0:02
Shanie Zimerman
Get started. So, hi, everyone. As some of you might know by now, I'm Shani. I manage our strategic partners over here at Oktopost. Thank you all for joining us in our 15th episode of our from the Experts webinar series. So joining me today is Kevin Mulrain. He is the vp, Head of sales over at Pro Quo AI. Hey, Kevin. Thanks so much.
0:27
Colin Day
Thank you.
0:27
Shanie Zimerman
And we have Colin Day, our managing director of EMEA and APAC over here at Oktopost. So today's conversation. Today's conversation is talking all about branding and the factors that are considered when taking your brand's reputation into factor. So just a quick reminder, everybody is on mute if you have any questions. There is a Q and a box. There's a chat box. You can feel free to drop those questions right in there. And we will definitely have time at the end of the webinar to get to them. Oh, you see, this is that lag that I. When I introduced you, I wanted this on the screen. So, Shani, Kevin.
1:07
Colin Day
Kevin had more hair there. I had less. Right.
1:10
Shanie Zimerman
Gangs all here. So much coordination comes into play. All right, well, let's go ahead and get started. I think. Setting the tone for today, Kevin, I would love to hear a little bit more from you again, just to make sense of this webinar. What makes up people's relationships with brands?
1:32
Kevin Mulrane
Yeah, it's a great question. I think where it really starts from is how people feel about a brand. Whether you're looking at the B2B space, the B2C space, brands build relationships with their consumers and their customers and their potential customers. And really understanding those feelings and being able to segment them into different groups and categories allows you to understand the performance of your brand. What do you do really, really well? Where are your areas of optimization, improvement? And then also understanding that on a category level, really understanding what drives the category forward based on the consumers in that category, what do they deem to be important? And so by understanding all these different factors around feelings and really allows you to make smarter marketing decisions and really drive commercial success. And so it's a lot of the work that we do with brands today. We look at a couple of things, but we look at things like the timing in which somebody responds to a question about how they feel about a brand. So that's something that we refer to as system one, which is your. The very quick subconscious, your intuition on how you feel, very much an automatic sense of feeling. That's really where there's a strong correlation about a feeling or an emotion with the brand. And then there's system two. And that's the more deliberate, conscious, well thought out sort of decision making on feelings on a brand. So by understanding these two things, it really allows you to again, make smarter decisions to move the brand forward.
3:13
Shanie Zimerman
Cost saving and time saving decisions for the brand.
3:17
Kevin Mulrane
Yeah. I think when we've done an analysis at Proquo, and when you think of it from a marketing perspective, there's over 25 million decisions a marketer can make that drives a brand forward. It's just an incredibly overwhelming and almost a paralyzing thing just to think about. So you can do so many different things. How do you know is the right one that's going to move the brand forward?
3:44
Colin Day
Right.
3:45
Kevin Mulrane
And so by being able to sort of put this correlation together of how people feel about your brand, what you do well, what you don't do well, and then how do you take the actions to improve it? It's all about that decision making.
4:01
Shanie Zimerman
Definitely.
4:02
Colin Day
How many, how many things did you say then?
4:04
Kevin Mulrane
25 million decisions.
4:06
Colin Day
25 million decisions. And any one of those, get any one of those wrong and it can erode your brand equity.
4:14
Kevin Mulrane
Right, Exactly.
4:16
Shanie Zimerman
Yeah.
4:16
Kevin Mulrane
So I think there's a lot of, there's so many things you can do and there's just a lot of hope and intuition about what you can do. And then there's also a lot of, what we talk to our customers about is your intent versus impact. You see a lot of brands that put together a campaign or they take a certain marketing action with the intent to see a certain result and sometimes they just, they miss the mark. Right. Like the impact they ultimately have is not what they was the desired intent. So really being able to understand how people feel and the relationship they have with your brand allows to be, you know, much more effective with your marketing actions as well.
5:06
Shanie Zimerman
Fantastic. Colin, was there anything else? I just wanted to.
5:11
Colin Day
Yeah, I mean, just, just pick.
5:12
Shanie Zimerman
I didn't want to cut you off.
5:13
Colin Day
Yeah, no, no, no. Just picking up on that point. Right, Kevin. So, you know, any one of those things can erode that, that brand equity. You know, the way I always think about it is, look, a brand wasn't built in a day. Right. But it can certainly be destroyed in one. Yeah. So, yeah. The other way to look at that as well. Right. Is as we build brands, it takes time. Right. It takes time, it takes effort. It's almost, I mean, you're almost building a culture. Right. Or you're certainly trying to build a cult following. Yeah. And I know we talk about that later. On in the session. Right. So it's really about how do I. It's not just about the font, the color, the. The flyer that we're using. Slacker Meo. It's everything that goes around that and you get any one of those pieces wrong and we're in trouble. Right?
