Episode 270 with Sue Kirchner: Identifying and Marketing Your Unique Brand

Ever wondered why your marketing efforts aren't paying off? My guest today, Sue Kirchner, founder of Brand Strong Marketing, is here to explain why knowing your brand and audience is crucial before spending a dime on marketing. Sue shares her journey from corporate America to entrepreneurial success and offers insights on how businesses can identify their unique strengths and attract the right customers and talent. We discuss the importance of foundational work in branding, why it's essential for small to mid-sized businesses, and how to make your brand stand out in a crowded market. 

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Transcript

Episode 270 with Sue Kirchner: Identifying and Marketing Your Unique Brand

Transcribed by Descript 

Erin Marcus: All right! Welcome to this episode of the ReadyYet podcast. I'm excited about my guest today, Sue Kirchner. Here's why. You just said something as we were getting ready to record. You said it a little differently than I said it, but it's the same vein of what's so important for people. Before we jump into it, Everybody, cause I could just go right off.

Erin Marcus: Tell everybody a little bit about who you are and what it is that you do. 

Sue Kirchner: Yes. Yeah. Thank you. First of all, for having me on Aaron. I'm thrilled. I always love talking with you. This is going to be fun, but I'm Sue Kirshner. I have a company called brand strong marketing. And what I do is I help small and mid sized businesses who are starting to scale, to identify their unique brands.

Sue Kirchner: So they can attract more customers, clients, and capital. to grow faster and easier. Yeah I am absolutely fascinated with working with organizations, digging in to find out what makes them tick, what makes them unique on their best day, what can they possibly do for their ideal clients. And in a lot of cases, I have to point out who their ideal clients are and help them with that.

Sue Kirchner: And really create that foundation that's going to drive all of their messaging, all of their marketing, all of their pleas to their different audiences to help them grow. And I just absolutely adore being able to go and do that. And I like to say, one of my, One of my favorite things about what I do, because I focus on an organization and telling them what they're absolutely amazing at, is I love making business owners and executives fall in love with their business again.

Sue Kirchner: Because we all deal with so many problems every day. There's always a fire to put out. There's always something that went wrong. There's always this and this. But to have somebody, come in and just say, stop for a second, take a breath, Here is what you're amazing at. This is why you do it.

Sue Kirchner: We don't 

Erin Marcus: usually hear that, right? We feel like we're screaming it from the rooftops, which is massively uncomfortable, which is why more people don't do it. And yet we don't have that reflected back. But you said something about this that I really like. You said you help them get their story straight.

Erin Marcus: And I love that because my version of that is, if you don't know who your people are, they don't know who they are. And so I, and you and I have the same problem. I'm going to just call it a problem. The fact that you and I both love marketing makes us not understand why other people don't.

Erin Marcus: You're like, what's wrong with you?

Erin Marcus: I call it do the work before you go to work. Yeah. This is not. Extra work. This is the work you do to make all the other work actually work. 

Sue Kirchner: Oh, exactly. And that's what I tell my clients all the time is I like to say I'm the person you talk to and work with before you spend any money on marketing, right?

Sue Kirchner: Because we all know I've had it happen. I'm sure you've had it, and you've seen clients who've had it, who they come in and they're already mad because I worked with an agency or I did this marketing and it was a complete waste of time and money. And, and then when you drill down and you ask them why didn't it work?

Sue Kirchner: They didn't know who they were talking to. So the message wasn't relevant. They were saying something that was important to them, but it wasn't important to the customer. It didn't attract them in any way, shape or form. So yeah, it's important to do this foundational work because it is. It is the brand strategy is basically the flip side of the same coin as your business strategy.

Sue Kirchner: And one has an internal focus. The other one has an external focus, which is the brand. And it's basically bringing that vision of where your company is going, how you operate, what you can do. It's bringing that to life so other people can see it and be attracted to it. 

Erin Marcus: And so many people, I think there's a lot that goes on.

Erin Marcus: Like, why does this trip people up? And I think it's a mixture of one, they just don't know. That's fair. They just don't know how to do the thing that they do. Two, we live in, we used to call it a microwave society that feels a little dated. Now I call it the Amazon prime society.

Erin Marcus: If I can't have what I want by two, forget, wait until tomorrow. Why aren't you delivering it same day? 

