How Brand Strategy improves your eCommerce business - featuring Jess Fitzsimon

Ryan Martin (Host and Founder of eCommerce SEO Agency Remarkable Digital) unlock the secrets to eCommerce success with branding expert Jess Fitzsimons, founder of Sky Jumpr, who takes us behind the scenes of constructing a robust brand narrative that can propel your business to new heights. 

Our enlightening exchange sheds light on the dynamic interplay between strong brand strategy and increased business growth, weaving through Jess's storied career from Aqualung Group to her current venture, Skyjumpr. 

Discover how a well-articulated brand identity doesn't just capture attention; it lays the foundation for a loyal customer base, streamlined SEO, and drives down those pesky advertising costs.

Embark on a strategic odyssey as we dissect the elements crucial for cultivating an emotional bond between your brand and its audience. 

Jess guides us through the intricacies of audience engagement and the art of brand resonance, illustrating how a focused approach can cut through the noise and deeply connect with your target market. 

Our conversation takes a practical turn, offering tangible insights from brand strategy workshops and real-world examples from household names that have mastered the art of clarity and purpose in their branding endeavours.

As we wrap up our session, Jess imparts her wisdom on how smaller businesses can outpace the giants by sharpening their niche marketing swords, reinforcing that agility and alignment of values are not just buzzwords but the bedrock of modern eCommerce success. 

We look ahead at the potential collaborations and the promising horizon for those ready to take the leap with Skyjumpr's expertise. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:19

Welcome to the Ecommerce Australia podcast. For those of you seeking direct assistance, remarkable Digital is just a call away. Our mission is to be remarkable, doing great things for great people and great businesses. I understand how much choice you have and how many podcasts are out there, so I'm truly grateful you've tuned in. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or topics you'd like covered. Let's get started. Welcome along to another exciting episode of eCommerce Australia. I have a really special guest with me today.

Speaker 1: 0:47

We're going outside the box a little in relation to pure eCommerce strategies, for a good reason. We know the cost to acquire a new customer is getting higher and higher. We know the SEO landscape is getting much more competitive. Growing on Instagram and TikTok is tougher than ever. But one thing that is always a great investment is into your own brand. Building a moat around your own business by investing in a brand and brand strategy ensures you get traffic that is searching for you by your brand. It means much cheaper CPCs on Google Ads, much more direct traffic and branded keywords, which is beautiful. And building a loyal brand that customers love means they'll be lifetime customers, not just a once-off, and we all know how much that helps the bottom line, it grows. Our database lists our zero-party data, which is absolute gold for profitability and when it comes time to exit.

Speaker 1: 1:39

So, with all that being said, let me introduce you to someone who I've worked with personally at 2xU many years ago. For the last few years, jess has worked in France for Aqualung Group as VP of Brands, marketing and Product. Aqualung Group have a huge footprint in diving and swim categories. As I just mentioned, jess was also involved in the branding and leadership team at 2xU and gained valuable exposure across the bigger Louis Vuitton, mount Hennessy group of companies. Jess has now started out on her own consulting journey with a new business, skyjumper, to help brands identify what their branding strategy is, which we can touch on with her. So, jess Fitzsimons, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2: 2:18

Thanks, Ryan, and thanks for having me. I'm glad to, I guess, join you and, you know, a big hello to your listeners.

Speaker 1: 2:26

Looking forward to getting stuck into some brand strategy because it's something that we haven't touched on the podcast but so valuable. That was a pretty big intro, and I didn't even mention the fact that you've done full iron man's, half iron man's and very much an endurance athlete yourself, so that, along with being a mother and starting a new business, I'm not sure how you fit it all in.

Speaker 2: 2:48

I like a challenge, so I think that's it. And I like to be busy, so I think, yeah, I don't like to be bored, so I think I just I feel my days. Anyone that knows me knows that yeah, I like to be challenged. Yeah, a hundred percent.

Speaker 1: 3:01

And no doubt you know working with yourself at Two Times you and also your husband yeah, I like to be challenged, yeah, 100%, and no doubt you know working with yourself at Two Times U and also your husband, Craig, who was a great mentor to me and I learned a lot about business development and custom teamware through Craig. So you guys are a bit of a power couple in Two Times U back in the day. So looking forward to, yeah, to sort of going over you know where things are at now in your journey. But let's start from your background and how things went from Akulung to now you're consulting on your own brand. What are some of the things that you learned through Two Times you LVMH group that you can now bring to some brand strategy?

