Transcripts
1. Introduction: Welcome to Marketing
mastery, Blueprint. I'm so excited you've decided to invest in yourself
and your business. My mission is empowering small businesses like
you to create winning marketing strategies that
will grow your business as big and as wide as
you want it to go. And I want you to dream,
as you may now know. My name is Katherine and I actually live on the
west coast of Canada. I have a Bachelor of Commerce
degree in marketing. And I've worked in marketing for the past 12 years with
all kinds of businesses, ranging from automotive
to health and wellness, to consumer packaged goods. So you are in very good hands. I've also been an entrepreneur
for the past seven years, which included
creating, running, and scaling my own
vegan chocolate brand from zero sales and
zero awareness to song in over 600 retail stores across Canada and actually into the
United States and Europe. I know the roller coaster as being a small business owner, which is why I'm so passionate about helping others with
their marketing strategy. Over the years I saw so many incredible small
businesses fail. Because the fact of the
matter was that they were typically experts in
their business industry, like baking or brewing
beer or accounting. However, they didn't know
the first thing about actually marketing and selling their products and services, which, you know,
you think about it. It's totally fair, it's a
science all on its own, but that's not going
to be your story. You are in the right
place and I can't wait to help you take your
business to the next level. A.
2. Uncovering Profit Leaking Gaps In Your Business Offer : Okay guys, welcome
to our first video. This is module one, lesson one. We are going to be diving deep into the industry
research for marketing. This is how we're going
to see if there's any holes in your
profit funnel or ways that you're not capitalizing on your market and industry
like you should be. I love this quote
by Neil Armstrong. Research is creating
new knowledge. Absolutely. Because this is
where we're going to get all those insights to best perform with our
business and our marketing. It may seem like those
bigger scale companies, our geniuses are no more
but really more knowledge at their fingertips and they're using it to
their advantage. Let's dive in, you should
have module one, lesson one. Underneath this video that
you can download as well, I recommend opening it up and
going through it with me. We're going to start on the industry research
for marketing. Industry research is more
than what's on this page. However, we're not doing a business strategy
document that's encompassing all facets
of your business. We're just focusing on
the marketing aspect. In terms of industry
research for marketing, these are the key
areas that we want to focus in and dig
a little deeper. We've got market
size and growth. This helps us understand the
current size of the market, what it's projected
growth looks like. Is our industry growing? Is it staying stagnant
or is it declining? These are really
important things to know. This information helps assess
the business potential, whether the market can
support your venture, whether it's going to be able to sustain you and make
you a lot of money. It can also highlight niches in your industry that you can capitalize on that could be great opportunities if
positioned correctly. There's also industry standards. This is an amazing way to stay on top of
the latest trends, innovations, and emerging
tech in your industry. It helps allow you to anticipate future developments and adapt your business
strategy accordingly. You can find really neat
things that are the future for your industry and
then capitalize on those so you can be
ahead of your competitors. Then there's customer
feedback and market research. Obviously, we want to
gather feedback from potential customers or current
customers through surveys, interviews, or focus groups. Qualitative and
quantitative data, it gives us those
valuable insights that there's nowhere better
to get insight from than the actual mouth
of your customers. The people that are handing over their hard earned dollars
for your product or service. We want to know what they think. There's some tools
that we can use to gain all this research. Before the days of the Internet, advertising agencies would use focus groups which were really
costly and time intensive. We don't likely have
to do that anymore. We can just hit up Google and find a wealth
of information at our fingertips doing basic Google searches
in your industry. We'll bring up a lot
of these things, but I wanted to put
down some specifics in case you wanted to go
look those up directly. Obviously, market
research reports, Marketresearch.com Ibis, World Statistica, some
of them are paid. Sometimes you can find
free information as well. There's industry associations
and trade publications. If you've been in your
business for a while, you might be aware
of these already. But definitely explore their
websites and publications related to your industry
and business sector. Government websites
and databases are an incredible place and
they are updated yearly. They have so much
information on there. If you're in the
US, you can check out the US Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Securities and
Exchange Commission. If you're in Canada, Canada Innovation Science and Economic Development Canada, Canada Business Network, CRA, Canadian
Industry Statistics. If you're in specific
provinces or states, there's typically province
or statewide governing bodies that have a lot of information that
you can tap into as well and those people are more than happy to help you out. Calgary Economic Development,
for instance, was one. I'm from the city in Calgary, Alberta and Canada.
They were incredible. They had teams that
literally did just this. If there's something specific
you wanted to know in terms of industry research, they could find it out for you. Also reach out to people,
don't be afraid to do that. Social media and
online communities are an incredible
freeway to mind. So much gold and information about your industry
and business sector. Just simply going
to the groups and looking up what niche you're in. For me, I'm in marketing. I might look up small
business marketing groups, whatever your industry is, and search in the tool, look for groups on
Facebook and join those groups and see what
people are talking about. People love to complain about their pain points and
that's a great place to pick up some golden nuggets
for your marketing efforts. Those, yeah, read. It's another place
linked in communities, people will share insights, trends, answer questions
specific to industries. You can also keep your finger on the pulse
of news and media outlets. Sometimes they have
very specific news and trends that are happening, if it's good enough
to become a story. Market analysis and
expert opinions on there. It can be really interesting to see what's coming
out of Bloomberg, Forbes Industry Week, Harvard Business Review,
all great places. You can also do online
surveys and polls. These are really
inexpensive ways to mine your customers for information tools
like survey monkey, Google forms type form. They all allow you
to create surveys, to gather feedback
preferences, market insights. If you have current customers amazing, use those
current lists. Leverage those to ask and get feedback from
your current customers. If you haven't built up
those customers yet, then reaching out to people
that are even in circles, family or friends that may
be interested in what you do just to gain their
feedback and ideas around. If they were going
