Title: Building Your Brand Small Business Survival Guide
Guests: Chris Goldman, Kyle Rhodes
Peter: Welcome to the Biz and Life Done Well podcast, where we explore what it means and what it takes to do business and life well. I’m your host, Peter Wilson.
Peter: This is a series of webinars we’ve developed to help small businesses like yours know and understand what they need to do right now to get through this crisis and beyond. I know today we have all kinds of professionals, medical professionals, service providers. We have artists to give this presentation online. We are recording it for our own use, but we will not be able to put out the StoryBrand piece of this conversation out online. I’m gonna turn it over to Chris Goldman now.
He’s our certified StoryBrand guide. Take it away, Chris.
Chris: So we wanna welcome everybody. I thank Pete and Kyle for being with us. And I’m aware, looking at some of the names, some of you have been through a version of what I’m about to present. A lot of this comes from the great work done by Donald Miller, that you can get in his book, Building a Story Brand. And you’ll notice here that we’re going to give out a free copy to two people today who hang out for our q and a question session.
And whoever asked question one and whoever asked question four is gonna get a complimentary copy sent to you straight from Amazon to your doorstep. So we’re really excited. Next steps go in this order. The next thing we want you to do is to schedule a strategy session. That’s where we begin.
And we go through the strategy, and that strategy then leads to the clarification and refinement of messaging the one liner. And that then gets us to the design and development phase of an online presence, brand new website, or brand new landing page that, of course, then leads you to understand what are the digital marketing services that will work best for our community and our
Kyle: Yeah.
Peter: And I’d I’d like to back it up one. I’d like to put a one a. What you have is like one b. Yeah. One a would be to get the book, building a story brand on Audible or getting it on Amazon or wherever, and just read the concepts for yourself.
First, familiarize yourself with it a little bit. I know Audible is a great way to digest this information. And the author, Donald Miller, is the narrator on the Audible. So it’s really helpful to hear him in his own words describing this. So I I would make that kind of one a.
Chris: Yes. And then remember this, if you confuse, you’ll lose every single time. Even if your content is right, if it’s not the right place or picture in the right way, you’ll lose. Now, that brings us to our conversation with designer Kyle Rhodes. And Kyle is with us today because he’s gonna talk with us.
Kyle, you wanted to share about three things, three reasons why having good design is important to growing your brand online. Good design creates, first of all, a strong first impression. Secondly, communicates clearly. And thirdly, good design creates brand recognition. Kyle, let’s, get you going here.
What do you wanna tell us about good design creating a strong first impression?
Kyle: Yeah. Strong first impression is very important because let’s face it, People do judge a book by its cover. Creating a good first impression is always important. But in the world of in the world of digital marketing, it’s even more so. Chris mentioned last week that we’d on average, we only have eight seconds to create interest in our website before the average user will leave and go to a competitor site.
It’s a very quick they’re trying to find information. If they don’t get it, they’re gonna move on to where they can. So you gotta create that first impression that really creates interest. And a lot of one of the ways you can do that is by having a well designed site that’s professional, modern, and it clearly shows how we can solve the user’s problem using aspirational imagery and clear messaging.
Chris: So, Kyle, is this a good example of what you’re talking about about clear and concise?
Kyle: Yeah. This one I found is not a very good example. It’s very cluttered. It’s, it’s not modern. It’s not professional looking really.
It and especially, it’s not aspirational or engaging. It doesn’t really show how you can solve their problems. It’s just too much information. You have to dig through it and people aren’t gonna spend that time. They’re trying to get what they need and and it’s a very quick exchange a lot of times on the web.
Chris: Now we wanna give a shout out to one of the programs we use. It’s called Airtable. And we’re gonna use their their site as an example of the kind of thing to do. They’re great products, help you organize in a number of ways. But Kyle, what is it about this site that specifically you say thumbs up?
That’s that’s really well done.
Kyle: Yeah. What I love about this site is just the clear message of creativity and the just the clean and simple white background. Just you can really understand it quickly. And I think, yeah, the creativity, the creative vibe, it really gives them a sense of the kind of company that they are and the kind of ways that you can use their their tool.
