through how you want to convey that message. Or if you have a sales team, how do I tell my sales team to communicate this message, to communicate the positioning of our brand in the, in the most creative manner.

And that's where then the visual identity of your brand comes into play. Your messaging strategy comes into play. And then you go into the advertising framework. And that is.  Where do we need to convey this message?  Do you think of the  amount of tactics that you have at your, you know, at your disposal of where do you want to put it?

What social media platforms make sense? What events you need to be a part of? What associations you need to be a part of? Again, it's that where, where do you want to spend Transcribed Your time, money, and energy to communicate that message. And that's where I was like, I think people kind of.  Jump through a lot of that, that thinking, and this thinking doesn't take years.

It's literally just taking maybe a day, a couple of days, maybe a week. Like we always say, you know, take the time, think through these, come back to it and then revisit it, get other people to kind of we call it, punch it down and, and see you know, how that resonates, but then when you get to that, where message it's.

Where do I want to be? We have people who are like, they're like all over, we need to be on TikTok. And they spent money, like, not just in advertising, but just, they've hired influencers, they've hired videographers and content people, and they're spending a couple hundred thousand dollars a year on TikTok, and I'm going, your audience?

That we have just said that you want to reach they're not on tick tock, right? Or, you know, they're going, Oh, I'm all over Facebook. And it's like, your audience  also wasn't on Facebook. They're just jumping to the, to the trend versus it's okay to have a Facebook presence,  right?  It's okay to have a tick tock presence,  but to spend that time, money and energy go where your audience is.

And sometimes it's. You know, it's in the most obscure places where, you know what, you start understanding how that audience, where, where they consume where do they, where do they like, spend their time, where do they make decisions? How do they find who their audience is? Is it, are they searching? You know, we call like You know, to analyze, are you looking at people that are in market, right?

In most categories,  most industries, most of the brands Only 5 percent less than 5 percent are actively in market searching for  for whatever the they're, they're, you know, they're trying to buy and that searching and Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, what are the others that 95 percent out there that you've got to create some kind of demand.

For your product, your service, your solution, because they're not actively thinking about it. And a lot of times that is getting in front of them at, I mean, sometimes it's the basics of  traditional sometimes still work. So you got to go to this event and be a part of this community. Or you've got to go into LinkedIn.

But instead of spending your time and energy posting, posting, posting, maybe it's going into five different groups and communities  and creating relationships within those communities, because that's where they're spending their time  and energy or in Facebook groups, or,  you know, in a lot of times it's still traditional, people are still watching TV you can still do a lot of things on connected.

You know, the, the, the sticks and all. But I think people have just, they automatically jump into digital and they go, Oh, you know, I'm going to do some meta advertising. And I'm like,  your audience really isn't there.  You're spending a lot of energy.  hitting this one little fraction where your bigger opportunity is at the top of the funnel, your top of your pipeline, creating some demand.

 Because you're going to get a lot more, you know, traction and, and better results that way. But a lot, again, a lot of it starts with the, at that branding process of, of,  What problem are we solving, who are we solving it for, and what do they gain, or what pain do we eliminate? And where do those people, where are they, where are they consuming?

Where do they live, where do they what is their behavior? And there's a lot of data that's at our fingertips. I mean, it's  Yeah, you just have to do a search. Don't realize you just have to go and look for it. A lot of it is you can find it on social media and, you know, looking at different hashtags to find those communities, looking at the groups, polling those groups.

The trade media in these in these marketplaces,  they do a lot of data a lot of studies of  how are they buying, what are the criteria they buying, but yeah, a lot of times it's just,  I grew up in the world where Google was not at our fingertips, and I'm just amazed at stuff that I had to go to the library for, LexisNexis searches, or designing our own studies, To uncover a lot of that or, you know, Nielsen publishes a lot of stuff for free.

Scarborough purchase a lot of stuff for free, but we had to pay for that stuff back in the day. And so a lot of the stuff is just, just being smart with your searches and and just  taking a deep dive and, and really uncovering a lot, you know, a lot of these audiences is gorgeous.  You know, go into like a trade show or an event and just  ask them questions.