6:09
Kevin Mulrane
Yeah. It's an interesting piece because I think where a lot of marketers sometimes struggle is around building that emotional connection with your consumers and your audience. And how do you do that when it comes to more of the rational thinking or the rational drivers that grow a brand? Things like the performance of the product or how it differentiates amongst its competitive set, those are all things that are pretty standard in the marketing function. But there needs to be a lot of creativity and there needs to be a lot of uniqueness when it comes to how to build that emotional connection. And that does take time. It doesn't happen overnight. But those are the things that really help brands disrupt their category, gain market share, and really stand the test of time, almost. So how are they attractive? Are they building an empathetic relationship with their consumers? Do their consumers view them as an aspirational brand? Really understanding what makes your consumer tick and being able to tap into that emotional benefit?
7:17
Colin Day
Kevin, from what you've seen out there, what are some of the brands that you feel are getting this right, right, doing it right? Like, you know, there are. There are some B2C brands that obviously spring to mind. Right. Like, you know, if you. You look at the. The likes of Apple, for example, it's like, you know, everyone wants or knows how to, or why they buy. It's like Apple devices. But what are some of the brands that you see out there that are doing it right? And. And why do you think that is?
7:49
Kevin Mulrane
Yeah, I think it's probably a bit different in the B2B and the B2C space, but in the B2C space, some of the more aspirational brands that we work with, we work with a company called Athletic Brewing, which I think a lot of people became familiar with, especially around dry January. But they're a no alcoholic beer brand and they've been disrupting the category. They've been doing a lot of really unique things, but they've just been connecting with their consumers in a very, very aspirational way. They're tying the emotional benefits of how consumers want to live. They want to be healthy, they want to be fit. 2 the blend of I enjoyed drinking beer and not having the negative impacts of it. I think you also see some really interesting brands in the B2B space, one that really jumps out at me because I've seen, seen it firsthand is companies like Sales Loft, right. I know certain SDR leaders, sales leaders, sales operation leaders would. It's that tribe that they've built. No matter what company they go to, Sales Loft is going to be there, right. And as they make moves in their career and they work for different businesses themselves, first thing they, if Sales Loft's not there, that's one of their first orders of business.
9:16
Colin Day
Yeah. Kevin, I had the same experience with Oktopost, right. But hey, I didn't take them into my next job. It became my next job. So I've purchased Oktopost a couple of times in my life. Right. You teed that one up for me nicely, mate. Gotcha. Sorry, Shani.
9:38
Shanie Zimerman
So moving. No, that's fine. I was just going to move into the next topic, the next topic of conversation, which is kind of how to flip that switch on your brand's relationship. So how, if there is that negative experience, how can we move quickly to kind of flip that into a positive experience? And is there really room for fault or room for failure when developing your brand in the initial stages, at least?
10:05
Kevin Mulrane
It's an interesting question. And I think in the early days, like there's, there's always a lot of testing what one of the things that we see and we talk to our customers about a lot is this approach of kind of this, like always on approach, right. If you look at how people feel about a brand or, you know, early days, you might be looking more at what drives the category forward because you don't have that established brand just yet. It's interesting. Those things change very, very drastically and it does vary category by category. And so as an example, with some of our customers, we look at different drivers for the category and we saw that in the beginning of the year, things like the need for transparency weren't so great. But as the world changes, as everything evolves around us, as consumer behavior and thought changes, transparency has been something that's up on the rise. And it's becoming more and more important for brands to be more transparent and more empathetic to understand what that they want from their. What they need to provide their customers. And so I think what's really interesting about this is that it's not just a get a glimpse of operate and move on. It needs to be this always on approach of understanding how things are changing the marketplace and then being able to proactively and quickly take those optimizations, those changes. So you don't go too far down a rabbit hole to make a really, really bad, lasting negative impression.
