026: Corey Brown's Masterclass on Dominating E-Commerce with Stellar Branding and Strategic Amazon Presence

Speaker 1:
0:00

Welcome everyone to the brand fortress HQ podcast. I'm your host, john Stogin, and today I have Mike Kaufman, one of our other co-founders, with us, and our guest is Corey Brown. Corey is an e-commerce and branding consultant with decades of experience elevating brand sales across marketplaces including Amazon, walmart and Shopify sites. He's direct directly managed tens of millions of dollars in sales in Amazon, fba, fbm and even SPS excuse me, spf models, which I think is a little less known. So, corey, welcome so much for that to the podcast and we're happy to have you. For people that maybe aren't familiar with you, can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Speaker 2:
0:42

Absolutely. Thanks for having me. And yeah, so I've been in the industry in a few different ways over the past, over a decade now. I actually started off working for a consultant that was doing some interesting hack black hat type of magic back in the day in early Amazon. Being new to the game, I didn't realize that, but it got my interest into Amazon and what Amazon would then become. So then I worked for a number of years in an in-house organization as a top 1000 seller here in Buffalo, new York, where I'm from, and during the early COVID days then decided to move some of those tactics and teams and things that I built out into what I do now, which is helping brands across the globe to execute their brand strategies that we build out for them at my agency, buffer Brand Marketing.

Speaker 1:
1:37

Okay, and so was your first kind of entry into e-commerce, that first job that you were, you're working or, and did you have kind of a marketing background or how did you start that first steps into e-commerce?

Speaker 2:
1:54

Yeah so. So my first steps into e-commerce were actually kind of on the. I was actually working in the apparel industry and I was selling apparel here for a local vendor a decorated apparel and I started building online stores for local schools and organizations so that they could passively purchase. And I started like the sales tripled immediately from the direct sale approach to the passive sale approach and I was like, hmm, e-commerce, this is pretty cool, I'm making money while I'm not at work. And that was when the light bulb went off and I started thinking this is where I need to be, because this is way more interesting than doing more direct sales. And so I made that quick transition and just took like the first Amazon job I could find just to figure out what this all is going to be about.

Speaker 1:
2:45

Okay, and you know, obviously you've had a lot of experiences since then and founding Buffer Brands and everything in between. One of the topics you know that we were having our notes and we're talking about before we hit record here was looking at consistency of strategy. So I'm curious, you know, with the experience, especially not only on Amazon but also off Amazon and other platforms when you look at consistency of strategy, what does that mean to you for brands and where do you think maybe brands make some significant missteps when it comes to that consistency?

Speaker 2:
3:21

Sure.

Speaker 2:
3:21

So consistency starts with really one term and that's organization.

Speaker 2:
3:27

I think a lot of brands that I've come across in the early days and even to this moment they aren't organized enough to really launch and execute a high level strategy, especially in an omnichannel landscape.

Speaker 2:
3:41

There's a lot of moving pieces across that landscape and if you don't have organization from the very start of what your exact strategy is going to be, it's really really difficult to execute. So even just getting back to having proper skew lists and having knowing all of your products and your product margins and your numbers and all of those and then taking that, and then the next step up, of course, is your visual, creative execution and advertising and all of those other things that we do at a very high level. I think the first part that people forget about and that's really where I come in on the coaching and strategy side, and I've always had a strong suit is getting people organized and prepared to actually execute that strategy before we start executing, because if you start running before you have the strategy in hand, you're going to spend a lot of money and time and energy on things that may ultimately not really come to fruition, and so protecting a lot of that by getting organized at the start.

Speaker 1:
4:36

Okay. So for those brands that maybe you know they have some traction, but either A they feel stuck or B they're looking at growing, when you look at those kind of fundamentals for strategy, is there certain areas that you see brands maybe struggle more than others? Or, when they come to you, where you see those, those pieces missing more often?

Speaker 2:
5:01

Yes, so that's kind of that perfect level of seller that we typically work with. So that's a really interesting conversation to me in terms of where we see kind of weaknesses within maybe a team or a brand or a business. Typically we see it in the creative visuals and how to execute those throughout Amazon and beyond. Specifically, you may have an internal team.

Speaker 2:
5:28

They might be great graphic artists maybe they're. They're great at building websites or emails or different types of marketing, social media, etc. However, they don't know how to contextualize that into what's meaningful on Amazon and on that platform and that part of this the customer journey and so that's one of the biggest glaring weaknesses that we see is, hey, this is an amazing product and someone puts it up and they're like it sells amazing on our website, but Amazon just isn't taking off. And then we go to look at the content and it's all over the place and it's or it's just regurgitated from the website. Well, it's completely missing the context on Amazon because that's a totally different sales process. So typically that's one of the most glaring weaknesses that we see that we step in and help them build that out and work collaboratively with their team or kind of take over that process and start to mesh in what they have into what works on Amazon with that product in comparison to competition, etc.