Yeah, and doing your own discovery. It's amazing what we think as an assumption is, I want to say it's like 80, 90 percent incorrect.  of when we actually go and pull and really understand our audience what we think because we have our natural unconscious bias of well this is how I would do it or  I'm sure this is how they think because maybe One person in their family thinks or acts that way, but when they actually start looking at it in a scale, you know, in a mass scale, it's like, whoa, I was wrong.

Someone that comes and does a lot of data you know, research, it is don't make the assumptions because most likely they're false. We, we do, we, as you like our own human.  We do not behave a lot like the set, like our target, so don't make those assumptions. Yes, unless you fit in your own target audience, which does happen a lot for small business owners.

But I love, this is very interesting because I think You know, going back to those basics and looking at it is something, as you said, we skip over because we just want to get stuff out there and things like that. And what I find super interesting when I work with clients, say for example, yes, they get support with their content, things like that, whatever, then they have the energy to go and do those things.

Like you mentioned, go and network, go to events, go and talk with their audience. And then they go and search them on socials and boom, there's some, some content there. Right. Yeah. And I think. There's so much power in bringing up, like, if you're the founder of the business and you're, you know, doing little admin things or things here and there, how can you sort of free up your space to then go and do those big things?

Like you say, like, if you're the founder, because a lot of these people are, they own their own business. They maybe have like a really small team. They, if they're doing all the things and they don't have the space to go out there and actively talk with their audience. And I have a perfect example of a client who we started working together very early in her business and she had the time to go and do all that stuff.

And of course, that really supported us in being able to grow her business through the marketing because she was actively going out there and doing the things because she had that space and time. And I think that's really powerful. And, and you bring up a really good point. You know. My advice to a lot of small businesses use agencies or folks you know, specialists like yourself or kind of like our team, fractionally.

Do not, you, unless you are, you know, scaling super fast and, you know, at like the 25 million Mark or hire,  you should not have a full time marketing. Anybody, you need to have a fractional CMO. Like our team, we're a fractional CMO plus the execution team, right? So we kind of come in and we're, I call it a marketing team in a box.

And, but I'm, I'm surprised at how, when we go in and talk to clients, they are so nervous. about especially smaller businesses of like, no, I need to hire that. I'm like,  you're going to pay somebody 70 K salary, a hundred K salary, then whatever you need to advertise or, you know, produce on top of that.

And that person is not an all in one. That person does not exist. You are not going to get a great PR person, a great content person, a great web person,  a great art director, copywriter, media person. That one person does not exist. So they're going to either have to have a team or you're only going to get whatever they're, they're, and they're usually a project manager or a generalist.

How far, I was like, how far could that salary go fractionally? Well, that feeds, that feeds a small marketing team fractionally. Like that's a, that's something that, you know, an agency like ours or, or a company like yours, Can just knock out stuff for a client. Much more affordably and, and effectively.

Cause then it's like, Oh, you've got somebody that's thinking about your business, but they know what they're doing and they're alongside you and growing with you. And I think that's a you know, I don't know where it's come from, but we've seen that as a trend over the last like five or 10 years of, The smaller businesses, midsize businesses all feel like they need to hire somebody.

And I'm like, unless it's an admin, like you just need, you're a CEO or a founder, president. And you're like, I just don't want to take media calls. Well, that's, don't call them a marketing director, call them what they are. They're an executive admin.  Yep. Right. Everything else just needs to be, you do not need a full time social media person.

That's, I mean, you look at full time people, that's 2, 000 hours  a year. Yeah. For one brand? Yeah. You're talking about at most, content creation, platform, community, that's maybe 500, 600 hours. You're not going to fulfill their time full time. And, you know, I mean, you, and then they, they have to be tag team with other people to do really great work.

