Author: Brittany Crockett

Kevin Adelsberger
Welcome to the second episode of the Content Machine podcast we’re recording at Pretzel Day in 2024. I’m joined by Chad Wilson, President of Foundation Bank and a longtime customer and friend of Adelsberger Marketing. Thanks for joining us, Chad.

Chad Wilson
Happy to be here. Honored to be here.

Kevin Adelsberger
Chad, we recently helped you guys with a rebrand for the bank, and I wanted to ask you some questions about that because rebrand is a big marketing decision. So why did you decide to go through with a rebrand?

Chad Wilson
It is a big marketing decision. It took us some time to get to a point where I guess we were comfortable making the plunge into rebranding. I think that the more you think about it for a business, everything in your business speaks, everything says something. If you look at all the different parts of your business, what are those things saying? What does your building say? What does the vibe when you walk into the building say? What does all of the digital presence that you have, what does it say? We had thrown together our branding in pieces over the years. We had some legacy branding for our bank that had been there for a long time. We refreshed that a bit with the new brand in 2005, and it was really a bootstrapped project where we got online, found somebody to just help us put a logo together. I think a lot of thought went into our name that we wanted to use to brand with. There’s some real meaning behind the name Foundation Bank. But the graphics, the look, the feel of that, we put some thought into, but I think over the years, it just became more and more apparent that we could do that even more clearly, could do that with even more excellence. It felt like in some ways we were playing Pong, and the rebrand was like moving to Fortnite. It was a big time advance for us just in, I think, the quality of the look that we had. We feel like we’ve got a great culture, we’ve got a unique thing in our bank, and we want that to be visible externally. And so in some ways this brand, the rebranding, we wanted it to be a reflection of more so who we really are. And we wanted it to be something that was fresh enough that it looks like we’re paying attention to what is speaking digitally. And so thought about it for years and decided it was just time to take the plunge. I think you have to have, in some measure, things right internally before you can take that plunge, because in many ways you’re wanting that brand to be reflective of who you are. And if you’re not really happy with who you are, there may be some internal work to be done first to help you feel like you’re really capturing the essence of who you are in the brand and that you’re able to stand behind what you’re communicating. So we spent some years doing that. And you never arrive. You can always improve your culture. You can always improve the experience that people are having with you. But we felt like we were at a place where we were strong enough in our confidence of who we were. It’s time for us to now have a more attractive, contemporary representation of that through our brand.

Kevin Adelsberger)
That makes a lot of sense. So what was about that process? What did you not expect? What did you learn about the bank during the process of rebranding?

Chad Wilson)
Well, one thing we already knew is that we’re not perfect, and there’s always room for improvement. And that’s helpful, too, because sometimes you can poke your chest out too much and think, we got it all together. We’re the best thing since slice bread. Going through the process that you took us through of really trying to identify what we do well, where we really excel in the marketplace. When you do that, you also see where you don’t excel. You see the holes, and I think we knew that going in, but it was a more specific process to be able to see, okay, this is an area we just got to be okay with not being good at. These are areas that we just really need to lean in on. I think that’s the thing that I learned. I knew we had shortcomings coming in, but I think I came out of the rebounding process, and I think our whole team did, having a greater understanding of who we are, having a greater understanding of what we do well, and just really leaning into that. And being okay with that. It’s really easy, I think, in the business world to try to become all things to all people. I think, particularly in the banking world, there are lots of banks, and there are lots of banks that do different things well. If you’re not careful, you can always be chasing what seems to be really attractive at the moment or really eye-catching at the moment. But the fact is, every bank has a niche, and we embrace that niche even more now than we did before the rebrand, because I think the team that went through the process, they were able to see, okay, this is what we are good at. Let’s be better at it. That’s one thing that we took away, is a greater understanding of our strengths, and I think an even clearer understanding of our weaknesses and we’re trying to play to the strengths in our everyday operations and then represent those in the rebrand

Kevin Adelsberger
You mentioned a niche and feeling you define that now. How would you define that niche then?

