Episode 252: 4 Principles of Marketing in action
Marketing can be a really overwhelming element of business. In today's episode, Fiona shares a framework that she teaches her clients who are starting a business or transitioning into business. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
The Four Principles of Marketing Strategy of Brian Tracy
Specialization
Differentiation
Segmentation
Concentration
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
People just jump on something or they just push out more and more content with no strategy behind it. They're not really thinking about our content, for example, as I said before, showing these kinds of sustainable things that we're doing. Because we know that our audience is really excited about that. We're just maybe throwing out random photos because somebody told you that you need to update your social media five times a day. You really want to come back to those four parts of this framework, specialization, differentiation, segmentation, and concentration, and come up with a plan for your business, for your marketing that talks to each of these, that encompasses all of the four points.
Welcome to episode 252 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. My name's Fiona Killackey, I am your host and today is a coaching episode. I'm going to dive into a really fantastic framework if you are struggling with your marketing, if you're struggling with your message, if you are struggling with how am I different from every other company out there that does what I do. Today's episode is a really important one for you. Before we get stuck into that, two things. Firstly, I just want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the beautiful land on which I record this podcast. And that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. I also want to pause there for a minute and acknowledge that there is so much going on at the moment for First Nations people, for all people in Australia, but particularly my heart goes out to anyone who's listening to this who is First Nations indigenous or Torres Strait Islander.
I can't even imagine what you are facing at the moment. I know that there is a huge amount of work that everyone in Australia needs to do to help First Nations people, just get normal rights, the normal rights that so many of us enjoy. If you are First Nations and you're listening to this and you are feeling quite overwhelmed at the moment, I would definitely check out 13Yarn. It is a free 24/7 hotline for First Nations people. Also, check out the Australian Indigenous Psychologists Association. That's where you can get in contact with them and find psychologists who are First Nations people themselves as well. We'll link to all of that in the show notes, but I just wanted to pause and know that I'm sending you a massive hug, there are so many people like myself who are really doing whatever they can to try and educate themselves, educate other people so that we can get out of this incredible, horrible, challenging mess that we find ourselves in as a country.
The second thing that I wanted to bring up today is we've had so many people get in touch after last week's episode, which was with Roxy Ryan from Hardie Grant talking all about the book publishing process. If you haven't listened to it, go and listen to it after this episode. It is such a good one. She just gave so many insights and tips about what it's like from a publisher's perspective. When someone like a business owner is pitching a nonfiction book. We have had lots and lots of people get in touch with us. So there are two resources that are really useful for you. One is in the Good Business Group, which is my free business group on Facebook. You can join it. We have about 1300 small business owners in there. We have a bunch of video training in there and one of them is all about how to get published, how to get your book out there, plus the differences between self-published and traditional publishing.
If you're in the Good Business Group, you can find that just under media and then videos and then find it. We will link to it as well in the show notes. If you're not in the Good Business Group and you are on Facebook, you are welcome to join it. We will link to that in the show notes. There are so many free training in there as well as a bunch of amazing people sharing tips and asking questions all the time. The other resource is we do have a course on How to Get Published. Now that is How to Get Published in print and online. But if part of your big long-term goal is to have a book and you don't actually have much writing done already or you don't have samples that you could send with as an example of your writing, then getting yourself published into an online magazine, a publication can really be helpful. If you need help with that, we have a short course, which is, like I said, it's just called How to Get Published. You can find that over at mydailybusinesscoach.com./shops. We will link to all of these in the show notes, which you can find at my daily business coach.com/podcast. Enough with all the URLs, let's get into today's episode.
As you may well know, or maybe you don't know, I have been working in marketing brand and content for 20-plus years. I've worked with big companies, I've worked with small companies, I've worked with people who just have an idea. I've worked with people who have thousand-plus employees. I don't do so much of the ladder anymore, but a lot of my career has been been in senior marketing and brand roles for Amazon, Audible, Country Road Group, and a whole bunch of places. When it comes to marketing, I know that it can be such a minefield for people, particularly if you haven't had any kind of career or background in marketing. If you're starting a business, perhaps maybe as the second part of your life or you've had a big career and you've changed tax and you've run a business.
