In this episode of Hello, Chaos!, host Jennifer Sutton, also known as JJ, introduces listeners to the podcast's mission of exploring the unfiltered realities of founders, entrepreneurs, and innovators. The podcast is a part of OrangeWIP, a multimedia company dedicated to providing resources for founders and entrepreneurs in various cities. JJ shares how OrangeWIP offers a one-stop content hub with engaging stories, curated event calendars, and local roadmaps to navigate entrepreneurial ecosystems. Tune in to hear candid founder stories every Sunday to get inspired and informed for the week ahead.
Well, hello, welcome to Hello, Chaos! It's a weekly podcast exploring the messy and chaotic minds and lives of founders, entrepreneurs and innovators. Every week, we talk to entrepreneurs from different industries, different company stages of all shapes and sizes. We hear those real, raw and honest and unbiased founder stories. um, to hear all the good, the great, the ugly of all the parts of being a founder. Uh, and that's why we like our mantra. It's where aha meets oh shit. Or as we were laughing as a, another little, you know, saying that we have around the offices, this is where you come and unmute yourself. So we drop new episodes every Sunday. So founders can listen to us on a Sunday afternoon, get ready for the week, or maybe their drive into the office on Monday. HelloCast is one of the many resources brought to you by OrangeWIP That is OrangeWIP, W-I-P, for work in progress. OrangeWIP is a multimedia company dedicated to serving founders and entrepreneurs in affiliate cities through hyper-local media platforms that are designed to inform, inspire, and create connections that help founders succeed. We are an all in one content hub for founders, fresh and engaging stories, we curate calendars and every market, we create these local dynamic roadmaps to navigate the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. We've really done all the hard work for a founder or an entrepreneur so they can go to one trusted source to get all the local information they need. My name is Jennifer Sutton. I am the, and my friends and family do call me JJ. I am the founder of OrangeWIP And today we're going to do something a little bit different. Wanted to take a moment as we've talked to, gosh, well over a couple thousand founders, entrepreneurs across the country, not just with the podcast, but with our additions and just getting out and what is, you know, what are the biggest challenges? And most people know I do also run a marketing agency. It's a marketing, full-service marketing and advertising agency called Bright Marketing, which is OrangeWIP 's studio for creating the content. But you know, as we talk to, on the Bright side, we talk to not just founders, but we work with You know, CEOs of large-scale companies, big brands, Fortune 500, you know, Inc. 5000 type of companies. And it's funny, you know, I've been talking to a lot of marketing folks, marketing departments, and CEOs, and I think there's a confusion of what's the difference between marketing, branding, or advertising. And a lot of companies come to the bright team and they're like, I have an advertising problem. Can you help? And when we start dissecting that problem, we realize, ooh, really have a branding problem, or ooh, you really have a marketing problem. So if you ever felt stuck in a maze of marketing, branding, and advertising, don't know where the problem really exists, and you're listening to this and going, I thought all those terms were the same. Then you're in the right place. We're gonna do a little special episode. That's really trying to untangle Dissect a little bit of what is the difference between marketing branding or advertising? So let's just you know, just take a few moments. Let's talk about marketing problem. What what is that? You know, this is like you're being lost at sea With the coordinates but lacking a compass perhaps you're venturing into a labyrinth of marketing problems It's like looking through, you know, looking into the business through the lens of what we call the seven Ps of marketing, or if you are on the bandwagon of it's the save, S-A-V-E, looking it through that method. And some people are like, there are seven Ps of marketing? I mean, if you're, you know, as old as me, you know, we started out with four Ps. of marketing, but now it's kind of evolved to seven P's or the or save. And it is, it is, you know, let's break, break, break down what is the seven P's of marketing or save if you haven't heard any, either one of those. And my producer's looking at me like, oh my God, here you go again on your, on your soapbox. But it's really, you know, think of marketing as really that mysterious puzzle of you might have a product or solution and it's unique but maybe your puzzle isn't really coming together. It's, you know, you've got an awesome solution but how do you get your entire operation working efficiently, effectively. So the original P's were product, place, price, promotion. Promotion meaning anything under that advertising bucket, the four media buckets of paid, earned, social, and owned. The additional piece where they needed to add on, you know, people, physical presence, and process. And really, as brands started to, and companies started to evolve, it became really relevant and apparent