So,  you know, I just think that's a, that's a message that I think it's like they think of it as, Oh, it's overhead. And I'm like, marketing is never overhead. It is revenue generation. It's just our runway. It might be long, you know, if you're doing an organic social and content creation, It could be a year  before you really see results, but if it's advertising, you know, truly, you know, targeted that is, has, you know, conversions and all that, that's a shorter runway for results.

But nothing should ever be seen as overhead. It should be, you know, strategically. Thought about with like some kind of results in mind, it needs to be intentional and purposeful. And if you, you're not sure how to structure your marketing and your advertising programs,  outsource it. Like,  That is the best thing you can do for your company.

It will save so much time, money, and energy in the long run.  Yeah, I love that. And it is, it is very interesting with, you know, I guess You know, because there's this sort of balance too, between like outsourcing say admin and then outsourcing someone that's an expert in that marketing space, because we do see that a lot, you know, Oh, and this is a really good story that my partner told me when he his dad was hiring someone to look after.

Yeah. The family his brothers and he said to the woman, how much? And she said, depends. He said, depends on what are you going to give me the, what you want me to feed the kids, like an itinerary of their day, or are you, are you going to outsource the thinking to me? Cause that's more money. If you're going to outsource my expertise of what the kids should eat, when they should do their activities.

I've got to do all the planning.  Exactly. And he said, Oh, I want that one. So that's the expert versus, you know, an execution. And of course, like, yeah, it's a good analogy. Right. Yeah, but it's so true. And that's what happens, you know especially in this marketing space, as you said, there's like, you know, different people in different roles and having that one full time person in your business that does all the marketing is just not going to happen.

So definitely getting different expertise in different seasons as well for your business and being able to get contractors or freelancers to come in. Yeah, absolutely. And scale up with you. And, you know, that's because we see that ones that, that rotate, I always say, you know, I look at, you know, a company and if they've rotated their marketing person every year and a half,  and then that owner, that CEO was like, ah, I hate marketing.

I can't ever find anybody that's right. And I'm like, well,  Let me, you know, help me understand why you're so soured on marketing or I, I just don't trust marketing people. And I'm like, well, why? And it's either, they've had this mindset of. I don't really know marketing or they think, but only a sales, like marketing is sales support, which is the worst mindset of marketing should be driving sales.

It shouldn't be the admin, the administration  support to sales. And I think that's where a lot of business owners. Make the mistake because then it becomes this you've got somebody that's like the VP of sales or the business development person that's basically doing a task order task orders to marketing Versus so if somebody is is truly a marketing thinker  They're going to either get frustrated in that role to go.

I'm not seen as a thinker. I'm not seen as a strategist. My ideas aren't being heard.  I can't get a plan. There's just chaos.  And so that's one reason you see turnover in those positions. Or it's because the owner didn't really know how to hire or what to hire for. And they, they, they've wanted a thinker, but they hired an admin project taskmaster  that only knows how to like, well, I think we're supposed to have social because that's what we're supposed to do.

So I'm just, they are just, I'm just  putting out social content. And then the owner's like, well, where's sales? I'm not seeing any results. Gosh, we do all this work. I spent all this money and I don't see any. And so they get so they let go of that person and we see that's  Two reasons why that position is like constantly turned over.

And then I'm going, well, how about you outsource that for a while and let's get your, I call it, let's put some calm and structure to your chaos because a lot of companies that have scaled to a certain level and maybe they've plateaued, they've hit that wall and they don't know what to do next. They're just that owner founder.

They've kind of. They're, they're growing out of being in the business and they're kind of trying to work off, you know, on the business  and it's chaos, it's disorganized. They don't know how to structure it. They scaled maybe their product team or their sales team or whatever, to a level that they're really trying to.

Figure out now culture, employees, all that crap.  Or if they're, you know, if, if they're have investors, you know, they're dealing with boards trying to raise money, investor relations, and it just, it is chaos. And so it's like, don't hire anybody, but use a fractional team,  bring somebody in that knows what they're doing, help run alongside you.

