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Jack Fussell: Why Do Brands Fail to Really Know Their Customers?
43 Plays4 years ago
Why do so many companies take their customers for granted?
They invest so much time and money to acquire new customers but not nearly enough to keep them happy and loyal?
In this episode of the Marketing Spark podcast, Jack Fussell talks about why knowing your customers and communicating with them is so important.
"We should be customer-centric all the time. We should have in-depth insight into what our customers want, what their fears are, their aspirations, and their goals."
Jack, the managing partner with Campfire Social and a fractional CMO, also talks about the importance of branding at a time when many companies sound and look the same, as well as the rise of fractional C-suite executives.
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Transcript
Introduction to Marketing Spark Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
My name is Mark Evans, and I'd like to welcome you to Marketing Spark, the podcast that delivers small doses of insight, tools, and tips from marketers and entrepreneurs in the trenches. By small doses, it's conversations that are 15 minutes or less.
Meet Jack Fussell and Campfire Partners
00:00:18
Speaker
On today's show, I'm talking with Jack Fussell, who heads up Campfire Partners, which helps B2C companies drive revenue through brand alignment. Jack's also a fractional CMO and a longtime podcaster. Welcome to Marketing Spark, Jack.
00:00:32
Speaker
Thanks Mark, thanks for having me on here.
Why is Branding Crucial in a Data-Driven World?
00:00:35
Speaker
You and I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn talking about the value of brand and branding. And at a time when data metrics and KPIs dominate the landscape, what's your approach to branding and how do companies embrace a differentiated approach to establish a competitive event? Just a load of question, but you and I both understand that brand is super important these days.
00:00:57
Speaker
Yeah that question cracks me up cuz it's like saying hey i'm just meeting you for the first time but what's the meaning of life like that's a big question because you know we do live in this space where where metrics matter and we want to measure everything and i and i get that because we're dealing with.
00:01:16
Speaker
You know we're dealing with money we're dealing with resources and those resources we always want to make sure they can be spent and utilized in the right space but the problem with that is that business is still at the end of the day unbelievably human and it's it's not just as simple as put up a sign.
Global Competition and the Power of Reputation
00:01:34
Speaker
Throw down some money for ads and watch the world come to you because, uh, yeah, it's easier to play now than ever, but it also means everyone is out to play. And now our competition is global and our competition is everywhere. And so, you know, as this bit really been a double edged sword when it comes to branding and marketing, because.
00:01:53
Speaker
we can all do more now than ever before me you and i recording this podcast with a lot less investment than it would taken twenty five years ago for us to open a studio to do the same thing so suddenly everyone has access to play. But the the backside of that is that now everyone has competition and so reputation matters more now than ever before because it used to be.
00:02:17
Speaker
Hey, I'm Joe Plummer. Find me in the Yellow Pages. And I'm the only guy in your Yellow Pages. And now it's like, no, I'm Joe Plummer. And now there's 50 of me. And if you don't like me, you can give me a Google review or a Yelp review. You can create content against me and about me. Or if you do love me, the other way around,
The Emotional Connection in Branding
00:02:37
Speaker
too. And so reputation, I think, has probably been the biggest game changer that
00:02:44
Speaker
It's just changing the way we do marketing and the way we do business. Unfortunately, reputation is one of those things. Metrics are a little more loose around that. I see all these things have combined to actually make branding, and you and I have had these conversations a lot, true branding, more important than ever before right now.
00:03:05
Speaker
As someone who falls on the brand experience side of the house as opposed to data, one of the things that frustrates me is that everything, as you mentioned, can be measured within the digital landscape. And so a lot of business decisions are driven by the numbers.
00:03:24
Speaker
A lot of business strategies are optimized based on, well, if we do this A-B testing, if we change this, how will the numbers change? And as you say, branding in some ways is a leap of faith. You have to believe that your story matters. Is that being differentiated?
00:03:43
Speaker
is a really good thing and a really necessary thing. So do you think a lot of brands are hamstrung by the numbers? Is that when they look at making an investment in branding, they have a hard time justifying it?
Misconceptions of Branding Beyond Visuals
00:03:56
Speaker
Yeah, and I still think it comes down to defining what a brand is and defining what true business success is because I still think there's a lot of, you know, I'm sure you've ran into it like I have. You meet someone and you're like, hey, I do branding. They're like, oh, cool. Yeah. You know, we have business cards and they match our website and
00:04:17
Speaker
And so many businesses still think of brand as visual identity. They think of it like a logo and it's not. And I think it's.