Speaker 2:
6:26

So the secondary piece of that would be the advertising portion. Spending money is not spending money is not spending money. Like you have to actually have a core competency and strategy to be working on, and a lot of sellers also when they have a successful product that is successful off of Amazon or they have one that's successful on Amazon. They're looking to expand that. A lot of times they get this false sense of security that I can just put advertising dollars into a couple of simple campaigns and that's going to do the work, and that's just not the truth. So those are really the two areas that we see kind of the biggest weaknesses when sellers come to us specifically for Amazon Help and then how to do that at scale.

Speaker 3:
7:11

Okay, I find that really interesting, corey, in that it seems to me most of the time when I speak with you know saying agency that works with sellers.

Speaker 3:
7:23

I feel like in most cases they're working in one direction or the other. In other words, either they're working with D2C brands that want to bring their brand onto the Amazon platform or they're working with Amazon sellers who understand the necessity of moving their brand off platform and getting that exposure. And I find it interesting that you seem to be working both ends of that spectrum, which are a very different process. You know, like taking a D2C brand and bringing them into the Amazon ecosystem and helping them understand how that operates. Differently, you know, than off platform is a way different process than taking somebody who's on Amazon and has built that brand and recognizes that moving forward, if they want that brand to continue to succeed, they're going to have to move off platform. How do you see that distinction? I guess maybe number one what percentage of your business would you say is one versus the other? And then two, how do you distinguish between those two things? What do you see as being that kind of you know, primary distinction between how you operate in those two scenarios?

Speaker 2:
8:27

Yes, that's a number of solid questions in there, so I'll try and dissect them. If I forget any, please, please, do reiterate them. So, in terms of the breakdown, I would say that 75, 25, so 75% of the time, we are taking brands that are successful somewhere Big Box, private website and then we're moving them on to Amazon or they're already on Amazon, but they're just not doing it right.

Speaker 2:
8:52

So there's no volume there. So we're really accelerating that volume. So that's really what we do most of the time. Obviously, we have a good percentage 25% ish that are going the opposite direction and typically that for us we're seeing that more as a support than an actual big time strategy of trying to move people off of Amazon. But even within there I think there's a subset of those that are looking at maybe a Shopify as a support and a catchall, but not the primary strategy goal.

Speaker 2:
9:25

And then there are others that are really actively looking to build a subscription basis over on their Shopify, capture those sales there, and they're really using Amazon as a tool to find more market share and hopefully slowly move them across. So we do see both they are very different strategies. I would say in preference I like to work with brands that are going towards Amazon, because that's really where my heart is. So we do have some partnership relations where we kind of go the other way, but on a small scale. We will do that as well. And then I think there was a second part to that question If I didn't answer please.

Speaker 3:
10:06

No, I think you primarily covered the question. I think my big thing is I'm you know so a lot of what we do at Brand Fortress. You know we're obviously generally working with Amazon sellers, you know, many of whom probably have done very well on Amazon, most of whom don't have much off of Amazon and don't really understand how to put those two things together and to try to build, you know, a cohesive brand. You know, off platform in order to strengthen the brand that they already have on Amazon right, competition is fierce, and so if you're not doing stuff off platform these days, you're already losing the battle. You just don't know it, and so I just find that a very interesting dichotomy between those two structures.

Speaker 3:
10:57

One of the things that we deal with for our products, which is my brand on Amazon, is we spent a lot of time over the last year kind of building out our social presence and things like that.

Speaker 3:
11:10

And one of the things that we go back and forth about and I'm curious what your thoughts are on this is how to approach our social from a brand consistency perspective. So, in other words, we have our branding, we know who we're talking to, we know what our brand colors are, we know kind of what most of our visuals kind of look like, and so we can have a lot of brand consistency there. But at the same time then, in order to maintain that, I feel like we sometimes aren't taking full advantage of what social really can offer us, because a lot of what social is good at is the organic aspect of it, which most of the time is not going to be very brand compliant. It's not going to be like that, and so I'm curious what your thoughts are on that in terms of that distinction like how brand compliant should you be and how much should you venture outside of that brand compliance in order to make better use of what social really is best at accomplishing?

