On being the dumbest person in the room.

Intro:

Ready to crack the code to business success?

Join us as Lisa Strangway, the powerhouse behind The Marketing Station, reveals the keys to unlocking your business’s full potential. From deciphering consumer behavior to crafting captivating brand stories, get ready to revolutionize your approach to thrive and succeed.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to take your business to new heights with expert guidance from a seasoned marketing pro!

Website:

https://www.themarketingstation.ca/

Stay in Touch with Lisa:

https://ca.linkedin.com/in/lisastrangway

Script:

What kind of products are they selling? How are they telling their story? 

You know, when we’re so busy doing the business, working in the business, sometimes it’s easy to forget the big picture. And then, you know, sort of one thing leads to another. And eventually you’re not really left with the same business that you started with or the same vitality that you started with.

And once you do that work, everything else falls out of that.

 I’m the general manager of a local retail chain known for our trendy clothing and accessories. For years, we’ve enjoyed success and a loyal customer base, but lately we’re facing a crisis. Sales are dwindling, foot traffic is down, and it feels like we’re losing our once loyal customers. It’s clear that recent shifts in consumer behavior and market trends are taking a toll on our business. Our brand identity feels stuck in the past and our social media presence is stagnant and dated. We’re struggling to understand our customer base, which has become increasingly vague. Despite a desire to change and a budget set aside for marketing support, we’re not sure where to start. So how can we adopt our marketing strategies to resonate with today’s consumers? How can we revitalize our social media to engage our audience effectively? And what steps can we take to regain the trust and loyalty of our customers? Enter Lisa Strangway, owner of the Marketing Station. Lisa is known for innovative yet practical marketing strategies and disciplined social media implementation. How can Lisa help? Welcome, welcome, Lisa.

Hi, Erin. How are you? I’m so good. I’m so happy to have you on the show. I am thrilled to finally be on this show. I love it. I’m a big fan. So now I get to be part of it.

I love that you listen to the show. So folks, Lisa and I, and Lisa is the founder of the marketing station now in its 10th year. Congratulations.

Thank you.

She is an amazing friend of mine. We’ve known each other literally for a decade now. I can’t, it blows my mind. I can’t even believe that.

Wild.

And she’s definitely highly, highly experienced and seasoned as a social media expert in content marketing and strategic planning for businesses. So I think that you’re just the perfect person to help with this issue.

Well, it sounds like a very familiar story. I have, I have dealt with situations like this in the past. With path clients, or, you know, just colleagues that I’ve talked to in this field in the retail field specifically. So yes, I can definitely help here.

Yeah. It does seem like this is something that I this is definitely something that I have personally seen as well, not with just clients, but even just friends who are owners of retail stores, having to just, you know, things, I find things, you know, when we’re so busy doing the business, working in the business, sometimes it’s easy to forget the big picture. And then, you know, sort of one thing leads to another.

And eventually you’re not really left with the same business that you started with or the same vitality that you started with. Yeah. And also don’t forget that the speed at which things change these days is astronomical compared to even 10, 20 years ago. so you could set yourself up in a business um two years ago and it’s already changed in terms of um digital capabilities so it’s really important that you stay on top of uh trends and uh data right yeah um okay so for the folks out there uh who are new to the show, we’re in season two of Weirdos in the Workplace.

 And this year, this season, we are focusing on supporting with practical problem solving with businesses. So every time we’re doing an interview with a professional problem solver, just like Lisa, folks are coming on and we are going to be kind of doing some real brainstorming together. So today we’re actually going to be looking at this problem through a model called the six thinking hats by Edward de Bono. And the six thinking hats, there are six hats, as you can imagine. And the first hat is the white hat, information and data. imagine. And the first hat is the white hat, information and data. There’s the red hat, which deals with emotions and intuition. There’s the black hat, which deals with caution and risk. The yellow hat, which is optimism and benefits. The green hat, which is creativity and alternatives. And then the blue hat, which is process and control. So we’re going to basically look at this scenario through all of these different lenses.

Okay, let’s get started.