And, and bring that calm to chaos, put more intentionality, uncover your brand, really define it, really define your marketing strategy and the plan. And so that your advertising where you're spending your time, money, and energy is done way more efficiently. And you'll see the results. It's a lot faster. You will scale so much more quickly and, and less pain.

This, like, that's what we, I mean, that's what we're seeing on the, they're just, they're running with their heads cut off because they're like, we're like, calm, calm down. We got it. You know,  let the experts handle it. And, but yeah, it's that mindset driver of, no, maybe I should hire this person. And so they're sitting in my office next to me and I'm like, why?

Like  you don't need them full time.  You're not there yet.  Yeah. Yeah. And I, I think you know, I, and that's sort of that benefit of being,  I guess that smaller business owner at the moment and sort of like growing your business because you, you do have sort of,  The finger on the pulse in that aspect, you know what I mean?

Like you have direct access to a target audience that you can speak with. You have, you're able to analyze things better and, you know using the information, make assumptions, using the data to make assumptions, not just guessing because I'm very big on making assumptions, but based on our data but, you know, being able to.

Leverage that and, and, and make those decisions moving forward. Whereas of course, like when your business starts to grow and you have a team and you're outsourcing, like all of the, like, you know, you've got people working full time. Sometimes it is harder to get that full big picture. So I really, I love that.

I think it's, it's very interesting as you know, small business owners are maybe looking eventually to have more people in their team, you know, what they need to prioritize and things like that. So going to, I guess, you know, connecting with that audience and that consumer.  Are there sort of any techniques or tools or strategies that you use to help, you know, your clients better understand who that is, whether it's, you know, market research, or I know you mentioned the data, but is there any other things that you recommend that we could look at to start to think about who this person is, why they're doing what, why we would be able to help them, things like that.

Yeah. I mean, market research, primary research. I mean, if, if  And it doesn't have to be so formal, right? You could literally like Go out to a trade show, you could go to just depending on what category of the market you're in, or you could use your social platforms right just to engage, ask questions.

Hey, this is a, you know, this is our product or service, you know, what do you think about that, or  take it, you know, if it's more of a consumer product like a package good. Go into pop ups, go, you know, and do pop ups, go to the trade shows and just get, you know, taste testers listen with with an open mind.

So always like open ended questions, never do multiple choice, never do a leading because you really want to uncover like really good feedback, right? So you don't want to lead anybody.  down a path because then  you're going to lead yourself down a possible wrong, wrong path. And then like I said, if you're out there in the market, you can use, like, if you're already advertising, you're already on social, you're really kind of trying to, you know, take a step back and, and look at There's a lot of data out there of  like your industry standards of what should be your hits on your landing page, right?

What should be your conversions into a form  when, you know, you can start collecting. If you have a phone number, you can put a recording on that phone number. So you can start listening to. Your sales team or whoever is answering the phone. If even if it's yourself answering those phone calls and hearing yourself do those scripts and hearing the team do the scripts it's.

Those are enlightening. And, and, you know, especially for an owner, if they have somebody else answering the phones a  lot of times conversions are as simple as.  the phone's not even being answered.  I  mean, just to be, you know, when we talk about data and, and going all the way through that user journey  and understanding, you know, where they are in social, where are they consuming, engaging.

So, you know, a lot of times we think about social media and just pushing out content.  But a lot of people have, you know, we, we do social for a lot of brands, especially if we're really trying to understand, is this message going to resonate  part of  social media is also building  community, right? Social  social media.

So sometimes your time, money and energy, instead of just like we call, I'm calling it pooping out content just to have content, right? We got to be in three times posting a blah, blah, blah. Well, instead, maybe you need to direct. That energy to go, you know what, we need to go and infuse ourself and some into these communities.

Is this the type of audience, we need to go find them, do we need to engage, and, and on other people like larger  peoples. You know, platforms, posts have a dialogue, go into DMS and saying, Hey, would this interest you? Can you test this? What are your thoughts about this? So using social media, I mean, if you can't go to a trade show or an event, a lot of that stuff is literally at our fingertips of just going into Asking people's asking favors and in some of these, like a Facebook group or a LinkedIn group or going into, you know, a Twitter community and going, Hey, would you guys mind give me some feedback on this?