Erin Marcus: Where we think that no work has to go into creating the outcomes that we want. 

Sue Kirchner: Exactly. Exactly. And so it's branding, I was told, and this is something we could talk about later. It's something that's plagued me my whole career is nobody wants branding.

Sue Kirchner: No one's going to spend any money on branding. Or it's everybody wants it, but nobody needs it. You're a, nice to have not a have to have, which I adamantly have seen in 25 plus years of working with clients that is absolutely not true, but. The thing that I find amazing is why would you invest so much money in marketing, especially as you're starting to scale and every dollar counts as to where you're putting it to grow the business?

Sue Kirchner: Why would you spend money if you don't know where? It's going, what it's doing, who it's talking to, and that it really tells how you're going to offer value to the people that you're trying to attract. 

Erin Marcus: And people who say that you don't need it, or you don't need it yet, all I keep thinking about is, I'm sorry if you've not heard of Harley Davidson, Coca Cola, Nike, Kim Kardashian if you, Jason Kelsey you can pick Any of these, the reason you know exactly what these things are is because of their branding.

Sue Kirchner: Oh, exactly. And you don't have to be, this is another thing that I'm trying to work on with my new podcast, Turbo Branding, is I used to get so frustrated when I was dealing with my clients who were all small business owners, right? Small and mid sized business owners. And I was a small business.

Sue Kirchner: And you would go to these conferences on branding and every example. Was Nike or Apple or Mercedes Benz. And you sit there and then I turned to my clients and they're like, I don't have that kind of money. I'm not ever going to be Apple. I'm not Coca Cola where everyone on the planet is my target market, so I love focusing in and highlighting the small businesses who are doing just a, an amazing job of owning their niche or of owning the fact that they know how to tell their story to their clients and they're starting to grow faster than they ever have. And one of 

Erin Marcus: the ones, a small business that always comes to mind with this is a friend of mine, Unique Larry.

Erin Marcus: Okay. And Unique Larry, is a carpet cleaning business. I know Unique Larry and it's funny because it's like he has a brand that well and the dog who has since passed and there's a new dog but Wally, the white dog with the big smile was part of the brand because one of his and you wouldn't think that a carpet cleaning company would have a content pillar and yet dog messes.

Erin Marcus: Was one of his absolute brand identity content pillar and look at his craze. He's everyone in the North Shore of Chicago knows who unique 

Sue Kirchner: Larry is. Everyone knows him. It was amazing. Yeah. And there's little things like I had a gentleman who used to sell print to me eons ago while I was in the marketing communications department and he always had a carnation.

Sue Kirchner: On his suit lapel, and after a while I asked him, I'm like why do you insist on having this carnation here? And he said, because people remember me, and it was like, yeah, that's just 

Erin Marcus: absolute genius. Sometimes it could be a little thing like that. And sometimes it could be, here's another example that people don't realize this is brand.

Erin Marcus: So I have a friend, her name is Tammy and she amazing woman. She's a life coach. She is a soft place to land. Just a pleasant, her energy. And so we have a mutual friend who jokes around with us and says, If this isn't brand this is dead on. I want Erin to motivate me in the morning and I want Tammy to read me a bedtime story.

Sue Kirchner: Here's the 

Erin Marcus: thing, Tammy and I agree on everything. Yeah. We agree on everything. We have very similar views. We are so different from a brand perspective. Yes. That it's obvious to our world, when do you need Erin and when do you need Tammy? 

Sue Kirchner: Exactly. And it helps from the branding perspective of finding your ideal target market, right?

Sue Kirchner: Because there will be some people who will absolutely gravitate to you and your energy and your style. And others may feel incredibly more comfortable with someone maybe a little bit more peaceful, a little bit more quiet. You can't be blunt about this. I scare the living bejesus out of me on 

Erin Marcus: occasion.

Erin Marcus: It is what it is. 

Sue Kirchner: No. But you're right. But someone to walk them off the edge all the time or, that kind of thing, and that's what makes the world so great is because there's someone out there who can help you same as when you're looking at your own brand, you don't serve everybody because we've all heard that I learned it, there's no money in the middle.

Sue Kirchner: Yeah, there's no money in the middle. So you need to be, and I like to say there's courage in branding, because you absolutely have to say no to certain things. You have to put your flag in the ground and say, this is what I stand for, this is what I do. Or even you don't, and here's the thing, 

Erin Marcus: people, you don't even have to be a jerk about it.

