Episode 264: Examples of GREAT marketing
This is crucial if you're trying to increase your sales. In today’s episode, Fiona talks about the five key stages of marketing and examples of brands are doing great. Open your mind up to what's possible when it comes to marketing for your small business in the different stages of the buyer cycle. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Awareness
Research
Evaluation
Purchase
Post-purchase
Brand examples
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
This is crucial if you're trying to increase your sales. Post-purchase becomes advocacy if you do a good job. Post-purchase is how you stay front of mind for somebody. How do you stay relevant to people you've already worked with, or people who've already bought from you? How do you get them to become loyal customers or clients that then either keep buying from you or if you're in an industry where maybe the frequency isn't that high, such as renovation or architecture, then they will become advocates for you and refer work to you?
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Welcome to episode 264 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. Today, it is a coaching episode, and it's all about marketing. If you are looking at your marketing plan, if you're thinking about your marketing for 2023, you will not want to miss this. If you are listening to this and you're thinking, I want to go and check that out later, you can check out the show notes, including links to everything that I'm going to talk about over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/264. Before I get stuck into today's session all about marketing, I wanted to let you know that group coaching is officially open. You can go over and apply. That group coaching program is a 12-month program. We open it twice a year, and I just love doing this program.
We go through every part of business and it's suitable whether you are just starting out or whether you are two decades in, we've had people two and three decades into their business who have just gotten so much out of the group coaching program. Obviously, it's with me, but it's also with the other nine incredible creative small business owners. We cap it at 10 people in each group just so that you really get to know each other, you get to trust each other, and you form those lifelong connections that are so often missing when you're working, particularly if you're working by yourself and you feel like you don't have people to bounce things off. It's myself, it's the other people, and there are whole hosts of guests that we bring in as well. Everyone from lawyers to SEO experts, financial advisors, psychologists, mindfulness teachers, and a whole bunch more.
If you are keen to apply, get on over to mydailybusinesscoach.com/groupcoaching. That officially kicks off in early March next year, but we'll be doing the interviews in January and February. Everything you need to know is on that page. But if you do have more questions, you can email us at Hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com, or you can hit us up on Instagram @mydailybusinesscoach. The other thing I want to do is acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the beautiful land on which I get to record at this podcast and live and play and work. And that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the East Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging. As we're talking about marketing today, we also should pledge all of us, particularly those of us in Australia, to work in ways that aid in true equality and equity for First Nations people. I welcome any other indigenous Torres Strait Islander or other peoples from First Nations across the world. Welcome. Let's get into today's coaching episode. All about marketing.
I have been in the marketing space for over two decades now. I was in marketing well before social media was a thing, and I have seen all sorts of channels and platforms and tools and software systems come up. But one of the best frameworks for figuring out what your marketing should be doing, how to analyze if it's working, and come up with ideas and all sorts of things, is the buyer cycle. Now, this is something I talk about in a lot of places, whether it's in my book, in this podcast, or in working with me, in talks that I do, because I think the buyer cycle is such an incredibly simple tool for understanding marketing. if you haven't talked to me about it previously, the buyer cycle is a kind of circular diagram and you've got five stages in it.
The first stage is awareness. That is people need to know that you exist. That awareness could come from a collaboration, it could come from you being in the media, it could come from you being on a podcast. It could be that you do an Instagram live in partnership with somebody else. It could be that you are mentioned on someone's TikTok. It could be all sorts of things. Advertising, Google AdWords, and all sorts of things can help with awareness. Once somebody is aware that you exist, if they're interested, they will move into the next stage, which is research. They will look at looking at social media, look at hashtags, and search for you through search engines online. They may ask friends, they might look for reviews, and they may reach out to you specifically for more information about what you do, and what your services are.
They might send a DM. There are all sorts of ways that you can show that somebody is in the research stage. In the next part, if they've gone through the research stage and they like what they see or like what they hear or like what they read, then they will go into the point of evaluation. Now, this is a really crucial stage for marketing and it's something that people miss a lot. Evaluation is really the point at which people are literally evaluating if you are the right fit or if your brand is the right fit for them. This could be things like making sure that any credibility or authority is in that place, whether it's a testimonial, whether it is a logo farm, whether it is how many years you have been operating, It could be media, or it could be institutions that you're part of.
