Steps to Improve Focus, Visibility, and Identity in Marketing with COO Tori Barker

Ready to unlock the secrets to aligning mindsets for marketing success? Join me and Tori Barker, Buzzworthy Marketing’s COO, as we kick off Season 8 of the Buzzworthy Marketing Show. This episode promises to change the way you think about marketing strategies by focusing on the critical importance of understanding and syncing the mindsets of both marketers and clients. Tori and I will guide you through the evolving mindset required at different stages of business growth, emphasizing the need for continuous adaptation to achieve new milestones.

Understanding your client's perspective is key to crafting impactful marketing strategies, and we’re here to break it down for you. We explore practical ways to step into your client's shoes, leveraging AI for deeper insights, and adjusting your perspective to better grasp their business challenges. Focus, visibility, and identity are the core issues we tackle, emphasizing the significance of honing in on specific pain points and the transformative benefits of increased visibility and a strong business identity. Plus, we discuss the power of niching down to serve your target audience more effectively.

But that's not all. Get ready for some real talk about our own journey from being a generalist creative agency to specializing in specific niches. We share the challenges and inefficiencies we faced, and underline the crucial lessons learned about the importance of saying no to certain markets. Discover the strategic advantages of specialization, the necessity of focus for sustainable success, and how clarity in service delivery can transform your business. This episode is packed with actionable insights and personal experiences that will guide you on your marketing journey.

Follow @urbuzzworthy on LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter. Get your copy of Buzz's best selling book, The Rule of 26 at www.ruleof26.com.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Seven seasons, over 90,000 downloads and quickly approaching the 100K mark, so there's only one thing to do, and that's kick off a season eight with another great series of inspiring and informational episodes. Last season was all about AI, and, while we won't abandon talk about how it affects our day-to-day life and marketing anytime soon, I thought it would be best to follow up all of this application talk with some mindset talk. No, I'm not talking about any frou-frou spiritual mumbo jumbo Not that there's anything wrong with that. No, I'm talking about getting our mindset about different facets of marketing firmly grounded. But to keep things interesting, I don't want to just sit here and tell you what your mindset should be. That would be boring, frankly unhelpful. No, I want to give you a peek into the mindset of marketers and their point of view. I feel like this perspective will be much more helpful when dealing with marketing professionals, and if you're a DIYer, looking at things through the lens of a professional marketer will be just as helpful.

Speaker 1: 1:15

So we're kicking off the season with a peek into my mindset when it comes to marketing strategy, and to help me is my friend, buzzworthy Marketing's COO and a business partner, tori Barker. Tori offers years of corporate and small business marketing experience and is a genius when it comes to implementation. She is the yin to my yang at Buzzworthy, so I thought it would be perfect to have her here in these conversations. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Buzzworthy Marketing Show. Welcome to the show, tori.

Speaker 2: 1:56

Well, Buzz, thank you so much for having me on the show.

Speaker 1: 2:00

I feel like we just got off the phone just an hour ago working on a project, so I felt like when you got on, I'm like are we supposed to be meeting for another project or something? What did I forget something? Oh, that's right, we have to do this show about mindset and marketing strategy and all that good stuff.

Speaker 2: 2:18

It's going to be amazing.

Speaker 1: 2:22

You will make sure I stay on point. How's that? I will make sure I stay on point. How's that?

Speaker 2: 2:27

So I will for sure.

Speaker 1: 2:28

You okay. So we've been working together for a little bit a year, about a year now. Is that about right, knowing each other for a few years now and all that good stuff? So, when it comes to marketing strategy, what questions do you have for me?

Speaker 2: 2:44

as far as my mindset in somebody who works beside you in marketing, yeah, I think it would be helpful for people to understand your grand vision right, Because when you talk about mindsets, you have to get yourself in the right mindset, but you also have to get your clients in the right mindset, or prospects or leads. So I think how do you put the client into perspective when you're thinking about the strategy that you're putting together and your mindset and approaching their mindset as well?

Speaker 1: 3:17

So I found that you have to, as a strategist, you have to put yourself into your client's shoes, if you will right, and think about their entire business from their point of view so that you can better understand where their mindset is, where their mindset wants to be, so that you can help them come around to the mindset where they need to be, to get where they're at, where they want to be. Right, because we know for a fact that what got you to wherever you're at right now will not get you to where you want to be, so you have to be another person to say 10X, right. So if you're today in a business and you've just hit your first thousand dollars, what got you that first thousand dollars is not going to get you your first hundred thousand dollars, and whatever gets you to a hundred thousand dollars we're not going to get you to your million. And from a million to 2 million, 4 million, 2 million to 4 million, 4 million to 8 million and so on, okay, every time you double up, or 10 X if, as as some would say, in some industries, just because of how much revenue happens, like in retail, it's more like a 10 X thing, but in service-based businesses. I see it doubling up Every time you double up, you got to change a little bit. You got to just how you do business, what business you do, who you do business with all the things, what do you focus on, all of those things.