to buy what you're offering, what do
they think about? It's an amazing jumping off point and gives a
lot of information. I've also created this
worksheet for you to start as a jumping off point. It might be confusing
if you're doing industry research
for the first time. Like what am I looking for? Right? There's two
main things here. What is your business current market size, and
projected growth? Then in the gray, I have
some further specifications that you can start picking
out and writing down. Then also, are there any latest
and emerging technologies within the industry that you may be able to position
your business for? It's starting to get
us thinking about target audiences
and key messaging. And using that research to really inform the
decisions we're making. We're not guessing. We're using real world data to make these
smart business choices. I love examples. I've given you an example sheet here for going through
those questions. For the vegan chocolate
brand, Dwarf Stars. Again, that was my brand
that I scaled from zero sales up to over 600 plus retailers in Canada and
internationally in US and Europe. I just thought it would be a great case study for showing you what we were doing for a brand that actually was successful. Because these
things really work. Throughout this entire course, you're going to hear
about dwarf stores a lot because I did
all these things. Like I said, it's a real
life living blueprint that I used to scale
that business. Why not see the kinds of
things that we're pulling out? I always find examples. Help if you get stuck, you can copypaste the method. At least use some of the types
of data that we're using, even if your
industry or business is very different
from a CPG product. For the first question, what is your business current market
size and projected growth? Again, I just went on
Google and I was finding government data,
some research data. For instance, the food and
beverage processing industry is the largest manufacturing
industry in Canada. Of course, I'm based in Canada, so that was more
important for me to know, especially when we
were starting out, but then when we were
moving into the US, I wanted to do more US,
specific information. It's important to think about the location that
you're selling in. We found out that
the overall industry was divided into segments. Sugar and confectionery was
the one that we fell into. We also knew that the
top three key players in the Canadian chocolate
industry were Nestle Hershey's, and Mandela's. And the breakdown of the
chocolate market share in Canada by percentages. It includes some
other brands here, but we wanted to know who were the biggest players and who owned most of the market share. What does that
breakdown look like? We also uncovered that
climate change is a real risk for ingredient production and it was hitting cocoa farms hard. You'll see a little bit
why this was important, but you really want to just
dive into different things in the market that could be affecting your industry and
ultimately your business. The key insights here, it informed us
that the chocolate industry is very competitive, it's large, and it's
a growing market. And we needed a key differentiator
to be able to compete. We weren't going to be able
to create another kit cat or Hess peanut butter cup if
we wanted to really make a difference in the industry and break through the
clutter and make waves. Okay, the next one. Are there any latest trends, innovations, and emerging technologies within the industry that you might be able to position
your business for? We uncovered that there
is a really big trend in health conscious consumers in Canada and the United States. Consumers are
increasingly seeking less process and more
natural foods and beverages. And it was really
being reflected in clean labeling movement across
packaged foods in Canada. The government ended up even jumping on board
and restructuring our food pyramids with
a plant based focus, which was really interesting. We also uncovered from the Research Institute
of Mcgill University, one of the big universities
here in Canada, that incidents of anaphylaxis were on the rise for children. Kids having severe
food related allergies had doubled over a
four year period. Then environmentally
conscious buyers were also on the rise. They were really
looking for higher ethical and green standards that certifications in your products in all aspects of the business. Health conscious consumers
were forcing companies, including big brands, to shift and adapt the demands
of the consumer. It's really interesting
over the course of our business, which
was five years, that towards the end
of those five years, those big name
brands, Cab, Believe, and some of the other
ones started to come out with vegan chocolate, which was never even
a thing before that. That was our bread and
butter. That's all we did. Key insights. It informed us of opportunities
and trends we could use to differentiate our
brand, our business. And key messaging
to connect with a specific target audience. As I said, it's a big,
big market, right? The chocolate industry,
there had to be a way that we were
going to compete. Not only does this
industry research really inform your
strategic plan and give you some key insights of how you
can differentiate your brand and move forward competitively
in your industry. But it also will show in
your customer retention, customer affinity for
your brand and sales. This is a key aspect of really creating a thriving,
growing business. You know, we started
our business during one of the hardest economic
recessions in Alberta. That's when we started a brand, a food brand, and we saw it
grow rapidly and expand. We were even able to hire
employees during Covid, and we'd really positioned ourselves well to move forward. It may seem like a
lot of work up front, but really this is
where we're gleaning those key insights that
are going to inform the rest of the
strategy and pick up those winning things
that are really going to separate us and set
us up for success.
3. Revealing Customer Buying Motivations: Okay, now you should have your industry research
for marketing complete. Now we're going to
dive a little bit into the customer
research for marketing. Obviously, the most valuable information that
we can collect is directly from the mouths of our potential current
or past customers. Which can give specific insights
and pain points that we can use when crafting our customer avatars
and key messaging. It's absolutely crucial
and if you can do this, it's going to inform so much and maybe even surprise you
that the things that you maybe had not thought
of or not thought were the most important things
really are maybe on the things that you thought were the most important that you
were trying to form your key messaging or sell around people don't care about. I definitely
recommend doing this. What I would like
you to do is create a market research poll to send a potential or
current customers. And you can do this
using Google Forms, type form, survey monkey,
or even over e mail. If you're like, hey,
I'm just really not a software person, that's fine. But I will say the
survey platforms are very straightforward. They've made it
super simple to use. Some of them definitely
have free options. We're only going to
be doing this once, You don't need a paid subscription
or anything like that. I know that everybody
coming into this course has
different levels of experiences with marketing and software
use and technology. If it would be helpful
for you for me to record, say how to video on how to
use type form for instance, just leave a comment or send
me a message and I will be happy to do that
