The Best SEO Podcast: Unlocking the Unknown Secrets of AI, Search Rankings & Digital Marketing

How Authentic Storytelling Builds Brand Trust with Owen Garitty

• MatthewBertram.com

Share episode

Authentic storytelling in marketing is much more than a trendy buzzword; it's a comprehensive strategy that should permeate every customer interaction from first touch to final purchase and beyond.

• Effective storytelling means presenting your brand's story as an evolving journey that spans multiple touchpoints
• The customer journey increasingly happens off your website, making platform-diverse content essential
• YouTube is overtaking Google as a search destination, highlighting the growing importance of video content
• When articulating your unique value, ensure it's something competitors can't claim, and focus on specific customer experiences
• Content must trigger emotional responses to stand out in today's oversaturated market
• Create a content ecosystem with three tiers: hero content (high production), hub content (product-focused), and hygiene content (quick updates)
• Assert your company value—don't be afraid to boldly state "we are" rather than "we could" or "we do"
• Case studies focusing on customer stories rather than your company are incredibly effective for building trust
• Brands should measure top-of-mind awareness and brand favorability to track storytelling effectiveness
• Always use your first-party data to validate what advertising platforms tell you

Guest Contact Information: 

-https://www.linkedin.com/in/owen-garitty/

-https://fpwmedia.com/

—----------

More from EWR and Matt:

Leave a Review if it was content you enjoyed: https://g.page/r/CccGEk37CLosEB0/review

Free SEO Consultation: https://www.ewrdigital.com/discovery-call

One-on-One Consulting: https://www.ewrdigital.com/digital-strategy-consulting/private-consulting-session

—

The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing podcast is a podcast hosted by Internet marketing expert Matthew Bertram. The show provides insights and advice on digital marketing, SEO, and online business. 

Topics covered include keyword research, content optimization, link building, local SEO, and more. The show also features interviews with industry leaders and experts who share their experiences and tips. 

Additionally, Matt shares his own experiences and strategies, as well as his own successes and failures, to help listeners learn from his experiences and apply the same principles to their businesses. The show is designed to help entrepreneurs and business owners become successful online and get the most out of their digital marketing efforts.

Find more great episodes here: https://www.internetmarketingsecretspodcast.com/  

https://seo-podcast-the-unknown-secrets-of-internet-marketing.buzzsprout.com

Follow us on:
Facebook: @bestseopodcast
Instagram: @thebestseopodcast
Tiktok: @bestseopodcast
LinkedIn: @bestseopodcast

Powered by: ewrdigital.com

Hosts: Matt Bertram 

Disclaimer: For Educational and Entertainment purposes only.

Support the show

Speaker 1:

This is the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing, your insider guide to the strategies top marketers use to crush the competition. Ready to unlock your business full potential, let's get started.

Speaker 2:

Howdy. Welcome back to another fun-filled episode of the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. I am your host, matt Bertram. Today I wanted to focus on storytelling, because storytelling is just something that I think that a lot of people think that they do, but I'm not sure if they get it right. I think it's a buzzword that's out there. I think people know it's important. The rise of video is happening and I wanted to bring in another agency owner that's been doing photography since they've been 15. So over 20 years Owen Garrity FPW Media. Just like EWR Digital we like to abbreviate things Owen Garrity's been running an agency for over 12 years and really is an integrated agency but focuses on storytelling first, and I thought he would be good to come in and talk about storytelling as an expert. Welcome to the show, owen.

Speaker 3:

Matthew, great to be on, I'm excited.

Speaker 2:

I'm excited too. You know why don't you just tell me like everything with search is changing right and, as another agency owner that's doing digital and everything else, you know what's most topical to you?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think, like you said, literally everything is changing and by the time the listeners are listening to this, versus when we recorded it, it will have changed even further, and that's kind of the situation that we're in. So I think that what we're really working with clients on right now is I don't necessarily want to say going back to basics, but in some regards let's make sure that all of the groundwork, that the foundation, is built so that we're really nimble and can pivot and can roll with the punches as things change and be really well positioned to capitalize on those changes. And when we're talking about story, I think the number one thing with that is understanding our customer right. So if we're a brand and we're trying to tell a story, who are we trying to tell it to and why? And I think that that's the fundamental part where people start to slip up immediately is they don't take the time to fully understand that really fundamental foundational setting of good storytelling.

Speaker 2:

What is your definition? Maybe enterprise business, small business? What are the definitions of storytelling and how should it be viewed?

Speaker 3:

And then we can dig into it more. Yeah, so I would say I take a pretty radical view to that, which is that every interaction a brand has with a customer should be telling an evolving story. So it's not any one specific thing saying oh, we tell our stories on our YouTube channel.