Speaker 2:
12:08

Right, and so, as the leader of a company who builds out brand guidelines and tries to stick to them very strictly, so my gut wants to say, like, really stay within your brand, stay within your voice, your visuals, all of those. However, in the social area which I will say I am not an expert in social that is definitely a little bit outside of my scope. Typically, we work with partners to understand that more so, just like people work with us to understand Amazon, we prefer to kind of partner that out. So, when it comes to the social side, obviously there's more of the lifestyle visibility influencer kind of that blending that we're seeing, especially over the last 12 months, right Like we're seeing a huge blending of just media going in every direction and how do you utilize that, capture it, edit it, use it in all different places?

Speaker 2:
13:00

And I think that that's one of the key things that I just want to touch on is being approachable and having that ability to have someone see their product within their lifestyle. That's the most important thing to me, while staying in that brand compliance, which is why, for most cases, we'll encourage even if we're not creating the social content, we'll encourage our clients to create media shares of that so that we can then cherry pick what works on Amazon and have some cross promotion and push it the other way, so they can see more of those product-focused items, and maybe push some of that on social, so that it does create a blended technique that seems relatable, but also, at the end of the day, we're trying to sell products, right? Thank?

Speaker 1:
13:46

you. Thank you. Well. I think that points really well to coming back to this idea of consistency of strategy and really what it sounds like is consistency of brand and understanding that, yes, there's going to be differences that need to be addressed when you're looking at how your brand is presented on Shopify versus Amazon. But I'm curious, in your experience, especially when you first start working with clients, what are maybe some of the big mistakes or things that sellers don't know that there are mistakes that they're making in the sense of is that they're too feature-focused, or is it just that there's not that consistency, or what is it that you see in that content, usually for an Amazon seller?

Speaker 2:
14:44

When it goes awry, it's typically too emotion-based and not tactical enough. Some people will come to us and say I want it to be flowy and I want it to be these terms that mean nothing to a designer. They're like okay, do you want red or blue? We need to get to that level of granularity. I would say the single biggest area that becomes the struggle is brands, whether it's because of budget or risk mitigation, etc.

Speaker 2:
15:14

They are not ready to jump and they know they need to do more on Amazon. They know that they need to do a cohesive brand on Amazon, but they split it out and go well, let's just try it with these three products out of our 20. That doesn't work on Amazon because the entire system is built to cross and upsell within your many ecosystem, within Amazon's ecosystem. That is the single biggest area that we try to convey as strongly as possible, regardless of what that budget looks like. If you're only going to do, in this case, 3 20th of the work in this example, you should expect 3 20th of a result.

Speaker 2:
16:03

A lot of times brands will take that toe-in-the-water approach and then go well, if that's successful, then we'll put more money down. It's not going to be because you're not truly committing to what the process is. When we pitch, when we're working with a client, we really want to go ahead and say, okay, let's do this right and give it a real fair shake at having success. Of course we're putting best practices in place and it doesn't guarantee success on Amazon. Of course you can have amazing brand but maybe the product's bad or maybe your inventory supply is difficult or maybe your pricing's out of whack, but really going all into that branding and using all of the available tools on Amazon with very strict strategy. Execution is absolutely paramount.

Speaker 3:
16:54

Well, it's interesting because we've had a lot of conversations about just Amazon as a real estate vendor. Ultimately, the eyeballs are there, they're already on platforms. The question is, how do you get yourself in front of as many of those eyeballs as possible? Ultimately, it comes down to real estate. The more products that you are offering, the more real estate you can grab, not just in the sense of those individual products and how much space you can take up in the search results and cross-promoting and whatnot, but also certain features of Amazon that take advantage of having multiple products. If you're your premium, a plus content, they have a comparison chart that you can use. You can also use that as a cross-promotion chart. In fact, I would recommend most times that's what you use it for.

Speaker 3:
17:49

Well, if you've only got a couple of other products, there's not much to show there. Virtual bundles well, if you've only got a couple of products, if you have two products, you can do one bundle, essentially because you can't do a bundle on both of them. It shows up on one detail page. The more products you have, the more bundles, the more real estate you can gain, the more eyeballs you're in front of. I would wholeheartedly agree with that process. Whatever products you have available to you, make sure that you're finding a place for them on Amazon. They all serve different purposes. Not every one of them is a hero product, but figure out what the position is of that product and make sure you put it in that position and then take advantage of all the Amazon programs that apply to that specifically positioned product.

Speaker 2:
18:35

Right, and to further that, because it's a conversation that I hear often. It's like whether to put it in variation or not put it in variation. Do we want to have multiple products that are showing? I've heard the argument of, like, you really want to take up all the real estate. And then I've also heard the argument of and this is maybe where I'm a little more in this camp of, hey, all the sales happen up top. I'd rather consolidate and be one of those top then have three trickle throughout the page that are taking up real estate in terms of product search result.