I mean, so just using that and you'll get actually a lot of people are willing to help if you come across genuine, authentic. You know, say thank you all that and, you know, give, give some swag gets, you know, and that's where, that's where influencer marketing started. It was like, Hey, would you,  here's, here's a product, would you mind taking a look?

I mean, now it's, now it's a business right now,  would you do this? It's, it's like crazy, but you look at years ago, it was.  Hey, mommy blogger, would you look at this product? Is, is there a there there?  Should I scale this? Should I actually start producing this? This is a prototype. That's, but that stuff still goes on.

Yeah. Right.  And, and so don't just think of like, I've got to do this formal study. Sometimes it's, Hey, I think I created this product or I have this solution because I thought it would help this audience.  Go and then join those communities. Go and engage with the biggest platforms within that community and just start having a dialogue with them.

You will get, you will be surprised at how much feedback you'll get and great data.  And, and it becomes, it helps you boost your platform eventually, right? Your followership and stuff like that, because then your energy isn't spent on, Hey, I'm posting three times a week on our platform. You're actually posting maybe 10 times a week on other people's platform going, Hey, can you pay attention to this product?

So, and then just watch the data, watch the throughput, knowing where, you know, where it's coming you, you know, your sources,  we always say have at least one source of truth in your marketing. So whether that is your GA4 analytics, if that's your source, or if you're using, you know, if you're more of a DTC using Instagram tied to your Shopify,  Again, you can link all that to your GA4, but some people just operate in the Shopify analytics, or if you're an Amazon or you're an Etsy shop, whatever, and those are your, whatever your source of truth is,  you will get, just watch that data watch the trends.

And you will be, there's so much data to uncover, along with your social platforms of who is looking at your stories and who's looking at your reels and not just. You know, are your audience going up or your engagement levels,  you know, looking at who, yeah, are you getting the right people? You're like, Oh, I've been trying to get those influencers or I've been trying to get that reporter to come look at Penn paid attention to me.

Oh my gosh, that person now. Or those five people, oh, they just looked at my stories. I mean, those are great indicators that what you're doing and what you're putting out there and who you're connecting with is working. So sometimes it's those little nuggets of insights that's, that's gonna kind of help you be more nimble in where you should be putting your, your resources.

Well, there's, there's interesting. There's two things that came from that. One of them being, you know, it's interesting what you say, like there are specific people looking at your content, you know, it's funny with like engagement levels and and actual people consuming your content because there's clients of mine that, you know, they'll be out in a networking event and their ideal audience is like, Oh my God, I love your stuff on LinkedIn.

It's like, I've never seen you like a post once, but you know that they're watching. Right. And that's, that's sort of like. Getting in front of people. And then I love what you say about contributing because  how I see it is content marketing content creation is more than just what you put on your channels.

Obviously there's different channels and on social media, it's more than just what you put on your own profile. So even for example, like I've got a client that I'm working with who is In the restaurant space, they own a a seafood shop in, in Australia. And basically like we're creating content on TikTok for new audience, but then there's all this content that's being created by Google reviews, right.

That haven't been replied to like  1700  reviews there that are just, you know, and then you've got things like TripAdvisor, you know, you've got platforms that aren't the traditional social media platforms that you can leverage in your marketing to create content on. And we always just assume, Oh, social media, I've just got to, you know, post content, but no, I remember a woman I did a live with in 2021, who told me she posted a couple of times on socials week.

And then a lot of her content Was actually contributing to conversations in other people's places. So that is, you know, something that I was literally talking about before we got on this call. So very interesting reminder. Thank you, Universe. And you know, there's big brands now that are actually commenting funny comments on influencers posts.

You know, we see like I've, I've. You know, I've seen recent recently, you know, these big brands just got all these like younger generation, like Gen Zs, just commenting little one liners on TikTok and these people are going nuts. They're having fun with it and they're bringing the personality to life, you know?