11:45
Colin Day
And Shanif, you know, thinking of that from a social perspective, right, it's like one of the, one of the things in a modern day marketers armament is the ability to listen, right? Like you know, we were given two of these and one of these, right? Like, and far too often we use, you know, we're vocal rather than listening to what's coming in, right. So you know, being able to listen to what's going on over the various channels, right? Whether it be like your email, whether it be slack, you know, coming in through a, you know, maybe a web form, through, you know, through your marketing or eloqua or whatever marketing automation platforms you're using. But also to be able to listen to social channels and pick up on how the brand is being perceived, how people are talking about the brand, or indeed not even about the brand itself, but about the things that are topical to that particular brand. It may be the set of hashtags, for example, that you follow on say Twitter or the various influencers that you're following on social. So how do you pick up on that wealth of data? You have to go and search for it, you have to go and listen for it. And then as Kevin said, right, once you've got that, you're then able to react to it and maybe not even become reactive, but be proactive so that if you can start to see negative sentiment start to increase about a particular topic, you can get out in front of it and start to influence the customer experience, the customer journey and the conversation.
13:35
Shanie Zimerman
And you have to be open to that feedback and that conversation and that criticism, if it's criticism. And I guess that's why the rebrand exists. And I think we also saw last year, towards the tail end of last year, a lot of rebranding happening, especially in the B2B space. Just being, I think more open and aware of the conversations that were happening globally and socially and just these conversations and being able to apply it to their organization and then portray it to their customers and their audience in a very transparent way. Like you said.
14:09
Kevin Mulrane
Yeah, I think you're seeing it in both the B2B landscape and B2C. But brands that are very, there's a strong correlation. There's a lot of emotion behind their vision and their mission. When you see a lot of brands that are more really focused on sustainability or supporting certain charities or donating to different causes, it's becoming a bigger part of the brand. And that is one of the things that really draws people in. And I think being able to associate. Colleen talked about influencers. That's one of those things that, based on what one person says, can immediately change the way people feel and perceive. Whether it's a brand, a topic, or anything. You see it happen in various different walks of life. But, you know, the minute Joe Rogan says something, bang, there's an entire audience that jumps on that. Or, you know, if Elon Musk says something about a brand or a company, bang, their stock flies. And so I think that also kind of speaks to that proactivity. Like you said, if you can. If you're on top of these things and you can proactively see how consumer behavior is shifting, you can start to make correlations on how that impacts whether it's customer loyalty, it's recruiting new users, and even be able to tie commercial performance to it. I think that's one of the things that a lot of brands are really starting to figure out is how does the value of the brand directly impact the commercial success of the business? And you're saying that again. I think there's sort of a bridging and coming together in both the B2B and B2C space.
15:50
Colin Day
Yeah, Kevin. And not necessarily related to the brand, but certainly related to social or alternative channels. Right. It's like thinking about that impact on the business. I just name one company, GameStop. Right. It's like that. That was the collective power of social. Right. And you may say that people got behind the brand. Maybe people just saw a quick way to make a fast buck, but it just shows how things can pivot so quickly. Like when someone picks up on a message or when the herd or the tribe pick up on that message and get behind it or not.
16:34
Kevin Mulrane
Exactly. Exactly.
16:38
Shanie Zimerman
So speaking of social, Colin, I'm gonna direct this one, at least for starting to you just being in the space that we are. How does social media play that significant role in our brand's reputation? I think, again, it's something that we're seeing more and more of these days. Something that. It's just very. It's just very obvious. It's. Everybody's on social, so it makes it very aware. It makes it a very obvious channel to go to. To voice opinions and concerns and feedback and criticism.
17:12
Colin Day
Yeah. I mean, take it in a different. Slightly different direction as well. Right. Shiny. In so much as, you know, if we. If we cast our mind back, like 13, 14 months. Right. It's like, you know, Kevin and I are both in Sales, Right. Like if you looked at where our sales team got the majority of their leads from, it was probably in person events. Right. It's like fast forward or start to take that journey over that period of time to present day. I haven't been to an in person event. Like I think the last one was when you and I were together in Israel last February. Right. So, you know, there's, there's that element of it as well, right. In so much as, you know, how can I find new channels in order to get the brand message out there. Right. In order to. At the end of the day, why are we trying to build a brand? We're trying to help Kevin and people like Kevin, the sales team. We're trying to help the sales team sell the product and service that we've got within our kit bag. If we can't do that, then as marketers, right, you have to ask, what is your job? If your job isn't contributing to the bottom line of the company, what is your job? To me, it's a case of what tools do I have with inside my kit bag today? What channels can I use in order to enforce the brand, reinforce the brand, get the brand message out there? How can I position myself and my colleagues as thought leaders in our space? Hey, the easiest thing for me is social, right. You know, if we looked at the brand and if you looked at the collective reach of your employees, right. Statistically. And you know, I love a statistic, right. But statistically, the collective reach of a company's employees. Right. Is at least 10 times that of the brand itself when it comes to social. So if you looked at the collective reach of the brand over all of its social channels. Yeah. Its employees outgun it by 10%. You add to that, Kevin, when was the last time you had a conversation with a brand? You were probably moaning about one. Not you were probably moaning about one, but you may have moaned about one and gone at them that way. But when was the last time anyone spoke to a brand? Probably you could count it on one hand, right. I was going to say never, but. Never say never. Right. But you know, it's a, it's a few times. When was the last time you had a conversation with someone on social? Probably earlier this morning.