to a lot of CEOs of like, okay, I've got my product or in the save method, it's the solution. You know, what problem are you solving? And it wasn't just about place or distribution. It's really about access because of how, you know, we as consumers are very omni-channel now. So, how are we getting access to the products and the services that we need? And that's where physical presence come into play and go, are you consistent? Are you standing out? Is your brand, you know, meaningful? wherever you get the, you know, give access to. And then, of course, pricing. You know, pricing is that are you the lowest priced or are you one of the highest priced? How are you justifying that? What's your value proposition? What's your brand value, that brand equity? And in the save method, that's the V for value. And then, you know, promotion, again, it's that advertising, the four media buckets, paid, earned, social, or owned. In the save, that's the E, and that's educate, whether it's the people, like we said, those people strategies of are you educating and informing your consumers, maybe it's your sales team that you've got to teach how how to pitch, how to help sell through, is it your employees of how to get you know your culture, the engagement, create brand ambassadors internally, maybe it's your partners, your distributors, the dealers, but that's all about in that advertising, promotion, education bucket. And the one P that doesn't really exist or it's really, I guess, implied in the SAVE method is process of, you know, are you empowering that frontline? Is there friction in marketing, you know, the bridge between marketing to sales? Is there a process problem when you're dealing with, you know, setting up your CRM or setting up your CRM to your marketing automation tool, your email communication? How are you bridging that gap? And, and those are things where, you know, we come in as a, as a, or Bright comes in as a, you know, full service marketing and advertising agency. We're trying to uncover where the problem is, because sometimes it's not necessarily, let's go dump money in advertising. It could be we need to uncover like is the advertising program running at full cylinders? Are you generating the return on ad spend, your cost per conversion, your cost per click, your click-through rate? Are you above or below industry standards? Maybe you're not maximizing your channel. Maybe you're not on enough channels and you're underspending. So there's a lot of things in the ad, you know, the advertising world that we kind of come in and go, is it advertising? Maybe it's like, whoa, your click-through rates are, you know, we've had a client that's like, man, your click-through rates, we're generating traffic to your website. We've got clicks to your website. But you're only closing 10%. That's a problem. That's not an advertising problem. That's either, that's usually a brand problem, could be an ad message problem that we need to understand, could be a sales enablement problem that we've got to, you know, listen to the phone calls or really help those, you know, those executives at the company to go, you know, what's happening there? You should be closing more than 10%. Um, you really should be closing more like 20%, 30% in this market. Uh, and then what are you doing to, you know, if you're not closing the, just a 10%, what are you doing to nurture the 90%? Um, you know, just had a conversation with a, with a COO at a company and he's like, yeah, he's like, I'm spending everything in meta. I'm getting leads, but I'm only closing 10%, and I'm like, whoa, that's not a good thing. Let's look at your message. Let's listen to the phone calls that come in. Maybe it's the script. Or as he started dissecting and let me hear all the issues, he was going into and it was a whatever quote they had to close those 10 percent they were removing all the margin so they were going oh you know the competitor kind of like price matching well again that's a you got a brand problem you got a messaging problem with like you haven't figured out your value proposition in order to to communicate it with with clarity so that you don't have to sit and start discounting discounting discounting discounting your product, especially if you're a premium product in the marketplace. So that's a brand problem. And if you get that fixed, it makes your advertising work so much harder, makes that spend work so much harder. So, you know, we start asking questions of companies of like, you know, do you know your vision? Do you have a mission and vision? Does it inspire and motivate people to want to work with you or stay working with you? Are they really good brand ambassadors? What's your engagement rate of your employees? What's your churn rate? What's your turnover rate with your employees? What about your partners? your vendors, your distributors. So trying to understand kind of, is it a brand problem? Is it a marketing problem there? Are your values meaningful? Are they unique or ownable among the audiences you serve? Does your frontline feel empowered or have the authority to make you, you know, to make you money? That could be a marketing problem. Could be a brand problem. So, those are things that we kind of ask. Like I said, we ask your close rates. If they're lower than 30 percent, that should be a bid reg flag. One of the