Now marketing can be a really overwhelming element of business. It's part of why we run our marketing for your small business course all the time. But also part of the thing that I think can work really well with quashing that overwhelms is to get a framework that makes sense to you. Now, there are many that I like to call on. There are some that I've made up myself. There are some that I get from other people. Today I thought I'd go through one particular framework that can really help you crystallize and come up with your messages. Like what is it that I'm going out into the market to say, what am I trying to do and who am I doing that for? And that can be a really hard place to kind of get stuck in, particularly when you're starting a business or if you're transitioning in business.
You're about to launch a new category, you're launching into a new territory where people don't know about you and you have to kind of start the whole brand awareness piece again. The framework is like, I like to think of things quite visually. As I'm talking, obviously, I can't show you visually what this is like. As much as possible I will describe it. However, you can take this framework and create any sort of visual that you like. I like to just create sort of a mind map of sorts. But as I said, you can create anything from this. What is the framework? The framework is called the Four Principles of Marketing Strategy. It is attributed to Brian Tracy. Brian Tracy is a very well-known marketing expert in the US. He's an author, if you've ever read the book, Eat That Frog, he wrote it, It's Brian and then Tracy without an E.
We'll link to that in the show notes as well. But he's the first person that I watched talk about this probably 12 years ago now. I'm not sure exactly when he came up with it. I probably should have looked that up. But I work with lots of different clients and quite often I'll pull out the four principles of marketing strategy so that they can understand, we do this, then we do this, then we do this. It's quite a methodical framework to work through. The four principles of marketing strategy, as I said, it's attributed to Brian Tracy have four areas. When you're thinking about coming up with the strategy for the business in terms of marketing, how are we going to market it? Where do we market it? Who do we market it for?
There are four stages I guess you could call them. The first is specialization, the second is differentiation, the third is segmentation, and the fourth is concentration. I'll go through each of those in a minute, but it's really figuring out, okay, if I'm just overwhelmed by marketing right now, literally coming back to these four areas, answering some questions underneath each. I'll also give you some examples of companies that have done this really well. By going through this methodically, you come out with a real plan of like, “Okay, this is what we do differently.” This is how we're better, these are the marketing messages, this is who most needs to hear it right now, and how we are going to utilize the marketing channels that we have at our disposal or that we've decided to take up how we're going to utilize them to get everything that we've now learned out into the world, into the market.
Let's start with the first piece, which is specialization. Number one specialization. It's really thinking about, what is special. Like how are you a snowflake? You can't be all things to all people. What makes your business special? What do you specialize in? I remember I was talking about this to a group that I was coaching a while ago and I remember I brought up this example of when I first started My Daily Business Coach, I was originally running my business under another name and then I started My Daily Business Coach and we're actually rebranding at the moment. We'll have another name. And this is life, this is iterations of, of business in real life in real-time. I remember I started the Instagram handle at My Daily Business Coach and I put a really vague Instagram bio in there.
I think I had motivation, inspiration, and education. I didn't say who it was for, I just thought I didn't tell anyone that I was doing this. I wanted to see if I could actually grow this organically, not paying for any ads, not paying for followers, or anything else, and just test different content and different ideas. I put this very vague bio and I remember somebody called me out on it and they're like, “I don't know what you actually do.” Like what do you do? I'll always remember that conversation and as much as it was a bit jarring at the time, I was like, “That is completely right.” I haven't said what I do. I was really transitioning from corporate consulting into business coaching. I didn't know exactly what I was doing and I really should have just had a go at putting together a bio.
I mean this is like seven years ago, but maybe six years ago, I can't remember exactly. The first thing is really like what do you do and what is special about what do you do? What is your area of specialization? You might say we are a lawyer who specializes or we are a law firm who specializes in helping really busy parents figure out the legal stuff like wills and conveying and maybe they're looking after elderly parents and they're also helping with that. We do it and that's what we specialize in to help. We're not the general wills or conveying company for anyone who's bought a house. We specialize in helping busy parents who are maybe buying a house for the first time, understand the legal issues that they need to overcome to own that house and all the other things.
That's a specialization like we specialize in the law and we are doing it for this particular group. The specialization is really figuring out who's the competition, almost like the competitor analysis, what else is out there? How do we fit into the picture and what are we specializing in? That's the first thing, being really clear on what it is that you actually do. How are you going to specialize in what you do? What are you the go-to brand for really? That's the first thing, you can't be everything to all people. Just keep that in mind. If we need to kind of narrow down what makes this business special, that's the first thing. The second, and I'm just sort of paraphrasing and using my own kind of ideas of this as well.