Speaker 1: 4:48

And so it's really important for a marketer when we're talking strategy is to always sit in the seat of the client you're trying to serve, and so if you're a DIYer doing the same thing, you want to put yourself in the seat of a marketing consultant, and you can do this with AI. You could literally sit there and go. I am so-and-so, this is what I'm doing, this is where I'm at dot, dot, dot dot. If you were a marketing strategist working with me, what would be your mindset to help me? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And it will give you a synthesis of that mindset which, from there, you're going to have to use your imagination and then go from there, but putting always flipping the script so that you're looking from the outside in, you know, coming opposite of wherever you're coming from, will help you get perspective.

Speaker 2: 5:40

And what do you think are their top three objectives or struggles that you're seeing coming from the clients when they're coming to Buzzworthy?

Speaker 1: 5:53

Most of our clients it's not even people just come to us, but I see it all over the world. Now, now that we've started working with people in Europe, now, now that we've started working with people in Europe, the big three are focus. We have this scattered mentality of just like we need to be everything to everyone and or we're trying to give everything to someone. And I'm just as guilty as any of those and I've been really working hard on, you know, honing that in. In marketing, you have to touch a lot of pieces of things to make it all work. There are engines, there are blueprints that are all encompassing sometimes, but the focus of who you serve and what pain you overcome allows you to have multiple skill sets going into that one objective. So focus is one of them. The second one is visibility. We don't talk about ourselves enough and since COVID, like I grew up you know my I grew up, I my, my I started my business in 2005. This is like at the beginning of the baby infancy of social media. So we were still out networking, you know, three, four times a week. We were still making phone calls. I remember when I first started BuzzBiz Studios it was a recording studio and I had my office assistant on the phone uh calling people because we were trying to offset our income because there wasn't enough recording uh jobs, right, right, when we started. So I had graphic design experience and I had figured out how to offer full color business cards. Back then that was a novelty and business cards were a half to have instead of a nice to have nowadays. But anyway, um, I had him open up the phone book and just call people, who who prints your business cards were a half to have instead of a nice to have nowadays, but anyway, um, I had him open up the phone book and just call people, who, who prints your business cards? Right, and oh, so-and-so business, oh, yeah, and do you have a full color? Or one color, two color, black and white, you know? And they never had full color. And so like, hey, what if I could gift you business cards the same color, full color business cards, the same price as your one or two color business cards? Oh, that would be awesome. Okay, great, I'll have Michael come over there and take a look at it. I'd take my portfolio over there, show them before and afters. Dot, dot, dot dot. Okay, great, yes, I would love to have those full colors. Great, Let me have your design Right. It was all like face to face, right? And now we don't have that as much. And so I think we take for granted the fact that we're.

Speaker 1: 8:26

If you're working from home, if you're a virtual company, you got to get out of your house, and if you're a brick and mortar, you got to get out of the office. Right, we have a visibility problem. And if you can't get out of the office because you're a small business and you're wearing all the hats, then that means you need to leverage digital media so that it can talk for you while you're busy doing and doing work. And then the third problem is identity. We so many of us don't know who we are to, who we serve. We understand, we might understand our the pain point of who we serve. We might understand who we are best to serve, but we don't know who we are to them, how they see us, and that is a huge problem because when you're talking to them in either sales or marketing or even providing your services and remarketing, you're saying all the wrong things because you're trying to be the wrong person, because you don't know who you are. So those are the three big ones.

Speaker 2: 9:29

Yeah, so recap again focus, visibility and what was the third one?

Speaker 1: 9:35

Identity identity. Yeah, you know Identity crisis is the worst.

Speaker 2: 9:42

You know it's interesting I think about. You know all of those key factors not only affect our clients or the people that we work with, but you know business owners like ourselves and one of the things that I think about a lot of times is they talk about niching down right and I think how important it is as a company and business owner to know who your client is. Which ties back to this whole conversation about mindset and strategy, because if we as a company are clear on who our target audience is, we're already going to know the pain points that they have. We're already going to know the strategies that are going to work. Obviously, case by case it's going to be a little bit different. We have a pretty good picture and we know that the mindset, depending on where they are in their business, we know the mindset that they're going to be in and how we can help them overcome for the growth and the scalability.

Speaker 1: 10:38

Yes, 100%.

Speaker 2: 10:41

So do you think that you know that's a journey that we've gone on or gone through? Talk a little bit about how we've come to a point of really getting clear on who our target audience is.

Speaker 1: 10:55

Oh you're poking the bear. Okay, all right, okay, everybody listening. What she's talking about is the fact that I used to be a generalist and now we're on this and we are now a specialist firm, and so we've all been there?