and show you how to work it and collect
the responses. I've compiled some questions
for you to answer, some questions for you to
include in your surveys, to glean the most important information that
we're going to be able to use down the line when we're forming our strategy. Obviously you want to ask what the customer's full name is, their E mail address
or phone number. This is a way if we get really
great insights from them, maybe they're a potential
customer that we're going to want to advertise
to down the line. This may or may not
be relevant as well, like what their current
occupation is for some of you, may be, for others it
might not matter as much. But it can inform
our customer avatar and our ideal customer, the type of industry inform
research down the line, you can ask it or
not, up to you. What's your biggest problem when it comes to your business niche? For instance, say we're
using vegan chocolate. Again, I'm feeling like, okay, we've done the
research and I know that anaphylaxis is on
the rise, and I really, really want to sell this to parents of children that
have peanut allergies. Then my question
might be, what's your biggest problem
when it comes to buying safe and healthy snacks for your kids on a
scale of one to ten? How important is it for
you to solve this problem? We've established what
the problem might be, then how you know, much of a priority is
it for the customer. If we're at ten, there's a
really good chance that if we surround our key messaging around this key problem and
we can solve it for them, it's going to be
very easy to sell to this customer because we're solving a key pain
point in their life. What would your
life be like if you were able to solve this problem? What would change
for the better? Again, gleaning
more insights here of wrapping your head around what their ideal place to be after they've used
your product or service is. Because in crafting
our messaging, we want to tell them not
only solving this problem, but we're going to take
you from this point, that ideal heaven point. Have you purchased any
products or services to try and solve this
problem? How did it go? This gives you some
insights into what they are forking over their dollars for the types of
products or services. Are they similar to yours? What do they have in common? Can you get any inspiration from the
things that they have bought to sell more
easily to them, to cut through that clutter, to get them to understand
your messaging more clearly? Or does yours offer something even a step above that
has all those things? But you also offer the thing
that's really going to solve their problems and
they're going to turn into a repeat
customer for it. What's happening in your
life right now that has motivated you to
solve this problem? People have lots of problems
that they want to solve, but there tends to be
critical moments in their life that makes that rise to the
surface, if you will. Is it a specific health issue? And that's why they're
really determined to solve this problem right now. Because that's a part of
their customer buyer journey, where we want to figure
out where they are at. If it's a key problem
that we're solving, something that nobody else has. They're really feeling
that pain point right now. When they're ready to solve it, they're ready to buy
your ideal customer and we need to get in
front of those people. Those are great questions
to float out there. If you have no
customers currently, if you are just looking
to get some information, maybe just start
crafting your messaging, Send those out to family and friends that it could
be relevant for. They don't have to be directly interested in exactly
what you're selling, but they could potentially maybe buy things
that are like yours. I wouldn't send it out to all
of your friends and family. Say if you're selling like a dog to and they don't have dogs, completely irrelevant,
but if you know you have friends and
family that have dogs, absolutely, send it up to them. It's just asking for some free information,
gaining their insights. We're not trying
to sell anything, we're just trying to figure out our market a
little bit better. You do have current
or past customers. I'd highly encourage you to send those first types of
questions to them or more of a feedback type survey to get some more
information around how you can perfect your messaging
that is going out to them. Because maybe they did buy
it, but they didn't buy. Again, we need to know why it's really costly to acquire a new customer for
the first time. It's a lot cheaper to keep them. If we can solve those issues, then we can gain those customers back and keep the ones that we are
already getting. Some questions you might
want to include in this survey and feel free to
mix and mingle any of them. But what factors influence
your decision to choose our product or
service over alternatives? That's a huge one, right? What was it that
made them choose to buy ours instead of all the
rest that are out there? How satisfied are you or were you with our
product or service, and rate that on the
scale of one to ten. How could we have made it
better if they give you a ten? Wow, that's phenomenal. But chances are you
won't get a ten. But that's okay, because
then there's room for us to learn and improve
and make it better. What specific features or
aspects of our product or service do you find the
most valuable or useful? Again, really useful information here for crafting our messaging. Have you recommended our
product or service to others? If yes, What motivated
you to recommend it? Again, that's telling us
what are we doing really, really well and we
want to keep doing and want to focus on if no, what factors prevented
you from doing so? How likely are you to repurchase our product or service
in the future? Please rate that on a
scale of one to ten. Again, this is tapping into
their buyer motivation. And if we did a good enough job on our end solving
their problem, that they are going
to stay a customer of ours or they're going to
look for other alternatives. Remember to keep your
surveys concise. People are very busy. People don't like
super long surveys. They'll quit part way through. You're not going to get as
many responses as you would if you just keep it concise clear. I would recommend keeping it to ten questions or
less per survey. I will see you in
the next lesson.
4. Distinguishing Your Business From Your Competitors: Okay, and now into the last part of all of our research,
it's competitor analysis. This is probably one
of my most favorite because I love seeing what other people are
doing out in the market. What's out there, and the
opportunities where we can do better than them or offer something
that they aren't. It's exciting and it's interesting just to
see what's out there. I would do three to five
potentially competitors of yours if there's a lot. Definitely if there's fewer, maybe three, but I would
say three at a minimum. A lot of people think
that if there's a ton of competition out
there, it's a bad thing. It's absolutely not always a bad thing because it
shows you that there is demand and a lot of demand for whatever
you're selling. It can actually be a positive. The key is us finding a way to differentiate ourselves
so that it'll stick out. People will notice
us and they'll buy hours over the rest
of the competitors. And being really clear
about that messaging, here we have a
competitor analysis. Again, it's for the vegan
chocolate brand, dwarf stars. I have included some of
the other sheets that are blank so you can put all
your information in there. But what I would recommend is going and looking around online. Going to their websites.