Speaker 2: 3:39

Yeah. So I think my first real kind of I guess touch point with brand strategy did come at two times you. It was when we were about 10 years old and basically we had some new investors on board, we had a new CEO and essentially what kind of happened is our clarity around our brand and who we were started to get a little bit diluted. There was different, I guess, perceptions on who we were going to be or what we were going to do, and it caused a bit of confusion within the team. And then LVMH came on board and we had a few sessions with them on the brand and those sessions really ignited in me some real interest in brand strategy.

Speaker 2: 4:24

And then from there, when I went to Aqualung, one of my purposes when I moved to France was to look at the strategies in the swim brands for the company and reimagine those. So that was a big task during COVID that we did and I really really enjoyed that work. So you know, talking to a number of small business owners even medium-sized and large businesses like have challenges with brand strategy but talking to a lot of smaller business owners, I think you know I've discovered that a lot of them probably haven't really done the work on brand strategy or don't understand the benefit that it will have to them, and so, for me, my passion's in small and medium-sized businesses. I feel that it's where I can have an impact, but also, too, I like they're a little bit more agile. So it's kind of, you know, a formed sort of an addition of two things I love brand strategy, but also two small and medium-sized businesses and helping them grow and succeed as well.

Speaker 1: 5:29

Yeah, fantastic. Now looking forward to diving into brand strategy. The first question I would ask is why does every business need a brand strategy? I know I mentioned off the top that it really helps significantly decrease your cost per acquisition if you can build a bit of a moat and build a really strong brand and also give you that loyalty a loyal customer or lifetime customer. But from its very basic essence, why does every business need a brand strategy?

Speaker 2: 5:56

A good little story that I like to tell to help people, rather than just give you like a definition, is imagine being stuck in London, a big city, without a map and with a very vague idea of where your destination is. Okay, how many kilometers would you travel, or how many wrong streets or whatnot, or how much time would you spend trying to find your destination? Whereas if you actually had a clear destination and a roadmap, how much time would you spend trying to get there? And so, even if there was like roadblocks, you missed a bus, you went on the wrong train. If you had a map and you knew your destination, you're able to reroute Okay. So brand strategy is like the roadmap Okay, and your brand is your destination.

Speaker 2: 6:47

So if you don't know where you're going and you don't have a map on how to get there, then what do you put your marketing efforts in or what do you put your energy into?

Speaker 2: 7:01

And so, basically, like a brand and the definition of brand is a perception or feeling that people have about you or like your service, your company, your product. And I often get people and I know I've done this with you, ryan is I get them to think about the feeling or the emotional that they have attached to one of their favorite brands and how they feel buying or purchasing or using that service. Think about that and then that is their brand. It's not the logo, it's not the identity that's part of it. It's a brand identity, it's a recognition. Seeing the logo of that brand that you love probably reignites some of that emotional attachment, but the success of that brand is that emotional attachment. So when you build a brand strategy, basically it's about looking at, like your market research, looking at you know who your customer is, what value you bring to determine what that emotion is, and then you need to figure out how to get from where you are today to there.

Speaker 1: 8:02

If that makes sense. Yeah, no, I really like the analogy of the map. So for me, if I want to go to, you know point A, or we want to go from point A to point B, so let's call it point B. When we're looking at our brand strategy, do we have to identify first what point B is and then work backwards to get there? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 8:22

Yeah, basically you can, but generally and I know there's probably, depending on you know, small and medium-sized businesses in this audience. But basically what you need to do is and I know it's really like you know most people want to throw the net wide. They want to. You know they go. If I do a bit of everything, I'll have a wider audience. But also to you mean nothing to no one. So it's kind of like you know they go, if I do a bit of everything, I'll have a wider audience, but also to you mean nothing to no one.

Speaker 2: 8:46

So it's kind of like you know, going and fishing in the ocean with you know, trying to find a goldfish in amongst a whole heap of other fish, whereas if you went to a goldfish bowl you'll probably get it fished where the fish is. So yeah, so basically, I think you know for people it's quite important to understand that. But then generally what I would do is I would do kind of like an audit of where you are today you need to know where point A is and point B is, basically doing again some market research and also to internal research. So basically looking at your strengths and what value you bring to the consumer?