This is not word for word or anything what Brian Tracy has said, but this is how I perceive the four principle strategy that he came up with. The second one, you've got specialization, number one, differentiation is number two. You figured out what do we do, how is it special? And then how are we different and not just different but better than what is already in the market or, what is coming into the market, for example, you'd kind of have your competitor analysis, you might also look at sort of things like brand axes. I did a whole episode on that, willing to do that in the show notes. Where do you sit thinking about, say for example business coaching, there are like a gazillion business coaches out there. Someone might come to me because I have a background in brand and marketing and content and they're like, “Okay,” but someone might go to somebody else who has a background in let's say yoga or reiki or more say alternative health.
Maybe they could go to somebody who had a background in psychology or maybe they go to somebody who owned a business that is very similar to the business that they have. You want to think about that number two differentiation, what makes your business not only different but better? And that could be a really hard thing, particularly if you are kind of hard on yourself and you put a lot of pressure on yourself, you're like, “Well, how are we better?” And it could be anything. It could be your customer service, it could be your approach, it could be your attitude, it could be the way that things are styled on your particular website or in your store. It could be all sorts of reasons that somebody is going to choose you over your competitor in the marketplace.
It may also be things that potentially you do really well but you haven't actually talked about. Customer service is one that comes up quite a bit with clients where the level of customer service that they put in is just incredible and yet it's not something that they talk about in their marketing and it perhaps should be because that may well be the point at which someone is going through the buyer cycle and they're evaluating if you're the right fit and then they see a testimonial about your customer service or they talk about, it's talked about some other way and they're like, “I did not know that you do that. That's incredible.” I will definitely be working with you. We are redoing our website at the moment. We're redoing a brand and all sorts of things.
I feel like I'd been telling you all that forever. It's actually happening though. I went through this US company, this agency to look at the website design and everything else. I have to say their customer service was incredible. We are also looking at merch and other stuff like that and I went through three different suppliers for merchandise for the company. I have to say one of them had an incredible PDF and an incredible pitch deck, but their level of customer service, I think it was about three and a half weeks between emails. I actually wanted to say that I was super keen to like work with them, but the three and a half weeks just to get back to me, I was like really? Whereas another company that I went to seemed amazing and we'll probably use them, they got back to me within a couple of hours and then one of my clients who's used them has said, oh literally we went from idea through to finished product in 18 days.
They were amazing. There are lots of points of frustration that people will have with a particular industry. It's figuring out how can we be better than our competitors at that frustration. Let’s say for instance in this example, the time lapse between if you come up with an idea for merchandise and then actually getting the merchandise that time can really quash people's excitement. There's all the novelty and fun about creating something like a product and then you kind of want to get it done now. It's figuring out that lots of people feel like that when they're looking for a merchandise supplier. How can we be the merchandise supplier that is either more efficient or just really great customer service, even if they weren't that efficient, even if they said it's going to take six months, but they were in touch with you along the way, that would be amazing?
That's the second point, differentiation. What makes it only not only different but better than what is out there. What does the competitor landscape look like? How do we fit into that and how do we own the things that we are really good at and show those things through our marketing? The third point is segmentation. And this is a really important part. Who are the customers that are going to value what makes you different and also value what makes you special and love it and buy it and not just buy your product or your service or both, but become an advocate for you and a brand ambassador, whether it's paid or organic, where they're out talking about you referring people to you, referring people into your store or be like, “Oh my god, I love going to this shop.”
They always have amazing things in there. You want to think about, I mean your audience fully understood who you are going after? And there might be different audiences according to the different areas of your business. For example, when I first started and I was doing a lot more corporate consulting, the CEO of a big company, maybe a very different approach to someone who's just got a business idea and wants to come to one of my general assembly classes for example. That audience, you've to got to figure out am I really clear on who they are? If there are different groups within that if there are different segments, what do they need? What's, what's driving them? What are their pains and their pleasures? What are their beliefs?
What are their values? Am I really talking about those things? Am I showing that we are for you? We are very much for you. I've had lots of people over the years that have said, I chose you because you seem really real and genuine. And I'm like, “Oh that's a lovely compliment.” And they're like, “No, there's just a lot of like fluff out there and there's a lot of people that I feel like don't know their stuff.” I may not always be the most popular or whatever in the business coaching world, but people were like, I just want to go to somebody who's just going to be really genuine, give me some practical advice and I can be on my way. Whereas other people might be like, I want to work with this person because it looks the most beautiful and glamorous or whatever.