Chad Wilson
I would I would say that our niche is providing financial solutions for people who appreciate a values-based culture and a values-based financial decision process. At first, going in, I think we thought we’re a small bank, we’re just able to do customer service really, really well. Sure. And that is something we do well. But I think we’re able to press even deeper into that. Not everyone is looking for a great customer service experience. Those who are sometimes are looking for not just a good customer service experience, but a process in which their own values are appreciated and even pushed up to the front in the process itself. And so we want to appeal in a culture where honesty and integrity are often questioned and where most institutions are approached with skepticism. We want to really, for those who value trust, who value integrity, we want to be an institution worthy of that, if that’s something that they care about. Some people just want a close bank that has a great app, and they never plan on walking in the door, and we’re not going to be the best fit for them. But for folks that want honest, sound financial advice, who want more than just a place to put their money, but people to help them decide what to do with their money, that’s where we’ve honed in to be able to get that personalized, not just relationship, but attention consistent with the values that they may already have.

Kevin Adelsberger)
That is a niche, I think, for sure, because I think most banks that people run into are large banks that are more interested in the transactionary stuff than the relationship stuff. Now, if you were to ever think about doing a rebrand again, what would you do differently or Or is there a way that you’d approach it differently? Or anything that maybe was a surprise to you in the process? You’re like, I wouldn’t have even thought about that on the front-end

Chad Wilson
I’m proud of the way that we went about it because we did include people from different parts of the bank to speak into it. I thought that was really important. You don’t want maybe the typical decision-makers being the only ones to weigh in on a rebrand, I think. We had a core team that was composed of a couple of typical decision-makers, but then we had some folks that just had marketing insight, and they were helpful to whittle down choices, to give some impressions of this is how this lands. But then we did include, at certain parts of the process, an even wider group to just give us, How does this hit you? If you were to choose between this and this, what would you do? We intentionally also were in six different markets in Northwest Tennessee. A lot of them are smaller towns than Jackson, Tennessee. And so we wanted to make sure that this brand would be embraced in each of those markets. And so we did get someone from each market to just let us know what they thought about the brand. So if I were doing it again, maybe even broadening that just a bit, You have to be real careful, I think, of involving too many people in the decision making, or you might say the draft input phase.

Kevin Adelsberger
Too many cooks in the kitchen.

Chad Wilson
Too many. But once you have have some choices, and once you just want to see how something lands, I think you can broaden the audience to where you’re able to just be even more informed. So we might have even broadened that. I think we did a good job, but we might could have done even better strategically not saying, What do you think our brand should look like, but here’s some work we’ve done. What do you think about it?

Kevin Adelsberger
And I’ll say from our perspective, we’ve done this with other companies. I think your team was on the better end of teams that we’ve worked off on that because You did have people from different departments. You had people with different opinions. And I’ll say everybody was cordial, worked together, was not in there just to throw a wrench in the plans. They were all there for the same goal and working together. It went really smooth for us. Thank you for listening to part one of our two-part podcast with Chad Wilson, President of Foundation Bank. Stay tuned to Content Machine for a future episode featuring Chad talking about his rebranding process.

Kevin
Welcome to the Content Machine podcast. I’m Kevin Adelsberger. This week, we are joined by our summer intern, Cadence Walsham. Thanks for joining us, Kadence

Kadence

Of course.

Kevin
So, Kadence, we have started a tradition around here where we have the interns come at the end of their session with us, the end of their semester with us, and we love to hear about your summer. So why don’t you give us an overview of being an intern at Adelsberger Marketing?

Kadence
This internship has been really good for I think one of the main reasons is because I classify myself as being an advertising and PR major. But being in this internship, I’ve seen that I’m not only just an advertising and PR major, but I actually can branch out into other areas in marketing. I got to see some website building. I got to see Katie work in graphic design, and I actually got to go on a few video and photo shoots as well.
Kevin
That’s great. You got to experience a lot of different things. How do you think that is helping you prepare for your future? Because tell us about what you’re wanting to do after you go, because you go back to school in a few weeks. Yes. But what’s the future hold for you, Hope?

