Episode 296: How's your Figurehead marketing?
How are you building a human connection with your audience? In this episode, Fiona shares the importance of figurehead marketing and how business owners can better incorporate their personal brand into their marketing efforts. She also shares 5 tactics that small business owners can use. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Figurehead marketing and putting a face to the brand
Importance of showing up as a founder in marketing
Five tactics for better figurehead marketing
Rating your figurehead marketing from 1 to 10 and improving it over the next 12 months
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Episode 292 - Previous episode
You are listening to My Daily Business Coach podcast, hopefully, you like it. I'm sure one of the parts that you like is my interviews with other small business owners because you are getting a sense of who they are, how they spend their days, and what things are they interested in. Why did they start their business? What's important to them? How do they feel about their business? What are they proud of? All of those things are helping you form a human connection with that founder. And you know firsthand that you can have that connection with a brand that maybe you didn't have before you listen to that interview. That is important when it comes to figurehead marketing. How are you getting onto podcasts that already have the audience that you have who are leveraging that audience and you're talking about things that are real and important to you?
Welcome to episode 296 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. Today you're reading a coaching episode and this one follows on from the coaching episode about a fortnight ago now, where we looked at a particular type of marketing and whether or not you're doing that. I gave you a couple of examples of how to do that. If you want to listen to this one today and then you want to get stuck into even more marketing ideas, check out Episode 292 as well. Before we get stuck into today's marketing episode, I want to of course acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of this beautiful land in which I live and work, and play. And I'm looking out into the most gorgeous sunrise over these amazing gum trees. I have to say, this land has been so healing and nourishing and I just so acknowledge and respect the traditional owners and custodians, the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and also acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded and we all have a role to play to make sure that equality and equity are there for our First Nations people.
The other thing I wanted to mention is we are talking a lot about marketing recently on this podcast, and I think that's because right now we are in the middle of the Marketing for Your Small Business course and coaching program. That's a live nine-week program that we do with anyone who has the Marketing for Your Small Business course, you may have bought it years ago and want to upgrade and get some live coaching or people that are coming into it for the first time. It's just such a pleasure running these groups. If you'd like to be part of the next one and you want to get a headstart, you can buy the Marketing for Your Small Business course at any time. You just go to marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com and you can find all the details there. If you've got any questions, feel free to email us at hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com. Let's get into today's coaching episode.
As I said at the start of this episode, we are talking about marketing and in particular a type of marketing that you may have let slide you might not be doing at all. And it is so important, particularly when you are humanizing your brand. This is a big one and it is one that like I said a lot of people don't do and it's one that we can do easily as well. And everyone likes to think about easy ways to market. In Episode 292 I talked about internal marketing, another huge part of marketing that people miss all the time, which is looking after the internal parts of your business. Your staff, your communications, when people onboard, your suppliers, your manufacturers, all of that. And creating a beautiful loyalty there, which is a huge part of why marketing exists and the importance of marketing.
Today I thought I'd talk about another type which is figurehead marketing. Now figurehead marketing is about the figurehead, the person or people behind the brand. It's the founder, or the C-suite if you've got that, or the co-founders, partners, you want to put a face to the name. I know people feel sick at the idea of that, I'm going to have to do selfies, and I'm going to have to be on video constantly. You don't have to be you. There are so many ways to do figurehead marketing in a way that is aligned with your values and beliefs and in a way that doesn't make you feel gross. I thought I'd go through five of those today. In no particular order, here are five things, five tactics that you might want to employ to better your figurehead marketing.
If you've taken away nothing else from this episode, I think it would be important for you to think about how much am I the founder of the business show up in our marketing. Have I just outsourced it to somebody else? Am I showing up in terms of my thoughts, my opinions, my tone, and my face, but also like other things that are important to you? Maybe you are super interested in art and that is a huge part of why you started your business because you really wanted to be involved in that creative community. And yet you don't talk about that. You don't talk about it in your origin story, you don't talk about it ever on social media. And urge you to think about where would I rate my figurehead marketing currently from 1 to 10, and how can I improve that number over the next 12 months.
Again, here are five ideas for you. The first, which sounds so obvious and yet people don't do it, I need to do more of this myself, is a day in the life of, we love this. I used to work in magazines a long time ago and I have to say that anything like Day in the Life of Articles did so well. There is a Sunday or Saturday, I think it's a Saturday paper here in Melbourne where I live and it's also syndicated in Sydney and they have a lift out called Good Weekend. I haven't looked at it for a while, but they used to have a day on your plate and it was morning to night, what did you eat at certain times? And then it has a nutritionist or something dissecting it. People love that.
Likewise, when I lived in London there is a magazine there called Stylist. I think that was what it was called. It was this free magazine that you could get on the tube and all over London and they had morning latte to lights out, that was their column or latte to lights out and it followed somebody on their day like what did you do? How do you start your day? What meetings do you have? What do you have for lunch? Where do you go after work? We love that. It's why social media does so well in a lot of cases because we are voyeurs, we like looking in and seeing what other people are doing. And yet in our business that is one of the easiest ways to create content and to put things out that are humanizing your brand and yet we don't do it.
A day in the life could look like you could take some static photos, put a timestamp over them, put them together as a video with a nice bit of music and suddenly you've got a reel or you've got a TikTok or whatever else you want to create. It could also be a blog article, or it could be a podcast, maybe I will take that and do it a day in the life of what it's like to be me and what I do in my work days. Maybe that'll be quite a good one, it'll be easy to create. Even as I say that, I know that there'll be people that going, that's so self-assented and obsessed and like it's, if people want to know what I do and if I eat wheat bread or if I have toast in the morning, they do.