Speaker 2:
19:05

So now, even with newer updates, they're showing potentially variations within search results, Right, so that's like one of the breaking things that I've just seen out there, that's it's not showing for everyone yet. So we'll see if that goes full fledged. But variations and when to use them and how to use them, but not just even the physical variations that you can actually set up in Amazon, but then those cross promotional variation, whether you're selling accessories at the bottom or you're selling very actual, true variants or different styles of products. So we've taken that to a super granular level with great success with many clients over the course of the last few years where we've really set that up to say, okay, once we get them on this page, let's give them every option and every slide that they could possibly have so that anything on this journey like we're already answering it they don't need to click on any of these other products or brands, and that is, that's the secret sauce.

Speaker 1:
20:05

So, just if I understand correctly, what you're saying is is that you know, around that core product, if there's accessories or there's things that are related, your general rule of thumb is to add those as variations, so that way you know they're a minor click away, as opposed to a whole new listing where you know they might have to, you know, go back into the search results or click at the bottom a plus content or something like that in order to find that different pack size or different color or that accessory that goes with it.

Speaker 2:
20:38

Absolutely, we're always trying to do that. We're trying to consolidate those sales into one, one listing as much as possible. Tell Buoy that up the BSR. But in addition to that, yes, of course, we're trying to show, even in non clickable formats, right, like maybe in that seventh image or in the video we're showing the family of products. So we're showing it there, we're mentioning it again in the brand story so that it's clickable through to your store but also to some of the other variants that might take their eye. But then again at the bottom of the A plus. So really you've kind of got multiple areas. As you're going, maybe down on the page, maybe you go part of the way back up, there's multiple ways that we can shift you to. If this isn't the thing you're looking for, maybe you're looking for a different color, maybe you're looking for different pack size, but we have all those things one click away and that's really really important.

Speaker 1:
21:30

Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense and I think where, like you said, there's been a lot. I think a lot of brands struggle with kind of what that strategy looks like for them, because there's a lot of different pieces to consider in that.

Speaker 2:
21:48

Also, amazon makes it very difficult to build variations for the average person. So that's one of the things, too. Those spreadsheets are difficult at times, so we have a lot of people come to us and, hey, I can't get these into a variation. So we have some people on our team that are amazing at that. But yeah, that's part of the battle too is when will Amazon let you actually vary it the way you want to? So, yeah, that's definitely a very important piece of the puzzle.

Speaker 1:
22:17

Okay, so I wanna pivot to something else that one of the other topics we have on here that I think is really important for people to hear, which is this concept that you mentioned in here of trying to advertise your way to relevance. Tell me a little bit about what you mean by that.

Speaker 2:
22:37

So the example would be a new launch of hey. I've created this product, or maybe it's a series of five products and I have a little bit of differentiation. But again it goes back to that dip in the toes in the water. I'm not gonna build out a real brand yet until. I see some traction, so I'll do the basics. I took these pictures with my phone and, but let's just advertise and see what comes back. That approach, we're all smiling because we've all heard it, we've all seen it.

Speaker 2:
23:12

It does not work. If that's a client, it's not gonna work. So that obviously is not the way to go, and all that does is okay, you're gonna save money up front on hey, I'm not gonna build up visuals and I'm just gonna launch this as cheap as possible. And then you're going to spend your way to the top and what happens is a terrible row, as your return is awful, your spend is higher than you'd like it to be, your most of your balances are coming out negative. And then the question is well, what are we gonna do from here? And it's like well, you're spending all this money to send people to a page that just isn't ready to receive eyeballs. What would you expect them to do? When they get there, they're gonna click on someone else's. That's what they're gonna do, and it always plays out that way. So we really encourage, if you're going to advertise which everyone should in some form be advertising that you have your strategy executed properly before you start to advertise or as you start to advertise.

Speaker 3:
24:16

Well, and it's really tough too, like I mean, if you don't take the time to work through that process of understanding just exactly how are you differentiating, and hopefully in more than just one way. Right, like, I'm like okay, yeah, you added this one feature, you know, or whatever. Well, it's very difficult to build out a product listing if you have one differentiator, right, like, because then the question is okay, well, I've got eight image slots, I've got a video slot, I've got premium A plus content I've got, I have all these places that I can put content to convince somebody to buy this product, and I have this one differentiator that I can highlight. What am I gonna do? Tell it eight different ways.

Speaker 3:
24:57

You know that this product is better in this way, like, so if you're gonna take that time, you know you gotta build out the listing anyways, you know, differentiate yourself in some more significant ways from the competition that you know. I would almost argue too, at the front end of that process, thinking through okay, I'm gonna differentiate in these ways, how easily can I actually explain that in an image or in a video? Right, it's great to have that differentiator, but if there's literally no way that you can easily explain that to a customer on that product detail page, that it doesn't help you because it's not gonna get you the sale.