You want to think about what makes you special, what makes you not only different but better, and then who needs that? What is this group? What is this segmentation that you are going to help in the world? What are their goals? What drives them? What are their desires? What are they looking like? What are they interested in sustainability? Are they really interested in style? Are they interested in nature? And being at one with the earth. What are their attribute and are you showcasing that in your marketing? Again, so often we can be really close to things and not see that we're not actually telling anyone about those things. Say, for instance, let's say your audience is really into sustainability and they want to connect with a like-minded business.
You might also be really into that, but you're not actually showing that that much. You're not showing, “Actually, we're going for a B corp listing” or we donate this to 1% for the planet or we've totally changed the way we use paper in the business. You're not showing those things even though those things may well be what gets somebody over the line from thinking about you and a competitor, what gets them really working with you and becoming loyal to you, which is the ultimate goal of marketing is brand loyalty. That's number three. Segmentation number four, the final part of the puzzle is concentration. It's really figuring out, where is your focus going to go. You've talked about, or we've talked about, let's be honest, it's a podcast.
I've talked about the three things leading up to that. What's the specialization, what do you do, and what makes it different? What's your differentiation from who needs that? And then the fourth act is concentration. How do we concentrate our efforts on say a particular part of the segment or a particular part of the market so that we can really get our message across and hone in on what are the tasks or the things that are going to give the most impact to our audience and to the company and what we're trying to do and what our objectives are really with concentration. The fourth principle of marketing strategy from Brian Tracy, the concentration part is really figuring out how we get the most kind of bang for our buck for one of better phrases.
How do we concentrate on the audience that most needs what we do by talking about how we are different, not just different but better, and really honing in on what we do really well, like what are we known for? You kind of pack up all of those things and then you come up with a plan and that is your concentration part of this. It's where are we focusing, who are we focusing on, and what message we are saying. And then you want to package that up and then get that across into your marketing channels. That concentration is really, who needs this most and how can we put all our marketing effort into concentrating focusing on that group or on that message so that we can really start growing our business or scaling our business in a sustainable way and in a strategic way.
This is really what it comes down to, these four principles of marketing strategy is really about being more strategic. Too often I see people go, I should be on TikTok now or I should be on The Voice, one that everyone was obsessed with about a year and a half ago Clubhouse, that's what it was called. Clubhouse just came to me. There's this new thing, I should be on it and they'll jump on it without a strategy, for example, going, okay, if we're going to go in Clubhouse or if we're going to start a podcast, how does it drive back to what we're actually selling as a business or the values or the beliefs or the brand that we want to be known for. People just jump on something or they just push out more and more content with no strategy behind it.
They're not really thinking about, with our content, are we for example, like I said before, showing these kinds of sustainable things that we're doing because we know that our audience is really excited about that. We're just maybe throwing out random photos because somebody told you that you need to update your social media five times a day. You really want to come back to those four parts of this framework, specialization, differentiation, segmentation, and concentration, and come up with a plan for your business, for your marketing that talks to each of these, that encompasses all of the four points. I wanted to show you two examples of this in life from companies that have done these really well where you can actually really pinpoint and go, they literally tick the box on all four of those with whatever it is that these companies do.
Now, before I get stuck into those two examples, another framework that comes up when I talk about this with people and comes up in lots of discussions that have had across my life with lots of people, whether it's my editors at magazines or whether I'm doing a talk for a company is when you think about who needs this? Particularly in that segmentation piece, like who is our audience? What do they need? What are their goals? What are their desires? How are they going to help us get the word out? One other framework that can come up then is it's called kind of the bell curve of influence, I think it's actual real name is the Rogers diffusion curve. If you imagine, and you may not be in a position to kind of draw this, but if you have got like a pen and paper or you've got somewhere that you can draw something, a whiteboard, whatever it is, if you draw like a bell curve and literally it's like a mountain, you're just drawing like something that goes up, then it comes back down.
The Rogers diffusion curve is really about how people adapt to a product or service or idea in society. That's why it's called often the bell curve influence. You start with down the bottom of your curve on the kind of bottom left you have the innovators and roughly the Rogers diffusion per curve I think came out in the mid-nineties. It talks about the average amount of society that is innovators is 2.5%. It's a very small amount of people that are really true innovators. Next to that, the next kind of section up in that bell curve is early adopters. According to them, it's about 13%, 13.5% actually. Then you've got an early majority, that's a 34% late majority. Between that, the 68%, that's the mainstream, that is the biggest chunk of that bell curve. That's really where you're getting the fat part of the curve.