00:04:28
Speaker
You know, as we as humans, and I do honestly, sometimes I argue against the metrics simply by pointing out our own humanity and saying, well, let me ask you, Mr. CEO, what is your favorite brand? Can you tell me the ad that converted you to being their biggest fan? And they never can, right? Because none of us are like, oh, well, the reason I love Nike is because in 1984,
00:04:49
Speaker
you know the certain email dropped and it brought me know it's like it's been this romance it's been this woo it's been this process and at some point were like i don't know where it came from but i'm just a massive nike fan i can remember a few ads i can remember a few print you know whatever it is but yeah i just i think i just buy another way they think and so i think sometimes we have to just kind of start with at the beginning and say branding is not all those things branding is
Reputation as a Measure of Brand
00:05:16
Speaker
It's what you feel is that it's not only just reputation, like, oh, they have a good reputation, but it's what you feel when someone says the name, Nike, Apple, Disney, Amazon, whatever it is, and helping companies to realize that every company, regardless of size, even a personal brand, even someone who's a content creator, an author, podcast, or whatever, even there, you know, it's like, oh, Mark Evans, and you think certain words. Jack Fuzzle, you think certain words.
00:05:42
Speaker
And it's helping companies to realize it's not what you say about yourself. It's what others say about you. And so metrics do matter. But really, if we're going to dive into metrics, let me look at your reviews. Let me look at what people say about you. Let me look at your, you know, how many out of every thousand leads, how many are you losing because of reputation? How many are you losing because of your reviews or your
00:06:06
Speaker
they're the word of mouth right word out on the street and think of just how much more effective your marketing would be even if we just fix that like so it's it's changing the conversation really and I think that somewhere is sometimes how we where this whole thing kind of falls apart where there's some miscommunication is that you and I are communicating using the same words but with totally different definitions so I think sometimes we have to help companies understand first of all
00:06:31
Speaker
Hey, brand is reputation and it's everything. It's everything that everyone says about you, thinks about you. And, and then the metrics, yeah, that can come into play later. Cause I agree. You have to, you know, and I do AB testing and we float all that stuff out there, but that's not the defining thing. It's just more of like, which one of these pieces of copies better written or, you know, that's really what I'm measuring. But it all starts with understanding that brand is reputation.
The Need for Unique Brand Strategies
00:06:56
Speaker
What I find really interesting, and you mentioned this off the top, is that we're all armed with amazing number of tools. Many of these tools are low cost or even free. In our arsenals, in our marketing arsenals, we can reach global audiences very efficiently. We can do it at scale.
00:07:16
Speaker
We're all on the same playing field, and we're all armed in the same way. Even if all those tactical tools work, once you draw people into your world, branding matters because that's when you can differentiate yourself. That's when you can create this perception that you've got something to offer, you've got something of value. And I think that's where a lot of companies drop the ball, is they're so focused on capturing attention
00:07:45
Speaker
But once they once that successful, that's when they stumbled. Do you see that as as a problem and a challenge right now? Definitely, definitely. And I think it stems from, you know, and we all do this, we all study each other, right? We all want to know, you know, if if
00:08:03
Speaker
How's Mark doing it? Or how is this guy doing it? Or how's this guy doing it? In the company world, it's, well, I'm a shoe company. How are these 12 other shoe companies? How are they doing it? And you learn from them. The problem is, is we all end up sounding exactly the same. And if everyone is saying the same thing, then everyone is saying nothing. And I think that is where
00:08:22
Speaker
you know, that is where a true brand strategy has to step in. Because it's not just the front end, it's not just about attention. But it's also once you get their attention, why should I buy from you versus the other 10 or 20 or 30 or 40, who are doing exactly the same thing.
Aligning Brand with Customer Needs
00:08:39
Speaker
And that differentiation, that's a two sided thing. You know, I think we used to think in the old days of
00:08:46
Speaker
the early days of marketing, and even back in the Mad Men days, the differentiation was about the company more. Like, we're the best plumber because we've been in business for 30 years.