Speaker 3:
25:33

They might be happy with it after the fact you know once they buy the product. But if you don't have a way to pitch that, then you're not helping yourself either. So, thinking through that process of what are the various different ways I can differentiate and how can I actually explain to the customer whether it's an image or a video or text or whatever it is what that differentiation is and why it matters to them? Because if I can't do that, then it's not really a good differentiator.

Speaker 2:
25:57

Right, and taking that one step further, how are people gonna find or know that they're looking for that point of differentiation? So that's typically a difficult piece of it. So let's say you have a product and nine out of the 10 main features are the exact same, and then the 10th one is your superpower. It's your differentiator. Well, okay, so maybe we're able to then use what the high traffic options are and try to siphon some traffic off of things that are products that's similar. But hey, we're a little bit better because we do this other thing over here. That's fantastic. We like to take that one step further At this point.

Speaker 2:
26:35

We're doing product development as well, so that's something that I'm very big on, and so one of our clients, as a prime example, we've entered into the coffee syrup market, but instead of creating a bottle like everyone else, we said, okay, well, there's a thousand bottles that's really hard to differentiate. How do you differentiate size, flavor, okay, instead, right from the start, we said let's build sachets. Now, it's not in the go product. Right Now I can say I know people are looking for all those bottles and we know all the players, but how are we differentiated?

Speaker 2:
27:11

Well, look at the video at the top of the search that video shows. I'm putting this on my FanniePak or in my purse. I'm on the go. That is a game. That's the differentiation level that you need to be able to have, where you can say I can make it obvious on a search page in a half a second that we're different and here's how, and then further explain that once you get to the listing and that's where we like to start with. Even if we can get back that far to the product development go. Okay, let's help you truly differentiate in a way that we can visually get across to a customer in less than three seconds, because that's probably what you have.

Speaker 3:
27:50

And what's interesting there is is that technically, it's not a different product, it's the exact same product, right, correct? You just created you essentially created a brand new market within that product vertical that didn't exist previously. That customers probably didn't even know that they wanted to exist, but all of a sudden they see it. They're like holy crap, that's exactly what I want, even though I never knew that's what I wanted. Right Now there's problems with that, right, because sometimes sellers look at a product and they're like oh yeah, I'm gonna create this brand new market within this product niche, right? Well, you better be absolutely certain that people actually will want that right? Like, don't create a market that people don't actually care about, you know, or can't find.

Speaker 2:
28:37

Yeah sometimes people can't find it because they don't know it exists. So that's part of your plan. You've got to have that as a piece to say, okay, where are we gonna get this in front of consumers so that they can actually vibe with us? Because so often it's so hard when you create your own category, nobody's looking for it, Right? So you're a great product, you have a great differentiation. Nobody can find you, so you got to have that as part of this as well.

Speaker 3:
28:58

And nobody's searching for it to go coffee syrup, you know, until they know that it's a thing.

Speaker 1:
29:03

And I think, even more important than that. You know, because I think, like you said, product differentiation is so important and it really wraps into you know what you were talking about earlier, when we talk about more from a brand aspect, which is, quite frankly, where Amazon and just e-commerce in general is at. You know the days of, hey, I'm gonna just source a product off of Alibaba and I'm essentially gonna flip it on Amazon. Those days are dead. So now it's how do I build, like you said, like cohesive brands and, as you're thinking about, you know, launching new products for your brands and differentiating yourself. I think it's important and kind of encapsulate what you guys are talking about, which is a differentiator that your customers actually care about, because it's not just enough to be different. It needs to be different in a way that is important to that target customer.

Speaker 2:
29:55

Exactly.

Speaker 3:
29:57

And thinking through who that customer is right. Like I mean, if you're focused on the wrong segment, you know, maybe that differentiator doesn't matter, but if you focus on the right customer segment, maybe that differentiator is everything you know to that particular customer. So, you know, being careful to understand from the start, like who is that customer? You know, is there a customer for whom that differentiator is important? Like, okay, we can build that in, we know how to do it. Manufacturers said they can do it and like, we kind of understand it, right, you know.

Speaker 3:
30:30

Then it's taking that step back and saying, okay, well, we've got this, you know. Like, so we sell, you know, pool tools. Like, okay, I can sell to any person who owns a pool, but that's probably not my target audience. Like I need to narrow that down. Like, am I selling to above ground pool owners? Am I selling to in ground pool owners? Am I selling to somebody who has a rectangle pool versus a circular pool or an elliptic? You know whatever? Like narrowing that down to the point where you recognize, okay, yeah, that's the customer that this differentiator matters to Nobody else. It doesn't matter to anybody else, but if I focus on him I can sell, you know, at two, three times the price all day long.