Kadence

I graduate school in December, a year and a half early. Kind of crazy. But I want to be a communications pastor at a church. Not sure where. We’re going to see where the Lord takes me. But I’ve got to work on aprojects here during my internship, and one of them was actually through a church, which is really cool since that’s what I want to go into. I was able to see the livestream and post it on the website and on their socials. I thought it was really cool because on Monday mornings, when I would post a livestream, I could see how many viewers had been watched, and I would see 60 to 70. I was like, wow, by 15 to 20 minutes of work I would put in for this church is making an impact for 60 to 70 people to hear the word of God, which is really cool.

Kevin
Will you tell us about a different project that you worked on this summer?
Kadence
Yeah. So one of the really cool things I got to experience this summer was seeing a project start from the beginning to the end. And when I started in May, you actually created an outline for the CMO service, our Chief Marketing Officer Service, which is actually live now, which is really cool to see. But I got to actually work with a bunch of team members, and we all had a part in this. So it began with an outline, and we got to see it through with the finished product that’s now live, which is really cool to see that I was actually a part of something pretty big, and that’s actually going to stay on past my internship as well.
Kevin
Yeah, we were glad to have you there. As you look back on your summer, was there any takeaways or that you had from the summer?

Kadence
I think one of the biggest takeaways I’ve had this summer is that I usually only see the end product, especially from what I’ve worked with at school and stuff. So actually, being behind the scenes more instead of in front of a camera or editing post, I actually got to see more graphic design take place and more website building and then more social. There’s so much I didn’t even know that took place in a marketing business that I got to see firsthand, which is very cool.

Kevin
That’s really good. Kadence, there could be future interns watching this. If they’re watching this, you’re talking to them, what would you tell them to help them to be successful as an intern at Adelsberger Marketing?

Kadence
I think I would just say yes. Whatever is being asked of you, just say yes. It may actually help your way, way down the road that you don’t even know of right now, but at least you’re learning, and you don’t know where that’s going to take you. I would just say yes. Don’t push no on the Google calendar. Push yes and have fun while you’re doing it, too, because it’s not going to be forever. It’s just a short amount of time. Have fun while you’re doing it.

Kevin
Well, Kadence, thank you for joining us for this semester and joining us for this podcast. Cadence is heading back to Evangel University in just a few weeks, so we were glad to have you this summer. If you’re interested in an internship at Adelsberger Marketing, visit our website at adelsburgermarketing. Com. If you are a company that works with us or someone that we know that you want some tips on implementing an internship, we love internships at Adelsberger Marketing. We’d be happy to talk to you about how to do that. Thank you for watching the Content Machine. We’ll be back with a normal episode next week.

Welcome to the third part in our series about Marketing Fundamentals, a marketing 101 with the Content Machine podcast. We’ve talked about some of the fundamentals of marketing. Let’s talk about paid media. A couple of versions of paid media. First thing we’ll talk about is sponsorship. Community involvement is great, but is at our target audience. You can think about things of who is attending the events or who’s also supporting this nonprofit that we’re supporting. It’s a great way to build relationships in the community. But we also should ask the question, what are we saying to the community by sponsoring this? And how can we make the most of this sponsorship? First thing, be present at the event. It’s embarrassing for people to have a table at an event and then nobody be sitting at it. Now, let’s think about traditional advertising, newspapers, radio, TV. The first question you should ask is, does the cost justify the attention that you’re getting? Are the people that we want to talk to consuming this product? And what stats are we relying on to know if this is reaching a good amount of people? I’m cautious about stats for radio and TV in local markets because a lot of times they are based on Nielsen ratings, or some markets don’t have Nielsen ratings and rely on people voluntarily telling you what they’re watching and listening to.

