Who, Me? The Brand Curmudgeon? Appearance on the Standout Startup Brands Podcast

I was thrilled to get together with Janessa Lantz (former CMO at dbt Labs) to join her and Amrita Gurney’s podcast, Standout Startup Brands, to discuss a topic that most people don’t even want to talk to me about — branding!

Yes, I’m known as something of a brand curmudgeon, but I’m also very much a marketer and I do care a lot about branding — but approach it with pragmatism, caution, and healthy skepticism.

Here are some of the highlights from the episode:

• To me, branding is about trust. My definition is quite meta, but it’s trusing that you will be you. Trusting that you look like you. That you sound like you. That you act like you. That your execution is consistent with your vision. Basically, have you defined a clear character and are you staying within it? You be you.
• It starts with hygiene factors: is your corporate image even professional? Is your copy error-free and mechanically consistent (e.g., via style guide). They’re called hygiene factors because you get punished if you land beneath the bar, but get no extra credit for being above. For example, you might not hire someone who arrives in very dirty clothes, but I doubt you’ll pick the top candidate based because they wore the cleanest. So any money invested in coming in above the bar is effectively wasted. Clear the bar, but by an inch.
• Consistent messaging across deliverables is arguably a hygiene factor. I wouldn’t think your terribly professional if I heard a different story across SDRs, sales, the website, a live webinar, and in reviews from industry analysts. Consistency is key to communications effectiveness, but it’s also a hygiene factor. Some people notice. The smart ones, I think.
• You can stay consistent by making a marketing blueprint deck, a deck that captures the answers basic questions (what is it, what are the benefits of using it, why is it different, etc.) in a master deck that you continually update and reference as you build marketing deliverables.
• Consistency is hard with genius founders who often have too many great ideas. To manage this, you need to get their buy-in about their best delivery and then standardize on it. And then hold accountable for not changing it every day.
• If there’s a technical story behind your product, you should make a seminal white paper that tells it in about 8-12 pages. You’ll be surprised how hard this is — particularly with platform software — and it will help you both tighten your story and tell it consistently. It’s literally the first thing you should at a zero-to-one startup on the marketing front. (Writing it will also help you get started on the style guide.)
• Why do I say “wait until you’re $100M until you focus on brand?” or “if you want to build a brand, go sell some software?” Because capital-B branding — hiring an agency that has no intent on tightening product message or increasing pipeline, but instead helps you determine brand values, brand promise, brand platform, etc. — usually can wait. Some marketers want to do it too early. Heck, it’s fun. But don’t do it too early. Simply put, if you’re $15M and not growing, nobody actually cares what you stand for. So don’t spend $300K trying to figure it out. Get big enough to be relevant, then tighten up who you think you are.
• Most $100M companies still don’t have tight product and corporate messaging. Get your priorities right. Fill the pipeline. Helps sales win deals with product, competitive, and corporate messaging. And when all that is working (and if you’re hearing about troubles due to a lack of branding) then go hire an agency to work on capital-B branding. And I am not universally opposed to this! For example, I recently had a great experience with Twenty-First Century Brand on a branding project. My argument isn’t never. It’s be sure you’re doing it at the right time and place in your evolution.
• Building a strong leadership message will help you win more deals than capital-B branding, so do it first. If you can convince people that you are the technology leader, the market leader, and the vision leader, you are going to win a ton of deals in a growing category. Why wouldn’t you want to buy from someone who you thought was all three?
• I view content marketing and thought leadership as demand generation, not branding. So that may be a source of confusion as well. Kellblog itself is demand generation and awareness generation for my serivces as a advisor or board member. It monetizes indirectly and is more demand generation than demand capture, but it works and I practice what I preach in this department.
• A review of the two archetypal marketing messages: why buy one vs. why buy mine?
• Lot’s wife‘s law (don’t look back) — why you should never communicate externally about smaller competitors.
• Why, in competitive, the rule should be, “if they go low, we go lower” and not, “we go high.” Enterprise software sales is a full-contact sport. You need to train and arm your sellers to go play it. In a perfect world, they’re so well trained that they’re eagerly waiting what used to be the toughest attack points.
• The other rule is, “when they go low, we get on the phone.” Never try to resolve competitor attacks via email. Use the attack as an opportunity to get on the phone and spend more time with the customer.
• Why you should allocate enough budget to measure your external demand funnel: awareness, opinion, consideration, trial, purchase.
• How to combat the age-old, “if we just had more at-bats we’d win more deals” or “nobody’s ever heard of us” claims from sales.

Thanks again to Amrita and Janessa for having me. The episode is here.