Speaker 1: 9:27

Yeah, perfect. And so, with that and with the brands you're working with currently, is that about having conversations with their customers, trying to open up that two-way dialogue with the customers that they've already got into their business and then trying to identify who their current audience is and where they want to be and trying to put together a roadmap to get to that point?

Speaker 2: 9:49

Yeah, and it may not come quickly. It depends on how much knowledge you have of the landscape or how much understanding you have on where you fit. But generally, as long as we can start to bring some direction and start to bring some focus and keep working on that, that's a really really good thing. So you may not solve it in one minute, it may take some time, but as long as you're continually working on it, you're going to find that you'll get there.

Speaker 1: 10:17

Yeah, perfect and I'm happy to touch on. So I went through one of Jess's workshops, which was an hour-long brand strategy audit, which I'm happy to go into shortly and highlight what I found, because I'm happy to be transparent around that, but I'd like to just touch on. So we both worked at Two Times U. We're both endurance athletes, we're both into that athleisure space. Let's use some real world examples.

Speaker 1: 10:45

So we mentioned Two Times you and they had that 10-year anniversary and things started to get a little bit clouded in terms of direction, with multiple different stakeholders coming into them at that point in time they were pivoting towards are they a high performance brand? Are they an athleisure brand? Do they need more market penetration in different sports? Are they just compression? Are they an athleisure brand? Do they need more market penetration in different sports? Are they just compression? Are they triathlete? Are they? You know all these different areas. And then you've got another brand which I know you're a fan of in LSKD. So, in terms of those two brands, which were probably similar to start with at some point, how did the brand strategy evolve for both of those?

Speaker 2: 11:22

Yeah, so I guess also, too, both brands are in different stages of their life cycle. So what you find is early on in your brand life cycle and both of them have done this really well they niche down. So basically, they determined what their USP is, what their strong, who their target audience is, and they just owned that, okay. So that's pretty normal and that's you know when we talk about niching down. And for smaller businesses, that's where you get your you know, I guess advantage to bigger companies. So both of them, at the same stage of their life cycle, are pretty similar, okay. But LSKD now currently is younger and two times use, a bit older, and they've gone through that phase where you grow and you have investors and then you want to expand and you don't want to lose sales. So basically, you may diverge and spread out a little bit, but because you did that work at the start, your brand strength is quite good. Therefore, you're able to widen your audience a little bit, but again you lose a bit of that identity. So what you see is, as you get bigger, you lose, I guess, the nicheness that made you strong at the start and you're still benefiting from it, but it becomes a bit more diluted. So right now, two times you would be in that older. But it becomes a bit more diluted. So right now, two times you would be in that older stage where it's a bit more diluted. Therefore, it's not as I guess.

Speaker 2: 12:51

Their brand strength isn't as strong or it's not as clear is probably the best way to put it to their audience, whereas LSKD is a lot younger. But the reason why they're so strong at the moment and why I'm really enjoying watching what they're doing, is because they've found their niche, they know their purpose and everything is consistent. So they're actually got this emotional attachment with their audience, which is what's making them quite strong at the moment. So different stages, but there's reasons why they're both successful at the same time. What will be really interesting is watching LSKD as it gets older and see how it handles that. And look, looking at someone like a Nike you'll often hear in the news. They pivot and re-strategize a lot as well, like big companies do, but the purpose and the DNA behind the company should always remain the same.

Speaker 1: 13:48

Yeah, perfect, I love watching LSKD. Yeah, it's funny, I'm in that athleisure space or in that kind of athlete's endurance space, but I've never actually purchased anything off them. I've never been targeted. Who is their ideal customer for LSKD?

Speaker 2: 14:04

I don't know Looking at it, so I'm not in the company, so I don't have the inside news. So this is my outside perception and they may tell me otherwise. So feel free anyone that's at LSKD listening to this, but from what I can see, it's your 25 to 35-year-old predominantly female, interestingly, but there's a lot of men that wear it that kind of, you know, gym goers and really, as they always say, it's that 1% better every day.

Speaker 1: 14:37

Yeah, it sounds, I mean two times. You had a similar thing there as well at some point around. You know what was it? Human performance multiplied.

Speaker 2: 14:40

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 14:41

They're really both interesting case studies in terms of athleisure and retail sporting apparel and both done really well, to be honest, as a credit to both companies for their journey so far.