Speaker 3:

No no no, no, no it's. We tell our story over an evolving multi-touch journey, from the very first time the customer interacts with us to the very last time on purchase support if it's a single transaction or hopefully, for an entire lifetime if it's an ongoing transaction. Business.

Speaker 2:

No, I love that. So you know you've got to probably start with the strategy of, like what is the story you want to tell? Right, and I think people go into, like you know, you're defining your unique selling proposition, you're defining your target personas and then you start to build out this customer journey. You know, when we start to get into these, these workshops, and really try to define what makes your brand different, right, and how to, how to separate the noise and tell that story, a lot of people are given sometimes not every time and not all the time but generic answers right, like we have excellent cover services. Excellent I can't talk today, sorry Excellent customer service, we have the best product on the market, or like the thing. I think that, like almost with the USP, it's got to be something that somebody else can't say. Or you can't replace your name with a competitor and like it flow. It needs to be unique to you. I mean, what's your take on that?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So let's let's take we have excellent customer service as a thing Cause I think I you probably hear that a lot from people. I hear that from a lot of people and by and large it's true, but we always kind of probe a little further, which is okay, but then what does that mean for the customer's experience? So, instead of customer service, I want to talk about customer experience, because that's a much more applicable story to a customer, right? They care about how is my experience going to be interacting with you as a brand, and so that can be a story.

Speaker 3:

Right, if we offer customers an experience that is not replicated at any of our competitors, by offering really good customer service, by having post-sale support, by doing all of these things, that each one of those things is not wholly unique or actually different than our competitors, but by the fact of the sum of all the parts, we are able to have an experience for the customers that is second to none, that's something we can work with right, and so I think it's really about framing it's more focusing it instead of being on the brand. What are we doing? It's, what are we doing that is then impacting how our customer feels and the experience that they have when they interact with us, and then the more that we can tell the best version of that reality to the customer. That's a story that they actually care about and will stop and pay attention to.

Speaker 2:

So what I'm hearing is you got to get really good at articulating what it is that you mean by what you're saying and communicate that message in a way. And the best way to communicate that message that people are going to retain it is in a story. So it's like, oh, we have excellent customer service. Well, what does that mean for your experience? Like you said right. And like, how, how is that going to impact them? Like, what's in it for me and the with them? Right? And so I think it's super interesting, even as we kind of expand into search and agents and LLMs and all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 2:

It's like how do you communicate clearly the message you're trying to communicate and does that person receive that message? And then they make the decision whether that aligns with, like, their goals, their values, like where they're trying to go, what they want. But if you can't articulate that, a lot of the even sales process or or brand process or customer journey is trying to go. I want this, I want this experience at the end, or I want this result at the end, Like who's going to help me get there the fastest right? Who can I trust to do it? And like, what is that journey going to look like, or some form of those questions.

Speaker 3:

I would say Well, 100%, I mean. I think that most customers are deluged by choice, right. The amount of choice that they have in most developed markets are infinite, almost, and so there's five competitors that do essentially the same thing on essentially the same timeline for essentially the same price, unless you have a really novel product, right, and that's a whole nother deal. That's an easier story to tell, but assuming you don't, you're established, you already exist, you're in the market. We really need to focus on that articulation, and what you're getting at is there's so many modalities by which we need to focus on that articulation, and what you were getting at is there's so many modalities by which we need to articulate that now. And not only do we need to articulate that to humans, we now need to articulate that to computers, which is really interesting, because if we start talking about how LL, I can't speak either.

Speaker 3:

You're rubbing off on me here, but on the large language models and how they're integrating in with search, the authority thing becomes really important, right? Otherwise, if these models aren't training on authority and really trying to sniff out authority, and good at that, essentially search will just become this beige thing of it's AI generated content, referencing AI generated content, in infinite. And so the fact is that we're speaking to two audiences now we're speaking to the model and we're speaking to the human, because to get to the human sometimes we're going to have to go through the model, and so then story becomes even more important, just in a different way.

Speaker 2:

So, for everyone listening, we're not going to go down the rabbit hole today of how to speak to the bots, which, if you're interested in that, please leave a comment, and I have some people lined up that are incredible at sharing what is happening with AI and LLMs, and I've been even looking at doing some masterclasses on this. But for today's topic, I want to stick to talking to humans. I want to talk to. I want to talk about the storytelling component of like. The data is telling me that YouTube is overtaking Google. Okay, tiktok is overtaking like. That's where people are finding awareness and are finding brands. They want to consume that information. They're spending more time on YouTube than any other platform. Even Google did a recent announcement that you need to pay attention to YouTube. It's becoming the hub videos. It's even better than social media, in my opinion, which I need to drink my own Kool-Aid of what I'm saying, and I did just hire full-time videographer to to help with this Cause.