Speaker 2:
31:09

You are speaking my language. I actually came from the pool industry, so so I know exactly you sell to. You don't sell to people, you sell to the homes that have pools and the pool types, and just along those lines what you're saying. I'm just absolutely smiling because that's I spent a few years doing exactly that and that's kind of where I started to break all of this and get organized and figure all these strategies out and then start to apply them to two others. So very interesting to me.

Speaker 1:
31:37

Awesome.

Speaker 1:
31:37

Well, and I kind of want to come back to you because I think this ties in really well with something that we talked about it people that you brought up at the beginning, which is talking about kind of that, those brand guidelines that you put together, because I think we have, you know, a lot of folks that are listening to.

Speaker 1:
31:53

You know they've been selling for a few years and when, when they started out on Amazon, quite frankly, they were probably essentially a collection of products, and you know they now understand, hey, I need to build this into a brand. And maybe you know they've seen, you know, a brand guide once, or maybe they've had one, you know, one time built for their brand and they kind of understand the concepts of Yep, the colors should be the same across the products and kind of the images. And then you know, maybe the font should be the same and you know some, my tagline should be the same, kind of those you know, real basic blocking and tackling. But beyond that, what advice would you have out there for somebody that's like, hey, I want to have a guide, even if it's just for our own in-house team. Or, and you know, if we're working with an agency to have a more cohesive brand. What advice would you have for them?

Speaker 2:
32:44

Take your time and work with a skilled agency Honestly, so often and you hit it right on with the. There's a lot of people that are launching and there's there may be thinking about it, but there's also a lot of brands that are in that middle ground right now on Amazon, where they did do the collection of products, where they started a pseudo brand but they didn't really go all the way with it, and five plus years ago they had success on Amazon and now they're seeing that shrink, shrink, shrink. And so we work with a lot of people that have that exact situation. The first thing we do is like Okay, what are your brand guidelines? And typically we get a Google Drive folder with a logo on it and that's it. You know like that's, that's the brand.

Speaker 2:
33:31

And I always say like, hey, whether you're going to work with us, whether you're going to work with a bunch of different agencies over time, even just for your internal team, how do you tell them about your brand? Or is it all up here? And a lot of times they'll go huh, we don't have it in a way that we can communicate. I'm like, if you don't have at least a three page outline, how can you expect anyone like. If you don't know what your brand is, how can any customer ever truly get connected to your brand?

Speaker 2:
33:58

So when we're talking about guidelines, we have ones that are very simple three, five pages, but you can go all the way up. You know many. The page link doesn't matter. It's the content of it's the logo, it's the sub logos, it's when they're used, it's how transparent can they be, it's the spacing around them, the percentage of use of colors.

Speaker 2:
34:19

What are your primary, secondary, tertiary thoughts? When are they used? How are they used? All of those? And then mood boards. And, hey, when we want our images, we want them to be more muted colors or we want them to be vibrant and vivacious. All of those things are best served to be in some sort of documentation that you can, as a brand owner, go to anyone, even your own team, and go here's who we are, here's how we sound, here's how we look and here's who we work with, and on day one, your team or anyone you work with externally is going to understand you at a level that they never could before, and thus they're going to do much better work for you and your brand is going to connect better with customers. So it's super important to have that sort of documentation. Again, there's levels to it, but I am a firm believer of having at least a five page document that lays out the basics to really get you going and then build it from there over the years.

Speaker 3:
35:15

Well, and it makes your life easier, right? I mean like when you're thinking, hey, we might want to work with an agency to do XYZ, right, so, okay, great, you want to do that thing and here's this agency. But now, when you connect with them, what's the first thing they're going to do? They're going to ask you those questions like who are you as a brand? Who are you servicing? What are you? I don't know, or I do know, but, like you said, it's all up in your head, right, you know, like I don't have it on paper, whereas if you've already worked through that process and done it once and it can take some time, you know, to get it right, you know, and again, you should probably come back to it periodically, but but at least if you've done it the one time. Now, when you start working with that agency, the very first thing you can do is hey, here's our brand guidelines, this is who we are, right, they can read through it. They, you know, and now they have that idea and you don't have to spend that time, for you know, two hours, you know, or three hours working through that stuff with them, you know, on a Zoom call.

Speaker 3:
36:12

I also think it's interesting something that you said just a minute ago, which was if, if you don't know who you are, then how does your customer know who you are and that they want to connect with you and relate to you? Right, and I think it's so interesting because that's so true just in life in general. Right, like I mean, just like you know, making friends and connecting with individuals and networking and stuff. Right, if you don't know who you are, then how do the people that you're connecting with know that they actually want to stay connected to you or that they want to take the time to get to know who you are? Like you don't even know? And so that rule applies just as much in just general life as it does anything else. You know, know who you are and be consistent in who you are. Well, you should do that as a brand, as a company as well, and you'll have a much easier time, I think, connecting with that audience and them being able to connect with you.