People are incredibly unreliable on that thing. But then the bigger The question is, are the people we’re trying to talk to, listening to, watching or reading this material? That’s something you have to think about for yourself. With digital marketing, it’s a similar set of questions. Does the cost justify the attention? Typically, On most digital marketing platforms, it is cheaper per thousand people reached than traditional media. But if you go to something like influencers, the cost may go up significantly. So do we have the content to here as well. When you start doing things like YouTube ads or TikTok ads, you have to have video to go with those things. Do you have good enough video to go with those products to help sell yourself? And the big question is, is our target market actually looking here? Are the people we’re trying to talk to on this platform and spending time here? I will also say that not all digital ads are created equal. Banner ads versus content ads are very different things. A banner ad on a random app that you install, like a weather app, for example, does not have the same ROI as a good video ad on YouTube.

So be thinking about the placement of those ads and who’s going to be seeing them. You should also think about getting out and networking. Can you network with your target audience? Chambers of commerce, realtor groups, trade groups? Maybe you can create a group, like a networking group on Facebook or a LinkedIn, or is there some regional group that you can be a part of? Getting out and meeting people is still a great way to develop business. And then finally, a big concept that you should think about is the splinterization of our media lives. Media attention is splintered. If you interviewed a room of 20 random people, they probably listened to 20 different things on the radio or through music, through speakers on the way into the office that day. The media attention is no longer focused in a couple of different spots. It’s spread all over the place. And so you need to be able to think about that not everybody is How are we going to be reading the thing or listening to or watching to the thing that you’re running ads on. How do we increase our touch points and touch more people with our marketing message?

You have to be able to spread out your balance of your marketing budget But focus on the areas that are the most beneficial through tracking over the long term. A good concept to keep in mind throughout the marketing process is developing know, like, and trust with customers. So know is creating the outbound awareness of your business. Do people know that you exist and that you sell the product that you do? Have they heard your name before? Do they know some friends that have worked with you or hired you or bought your products? This is where outbound marketing comes in, where we’ve got the audience that we want to talk to, We’ve spent money and we’ve done something that’s good for our brand image. It creates awareness of our business so that we’ve hit that first contact. You hear that old saying, people have to hear your name seven times before they do business with you. That initial interaction Introducing them to know that you exist, that’s in the no category. The second category is, do they like you? Communicating who you are and who you work for is a key part to know if they like you or not.

This is also a good time to introduce social proof. Can you show testimonials of people that have worked with you or finished projects that you’ve done that they may have seen or can appreciate what you’re doing so that they can understand that you’re worth doing business with? If you can humanize the business, this is a great time to do that as well. Will you introduce that the people behind the business is not just this nameless faces Corporation. It’s a group of people doing a thing. And then finally, if you have any affinities that you want to signal that you might share with people, so maybe you’re super patriotic, or maybe you’re super involved in your local school system, or maybe you have a certain nonprofit that you’re very much attached to. Here’s a great place that as you share that information, you could be helping build a relationship with people that you don’t even know that you’re talking to yet. Now, I will say there’s some affinities that can turn people off as much as they turn someone into a friend of your customers. So just keep that in mind depending on what you’re leaning into.

And then finally, we want to build the trust. So know trust. So trust, can we show our experiences? General, we’ve done business for 40 years, and specific where, Hey, we’ve worked with banks under this dollar amount doing this service for the last 15 years. That trust can show the success, but also shows that you know what you’re talking about. And additional trust symbols could be chamber memberships, better business, bureau memberships, Google reviews, clutch reviews, things that help show that you have a track record of being a trustworthy business to do work with. Sharing a clear path to success, the different steps it takes, removes some of the mystery of what it means to do business with you and how to get to the place where they want to be. And then also, I would say being real, not using stock photos, not hiding leadership on the site or in public, and not being fake. These are all things that help build trust, which will help you close your deal. Now, at Adelsberger Marketing, we have three main pillars of marketing that we’ve tried to do over the last 10 years to help us be successful.