Erin Marcus: You can just be like, you know what, This is my teeny tiny sweet spot where I am amazing. It's not that I can't help you on this side. Like I'll give you an example for me, my sweet spot with clients, depending on the business is, they're over a hundred K they're into a couple, six figures, but 5 million is where I cap out because it's not that I was C suite at a 56 million company.

Erin Marcus: It's not that I don't want to do that, but the rules are different. There are problems are different there. I don't want to play in that sandbox. Yes. Yes. So 

Sue Kirchner: So it's like, where are you the best you? Exactly. And that's what the brand should help you see. And it should help you make those hard decisions, which are I don't want to chase that type of customer anymore or things like that.

Sue Kirchner: And like you talked about, I have so many customers who like, they get absolutely nerve wracked when we're like, no, this is your ideal customer. And they're like, yeah, but what if this person, or what if it, and I'm like, Hey, you don't have to say no to them. If they come to you. And it's not going to disrupt your operation in any way, shape or form, or not be profitable by all means work with them if they came to you.

Sue Kirchner: However, when you have a limited amount of time, energy, and money to spend on marketing, you're not going to market to that person. You're going to market to the people who you have the best opportunity of getting them to convert or attract them. 

Erin Marcus: And don't confuse marketing niche with client portfolio.

Erin Marcus: Two completely different things. If you do your marketing really well, the people on the periphery or your brand message and everything, the people on the peripheral of that will also be attracted to you. 

Sue Kirchner: Correct. Correct. And they may be attracted to you. Maybe they're not, as you said, your niche.

Sue Kirchner: Maybe they're not your ideal customer or the right niche that you're going after, but They've seen the amazing work that you're doing and no one is filling that niche for them. So then they have, so then they're saying, Hey, could you do this for me? Because I can't find anybody else who can.

Sue Kirchner: And that's not a bad thing. But yeah, but like I said, understanding, in a lot of what I concentrate on with clients prior to COVID, but then especially during COVID, For small businesses. One of the biggest problems they have, not just finding customers is finding talent, it's finding employees because no one's heard of their company.

Sue Kirchner: And a lot of times they don't even advertise that they're looking for someone, or they don't advertise appropriately that they're looking for someone. I had a client who was like we can't hire anybody if we can't. Get at least two more people and we can't serve more customers and I could bring that business in.

Sue Kirchner: So it's actually hurting our growth by not having these two people. And he's but I can't get anyone to work here, and it was two things. One was why should they work here? Can you tell, can you answer that question adequately? Tell me the story of why they should work here. And that's your employer brand, right?

Sue Kirchner: But then the other side was, is I'm like where are you saying that you're looking for somebody? Oh, we had one, one job slot on Indeed. And I'm like, okay, but that can't be enough to find it. And I said, and then if someone does see the job posting on Indeed, what are they going to do next? They're gonna great.

Sue Kirchner: They're gonna go look you up. Yeah. And he is he is I don't know. I'm like, they're gonna go look you up and on your website, you don't say anything about what it's like to work there. And I said, and you don't even say that you're hiring. And then they're gonna go look at your social media account to see oh, I wanna see if their employees, do they give shout outs to their employees or are they doing community work or, things like that.

Sue Kirchner: That's great. And there's nothing. 

Erin Marcus: Does someone identify with your brand as a team member as much as they identify with your brand as a 

Sue Kirchner: client? Exactly. And there was nothing there. And I said, and that's the problem is when you, if you're looking to bring talent in, you have to spend just as much time advertising why you're a great employer brand as you are a brand for your clients.

Sue Kirchner: And it helped within three months, they got two people in and started to grow again, but it took pointing out that. This is the, not only is this the process to finding people and convincing them, but then just what is the story? Why should they work here? Why are you a great place to work?

Sue Kirchner: It, especially when you're trying to attract top talent, right? You're a small business no one has ever heard of. What makes you different for this particular client that I was working with? It was for the industry was very conservative. But their company culture was very edgy and very entrepreneurial.

Sue Kirchner: And I'm like, that will appeal to someone. You need to be talking about that. When you're, promoting that you have a job opening and things. 

