Useful Content Podcast with Itir Eraslan

when you look at the marketing world and the type of marketing tactics that you can do, probably there's like, I can easily count 100 things that you can do to grow your brand, but it depends on. What's my strategy? What's my budget? And what's my resources with resources meaning that who's the team who's going to execute this? if you don't have the team in place to do that, you cannot do email marketing, PR, influencer marketing. You cannot do them all. You have to pick your playground. Hello, and welcome to the useful content podcast. And today we have a brand new teacher in our useful content classroom. Iter Erslan. Hi Iter.

Hi, Juma. How are you?

I'm doing, doing pretty well, doing pretty well. And I'm happy to have you on today. And I know we have lots to talk about, but brand strategy and about marketing. But before we get into that, could you please share with the people what you do and how you help your clients make useful content. Mm hmm.

thanks for inviting me, by the way. Uh, and I'm, I hope that I will be able to, um, invite you soon, very soon as well, because I have a lot of burning questions about content and video production and so on. Uh, so, um, I'm, I ha I own a boutique marketing company. Uh, I. Try not to say it agency because the thing that people understand from agency is completely different.

And, uh, and since I founded my company, which has been, which was seven years ago, I always say I'm not a marketing agency. Uh, but what I do is I'm a brand strategy, uh, and marketing expert. And I partner with brands, uh, to. Grow their brands, uh, meaning that I do a brand strategy and I helped, um, uh, manage their brand teams, build their internal external teams. Uh, but I also work with, uh, the industry experts in, in branding, visual identity and tone of voice. So when I do the strategy work, depending on the needs of the customer client, uh, we also work. Like an agency, although I say I'm not an agency, but which means that we develop the branding, the visual identity, the tone of voice. We also build websites, but this is where I partner with the. Some of the best people, uh, freelancers, solopreneurs or studios, and that I could find in the world,

So what do you prefer? Do you prefer to do the thinking part of the business, which is the brand strategy part? Or do you prefer to do like the creative doing part of the business?

uh, that's, uh, um, this, that's the biggest dilemma of probably any marketer because, uh, there has been some times when I tried strategy only, and there has been some times where I do strategy and execution. And it's always with mixed feelings because when you only do a strategy, you Executing it because you just, you know, just let it after like two or three months of strategy work, you let some, someone else do it. Uh, and somehow you want to be a part of it. If you are so left out, you just want to be involved in and still help the brand. Uh, but when you are too much into execution, then there is this. It's everyday tasks, operational things, people are asking sometimes to me, like, are you the graphic designer? Can I ask you my graphic design needs?

So, so anyway, you know, so. It's a dilemma and how I find the best ratio for me. I'm not in that best ratio right now with my business is a 70 percent strategy and 30 percent execution. And why I need that execution is the feeling, the feeling of seeing that execution to come to life is what makes a marketer so happy for me.

It's the same. It's that thing. Uh, but it's also makes me fresh and up to date as a marketer when I execute.

Yeah. Yeah. And this is good for all the, all the, uh, agency owners, well, agency owners and all the people out there who. Give this type of service for them to hear because we kind of in a similar position where we do strategy, but we started in the execution end of it. when you are somebody who is the doer of the things like the, after it's all the brand strategies all done, and then you have to do the visuals, do the actual, um, brand thing.

And then you do that for a long time. You get pretty good at that. But when you go up the rungs. Into the strategy part of it, you still have some desire, like how Christo says he's a recovering graphic designer and in the same way, you still have some desire to put your hands in the stuff and do a little bit of it.

So I can understand the tug and pull between those things, but that's 70, 30 seems like a very good ratio to have, you know, I I'd love to have that, you know, that's, that's, that's good stuff. So in terms of the, you've, you've said before, you know, That branding comes first and then marketing comes second.

Why do you feel, or how do you know this to be true?

So for people who sometimes confuse branding with visual identity and visual branding, branding is actual strategy, part of brand strategy, marketing strategy, part of business. So when I say branding first, I mean that it's the strategy part of the business. So as a business, you have not only as a marketing, but you have.

Business strategy, right? Like you have a business strategy and that business strategy cascades down to a sales strategy, to a marketing and brand strategy and to a finance strategy. So, uh, that business strategy shows the brand marketing person to understand where they want to focus on. Meaning that let's say the business goal is to. You know, increase the woman's share, uh, in the markets. And then which it's cascades, cascades down to brand strategy saying that we have to win with her, and then you have strategy priorities underneath as a marketing team to try to communicate to women more so that That will eventually change the, uh, marketing sales. Uh, and, uh, then why we need branding first, which means like why we need brand strategy first, because if you don't have a brand strategy, there's a possibility that. Not a possibility, but a high possibility that you're going to do mistakes when you are making your marketing investment, which means like just think about yourself.