Speaker 2: 14:53

Just quickly on that. I think what's really important to note is they both connect with their consumers and they know their target audience, so they have an emotional connection. Both brands did and if you look out there, there's heaps of athlete leisure brands out there, heaps of young ones, but they never take off. So you know, if you're a young upcoming brand, have a look at those two, because you've got to connect emotionally with your audience.

Speaker 1: 15:19

Yeah, how do you connect emotionally with your audience? And your creative's got to be right. Your language has got to be right. Your logo, your products, everything's got to be right. Would Two Times you or LSKD or any other brand? Where do they start? Do they start creating a product and then build a brand strategy around that, or is a brand strategy first? Is that a chicken or an egg conversation?

Speaker 2: 15:41

I think it depends on the person starting it, because sometimes, like, you have a really good idea of the market or the consumer and often, like those stories we hear about, it's someone who discovered a problem that an audience has and they've solved the problem with the product. Sometimes you get people that are good at product and they bring a product and then they navigate, you know, trying to find the audience for that. It can go either way. But the big thing that what you need to know is you need to know your market. You really do, like is there a market there? But also you need to know, like, the value that you bring to that person.

Speaker 2: 16:18

So someone who solves a problem for someone so say, I don't know, you know, in e-commerce or web services you can't get anyone for customer service. It's a massive known problem. I should call it telcos, because everyone knows they have a problem with this. There's no customer service and it's a big problem. But if you started a business and solved that problem, the value you bring is excellent customer service and that connection you then have with the consumer, because that's your value. So you need to find consumers that are willing potentially to pay a bit more, but they know that their phone's going to be answered, or they call, or they're questioned in two minutes as opposed to two hours, kind of thing.

Speaker 1: 16:54

Yeah, that's a shout out to the Victorian government my gov. If someone can solve that customer service issue, I'm on board.

Speaker 2: 17:04

Yeah, yeah, See the pain point. You'd happily pay double for the service to get over that pain point. Yeah, absolutely, Cost wouldn't be a thing.

Speaker 1: 17:14

Great point. So if I'm an e-commerce business owner and I'm small to medium or early on in my growth phase for my business, how do I know if I have a good brand strategy? How do I know that I need to work on my brand strategy? What are some common areas or pain points that people come to you looking for help with brand strategy?

Speaker 2: 17:37

Yeah, generally it'll be about the user experience on the website. How many conversions do you get? Do you get any or if none? Because if you're not getting many, then it means the people coming to your website and not the right people, or you're not articulating your value well enough, or things like that. So what would be really interesting to do is to understand why or where they're traveling on your site, when they jump off or at what point. Also, to talking to your current customers, you'll be able to navigate what value you bring and maybe you can change your copy or things like that to help improve that.

Speaker 2: 18:16

A lot of times I always love like the Instagram example where someone has like 30,000 followers and three likes on a post which tells me that their audience is not very engaged or potentially, they've purchased their audience but not the right people. So basically, like you know, customer conversion, the trust and the consistency, the return customers and things like that you'll know because the engagement's a lot higher. So if your engagement's quite low, that is probably the best indicator. To be honest, you're not resonating with your audience.

Speaker 1: 18:49

Yeah, and it's probably a gut feel thing too. So, you know, we went through a workshop together and there is a point where I do know that I need to, you know, invest more into my own brand strategy. You know, even if I look at my social media channels, I've got my personal brand, which I invest heavily in on a daily basis on Instagram. I've got Remarkable Digital as another handle, then I've got eCommerce Australia Podcasts, and then all three are not quite aligned. So in the back of my mind, I knew that I needed to find some alignment there as well.

Speaker 1: 19:21

And it feels, you know, for me too, it feels like it's's just, it's sort of like punching into a headwind. You know, like it just, it always seems like hard work and then, off the back of our, our conversation and our hour that we spent together, I feel like the sails have just, I've just changed the, the direction of the sails. I'm not a I'm not a sailor, so I'm not sure the terminology there, but I've just changed that direction and I feel like now, going forward, I'm going to be cutting into that headwind a lot easier and a lot smoother because I'm not as wide.