If you are part of the Australian Psychological Association, that stamp of approval may well be exactly what is needed for somebody to move from, "you're the right fit for me." That evaluation stage is really important because once somebody moves through that evaluation stage, they are literally saying, "I want to work with you, or I want to buy from you." Tell me how to do it, which brings you to the fourth stage, which is purchase. Understanding what does somebody need at that point of purchase, whether it is staff training in a physical shop or location, or whether it is things at the checkout in terms of the product detail page on a website. Do they need video content? Do they need an understanding of how to use whatever it is? I sometimes buy some really weird stuff late at night on Instagram.
I bought recently this kind of thing that fits into your car, what's inside my car is very small. It doesn't feel like it would be that small inside, but it is. There's very little place to put your phone, put any chargers to put anything else. I found this ad and it is something that tucks into your chair, but kind of acts as a pocket of sorts. I think my son in particular will love it. He always sits in the passenger seat. Anyway, I digress, that point of which how to purchase it, I was arming. I was like, "is this going to be some crap that arrives that ends up at a landfill because it doesn't work properly in my car?" At that point of purchase, I'm on the actual product detail page, seeing the amount of photos from people who had got it and put it into their car and what could fit in those little pockets.
That was what got me across the line. Your purchase marketing can be anything on your product detail page. It could be quotes, it could be awards, it could be anything else that at the point of which somebody is about to either contact you or buy from you, you're giving them exactly the information that they need. The last stage, and one of the most important, they're all important, but this is crucial if you're trying to increase your sales, is post-purchase, which becomes advocacy if you do a good job. Post-purchase is really how you stay front of mind for somebody. How do you stay relevant to people you've already worked with or people who've already bought from you? How do you get them to become loyal customers or clients that then either keep buying from you or if you're in an industry where maybe the frequency isn't that high, such as renovation or architecture, then they will become advocates for you and refer work to you?
Those are the five key stages. You've got the awareness, research, evaluation, purchase, and post-purchase, which becomes advocacy if done well. Today I wanted to go through some examples in each of those stages of brands that have done it really well. What's an example of a brand that's done the research stage really well? What's an example of a brand that's done the purchase stage really well? What's an example of post-purchase advocacy? awareness, all of that. And I wanted to share these with you because quite often we can get stuck in a certain way of thinking, or even in channel thinking only. Only think of Instagram or only thinking of TikTok or only thinking of email, rather than thinking necessarily outside the box when it comes to how will I market and how will I guide people through those particular stages.
I will start with awareness because that's the first stage. An example of a brand that has done awareness really well, and I'm going to highlight one particular campaign that they did is Glossier. Glossier is a kind of lifestyle beauty skincare brand out of the US. It was started by Emily Weiss who was a beauty-like writer for big magazines. And then I think she started her own blog and from that started creating her own products, much like another skin haircare brand over here in Australia. She just has a really great knack, not just her, I imagine she has a huge team of content writers and marketers and everything now, but a really great knack for really good tone, clean, crisp graphics, and just the types of products that people want to buy, particularly sort of skewed to a feminine demographic with kind of the millennials and then maybe moving up to people in their forties, but I would say it's a little skewed, a little bit younger to that.
One of the campaigns that Glossier did was a while ago, I'm not sure, maybe like five years ago, or four years ago, I'm not sure exactly, I probably should have looked that up. But one of the campaigns they did was they were bringing out something, I can't remember if it was pink. I think it was a pink product that they were bringing out. I don't know if it was like lipstick or perfume, but it was a pink product. What they did is they actually sent promo models, or maybe they were their staff again, I feel like, "does she know what she's talking about," but stay with me. They had women dressed up with trench coats in really grimy underground stations in the New York subway. What they did was those women handing out pink roses.
People were getting off the train and they were handing them these pink roses. And then if you imagine in rush hour, all these people coming out into the center of Manhattan from the subway holding a pink rose. Other people walking past like, “what is this? What's happening? Why have all these people got roses?” Now that in itself is a bit of a campaign, but they needed to lead people back to their brand. It's a nice thing to get a flower, but how does this actually come back to brand awareness? What they did is they had a little sticker that was perfectly placed on the stem of the flower and it has a tag, like a label. If you were going to take a photo of that flower, you would really not be able to take a photo of the flower without this label, this sticker in place.