Your competitor websites go to their social
media channels. Typically, there's
links on their websites that go to their
social media channels. Look at first for the feeling of the brand,
the colors they use, the type of messaging content
that they're posting. How many followers do they? Do they have a lot
of engagement? Is their website really
clear and easy to navigate or is it really
confusing and clunky? Do they have certifications? Do they position themselves in certain ways that you're not or you haven't
thought about doing? These are all things
that we want to glean from our competitors. I've narrowed it down to
some of the top things that I think are most important for us to get from
our competitors. You can go super, super
in depth with these and if you want more
information, go for it. But to save some time, these are the ones
that I've included. First, we want to start off
with their key positioning. How are they showing up in the market, differentiating
themselves? What is their uniqueness that they really are trying to
communicate or get across? If it's unclear, right? Unclear. Like, I have no idea. This was one of our
top top competitors. It was free to be definitely in terms of the size
of the business, but also how specific they
were in their offerings. Obviously, we
weren't going to go after the Nestles or
the Cadburys because we can't compete with those marketing or
advertising budgets. I'd like to keep it to obviously free to be was
a lot bigger than us, but they weren't crazy,
crazy mass scale. They were doing something
very niche like we were. Just to give you an idea, if you don't know if you're
not aware of this brand, free to be offered
sunflower seed cups instead of a peanut butter cup. They use sunflower seed butter. Ours was pumpkin seed butter. We had very similar offerings. We were both vegan. Our products were dairy free, and they were both
free of the food. Allergens free to bees
were free of the top 12. Ours at the time I think
were free of the top ten. The positioning of free to B was the tasty and allergen free. Those were the main
things they really wanted to point out here in this image, you can see refreshing
mid filling, they're calling out the flavors. Then in other places, so much on their branding
even included in their title, free to, it's free to be
safe from food allergens. No worry you can need them and not worry about
having to get sick from it. A key observation here,
like I just mentioned, the name of the company, name of their company is their motto. This makes it really
clear for the customer. They use both colors. Simple, flavor differentiation. The packaging was very
simple and straightforward. The opportunity here, this is where we want to
uncover places where they're lacking a little bit
where we can take one step ahead and do these
things that they're not doing to stand out in
front of our customers. Their website didn't really
have a clear message. It did focus on the flavor and silky sunflower
butter filling. However you, they're relying on their logo and
their business name to inform people
of what they are. If people know what
they are, great, that's a totally great landing page because
it's like, hey, we've got some new flavors
and they taste really good. But if I'm a mom looking
for allergy friendly stuff, and I hop on this
website, I might just quickly glance at
that picture and say, oh, it's a peanut butter
cup and get out of there. Another key differentiator
opportunity for us was that we use
pumpkin seed butter, which is incredibly
delicious and rich, and more mimics a
peanut butter cup than their sunflower
seed butter did. Sunflower seed butter tended to be a little bit more runny, whereas the pumpkin
seed butter had that thicker texture
that peanut butter did. And it was just more palatable. At least we found everybody
has their own opinions. Another opportunity
was they didn't really have a call out for a
social cause message. Obviously, being in this field, being vegan, allergen, friendly, ethically sourced
products or ingredients, there was a lot of opportunity
for us to join up with the social cause to position ourselves as champions
in those fields. They also used palm oil in
their products at that time. I don't know if they
do anymore or not, but we used only wholesome ingredients,
a real ingredients. That was also an opportunity
for us to really call out on our packaging inspiration. So inspiration are the
places where you're like, hey, props to this company, They're doing a really
good job with this, or I need to be
doing this because obviously this is
important, or wow, I'm really inspired
by their branding, their logo, their colors, or the type of content that
they're putting out there. And I want to emulate
those things. It reminds me of that I have
seen further than others. It is by standing on the
shoulders of giants. I think it was maybe Isaac
Newton that said that. But it is like there's no shame in doing what other people are doing because it's working. Especially if you see
across the board, you start seeing a pattern between your different
competitors, that they have similar
style messaging or they're trying to go
after the same thing. Because they've
uncovered key insights that are really speaking
to the customers. You can do it and you can
do it in your own way. Because the brand is where
we're really going to differentiate you
and bring your heart and soul and story into your business and make it stand out from everybody
else in the market. The inspiration
that we have from them is that they were free
from all the 12 allergens. We're like, okay, do we
need to look into this? Is there anything else
we need to do to make our free from the 12
priority food allergens? Are our already free from them Or is it really
important for the customer that has food allergies in
their family to see that they're
free from all 12. They really show
care for family and kids through their content
and their messaging. They had an incredible blog that was always coming up with
allergy friendly recipes. You can even seen
in this picture, there was a screenshot from
their Instagram families, smiling kids, enjoying treats, being safe, being healthy. They also had certifications which are really important in especially the health focused food product in the industry, which was non GMO. You can get certifications for a whole host of
different things, but those seem to be really important for parents
and customers to see. Lastly, I always like
to check out the price. What are they
offering? If they've been around for a long time, it's telling me that people are willing to spend level of money on what they're
offering and I can position mine in
a similar place. All right, that's
a quick overview of a competitor analysis. I'd like you to go
through and complete competitive analysis for at least three to five
of your competitors. Again, keep it ones that are on your level
or near your level, just slightly bigger than you. But not these huge Coca Colas, Pepsi brands, mass scale brands. We just can't compete with them. And it doesn't
make sense to copy the messaging they're doing. You can check them
out if you'd like to, but make it make more sense for the industry and the
business size that you are. I'll see you in the next lesson.
5. SWOT Analysis: Okay, so now that we have
done all that digging, all that research, we want to pull it all together,
make it concise. We're not scrolling
through lists and lists of stuff when we're trying to
pull our plan together. This is called a Swat analysis. You may have heard this before, it's very common in
business practices. But it stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
and threats. And it is a key part
to a marketing plan. This helps us identify where we're doing
wonderful things, where we can work
on some things, potential things like
the trends that might be coming up that we can capitalize on and position ourselves for. Then things that we need
to be aware of that might pop up and threaten business
or what we're offering. You want to take
all the research that we've compiled from the other few pages in this worksheet and put them into synct
bullet point forms, pulling out the most
important details. For instance, if we're
doing this for dwarf stars, the vegan chocolate brand, some strengths that
we were already doing when we conducted
this research. We had a vegan product, We were doing that really well. We were establishing
ourselves in the market as one of the only
vegan chocolate bars. Not only only, but only vegan chocolate bars
that was so delicious, people couldn't believe
they were vegan. We had a lot of people that
when we were selling at markets or doing sampling
in retail stores, they'd come up to us and say, vegan chocolate or
what even is that. We'd give them a sample.
Sampling was huge for us because we knew that if
they weren't vegan, which selling to vegans, it was like, oh my God, sign
me up, I'll buy everything. But even converting
people that might just be health conscious
and curious about it, we'd give it to them and
they'd say, oh my God, I can't believe that's vegan, or I can't believe that's
healthy chocolate. We were doing some
things really well. There weaknesses for us, especially in the
beginning was packaging. Packaging can be incredibly
expensive and there's really large minimums when you're ordering
from manufacturers. And we couldn't communicate all the things that we
wanted to communicate. When we started off,
we had clear bags that we would put
products inside. And then it would be a
small sticker on the front, obviously font would
be really small. We're trying to call out the important
things of our business, but there wasn't a lot of room. That was definitely a
weak point opportunities. As I had mentioned in
the beginning of this, we saw that the health
conscious market was growing for people and
then parents with their kids, opportunities in
anaphylaxis on the rise, kids having more and more
severe allergies to food. There's an opportunity there
for parents looking for healthier treat
alternatives that are safe for their kids to eat. Then threats in the market. This would have been where competitors are rising up
underneath us that maybe also begin or have those call outs to being
allergen free that we have to watch out for
and make sure that we're positioning ourselves
so our customers prefer us over them. Again, compiling
all the information from the other segments
in this worksheet. Filling them in here in
a succinct way so we can pull that information much
easier and concisely. Later. I will see you
in the next lesson.