19:53
Kevin Mulrane
Exactly. Yeah.
19:54
Colin Day
Right. So statistically, people are eight times more likely to engage. Right. Like we've, we've got some, some branded material that I put out there over my, my own personal network than, than, you know, my organization putting out. And then if you look at that statistically, six Times more likely to take that conversion. So where does social come into it? Social is a huge part of our lives today. I mean, if we look at how often we're on our mobile devices, we look at how often we check our Facebook Feeds or our LinkedIn messages, the first thing I do in the morning, rather sadly, is tune into social, look at what's coming in on my feeds, on my timelines on a daily basis, and react and engage with them. And I do that frequently throughout the day. So, to me, it's a case of anyone that's got a thinking about their brand strategy, if they're not looking at how they can harness the power of their employees to help enhance that brand, make them brand ambassadors. After all, we're probably doing it of our own accord anyway, in some way, shape or form. Yeah, but. But I want a way to corral them. I want a way to. To enforce best practice. I want to be able to. To coach and educate. Yeah. My colleagues on what does it mean to be socially active and what does it mean to be responsible to the brand. Yeah. And the brand equity that we've been building.
21:32
Kevin Mulrane
Yeah, I really like that. I think the way social was position to me a few years back was as a salesperson, sales leader, CEO, founder. If you could go and speak in a room to a hundred of your best potential customers, would you pay for it? And the answer is absolutely. And we have that opportunity for free every single day on social channels. Right. You can build an audience, you can build connections. I do think that a lot of. A lot of consumers and customers, they want to engage with the people in those brands and not so much the corporate jargon, but they want to see what people are talking about again. I think as the buyer evolves and shifts and it's a different generation, the traditional methods are evolving. Everyone is on social. And it may be a different social channel depending on who your Persona and ICP is, but it's getting bigger and bigger. And I think it's just. It's continuously becoming the way of the future.
22:44
Shanie Zimerman
It's much more authentic. But with that comes a great responsibility in properly training and onboarding your employees to be the best representatives and those best ambassadors to your brand as possible. You know, we talk about a digital footprint, but it's more like a digital tattoo. If it's. If it's on the web, it's there to stay and it'll always be discoverable. And I think that that holds great power when it comes to reflecting back to the brand.
23:13
Colin Day
Yeah. Shani My. One of. One of my former bosses once said to me, colin, when you're putting something on social, yet read it, reread it, and think, would you be proud to show that to your grandparents? And if the answer is yes, then go ahead and post it. If the answer is no, think seriously before you go posting it. Right. Because once it's there, don't I know
23:36
Shanie Zimerman
it from those Facebook memories? Those Facebook memories that come up from 13 years ago, and I'm like, who gave me Facebook 13 years ago? Who let me on that thing? No, it is. It's a big responsibility and it's. It all, you know, obviously, depending on the channel that you're on and the network that you're on, it does fall back on the brand that you're representing and that, you know, you're advocating for. And I think as powerful a solution as it is, it also is powerful in the sense of the responsibility aspect of it.
24:12
Colin Day
Yeah. I mean, it can all be tied back. It can all be tied back to your employer. Right. Like, you know, so if you went on to my LinkedIn feed, right. It's like you'd see that I'm associated to Oktopost. So anything that I put out there, Right. Whether I like it or not. Yeah. You know, I'm an employee of Oktopost, and therefore, you know, anything that I write, even though it's my own thoughts and opinions. Yeah. I've put on there that I'm an employee of Oktopost. So, you know, it gets. It gets the company or the brand gets tarnished with that message.
24:42
Kevin Mulrane
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of good that can come of it. But like you said, there's a lot of bad.
24:47
Shanie Zimerman
Right.
24:47
Kevin Mulrane
Like I've even saw on LinkedIn, people that were, you know, posting to support different causes within social injustice, and people were making just horrible, horrible comments, and their employers saw it, and unfortunately, their employers couldn't stand for it, you know, and I'm sure there was all sorts of, you know, challenges and issues that. That caused. And so I think the. Would my grandparents be proud of me by posting this lens is a great filter to put it through.