The sticker had their Instagram handle, which is @glossier. Whenever anyone was going to share, "look what I got today." Or this is a lovely way to start my day with a beautiful pink rose given to me by a stranger. They would take a photo of that, share it, and basically be sharing the brand. Because then people might be like, “well what is this brand?” Let me look them up, let me follow them, let me see what they're all about. Brand awareness in a really different way. I mean sending people into dirty grimy underground stations and getting them to give out these beautiful, fresh, lovely pink roses first thing in the morning. And then have all of these people coming into a space, a busy city morning full of pink roses and each of those roses has the Glossier tag, which then allows people to go, what is that?
Then you get curious and go into the stage of research. A really great example of an awareness campaign, and that was for Glossier. And of course, we'll link to an image of that in the show notes, which you'll be able to find over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/264. The next stage in the buyer cycle is the research stage. An example of a brand that does that really well is Warby Parker. Now I often say to people, Warby Parker is a brand to look at if you are interested in anything to do with business and anything to do with so many things, giving back team culture, making money, I mean all sorts of things. If people don't know what Warby Parker, it is because we don't have it here in Australia, unfortunately. Warby Parker is an eyewear company and it was started by four friends, they were in college together, one of them left his glasses plain or maybe it was like a backpacking trip.
Anyway, he lost his glasses and he was like, “why are glasses so expensive?” And at the time, the glasses to replace them were like six or $700, and at that time you could buy an iPhone for the same price. He was like, "I don't understand why glasses are so expensive." And it turned out I think that he couldn't afford to replace the glasses. He ended up being at college without being able to see properly, which obviously is not great. I wear glasses, and I totally understand how frustrating that must have been. And then he talked to his friends and they were like, “I don't understand this.” They looked into it and they realized that there is one company out there, a French company that basically had a monopoly on all eyewear or pretty much 97% or something of the world's eyewear.
Whether you were wearing Dior or Ray-Ban or Specsavers, I don't think Specsavers was in the market just then, but they sort of looked at this and were like, “we want to create an alternative.” What they did was create cheaper, more affordable glasses. The brand story from there is incredible. What they were able to build, I think they were valued at like 1.2, 1.3 billion within seven years. And these are people in their twenties, now they're in their thirties, but they were able to build this massive community around their brand. Now, one of the things that they did, was they were initially just selling these glasses from their apartment and people were coming to their office, but they were just coming to their house to try things on. They had so many great ways of doing things cheaply because they had to at the start.
That whole necessity is the mother of invention that really rings true to Warby Parker. And like I said, such a good brand. Go and research them after this podcast. One of the things they did was they got to a point where they were going to open retail premises because they had a community, they had an audience and they wanted to open. Now retail in New York, which is where their headquarters are, is very expensive. Rather than open and then learn all the mistakes whilst also having to pay a huge lease, what they did was they actually kitted out an old school bus and they created the Warby Parker class trip. Now, that class trip looks like from the visuals, I don't know for sure that it was sponsored by American Express because the American Express logo or tagline is on the bus.
But what they did was they decided to travel around America in this kitted-out old yellow American school bus. And they had kitted it out an eyewear shop. Now, Neil Blumenthal, who's one of the co-founders, has gone onto numerous podcasts and talked about the amount of information that they were able to gather about their customers, about how they shop in an actual physical place rather than online was just astronomical. What they did was they went to all different cities. They told people, “Hey, we're going to be here at this time.” They use their social media presence to get people to come and live the brand, to come and talk to them, learn about their research, who are these people and why did they start and what kind of glasses they have, and what's their ambition with this whole Warby Parker brand and why should I buy from them?