So starting with the white hat, Lisa, white hat deals with information and data. So, you know, in terms of the insights that this retailer could gain from the world or that they should be gathering? What is your advice on that?

Yeah, so this is probably my favorite category. There’s a couple things they should be looking at. First of all, look at your sales activity and take a look at the sales figures there and figure out which products and what type of inventory is actually selling. Look at your, and then for the products that are selling, figure out who is actually buying that product. So I know that they have a loyal fan base, but is that, or not fan base, loyal fan base, but is that not fan base, a customer base, but is that loyal customer base actually still purchasing items? Who knows? You have to do the digging and find out. And collecting information from, customer base is super important. You can do that through surveys, um, or through, um, you know, just talking to them in the store. Um, social listening is a really big tool. So take a look at what people are saying online and, and start to figure out what they’re looking for right so maybe that’s cool like are there any specific platforms that are used for social listening or is it more just like like sensing um you know through through like. So just reading comments, you know, which will give you a good sense of what people are looking for, for sure. You go to any Facebook group for a town or whatever, or a city, and you can even ask a question in there and see what people are saying. But, but there are apps and things available to you with the specific use of social listening. Interesting.

Okay, cool. I interrupted you. You were going to say something else, I think.

Well, I lost that train of thought.

Okay, the train of thought has left the building.

Yeah, seriously. In terms of competitor analysis, is that relevant these days you know because i know there’s sort of two different thought ways of thinking around it i know folks who are very customer focused and they don’t care crap about their competitors and people who are you know obviously customers are important but they also want to see what their competitors are doing and you know make sure that they’re balancing everything.

So what, what, what’s your opinion on that? I always a hundred percent recommend doing a competitive review. Okay. I would, I would look at your top five competitors and see what they’re doing. What kind of products are they selling? How are they telling their story? Are they, what kind of technology do they have? So are they offering, you know, online purchases, free delivery, you know, all of these things are going to help you get a good picture of where you stand within that competition.

Okay. Yeah. All right. Let’s move on to the red hat, emotions and intuition. How, as a consultant, marketing consultant, do you advise your clients on that, that storytelling aspect that you just shared a minute ago?

Like how, how do we tell a story that evokes emotions? And yeah, let’s stop there. Let’s ask that question first. Right. Well, first you have to really understand who your customer is and who your potential customer is, right? So that’s why the research part of this is so important. What are the values? What are they looking for? What do they, you know, what do they aspire to be? What’s their lifestyle like? And all of that. And then the best way to engage with them emotionally is to craft the story. engage with them emotionally is to craft the story so craft not one story several stories that you can publish on your website and on social media that will with the goal of appealing to that side of them right so appeal to their emotional side so if your target market is, you know, a busy mom of two kids, full, and she works full time, and she values quality time with her kids, with her family, you know, you craft a story around that somehow that relates obviously back to your product but how how can your product or service appeal to that part of that target markets world right so that’s an example but right yeah so in the case of like this general manager who’s managing a local retail chain really you don’t know what stories you’re going to necessarily tell about your business until you understand your customers. Is that what I’m hearing?

Absolutely.

A hundred percent.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay. So it sounds like customer really understanding the customer at a deep level is the most important starting point perhaps. It is the most important starting point. And once you do that work, everything else falls out of that. Hey, so I am curious. How much can we trust our gut instincts as entrepreneurs? Yeah, I’m a big believer in gut instinct. Okay. Yes. Now, having said that, it’s really important that that’s not the only thing you rely on.

So it’s gut instinct plus data or research or any kind of quantitative, you know, results or data. uh you have to have you have to have a balance of two now and i would say if you’re just focusing on data then you’re missing that part of you you know your gut which you know if you’re the owner or the general manager of a business to me that says that you have some type of passion for that business so if you don’t have an instinctual gut feeling about it, then maybe you’re not in the right business. It’s interesting you say that actually, it just struck me like, you know, what if your product or service, you know, isn’t quite perfectly aligned with your passion anymore?