Erin Marcus: So 

Sue Kirchner: what got you into this? What's your origin story with this? What's my origin story. I have a very long origin story because I bounce around a lot. What I found in my journey is that nothing is linear.

Sue Kirchner: And it only 

Erin Marcus: makes sense, like in way hindsight. 

Sue Kirchner: Yeah. Oh, in way hindsight, because I remember being right out of school and I got a job at Motorola which was not a marketing company, but I was lucky enough that having lived in Latin America for a number of years, I spoke Spanish fluently. So I was lucky enough to be brought into Motorola to work in the cell phone division as it was taking off and I got to do all marketing for Latin America.

Sue Kirchner: Yeah, so that was awesome. But, um, it was great because it let me see every part. Of marketing and advertising as opposed to being pigeonholed into PR or, advertising and things like that. So I had a very well rounded background and then I got into a situation. I lived overseas for a number of years when my husband was transferred.

Sue Kirchner: But it came to a point where Motorola was moving my job to Florida, all Latin American employees or anyone who was serving the Latin American market needed to be in Florida. We're going to consolidate them all there in one office. And I was like I'm not moving to Florida at the time.

Sue Kirchner: So it was exciting at that moment because I said, you know what, I'm going to go out and try my own thing. I've worked in corporate America for eight years. I'm going to see if I can do my own thing. And, I had so many people saying Oh my gosh, I can't believe you're going to give, you're going to give up a full time job.

Sue Kirchner: You're going to do this. And I'm like, what's the worst that's going to happen? It doesn't work. And I go get a job. Like I already had that. Six to eight months from now I just start sending my resume out again and looking for a job, but I wanted to try it. And what I loved about that. Was it opened the journey to this nonlinear thing, which is I could do different things and before it was like when I was at Motorola was like, okay, we're going to do this and become corporate VP at some time, it was completely going that way as you've seen, but when I went out and did my own thing, it was like, Hey do you want to learn about research?

Sue Kirchner: Yeah, I would love to learn about research. And I had a professor of mine at Kellogg who was like, help me do these research projects for clients that I have. I'm like, great, and then I actually ended up teaching master's program in international business at Lake Forest graduate school, never a millionaire.

Sue Kirchner: So that thought of teaching and that kind of created this love of, Teaching and presenting and I have this level of research. 

Erin Marcus: That's where I got my MBA. That was a great. 

Sue Kirchner: That was an awesome program. And my skill, what you can say is my core skill is writing and strategy, looking at patterns and problem solving and things like that.

Sue Kirchner: So my journey ultimately took me to the point where I realized. Finally, after a number of years that there was a niche that I could fill that allowed me to use research. It allowed me to use writing. It allowed me to use strategy and it allows me to use teaching and pull that all together into this brand consulting type of a job.

Sue Kirchner: And it just I love it. I absolutely love it. And there was a point where you 

Erin Marcus: can tell, and I think that's, that is a lesson in and of itself. When I, when you talk about your story and. I know none of that happened for you in a minute and a half, but it's you just keep iterating.

Sue Kirchner: Yes. 

Erin Marcus: What it is you're great at, what it is that lights you up, and if you can do that at the same time, in service to the marketplace, by the way, not in a bubble that nobody wants to buy, but in service solving an actual problem, and the more you can do that while simultaneously letting go of the things you don't like.

Sue Kirchner: Yeah. 

Erin Marcus: That's the entrepreneurial dream. 

Sue Kirchner: That's absolutely. And like you said, it's like we were talking earlier in our conversation about what is your genius or your zone of genius or what are you really good at and stuff. It's yeah, someone could come to me and I could create your social media posts.

Sue Kirchner: Someone could come to me and yes, I can create a marketing plan for you, but there's a lot of other people who can do that. And maybe even do it better. I said where I am really good. is coming into an organization and digging deep enough and asking the right questions to help see where you are unique, what is your brand and where you are unique and which type of customers gravitate to you.

Sue Kirchner: And then how do you translate that into a message that's going to grab their attention and make them want to at least hear more which is, the goal of marketing is to give you a chance to tell your story more. But I just, I really love doing that. And yeah, it's like you said, it was nonlinear.

Sue Kirchner: It's I lived overseas and worked overseas for an international company. I started my own e commerce business and that's where I learned all about digital marketing and how, it's that same cliche. If you build it does not mean they will come. No, 

Erin Marcus: that, that day we missed out on that golden 

Sue Kirchner: era.