If you start the day saying that, okay, I have to start the day with a post on LinkedIn without thinking that why I'm posting on LinkedIn. What's the purpose? Why am I doing it without doing that? If you start the day With a tactical thing, then a day would pass. But if a year passes like that, without knowing what the exact, why exactly you are doing that thing, there's a chance that this will not culminate to the end goal that you are trying to reach. That's why it's always helpful to start with a strategy and then build a marketing plan based on that strategy. Uh, there's one more thing, uh, that I need to add here is that for a marketer to be To have a much easier life, let's say in the team, uh, it's always helpful to have a strategy because once you have that strategy, if someone comes to you and says, we have to push PR now, because we have to push it because you know, people have an idea of how marketing can be done. And if someone comes to you saying that you have to push with PR and with the specific magazines, then if you have a strategy, you are like, Why are we pushing it? You know, you can question the things, tactical things that comes to you on a day to day basis. Uh, that's why a strategy work always helps, uh, the marketer execute better.

Mm

Yeah. So, so your strategy helps you validate the tactical things. It helps you, say that I'm doing this for this particular purpose, and so if you, you know, have a budget, let's say you have a limited budget, something, let's suppose your budget is 1 million to spend on marketing, then you would not waste any of that money doing things that you're not supposed to do.

Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, exactly. I'll give you an example here that will help people understand better. I was talking to a potential client, uh, and they are in the cosmetics, beauty business. And they, two years ago, they spent 2 million, exactly 2 million on influencer marketing. Uh, and they couldn't see any return because they think that cosmetics and That's, that's the, you know, format and that's the standard.

Every cosmetics and beauty brand, they are investing into influencer marketing. And they say that all the money that we have in marketing, let's focus on one thing and it should be influencer. And we are going to do that. Nothing else. But they couldn't see any return because the reason that they couldn't see any return, the brand, the branding, the visual identity, the strategy, tone of voice, it was not there.

It was all around and it was so complicated that it was the wrong time to invest in influencer marketing. But I mean, for them to know it, they had to, first of all, start with a strategic work. And from that strategic work, they could have come up with, okay, we're going to work on the branding. We, Make sure that our visual identity and tone of voice is correct.

And we know how do we want to position the brand. And then maybe they can decide influencer marketing would be the only path that they're going to pursue. But without doing the strategy work, uh, they cannot do that. So. I think it's a must have for every single brand to start with a strategy work without jumping into marketing.

And that's how I work as well. I never do executional work before I do the strategy work.

helps tell you if you're making the correct decisions with regard to your marketing and communications. And so you have a guide. You have something that tells you. And then, of course, you can go back and assess those things and see if they're matching up with the overall strategy to know if you're heading in the right direction.

Yeah. Okay. That's great. Let's talk. Well, you know what? Let's talk a little bit about your, your, cause you have a podcast as well. And that's in the marketing meeting. You've been doing that since 2001. Yeah.

I wish it was 2021.

missed out two decades. You've been doing that since 2021.

like on top of the world in the podcast.

So 2021 is when you, you started it, right? So, so, so I couple of questions about that and it is tied into my question about your branding. So why did you start the podcast? That's the first question. And how has that affected your, your brand, your company?

Um, I started the podcast because. I wanted to interview people and I wanted to connect with people. Uh, the reason that the podcast is named as the marketing meeting is that, uh, I worked for almost 20 years at Nike and we used to have on Tuesdays, we used to have marketing meetings where every function. In the marketing department comes and shares their thoughts and opinions. And we do like a round table and we work on the plans. We explore ideas and so on. So actually, uh, after leaving Nike and starting up my own company, the first thing I recognized that I missed those interactions because I, as a brand strategist, I only see the business from one angle sometimes, and I have to connect to the PR people.

I need to connect to digital people, uh, to digital, uh, media and to people like you, you know, who are the experts in content so that I can learn and understand more and I can grow my, um, idea about the world. So that's it. That, the reason that it started is that I wanted to duplicate the marketing meeting, but not with only one team, but I decided that I want to meet with the experts in each function. That's why I started with like, I started interviewing PR people. Then the next week it was events. The next week it was somebody from social media. So I was, you know, meeting that within the years. As long as I could sustain it because there has been some times that I couldn't sustain it when the business got very busy or when I moved to another country, there has been some ups and downs, but I recognize that I, I just want to explore whatever I want to explore at that time.

For example, The beginning of this year, it was mainly AI and I was only interviewing people who are into AI.