Speaker 2:

This is audio. This podcast is audio. We're going to put it on YouTube, but you need to be on YouTube. It's not a nice to have. I think it's a need to have now, and those posts and those videos stay on YouTube where people can watch over and over again on social media. They last a couple hours, right and, and you got to keep on that hamster wheel posting it Now. Certainly the content finds the right person today, um, and you don't have to build the audience, but you still have to tell the story in a compelling way. That's going to get somebody to take action. And so, owen, I would love to hear what you've been doing, which are already in alignment with the markets. Moving to where you're at, walk somebody through that experience of assessing how their brand presents itself online and then how to identify maybe some of those holes in it, and we can just give like a rough framework for somebody listening to to maybe apply it to their own business that's listening, or maybe some of their clients.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. I think we always, you know, kind of look at what are the assumptions that are being made, right. What we find oftentimes is that companies, especially the ones that have been in business and actually the more successful the company is generally speaking, the more assumptions that they have about their customers. So if you've been in business for 80 years or 100 years, which some of our clients have been, they feel like they pretty much understand who their customer is because they deal with them on a daily basis, so forth and so on. Well, there's a couple of trends that we all need to pay attention to. One the decision makers is aging down considerably, whether that's a, you know, a tchotchke or a huge, you know industrial contract, right, that decision maker is pulling the trigger, is aging down. So what's true about them was not true about the generation before, by and large. So that's number one real big factor that we need to allow for. The next thing is that authenticity right, if we think our customers care about certain things but we don't actually know and we put out a story, a marketing message that speaks to that pain point that we believe to be true and it's not not, immediately, we've, we've killed the efficacy of that marketing campaign or that story, and so we really work through with, with clients. Let's, let's get really inquisitive and let's do some research beyond just you know our customer personas. Like, let's look at what are other, what are our competitors doing? How are they being effective and why? What are they solving for that? We're not, because most likely we can solve for that too, but we're just not talking about it. And I think the last thing is that most brands are really cautious in their language that they use, about how great they are, which I find really weird, right, if you really think about it, most brands aren't willing to say we're the best. I mean, they may say that, but they're not willing to say it in every single way, at every single turn, and and. So if you're not coming from this place of we are, if you're using language like we could or we do, we do know it's like we are, we are this. If you're not using that language, your story starts to fall flat.

Speaker 3:

And then I think the last, the very last thing is a little bit of emotional manipulation, right, it doesn't hurt. Is we want somebody to feel, something? Right? The old adage is a photo tells a thousand words or whatever it is. I'm butchering it, but we want somebody to feel something because, at the end of the day, whether it's talk, youtube shorts, social media, we have to get somebody to stop and give us their very limited attention. They're very, they're very limited time. Most likely there's something going on in the room. Right, kids are screaming. They're in a busy office environment, the TV is going. Whatever it is, we need them to stop, and the way that we do that is by showing something that they care about on an emotional level. Right that we have some sort of trigger. They have a fear of missing out, they have envy, they have jealousy, they feel safe, right, they know that that company is going to fill a need. Right, we're going to take away a stressor, whatever it is.

Speaker 2:

Is we need to have that emotional hook, and if we don't, it's just going to go by and they're not going to pay attention yeah, I mean, I agree with everything that you're saying, really, um, you've got to elicit emotion in in what you're doing, and there's so much noise today that everything is becoming bland. So that's what I'm seeing. I'm seeing there's kind of like two directions which you should probably be doing both Leveraging AI as quickly and fast as you can to incorporate it into your workflows, because it just accelerates your productivity, your creativity, your enhancement of whatever you really know how to do. And then the other thing is you need to build a brand. Today, I mean, I can tell you with search, how, how it's starting to fan out, how all the big social media platforms and search engines and LLMs have done deals and just scrape each other's stuff all the time and and they're they're looking for that authority that you talked about early and identifying like is this a brand that people care about? Is people follow and how should I value that based upon everything else? And you know, what I am seeing is there's like a level of like. I even was using some LLMs to do some comparison Okay, of, of, of, of a different vendor, of a couple of different vendors, right, I was trying to do a vendor assessment, okay, and it scraped their website.

Speaker 2:

It scraped some reviews. Um, did? It? Did a couple of things, but for the most part, like when they were talking about copy on their website, I couldn't tell the difference.

Speaker 2:

Okay, like there wasn't a unique proposition between these, and I was like, okay, and then that's when I had to to to rejig the search, to go a lot deeper, to get some analysis of what other people are saying of, like on Reddit, on reviews, and and aggregate that to be go, well, you're not telling me why you're different. I got to find out that from other people, and then that reduces my trust factor, right. And then, okay, I was hoping to just find a selection. Now, I got to set up a call with each one of them, right. And so what I'm seeing in search is people just want the answer right now.