Peter: Yeah. I think the the graphic, if I could chime in, the graphic itself really reflects the working together, the networking effect. And we’ve used this product for about two and a half years and it really is a great product and it is fun to use because you’re collaborating. And I think that graphic captures that collaboration as well. So they’ve done I think they’ve done a great job here.
Chris: Really good job. Simple, clear, and to the point. Now good design also communicates clearly, and that’s kind of the point of everything we’re talking about here today. So Kyle, talk us through that a little bit.
Kyle: Yeah. Clarity is very important because with good design, it’s not just fancy images and fonts. You have to draw focus to your message. That’s the the primary goal of good design. And if a website is too cluttered and wordy, people might not take the time to dig through it and actually read the words on that site because they aren’t they aren’t presented in a way that’s eye catching, clear, and quickly understandable.
That’s very important. Because within eight seconds, your website doesn’t clearly communicate what you do, how you solve the customer’s problem, and how they can do business with you. Those are the three those are the three things. If they don’t do that, then your your website won’t be very effective in growing your business, really.
Chris: Now, I’ll grab this site. It’s a UK site, but I’ve worked on the actual version of The US site on this. And I and I I just finally gave up and called about two years ago. I just called a travel agent and said I need help because it was so confusing and overwhelming. Now when we go to Hootsuite, a great social media management system, we discover something completely different.
Kyle, what is it from a design standpoint that they did well?
Kyle: What they do really well is they have a clean clean design that has a clear call to action and it’s some its simplicity is able to draw a contrast to the important things, like the call to action, a button that says start your free trial. Because if you have too many things creating contrast, you won’t be able to draw the focus to what’s really important. And I think they do a great job of really focusing on what’s important and just the simplicity of the design.
Chris: And it’s not just about the design of the website. It really begins also with the messaging that creates in your minds a great brand recognition. Talk to us about brand recognition, Kyle.
Kyle: Yeah. Brand recognition is a very important purpose of of design. And really, it all kinda starts with your logo. You gotta create a recognizable and unique logo. And some people, they try to communicate too much with their logo.
It’s too complicated. They want us to talk about who they are and what they do, which is good. But really, what you wanna use is your one liner and your website to communicate a lot of that information most of the time. The primary purpose of a logo is to be recognizable. You think of Apple or Amazon or UPS or McDonald’s, Adidas, all these companies on this on this slide here.
A lot of them, they aren’t really talking about what they do as much as creating a unique brand that is recognizable and creates that recognition.
Chris: Well, one of the things you threw our direction, Kyle, was a was a Nike commercial that doesn’t say Nike anywhere. And it actually has no shoes involved in it. Right? What what is it about this that makes it so effective?
Kyle: Yeah. I think this is a great example of simplicity and a strong call to action. Just do it. It’s do things that people in the history could only dream of. So it’s just a really inspiring image that doesn’t actually really talk about Nike.
It doesn’t say their name, but you know the swoosh. You know what they’re all about and it just it’s inspiring. And I think Nike is a very good example of effective marketing and a good person to learn from for sure.
Chris: Okay. So what we wanna do next is we wanna open up a q and a questions for you because we don’t wanna just present to you. We wanna have a conversation with you as small business owners. And when we’re talking about design and we’re talking about the idea of blending story, this becomes really important. While you’re doing that yeah.
Go ahead, Pete.
Peter: Yeah. Was gonna say we wanna give those books away too. So the first and fourth question are going to receive the Building a StoryBrand, a real hardcover book that we’ll buy and send to you.
Chris: And send to you. And if you’re first or fourth and you already have StoryBrand, you can let us know that, and we’ll get you Marketing Made Simple in its place also from StoryBrand and Donald Miller. While you’re thinking of your questions, I wanna show you a couple things, examples of good websites. Actually, these are websites where we have a design done by Kyle. This is one for asset roofing.
Just went well, live. When did it go live? Pete, a couple months ago, three months ago?