25:20
Shanie Zimerman
Definitely.
25:21
Kevin Mulrane
Once it's there, it's there.
25:25
Shanie Zimerman
Yeah. Especially with the new cancel culture. And I think really the bottom line is understanding that social does play a huge role in your brand's reputation, whether it's the brand itself speaking or the employee speaking on behalf of the brand or the employees that are associated with the brand. And as.
25:45
Colin Day
That's a great point as well, though, Shani. Right, sorry. Sorry to talk over the top of you. That's a great point. Right. It's like, you know, whether the employee speaking on behalf of the brand, yet the employees always speaking on behalf of the brand, even if. Even if they're not. I mean, in the old days, right. It's like, you know, back in, in my day, when I was a lad. Yeah. Many moons ago, as some people would.
26:07
Shanie Zimerman
Stone Age. Right.
26:08
Colin Day
Yeah. Back. Back when the dinosaurs walked the earth. Right. And you know, the only thing that was out there was. Was. Was printing. Right. And you used to speak to a journalist, right. Like in order to get the message out there and get something published back then you would have authorized spokespeople for the organization and it would only be them that go out there and talk on behalf of the brand. Today, everyone's a brand ambassador. Everyone's talking on behalf of the brand. Whether the brand likes it, knows it or not.
26:42
Shanie Zimerman
Definitely. So consider when developing your brand's reputation that social is critical and train and tread lightly and make sure you're using it to its utmost benefit and also utmost responsibility. Using utmost.
27:03
Kevin Mulrane
Question, if you don't mind, please.
27:06
Shanie Zimerman
So that's a good question.
27:07
Kevin Mulrane
So I think this is really interesting because for me, like, the way I learn about a lot of brands and discover and get recommendations on brand is social. Right. So I think there's not just what your employees are saying online that can impact the brand, but there's also going to be everybody else that has an opinion to your point. Con. Like you see with the typical airlines, right, if you get horrible customer service, something happens. You're tweeting, you're hashtagging, you're adding, and it, you know, but I think that's also becoming more and more prevalent in the B2B space. So I guess the question is how do you manage what others are saying about your brand, good and bad, and how do you just try to, you know, proactively, quickly jump in there to. I don't want to say save the day, but steer, I guess, maybe steer it or steer.
28:02
Colin Day
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Shanique, can I take that one or do you want to.
28:07
Shanie Zimerman
You can start. You can certainly start.
28:09
Colin Day
Cool. Perfect. I mean, Kevin, from my perspective there, as I said earlier on, right, you've got to be listening to it. You've got to be tuned into it, right? So it's going to happen, right. So it's a case of how can I understand when it's happening and how can I get ahead of it, right. There are tools and technologies out there. Today that allow you to listen, look at the brand's own accounts. Right. We have some here at Oktopost. Right. But look and listen to the brand's own accounts like you know, manage that social inbox, if you will, like you know, where you're being mentioned, where you're being direct messaged, etc. But also listen to and track various hashtags and look at the sentiment and the trending of those that that sentiment and be notified when there's a spike. Yeah. In activity. Or when there's a spike in negative sentiment. Awesome. Yeah, so to me it's about, you know, being able to listen to it and then, and then you can jump into those social conversations. Right. And whether you, you do it for a DM or whether you do it like you know, on mass. Yeah, that's really like on a case by case basis dependent upon what the actual conversation, what the actual comment is all about, but knowing that it's happening and being able to jump into the conversation here and now, it certainly gives you the ability to maybe course correct, maybe get the brand's own view and opinion out there. But sometimes it's actually good to do nothing.
29:57
Shanie Zimerman
I was going to say it's also a matter of making sure that the team or the individuals that are responsible for social are armed with the right response and the right conversation back and not necessarily be on the defensive or not just have just anyone respond to these conversations on social media, but having really well formatted thought out responses and being able to defend your brand and still be empathetic towards the individual who's commenting or who's feeling these pain points. I think that that's a critical component as well. So actively listening but also being able to really portray the response in a well thought out manner.
30:43
Kevin Mulrane
Yeah.
30:47
Shanie Zimerman
All right, so let us move into our last topic here, which is how and what B2B marketers can learn from the B2C space when it comes to that brand reputation. You know, we see a lot of, like we said, just taking social as that example you spoke about airlines and restaurants and people coming to social first for voicing concerns and complaints. We see that a lot in the B2C space. How can B2B marketers kind of take what B2C marketers are doing when it comes to that brand's reputation? For better, for the better. We always want for the better, not necessarily the complaints and the concern.