Speaker 1: 11:10

Yes, we all have. Yeah, when we start the business, we get all the business any business we possibly can, so that we can pay the bills. Totally get that. But you have but once you've been in business for about a year, I it took. It took me 13 people.

Speaker 1: 11:23

So I mean, I'm just telling you from experience and even after the 13 years when I figured out what I wanted to do, when we went from being generalists to everything, so we used to, as a creative agency, serve e-commerce, retail coaches, travel, home-based businesses, b2b businesses, you name it. If you came through my doors, my team was going to figure it out, and that meant that our services was iterative and bespoke to every single person that came into the doors and we said yes to, and what that did was it created a lot of work, because you know, as a service-based business, if you have to create something custom for every person that comes in, you never get a groove on, and that groove is profitability, right. And the lack of groove is profitability going right out the damn door, right. And so over the years, I did, you know, find niches that I didn't want to work with, and so I kept saying no to more and more. First it was realtors, and then it was e-commerce, and then it was hospitality, restaurants, and there was reasons for it because it didn't matter. The type of marketing that is required for all of those niches is so much different than the type of marketing I like to do and my team that I attract like to do so.

Speaker 1: 12:51

Even when we reinvented BuzzBiz Creative to Buzzworthy Marketing, I was into the well we work service-based businesses, which is still a wide berth this is five years ago, guys and so we have the B2B and the B2C the business to consumer so those are going to be service-based businesses. A lot of them are going to be home services so your plumbers and your roofers and your interior designers and your home cleaners, all like that and your B2B services is going to be your CPAs, your commercial cleaners, your commercial landscapers, contractors, all that good stuff, right, and it was just what Just less than six months ago, yeah, we finally said okay, b2b, b2b services specifically, and some people will get even further down than that, but we find that what we help people with in that niche, it keeps us very focused and it allows us to get deeper and deeper every time we do it, because we're doing more and more of the same thing for each person we're doing it for and it really has, uh, paid dividends already for our clients period yeah, I mean they're getting better and better service.

Speaker 2: 14:04

Yeah, and each iteration of how we fine tune the business gets better and better, which is what I think people should hear in this conversation that you know, like you said, it took you X number of years and it was this to this, and now it's this to that, and so it's just a matter of you know, going through the process of self-identifying right.

Speaker 2: 14:26

Knowing what your company delivers, how you deliver it best, and then putting yourself in that right lane that I think people really need to hear, and that in itself is a strategy. We talk about strategy here and mindset and all of those things, and so how you structure your business is a strategy in its own right. And then, you know, buzzworthy marketing comes in here to help with amplifying your business and helping you grow and scale your business, and so there's always, you know, a journey behind the story of how you're getting to where you are.

Speaker 1: 14:59

Yes, definitely, and I think that you bring up a good point in the fact that just was just because you can doesn't mean you should, right?

Speaker 1: 15:08

Um, I, I run into entrepreneurs, um, I have this, this gentleman, he is super successful, but he works his tail off, um, because the fact that he's always going, well, I can do that and I can do that, and I can do that for this person and this type of person and this type of person.

Speaker 1: 15:24

And so every time he turns around, he it's like yes, I can, but then I push back and I said should you? You know, the crazy thing is that he disappeared for a year out of my life and now he's just coming back into my life right now, and I'm finding out that he had to step back and actually take a position with another company because he had burned himself out trying to be everything to everyone, right, and he still has a side hustle and I'm and I'm gonna I get to meet with them next week and I'm and I'm I'm hoping that his side hustle has a lot more focus and he has a good idea of who his identity is, because when you try to be everything to everyone, you become nothing to no one Cause you, just you, just. You become nothing to no one.

Speaker 2: 16:06

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 16:07

Because you just fade into the background, you become part of the white noise, right, and so better is not better. As my friend Mike McCallowit says, different is better, and to be different is by being so specialized that you just cut through the noise, by being so specialized that you just cut through the noise. And when you're, if you're a coach or a consultant, when the um, when the student is ready, they will find you. You just have to be visible, that's all. You got to be there, just have your hands open with exactly what they need, when they're ready to take it. Okay. You will not be able to convince somebody to take your tutelage before they're ready to accept it. And so, on the flip side of that, if you have a service, that's say, a commoditized service, how you provide that service and in what depth you do it, and helping them understand what you're doing, is just as important.

Speaker 2: 17:01

Yeah, I think kind of one of the common threads that I'm thinking as we're talking is clarity is key in this point, right, because we talk about the focus and visibility and if we don't have clarity, then we don't know where to focus, we don't know how to be visible in the right way. So it's almost takes you all the way back to mindset and clarity and putting yourself in the right perspective to become the company that you want to be.