Peter: Months And
Chris: and you can see you might recognize the guy on the left here. Pete’s not only a marketer, but he’s also one of their customers. And found that this relationship is true to Asset Roofing because they are people that a handshake represents what they’re all about. So we have a great we have a great question here from Ricardo. How can a franchisee reconcile their local marketing with headquarter led marketing.
We have a little bit of experience with that, Pete. You wanna talk about that?
Peter: Yeah. We work with a large franchisee in the pet space. And I think the the primary thing is, you know, first and foremost, the franchise has to have a real strong brand. And that is the key. And they should give guidelines for how to use their brands and marks on a local basis.
They should actually do the development work for you or give you some examples of that in terms of how you would use it. That would be my primary goal. There shouldn’t really be a need to, like, reconcile if the if the HQ has strong graphics and materials that you need, you know, that really shouldn’t be too much of an issue. They should have already built in the way to put your local location and that sort of thing in. So that would be I would also want to have further discussions with the person who asked the question as well.
So
Chris: Yeah. And one one thing to keep in mind, that’s a great question, is that sometimes your franchisee is the one that brings a better marketing product to the franchise itself and the headquarters. And so sometimes that can be really important for the entire company as far as that goes. Question number two, Neil, I like this question. How do you suggest companies find images for their website that support their stories?
Okay. Kyle, let’s talk about finding images and how much time do we spend trying to locate the right images.
Kyle: Yeah. It is very important. Images, they speak speak more than words a lot of the times and you it’s important to find those right images. We have there’s a lot of stock photos out there, but, you gotta think about how you can present these images in an aspirational way that shows your client or your customer winning or solving their problems. Wanna keep it grounded on that, showing smiles, showing people interacting.
The best way is to always we we try to encourage clients when we’re getting photos for the website to take branded imagery with professional photographers that show their specific clients doing what only they can do. But, yeah, there’s a lot of ways to find also good stock photos as well.
Chris: And here’s one thing to make note of that we’ve experienced. A lot of times when people are doing photoshoots for their company, we can see the face of the owner or the owner’s workers and only the back of the heads of the people that are actually their customers. That’s that’s flip flopped. You wanna make sure you really see your customers. That’s a great, great question.
And we do subscribe personally as a marketing agency to two or three different photo stock photo companies so that we can get high quality that, by the way, are legal for you to use, and that’s a key. You wanna make sure all of your images are legal. Pete, you wanna chime in on that, or do you wanna go to the next question?
Peter: Let’s go to the next question.
Chris: Can you talk about services that don’t offer a physical product? Is the story process still the same? And the answer is absolutely yes, if not even more. Because when you’re dealing with a nonhard product or service that you’re offering, the story is what’s going to absolutely land that. It’s it’s the way you tell that story.
One of the great organizers, and I apologize, the name slips my brain right now, but one of the great organizers in businesses, you wanna ask yourself and your and your team these questions. What are the stories that we hear being told about our our business that we either want to be told or not, and what are the stories that we’re telling about our business. And that’s a good exercise just for your core team to do sometime is sit down. What are the stories we hear, and what are the stories that we’re telling? And you get that out, you’ll realize how important story is.
John has a question. And how do videos help or not help? So Pete and Kyle, you guys wanna chime in on that? I’m the I’m more the message and word guy.
Peter: Sure. I think going back to the example of the roofing company that you showed earlier, Goldman, are allowing the users to so this is the opening image. But then as people want to explore deeper and get more of the story, the video gives you a chance to tell more of the story. And the nice thing about video now is that it’s so widely accepted that people have almost, in some respects, become kind of lazy. Like, if there’s a video on a page, we know they’re probably gonna gravitate to the video and watch it just because they don’t necessarily wanna read everything.
So video is a way to to convey more complex ideas and also convey more of the aspirational imagery that we talked about earlier. Kyle, you wanna add anything on that?
Kyle: Yeah. I mean, video is just you’re able to communicate more quickly, and it’s easier to understand. So, yeah, it’s always very effective. It creates more work to put together usually than just writing something, but it pays off, I’d say.