31:30
Kevin Mulrane
Yeah, I think you do see B2B prioritizing and seeing the importance of the relationship they have with their customers because what's becoming more and more prevalent is this sense of communities or tribes like we spoke a bit about earlier. Right. Even in a previous company, about 30, almost 30% of our revenue from a new business side of things was coming from somebody who was a customer. They left their job, went to a new business and called us because they loved what we did so much. Right. And I think it's becoming a bigger and bigger opportunity for brands. They're seeing that as an opportunity for them, to them to really jump on. And so that sense of a tribe or customer loyalty is going to be more important as brands grow and get bigger. And I think it all starts with that relationship and understanding based off the category I'm in, what is my, you know, what is my customers like? What do they deem important? What are the most critical things? Some are going to be very, very performance driven. Others, you know, there's an opportunity to disrupt that category based off those emotional things. But I think it's just really understanding that and building that relationship to drive more customer loyalty. Because then it's the word of mouth, like it then starts to snowball and your users start to recruit your non users. And there's a lot there,
33:05
Colin Day
Kevin, just picking up on the tribe element. Right. And taking in a slightly different direction. Yeah. Look, I always say that selling is a team sport and an important part of that team's marketing. Right. It's like, you know, as a sales leader, what do you see as some of the key interlocks between sales and marketing?
33:26
Kevin Mulrane
Yeah, we operate very much the same way. We sort of internally we look at ourselves as a revenue team, which is sales, marketing and content, you know, and we're one piece of a much bigger operational pie. There's the product team, there's our enablement team. There's a lot there. But I think what the most important thing, I think between the sales and marketing alignment is it just starts with what's the goal? Right. Like what is the goal of marketing and how should that influence sales and what is the goal of sales and how should they feed back to marketing? I think if you have two different goals and targets, that's where the friction begins. Right. Like marketing's out there doing their thing, sales is doing theirs, they're not aligned and there's just complete friction. So I think it's just understanding what's the unified North Star, what is the most important thing for that brand to obsess over and align on.
34:27
Colin Day
Right.
34:28
Kevin Mulrane
I think that's the foundational piece and that starts even above A sales and marketing team that starts at the top with the organization and the direction of priorities. But you can't go much. You have to have great people, respectful people, empathetic people to build that relationship. But without the alignment from the top, it doesn't get too much further. I don't think
34:54
Shanie Zimerman
it always starts at the top. It has to. Everything has to start from the top and trickle down. Any initiative, any positive factors that would be considered has to come from the top and trickle down. And there has to be enthusiasm from the top. And I think we always speak about that bridge between sales and marketing and speaking the same language. And without having that same language, there's just such a disconnect between what your messaging is and what you're selling and what the person is getting and how they're being treated as a customer. And it all ties in and it all has to start from that top and trickle on down.
35:34
Colin Day
Yeah.
35:36
Kevin Mulrane
I think the roles are intertwining. They're becoming closer and closer together. I know. I spoke with Jen on your guys podcast about, you know, sales becoming better marketers and marketers becoming better salespeople.
35:48
Shanie Zimerman
Exactly.
35:49
Kevin Mulrane
And even talking, touching on the social point. Like, I think that's one of the examples that I see every day where salespeople have an opportunity to create great content to you, put their brand in a positive light and build an audience and build a community and evangelize on behalf of the brand. Which is kind of a new skill set. Right. It's not a selling direct response. Like, it's. It's much more of a, I think, a more traditional marketing skill set. And you see some of the best marketers are really leaning into the voice of the customer and understanding what prospects want. So they're listening or they're active in sales calls. So I think you're seeing a little bit more of a blend and which. Which I think is great because it's just starting to, like, remove those silos. And, you know, it's two different. You know, you can look at it as two different teams and two different functions, but. But it's a team sport. I think Colin hits the nail on the head there.
36:44
Shanie Zimerman
And they have to be speaking the same language, the same. Just that same language in general, and speak to each other and communicate internally. This is what the customer is looking for, the prospect wants, and how do we deliver that? And this is what we're delivering. So put it in front of the prospect. It's. It just all intertwines.