If you have drawn this on a piece of paper, then at the bottom you've got at the bottom right, you've got the laggards and that's 16%. 16% of people will only catch onto a product or an idea or a service if they absolutely have to, they're the people that maybe got a smartphone when there was no other option, there were no flip phones available, and they had to get on board with having a smartphone. They did, but really they don't want to be. Likewise, it might have been people that signed up to Facebook when it came out in 2007. Maybe they signed up in 2015 because they felt like they needed it to get into other apps or they needed it to see photos or something. The laggards are 16% of the population.
The innovators are 2.5%, a much smaller percentage. And yet many of us, when we are thinking about marketing our product or our service, we're like, “It's really like cool people”, the innovators they're our market, but you got to think if you are going out for a big amount of money or if you're going out to like sell something, to the masses, there's nothing wrong with that because they're making up 68% even laggards. Maybe you are like, I really want to do this class but doesn't everyone know this already? And it's like, “No, I was actually reading a book recently on working from home and I said to my husband,” I don't really know who this book's for because everyone's used to working from home now. But then we talked about it and I was like, “There'd be heaps of people that that would still need to know how to do this.”
That laggard or even late majority and the laggards, that's still a chunk of the population. I mean it's 50%, it's half of the population are either late to the party or well late to the party and maybe they're people who are, “I'm going to just work for my kitchen home. I will never set up an office in my house anywhere because this working-from-home thing may not last.” The Rogers Diffusion Curve, the reason that I bring that up is that sometimes when people are thinking about these parts of, how am I different? How am I special? Who's my audience? Sometimes we can jump into, if I could just get this like cool innovator audience, then everything would be set and yes in some way because each of those sections, the innovators and then the early adopters and then the early majority and then the late majority and then the lag arts, each one of those sections influence the section behind it.
If you get the innovators, they're going to influence the early adopters. The early adopters will then influence the early majority. The early majority will then influence the late majority. The late majority will influence the laggards. Yes, in a way, but it's not always where you want to tap into with your audience. It's not always like we are going to be the coolest and the most innovative. Sometimes you'd got to know we're going to be for the mainstream and we are totally fine with that and that's a chunk of the population. In terms of sales and in terms of awareness and opportunity, it's massive. Whereas if you are trying to get into that 2.5% of the population who are innovators, you've really got to be doing something different and original and amazing. Also, they're innovators, they're the most open to change, and the laggards obviously are the least open to change.
But the reason that I bring that up is one, it kind of goes with what I'm about to say with these two examples of the four marketing, four principles of marketing strategy in action. But also just to remind you that when we are going through this, we all have a tendency to be like, what I'm creating is original, it's cool, and whatever. I'm totally going to tap into that part of the market. And yes you might, but there's, there's no shame in tapping into the mainstream part of the market as well. I just wanted to put that in. If anyone wants to find out more about it, you can literally Google The Rogers Diffusion Curve. As I said, it came out in the nineties and that's really when you heard a lot more about early adopters and the cool early adopters and there's lots and lots of studies being done on, on that particular area of the market, particularly when it comes to brand psychology and all sorts of things.
Anyway, back to the four principles of marketing strategy and I hope you're able to tune in and listen along with what I'm saying today. You have specialization, differentiation, segmentation, and concentration. Now two brands that have been able to tick all the boxes and have done that really well is Canva. Hello, shout out to Australian Unicorn. Canva, for anyone who does not use it, is like a drag-drop design tool you can design anything on there. I have been one of their biggest advocates. I swear I should be getting paid by Canva because I talk about them all day long to everyone. I have done it since before I even started my business, I remember using them at my previous workplace and that is seven or eight years ago must have been roundabout when they just sort of come out.
If you don't know that was started by Melanie Perkins and her friends, which I feel awful saying because they were all the co-founders and really should have looked it up. But Melanie Perkins is kind of like the poster child for it in the face of Canva. When they started Canva, they started it as a tool to create yearbooks for schools so that schools, instead of paying these guys to create the yearbook, they created a software program so that schools could do it themselves. If you think about that first and then they expanded and expanded and now, many small business owners around the world use Canva because it's just an incredible tool. But if you think about those things, specialization, what do we do? We help principals and school staff creates a yearbook in their own time using their own tools and using our software program.