Peter: Well and I I would add, that video needs to be done right. Yeah. You don’t wanna have it too long because most people are now used to watching videos on their phone. And by the way, you know, all of the things we’re talking about here really are reflect what you have to do on mobile. And the nice thing about this device is it’s easy to consume content, but I’m not gonna sit and watch a video necessarily for ten minutes.
So you have to remember that the audience that you’re, messaging to in this platform is most likely going to have a little, quicker trigger and, tend to get bored pretty quickly. So just you have to keep that in mind. So shorter, high impact videos is a good place to start. As they get more and more into your product or service and they wanna find out about that, then a longer form video does make sense for sure.
Chris: So Yeah. And there’s there’s things to know about having this associated with your site. If video is not plugged into your site well, it will slow your site down. And you may have great content, clear messaging, and every time somebody comes to your site on their phone or on their computer, it just locks up because you’ve done the videos embedded incorrectly, and they’ll leave your site because they’re just frustrated. And so we don’t want that happening.
Whatever company you’re using for marketing, doing your website, you wanna make sure you will have that done well. Now next question, this is great. Anna asked this question. Can this be done this
Peter: Anna. That’s Anna.
Chris: Anna. I’m sorry. Anna, thank you. Can this be done for a large community event like the Edmonds Art Festival? We don’t have a clear message.
I would actually say, yes. First of all, you need to know that. I’ve done by the way, personally, I’ve done the strategy sessions with groups as small as three that were a core team, owner, co owner, and one employee. And then probably something I wouldn’t do again is an organization that had 26 primaries all sitting. It was like the board and the core team altogether.
And the main thing you wanna remember is that the more complex what you’re trying to do and the more people you put around the table, it’s gonna take longer. Typically, what we do is we work for with teams of, I’d say, probably five to 11 is kind of the the sweet spot. And this usually takes about three to three and a half hours with that core team, and that leads to about fifteen to twenty hours of work we put in after crafting, massaging, creating dense, usable language across the board for everything. So, Pete
Kyle: Yeah.
Chris: Coming down to it.
Peter: Yeah. I’d like to add one point to that is that going through the process, the story brand process, forces organizations. It’s a framework that forces it’s nice to have a framework that you can organize your thoughts around. And it goes beyond just the core messaging for marketing purposes for an organization. Mean, it gets to a point where it’s like, why are we doing this?
So it is very strategic for companies and organizations to go through this process. It’s not just, you know, really for marketing messages at all. It really is, you know, can be very transformational for an organization. When they go through the process, they realize, hey, who is our customer? Or who is our client?
Or who are we serving? And why are we doing it? So I think it can be very powerful and transformational for an organization.
Chris: Pete, can I give you one example of that? And then I think we’re right up against our time, so we’re gonna we’re gonna get you back to work on time because I know that’s what you’re about. One thing that just happened with us meeting with an organization is we got in the conversation about who their customer is and what they do, and the team realized in talking with each other about these concepts that they weren’t all on same page. And they’re very successful, but imagine how much more successful they can be once they’re all on same page. They all are headed the right direction, the same direction in concert with one another.
And when you see those transformations take place, this isn’t something that just carries you for your next event or your next client. It’s something that can carry you forward in the overall experience of your business and your core team and training future people that consequently aren’t at the table yet, then in a year or two will come on as one of your partners or co owners, and you’re able to explain, here’s who our customer is, and this is how we help them win the day. And we we’re just so excited and honored that you’re here with us. Pete, you’ve said for over eight years now, we do one thing. We help businesses win online.
Businesses and organizations. Yeah. Win online. That’s right. And organizations.
So, Pete, we’re gonna give you the final word today.
Peter: Well, thanks everybody for joining us. I really I really sincerely mean that. Thank you for spending the time with us. Next week, we are going to be talking about social media. We’re gonna have our guest who will be Emily Caddell.
She is our, social media specialist in our organization, and she is really an expert on using those platforms. Thanks for listening to this episode of Biz and Life Done Well with Peter Wilson. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and most of the other popular podcast platforms. Please tell your friends about us and leave us a review so even more people will find out about us. Thanks again.
We’ll see you soon.