And then after like eight episodes, I was like, okay, that's enough. Now I can go back to meeting some other people. So, uh, yeah, basically to answer your question, it was because of my curiosity about marketing and where and how it evolves.

Yeah.

about how it affected your brand, but let me just say, I love the premise of, of the podcast. So I love how you took your, your former career at Nike and these Tuesday marketing meetings, and you want to have you a company, maybe by yourself at the time, and you wanted to have your own marketing meetings, but you said, you know what, let me have it with some people who.

Don't work with me, other experts in the industry doing this. That's the first thing I noticed that that's great. That's a great premise because many times people don't think about the premise of the podcast that they have, they don't go through that part of it. And the second thing I love about it is that you you're treating it like the evolution of a company as well of marketing itself.

So if marketing is evolving in this direction, then you can have. Um, eight episodes at the beginning of the year, just talking about AI, because that's the thing, the emphasis inside of marketing at that point in time, you got your fill of that. And then you, you kind of go into some other emphasis, which I love that too.

So you give yourself flexibility. So at a company, like, let's just suppose you're working at another company, like not Nike, but someplace else on the other place, that would probably be the internal conversation. How can we utilize AI? And then you, you focus on that. So that's, that's great. I just want to say that as.

Great premise and a great way to approach how you choose the topics for your podcast. Now you can talk about how it affected your, your overall brand,

Um, the first thing that I would say is that I, some of the people, most of the people that I interview are really good connections and good friends now. And with some of the people, probably like six, seven people, I'm also doing, um, work. Um, we do projects, for example, there was this creative brand director that I interviewed as the third person on the podcast back in 2021 and we started working together.

And now he's my branding partner when it comes to visual identity. So we partner together on projects. So I think that's, that it's really helped me to increase my connections also overall, because when you have a podcast, It's easier to approach to people if the people that you want to connect to, uh, because rather than me asking them, Oh, I want to meet you.

I want to grab your thought brain, uh, for whatever it's only for me, then it's quite a little bit of me centric. But when I say to people, I want to learn from you, it's damper, uh, you know, focus. So that's why. It's a very powerful way to connect with people. Uh, and I love that. And I love getting curious about their work, getting curious about what they post, what they write, sometimes like lectures from a university.

So it helps me build, um, better connections globally, let's say.

All right, great. So now that we've talked a little bit about you and what you're into, let's get into, uh, brand strategy and marketing planning.

Let's talk about brand strategy first, and you can take that step by step and explain what it is and how you do it.

Yeah. So every, uh, brand strategist or every marketer, because every marketer is a brand strategist, every marketing, uh, manager or director or CMO, they have to be a brand strategist.

There's no, you know, question about that. So the role of a brand strategist or a marketer is to start with brand strategy first. And that's brand strategy process is sometimes. Has a template in some companies and sometimes it's just like done irregularly on how it's, how the marketer knows, you know, so everyone has a different style.

What I'm trying to say is everyone has a different style. Some people like to work with mission, vision, purpose, and so on. Whereas in my templates, I don't get stuck with mission, vision, purpose. If the client wants that, of course I work on that. But. I'm just like, what's our business call and what I need to do to, to, help the company reach that business goal as a marketing person. So there's the goal. And then I need to find out our, my positioning. I need to find out who am I targeting as the customer. So this, these are the things that I want to go into. It's always starts on my side. A brand strategy work always starts. By getting curious about the industry, about the market, about the customer, about the, about the competition. So it's all about, Like getting extremely curious about that world of doing business. So what I do is that I do, first of all, I deep dive into the markets and industry and try to gather as much as possible insights, what's going on, what are the things, what are the threats, what's, what's going to happen in a few years, probably who are the players and what type of communication does those players do and how they position themselves, that's, that's And the second phase is go and meet with the internal team one by one, meaning that I meet with the salesperson, I meet with the finance person, and I meet with innovation or product person one by one, and I asked them what are the problems that they see, what are the things that they see as an opportunity.

And I also gather insights from them. And the third phase is. The best phase, because by the time I reached this third phase, everything gets so complex and too much that I feel like I'm going to throw the towel as a brand strategist because there's like too much data and I don't know what am I, what am I going to do? And then third phase is I meet with the customers, which means. It can be a potential customer, or it can be the real customer of the business, or it can be the customer of another brand. So those consumer, I call it sometimes consumer or customer, whatever, but those insights sessions should be about not asking questions directly about that specific brand that I'm working on, but it should be about. Their lives, what are the problems that they are facing? How are they living? What are the things that they do in a sales process? For example, how is their working? If it's a B2B, it's of course, it's very much into how they do work. But if it's a B2C brand, I start asking about their daily habits, their insights.