All the things they were able to open the doors literally of a school bus and have people come in and experience the brand without having to pay anything to do. It got a lot of media attention, it got a lot of people to realize what the brand stood for. But the other thing that they got, and they've talked about this in any interviews and things that I've read about it, is that they were able to understand what their customer actually wanted. They had thought that when you are putting eyeglasses on in a shop, you would really just need a small mirror to kind of see from your shoulders up. What they realized on the bus was that everyone wanted a full-length mirror, they wanted to see their whole outfit with glasses. They were able to actually create then a store, a physical space, a retail shop that catered to all of these things that they had only learned by doing this bus trip.
Now in terms of the customer in that research stage, I mean what an incredible opportunity if you are interested in a brand to go down, meet the founders, try on all the different types of glasses they have, and ask a bunch of questions that are fantastic for research. Such a great example of a campaign that actually helped both sides' research. It helped the customers, potential customers, and current customers as well as helped the brand itself. Research its own customer and what they needed to do to talk to that customers in a physical shop. That is the research stage and their campaign was by Warby Parker and if you want to Google anything about it, it's Warby Parker Class Trip. You should be able to find more information about that. Of course, we'll link to that in the show notes as well.
The next stage is evaluation. I talked at the start about how important the evaluation stage can be in marketing. Now the first two that I mentioned, the awareness campaign with Glossier and the research campaign with Warby Parker were both campaigns, they were both one-off things that they've done In this next example, this evaluation marketing, this is something that this brand does consistently, it's part of their business as usual marketing or always-on marketing. That brand is Everlane. Now Everlane some people don't necessarily love the founder, but Everlane is a great brand that creates ethically created apparel and accessories out of the US I've bought a number of their things and I have to say that, I'm not sponsored by Everlane, I wish I was, but they're all pretty good quality, the shoes are good quality, but they're really small for the size that they say they are.
But other than that I found really their silk is amazing, that Kme is amazing, that denim's really great and I found it just a really good brand to get behind. One of the things in the evaluation stage that someone may be doing if they're looking at in this example apparel is where is it made, how is it made? That sort of stuff. One of the first brands to do really transparent pricing. I know other brands have now followed suit, there's one in Australia that's doing it a lot, kind of higher-end fashion apparel range. One of the first brands to do that was Everlane to be very transparent about what this product cost us to make where isn't made and what markup we take on top of all of the costs of goods.
In the product detail pages of Everlane, you can go them, and at the bottom underneath kind of the description and the ad to cart and all of that sort of information and what it's made out of, they will have icons that show you every stage of the creation of that particular product. I'm literally looking at one at the moment and it's this women's boxy Oxford shirt in Apricot. Underneath all the information, all the images, all of that stuff, if you scroll right down it'll say transparent pricing. It literally will tell you. For this, let me see what the actual price of the garment is. The price is $96 AUD. Now that is on sale at the moment, but it's $96. And they have said the materials cost $14.14. The hardware, buttons and finishings, and trims cost $3.45, the labor costs $9.96, the duties cost $24.24 cents, and transport $0.61.
You can add all of those things up and it's about $55. Their markup is currently while it's on sale, 40-something dollars. Now what I think is really good about this is that you can literally see what the company is making from this, but also every so often they will have a pay-what-you-want sale. They will have certain things, certain categories, certain product lines and they will say, “as long as you cover the cost that it costs us to make, you can then put in your price.” I mean you just don't see that very often from big fashion brands. They're not a niche tiny little boutique brand, they are a big company sending their stuff all over the world. And even in terms of say transport, it being here $0.6, you think about “how many they must have ordered for that transport price to be low.”
That is a great example of evaluation marketing because if you are somebody who really is looking at you know how to be more sustainable yourself and try to make these calls on things that you spend your money on, you want to see how much they pay for this and how much did they pay for the labor? And all of those things are transparent on Everlane. They also show you the actual factories that they get things made in and you can see so much of the behind-the-scenes with that brand. The other thing that I have to say about Everlane is another part of evaluation marketing that I've seen them do when they launched denim. I was kind of buying their silk stuff previously and then they decided to launch denim. Now what they did is they were an online brand, they actually shut their whole site for a few days and they just had a message from the founder up on the site saying we don't want to overwhelm our staff and we want to do this right?