Speaker 2:

Like that customer journey is happening before they even get to you, before they even come to your website. It's happening off page, and the best way to influence those people is for them to hear your story from a third party, right, and the best way to do that, I think and I've thought this for a long time is through video. I mean, when you talk about storytelling, like, let's even go back to that, like, give us maybe a couple different examples of a really authentic story that was that that you helped create, or you there's a case study of anything you want to share. But like how the change right to the storytelling, in the storytelling, to fit the right model that you were talking about, just launched it. Just launched the brand.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so one of the things that you hit on is case studies or hearing peer stories. Right, and you know, I think when we think most people think of testimonials it's kind of cheesy, whatever. But where we've really pivoted with most of our clients over the last couple of years is doing more data driven case studies, where we're going to that customer's business, we're setting up the problem right. What is the problem that they're facing? We put them on camera, we talk about their business, we spotlight them. Really. The whole video is much more about our customer's customer than our customer, and that makes it a lot more authentic. It's a win-win for everybody. But it also shows in a real world scenario that's not super staged, that's not super scripted, how is that customer interacting with our client's products and solving the problems they have, the problems they have all of their peers have, by and large, right, and so that's that's something that, dollar for dollar, is one of the most effective things that we do, because people are able to see that and it lives forever. Right, like you said, it's on YouTube, it's it's it's it's forever.

Speaker 3:

A couple other things that we've done we did a. We've done a couple of branded documentaries where they're longer pieces. Documentaries. Where they're longer pieces, they're on subjects that are interesting to the customer base but have no direct product tie in Right. So they they may. They may have products in them, but it's not a infomercial Right. It is absolutely just a sponsored documentary and we're getting attention because we're talking about something that is highly important and interesting to the customer base, but it's not selling a product, right?

Speaker 3:

A great example of that is we did a project called Lionheart for Safariland a few years back who sell body armor to the US military, and so the whole project was centered around preventing veteran suicide, which is, you know, a hugely impactful subject for that whole constituent. Every decision maker in that constituent cares about that, and we got millions of views and had a huge uptick in social presence. You know just like the metrics were off the chart from something that didn't actually have anything to do with selling products, but it sold a lot of products net net over the last, however many years, because that attention cycle just continued and continued, and continued.

Speaker 2:

There was a cause. There was a cause that people cared about and that they were interested in and they injected their brand in a way to say that we care about this too and we're addressing this. Or we're like you in that, like we're one of you that understands the challenges, like I, like that documentary and I would tell you I'm going to go with a less serious example that that is way over the top. Okay, like, but it but it focused on attention. I don't know if you're familiar with the YouTuber, mark Roper. Okay, this guy came up with this like a little STEM product for kids and you know, I have two, two young boys and he did this one video that, like, everybody likes animal videos right, that's where everybody's attention is. Right, they're watching animal videos.

Speaker 2:

He did a very, very well done, probably movie level documentary or survivor level documentary, which all their stuff is that, because production quality, where I'm trying to go with this, but it was a squirrel gymnastics or squirrels trying like steal nuts, and then there was like an obstacle course and it was like two hours, okay, um, and it was, but it was so well done. I was like, who is making this? Like, what are they doing? Like and it has like crazy amounts of views and and he did it in, like his backyard or something and and it launched his brand. Okay, like, it just absolutely launched his brand because he sucked in all of that interest and he was tying in concepts of engineering, of you know, building stuff, like all the things he did like indirectly and I'm not encouraging people to go do that Like from a business standpoint, it's just a far extreme of of grabbing that attention with very high quality production value.

Speaker 2:

Right, like I think that there's a like people say, okay, like the shorts and stuff that people want to see behind the scenes. I would love to get your take on that, owen, of uh, what is the mix of the high quality production? Because there is absolutely a place for it, and then the behind the scenes use the phone, uh of of what's happening, because people want to see both. Right, and maybe they're in a different mode, but I think you need to have both too, because you need to show the polish and then you need to show the authenticity. I mean, how do you like layer content creation, maybe?

Speaker 3:

absolute high level. That's the stuff that people watch and they're like, wow, that's incredible high production value. You know our hub content is one step below that's. Maybe you know our product more product focused stuff, right, that's not so brand overarching, that's very product focused. And then our hygiene stuff is top of mind awareness.

Speaker 3:

It's that behind the scenes, it's that quick, you know, getting that cell phone shot, uploading it to reels, making sure that we're always in the conversation as a brand, and so we just kind of take those three buckets and then plan the story arc through all of those buckets and then through all of the touch points. Right, and I think that you know when we talk about this, just a piece of video content by itself doesn't necessarily move the needle. It has to be a part of that evolving story, regardless of if it's a really well produced hero video. You still then, when you go to the website, when you are on your, you know, favorite ESPN app or whatever it is, you still need to see a display ad that's referencing that same thing that you saw two days ago. So it has to be this ecosystem and this evolving story, and I think that that's where people don't take it that far or don't do it well, because they get lost in that process.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think you hit on something so big, you produce like a fantastic piece of content for somebody, right, and you're like, if you build it, they will come right, like you have this one video, right, and you, you, you, you build this massive video and it's like awesome and they're so happy, right, and then they don't do anything with the video. They don't know what to do with the video. They don't. They don't build it into the ecosystem, they don't push it out on multiple channels and repurpose it. Like they just have this video and maybe they stick it on their website or whatever, and it just like lives there and dies there, right, and it doesn't see the light of day.