Why do they, why are. They not doing this or not doing that. Anyway, it's like a very big deep dive insights only asking that person about their lives, not too much about the brands that they use. Uh, and that's after that customer phase, um, I always get together with the whole team, meaning that I have like people all around the company, if possible, and we sit together and I asked those similar questions to the, to the team without revealing anything yet. And I asked them, Why

do you think customers are asking from, um, buying from us? Why do you think they are not buying from us and they are buying from the competition? And, you know, it's like a big day of workshop that we put together everything on the wall, and then it's like, um, you know, um, there's the human design, uh, work sometimes they, they do.

It's like, I'm doing a similar thing to, um, to, to this workshops. And then after that workshop. I sit alone and I start gathering things. So for example, from phase one, which is the market industrial competition, uh, research, I put like everything on the, on the wall, which is like, for example, sometimes 10 things or sometimes 20 things.

And I pick the first top three or four, the things that will really matter. To this business, like the things that I see in the industry. And then the second phase, I go to the internal insights and I pick a few top things that I got as an insight from there. And I also got insights from the customers. So I put them in a order. Which will culminate to the strategy work. It's easy to explain it like this, but this is where the expertise or knowledge base of a brand strategy comes in. And at the end of the day, this whole work of I do it in two months, this whole work of two months. Cascades down to only one page, which is the brand house.

And that brand house has, what's our goal as a business? Uh, who is the customer who is the target customer that we want to reach? Um, what's our positioning in the market? How should we position our brands? And. In order to reach all of these, what are the top three priorities for the brand team, meaning that for the marketing team to focus on, as I gave an example from the very beginning, if the business goal is to reach, to increase women's share, uh, in our sales, then it will have a win with her brand priority, uh, as, uh, on that brand house page. And that's where the brand strategy work. And once you have the brand house, now you are able to start doing marketing planning. it's, it's,

a little bit long explanation, but

No,

it was a little bit clear.

It's good. It's good. It's good. I think it seems like an important part. I guess this will be done also pertain to marketing later on. It seems like an important part of the process, like three P's important part of the process is finding out for the internal team. Interviewing them, finding out what are their views on the brand, the specific things, what affects it, it's at.

All those different things. But also are you saying that you talk to the customers as well and in that field, right? And I guess what you're doing is you're trying to align to see how well those two things align,

Yes, exactly.

Where, if it actually, what the people in the business think that they're doing, and also what the customers are actually seeing is happening and seeing how those things align.

Is that a big part of the process?

Yes, exactly. It's like checking. The internal teams checking external things happening and also checking what the customer is doing actually. And sometimes those customer interviews, people think that if the quantity is higher, it's always better. And I used to think that's. When I started my business, but it's not the case actually, because this is not at the end of the day, a customer research study. This is a customer interview to help me to build the brand strategy. Uh, of course you're going to have other customer research. You do qualitative, quantitative analysis and so on, but you do it for different purposes. The thing that I do is for the purpose of brand strategy. So I usually meet with six to seven. Different types of customers. And if I do the recruitments of those customers, well, then even sometimes after three or four, I'm just like, okay, I'm, I know, I now know what's going on here.

Yeah. Yeah. And so those customers are specifically talking about the brand as we're trying to get insights into the, what they think or feel, or as Martin Neumayer would say, the gut feeling about the, about the company. So that's what, that's what we're looking to get into. Yeah.

Yeah. And usually I don't ask questions about the company specifically or the brands. I. Actually don't need to ask those questions because I'm curious about what the customer is facing. What's the problem

that they have in their life. If it's like interviewing for a cosmetics brand, they don't need to know what cosmetics brands I'm interviewing for, because I'm not going to ask questions about what they feel about the specific brand. I want to know the reason that that girl. Or that woman is using that specific type of cosmetics. Probably the scent reminds her of her grandmother's scent, something like that. You know what I

mean? It's just like, it's nothing related with the company or the brand is related. Only the focus is only the consumer there.

right, right. Okay. I get you. I get you. Okay, great. Excellent. Excellent. So that's the first phase. That's the brand strategy part of it. So you gather all, as you said, you get overloaded with all this data coming to the end. And now you want to take this data, these insights, the things that you've gathered, both from X from customers externally and the internal team.

And what do you do with that? What does, what does that turn into as you move into your marketing planning?

The marketing planning starts with the brand priorities because in the brand house, which includes our goal, our target customers, our positioning as a brand, there is like brand priorities as well, which means you may want to win with her, you may want to ignite a different type of, uh, customer segment or whatever.