37:07
Colin Day
And Kevin, thinking of it from the marketing side of things, putting my marketing hat on for a minute, where I came from before joining Oktopost, very big B2B brand. Our focus from a marketing perspective, the way that we were compensated and obviously compensation drives behavior or influences it. We were all about, you know, in order to get a seat at the table with our sales peers, it was all about, you know, measuring based upon two metrics. Contribution to sales, pipeline, contribution to close one business. Right. So as marketers, for probably the very first time that I'd ever spoken to any marketer anyway, we actually took a number. Yeah. So we were carrying a bag. Not as much as a sales bag, but we were carrying a bag just like our sales peers. Right. And we made a physical commitment that this is what we were going to drive, this is how we were going to measure it. But you had to have the tools and the capabilities in place to be able to measure it in the first place. Right. So that was all part of the brand story. Right. Because it all came together. Right. It was all an integrated marketing strategy that ultimately led yet to this contribution to pipeline, this contribution to close one business, sales marketing. Here's the interlock, right. You know, what, what do you accept as a marketing qualified lead? Because it may be different to what I think I'm pushing over. Right. So there was very much that, that, that dialogue, that, that interaction in order to get that language, you know, built correctly. And then it was a case of this is what I'm going to stand behind and this is my commitment to you, Mr. Or Ms. You know, sales, sales professional and sales organization.
39:08
Kevin Mulrane
Yeah, no, that's, that's exactly it.
39:11
Colin Day
Right.
39:11
Kevin Mulrane
And because I think, because there was a common goal alignment on what was important, right. It wasn't, you know, marketing has mql, sales has sales, and they don't, you know, now marketing, I don't care what sales thinks is an MQL or sales accepted lead or whatever acronym we have. Right? Yeah, you just, you just toss it on over. And so I think that that alignment, you know, on those, those key performance indicators or metrics is what starts that. And then having that conversation and having, you know, I've even thought like that singular dashboard, like we're all speaking the same language. Instead of sales has theirs, marketing has theirs. And now it's. Well, I see this, you see that, and that's where friction begins. So it's amazing to hear that.
39:56
Colin Day
Yes. It's all about being radically transparent, Right, Kevin, And I know you've been on the radically transparent podcast. This is Not a plug for that.
40:09
Kevin Mulrane
If there's not a shameless plug, then it's not even a real webinar.
40:13
Shanie Zimerman
I know, I know. That was good, though. Perfect timing also. No, we are, we always say here at Oktopost, it's about being radically transparent. And you can't have that transparency without these departments and these individuals working together for the common goal. Right. The common goal is always going to be. We know what the common goal is. We don't. You know, that's what it is. And it's a wider teamwork than just working within your teams. It needs to be cross departmental and divisions, and that's the real teamwork there. Yep.
40:53
Kevin Mulrane
Well said.
40:58
Shanie Zimerman
So that is, that does bring us to kind of wrapping up the webinar itself. We have a couple of questions that came in. I do first want to thank the two of you. This was a really great conversation and I think it just helped, you know, kind of give that wider perspective on the brand itself, that it goes well beyond that elevator pitch and the font and the colors that you choose to use on your website. And I think that this was just able to shed a lot of light. And I did want to address a couple of questions that we got from the audience. So the first one that came in this was earlier on. So how do you measure emotional connection?
41:41
Kevin Mulrane
It's a good one. It's a really good one. And I think it's probably one of the more challenging tasks that a brand or a marketer probably has in front of them. But depending on where you are in your business, there's a couple different ways. One is to just see the response. There's all sorts of different ways in which you can speak with your consumers and having your finger on the pulse. We've worked with some much smaller brands
42:07
Shanie Zimerman
that
42:09
Kevin Mulrane
they spoke with their customers every single day. So they had a really good understanding of the sentiment or the reputation of the brand. As they grew and as they scaled, it became a lot more challenging and difficult. And so there's a lot of different ways in which you can do it. We work with brands and help them understand that through daily conversations with consumers and being able to align that back to an emotion and align that back to a score, and then giving the actions to say, here's how you make this better or worse. But there's a multitude of different ways to do it. But I think the important way is just understanding as it changes, as it evolves, you always have to have your finger on the pulse
42:54
Shanie Zimerman
and try to make that, that actual connection with their Customers and try to be proactive in collecting feedback and hearing what they have to actually say back to you and being, like we said earlier, being open to that conversation and that feedback and open to applying change where you know, where it makes sense to.
43:15
Kevin Mulrane
Exactly.
43:19
Shanie Zimerman
Great. So another question that came in. Is there one single more important factor to consider when developing your brand? Obviously we mentioned. What was it? 25. 25 million.
43:33
Kevin Mulrane
25 million. Yeah.