Speaker 2: 19:52

Yeah, I think the thing is it's like you know it's doing the hard work and then once you've got it and you've got that clarity and you'll know when you have that thing. Do you know what I mean? Like you'll know when you found your spot and everything will be easy because you'll be able to make decisions easy. You'll be able to say no, easy. It just becomes really clear. It's like again, it's just focus. Having a clear focus makes it easy, and I think one really good way to put that is like you know you look at a elite level swimmer. You know they focus on one event. Primarily is their top event, and then they have a B1 that's very adjacent and close to it. They don't then go oh, there's an opportunity over in the event that I'm not training for it. I'm going to go there because the competitions are, you know, the competitors are less strong. So I'm going to change today and then I'm going to go back here and I'm going to try and do every event and then I might get into the Olympics.

Speaker 2: 20:47

You know they're able to very easily make decisions on, like what events they compete in at this meet, what you know. They don't even look at the other the other things. They know what value they bring. So yeah, it's hard work and it takes time, but doing that work and once you get it done will make things really simple. And I think the big point is is like LSKD is not a one-year-old business. Two times you took a while to get traction. And most businesses starting out there's some that just have clarity from day one. They do all the work they could spend two years preparing before they launch. But you know, if you've already launched, take your time just to get narrower and narrower and narrower and that'll improve your focus. But it'll help a lot in streamlining things.

Speaker 1: 21:34

Yeah, I agree, and you know, back to myself, my own business. When I started Remarkable Digital, I was doing email automation website, builds social media, organic social media, paid pretty much everything and quickly felt operational drag and also generalists not getting enough cut through. So that was something that I identified early on that I just needed to really narrow down, niche down and focus on one and become an expert in that area, of which I picked SEO and e-commerce. So all of a sudden now, instead of all those different new shiny objects and whether it's TikTok or the new platform that comes out next year that no one's heard of yet if you just focus on one thing and do it well, then there's always going to be business.

Speaker 2: 22:19

Yeah, and it's probably a lot easier to do and for you, definitely in your work, like if someone has a clear direction, it's much easier to do SEO and Google AdWords. For someone that has a very clear outline compared to someone that doesn't Like, the effectiveness of your work would be a little bit different between the two.

Speaker 1: 22:39

Oh, 100%. You're so right with that. The businesses that succeed, whether they use my agency or any agency, I know there's a common denominator around really good website, really clear copy, they know who they're after, they know what they want and they know where they sit in that environment. So the more focus I think from what I'm learning after spending an hour with you, but also on this podcast, is brand strategy is almost just like a really clear focus on where you want to get to, and I think that map analogy really set it up well because, yeah, if you didn't have a map or you didn't know where you're going, it would certainly make it very hard to get anywhere. Are there some questions that you want the listening audience to ask themselves and ponder a little bit as they're listening to this podcast and as it relates back to their own brand? Are there some key questions that you are asking in your one hour sort of audit that you think are really good for people to start to ponder a little bit?

Speaker 2: 23:39

Yeah, and we tend to use this a lot because generally, you can do this yourself. So one thing I always ask is why do you do what you do if money wasn't involved? Okay, so that's the purpose behind your company. That should never change, ever, ever. So you need to understand why you do what you do.

Speaker 2: 24:00

And then some other questions that I like people to start thinking about is who do you do it for? So who's your audience? And that doesn't mean I do it for small business owners, because that could be e-commerce, that could be a service, that could be. You got to nail it down, to like the motivations and the profiles, which can take some time, but you get there. And then what value do you bring to those people? So what problem are you solving or what emotional connection are you connecting to, like, for example, good ones like Louis Vuitton handbags? People pay $20,000 for the handbag and it's not for the handbag, it's for the feeling they have when they're wearing the handbag. So that's the kind of thing. So it could be just exceptional customer service, as we said with our friends at MyGov there.

Speaker 1: 24:52

Yeah, that's right. That is definitely not what they stand for.

Speaker 2: 24:56

Yeah, but the feeling of excellent customer service is, like you know, being heard. You know you have confidence in getting the answer. So it doesn't have to be a product. It can be a feeling related to like a value that you bring.

Speaker 1: 25:10

Yeah, what are your favorite brands? Who do you look to? We mentioned LSKD, but there are some other brands that you look to go. Yeah, they're really tuned in with their brand strategy.

Speaker 2: 25:21

Right now. So I think Apple's probably the most consistent. Like, let's be honest, Apple's pretty consistent. So someone like Patagonia, that's why. So people understand what they do. You know they may or may not align with them, but they understand that Taylor Swift right now is doing a great job. You're a Swifty or you're not, but you know what she stands for. So there's no, it's clear. I think those guys are all doing, you know, a kind of really cool thing.