Exactly. That's part of the brand too, is like, how do you make sure that you have a a voice and, and personality that, that is true and it's authentic, but also that is consistent. What you don't want to have is this like quirky social media response and then you go to your website and it's like,  this thing is dry as dirt.

Like what is going on? Like, you know, everything's, or if you, we always say if somebody has like a bricks and mortar and they've got a different personality online,  And then they go into bricks and mortar and it's like, it, what brand am I at? You know, so making sure that it's consistent across all.  touch points is so, so key.

And it will just, it just amplifies. It just makes people.  And what it does is it's when you're so consistent like that, you make it really easy for people to fall in love with your brand. Versus when you may, anytime you, you make it difficult, like if you have a different logo or look, you know, on your website, people that have to think, is that the same?

I'm confused. All of a sudden, you've just now created friction. Yes. And in our brain, if it's too much, we just, we jump off. It doesn't stick. It doesn't work. And, you know and that's where like, ugh,  try to make it as simple, less friction.  As as possible. But yeah, I was and to your point of like again, it's going back where your audience is.

If you know that restaurant and you're trying to convince  the consumer of where the best restaurant. Well, of course, then your platforms, it might be instagram, maybe facebook, but really  The influencers, those community trip advisor you know, all the Yelps, the Google reviews, all of that, those have to be kept in mind because that's where your audience  lives in place.

Yeah. And and you've got to, you know, you've got to think of, of how do I, how do I engage and make sure that my brand is present.  In those, in those aspects. So yeah,  social media isn't just,  you know, the, I call it the big four. It's, it is, it is anything. It's because you've got some brands, like if you're a fashion or home deck brand, you know, Pinterest is still,  it's still relevant.

I don't think a lot of people talk about Pinterest as much, but. It is. No, and I see massive growth on my Pinterest at the moment. So it's crazy. Cause we work with a lot of like with a lot of home decor brands, but we work all the way through the channel. We don't buy, we don't sell direct to consumer or our clients don't,  but we have to make sure that we do a pull through.

So we've got to have some relevance.  To the consumer, so they go into the retailers that we want them to go into  and ask for our brand. So it's not just about You know, you got to work all the way through, I'll call your channel, right?  You know, sometimes you're, you're a manufacturer that's four steps away from having a direct to consumer interaction, but you still have to be mindful of  all of those interactions of there's a different message direct to your, you know, your cut and sew or your contractor or your retailer,  but then you also need to have some brand relevance.

To that consumer. How are you going to pull them through? Yeah. Yeah. And also those like, say wholesalers or something want to know that you engage with their audience, like you're helping them market as well. So, you know, you don't have to directly market on Instagram to your wholesale cause they're probably not looking for you there.

You would direct market to their consumer. So they go, ah, they understand our audience. They get it. And a lot of times it's, you know, We say, you know, we, we tell our clients and it's, and it's interesting, a lot, especially newer manufacturers and, and we're like, we're like, look, you're there, we've got a strategy to push into the market  to push into wholesaler distributors, retailers, and there's a whole, you know, framework around that and messaging strategy, content strategy.

are aware of how we communicate to those audiences  is strategic and we've got to be mindful of and plan for that. But then,  you know, we always say there's got to be, how do we pull through? How do we get it off the shelf? How do we get those consumers? You know, if I'm on the shelf in a grocery store, how do I pull it off the shelf?

Because You know, or how do I climb and convince the retailers that I need to go from bottom shelf to the top of shelf because that's where our, you know, our, our mindshare is. So those are also, those are different strategies, different messages. It's still the same brand. Yeah, it's not two different brands.

And it's not two different taglines. It's like, people are like, I need a tagline for this. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. I think we complicate the process. Yes, and I was like, it just needs to be as simple. We just have a different way to articulate. Because again, we're still Our brand solves the pain point here, but our brand, you know, our brand solves the pain point for the consumer and and brands need to be, I would call consumer centric.