So that brand priority is. The thing that would help the marketer to build the marketing plan. If it's like, if it's a completely new brand, it's usually the brand priority is about increasing brand awareness. So increasing brand awareness, what are we doing first? We need to work on the logo. Or we need to work on the visual identity.

So I'm just giving those examples. It, it doesn't need to be specific like this, but this, how, you know, people understand it. And then the second thing, increase brand awareness. What are the channels that our customer is hanging out and where can we use, which channels can we reach out to them to increase awareness and what are the tactics to increase that awareness?

So, you know, That's brand priority. Usually I work with like top three priorities and that each priority has a plan underneath.

If it's increasing brand awareness, I should have a few things listed that I want to do this year. And the next step is after we decide on the things, uh, I need to put them in a calendar. Uh, first of all, we are going to. Make sure, for example, if it's like to increase brand awareness, watching what can you do? You can give ads, right? Um, but when the brand is not visually appealing or the tone of voice or the copywriting is not the right yet, then. You should postpone giving ads to increase brand awareness to the second phase.

First of all, you need to fix the visuality, the copywriting, the tone of voice and everything, because then you are ready for the stage to give, to push your brand to the stage with some ads. So, you know, it's all depends on. The status of the brands. Uh, and then that's the planning phase and that planning phase.

Usually, uh, as I mentioned, it's, it's got, uh, feeded by the brand priorities. And it's also got feeded by, uh, the channels that we are in the new channels that we want to approach to. It's like an actually cross functional planning. It should have like PR in it. It should have media planning, events, grassroots community building. And. Sometimes some of the parts are high, some of the parts are low, which means. might be investing in organic growth rather than a pay that growth.

So it depends on how you want to use your dollars depending on where the brand is at right now.

Um, usually most of the brands say that, okay, we have to start working with the PR and I say, Yeah, maybe this year we're going to do only this amount of PR activity, but it's only because of this event. But other than that, you don't need to give PR yet. But for this to happen, uh, you need to again have strategy. What's the strategy that we are trying to achieve right now?

yeah, that's good for those who are, you said PR as public relations. Right. So, um,

Sorry about that.

but, but for some people who might not market us, who might not know, and like it went, some of the companies we work with, they, uh, they, they call it, um, CSR, which is, it's this, I don't know if it's the same, it's corporate social responsibility, which is.

It's basically a bit of P. R. You go out and you help the community or you have these programs or whatever it is, and because we tend to work with people in energy companies who have to look good, so they have a lot of those type of programs going on and so on. So, okay, so great. So we we've established this marketing plan.

How does content, uh, Kind of fit into all of this. Cause I know you might look at the, the, make your brand strategy. And then based on your brand strategy, you start the marketing planning and you realize that, Oh, we need to do a blended strategy. We need to run some ads and then we need to do some organic content.

How does the brand strategy influence directly the type of content that you then make?

Mm-Hmm. So the type of content is not the type of content that your competition is doing. The type of content is the content that the tar your target customer is looking for. And. Also it's the type of content that fits to your brand visually and verbally. Uh, so that's why it's again, content marketing strategy starts with a strategy because the content marketer needs to know who we are targeting, what exactly we are trying to say and what value or problem, what value my product will bring to the life of a customer and also what problem. My, uh, brand and my product is solving in the lives of that customer. So without knowing these, it's not possible to create any content. And as I mentioned at the very beginning, the content that a brand should create should not be directed or should not be briefed by the content that the biggest competitor in that industry is doing. Because usually it, because their targets and their aims. Will probably be different than what you are doing. And there are also budgets would probably be different than the budget that you have as a company. So that's why content marketing is also getting their feedback and brief. Once the strategy is based. And when I talk about planning, I think it's important. One thing that I need to add is that a marketer, when a marketer is doing a marketing planning, they have so many levers in their hands, like so many things that they can use. One of them is public relations. The other one is social media, marketing, paid ads, organic growth through influencer, marketing, content, marketing.

Thank you. At every channel, like social media or influencer marketing even, and then you have to lay these on the, on the table and see, okay, I'm going to spend like 10 to content marketing. I'm going to spend one to influencer marketing this year because I'm not ready yet. To take the stage and I'm not going to spend anything to public relations this year because I want to make sure that I'm making an organic growth in the marketplace with my useful content. And then you can decide how to use those levers depending on your strategy. Um, that's, that's how I approach planning.

I love that. So it's almost like you have a chart. Let's just suppose you have. Like a hundred points to allocate to. So, you know what I'm going to make, draw the example of, and I don't know if you can relate to this or not. It's like you have a game and you're building out a character and the character has several attributes and you have to put points into each of those attributes in order to build a

Oh yeah. Yes,

that you have something that needs the character to be strong, of course, you'd put a lot of attributes into the strength, a lot of points into the strength attribute.