They are trying to build a connection, a human connection with your brand, and things like day-in-the-life content works well. I mean if you look at YouTube, every single blogger, and vlogger influencer, who wants to be an influencer out there is doing this. And the reason they're doing it is that it works. People watch this stuff. The second thing, which is something I feel people don't put into their marketing plan, is getting onto podcasts, and getting into traditional media, and I would lump those things together. Podcasts and traditional media, if you talk to PR agencies or PR agents these days, those things are pulled together. It's no longer that PR just does traditional print media or online publications. Podcasts are a huge media outlet. You look at companies like Mamamia that have made empires and have gone from a traditional publishing model with online publication to a gigantic podcast empire.
If you are looking at your upcoming 12 months, what are the key campaigns you're running? What are the key times of year key dates for your industry and your audience? And how are you getting onto podcasts that are going to come out around those days or podcasts that are very much talking to that community or traditional media that is also very much talking to that community? And we don't do that enough. We do not put that into our plan. Again, you are listening to this podcast, hopefully, you like it and I'm sure one of the parts that you like is my interviews with other small business owners because you are getting a sense of who they are, how they spend their days, what things they interested, why did they start their business, what's important to them, how do they feel about their business, what are they proud of?
All of those things are helping you form a human connection with that founder. And you know firsthand that you can have that connection with a brand that maybe you didn't have before you listen to that interview. That is important when it comes to figurehead marketing. How are you getting onto podcasts that already have the audience that you have? You are leveraging that audience and you're talking about things that are real and important to you. Such a huge one that is not put into things. Likewise, traditional media still has a gigantic role to play, I think with social media and I feel like I'm always harping on about this. People think social media is it. No. Traditional media have not only the actual publication, whether that's print or online, but they will then syndicate that article and amplify it through their social media channels.
You're getting both of those things with one hit, podcast, and traditional media. The third tactic that you want to look at for building your figurehead profile and allowing people to have a human connection with your brand is your profile building. Profile building is, I would say media term. Looking at your profile, what exists do you have? Is your LinkedIn updated? Are you posting on LinkedIn? Are you posting on Medium? If you're a thought leader in that space, do you have a speaker kit? Do you have a sponsorship kit? Do you have if you have a podcast or something? Speaker kit or a short bio, long bio. Do you have some photos of yourself?
How are you building your profile out there into the world? If you do start talking to a PR agency quite often they will say, “Okay, we're going to start with a bit of profile building.” And that is they're getting you thought leadership articles, they're getting you opinion pieces, they are getting you to be part of a panel or anything else that is going to build your profile. I love PR people, and I have a lot of close friends who are PR people, but if you do not have the budget to get that right now, I would look at building your profile. Checking things like LinkedIn, do you have a speaker bio? Are you consistently pitching yourself to speak at anything like that? Also, what exists out there that you don't want to exist? Are there things on Facebook that maybe you want to delete or archive those posts?
Are there things out there that, I don't know, photos of yourself that aren't necessarily the most professional on certain platforms? Not to say that you have to take away who you are, but make sure that what is out there about you is how you want to be perceived and it is part of your figurehead marketing. In the next part, I touched on it already, and this has been huge for me and I just enjoyed doing it as well, are panels and keynotes. I speak at a lot of trade shows, I do a lot of panels for different summits and business groups. Some of those are the private sector. I'll go into places like Xero or places like I used to do it for Etsy or different places and talk about an element of business that is a huge part of building your profile.
I would have a look and I often say to my clients what things are coming up in the next 12 to 18 months. What trade shows are coming up? What industry events are coming up? Where could you be a panellist? There's a company called General Assembly and they have offices and places all around the world. It's adult education, very much in the digital creative sector world. And they often will have panels. You could contact them and be like, "Hey, if you've got any panels coming up on sustainability in retail,” or whatever the things are that you are an expert in, and just getting panels are the easiest way to get onto the speaker circuit because it's not just you holding it all together.
You'll have an MC. The MC or the person hosting will usually chat with you beforehand. You'll often get sent the questions beforehand and get an idea of what you're talking about. You have other people on the panel that then you can connect with and they're just fun as well. If you can let go of the nerves, they're fun. Keynotes are a little bit more intense. It is you holding the space for 40 minutes or an hour or longer if you are running like a keynote workshop. But again, they are raising your profile, they're raising your credibility and you're getting in front of audiences sometimes with Creative Mornings when I did a keynote for them, years and years ago now that I think they held 400 in that space, 400 creative people, likewise Shopify.
I did a couple of keynotes for them and that is about 450 people. It's huge. And the last one is photo shoots. Making sure that the photos that are out there that you have, you feel confident with, you're excited by. And that is something that I know myself. I have let slide, I had three photo shoots booked through the pandemic and I couldn't because every time it was booked we had a lockdown. However, I've recently got photos taken with the amazing Hilary Walker, she is fantastic. She's here in Melbourne. If you are interested, just check out Hilary. We'll link to it in the show notes. And I have to say, she just made the whole thing comfortable and wonderful and I'm so happy with the photos, which you'll start seeing more of out there in the social media world.
That is it for figurehead marketing, thinking about how much are you getting out there. A day in the life of podcasts and traditional media, building your profile, getting onto panels and keynotes, and making sure that you have great photos of yourself that you love and you feel confident and they represent you. If you found this useful, I would love it so much. If you might share this episode with a small business friend or leave us a review, which helps other small business owners find out about us. You can find all the show notes for this over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/296. Thanks so much for reading and I'll see you next time.