Speaker 2:

I would, I would love for you to even, um, uh, punch it out a little bit more on. Like, okay, talk about that ecosystem and and maybe give somebody like a simple, like you gave a simple framework of how to create, like, what types of content? Let's talk about distribution, cause, like I know, I get that question a lot oh, I got this great thing and then they don't do anything with it or they don't know what to do with it, and I feel like that has to be part of the conversation.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. So let's use like a B2B client for this example, because I think it's a little bit easier to map it out. So, let's say, we created this video that is one of their customers telling this incredible story about how they've helped them. Well, we're also going to create a white paper that goes along with that, that dives into the specific problem as an industry as a whole right, and that's going to maybe live on LinkedIn, for instance. We're not even going to put the video on LinkedIn, maybe we're going to have the white paper just on LinkedIn. Then we're going to have some blog posts that talk about the similar project right. Then we're also going to have a social strategy that goes along with that. Then, at their trade show activations we're going to have in booth messaging right, we're going to have signage and banners that tell that same story, that are talking about that. Then maybe we're also going to have an infographic that's going to live on social media.

Speaker 3:

That's going to refresh after, after the time, right, because I think that's the other thing too is that these things shouldn't live for just one cycle, right? How do we go back and refresh it? So, in two months from now, we need to have one of these pieces of content, kick that cycle off again so that we're getting the maximum value of that investment Right, integrated into our search campaigns that we're running. Probably we should, because it's a really impactful thing and we can keep the general hygiene campaigns going. Our branded keywords are that, but we can layer in a small sub campaign, turn it on and then turn it off, and so that's all from just one video, right? And so you start to think about that of like okay, if we create a content ecosystem around each story that we're telling and you think about that more in that regard, it totally changes the game about how effective you can be concept, right, and digital or digital marketer Ryan Dice, or is it?

Speaker 2:

And like he talks about in community management and how to use social media. You have to take that piece of content, you have to break that piece of content up and put it all in all these things. What I heard from you is kind of a concept that I headed at, uh, at the beginning of this podcast was the customer journey lives off your website, right, everything you just said didn't include the website, like like all the examples were. You know, maybe the case study did, I don't know, but but, um, you know you said LinkedIn. So you're talking about building a full customer journey funnel or the things that you want them to hit all off page and then throwing it into ads, of kind of, uh, catching new attention and bringing them into this funnel that you're building. You're architecting across the internet, right, and how you want them to maybe touch these different spots.

Speaker 2:

And I think you need to do that and I think it's difficult and I would love for you to speak to that, because the biggest pushback I get on hey, you need to do videos, or you know, I've been like go hire a videographer. Or do you know somebody like, get on podcasts, like, like you need to create content. There's this framework that that we use, called seven, 11, four, so seven hours of content, uh, 11, see, see the brand 11 times on four different channels. Like, and it fits a lot of like our overarching strategy of what we're trying to do, and the number one best way to get there is to have someone consume your video, right, and also have someone be aware of your brand, right, and so I think videos work in two areas, but when someone goes to you, yeah, but that I don't have time for that. That's too difficult, like you know. I know we need to do it, but we're not doing anything like that, uh, like what?

Speaker 2:

how do you respond to that? How do you answer that? And like what data maybe, uh or case studies do you point to to say like you need to do this?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So, first and foremost, I get the struggle. You know, what's really interesting is, even us as an agency struggle to do it for ourselves because we're too close to it, and I think that that's where you know, this is one of the areas where I think outsourcing really is beneficial, because it allows somebody to come in who's objective, who can actually highlight what is the best version of reality that's not mired in the problems of every day, and so they're very focused on. Well, maybe they don't have the confidence to tell that story, and I think that's what it comes down to. A lot of we don't think it's gonna be that effective because we don't believe it ourselves to some degree, right, or there's doubt.

Speaker 3:

But for a lot of our clients, we do top of mind awareness surveys on a regular basis. So we're either taking the survey data that they already are producing or we're doing our own survey where we're tracking year over year as we're doing these campaigns, and what I would say is that for the vast I mean 95% of them, we're seeing huge incremental jumps in awareness and in positivity. Right, if we look at brand favorability scores, the more that we are in market with a really authentic message, the more. Those scores are going to move up just from the advertising. Nothing at the underlying company level has changed. It's not like they've changed their customer satisfaction, training or anything like that. All we're doing is presenting a version of reality to their customer. That is then being internalized and is translating to a positivity score. So it's really incredible when you think about it that way of like, we don't need to change anything about actually how we do business. We just need to change how we tell people we do business.