And so. What the marketing plan is like that, if you know that you're going to have to get a lot of turnover, do a lot of sales, and maybe you want to invest in a lot of ads, maybe you want to invest in email marketing, maybe to, or if you want to grow your email marketing list, you might want to do some organic social that lead people back to, uh, or maybe run a competition or do some type of thing that cause.

So then you take, you know, Your, and I'm saying points not to make it sound good, but it really is like a budget thing. Uh, and you take that and you put the resources into the space or into the particular type of marketing tactic that you feel would have the greatest impact based on your brand strategy.

Is that what it's supposed to look like?

the reason that we need to do this is that. There's only too many things that you can do, right? I mean, like when you look at the marketing world and the marketing type of marketing tactics that you can do, probably there's like, I can easily count 100 by top of my mind, that 100 things that you can do to grow your brand, but it depends on. What's my strategy? What's my budget? And what's my resources with resources? Meaning that who's the team who's going to execute this? You know,

if you don't have the team in place to do that, you cannot do email marketing, PR, influencer marketing. You cannot do them all. You have to pick your playground.

And sometimes picking that playground gets, um, Defined as you start executing, you start executing things and you see some of the things are not working and you might switch, uh, on the way, okay, this path is not working for me, let's say email marketing, we don't see too much conversions, maybe we are doing a mistake or we need to spend more time to see some conversions, but let's also start to start, try. Another approach so that it goes hand in hand and we are not putting only our dollars to email marketing, let's say.

So if you don't know your strategy, those 100 things will come up from here and there from every team member that's a sitting in the team, like sales team, finance team, you're going to be, you know, when you start working in marketing, you're going to see that. Every person, including the families of those person have, will have an idea about how to do marketing. And that 100 list will become suddenly become 200, 300. And to be able to work with a, you know, good mind and to be able to really start the, do the things that matters, you have to pick your battle and you have to, Pick five things out of those a hundred things probably. And you have to communicate this with everyone that this is the path you are taking and you might try different things, but you are not going to try 10 things at the same time. You're going to try one or two new things at the same time.

Yeah. You know what you said earlier was very interesting. What I got from it is this, you, you talked about, uh, sometimes you discover what works when you start to execute, right.

Yeah. Yeah,

that when you execute in your tactics, it actually gives, uh, Feedback back into the brand strategy so instead of just a downflow, you actually get some kind of feedback when you start to put the thing into motion, like the market tells you certain things. You look at the data and then it feeds back into how you can adjust your brand strategy. Is that something that is true? Um,

Usually it's two ways. I mean, sometimes the strategy might get shifted a bit, uh, by as you, you know, execute, but usually as you execute strategy. You know, as people execute, people need to sometimes go back to strategy saying that what were we doing? I mean, who, who was the person that we were trying to communicate, but now who are we communicating to? Uh, so that's a reality check that needs to be done. Uh, by the marketing team, by the marketing leads, um, I think at every four or five months. Um, but not later than that.

Are there any things that in your experience that, that are initiatives that brands often overlook when planning the early strategy or their monthly strategy, and that could be something that could really be a game changer for them.

Yeah. The thing, the top thing that is, has, is overlooked is, uh, the timelines. Execution timelines, we always assume that we are going to build the new website in three months, and then if an agency comes and says, no, it's going to happen in five, six months, it's going to happen in five, six months. There's people, I mean, including myself still after going through so many websites, projects, or so many branding projects or campaigns. I know that things take, take time, but when you do planning, there's like over enthusiastic and excitement and, you know, um, passion flying around, uh, the board, you know, table and you say, okay, we're going to execute this in two months and we are going to be the best and so on. But then usually it takes four months.

So,

The top mistake, the top mistake is the timelines, uh, enthusiastic and, uh, passionate timeline planning.

Uh, you need a marketer for that, but you need to also question the day that the marketer is, you know, also saying, uh, and the second mistake that's been overdone is the budgets. Budgets are always over. Uh, yesterday I was sending the budget of one of my, um, clients, the yearly budget of my, one of my clients. That's the budget that's been spent since year to date, like from January till the end of October. And we are like, um, 5% Off like more, of course, I don't see any scenario that's you're under the budget. Uh, and I'm just like, okay, this is good. I mean, 5 percent over the budget is fine. So the thing that you have to know that you're going to be over budget. If it's not over 20%, it's okay. Uh, a good marketer knows that a 5 percent or 10 percent off planning in terms of timelines and in terms of budget is fine, and they know how to live with it. And that's the same with the KPIs. I mean, the third thing that's overlooked is the people that they want to reach. If you target. To reach 1000 people, you usually reach 700 or 600, but that's all of these things happen because of the question mark of the board of, or the CEO about the marketing investment, they sometimes think that marketing is a waste of money.