clients on Brightside, you know, we've got a client that they don't even know their close rate. It's a significant, you know, very large-scale transportation manufacturer and dealer and they have never measured the close rate or the turn rate of their customers. So those are some like red flags of we need to figure that out because again, we could be throwing money at opportunities and if we're not closing, that's a problem. And this particular transportation company, you know, as we started talking, you know, they were like, yeah, we need to uncover it. So we're using, you know, an ad strategy to really elevate to the CEO that, you know, it might be more affordable to spend money in advertising to get a better brand. awareness and, and brand consideration and preference, versus just giving the sales team, just throwing them like extra commissions, or hiring, you know, additional salespeople. Because there's not a sales strategy, there's not a sales enablement program, there's not a fully functioning CRM that's tracking pipeline management. So there might be some other places that that organization needs to spend money, but we can make the advertising work much harder if we knew, hey, they have a close rate of 50% and it's a six-month sell-in cycle. Makes advertising decisions way easier and way more effective. You know, when we look in and someone's like, you know, I feel like we dissect the advertising. Does the agency you're working for, do they practice media mix modeling and projections and estimations? Because there's a lot of tools out in the marketplace that allow you to do that. We have it. We look at what is our ROI, the click-through rate, the ROAS. We look at CPC, CT, you know, CTR. Are we above or below the category standards? Not just industry, but like in your category. What's the conversions? And what's all the way through? You know, we started working with a client about six months ago, and their agency only gave them impressions. I'm like, but what were they buying? And they're like, pay per click. And I was like, well, just in that tactic alone, it's pay per click. You're paying for clicks, traffic to your website. And the agency was only reporting the impressions in search. that that's what that's a red flag um and then but then working with them to kind of go okay we we're getting traffic to your website we're paying for traffic to your website this is low-hanging fruit these are people that are already in the preference part of the funnel. So what do we need to do to convince them on that landing page? And I think that's another, you know, a lot of times advertising, you know, agent, they dump them into the homepage. No, no, no, no. You need to put them in a convertible landing page that is controlling that user experience so that you're getting the highest amount of conversions. And then if you're not, like we've had a client that we were, again, we were getting great click-through rates. People started the process of appointment setting, but then abandoning that process. And as we started dissecting that, what we realized is there was too much friction in the form. to set the appointment. And then there was also too much fear of we need to educate and use a little bit more content on the website or on that landing page to go download this video. Just give us your name and your email. Get on our blog. We'll give you tips and tricks. It's free. Capture the lead and then use your marketing automation, use your other tools, your sales team to then nurture that lead further. Again, it's all about generating that lead and then working that lead through your pipeline. Um, you know, sometimes we work with clients and that, you know, the marketing problem, it's, they've got a product problem. Like their product is either over-engineered, um, and they can't make money on it off of it because they haven't done the proper analysis of the market, um, to make, to, to meet their margin goals. Um, sometimes their pricing isn't set right. So, you know, should they be charging more? Maybe they can get away with less and then generate more volume. So those are things that we can help them figure out in that pricing, that product development. Is there market acceptance for that solution? Those are big, big questions. But instead of going out and spending a ton of money, let's make sure that we remove that friction. in the organization. Are you giving your audience, are you giving them access in the right places? Where they consume, where they spend time and energy, are you available there? Does the distribution strategy help or hurt your brand? We've worked with a client in the past where they had a brand problem. um they wanted to be and their product was fantastic the market um concept acceptance was you know unbelievable they were on shark tank had a had a ton of visibility but their distribution strategy as a premium premium product in the fashion and beauty industry But they were putting it out in Walmart and Walgreens. And it's like that is not premium in fashion and beauty. You should have been in Sephora. You should have been in Ulta. going into some of the, you know, some of the Amazon, you know, niche stores, but, and they didn't even realize how they were devaluing their product based on their distribution. They were just excited to get on shelves. You know, we work with clients