6. Your Big "Why": Okay, so we have the
research done, amazing. Now it's time to focus on you and your business
and pulling out those golden nuggets
that are really going to differentiate you
to your customers. What I have pulled up here is our website from Dwarf stars,
vegan chocolate business. This is the back end
of a Shopify website. The website is no longer active, so that's why I have to
show you from this view, we're actually in the process
of selling the trademark. But I wanted to take
you through what it looked like and talk a little
bit about brand story. Here what I really
want to highlight is how you can leverage storytelling and
emotional connections. Because emotions are one of
the most powerful things, especially when it
comes to selling. If you're able to
connect the heart and soul of your
customer by being authentic and genuine with
who you are, your story, and why you created
your business, it's going to take
you so so far, because that's what we
did in our website. You'll see little bits
and pieces of this. But as you scroll down
on our main page, it has this section
and then boom, we're hit with what really
matters is on the inside. Right here we share our mission statement
right front and center, and let our customers
know what we're about. We believe in creating a world where everyone can
share chocolate. Then we get into a unique
selling proposition. Real words from customers and our testimonials,
we pulled them out. Common phrases after biting
into our chocolates include, yum, oh my God, and holy crap. It's safe to say
you'd never guess. Our treats are allergy friendly. All of our products
are peanut free, dairy free, gluten
free, and vegan. We also carry a sugar
free keto friendly line. Did we mention? All
of our chocolate is handmade in Calgary by
two local entrepreneurs. Check out our full story
by clicking below. This is really calling out those unique selling
propositions. The key benefits, really hammering it home
to our target market. Then there's more of a story that we'll go into in a second. As you scroll down, there is a video of myself and
my business partner, Garrett, he was
the Red Seal chef. This actually links to a video
that one of our retailers, Calgary Co Op, did of
us for local products. And it was a
professional made video, we didn't have to pay for it. They were actually
interviewing us for their blog in their Youtube account,
which was really cool. But I was able to link
it to our website, which just gives more
credibility and social proof. And throughout it
tells our story in a really beautiful,
engaging visual way. Then we get into
some testimonials. This was a sliding one. As you can see, they changed. These are real customers that we have on our Shopify website. We actually had a
ongoing app that would automatically send out e mails asking people for
testimonials that we could collect them and then
we'd give them a discount if they give us a testimonial. Because people seeing
other people's words that have actually
took the risk, paid money and
tried our products and gave really incredible
words of encouragement. Just definitely helps when
you're trying to sell things. I highly recommend getting
it from your real customers. Then you'll see
this again later. But we like to use a little bit of humor in
everything that we do. We don't take ourselves
too seriously, but it's handmade
with love also, blood, sweat, and tears. People commented
on seeing this on the website and thought
it was pretty funny. Any small business owner
will totally relate to this. These are real
pictures of Garrett preparing our chocolate
in the kitchen. Then we have another
social proof at the bottom of some of the big retailers
that we used to sell in. This was our front page. But what I really
want to show here is our brand story and talk
a little bit about that. You might also be
thinking dwarf stars, like where the heck does
that name come from? And let me tell you, when you're making sales
calls on a phone, you have to repeat
that about 12 times, but it's a bit of a
sticky brand name. It really stands out. What just catalyzed me thinking
about having a name. There's a lot of opinions on what a brand name
should or shouldn't be, but I was thinking of like
the big players out there, like the Mars, the O Henry's, none of them have to
do with chocolate. It's really about their
brand essence and their positioning
in the story behind it that made them
into something. Those are massive, massive
brands that scales very well. What I wanted to
play on with this when I was creating our brand, was Garrett and I have been friends for over
13, 14 years now. And we actually met working
at a grocery store. And he was in the bakery
and I was in cash, which we ended up
coming full circle and selling our products in.
Which is pretty cool. But our friendship was built
on us being total weirdos, and I thought this was
really cool and relatable. Garrett is a gay man and he had a lot of trouble going
through his culinary career, with people telling
him he wasn't going to get anywhere just
because he was gay. And I always been a
bit of a creative, and you had my own struggles with people underestimating me. I love this idea of us being
the underdogs and coming together and creating something bigger than ourselves
and saying, we showed you when we became successful because
I knew that we would. This is what was the catalyst
for our dwarf stars idea. What really inspired it
also when we started, was the first
product we ever made were not the pumpkin
seed butter cups. They were dry roasted
chick peas that were covered in pumpkin
seed butter and chocolate, they think of like a nut
free chocolate covered net. They were absolutely delicious, but they looked like
little asteroids almost. It was funny because Garrett, being an amazing chef with
a culinary background, wanted to make them perfect and polish them and glossy
and what have you. And I was like, no,
we're going for the natural healthier
ingredients. When he made them, they
look like they're rough, had some divots in them, they look like asteroids to me, that was the first catalyst. I'm a visual person
and I went with it, I was like, cool, let's think
about outer space then. You could we call it like asteroid or shooting
star or what have you. And then I came across
the term dwarf stars. I started doing some research
on astronomical terms. Dwarf stars are stars. They don't shine as bright
as the other stars, but when two or more of them
coalesce or come together, they create a massive
interstellar explosion. When I read that, I was like, oh my god, we're dwarf stars. It was a metaphor for Garton
and I, the underdogs. We don't shine as bright
as the other stars. We came together and we created something incredible and much, much bigger than ourselves. I loved the metaphor and I loved the story that I
would be able to tell to our customers that
just because you have a food allergy or you're
vegan and you can't eat everything else that
other people get to eat. In this world, we see you and
we have something for you. And we are dedicating
our business to making something for you because
we think you're special. I love the way that this was communicated and I could weave this metaphor and visual imagery throughout everything
that we did. This is about a section
of our website, again, calling out that
mission statement, That is what we stand for
and you hammer it home. This is funny. It was
a photoshoot gear. Was so mad at me
because usually I get so dolled up for things, and this day I was not feeling
it and I never wear a hat. And I thought this hat was funny because it was just
being a business owner. It was one of those days
and I was not feeling it. But we got professional
photos taken, unfortunately, on that day. And it's all right, right? It's all part of the story
and it goes into our ethos. We tell a little bit about
ourselves, what we're about. Take one bite and
you'll be blown away. You won't believe that
our vegan chocolates are free from dairy peanuts, gluten palm oil, and
artificial preservatives. That's because we never
ever compromise on taste. Our conscious sweets are
healthy for you and the planet. Then meet the co founders we wanted to tell people
about us because we were very much and
started as a local brand. We wanted people to be
able to connect with that. Talk a little bit about
where Garrett worked, um, the restaurants, and that he's originally
from Germany, As grandma taught him
how to cook and said, whenever you make desserts
and sweet things, you always add a little
bit of salt to them to really enhance the
flavors we talk about, about me and my
marketing background and then how it all got started, where the name comes from. Because a lot of people ask us, it's the story that
I just told you. Finally, we end up end off with a message to our
stellar customers. Your uniqueness is your power. Like a dwarf star, your
shine comes from the inside. Even if your diet restrictions make you a little different, you deserve to indulge
in delicious chocolate. Inspire us to create sweets
that everyone can love. What I want you
to do is fill out the worksheet that's
below this video. I really want you to think
about your brand story. What is your personal story? Your personal connection and the emotional connection
to your business that your brand can tell and enhance and connect
with your customers. We are going to use the power of leveraging the storytelling to build out a brand that really resonates
with your mission, your purpose, your
vision, your values, and resonates with
your dream customers. I'll see you in the next lesson.