Speaker 1: 25:47

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:47

But they're the normal big guys that most people look at of really cool thing. Yeah, but they're the normal big guys that most people look at. I think at the moment especially for anyone in Australia, Alice KD is kind of a cool example to keep an eye on.

Speaker 1: 26:02

Yeah, I'm not a Swifty, you know, but what I did notice when she was in Melbourne recently everyone walking around the city who was clearly going to a concert of hers had the high boots and the red lipstick, and so that's kind of like branding that she obviously rolls with. I don't even watch her, but I'm assuming that's what she wears and so that's all I've seen throughout the city that whole week. So that's a pretty real example of branding. Personally, I love Polo Ralph Lauren. You're wearing it today. I noticed Wearing it today. It just fits like it's consistent.

Speaker 2: 26:31

Yeah you know what you're wearing it today. I noticed wearing it today. It just fits what like, it's consistent. So yeah, you know what you're getting.

Speaker 1: 26:34

Yeah, you know what you're getting it's clear, and there's plenty of black t-shirts around that do not cost the same exactly as this t-shirt, but I know it fits every time, I know it lasts a long time. The quality's there.

Speaker 2: 26:45

So you know that is, you know that is the power of branding, I guess yeah, exactly, it's the the feeling that wearing that T-shirt gives you, or the feeling that the Swifties get when they put on their boots.

Speaker 1: 26:56

Yeah, exactly, and the feeling that you want, as an e-commerce business, that you want your customers to know every time. So the consistency and the focus.

Speaker 2: 27:06

Exactly. Look at brands like Airbnb and things like that that have done well online. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:12

Yeah, and so let's talk about Skyjumper. Yes, seeing as though you're such an expert in brand strategy, let's hope you've got your brand strategy sorted. But what does Skyjumper mean?

Speaker 2: 27:24

Skyjumper.

Speaker 2: 27:24

Basically the name kind of came about like when you start your own business, or it kind of is like like when you start your own business or your you know, it's kind of is like jumping out of a plane, like you prepare, prepare, prepare, and then you jump out of a plane and you're like, oh got you know, like hopefully I've got things sorted and if something goes wrong, hopefully I've done the preparation to be able to do plan B, plan C, plan D, and so that's where sort of Skyjumper came from.

Speaker 2: 27:49

And then the concept is that you know, I help people jump in their business. So really at the end of the day, you know I focus on small and medium-sized businesses, I look after brand strategy, but I can help in other areas. I think you know, when you're growing in small and medium-sized businesses, you do have growing pains as well or non-growing pains that you need help with. So they're the kind of things that I like to work on and, as I said, I like a challenge. So for me, helping try and solve problems or helping you guys grow is fun for me.

Speaker 2: 28:24

So maybe not for everyone, but for me it is.

Speaker 1: 28:26

It's good to have someone who's sort of been through that with both bigger brands and smaller brands as well, just to help look at your business without being in the business as well.

Speaker 2: 28:37

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 28:38

It's an objective viewpoint.

Speaker 2: 28:39

So I don't have any attachment to anything, but I do need to learn from you because you have the attachment.

Speaker 1: 28:47

Yeah. So what is the process? To? There's people listening and they're like you know what? We haven't done any brand work. We could really do with some brand work. What's the process? What are the options to work with yourself or someone in that branding space? More broadly, what does that typically look like?

Speaker 2: 29:06

Yeah, so obviously you can Google brand strategy. You're going to get lots of things there For me personally. So my business is called Skyjumper, so it's Skyjumper without the E, so S-K-Y-J-U-M-P-Rcom or you can email me at hello at skyjumpercom. But yeah, it's without the E.

Speaker 1: 29:28

Put your details in the show notes as well, so they've got them there.

Speaker 2: 29:32

Yeah, and basically we'll just have a chat to see what works best for you. Not everyone's the same and depending on what your objectives are, we can tailor that.

Speaker 1: 29:42

Yeah, is it like a three-month campaign? Is it a project-based piece of work? Is it 12 months ongoing? Obviously, everyone's different, as you mentioned, but just in terms of expectations, if they know that they need some brand work done.