00:08:56
Speaker
or we're the best shoe company because we're fourth generation shoemakers. And nowadays, no one cares. Nowadays, the new guy can have just as much of a market share as the guy who's been doing this for 50 years. The key to all this really is in the customer. And it's understanding the customer, who is your target audience? What are their biggest needs? True needs, not just like tangible, but also, you know, psychographically, like what
00:09:22
Speaker
you know, are you are you know, if you're selling to a CMO, you're probably not just selling a service, you're probably helping him feel like he's more secure in his role because it's the highest turnover job in the entire C suite, they have the shortest shelf life. So you're not just dealing with like, how can I give this guy an email marketing strategy, but you're also dealing with how do I help him succeed? How do I help him feel secure? So once you understand all that about your target audience,
00:09:45
Speaker
and you understand what's unique about your brand, then you marry those up to say, this is how we uniquely solve your problem. Whether you're selling shoes or whether you're selling a podcast or whether you're selling consulting services or software or whatever it is that you sell, that's really where the magic comes in. So it is much more than just, let's just throw a bunch of ads out and then everyone will come. One of the things I encourage people to do is when they're doing this, I pull up all their competitors' websites on one giant screen.
00:10:13
Speaker
And when you do that, I was doing this a few years ago with a home builder. And when you when we did this with them, we pulled up there. It was nine, nine websites on one screen and theirs was in the middle. You couldn't tell the difference between any of them. If you covered up the logos, they were all the same website. They all had the same giant header. They all said the word luxury. They all you could have just mixed and mingled the logos and no one would have ever known the difference. And when you do that,
00:10:38
Speaker
You can't even figure out your own website based on a screen. Your audience never will. And so that is a key part of that, Mark. That was a great question. So I want to continue our conversation about branding. But one of the things that I wanted to touch upon is this idea of knowing your customer. What I find really interesting and somewhat troubling on LinkedIn is so many marketers are waving the flag about
00:11:01
Speaker
It's important to know your customer. And to me, that's marketing 101. We should be customer centric all the time. We should have in-depth insight into what our customers want, what their fears are, what their aspirations are, what their goals are. How do you explain this? We need to know our customer phenomena that seems to be happening right now. Yeah, I think it's because as usual in business, we usually don't, we usually
00:11:28
Speaker
We as humans usually don't innovate until it's in response to something. Most of us are not sitting there at night saying, you know what, life is going really well tonight. I think tomorrow I'm going to throw it all into chaos and try a totally different approach. Like we usually don't. Zoom, for example, you know, my entire house right now is filled with, there's five of us.
00:11:48
Speaker
We're probably all on some version of Zoom right now. And we had to scramble to make that happen. When COVID hit, we had to scramble because none of us had that technology in place. We didn't have enough microphones, enough headsets. So usually business is the same way. And I think customer centric suddenly is starting to come into the conversation because we're realizing none of us are standing out.
00:12:09
Speaker
We're realizing that all of us are competing and that suddenly my competition isn't just those in my zip code, but it's the entire planet. Anyone can do what I do. Like the services that you and I provide, there could be a strategist in Kuala Lumpur competing for the same gigs with us.
00:12:27
Speaker
That's a game changer. And what I'm amazed at, when I do strategy work, one of the first things I do is I reach out as part of the initial process and I reach out to the ever who's hired us, right? The director of marketing or the CEO or the founder. And I'm like, I need to talk to 10 of your customers, 30 minute interviews. It takes them days to come up with names. And usually because they haven't spoken to a customer besides the sales process,
00:12:53
Speaker
Once they do sales or unless there's like a customer service issue, they're not, they don't have customers on speed dial. They don't have customers. They're like, oh yeah, I was talking to Joe last week. It's always like, uh, yeah, let me get back to you on that because they don't, they simply don't have those relationships in place. And my thinking is, you know, if you want to stand out in the marketplace,
00:13:13
Speaker
Just talk to your customers. Like I think we should be talking to them, not just as marketers, but as company owners, as founders, as CEOs, talking to our customers on a consistent basis because they change nonstop. The things that influence them change nonstop. And usually we don't change until they've walked out the door. That's usually what gets our attention. Companies that are saying suddenly we want to be customer focused, they're saying customer focused because customers are walking out the door and going somewhere else.
00:13:42
Speaker
I just find that incredible that it's almost like companies take their customers for granted. We spend so much time trying to capture their attention, nurture them, educate them, close the deal.
The Rise of Fractional CMOs
00:13:53
Speaker
Once they come into the fold, it's almost like, okay, you're done. We don't have to pay attention to you anymore because our product is going to be enough to satisfy you. Whereas when I do marketing engagements and I go through the same exercise as you and say, I need to talk to your customers, what customers tell me is always surprising to the CEO.