 You know, like, how does it ever see see that in your clients does that come up for you um like yes but it’s it’s not it’s not something that is like easily detectable because especially with an owner I think an owner and a manager are two very different roles so I’m just going to speak about ownership. If you’re the owner of a business and you’re not quite passionate about it, it’s going to show in your results and it’s going to show in the amount of time and work that you put into securing the future of your business.

Okay.

Which means doing the homework now and and doing you know investing in your business if you’re not passionate about your business anymore you’re not going to be taking those steps so yeah I have seen that um and um it always makes me sad yeah it always makes me sad because maybe at one point this person was passionate and something happened along the way you know they got disillusioned or maybe uh they just decided this isn’t something they wanted to do but i’ve seen other times uh situations also like sometimes health related you know oh yeah health and stress you know there’s lots of I think reasons why people can become disengaged um yeah yeah definitely uh yeah and sometimes I’ve seen it where they’re just at a place where they’re kind of ready for retirement and you know they just haven’t really done the planning and they’re just sort of checked out a little bit so that’s I’ve seen that too. So that’s, those are big feelings around that. Yes. So the black hat is caution and risk.

And you did touch on risk, I think in the first question as well, but what risks, I mean, the obvious risk of, you know, if you don’t have revenue, you don’t have a business um other than the obvious risks you know what what do you see for their business if they don’t make a change immediately well if they don’t make a change immediately well i would kind of uh use different wording for that if they if they don’t start doing the work um to figure out what changes need to be made then they’re going to cancel themselves out if they can’t evolve they’re going to lose their audience and by audience I mean customers yeah so the risk is you know not knowing not knowing who your target market is and maybe going too broad.

You know, if they use strategies and tactics that is meant to appeal to a very broad fan base or target market, they’re going to miss out because they’re not, they’re not going to be providing, um, a product that is actually needed by a specific target market. Okay. Um, have you noticed that business, our, our, our business is niching more than they used to. Is this a trend? Yes.

 Okay. Yeah. It’s something I’ve noticed for sure because uh you know with i think with technology today it’s a lot easier to uh drill down into your um into your target market and really figure out uh through research methods and stuff figuring out exactly what their needs are and sometimes you find out that maybe you can narrow down your product offering to really hit that mark for them. And so you’re decreasing maybe what you’re offering, but you’re increasing your sales and maybe the frequency in which people are buying. So that’s why niches sometimes work. Yeah. Is there any time where you would not recommend a niche?

 I think it just depends on the product being offered. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s hard to answer that question without knowing specifically. Well, if we use this example, I would recommend that maybe they niche down. But again, I’d have to know more about the target market. Right. Yeah. Okay. right yeah okay um i’m curious about if we could go into that just a little bit um so when you’re creating like a customer persona along with a client what are the steps that you go through for that like what is what’s the really important things to identify um well i always ask the client to send me whatever data they have.

So it’s, and a lot of times I don’t get it. But it’s, you know, give me a general sense of who is coming into your brick and mortar store, right? I look for, you know, general observational data probably is what I’m going to get. So the age, the sex, the purchasing patterns, frequency in which they come in, any kind of anecdotal data they can give me. You know, do they know their customers?

Do they talk to them do would they recognize them if they were walking down the street you know are they coming in with strollers are they coming in you know a certain time of day I need all of that whatever the owner can give me will give me a bit of a broad picture and then I drill down and what I do is I look at that industry and I look at what the typical customer would be right so there I mean that research is available out there on the internet and I so I look at that and then I compare it to you know what I have from the owner and I see what the gaps are, if any. And so that helps me round out what the, what the persona would look like. So it’s a lot of research. It’s a lot of talking to the owner and looking at survey results. If I’m lucky, they have survey results, but you know, startups don’t have survey results. If I’m lucky, they have survey results. Right. But, you know, startups don’t have survey results.