Speaker 2:

Man, like, how aware are people of your services? If people are making a selection of something you offer and you're not in that top of mind like category of the selection process, you're not going to make it through the rest of it, right? So people got to have your attention. And another thing that you said. That's really interesting. I made this connection in my head. It might not be completely relevant to your point but I thought I would share. It is the reason that people are not doing it is because they don't know how right and they need an expert to come in and say here's how we're doing it. There's like the fear of like I don't know how to do it, it's too difficult. That's where frustration or sorry, not frustration, what is it called when you don't do something you know you need to do Procrastination, procrastination. See, I can't talk today.

Speaker 3:

Thank, you, we're Alan. We're helping each other out, so we're going to get there.

Speaker 2:

We're going to get this message across to anyone that's listening. So, um, procrastination is the fear of not knowing how to do something. And then, from what I've read and I'm not saying this is like the end all be all, but it resonated with me that either you, you're telling yourself in your head that I'm going to get this, I'm going to do this last minute and I'm going to get it done and I'm Superman or I'm not going to give myself enough time to do it and if I fail, then it's okay. I'm not going to give myself enough time to do it and if I fail, then it's okay. And that's where, like that is like, when I heard that, that is like crazy to me, that that's where procrastination comes and you just got to get started and you got to do it. And then, relating back to what we're talking about, is, if you don't know how to do it, but you know you need to do it, reach out to someone like Owen, like, reach out to someone that's done it and they can help you. And, to your point, um, having an objective person, look at your own brand, because anybody that's managing their own brand, like you said before, is too close to it. And I also think a lot of these big brands, to be honest, are eating off of the, the logo value, the brand value that they've created, and they're not doing anything original and they don't want to rock the boat and it's just kind of the safe harbor mentality. And I think that newer companies are starting to eat the lunch of these bigger brands because they're more nimble, they can navigate, they're taking risks and the thing that I hear, not like publicly, is a lot of the big brands, a lot of the big consulting groups, a lot of the big firms. No one wants to use them, but nobody ever got fired from hiring IBM or whatever that ad was, uh, years ago.

Speaker 2:

Like, so, so, so, like you need to take risks If you know you need to do something. Like if you know you need to like lose weight, like right, like maybe it's a health thing, maybe it's a, it's the summer thing, whatever it is like, and you don't have accountability on yourself. That's why personal trainers are exploding through the roof, like imagine what that person's job is like from the 1950s. I'm going to go to the gym and someone I'm going to talk to. I heard this somewhere on a podcast. It was just hilarious, but it was like like that person's just there to hold you accountable and like, spot the weights for you.

Speaker 2:

Even if that's what it takes, it still will work Right, and you need to reach out to someone that can help you with strategy and has done it before and like the thing that. That I think that that well, at least from our experience, that that I have a lot of experience with is I've worked with industries in all different, like all different industries, all different kinds of people, all different experiences, and I can aggregate those experiences to kind of go here's where we should start and then, like, based on data, we'll do that, but this will kind of keep you out of the ditch. And I know um at, uh, f P W media it's it's the same way over the last 12 years Like there's probably stuff that you've tried that's fallen flat on his face, and then there's other stuff that happens, and then the crazy thing is the stuff that works on this platform or video that falls flat. We'll work over on this one, right, and then so, like there's a lot of like data analytics and and and testing it. And the thing that I love about digital marketing and and uh, data-driven marketing is if you ran a billboard or a TV ad or whatever traditional media, you let that sucker run and it's just like. I hope it works right. Maybe you did that market research, like you're saying.

Speaker 2:

I think the referencing, the brand lift, is incredibly important. I think people don't do that enough for the brand awareness. But with digital you can see how people are responding and you can iterate on the fly. So you're not buying a flight of impressions or whatever. You're managing that experience and that process and you can also test a ton of different samples of stuff and we get into AI and whatever.

Speaker 2:

But, like, you can test a ton of stuff, figure out what's working, customize that message, personalize that message for different people, and you can start with something basic and then you can build on that.

Speaker 2:

But, like, the message I'm trying to communicate is you just got to get started and you can start with something basic and then you can build on that. But, like, the message I'm trying to communicate is you just got to get started and you need to find an expert that can help you do that. If you know this is something you need to do find some way to get some accountability to to get going, whether it's internally, externally, whatever. I don't know if you had any thoughts on that. I was kind of just on a tangent there, but on a soapbox, because I feel like a lot of people know what they need to do and even when I talk to them, oh, and they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I know I need to do that. Then I'm like, well, why aren't you doing it? Then, right, like there's a disconnect there. I don't know if you have any thoughts on this.