00:14:13
Speaker
I'm never amazed when the CEO goes, they really said that. I mean, and the fact that they don't know this information is troubling, is disappointing. It really reflects on how they do business. One of the other things I wanted to talk to you about is like a lot of people use, you've been through an interesting career transition recently. I mean, I lost my job the end of April as a full-time marketer with a SaaS company. You've gone through a similar experience.
00:14:41
Speaker
a couple things i wanted to ask you about just in terms of your own transition to where you were before and where you're at now the rise of fractional cmo is like like ourselves like i think there's going to be a lot of really experienced marketers who are going to be looking to start their own gigs and i'm curious to get your take on what the benefits are of a fractional cmo so talk about your story and then talk about about the fractional cmo movement
00:15:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's fascinating, and I really do think it's the future, not just with CMOs, but I think fractional period. Probably like yours, COVID played a big role in my recent transition, because about, you know, it was like, I think the end of June that I transitioned out of a full-time role as well as, you know, doing marketing operations with a company. It was COVID related. COVID is not as much of a disruptor as it's been an accelerator. A lot of what we're seeing in workplace and education, these were all things that were going to happen.
00:15:34
Speaker
They were gonna happen later covid is accelerating them and it's just accelerating the way we work the way we live the way that you know to a new level I'm actually really excited about what's coming after all this but I think the rise of fractional cmo is pretty amazing because CMO roles have always been
The Evolving Role of CMOs
00:15:51
Speaker
again. I said this earlier. It's always been the shortest shelf life you have on average about 18 months is the shelf life for a CMO to company because now you have experience falling underneath them sales falling underneath them everyone is kind of a catch-all bucket if it's not technology or finance
00:16:04
Speaker
It's probably going to be underneath this guy or gal. You know, you're seeing some of it reframe to a CBO, you know, chief brand officer, some of it with the chief growth officer, but it's really the same type of role. I think the benefit, I think there's two benefits for, first of all, for us as fractional CMOs.
00:16:22
Speaker
I think there's a tremendous benefit in that we get to work with multiple companies at the same time. We have seen repeatedly in business that ideas, the companies that do really, really well are the companies that bring different disciplines or different thoughts from different types of segments together. And so they bring us, you know, maybe, maybe it's a B2B company, but they've studied retail and they've brought some aspects of that into their system. So when you have a fractional CMO, A, you're able to
00:16:49
Speaker
piece together these different fragmented thoughts what other people sees fragmented thoughts from one industry to another the benefit for company is tremendous because you're able to bring someone in at a fraction of the cost you're able to really let them shine in their their most prime moment right so we're not having to deal you know we're not bogged down in a lot of the daily minutia of running something.
00:17:13
Speaker
But we're able to, most of us as fractional CMOs, most of us as CMOs period, we're strategists at the end of the day. We're really good at seeing where we live at 30,000 feet. We're good at seeing the future. We're good at seeing the connections. We're least efficient when we're down in the weeds. We're least efficient when we're dealing with budget meetings and some of that other stuff. We really shine at leading and
00:17:36
Speaker
You know making sure all the parts move together company really gets to buy the best of a same when they do fractional plus again i would think you know i want someone who's being exposed to multiple different industries or genres or disciplines or whatever i want them in a cmo world.
00:17:53
Speaker
because they're going to bring ideas to the table that, you know, if I'm a healthcare company and I only hire CMOs with healthcare experience, well, I'm really limited. But if I bring in a guy who also does some, has some V to C space in his background, who has some retail, maybe who, you know, whatever it is, suddenly you get this fresh infusion of ideas.
Conclusion and Audience Engagement
00:18:13
Speaker
I still think we're at the beginning of this and I really think COVID is, I think this concept of fractional period is going to take off because you can have specialists who just nail it and who kill it and who are experts and you're able to bring them in and get the most efficient use out of them going forward. So I'm personally super excited to see what happens over the next few years, especially when we come out of COVID, budgets return, spending returns, and how the landscape is going to be totally different than it was back in March.
00:18:42
Speaker
That's awesome. I've ever needed somebody to support the concept of a fractional CMO. I think I just got it right there. Thanks, Jack, for participating in the podcast. Thanks, everyone, for listening to another episode of Marketing Spark. If you enjoyed the conversation, leave a review and subscribe via iTunes or your favorite podcast app. If you like what you heard, please rate it.
00:19:03
Speaker
For show notes of today's conversation and information about Jack, visit marketingspark.co slash blog. If you have questions, feedback, would like to suggest a guest or want to learn more about how I help B2B companies as a fractional CMO consultant and advisor, send an email to mark at marketingspark.co. Talk to you next time.