 So, yeah, it’s a little bit of both. And I come close. It’s not an exact science. No. But I do come close. Yes. I mean, as someone who owns a business and is, you know, I’ve been part of a few startups, my own and other people’s, you know, sometimes it’s like, it feels like a little bit of a risk, you know, deciding to like focus on one or, you know, a cluster of particular customer personas, like a target market. It does feel like a risk. And I think that sometimes that that’s a trap that I think people fall into is not wanting to pick a person, pick someone who you believe is going to buy your product. Well, again, we’re going back to that whole thing about too broad of an audience. You know, it’s like, you know, how do you craft your messaging? How do you how do you how do you craft your messaging?

How do you develop your creative? I mean, everything stems from your customer personas. So if your customer persona is everybody in the whole wide world, how are you going to get your messaging across you know to the whole world you know if every single person is a potential customer right we’re not gonna hit any marks right you know you just think of it as that you know put it down the funnel and then at that at the bottom of the funnel you have like the cream of the cream uh you know the people that are most likely going to buy from you and figure out what is going to get them to buy yeah that’s what a customer persona is supposed to do right okay so going back to black hat and caution and risk um i’m curious because i think this is like a very natural, you know, human behavior to want to minimize risk.

And we know that, you know, in most cases, diversification minimizes risk, except I think when we’re talking about a target market. So but it feels like a risk. So what do you do as a marketing professional to help it feel like less of a risk with your clients? You mean developing that target or that exact? Yeah. Well, I have to explain to them that, um, oh, well, I mean, this is what I always say to clients. I say, you know, you have to start somewhere. So let’s, you know, so far, yeah, you haven’t tried any strategies.

So why don’t we try this strategy and this strategy and see how it goes. And then we’ll revisit it in three months. Honestly, like marketing is, you know, it is part science, but it is part gut instinct, like you said. And it’s a lot of, you know, data crunching and stuff. But at the end of the day, it’s not an exact science. Okay, so and anybody who says it is not been in marketing for very long. So what I say is, let’s just try it. What I say is let’s just try it.

I can tell you as a professional and based on my years of experience that you’re going to get better results if you focus on a particular market and you craft your messaging to that specific market. But if you don’t believe me, let’s try it for three months, see how it goes. And then we’ll look at the results and we can pivot if it doesn’t work. So that’s how I, I, I’ll, I always get a yes when I, when I kind of position it that way. And, you know, all I want is success for the client. Right. 

So at the end of the day, I’m not going to recommend something that I don’t think is going to work. So I put the power back in their hands and I say, you know, it’s your decision, but let’s, let’s try it and we can always change it. Yeah, definitely. And you’ll learn something from it. Right. And I’m sure there’s always something to learn from, from a test.

 So, yeah. Okay. Yellow hat is optimism and benefits. So what is the good news here? Well, the good news is that this store has had a loyal customer base and they have had a lot of success in the past. The other positive thing is that they are looking to make some changes, to pivot, because they know that they need to do something. And they do have a budget, which is huge. They have set aside a budget. So right there, that tells me that they’re serious. And that’s the positive thing about this is they have the right mindset to pivot and change and grow. Oh yeah. Mindset is literally everything.

And you know, people who poo poo that, like they haven’t, they just haven’t gotten there yet. You know, like. Mindset is everything. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So green hat, creativity and alternatives. Is there anything like outside the box that you’d recommend here? Or one of the other questions that I would ask in the scenario is if you were working with no budget, where would you start? Oh, I have a lot of ideas for this. This one, I mean, okay. The first thing I always say is, okay, let’s take a look at your network.

See who we can collaborate with. That’s a, you know, a win-win situation for both that doesn’t actually require any kind of payment, but maybe it’s a, it’s a collaborative promo on social media where you’re, you know, partnering up and offering a huge prize and you do some type of contest, but definitely collaboration is the first thing I would look at. Okay. And the second thing I would look at is try and step out of your business for a second and imagine what it could be. So more than a store. Okay. So this is a store, but what could it be other than that? You’re selling clothing, but could this be a meeting place for women?