Speaker 2:
37:05

Absolutely, and so having documentation for your business to really explain that, obviously that's much easier than having documentation about who you are as a person. That would be a little bit longer of a document, but yes, we certainly want to have some sort of documentation you can hand out and say this is who we are definitively. So that is definitely an area we want to start with. In fact, recently I'll share we had a client come to us and she didn't have brand guidelines. So we ended up going through the discovery phase. We kind of had our creative kickoff call and we recognize like you really need to have brand guidelines. You're building out this extensive brand and we got into that process and I thought we did.

Speaker 2:
37:49

We did an amazing job building out this branch and she turned around after a couple of weeks, was like you know what I love working with you guys, but this isn't the vision I wanted and I'm so glad we did this, because I'm going to go backwards and I'm going to actually take a step back and I'm going to work to build my brand out more and I'm going to come back to you when I'm ready for the Amazon side things and that identification. Imagine had we just trudged forward with her and just pushed this brand on Amazon. How much it would have cost her. It could have just been the death of the brand over the next six months. With no, she probably would have not liked her brand, whether it was successful or not. It would have felt inauthentic to what she was trying to do, and so that discovery phase and taking the time to have those conversations is becoming more and more relevant over time with Amazon.

Speaker 1:
38:36

So I think one thing that I think, well, I know I struggled with when I was had my own brands, and I think a lot of people probably struggle with as well as is that you know it's, it's fairly easy to understand, okay. Well, the colors should be the same and the fonts should be the same, like those are, you know, pretty easy things to figure out. How do you approach having guidelines for like the brand voice it, you know, is it. You know it sounds happy versus sounds sad. Like what does a good brand you know guideline for brand voice look like?

Speaker 2:
39:21

Yeah, I think it does depend on who you're, who you're going after. So I kind of share like lightly what ours is for our company, like we are trying to be in intelligent, sharp, passionate, but also receptive to listening and have the ability to kind of Guide people in the right direction with enough firmness. So so building that out and kind of almost like bulletting it out and then writing it out is very important For the overall process.

Speaker 2:
39:54

It is difficult this is one of the more difficult areas to be like. This is how we're gonna speak, because Of course, it's just inherently difficult to kind of capture that. It's almost like a mood board for words right, like a mood board. You can't explain it, just it feels like it's supposed to feel. So putting it to words is definitely more difficult, but Making sure that you're not Allowing for ambiguity In terms of being who you're not trying to be, I think it's more important. Kind of siloing yourself into this is how we're gonna sound Overall. That is gonna be something that you really have to kind of work with, with those that are guiding it.

Speaker 3:
40:35

You know it's interesting one. One thing that I often think through with respect to this and the honest truth is is that I don't think that we're I Don't think that we're yet effectively Implementing what my belief system would, would, would suggest we should be doing, let's say, in regards to this in terms of brand voice and whatnot. So what comes to mind for me is, again going back to what you were just saying, corey, which is it's it's very difficult Oftentimes to kind of put into words Exactly what that looks like. You know, like I kind of have this vague idea of what my you know, my voice should be as a brand. But how do I write that out and systematize that and and create it? You know, put it into this silo that says this is. You know how we're gonna operate, and one of the things that, for me, makes it a little bit easier is to look at you know, and again, you have to have determined who is your primary, you know, best target customer for this. But if you believe you know who they are, then I think the next logical step in that process is, like you hear a lot of people say that when you're writing your copy, speak your customers language, which I kind of agree with.

Speaker 3:
41:52

But I actually think there's a better. There's a step beyond that that I think is a better approach, and that is speak the language of the person that your customer most admires and follows. It's not necessarily the same, it's similar but it's not the same. And I think there's a. You know, if you can come up with the so you have the customer Avatar if you can also then come up with the avatar of the person they most admire and respect and follow, then all of a sudden now you can pick an actual person out there that fits that role like do they respect, you know? Like Navy SEALs do they respect? You know? Celebrity rappers do they respect? You know? Whatever? Right, as soon as you know who that person is that they follow, that they respect most, then you can just pick a person who is the epitome of that and Say that's who we're gonna talk like, like that's what the language they use, the phrases they use, the jokes they tell you know, that's that's who our brand should sound like.