43:34
Shanie Zimerman
25 million.
43:35
Colin Day
That's a lot of things to remember. I want you to name all 25 million. Kevin. Go.
43:40
Kevin Mulrane
Those are the decisions and actions a marketer could take. The way that we look at it is we break. So we break our. The way that consumers feel about brands and build relationships about brands. We break them down into what we refer to as the 16 different drivers. Those are also broken into different categories. So there's going to be things like rational drivers, seductive drivers, emotional and persuasive. Now it's different for every brand, every category, every stage of where you are. That's why it's not easy.
44:19
Colin Day
Right?
44:19
Kevin Mulrane
Like making understanding all of this is not easy and then trying to understand it and taking all those actions and figuring out the right things to do, it's a very challenging, daunting thing. Right. There's some brands that do it incredibly, incredibly well. There's other brands that really are struggling and challenging with it. If it was some of those, like, if it was really easy, we'd all have a brand, we'd all have islands, we'd all be millionaires. So it's super, super difficult. But I think what it's important to recognize is that there's not a one size fits all model. And it's not going to be considered. It's not a static thing. Right. These different drivers are going to change based off a lot of different variables. So having that always on approach is what's really key.
45:08
Shanie Zimerman
Definitely. And that makes perfect sense. It's hard to pinpoint one specific factor. Like you said, if that was the case, then why would I need to be working at Oktopost? I would be running my own gig over here. Okay, great. There is one more question, and I, and I touched on it earlier when it came in, but I'm wondering if we can just kind of dwell on it a little bit longer. Is there room for failure when creating your brand? And I think that that question, what I'm understanding from that is can you redeem yourself if you fail in the beginning? Is there room for redemption afterwards?
45:49
Kevin Mulrane
It's a good question. And I think anybody you ask that Works with brands may have a bit of a different school of thought. I think one of the schools of thought is the age old. There's no such thing as bad press. Right. You know, you can take a look at. You froze there, Colin.
46:13
Colin Day
I said, I've just written that down on my piece of paper, Kevin. There's no such thing as bad publicity. Right.
46:20
Kevin Mulrane
You can look at some brands and one that comes to mind, peloton, right. Like they put out an ad campaign that just totally missed the mark.
46:33
Shanie Zimerman
I remember that one, you know, and it was the creepy one that they put out. Right. With I forgot what it was. But I remember, I remember it, seeing it and being irked out by it. Yeah. So then everyone got a peloton a
46:48
Kevin Mulrane
month later, you know, so there are certain ones that you know are just going to. Because then everyone, everyone talks about it, Right?
46:56
Shanie Zimerman
Exactly.
46:56
Kevin Mulrane
And that kind of speaks to what drives the category forward. Right. You can put something out like that. But peloton, based off of what's going on in the world, gym shutting down and people caring about a high performance fitness bike, it's still going to drive commercial success. I also think too where it really stems though, I think is being able to put together really good ad campaigns, being super efficient with your return on advertising spend and making sure that you're connecting with your consumers because over time that does build the brand equity, the brand reputation and then does drive to the commercial success. I think you want to make sure you're getting a few more hits than misses. But I don't think more often than not, I don't believe that it completely crushes a brand.
47:55
Shanie Zimerman
Right. With so many factors to consider, you'd have to really hit every mark to fully flop, I guess, and not want to change in order for that. To have that redemption afterwards.
48:12
Kevin Mulrane
Yeah. And that's an opportunity itself. Right. You know, like the redemption story. Everyone loves it, you know, So I think there's, there's always a. There's always a next move, there's always the next step for sure.
48:27
Shanie Zimerman
So those are the questions that we have received today, which does bring us to the end of this lovely almost hour webinar that we had. And I just want to thank the two of you again. This was a really fantastic webinar. I found it insightful. I have no doubt that our audience found it insightful. And for those that will listen to the recording, I'm looking forward to hearing their feedback as well. So thank you both. Kevin, thank you so much for joining us again. Fifteen episodes in and the conversation just keeps getting more and more riveting. So really appreciate you taking that time today to join us and talk a little bit more about what's in a brand. So thank you, everyone, for joining us today. If you have any questions at all, our contact information is here. You'll get the request. You'll get this deck, so you don't need to memorize anything. And until our next episode at the end of May, I look forward to seeing you then. Thanks again, guys.
49:26
Colin Day
Thanks, Kevin. Thanks, Shani. Thanks, everyone.
49:28
Shanie Zimerman
Thank you. Take care. Bye.