7. Crafting Ideal Customer Avatars: All right guys, we
are getting into our ideal customer worksheet. Sometimes it's called
customer avatars, sometimes it's called
target audience. They're all the same thing. But it's really going to
help us when we start marketing to really nail
down who our audience is, what they look like,
where they exist, where they hang out, where
we can talk to them, the messages that are really
going to resonate with them. It's going to make our
lives a lot easier and our approach a
lot more targeted. I wanted to walk you through an example page
one of the sheets. Typically, it's good to
create two customer avatars. Sometimes people have a really
strong one and a avatar. Sometimes you can
have three or four. Just to keep it simple, and especially when we're starting off to know
who to really target, I love to stick with one major one and then
having a secondary one. I think I included three
in your worksheets, but you can always make more, print these off, do them on the computer, whatever
works for you. But I want to walk you
through one because I always find when
learning examples are a lot easier and just
make more sense for me. I already found a picture here
you can go to pretty much. This is not going to
be for commercial use, no one's going to
see it but you. However, if you want some
photos that are free of use, you can go check out Unsplash or pick Jumbo.com There's
beautiful photos in there. And you can look
through and pick out an avatar like the one that we are going to create
today gives you that feeling, that emotion and it looks like the type of people
that you want to target. We'll start off here, I should probably
preface this with, I'm going to do this
for the previous brand, the one that I scaled to 600 retailers
across the country. It was called Dwarf
Stars Chocolate Company. A little bit of
background, essentially, we would sell pumpkin
seed butter cups instead of peanut butter cups, we created organic pumpkin
seed butter cups that were free from the top 12
priority food allergens. So there was no
peanuts, no tree nuts, no gluten, no dairy,
the list goes on. And they were also vegan. As I start to say those things, it'll probably make
a lot more sense when we go through
this worksheet. But essentially,
I'm going to create the customer avatar that I
created for my business. Her name was Ava Martin. Things like names or
pictures are easier to put after words. I already have mine done. I know obviously what
her name is going to be, but you might want to fill the name in the picture
in when you're done. The rest of it, her age
is 30 to 45 years old. Don't know why I
won't let me fill it in over here. I'm not. That's Abby with
Adobe PDF editor. But maybe we can just
put it behind here. She's a female. Her
location is US and Canada. Now for location, you can get a lot more
specific with this. You can narrow it
down to the city. If you are a local business, then that would be the case
where you'd want to do this. Or if you're more
specific just to Canada, we were growing into
the United States. We wanted to target
both of those. And we felt like the mentality of our target audience
in North America, I guess not entirely
North America, but Canada and the
US would have been, had the same kind of mentality, ethos, philosophies, values. That's why we were able to group both of those
countries together. Whereas this could
look completely different if she's from
Sweden or Portugal, right? So keep that in mind. Where they're from
really matters. Not everybody thinks
the same and there's a lot of different
cultures in this world. The education level, she
had a bachelor's degree, her occupation was
a family lead, she was a mom and
she took care of the household Job title. Not relevant here.