That's what we do. We allow people who are not designers to design, differentiation. How are we different and not just different but better? My husband is a graphic designer, I have two best friends who are graphic designers. I'm surrounded by incredible graphic designers, art directors, and amazing people. If you have ever worked with a graphic designer, most graphic designers will be using Adobe products so they'll be using Photoshop, Illustrator, all of that kind of stuff. That is very hard I think, and I'm pretty tech-savvy. It is a difficult product to get your head around if you are not a graphic designer. All the different ways that you can create things in Photoshop or Illustrator or a lot of Adobe products need a lot of training, and that's why you need to pay graphic designers because they're really good at what they do.
I don't want to say dumbs it down but makes that makes the user interface so much easier to get your head around. It is literally drag and drop. You don't have to be like lining things up perfectly. You don't have to really worry if you're like a millimeter out, which I often am and my husband will be like, “That's so crooked Fiona.” I'm like, “Can't notice.” When you think about what did they do? What makes them special, what do they do? Really easy to answer. They help people design who aren't designers. Number two, how are they better and different from what's already out there? Well, the big player in the market is Adobe creative suite, and yet a lot of people, one also, if you can understand how to use that, it's quite expensive.
A basic creative cloud license is about $36 a month Australian. And it may have gone up, I haven't used it for years, I used to pay for it and whereas Canva, it's free and then you go up and even we use the Canva Pro, I think it's about $19 a month and we are in there every single day using the stuff. But for years I didn't pay for Canva. It's got many tools and things in there that you can use for free. That makes it not just different but better for a lot of people than say the Adobe Cloud and now I feel really bad like someone from Adobe’s going to come and like, tell me off of saying about this. It's differentiation, and tick segmentation, who needs this? Well and originally when they started it was very much admin staff at high schools.
They know that they have to pull together the yearbook. It's an annual part of pretty much every high school. And yet if you had a graphic design firm unless they had many graphic designers, they couldn't keep up with the demand if they were getting more and more high schools because of those yearbooks, I was actually on the yearbook committee of my high school I'll just say, and I helped pull together the yearbook of I think 1996 and 1997. There's a lot of stuff involved in it. There are many photos, there are many pieces of content that need to be written. I mean they're a huge undertaking. They looked at that and were like, we see this problem because people are coming to us to design new yearbooks so we could create something for this group and we know that group really well.
We know that they want to make amazing yearbooks. This is what people keep for the rest of their lives. We know that they want to be able to do it efficiently. We know that they want to be able to change things at the last minute and maybe not have to always come to a graphic designer or maybe it's at 11 o'clock at night and they want to change one thing before it goes to print. They created a way, a tool Canva for people to be able to do that. Tick segmentation and then concentration. Who are we going after first? Now they could have taken this tool and gone, oh this is really interesting. As anyone can design, maybe we'll go to corporates, maybe we'll go to small businesses, maybe we'll go to creative franchisees. But they didn't, they concentrated on where the problem was that they saw and who they could almost test it with first.
Obviously, I don't work at Canva, I don't know exactly what they did, but from the outside, this is what I'm assuming. They went in and tapped into that concentration. How do we get those people to use it? Because if those people can use it who are not designers, going back to what makes them different and special, it's designed for not designers. If those people can get on board and use it, wow, we could then develop this bigger and bigger, which is exactly what they did. I think as of 2021, Canva was valued at 40 billion, that's a billion dollars. That's an example of a company going through those four areas. Specialization, differentiation, segmentation, and concentration and ticking every single box. The other company is just an incredible company called Walker and Co started by Tristan Walker. Now I have talked about Tristan Walker a few times.
I tried to get him onto this podcast, I have also contacted him for my book, lovely people, but he seems super busy. Tristan Walker, I saw him talk at a fast company conference in New York in 2015, and just blew me away his story. He had worked at one of the top innovative agencies in the world and he was already at the top of his game he is a man of African American origin and he was being told off, not told off, but he, he said that people were making comments about him not looking as neat as he could look in terms of his shaving. He was getting nicks and all sorts of things on his face and he had a look into it and was like, there are no razors out there that cut course curly hair, which is what he had.
All the razors are basically made for straight hair. He developed this company Walker and Co and Created Bevel, which was the first, I think that was the first part and that is a men's grooming and now Walker and Co is actually a grooming company for I think skin, hair, and grooming products for people of color. Now that was bought, his company was actually bought out by Procter & Gamble in 2018. I saw him in 2015 and he'd not long started it and then in 2018, like three years later it's bought out by one of the biggest companies in the world and they don't say exactly how much it was bought out for, but you can imagine that it's quite a lot. If you think about going back to what the problem was and how he created a solution to it through Walker and Company and through Bevel, in particular, specialization, what do we do?