It's just like, it's always spent, spent, spent. If the market search. In place in charge is not strong enough or is not, um, senior enough to guide the CEO or the founders. Uh, they, the path that they take is to give enthusiastic and passionate timelines, passionate budgets. And so on, uh, but a CEO and founder should always be okay if the budget is 10 percent up to 10 percent higher.

And if we are not able to hit the KPIs with a 10%, um, plus minus plus is always okay. Um, minus, um, The number is also, should be also good.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, I was just about to say it never comes in on the budget,

There's no time.

no time, never once you have budget left over, you find something to do with it, you find something to do with it. So that's, that's good. You know? And so I guess that the, the mistakes people make is that they should pay attention to the timelines and maybe there's, you know, ways that they can solve those things.

Pay attention to your budgets and pay attention to if you're hitting, you know, necessary KPIs.

and so on. Yeah.

Is there ever a case where you could see that things are not going well and you have to make adjustments? And how do you do that if something you realize, okay, this is not going too well here and you have to make adjustments?

As I mentioned, I'm in a marketing leader needs to do that checks with the strategy, uh, on a timely basis. And I assume that there's a strategy in place. In a marketing team and the marketing team is working against that strategy when they're executing and it's the marketing leaders responsibility to make sure that we are going towards that strategy. And it's usually during those times that we do the checks. That's something is going not wrong. I mean, you have to check the numbers, the budgets, the KPIs, or you have to check, for example, if there's a specific type of customer that you are, you have been trying to reach, if you aren't reaching them through the executions that you built, probably you have to switch your marketing planning, the things that you pick as a tactic is probably not working.

And then you have to, uh, you know, go through the plan once again. And make the adjustments. Usually it's the media plan. That's not working well because when you are doing ad spending, you have to have a media plan. And that media plan is very easy to measure if it's working or not working.

And where does, where actually you see that things are not working.

What are the common things that causes a breakdown in between the brand strategy or the brand strategies and maybe the marketing team? How can there be a disconnect there and what can we do to avoid these, these kinds of disconnects just in case that is

You mean, uh, disconnect between the brand strategy team and the marketing team,

Yeah. Mm-Hmm,

it's the same team actually. The marketing team is the brand strategy team. It's just that, uh, the marketing team's goals are starting from the brand strategy. So the person who works on building the brand strategy is sometimes the marketing manager is sometimes the marketing director. Uh, but for example, if you are working as a social media manager in a marketing team, maybe you are not the person who builds that strategy, but you. Should be aware and you should be a part of that strategy discussions when they are put in place. So it should not be only the marketing director who comes up with a strategy from her mind or from his mind and that dictates it to the team. The, all the team needs to know and needs, needs to be a part of the strategy work because that's. that's. where they need to, that's their compass, let's say.

Mm.

We can see the brand strategy work as a compass, uh, on where you are going to.

And that's what I wanted to get at is like sometimes at the, at the, let's just suppose at the, the managerial level or director level, that these things are planned and done, and then you kind of, kind of give it to the rest of the team. Okay, let's just do this stuff. And all they have is a sense of doing things, but they don't really have an idea.

About this brand strategy and everything that is required inside of that. So they can't make wise decisions, or maybe sometimes they decide on adjusting a tactic, but they don't know that this tactic really shouldn't be adjusted because it was planned in a certain way. So I guess what you're saying is that everyone who is involved in both the planning and the execution at some point should come together and talk about these, these big picture things.

Is that what

Yeah, for, for sure. Yeah, for sure. And any plan, like any campaign. For example, we decide to do so, uh, Black Friday is coming now for Black Friday. We need to do a campaign and it's going to be like a three weeks campaign. There will be like an entry that's the discount periods and so on. And even that campaign needs to get inspired. By the brand strategy, meaning that, okay, Black Friday is coming. What, who are, who were our target customers and what were the things that we are trying to reach and what are the KPIs that we are trying to build, uh, to keep as a brand. So every idea. That's been built around the, the, that campaign, every concept should relate to the brand strategy, meaning that if you are trying to target a specific segments of women, let's say that's campaign black Friday campaign should have a link to that specific persona. Customer persona that we are trying to reach. Otherwise, I mean, like I can easily kill any campaign plan if it's not working towards what, what we are trying to achieve. The thing that I'm trying to mention here is that a strategy work is hard to do it at the very beginning, but once you've done it correctly, it really helps you save budget time and also focus of the team that you are working with.