Marital status? Married. You could
always add sections two if they have kids. You can write how
many you can get as detailed as boys and girls. Yeah, this is definitely, I'm giving you prompt
places where to start but get as deep and
detailed as you would like. We were thinking the
household income is at least $100,000 or more. Some hobbies, it's always
really good to look at hobbies because it really, really gives you a sense of what the person enjoys,
their pastimes, and later can spark ideas
for where we might reach these people or potential
collaborations of who we might partner
with hobbies, cooking, healthy recipes,
yoga, running, travel. I'm sorry, that's looking
a little bit messy here. But in the version
that you have, it's a lot more clear and
doesn't look as jumbled. Yeah. Ava's values are protecting
the environment, animal rights, and her
buying motivation. Well, first of all, her
husband has peanut allergies. Potentially her kids do two or there are
cross allergies in the family dairy gluten. She also is looking for treat alternatives
is for kids. Those are buying motivations. Buying concerns in
the motivations. I like to think of them also
as wants, buying concerns. I like to think of as fears. Fears can come up in
biggest pin points as well. But really, what are they
trying to watch out for for her in this particular case with a vegan chocolate
and allergy free. It's food allergens,
it's palm oil, artificial ingredients,
artificial flavors, chemicals in food, and unethically sourced
food like cocoa. Back to biggest pain points, food safety is a huge one
for this mom and her family, especially for kids
and husband have allergens If they have to use epipens or they go into
anaphylactic shock, that is not a fun time. Lack of healthy snacks or treats for kids that
have real ingredients. And said there's a lot of products on the market that disguise themselves as healthy, but really they're just loaded
with sugars and chemicals. Other details here, you
can add other things that you think aren't categorized but might be
involved in someone's life. If you're having
a bit of trouble, you can think about
yourself like what are some other things that you say would represent
you as a person? Ava buys um and athletic wear. It's a random fact, but
it definitely gives us some insight into
her buying motivations. The type of products she likes, are they more luxurious
or affordable? She loves traveling. She also loves plants and trying to grow vegetables
in her backyard. These are some examples
for you to walk through. We are going to take a
look at the next document. Here's when we dig a little bit deeper into
consumption behaviors. These will give you
a better idea of the purchasing power of
your ideal customer. Where they buy things, what
types of things they consume, what types of media
they consume, really starts
painting the picture of where they're hanging out, where we can find them for potential advertising
opportunities, the type of things
that they enjoy and they do currently
spend money on. We can align those things,
then there's no reason why they won't start
spending money on yours. Here a few of the questions, what type of media do
they currently consume? This can include magazines,
TV streaming, shows, books, apps, podcasts, blogs, news outlets, et cetera. If we're looking at
these different things, you Ava, for instance, there's podcasts
on healthy eating, food allergens for moms, books. Same manner when I think about
TV shows she might watch. Maybe she watches David
Attenborough documentaries because she's an
environmentalist. She's definitely seen
Octopus My Teacher, the octopus magazines. She might read house and
home vegan magazines or has some vegan cookbooks apps that she might use if
she cares about health. She might have head space for anxiety and meditation
and getting better sleep. We start thinking about the different kinds of
podcasts and blogs, and news outlets out there. And even doing a quick
search on Google, on Amazon. Even for books, just
typing in a keyword. Whatever your target,
just typing in a keyword. Whatever you are selling. So in this case, I might look up healthy
cooking or healthy eating, or cooking for families with
allergies or vegan cooking. Right? They're not
exactly what I'm selling, but it's in the same industry and it's within the interests
of my target audience. Those should give you some
ideas for the first one. What social media
platforms are they on? Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, linked in Tiktok, Read it right. There's different
demographics for every social media platform and there's different
uses for them. Facebook tends to be more
for groups and for people hosting events and can be a
bit of an older demographic, whereas Twitter tends
to be more for news and reporting and people that like sending quick snaps
back at each other. Instagram is more visual
basis along with Tiktok. It can have a bit of a younger demographic linked in
is more corporate, it's more professional read, it has a lot of subcommunities
where you can find a lot of interesting groups in places where your target
audience might be hanging out. Doing a little bit of research
into your industry and age group and seeing which platform fits the best
with your target audience. Then what type of clubs, groups, or events
do they attend? Again, you can look at things
if you're a local business, things happening around your
city or on a bigger scale. More generic, are
they music events? Do they like going to book club? Do they hang out on
certain Facebook groups? Sub read it groups as well? These are all things to
think about because again, you can know where you can
find these ideal customers and what interests they have besides potentially
just your product, other products and services
they're purchasing. Again, this gives you
a really good sense of the type of disposable
income they have, what they value, and the amount of money that
they're willing to spend on certain
products or services. The stores that they shop
in, online or offline, But do they prefer to shop in person and physically
go into a store? Are they okay with
shopping online? This might also inform your strategy when you're
deciding to sell your products. Say you're thinking of owning a retail store versus
opening a shopify. This can inform that
strategy a lot. Then what influencers,
educators, entertainers, celebrities or
influential people, are they following
in your market? These are great places
to go and look and find potential followers
for your product. Or even leverage the audience
of say, a micro influencer. If you wanted to send a product to them
to promote for you. There can be really
inexpensive ways of getting your product in
front of a lot of people that are in your
ideal demographic. Just by leveraging
the audience that other people have already done all the hard work to build. Lastly, in your document, you will see a timeline. I think this is a really, really useful way
to put yourself in your ideal customers shoes
and get a sense of what a day in the life
looks like to be them. What we have here is
a timeline of one of their days from the time
they wake up to bedtime. And just to note
that the times for your ideal customers could
be completely different. So feel free to change
those on your worksheets. Because if you're dealing with somebody that is a bartender, right, they're not getting
up at 06:30 A.M. likely, if they're working later shifts
till 234 in the morning, feel free to address those
and just really try to get a sense of take into
account their job, their family life,
their home life, their age, and what makes sense. What would a day
look like for them. Here we have Ava's. I'll go through this briefly, but obviously there's
a lot of information. The main points here is
that we want to pick out. What I would do is I would say go through, pretend
you're that person. What is your day look like from the moment you wake up
to the moment you go to bed and the people that are in your life
that are influence. Then we want to pick
out what could be opportune moments to
either reach these people, catch them on social media. Perhaps if we wanted
to advertise on a podcast or online
on a digital ad. The places that they're
going to be able to catch them and ways that we can influence them through
our marketing and our outreach at certain points in their day that really
resonate with them. I'll give you some
examples here. 06:00 A.M. she wakes up, maybe this is the time
before her kids are up yet that she is scrolling on Instagram when she first
opens her eyes and she gets caught by on Instagram. If we know that, then
I'm going to make that part of my social
media strategy to have quotes that go out early in the morning,
catch this demographic. So they're looking at my
quotes and I'm building that customer
relationship with them. Then she journals, and she uses a journaling
app to do that. Cool. Maybe we want to
do inapp advertisements. He reads, Mind Body Green, Forbes Refinery Daily
Horoscope. Okay, cool. Maybe we have an SEO or a Google ad strategy that's catching her
through display ads, advertising on these websites. Then she reads an educational
article on pumpkins. Well, that just happens to
live on our website because we have a blog that talks all about the health
of pumpkin seeds. She's got yoga with Adriene. She plans her day on the phone. Maybe that's another opportunity when she's scrolling through social media for us to catch her with our posts
or with advertising. Then this is a weekend,
she goes on a hike, she listens to kids
brain podcast, there's another opportunity
to put an ad on there. So an example of different
days at 06:30 in the morning, different things that might
be happening in her life. Um, and all these opportunities
to be able to catch here with our advertising, you
can read through the rest. Obviously, I don't
want to take up your entire day going
through bit by bit, but there's a lot of content
here, a lot of information, and a lot of inspiration with specific examples that if your brand is similar
to this one awesome. There might be some
things that you can glean from here and
using your own strategy, but it can also be
a jumping off point to get you start thinking about, in the same way, what might
be useful for your brand.