The first one is building stark raving fans. We want everyone who does business with us to tell all their friends that they had a great experience working with Adelsberger Marketing. We do that by doing the best we can to deliver on the projects that we say we’re going to do when we say we’re going to do them as much as it’s in our control. And we always take the hit for people. An example I always give is I had a customer who ordered business cards, and he sent me the information. I made the business cards. I approved them. He proofed them, sent them to order. He got them, called me, and said, Hey, the phone number’s wrong on these cards. Some businesses would say, Hey, you approved them, you’re out the money. I went ahead and fixed them because I knew that if I took care of him, he would be a fan. And for many years after that, he would tell anybody he that they should do business with us, and was a great supporter of my business. We also believe in being part of the community. We invest in nonprofits in our community.

We invest in community activities. We want to make our area a better place to live because a rising tide floats all boats. It’s also a great place to get to know people and start relationships that will lead to new business in the future. And finally, we want to educate as much as we can. So what reason we do this podcast or we go do talks at different chambers? We want to be seen as experts in marketing, and we do that by teaching other people about marketing. You may have some questions about marketing. I’d encourage you to come to office hours with me. If you go to the Co’s website, you can find an opportunity to get a free 30-minute call with me to ask me whatever questions you might have about marketing. But here’s a couple of books that I’d recommend in the meantime as well. Story Brand by Donald Miller is a great way to think about messaging and developing a one-liner for your business. Juicing the Orange by Fallon is a book that does a great job of a company showing how they built several campaigns over the last couple of decades and the thought processes that they took into creative that was motivating to customers.

Jab, jab, jab, right hook, or really Anything by Gary Vandertruck is a really excellent resource to think about how marketing works in our current era. Anything by Seth Godin is worth your time to read. A really interesting book about the way our attention works is Attention Merchants by Tim Wu. I recommend that book to help you think about how to capture people’s attention and, frankly, how to protect your own. Culture Built My Brand by Miller is a great book that helps you think about how to build a company that is acting in a way that customers want to work with and do better. So that is the end of our three-part series on How to Do Marketing 101. If you have any additional questions about marketing, please send me an email at kevin@adelsburgermarketing. Com, or sign up for an office hour’s visit at The Co and get 30 minutes of free marketing consultation from me. Thank you joining us for this episode of the Content Machine podcast. We hope to see you in future episodes.

Welcome back to the content machine podcast. We are in the second episode of our series on fundamentals in marketing. Last time we talked about understanding who you are as a company before you get into marketing. Now let’s talk about who your customers are and understanding them.

So do you know who your customers are? And no, everyone is not your customer. We talk to businesses all the time that want to say that everybody is their customer and they fail to focus in on one set of people, which puts them at a competitive disadvantage for going to the marketplace because it’s difficult to communicate everybody’s need to everyone. We like to encourage businesses to focus in on one particular group of people. Now that could be everybody in your geographic vicinity, sure, but maybe it’s a certain age, demographic, or a gender or stage of life or a level of education.

The big thing is, what is the problem that you’re trying to solve? Not everybody has the same set of problems. Problems. So why would they care that your business exists? What problem are you solving for them?

And then why do they pick you? Is it because of convenience that you’re the closest one or the fastest one to deliver that service? Is it location? They know that you’re in their area and that you can you support their community? Is it part of their mission for like, Tom’s shoes?

Everybody was crazy about Tom’s shoes for a while because they would donate a pair of shoes for everyone that someone bought. Like that mission motivated people to do business with them. Is there a relationship involved? Do they have a parasocial relationship with the company or do they actually know the people that they’re buying from? And then are you simply the best option for this person?

Tell you about our customers. We have small businesses that have less than 50 people and no marketing leadership on staff. We provide a certain set of services for that size of company and then you go up to like medium small businesses, 50 to 500, with maybe marketing leadership that maybe need additional service that they don’t have in house or some guidance. And then we have big businesses that maybe need one specific service from us, that they have marketing leadership. They’ve got other marketing things, but they need maybe just like a video for like Kellogg’s here in Jackson.

So we think about those customer segments and then design our offerings around what would help them the most. The next thing to think about is inbound versus outbound. We talked about this on a previous episode, definitionally. But what does that mean in practicality? Inbound marketing is what I call being ready to be found.