Speaker 3:

Well, a hundred percent I mean I had a. I think it's also framing what is failure, right Cause I think it's getting people comfortable with the fact of like failure inside a campaign is actually a really good thing, because it means net, net are. We're going to kill that part of it and we're going to do something else, because you know we have a plan that 50% of these things aren't going to work and we're going to kill them off as they don't work, and then we're going to just concentrate our resources on what is connecting, what is resonating. I had a conversation with a client a couple of days ago that's really struggling with their Amazon sales and so forth, and we did an analysis and I said at best, 50-50, this is ever going to work for you. Here's what we're going to try. We're going to talk in two weeks and I may tell you this is not going to be an effective sales channel for your product. It's too crowded, your margins are too low. It's just not going to work.

Speaker 3:

And that's what my team told me, and I think you've got to have partners that are comfortable saying that to you too, right? Especially when we're talking about storytelling, it's like you may go in a direction and you do all of the research and you have something that lands really flat. You immediately need to be prepared to pivot and launch something else. Right, so it's being nimble, it's doing that. It's it's embracing your brand as a challenger brand, even if you're established. Right, challenger brands are called that for a reason because they're taking those risks. They're doing that, and if you are measuring the analytics on the back end, like you talked about, and have a really good process for doing so, you're never taking so much risk that you can't unwind it. Right. You're taking sort of educated risk. You know that you're going to go in a certain direction, but you're going to quickly pull it back if it doesn't work and go in a different direction, and then, by and large, those campaigns over a year are going to perform way better than something that's playing it way safe.

Speaker 2:

A couple of things on that. I love it is fail fast, right, fail fast and then and then kill that. And when you find something better, don't go backwards, right, like, don't don't go backwards and try something else because that you've already tried, unless you're doing it in a different way. Like you gotta keep pushing forward and and challenging. What is it? Elon musk, every time he comes up with the new space shuttle, he burns the last space shuttle, like it's like we're not going backwards, right, as soon as it's operational, like any, I mean, right, you can, there's no going back, you've got to push it. You've got to gate what you're doing and push it forward.

Speaker 2:

But I know a lot of people get scared and then they go back, right, they're like let me go back to traditional, let me go back to whatever was working 20 years ago. It's not going to work anymore, right, if you tested it. It's not going to work anymore, right, like if you tested it, it doesn't work, keep going. And that's why you want to do measured tests and track that data and keep pushing forward. The thing that I was going to ask you and I'm losing my train of thought here is I'm sure I'll remember it here in a second, but why don't I open up the floor? If there's anything that we didn't talk about and cover that you think is valuable, uh, I would love to give you a floor to just communicate that to to anyone listening.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think one of the only things that we didn't really touch touch on is what, what happens when this goes wrong. Right, how and how do we prevent that? Because it can. There's a risk. The more risk you take, the more risk you're taking. And I want to go back to the very beginning, which is brands go wrong and get in hot water when they alienate their current customers.

Speaker 3:

And I think that that's really happened right over the last five years.

Speaker 3:

And when we talk about, you know, causes, I always want to be really careful of that. When we, when we do cause quote, unquote, cause-based marketing, we're really doing problem-based marketing. It's it's even if it's that dramatic example with with the Lionhearted project that is not objectionable to anybody within their audience. Right, even though it's a very intense subject, it's a very safe subject for us to talk about. And so that I think is really important is, especially for a brand that's starting off, that can't necessarily afford to take a big hit. Make sure that the storytelling you're doing is also safe to your customers. I don't care what the world says, I care about what your core customer says, right, and if you show them a message or you speak to them in a certain way, that's offensive to them your core constituent you're cooked. So it's all goes back to really understanding who is your audience and making sure that you're always putting them on that pedestal and really speaking to them in the way that they want to be talked to.

Speaker 2:

So the yeah, the Bud Light, or whatever it was, campaign was-. Great example Right Like don't alienate your base. If you're going to do something like that, you should probably test it in a small market pilot program. See how people respond. Maybe I can't imagine-.

Speaker 3:

Which they did. I mean that really wasn't a wide campaign to their, I guess, credit on that. But it takes somebody getting a hold of it.

Speaker 2:

Someone getting a hold of it and blowing it up.

Speaker 3:

There's no such thing as test markets in today's world, right? I mean not like there used to be, because everybody has a cell phone and so you could test it in middle of nowhere, Iowa, it doesn't matter. One person with a cell phone can make it worldwide in a second. So again it's. It's doing things for a purpose, right? I think it all comes back to what is the purpose of what we're saying. Are we chasing a trend? Are we saying something because we think it's the right thing to do, or are we saying something because it's adding value to our customers and that's the litmus test.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, and that helped me remember my thought. My thought was what are you trying to solve? What are you trying to achieve? What does good look like at the end of that? Right, and a great call-out too.