8. Defining Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP): Okay, in this lesson, we are finally getting to defining your unique
selling proposition. This is what sets your
business apart from the rest of your competitors
and differentiates you. I love this quote
by Coco Chanel. In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different. True, for really like
anything in life. Obviously, she's referring to fashion, but
business, same thing. And she was an incredible
business mogul. At this point, you've gathered some really key research and insights in terms
of industry trends, your customer avatars,
your brand story. And it's pulling all of that information
together to create a rock solid USP that people are really
going to pay attention to. I have some prompts here, some questions for
you to look at. Again, you don't have
to answer all of these. If it's too overwhelming,
that's fine. They're just meant to be
inspiration to get you started thinking about how we're
going to define these USP's. Feel free to pull in information that you've
already collected from other documents or write some stuff that you're just taking off the top of your head. But I'll go through
these quickly. The first one is, what problem does your product
or service solve? That's the easiest way to
start for us with dwarf stars. It was chocolate, but
it had no dairy in it and it had no allergen. What was our product solving? It was moms looking for healthy treat alternatives
for their kids or families that were safe for their kids to eat
and to bring to school. You can go through
these problems, identify the specific
pain points or challenges that your
target audience faces. How does your product
or service address these problems in a
unique or superior way? What benefits or outcomes does you're offering,
provide that? Set it apart from competitors. Like I've mentioned before, competition in your industry
isn't always a bad thing. It means that there's
a demand for it. Even though our chocolate
product was so niche, we competitors out there
like free to be that were literally offering
the exact same thing. But the way that we
branded ourselves and positioned ourselves
in the market, they were really very much going after the moms and the kids, whereas ours was more
of an adult brand. And that's also a way
to appeal to parents, but for them to feel like it was more
elevated that they would want to enjoy themselves or even
bring over to friends or to events or parties to have the way that we branded
and positioned ourselves. The second one, what makes your business different
from competitors? Reflecting on those
distinct features? The qualities or
characteristics. Consider your expertise. Right? Garrett was a red seal
shaft that was something that was really unique
about our business. It wasn't just someone
that wanted to make a lot of money
that started it and it wasn't just a mom who had no experience in Colin area that wanted to start
it for our kids. There's nothing wrong
with those things, but that was something
that set us apart, that we had a red
sell chef creating all the recipes that went
behind our chocolate. Is there any
proprietary technology, specialized knowledge
that you have or unique processes that you use? And how did these
aspects differentiate your business and create
value for your customers? Right, because we
have a red sell chef, he has all that training,
all that knowledge. It creates value because our products taste
really, really amazing. What do your customers
say about your business? If you have customers and
you can gather testimonials, I highly recommend
that you do that. Or if you have collected
some in the past, write down keywords or phrases
that they have written and said over and over again and circle any that
you see recurring. I'm also going to show you a really cool way
that you can use to pretty much fast track or automate any
patterns that you find. You could use this for
testimonials or you could use this for existing copy that you've written in
previous modules. Getting you thinking about your unique selling proposition, your brand story,
these kind of things. Okay, so I've just pulled up
this word cloud generator. It's just monkey learned.com
and it's absolutely free. I'll provide the link
below this video. What I've pasted in
here is just some of the copy and testimonials
from our website, and then you hit Generate Cloud. What it's going to do for you is the most commonly
mentioned words. Say it is the testimonials that your customers
have given you, the most common things
they talk about. They're going to be larger
than everything else and it gives you a quick snapshot of the things that are
standing out in your testimonials in copy that you've written
maybe previously or now, ideas that you've been having,
a research that you did, you could literally paste
any text in here or even upload a file and
then generate your cloud. And it gives you the
most common patterns and words that are really helpful for writing your unique selling
proposition and key messaging. What is your niche
or target market? Determine the specific
market segment or niche that your
business caters to. Again, we would pull out this information that we found previously in the research. Are there some really
trendy niches? Or is your industry moving toward a certain
niche for the future? Consider the specific
needs preferences or this target market
for that niche. How does your product or
service uniquely fulfill those needs compared to broad
or generic alternatives? What is your brand
story or origin? Again, referencing that brand story that we wrote in lesson five about your
business founding or the inspiration
behind its creation. How does this story
connect with the values, aspirations, or interests
of your target audience? Can you leverage this
narrative to create a USP that resonates with
your customers like we did at
dwarf stars, right? That absolutely inspired
our business name. Lastly, what do you excel at compared to
your competitors? Here I would review your competitive and Swat
analysis that we did previously identified
the business excels and outperforms
your competitors. You can think of
factors like quality, customer service,
speed, customization, or innovation, and
then think about how your business strength in these areas contribute
to the USP. This is a spot here where you
can paste that word cloud. If you wanted to
take a screenshot of it and put it in here
so you can keep it. Then down here I want you to
write one to three ways that your business stands out
from your competitors. This is the time to define that unique selling proposition. That's going to help us create all the key messaging
in the next lessons.
9. Final Thoughts: Okay, as we wrap up this journey through the foundational
elements of strategic marketing, I just want to take a moment and quickly reflect on what
we've explored together. We've dove deep into the
art of marketing research, uncovering the
layers that help you connect with your
ideal customers. And we've crafted detailed
customer avatars, giving life to the very people your business will thrive upon. You've learned how to stand
out in your industry, articulating your USP that
resonates with your audience. Together, we've navigated the insightful process
of Swat analysis, turning insights into
actionable strategies. But remember, this is
just the beginning. The world of
marketing is vast and ever evolving and there's
always more to learn, always more to achieve. That's why I'm excited
to share that. This course is the first
in a series of marketing mastery blueprint courses that
I will be bringing to you. Each course is designed
to build upon the last, taking your marketing skills to new heights and your
business to wider horizons. Keep an eye out.
There is so much more on the horizon,
More strategy, more insights, more
success stories waiting to be written by you. If you enjoyed this course, please join the discussion. Ask some questions. Fill out the project and resources
section. Share your story. Share your unique
selling proposition. And leave some comments for me. I would love to hear how
it's all going for you. Thank you for joining me on this part of your
marketing journey. I can't wait to see
where you'll go next. Until then, keep
innovating, keep growing, and keep an eye out for our next chapter in
marketing mastery.
Kathryn Kozody, Artist, Marketer & Creativity Activist