Are you in a position to be found by potential customers. And when they do find you, are you set up in a way that makes them aware that you are the company they want to do business with? Do you have the appropriate marketing materials and information to help convert a lead into a customer? You really need to have inbound marketing, correct? Before you start doing outbound marketing or you’re wasting money because outbound marketing is paid marketing to help you draw attention to your business.

 

If your business is not ready to have attention drawn to it, spending money to do so is a bad idea. Billboards, social ads, sponsorships, anything you do in a paid way to get attention turned your way. Now, a couple other things we’re gonna do kind of a lightning round here and talk about some fundamentals of marketing for business. Your visual brand, your logo, the look and feel of your business. It should be consistent in all the places that it’s used.

Your website, social media, business cards, print, all those things. You should also have a few different variations of the logo. An all white and all black, a full color, a one color version. You should have all those as part of any professional marketing package. And you should use those ones appropriately so that they look good and are legible on the platform that they’re being used.

Every business should have a one liner. Part of the messaging, branding that helps convey who has the problem that you’re solving. How do you solve their problem? We wrote a one liner for a business that we’re friends with. That’s they’re an HR staffing company and we phrased the problem that they were solving as we turn human resources into human capital.

Nobody likes human resources, not that I’ve ever met. But human capital has a much nicer ring to it and helps paint a picture of the problem that we’re solving for companies. For us, we say we lead businesses to conquer digital marketing. We work with businesses. A lot of times we hear from people that marketing is confusing.

They don’t know where to start. Digital marketing is vast and they’re not sure where to start. And so we lead them to conquer that and also goes with our branding of that fierce sort of wording story. Brand is a great book that has some great information on one liners. The next thing, websites, your website, you need to think about who is it for?

Is it for you or is it for your customer? So think about it from the eyes of your customer. What information are they looking for? Are you answering their questions or just talking about what you want to talk about? Think about what your customer needs to find out.

When they come to your website. Is your website easily navigable? Can you find what you need quickly? You know, I think it’s crazy that we visit a church website and you can’t find the times of the service or where it’s at quickly. That should be the first.

One of the first things that you see is leadership information on the website. Can you figure out who’s in charge of the place or who do you need to get started with? If you’re trying to buy something, hiding those things I think is a bad move. Is your visual branding being used well on the website and then avoid stock photos. Stock photos, especially in a local business, hurt the trust you’re trying to develop with customers.

Additionally, you should be active on social media. It crosses between inbound and outbound, but you should be careful on which ones you’re active on. Some of them are not worth your time. So where are your customers attention? Are you doing business to business?

Are you business to consumer? How often should you post? Well, as much as you can make interesting content. Just posting to post is not a good idea. But posting interesting content is a great way.

Gary Vaynerchuk phrased it this way. Jab, jab, jab. Right hook. You provide value. You provide value and provide value.

And then you hit them with the sales message. Giving behind the scenes is really helpful. Giving something interesting. Helping people see the value in what you’re talking about is really helpful. And then finally, the last kind of lightning round we’ll hit here is Google my business.

Are you business to consumer? How often should you post? Well, as much as you can make interesting content. Just posting to post is not a good idea. But posting interesting content is a great way.

Gary Vaynerchuk phrased it this way. Jab, jab, jab. Right hook. You provide value. You provide value and provide value.

And then you hit them with the sales message. Giving behind the scenes is really helpful. Giving something interesting. Helping people see the value in what you’re talking about is really helpful. And then finally, the last kind of lightning round we’ll hit here is Google my business.

 

Welcome back to the Content Machine podcast. Over the next couple of episodes, we’re going to look at some really fundamental pieces of marketing, a marketing 101. Turn up the volume, get set, and let’s dive in here. What is marketing? My definition of marketing is getting people’s attention and motivating them to action. Because sometimes people get confused between what is marketing and what is sales. Well, Marketing is getting the attention and motivating them to get to the sales point. So sales is the transactional work of making the sale, which can also include relationship management over time. The line between the two can be really blurry, but marketing, in general, is setting up for the sale. Now, in small organizations, there’s not a real hard line between the two. I do marketing and sales for my company. But the larger the organization, there’s usually a clear divide between the two. And marketing should always be setting up sales, and they should be working together in that end. A couple of other big pieces of terminology that I want you to think about when you think about marketing is, one, inbound versus outbound. Inbound is marketing that we’re dealing with people who are coming to find you and providing resources to make them want to do business with you.