Speaker 2: 29:58

Yep. So preferably, obviously, I can do a quick 60 or 90-minute session, but you're going to get homework kind of like you had. There was lots of questions, you had to think and then you had to look at the homework. But ideally the best case scenario is I work for you over a long period of time, whether that's once a quarter, just to check in and we monitor progress. But I understand also too that not everyone has the capacity to do that. So even if it's just, you know I give you a quick workbook, you do that, we have a quick chat. You know I give you a quick workbook, you do that, we have a quick chat. You know, catch up and basically we get thinking and you start making steps. Then that's moving forward. Do you know what I mean? The idea is to move forward. So it depends on what your capacity is. But look, at the end of the day, if you don't do it, you're going to be walking around the streets of London a lot longer than the person that does do it.

Speaker 1: 30:50

So yeah, yeah, perfect and, as I said off the top, it just makes so much more sense. Cost per acquisition is so high and it's only going to get more and more competitive. Social media is more and more competitive. It's harder to get good organic reach. So if you're reaching the wrong people with any of those sorts of strategies, then it's a waste of funding, it's a waste of money. You're not going to be as efficient as you can.

Speaker 1: 31:14

If you actually do take the time to build that branding message, build that moat, then you're creating your own space and even when it comes to exiting a business, if you know exactly what you are, who you stand for, you've got that branding piece and it's easier for someone to purchase that because they can't. You know. An example I have is you know, let's say we're in the asset finance category and you're spending $100,000 on Google ads a month and you're doing no SEO or no branding. Someone can come along and just replicate that spend and there's no reason for them to buy your business. But if you've worked on your branding, you know who your customers are, you have huge branded keywords, branded search. It's much more cheaper per lead or per conversion and, yeah, it just makes a whole lot of sense to be more and more focused.

Speaker 2: 32:03

Yeah, if you're looking for getting some buy-in to what you're doing, a brand strategy is pretty much essential for an equity or a buy-in to what you're doing. A brand strategy is pretty much essential for an equity or a buy-in. They want to see you know who you do it for, where you're going. So you're absolutely correct on that point. It's a huge piece for their review.

Speaker 1: 32:22

I should probably cancel that and talk about an e-commerce business as opposed to a service-based business.

Speaker 2: 32:27

It doesn't matter either way, honestly, it doesn't matter. E-commerce service.

Speaker 1: 32:32

Anyone who you know. You're starting a t-shirt brand. As an example, if you're just selling white t-shirts, you can get. You know, that's a great example.

Speaker 2: 32:42

No, but you need to know, I guess, with that, like you need to know your audience.

Speaker 1: 32:46

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 32:47

So who values it? You look at Witchery's white shirt campaign. They've got a cause, and so that cause is a connection or a feeling for many women.

Speaker 1: 32:57

So you I can't help you with the witchery. I can't help. I've not seen the witchery.

Speaker 2: 33:02

White t-shirt campaign it's um, it's no, it's white shirt so basically it's for ovarian cancer, I think Okay, and it's really well supported, but it connects to obviously a lot of women, but it attaches to a cause. So, like that, you know it's a white shirt, but you know they've attached it to a cause, I think actually do you know who does a really good job? Carrie's Beanies for Brain Cancer.

Speaker 1: 33:26

Oh, yeah, yep.

Speaker 2: 33:27

So that's like you think about it. I think she's gone wider into cotton on that now.

Speaker 1: 33:31

But that's like it's a beanie, but it has an emotional connection to so many people and they feel like they're giving, but that's yeah, yeah, the same with, in the AFL sense, neil Danaher and the Freeze MND campaigns as well, which is just a beanie, but they've got a purpose attached to them.

Speaker 2: 33:51

And, honestly, look, if you're like an e-commerce business in an area that's known for really poor service or it's difficult to get hold of that product, like something like Archery, do you know like? There's a lot of Archery businesses out there that do super well, because it's super difficult to find archery stuff so if you're an e-commerce person that knows your stuff about archery, you could probably have a really successful business, because people are looking for you and they can't find you, so you've found like a little niche.

Speaker 1: 34:25

Yeah, nice. How did you stumble upon archery?

Speaker 2: 34:29

We're in the sports biz, Ryan, so there was at one point we were looking at and it was probably doing brand strategy. Maybe it was like when we were at Rebel when I was at Rebel, which is a long time ago, you know the sports that actually, like there was archery stores or now they're online, there's a lot of those things, but you know there's people that do it and they can't find what they need.

Speaker 1: 34:53

Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent.

Speaker 2: 34:55

That's really niching and you can do really well out of it.