We can't run the online store and launch denim at the same time. There is so much work that needs to be done. What we're doing is we are just going to put a pause on the online store until we get this denim launch right. Now, you do not see that I've worked in many retail places with big online sites and the second you shut that down, you are literally losing money every minute that goes past. For them to shut that down for a few days, I think it was to be able to launch the denim in a way that they wanted to launch it again, whether it was an intentional campaign or whether it was like stuff is hitting the plan, let's just put a pause on the shop for a bit. It really showed that this is a brand that actually seems to be looking after its team and looking after its priorities.
That is a great example of evaluation marketing, Everlane. Purchase, what can you do at the point of purchase to make people get through that process easier? Now purchase one of the brands that I think do this well now I don't shop that much from them anymore, but I used to, I have to say when I was younger, when it first came out and when I was in the UK I worked for Amazon and Audible, but I also interviewed at Net-A-Porter and actually got all the way through to the finals for a managing editor role there. Now when I was there they actually said, “I think you'd be much better off at this other brand that they have, which is called the Outnet.” I went through a whole process of trialing that and all sorts of things. For that reason I was looking at a lot of other fashion brands online and what they were doing and what they have done since.
One of the brands that were one of the first to do the purchase stage really well is ASOS. Now I know fast fashion, I'm not advocating for that, but ASOS was one of the first to do videos on the point of sale so that you could see how the product actually moved on people. Now we take that for granted on so many fashion sites, but they were one of the very first, no one was doing it when they started. The other thing that they have been one of the first to do is to use your data from things you have bought previously, things you've returned, why you've returned them, and what the reasons are to evaluate what size is going to be the right fit for you. Now, you can also put all your stuff in manually and they will then evaluate every single product and use that data to say, based on this particular brand or this particular fit or this particular material, your size will be this.
That's really good in terms of the purchase because one of the biggest fears that people have around online shopping, even though we think it's so ubiquitous and that everyone does online shopping at the moment, they still don't, a lot of people still research online and then go shopping in-store because they're worried that the fit will not work. Particularly with things like shoes, particularly with stuff that you can't necessarily return or it's not easy to return. ASOS saying this is actually based on all the data we have around you or based on the data that you've manually put in about your height, your weight, what type of body shape you have, what other brands you have bought, and not even necessarily from ASOS. If you're going to buy shoes on ASOS, you can actually go in and put in, I currently own Adidas runners that are this size and I own Converse in this size and I own Doc Martens in this size.
Even if you've not bought any of them from ASOS. And once you put all that information in, then it will assess based on what you've told it, that this is the right shoe fit for you and that alleviates that fear at the point of purchase to actually buy something online that you then worry that you're going to have to return. ASOS again, whether you love them or hate them, and I know they are massive fans of fast fashion and cheap stuff, but their use of data in that point of purchase is incredible in terms of the marketing that it does, the marketing that it is guiding people to go through that purchase stage to make it as easy and as fear free as possible. That is as os and a purchase stage. Just to recap, we've had the awareness stage, the Glossier Pink Rose campaign research, the Warby Parker Class Trip campaign on the bus evaluation, Everlane with their transparent pricing and purchase as os with both the video content but also use of data to understand sizing to alleviate people's fear at that purchase stage to buy.
The final one is the post-purchase stage. This is where things come after you have bought from somebody. Now I have two in here, I have to say both of them are clients. There is no bias, I just genuinely think they do a good job of this. Radical Yes is the first one. And if you don't know Radical Yes, make incredible bags, accessories, and footwear. Sunglasses, super cool T-shirts, like just the cool stuff that you would likely stop somebody in the street and be like, “where did you get your bag? Could I just ask? Or where did you get your shoes?” And they have this perfect fusion of functional and super cool, I don't want to say fashionable because I think fashionable can often mean trend-driven, and then it goes in and out.
What they create is just these really considered pieces that are timeless but also super cool. Radical Yes, do lots in terms of the post-purchase stage, but one of the things that they do really well is that they send out a reminder about looking after your products in line with the full moon. Just a great way to remind you to look after things in line with some of their values and their beliefs and the personality behind the brand. I love that. They do a lot of great post-purchase stuff. They do a lot of great video content that is then repurposed in some of their emails and just yet in general, they look after their customers. And it doesn't matter whether you are buying from them all the time or whether you've bought once, you get this sense of ”you're part of the Radical Yes community and we are here for you and we are here to answer any questions,” whether it's how to wear this style, how to clean it, how to keep it going, like all the things.