Outbound is marketing activity that reaches out to people, usually through paid media. And then I’m going to nerd out on branding for just a moment. We classify branding in four There are different categories. There’s the identity, which is the mission, vision, and core values of a business. There’s positioning, which is what we bring to the market and how we bring it to the market. There’s messaging, how we communicate who we are and what we are. And then finally, there’s the visual branding, which is what people sometimes confuse for branding, which is logos, colors, and look and feel. So when you are starting with your marketing and you have a base understanding, you want to have a really good understanding understanding of who you are as a company. What is it that you bring to market? Is it a product or is it a service? Or isbv it a product that is sold as a service? Or is it a service that’s sold as a product? What are people really buying from you? We call this positioning. So are they buying convenience from you or are they buying that item? It’s sometimes a little bit more complicated than what it looks like on paper.

The next thing is, how do you bring it to market? Now, for some companies, this is hugely important. You might be selling oil changes, but the difference is it becomes a mobile oil change and you go to someone’s house. That takes what you bring to market and how you bring to market into a really clear view. You are doing mobile oil change. It’s a service rather than just a product. And how you go to market with things can, almost in our era, be more important than what you were bringing to market. The next thing you should think about is what are your competitive advantages? What makes you distinct? Things like service and trust are hard to sell because they’re not quantifiable. Anybody can say that they sell service and trust. They might not be able to prove it over time, but on the initial customer intake, anybody can say that. Local can be an advantage, but it’s also not as important to many people as it should be. Sometimes you can be the fastest or the only provider. Understanding what your distinct advantage in the marketplace is or working to refine define and create that distinct marketplace advantage is a key part to being successful in marketing.

It’s important to think about who else is bringing this to market. So keeping an eye on competitors and thinking broadly about who competitors may be So for example, we were consulting with a nonprofit once who didn’t have anybody else in the immediate region that provided the same set of services that they do. Well, yeah, they don’t have a direct competitor, but every The other nonprofit is competing for the charitable dollars of that community. And so think broadly about who the competitors might be. Is there anybody else fulfilling the need that you’re fulfilling, even if it is not directly fulfilling that need in the same way that you are? Then once you’ve got what makes you just distinct and competitive, and you think about who else is in the market providing those things, think about how you can do it differently or better. Ace Hardware and Lowe’s provide the same general things. Lowe’s has a lot more opportunities for those. They’ve got more SKUs to sell. Ace Hardware, smaller SKUs, smaller store, but has that reputation for the helpful hardware folks. It’s got people in the store that are knowledgeable and experienced, and that’s where they’ve built their brand so that if you’re not sure what you need, you might go to Ace Hardware.

If you know exactly what you need, you might go to Lowe’s. So Ace Hardware and Lowe’s have different competitive advantages they bring to the market. Same thing with a state farm agent and a non-captive agent. State Farm has this big marketing budget, and they can take care of a lot of things, and they have some technology that they can use. But if you’re a non-captive agent, so a local insurance agency that represents lots of companies, You have the advantage of being able to look at different marketplaces to get the best rate. And so being able to determine what your advantages are against someone else in your space is super important. What is ours? Well, we think about things like local as one. People like to be able to talk to us and see us in person. Holistic. We like to approach projects from a big picture with our marketing projects with people. We like to talk about these questions that we’re talking about on this podcast. But thinking holistically about an individual marketing project so that we’re not just providing a video, but we’re fixing a problem. And we also call that working with strategy first as well.

So can you define your competitive advantage? If you don’t have one, what can you do to create one? Could you add a new service line? Could you make it easier for your customers to do business with you? Can you have something unique that you can plant your flag on that’s a good reason for people to do business with you? That’s episode one of the Fundamental Series. We’ll be back with more episodes in the future on this topic.