We make grooming and hair removal products for people with course curly hair now differentiation, how is that different and better than what's out there 10000%? I imagine that if you have cos curly hair and you cannot find a razor that actually allows you to take that out without nicking your skin or causing ingrown hairs or whatever, that is huge. A huge part of the world has cos curly hair and it is just, it's almost unfathomable that there was ever a situation where razors were not created for people with that type of hair. Massively ticks the box with differentiation. Segmentation who most needs this? He started in America with people of African American heritage that have cos curly hair and then had, has grown now to people, any person of color that is looking for products that help with all sorts of things from skincare, hair care, hair removal, and creating a whole movement and community around that.
10000% ticks, segmentation, and then concentration. Who do we need to focus on first? Now as I said, Tristan Walker was working at one of the top innovative agencies and when I saw him, the way I'd learned about him and that I really wanted to see him talk when I could go to that festival was through Fast Company. Now Fast Company is a magazine publication, online site, and community hub. 2015 had been going on for 20 years because that was the first Fast Company Innovation Festival that they'd ever done and it was kind of like a celebration of 20 years now they do it every single year if you are ever in New York when it's happening. I think it also happens in LA sometimes, but don't quote me on that. It is incredible, like absolutely incredible, the best conference I've ever been to in the world.
When I saw him speak, he had gone through channels at Fast Company. NowFast Company is very much known for tapping into the innovators that 2.5% and even the early adopters. He very much tapped into those people first, got a huge amount of media, a huge amount of exposure, his own networks and contacts I'm sure with this agency and also through the African American community. A massive success story and I think Tristan Walker is just one of those entrepreneurs that everybody should know about. Again, if you come back to those four principles of the marketing strategy by Brian Tracy, specialization, differentiation, segmentation, and concentration, he ticked every single box. That is kind of towards the end now of today's coaching session. I know it's a big one and if you've never heard of this sort of stuff it can be a lot to get your mind around.
But I think that it can be a really great place to start if you are feeling very overwhelmed with where you're going as a business or as a brand or even, if are you trying to move from a business to a brand. What are you doing? What makes you special, and what makes you different? What makes you better? Who most needs that? And then where do you need to put your efforts? Because too often, as I said, marketing is very ad hoc, it's very scattergun, people do not have a strategy around it and it's really important to get a strategy around it. Otherwise, you are potentially wasting a huge amount of time and a huge amount of money without understanding what are you trying to do. Whereas if you have those four areas, what is it that we do? What makes this special?
What makes it different and better than what is out there? Who most needs this and can we validate any assumptions that we have about those people? What do they most need? How are we going to concentrate our efforts to give them what we need with the message that we want as our business going forward? That is it for today's coaching episode. It's a big chunky one. If you are interested in this stuff, our Marketing for Your Small Business Course goes through this. You can buy that anytime at marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com. You can also book a coaching session with me if you would like to look into this. We do three-month and six-month packages. We also have 12-month packages for strategy clients, and people that we've worked with previously and we also just have ad hoc sessions.
If you're like, I just want to just get your ideas and get your viewpoint on my business Fiona, then book in for those. We are currently booking people for February 2023. If you are keen, get in on that. We also have group coaching that is coming up as well. Our group coaching program. You have access to all of our courses as well as one-on-one sessions with me. The next round of group coaching will be opening at the start of 2023. If you want to get on the wait list for that, please let us know. I think we already have two people in that that couldn't make the current group, they booked in already and were like, “Yes, we do keep those groups small.” There are only 10 people, we cap it at 10 people. If you are keen to get into group coaching for 2023, please let us know.
You can email us at hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com and we'll make sure that you are the first to know when we launch that. But like I said, there are many ways to connect with us and to learn more about marketing and you can find pretty much all of them at mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this useful and you want to go through the show notes, you can find those over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/252 and we'll link to everything that we've mentioned in those show notes. If you did find this useful and you found it really helpful, I would love it so much if you could leave a review on Apple or Spotify. It just really helps other small business owners find this and who knows, maybe they really need to understand the Four Principles of Marketing Strategy as well. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram @mydailybusinesscoach.