Speaker 2:

If they tested that, it just went viral because someone got a hold of it, went viral because someone got ahold of it. You know, maybe they needed to do the, the, the, just, uh, bring people in and ask them the question, right, if they're core customers, because I feel like that could have been addressed if they would have also thought, like, what, where? What's the end result of where this could happen. Like they think, oh, we're just going to grow this small segment of market share and they didn't look at, like, the underlying impact. So I think it falls in with what you're saying. But like, when you're creating these videos and when you're spending this money and you're like, oh, you know, a high production, like the campaign towards veterans right, veterans right, or? Or people that are that are, that are suffering with PTSD, or anything like that, you're speaking, you know what you're trying to achieve. Like, you understand who you're trying to reach and you want to communicate something in a different way and you understand that how it's going to fit in and and how you say like it's going to be safe to to what you're doing. And also I want to pull through the the return on investment, or even value, that a video can create, cause a lot of people will look at well, this is expensive, right, like this is going to cost a lot, it's going to take a bunch of time and my people's resource I always get asked that how much of my people's resources is going to take. I'm like, well, the more you're involved, like the better, because it'll be more authentic and it's more helpful. And you know things that we don't know, even if we know about your business and they look at all that like physical cost.

Speaker 2:

But if you measured it against, like the campaign you talked about previously, what the impact could be and like how they sell something from that video, like you got to you got to look at the bigger picture. Like you talked about going back to the ecosystem concept and and how this fits in and knowing how people consume content, I mean, how do you get your story out there, like, and I mean let's end on maybe what are some questions that people could ask themselves to help self-identify if they need to. I mean, people are going to be like I need to do more video, and I think we all do, but, like it's hard to look at yourself. Like you said, it's great to bring in a third party and they'll give you that objective view. But how does someone even start to assess?

Speaker 2:

Okay, like I am doing video, or you know, like, how do you look at the full brand not just video, but the full brand story and analyze that? And I know you talked about it a little bit at the beginning, but I want to just encapsulate it into a thoughtful message, a thoughtful short message. How would you do that?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So really kind of short and sweet which is across if you're the brand thinking about internally. Are we offering value to our customers across all of our advertising touchpoints? And I think for most people the answer is no, or we could be offering more. And again it's going back to where we started, which is customer experience. If we are just yelling at people saying, buy our stuff which is essentially what most advertising is, it's like, hey, buy our stuff, right, that is not adding value to them on a personal level at all. So if we're not adding value across every touch point, there's opportunity to have a higher return on investment from the advertising we're doing Because inherently, the more value we add at each interaction, the more likely we know from a data-driven perspective that that person is going to buy.

Speaker 2:

I love that. One follow-on question for you when you're talking about internet marketing what's one unknown secret of internet marketing?

Speaker 3:

It's a little bit cynical, but use your own first party data to validate what the platforms are telling you is true. I think that a lot of people forget that almost every advertising platform that you give money to is a completely garden and you are assuming that what they are telling you is exactly accurate. While they have every incentive to give you the rosiest picture, you need to have every incentive to look at the most negative picture from a performance perspective. So whatever Google is telling you or whatever Meta is telling you is true on your ad performance, you need to make sure that you're seeing that come through on website visits, on click to purchase, on everything, because at the end of the day, they're going to take the most optimistic view and you need to take the most pessimistic view.

Speaker 2:

Some of these platforms just got in trouble for that. So what Owen's speaking to-?

Speaker 3:

And they will continue to.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, I mean there's and what is the internet theory? There's something like 60% and increasing of the internet is all bots, right? There's a lot of conversation about that. We'll save that for another time. So, Owen, how do people best follow your work? Get in touch with you, find out more about what it is you do and the knowledge and authority that you're sharing.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely yeah. So great way to connect with me is on LinkedIn or on Instagram at Owen Garrity on both platforms also. Owengarritycom. And then on the business side, if you're looking for an engagement or some help with your marketing, you can find us at fpwmediacom and then fpwmedia on all the major social channels.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on and talking about storytelling. My name is Matt Bertram. I just launched MatthewBertramcom. The agency's growing. The agency's running on its own. They're doing some great work. I am stepping into more of a consulting advisory, fractional CMO style work for B2B businesses, so check out what I'm doing there. I am launching a couple of new books here shortly and another new podcast. I've decided we're going to go with a new podcast and keep this 12-year running podcast same name, so people can find it. I have taken all of the old topics and used AI to categorize them and summarize them into chapters in a new book that I'm launching called the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. Of course, and check all that out. Thank you for listening. Until the next time. My name is Matt Bertram. Bye-bye for now.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Matt Bertram

Host