Could you have fashion shows could you do you know i don’t know any type of little event wine and cheese events um sure take a look at what you know what can you do in your space that will make it more of a destination okay and what it already is yeah so for brick and mortar stores i always look at those two things and um it’s bound to create traffic i love that yeah make your business a destination. Yeah. Blue hat, process and control. So how do we, you did touch on this earlier, but like specifically, you know, you’re testing a new campaign.

 You know, we’re working with this business, this retail chain. We’re testing a new campaign for them. How do we know if it’s been successful right so uh whenever you whenever i start a new campaign um i do a full marketing plan for it and part of the marketing plan is making sure that you identify what your specific objectives are but every objective needs a measurement tool absolutely or else you’re just throwing money out the window.

So we call them KPIs. So key performance indicators. So you always do that. That’s the first thing you do. So for a new campaign, I would look at social media data. So the reach, engagement, impressions, website analytics. so how many more people are visiting the website how long are they staying on the page are they uh clicking on anything you know that type of thing uh and then surveys so uh if you’ve never surveyed your fan base, I keep saying fans. Can you tell I come from a different world? We forgot to mention Lisa spent a long time with the Ottawa Senators in marketing. I’m never going to get that vocabulary. Well, raving fans. We’re all trying to create raving fans, are we not? Yes, yes. 

 Raving fans

Yes. Yes. Rating test. So surveys, you know, and I would hope to God that they would have some type of database, customer database. But if not, that would be one of my recommendations is to either start collecting email addresses so that you can survey on a regular, on a consistent basis. So whether that’s once a year or once a quarter, whatever it is, it’s consistent and you create a baseline of numbers and then you measure against that every time you survey. So, and you’ll be able to get some good data that way.

For sure. And of course, sorry, sales sorry sales obviously are you selling anything you’re not selling anything then the campaign probably didn’t work no okay so that is that is interesting though because there are a lot of people who focus on marketing that you know there’s different you know goals when it comes to marketing you know brand um reach or brand awareness there’s different, you know, goals when it comes to marketing, you know, brand, um, reach or brand awareness, there’s community building. There’s like a bunch of things, obviously revenue is one of those things.

Um, like what is the, like what, what, I mean, revenue is that number one, the number one goal? Well, I have to say it depends on, it depends on the business I’m working with. Okay. If we’re using this, I’m using this as the example. It’s a brick and mortar store. Obviously, they’re doing all of this because their sales are dwindling.

 So I would say the number one is to increase sales by X percent. And you need to figure out what that X is. So, you know, I would ask for sales figures for the last year or two, even to see what the sales trends have been and and then figure out what a good KPI would be for that. And so I say, yes, sales for sure for this, but they did mention that their social media was dwindling and there was no engagement whatsoever um so you know the second one would probably be to increase awareness increase awareness of the store and increase engagement with the content that they’re putting out um and engagement could mean clicking a link that goes back to the website.

To me, that’s a valuable result from a campaign. If people are actually, you know, taking action on the content that you’re putting out, that’s what you want at the end of the day. At the end of the day, you want people to go to your website and make a purchase for sure yeah or walk into the store and make a purchase totally yep awesome um any any final thoughts i want to actually help the store so yeah it’s too bad it’s an additional store yeah yeah this is well it’s an optional store based on you know numerous experiences that I’ve had with clients and um but but certainly you know if you’re you’re out there listening to this and you’re thinking is she talking about us uh Lisa might be a good person to chat with oh absolutely I love retail um and I love, you know, I have so many ideas when it comes to retail. I used to manage, I used to do the marketing for shopping centers. So I understand the retail cycles. I understand, you know, the ideology behind retail strategies.

And I just love it. So yeah, I love that your example to this story was amazing. Well, this is this is like, like I said, it’s like it is a real story. It’s a real story. It’s an amalgamation of a couple of stories that I’m, you know, we’re aware of.

So yeah, we hope that this resonates with people. And I think it will because it is, you know, a common issue, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for coming, Lisa. I am happy to be a weirdo in the workplace. I am very happy. You are an official weirdo now. I love it. Yay. Yeah.

Thank you so much for having me.

Don’t forget to stay weird, stay wonderful, and don’t stay out of trouble.