Uh,

All right. So we coming in for the finish here, ITER, and I wanted to share with the people something or the thought that you have about brand strategy. That is probably the most important thing that companies should know. If there was one rule or one principle that would overrule everything when it comes to brand strategy and maybe marketing planning later on, what would you want brands and companies to do?

Excellent.

the thing is time is very limited for every brands and if you don't do it now sooner or later, once your brand grows, you're going to need to do it. And the thing is that every brand is unique. You might be producing a very similar cosmetics cream. With all the other 10 or a hundred players in the market, but you still need to have a strategy because your brand, your team, your cream, or your product is completely different than the other products in the market.

Even if it's not different than you need. A strategy. So if you wanna, if you don't want to lose time, if you don't want to lose budget in the longterm, if you don't want to lose resources, which means like the time of your company, the time of your team retained until that, those come only from working on a strategy and strategy work is not something. That's can be avoided sooner or later. You're going to do that and please do it because the dynamics of your company and your brand is always unique. Uh, just like everyone is unique in the world and you have to make sure that what you want to do with your unique brands, uh, has a path and has a strategy in place. And this gets even more and more important. With the rise of digital, with the rise of, um, generative AI and so on. Uh, not different, but important. Let's say, uh, because there's so much clutter and there's so too many channels that you can communicate your brand to, and in order to pick which channel you want to go, you have to have a strategy.

And, uh, every marketing plan has to have a strategy before it's been built.

So companies, marketing teams, you've heard that do not do anything unless you have your brand strategy in place that will feed into your marketing. And that will feed into the content that you make. It's how people may want to, uh, find you online and connect with you. Where can they find you online?

Uh, I'm on LinkedIn, Instagram. As it your, Alan, as my name and surname. Uh, and I have a podcast, which is the marketing meeting, which we have already talked a lot. It's on YouTube, uh, apple and Spotify podcasts. Uh, but I mean, I'm usually very good at answering emails, uh, from LinkedIn as long as it's not like how can we collaborate or can we meet Hi, have a nice day or so on,

even for, have a nice day message.

I reply. Uh, but I'm, I'm usually quite reachable and accessible to everyone.

Yeah, that's good. So thank you so much for being here. And thank you so

much.

So much students are joining us on the useful content podcast. Useful content classroom dismissed.

Thank you.

And we're clear.

Yeah.

Wonderful.

than, uh, you know, hosting a guest. I'm not so used to, I

You're not so used to being on the other end. Are you done a couple of those? You've done a few of those. Yes,

to give lectures a lot at the university. Uh, and usually I have a few slides. Uh, and I have a sequence on my own. So no one is asking me as I present. Uh, so it's a different type of communicating. For example, for brand strategy is always helpful to show one or two visual examples to people because it can get really complicated when you are explaining it. Uh, and I couldn't, um, diminish it to, uh, Elevator pitch format because it's complicated and you need to be an expert on that. Uh, but yeah, uh, thanks so much for giving me the opportunity. No matter what,

You know, problem is it's been a long time coming. I, I, um, when I went back to look at your, our correspondence and LinkedIn, I realized, oh, we never, you asked me about this and it never happened, which I am, I am my, my friends will know this. And some people who I do work with, I'm really terrible at messages sometimes.

that's okay. As long as you know that you are terrible.

I'm aware. I'm aware. I'm quite aware. I'm quite aware. Um, so, you know, I try to do my best to follow up with everyone and sometimes I lose track and people suggested that I need a virtual assistant, but I don't know. Some, maybe one of these good days maybe. Yeah.

Yeah, but I mean, I, uh, to be honest, I mean, I, I must say that, um, if there are a few people, let's say five people that. Uh, pulls my attention that their content pulls my attention. I will count you in that within that five people, uh,

like the type of the quality of the videos, especially you are communicating through videos, right? That's how I see, uh, the quality of the videos, the clarity of the message. It's. It's like a snippet. You can just watch it and it's done. You know,

uh, I can say that it's like, I'm, I hope to, um, you know, host you as a day, as a guest one day, as, as soon as my recording timeline opens up. Uh, I will send you a message because I have a lot of burning questions about content,

production, videos, and I don't know if there's any specific things that you want to really share.

Um, it can be a new opening in your business, uh, world also.

Yeah. Once you, once you are ready for me and you, you give me the signal, I'll send you ideas and you could, you tell me how you want me to do it and I'll try to do it as best as possible. That way we'll help your audience