to figure out what are the audience What do they think or feel about the company? What about, what do the people think? What do they think about the solution in comparison to the competitors? What's the, what's the equity do they have in the marketplace? And then, you know, we work with a lot of chambers, utilities, different cities, municipalities, and a lot of them go, we don't need to know our brand equity. Well, I think they kind of do, but we translated a more of like how healthy is that brand or what's the value of the brand in terms of social currency so that when they put out memorandums or they've got to, you know, put out new policies, how well will those be accepted? So a lot of times we help those type of organizations to figure out how healthy their brand is and what's the social currency and the value in order for them to know how hard it's going to be to put stuff in the marketplace. That's a, again, that's a marketing problem that we've got to uncover. Because, you know, sometimes utilities and municipalities, they've got to put out a lot of policies that piss off the constituents and their stakeholders. How do we make sure that when they put those things out, it's an easier sell into their communities? But yeah, so that's what we find companies. It's like, is it a brand? Is it an advertising? Is it a marketing? And there are solutions for all of those. And to get those issues fixed and to move a company or an organization forward, It's, it's, you gotta, you gotta not just find the problem, spot it, but it's about solving it. And, and I think that's, that's the biggest, that's the biggest issue that we, that we work with. So, you know, it's, it's, as we've talked to many founders, business owners, marketing departments. Sometimes they're so focused on the tactic or what they think is the problem, and they haven't spent the time to really uncover and identify the real problem. Where's the real friction that can unlock and unstuck them to scale exponentially? and they spend in the wrong places. So once you know the problems, or sometimes it's many problems, right? There might be a pricing issue, there might be a product issue, it could be an advertising and a brand and message issues. But once you kind of identify those, then you can focus on what are the insights to solve those issues, and then prioritize the time, money and resources against solving those problems. There is not one company in this world that goes, I have unlimited time, money, and resources. And especially for smaller businesses and startup founders, time, money, and resource and or energy that you can afford. to solve these problems, you gotta prioritize. Can't fix everything at once. What is the lowest hanging fruit? And then like, how do we just knock those things down? Then your company can truly, truly scale, like exponentially. It's amazing to watch companies that get unstuck in that way to start growing and thriving. So that is today's episode is on, is it a marketing problem? Is it a branding problem? Is it an advertising problem? And they are not all one and the same. There you have it. So that is my, you know, JJ soapbox for the day. and we can so I appreciate everyone that anyone listened to us live today. I appreciate it. Thank you for hanging out and chatting with us. We've got some good upcoming episodes over the next few weeks. I'm super excited for for a couple of them and then some some the last two or three that we've had check out the last two they've been amazing episodes as well. Great tips and tricks from some founders that we've talked to. But again, this episode will be published this coming Sunday, available on all podcast platforms. Pick your favorite, we're there. So subscribe to Hello Chaos, like and share. Help us grow a great and more connected entrepreneurial community. Hello Chaos is one of the many resources brought to you by OrangeWIP That is OrangeWIP, W-I-P for work in progress. OrangeWIP is a multimedia company dedicated to serving founders and entrepreneurs in affiliate cities. We are 100% free, just an email to join the community, especially if you're local. So if you're in the Greenville area, so the upstate of South Carolina, the Midlands of South Carolina, Charleston of South Carolina, It's just an email to join. We do curate your calendars in those local markets. We have a resource, a dynamic resource directory to, you know, help you navigate the ecosystem with ease. And every week we send a little, you know, a little email to your inbox with all the upcoming events, live events, incubator deadlines, accelerator deadlines, grant opportunities. You know those things hit your inbox every Sunday to help you get ready for the week or be aware of stuff that's coming down the pipeline for you. Check out the new edition that's going to be, well we've got a current edition that's on women-owned founders, minority-owned founders in these markets. Some amazing stories, great tips and tricks. The upcoming edition is around how did brands pivot, how did companies pivot. And what do they do to, to overcome those challenges? So there'll be some good stories there. That'll be in the April edition coming up. So find your city and enjoy. Y'all, thank you for tuning in to Hello Chaos. It is where AHA meets OSHA. I am your host, Jennifer Sutton. JJ, we will see you again next week.