Also, I love that idea because so often you buy something and we don't necessarily look after our products in the way that we might have back in the day. I know when I was growing up, my dad had a box, I can still remember exactly where it was in our house at bottom of the pantry and it was full of shoe polish and all the different types of brushes and we always had to polish our shoes, we had to clean our leather. And it's something that I have to say as an adult, I don't even know if I own any shoe polish or clothes or these brushes. My dad would always be brushing his shoes to keep them in good nick. Whereas in our modern day we are so used to things being throwaway that we don't necessarily look after our products.
I love that this post-purchase kind of content that's coming out from Radical Yes also aligns with their belief of buying things that are well made that is not going to just end up in a landfill and looking after those things. That's the first one in the post-purchase example, Radical Yes. The second one is Lore Perfumery. Lore Perfumery is based in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy in Melbourne, a beautiful perfumery shop run with just incredible staff. And two of the people the founders, Jess and Jade are so passionate about what they do. Now, recently I've been working with them and they were talking about a campaign that they've run for a couple of years called 12 Days of Spritzmas, like Spritzing Perfume. And they had created these beautiful boxes and I got to see them on Zoom and I thought, this is so good, I'm going to support them, I'm going to go and buy one for myself.
What I didn't know is that they give you so much information. Perfume is such a personal choice which perfume you wear or which after Shaver, I'm not sure if they're both called perfume, doesn't matter what gender you are. It's an advent calendar that you open up and there are 12 days, and 12 boxes. Each box has a sample of a particular perfume and then it has a little card in it. That card has a QR code and if you scan the QR code, you can learn more about it. You can also sign up for their email sequence. I signed up for the email sequence and every day you open your box and you open your sample. Some of them are all beautiful smells, but some obviously you navigate towards more than others.
When you open that email on the day, each day they send you an email about the 12 days of Spritzmas. And within that email is a video all about that particular perfume. What are the origin stories, what are the notes of what are the scents that you're smelling? How did it come about? Why did they choose it for this? It allows you to really get almost like that in-store experience but through an email. I think it's just, it's made me fall in love with quite a few of the perfumes, and we haven't even gone through the 12 days yet and it's made me go, maybe I'll get that one or maybe I'll get this one. It's a really great way of nurturing that relationship. It's also showing your authority in a particular space and it's giving amazing customer service and it's the type of thing that you might then send to a friend or send it to maybe a partner or if you're like, “this is exactly the perfume that I want for Christmas” or any other kind of gifting that you have this time of year.
Such a good example of the post-purchase stage by Lore Perfumery. Now we'll link to Lore Perfumery, Radical Yes, ASOS, Everlane, Warby Parker, and Glossier in the show notes. And like I said at the start, you can find those over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/264. Those are all great examples of marketing in different stages of the buyer cycle. Again in the awareness stage, it was Glossier with the pink flowers in the subway station in New York. In the research stage, it is the Warby Parker Class Trip. In the evaluation stage, it is Everlane with their very transparent product pricing on the product detail pages. In the purchase stage, it is ASOS with their video content, but also their data suggested sizing based on a huge amount of data that they have. In post-purchase advocacy Radical Yes, with their cleaning in the full moon and looking after your products, and Lore Perfumery with their 12 days of Spritzmas.
I hope that within that, and listening to this, you have opened your mind up to what's possible when it comes to marketing for your small business in the different stages of the buyer cycle. As I said at the start, we can just get caught up in marketing the same way year in, and year out. I hope if you're listening to this in real-time at the end of 2022, this gives you some food for thought for 2023 and all you can accomplish through your marketing in that year and beyond. That is it for today. As I said at the start, Group Coaching is now open for applications and you can find all the information and how to apply over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/groupcoaching. I really enjoyed this episode. I loved thinking about which ones would I say really do a good job in all of those stages. I love the buyer cycle, I think it's a fantastic framework and I really hope that outlining some of these examples today has helped you. Thanks so much for listening, 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 at @mydailybusinesscoach.