Speaker 3:
42:57

Right? That's my belief. I Don't know that everybody agrees with me, but to me that seems like a much easier way to figure out what your brand boys should be, because now you have an actual Example of it out there that you can just say look what you know. Like people wear the bracelets, you know what would Jesus do, right, well, like you know, if it's whatever it is, you know, like what would? What would the Navy SEAL do, you know? Or what, whatever, what would they say? You know, I, that's, that's my thought on it.

Speaker 2:
43:25

Yeah, and I want to touch on something that's adjacent to that, so a huge success story that we've had, you know, for the past few years. Now we have this amazing client who they were dabbling in Amazon before they were having some sales. They do more direct to consumer through like distributor type of sales, and Amazon was kind of like a passive channel for them. They really didn't know how to harness it. They came to us with issues and I'm fortunate enough that this product is a consumable. That's. That's very Important in the field that my wife works in, so I understand the consumer. So this was, it was a match made in heaven. That was a little bit on the fortunate side. But what I realized when looking at their listings and their products were that they were selling To the need of the person who was going to consume the product, but they weren't selling to the person who was going to buy, which is the person who's taking care of the person who now needs is consumable. And so what I realized when we started building on strategies we need to build this out so that we are speaking to the caretaker, because the caretaker needs to understand what their loved ones going through now and how this product is going to support them on their new, very abruptly started journey with this new consumable that they need. And so when we flipped that switch and we took all of their content and flipped it to that narrative and that voice, we had to think.

Speaker 2:
44:57

Every single picture, every bullet was if I were taking care of my loved one, what would I need to know? What would I want to hear? Do I need specs? Do I need support? Do I need to know that this is a brand that's been around, that you can trust, that'll be here in six months when you need it? And All of those things went in there and here we are, three years later. They are five acts, what they've ever been. Because of that voice change. They're launching new products. They're, you know, just an amazing success story and I'm super passionate about it because they're also helping people like this is something that's actually very close to home for me that they're helping people. So I get a lot of, you know I'm obviously satisfaction from the client side, but also, you know, just knowing that we're helping support a lot of families and need Through that. But it's all about who are you talking to and how.

Speaker 3:
45:46

For sure, that's awesome.

Speaker 1:
45:49

Yeah, I think that connects really well, you know, to the topics that we've had here. My question, you know, as we kind of wrap up here, is for folks are listening, you know kind of brand inconsistency can be kind of a big elephant to wrap your hands around and feel, you know, kind of overwhelming. So in that process, you know, there are a couple of areas where you know for the brands out there that maybe have the beginning building blocks than that but don't know where to go next, what advice or recommendations would you have for them?

Speaker 2:
46:23

Yeah. So you'll hear me say it a number of times throughout the price probably probably look for a really solid agency that can plug and play with your team. It depends on what those skill sets you have within your internal team. Typically, you're gonna find someone that can work with you and kind of plugs into your team in a way that's collaborative, where they can fill gaps that you may have within your skill sets.

Speaker 2:
46:48

And then taking your time to really build out that action plan, whether it's going through a comprehensive audit Of some sort of the accounts, kind of just to get a status of where we are, because that could be a million different places and then go okay, where do we want to be? Now let's build an action plan, bridge list to get us to that point. And whoever does the work is not as relevant. It's more that the work gets done because it needs to get done to get to get that across that bridge. So that that's where I would start with.

Speaker 2:
47:16

Everything is really truly getting a diagnosis, analysis and an action plan together and then just taking it head on, step by step, to get where you need to go, and doing so in a concise moment, not Kind of going back to that. You know, dipping your toes in versus doing it right all at once, like commit, fully commit. Because I can tell you, when people say, oh well, they're taking a ton of our market share and we're building a good team, oh well, they're taking a ton of our market share and we're losing out and we don't know what's going on, it's they went all in on every aspect and people get their brand and that's what you're missing now. So like that, all in mentality is really important to take forward.

Speaker 1:
47:54

Okay, well, that's a great thing for uh listeners to take away, as far as you know how to take that brand to the next level. For folks that are interested in kind of seeing what you're, you know, keeping up with what you're up to, and Want to learn more about you, corey, where's a good place for them to go?

Speaker 2:
48:11

Yes, this is where I should probably plug my socials, but I am a little bit of a hermit so I'm not big on the social media. You can find me on linkedin. You might find some posts on there about uh marathoning or about e-commerce in general. But you're probably best off going to buffabranchcom and uh hooking up with us with an intro call or an audit of some sort, or just uh, you know, even subscribe to our newsletter there just to continue to learn and uh, if and when you need some help, we're here.

Speaker 1:
48:39

All right, perfect. Well, Corey, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Speaker 2:
48:44

Thanks so much for having me. Guys Really appreciate it Thanks.

Speaker 3:
48:47

Corey.