Even if you're selling in B2B  your brand needs to be whoever that end user, that ultimate end user of your product or service. That's who your brand needs to be centered around. Yeah. I don't think we talk about that as much, but I think that's also lost a lot of up and coming brands. They try to do it.

Well, I'm B2B and it's like, well, you're selling to other businesses,  but it's, You're, you're actually trying to get into a retailer.  Yeah, or you're targeting someone in that end user. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Your brand needs to be based on that end user pain point. How we communicate that to the retailer is just a different nuance, but your brand needs to be centered on that end user.

But yeah, that's.  But no, but yeah, they're different different strata. And that's why I'm like,  there's a lot of complexities and a lot of I think  those business owners that are trying to grow and scale, they've either known one part of it, of their, maybe their market, like they were in sales in the industry, but they never saw the big picture.

And so that's like, our teams, like ours, teams like yours, we can come in and kind of,  let's put that calm to chaos. Let's put, let's put some strategy around it. Yeah. Because they haven't, they haven't seen how the whole full marketing picture looks like and how they need to win. We call it like, do you want to compete, dominate, or win  in your market?

Because there's different levels and different aspects to, to doing that. But yeah, it is. But it's fun. I mean, it's like I said, 30 years, it's just the tools have gotten better. The tools have gotten easier to do things faster. But the, but the process for thinking and building the strategy and the discipline of the, those, those thought processes,  those haven't changed.

No, no. I think sometimes we think something new has to, we have to reinvent the wheel. You just have to use the tools that you have  Better. Yeah, I totally get that. But no, that was amazing. Thank you so much, Jennifer, for joining us. How can people find you and connect with you and learn more about what you do?

So you can go to our website. Bright Marketing is is we are at Go Bright now, so G-O-B-R-I-G-H-T now.com.  Or you can go to LinkedIn on my LinkedIn page. I'm pretty active and I have all the links there that you need, even if you want to. I do a free one hour kind of complimentary strategic council.  For companies that are just like, I think I have a problem, but I don't know what my problem is, which is we, we hear that a lot from CEOs, but there's all the links are in my bio on LinkedIn or follow me on Twitter and same thing.

All the links are there and my Twitter handle is at JJ media Maven.  Amazing. I'm sorry. I was like one of the first ones. So,  but  I was I was one of the first.  Tweet, I should say X. I'm, I'm never going to get that for those, but yeah, I'm an old school Twitter person,  but we'll, we'll see how that platform goes.

Yes. Well, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. It was amazing. And I've learned a lot, so thank you so much. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Love it. Of course, you know, we went into all things like hiring marketing teams and even just outsourcing and using professionals like freelancers and agencies like ours at a boutique and are here to support and help you.

And we're just remembering that you don't have to know it all, all the time. I think that's a really good reminder because we're always learning and evolving. And I've been doing a lot more work on target audience and learning different sides to it from other experts in my space that have done. Done it, you know, they've learned it and now they're teaching it.

And I think that's the power of it. Right. And I think not being afraid to always say like, I don't know it all, but I'm still learning. I'm still evolving. I'm still growing. And the best thing about that is I can then teach my audience to do the same.  So I hope you got so much value out of that and remember to be a content queen or king and that developing your strategy and story develops your business.

Thank you so much for joining me today and please don't forget to share this with all your business and entrepreneurial friends. Do this by adding it to your insta stories and tagging us at content queen mariah or just tell them about it. You can do the old copy link and send it in a message. If you do rate and review though it helps me get amazing guests on like jennifer.

It helps us rank in the charts and continue to get pitched. So if you haven't left a review or a rating please do so. I love seeing the comments come through. And follow me on Instagram or TikTok and let me know if there is anything you want me to cover, any guests you'd like me to have on the show.

Please reach out, I'm always looking for inspiration. But apart from that, I hope you have an amazing week and I will talk to you soon. Bye! 

PodcastMariah MacInnesmarketing, marketing advice, how to be authentic online, business ownerComment