Speaker 1: 34:58

All right, Archery let's have a look at see if we can create a little e-commerce store on archery and take over the archery world.

Speaker 2: 35:05

You might be surprised. This is like those things do quite well.

Speaker 1: 35:10

Yeah, I looked at chess the other day Exactly Like this is like those things do quite well. Yeah, I looked at chess the other day, exactly, and chess is like that's super competitive for chess boards and chess pieces and people spend a lot of money on chess. So that's, you know, the reason for e-commerce. But if we're looking at, or it's why the e-commerce category is so popular, but even if we take archery or let's take chess as an example, if you don't have a brand strategy in place, you're one of 10, 20, 50 chess brands out there. But if you can really do the brand strategy work and understand who your customers are, why they shop with you, why you even exist, what's the problem you're solving, then the chances are to get much more market penetration.

Speaker 2: 35:52

Yeah, so basically it would be, so probably you would do all board games, because that's you trying to be everything to everyone. You wouldn't just do chess, whereas chess is the niching and then deciding on your audience is the next thing. Archery, for example, was a good one because it was a sport that Rebel wasn't interested in because it's not big enough.

Speaker 2: 36:16

Chess if you only did chess and you're the expert on chess, you go to like Kmart Target. They have cheap chess sets. If you're a connoisseur, you want something that's hand-built out of wood or whatever you want. You're not going to find them in the big guys and they're not going to try and compete against you.

Speaker 1: 36:32

Yeah, and you're also going to stand out. So what a conversation I had recently with Brendan Gillen, who's been on the show a few times before and a good mate of mine. We were talking about Timu the other day and how do you combat against Timu? And now we can look at branding and kind of go okay, branding is vital if you need to stand against a Timu. What are the ways we can actually win? Because they're going to kill us on price. So we need to actually define a good brand strategy and give people a reason to purchase us in spite of price, because we're just never going to beat Timu a reason to purchase us in spite of price, because we're just never going to beat Timu.

Speaker 2: 37:14

Yeah, you've got to find out what they're not good at. When you're big, it's a bit more difficult to be agile, so you've got to look at the things that they can't do as being big.

Speaker 1: 37:28

Yeah, and that's why e-commerce, and that's why this podcast is this as well is to really enable small to medium businesses that agility to be able to go. Okay, our brand isn't strong enough, bang, we can do a brand strategy, we can get really focused really quick and we can change a lot of things. Or we can just shift that compass from heading out of town in London to heading to wherever that plan B was, or point B that you mentioned off the top.

Speaker 2: 37:51

Yeah, exactly so. I think that's the great thing. That's why I love working with small and medium-sized businesses. Your ability to move is greater, whereas when you're big, the risk is potentially greater, so it can take them multiple years in big businesses to make an adjustment.

Speaker 1: 38:07

Yeah, we've seen that through COVID, with the likes of David Jones and Maya, who are historically slow to move because they're just so big not because they don't want to, but it's just. It's so hard to move something that big.

Speaker 2: 38:21

Lots of people.

Speaker 1: 38:22

Yeah, and so COVID came and closed us down in a couple of weeks. All of a sudden, everyone started to want to get involved in e-commerce, which is good, and now everything's back open again. Yeah, e-commerce is kind of still going along, but certainly not at the rate that it was, but it'll be back.

Speaker 2: 38:39

Yeah, yeah, I think COVID taught a lot of baby boomers about the internet.

Speaker 1: 38:44

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, look, it's great to catch up, really appreciate the hour we spent around the branding. You certainly gave me a lot of homework and yeah, it took me a few days to kind of really ponder some of those questions and drill down a little bit to now and clients that I bring on board. Now I do question are these my ideal client? Am I actually going to serve to help them or am I just taking them on to grow my own agency? And it's a really interesting question to ask because you want to just be there to help people and build a brand that is known for helping the sector that you want to get involved with. So, yeah, it certainly helped me and I'm looking forward to working with you in an ongoing capacity, moving forward.

Speaker 2: 39:29

Yeah, no, I'm sure we'll have great conversations.

Speaker 1: 39:33

Fantastic. Well, yeah, good luck with Skyjumper. Thank you. If anyone wants to work with Jess, just jump on her website have a look. There's some really good opportunities for an hour-long audit and a conversation around that. But yeah, that's it for now and yeah, I appreciate your time.

Speaker 2: 39:49

Thanks, Ryan.