Sue Kirchner: Exactly. So yeah, so I had to learn all about digital marketing and driving people, to your site and things like that. So by the time I got to brand strong marketing, it was this complete soup amalgamation of all these skills that I had learned in my entrepreneurial journey and finding out what am I really good at?

Sue Kirchner: What am I really able to uniquely deliver that a lot of people struggle with? No, a hundred percent. 

Erin Marcus: Agree. Very excited that you found it. I know. There's a lot of people out there who are very excited that you found out. I hope so. If people want to continue this conversation with you and learn more about this and I just, this is the backbone.

Erin Marcus: This is the foundation. I honestly think. One of the reasons I've been able to take a coaching business so far so fast is because the brand was solid right from the beginning. Yeah. There's been iterations of a logo, but to me, the definition I use for a brand is how do people feel after interacting with you in any way?

Erin Marcus: Exactly. And if you can be, brave enough, To be authentic and embrace it. That is what gets you through the iterations 

Sue Kirchner: of your it does. It does. And it's absolutely hard to say no. And I interviewed some CEOs I don't know, about 10, 15 years ago about just the importance of branding.

Sue Kirchner: Cause like I said, I had this chip on my shoulder of people. I was like, Oh, no, one's going to invest in branding and things like that. So I comment like that can mess you up, right? It can mess you up. And I've had the same thing with a book. No one wants to read a book about branding and no one wants to, and it's you know what, at a certain point, you, I, that's what I stand for.

Sue Kirchner: I stand for the fact that the brand is absolutely essential. If you want to grow your business, especially as you start to scale. And so I, I need to keep yelling that I need to keep showing people that it's true and that they need to invest in it and things like that. But I had a a CEO tell me at one point, I thought it was a great, He said, when you're entrepreneurial and you're just starting out, he said, with his company, which was an executive recruiting firm, he said the first five years we were order takers.

Sue Kirchner: And then we finally got to the point after five years where we could be order makers, meaning we knew who we wanted to work with, what we wanted to sell, and we could actively strategically go out and grab that kind of work as opposed to just taking whatever came our way because you have cash flow that you need to cover.

Sue Kirchner: And there's nothing wrong with that, but you do at some point have to realize, and especially when you start to scale, is okay. Now we have to get this down. What is our strategy? What is our goal? What is our vision? Where are we going? Who are our customers? So that we don't waste time, energy, and money making mistakes or getting sidetracked along the way.

Sue Kirchner: And trust me, I, I. I am the biggest person who gets distracted by shiny objects. I have to be. You wouldn't be 

Erin Marcus: doing 

Sue Kirchner: what you were doing if you didn't. Welcome to the club. You reeled in. But yeah, so I have to really, tell my clients, I get it. I get it when it's hard to say no, but you have to, so if people want to continue this conversation with 

Erin Marcus: you and learn more, what's the best way to find you? 

Sue Kirchner: Yeah, best way to find me is my website, BrandStrongMarketing. com All the links to my social profiles, LinkedIn, YouTube channel. And then I'm also launching Turbo Branding, which is my podcast, of which I will be having you as a guest.

Sue Kirchner: And I'm excited about that that's on YouTube and we'll be launching probably in a couple months. So brand strong marketing. com. 

Erin Marcus: This is how I know when I'm talking to a marketing person, 

Sue Kirchner: you're 

Erin Marcus: ready. You did it. You 

Sue Kirchner: did it. 

Erin Marcus: Yes. One 

Sue Kirchner: call 

Erin Marcus: to 

Sue Kirchner: action. One call to action. Go to my site. You'll find everything.

Erin Marcus: I agree. I say that I do the same thing and I, sometimes I always ask people that and they list off seven or eight things and people lose track. So if you've taken nothing else away, 

Sue Kirchner: go to the website. At least 

Erin Marcus: start there. If you get lost. You at least have my number, nowhere to find you. So thank you so much for hanging out with me.

Erin Marcus: It's always fun to talk to people who I know get it and are excited about the same. You can join. I have a little group of marketing nerds. You can join with us. Awesome. I love marketing nerds. So thank you so much for hanging out with me today. 

Sue Kirchner: Thanks, Erin. I really appreciate it.