- If you want to build a brand that customers love,
then you need to make sure you're doing a few things right,
like building a community around your business,
staying focused on your customers at all times,
and not being afraid to stand up, stand out,
and stand for something.
- Be the best, be the worst, but never be the middle.
You know, like just don't be boring.
- In today's attention economy,
with so many other brands, businesses, and messages
competing for your customer's attention,
if you're boring, you're broke.
I'm Adam Erhart,
and today, I wanna unpack a recent episode of "Connections,"
the show for marketers on Salesforce+
where Yeti CMO, Paulie Dery, talks about some key insights
into what Yeti is doing
to build a long-term sustainable brand
and relationship with their customers.
I'm gonna take some of the bigger picture ideas he shares
and translate them into proven
and profitable marketing strategies,
tactics, and frameworks that you can use right now
in order to build a brand that lasts,
make a deeper connection with your customers,
and build what Paulie calls a heat shield
around your business.
Before we start, if you wanna check out the full episode,
you can right after this on Salesforce+.
It's completely 100% free to watch
and there are a ton of other great episodes
on there as well,
so I'll make sure to put a link down in the descriptions
for you to check out right after this video.
For now, let's start unpacking
one of the most important brand building concepts out there,
how to build a loyal and dedicated cult-like following
for your brand.
Despite what it sounds like,
building a cult brand has nothing to do
with starting a cult.
Whew.
Well, there's a relief.
And everything to do with attracting
and connecting to people who share a common love
or passion for a certain value, lifestyle, attitude,
or behavior associated with your business.
For example, I love marketing,
so I talk about marketing, create marketing content.
Try to tell anybody who will listen
about just how great marketing is.
Excuse me, sir, would you like to learn
about how marketing can help you grow your business?
And Yeti did this by being clear
and focusing on the two things that matter most
when it comes to building a long-term and sustainable brand,
their core customer and building community.
- It seems like you've built a cult brand
rather than a fad brand.
Is that something you talk about internally?
- I think we talk about it for two reasons.
A fad is a short-lived spike,
and why that may be really satisfying on the short term,
it's not how you build a brand
or a company for the long haul,
and you always have to protect your core customer
and community.
And if you do that well, others find you, right?
And will follow you in.
- The good news is that building a cult-like following
is a whole lot easier than it sounds,
as it all really comes down to authenticity
and being true to your business, and your vision,
and your customers.
When you do this,
you naturally start to attract more people just like you
and repel bad fits and problem customers
that you wouldn't wanna work with anyway.
And it builds a heat shield that protects you
when bad things happen,
as how much you can weather
is dependent on how much you've put into your brand.
- So what is a brand heat shield?
- There are some companies that don't invest in brand,
so when something happens, they're in trouble.
A brand heat shield is how well you can weather that storm.
Brands aren't perfect, companies aren't perfect,
people aren't perfect,
but with brands that have great heat shield, there's give.
And how much can you weather
is totally dependent on how much you've put into brand.
- A strong brand is what allows some businesses
to grow consistently, regardless of the economy,
allows you to charge top dollar
and have people practically beg you to give you their cash.
And the best brands know how to make their product,
but more importantly, their brand,
become a part of your life.
More than that, though, it becomes a part of you,
or at least the way you think about yourself.
It's more than making funny ads, flashy graphics,
or hyped-up product launches.
It's about making the brand part of your identity,
and the very best marketing does this
while at the same time,
bringing together a group of people
who also share the same values, and lifestyles,
and attitudes, and behaviors,
and that's what community building is all about.
Building a community around your business
doesn't have to be complicated.
Sure, there are tactics and tricks and hacks you can use.
I'll share those with you in just a minute.
But what's really important is the strategy,
the attitude, and the mindset behind all of this.
which comes down to asking,
how can you be of service?
- How can you be of service?
How can you be really true
and help those people do more of what they love?
- What I found most interesting here, though,
was how Yeti didn't come out of the gate swinging,
trying to go after everyone, everywhere,
which would've made them a commodity,
but instead, started with a small customer segment
and really focused on giving them
the best experience possible.
- I wanna talk about the vibrant brand community
that you've built at Yeti.
Built it really fast.
How did you do that?
- Community is the cornerstone of Yeti.
We started on with the fishing communities
down the coast of Texas and Florida
because we built a product that was made
for people to fish longer.
So you put a lot of focus into that community
'cause they were really embracing us.
We started to see other communities embrace the product,
and we still to this day follow that.
We don't create the tracks, we follow 'em.
We see where our product pops up
and what communities embraced the products.
So we started to see it pop up in the outdoor world,
in the climb world, in snowboarding,
into the barbecue world,
and now we're into this world of surf and skate,
which the product found its way there.
When the product found its way,
we followed and invested in the community.
- A good way to start building more of a community
around your brand
is simply to start identifying the platforms and places
that your ideal target audience is present and active on.
Then, go there.
Listen and learn.
Then engage by being curious, asking questions,
and providing helpful content.
You can take this a step further by creating an online group
or community to help bring people together
around your topic.
And you can amplify all of this
by adopting a user generated content, or UGC strategy,
that encourages customers
to share their personal experiences
with your brand or business.
At the end of the day, though,
do whatever you have to do
in order to share and tell the stories
of the people that love you most.
So to help you do that,
let's take a look at brand building content now.
Content marketing is one of the most important ingredients
to building a strong brand today.
- How do you approach brand storytelling?
Does the community help you create custom content?
- We invest a lot in our content.
We love the places that our product lives,
and we love the characters,
and all we wanted to do was tell the story of the people
and the places,
and they're often stories that aren't told.
And so, we wanna tell it.
- Your audience wants more content,
the social media algorithms want more content,
I personally would like to see you make more
and better content,
but quantity alone isn't enough to succeed
in the content game today,
as the demand for quality content is also increasing.
So if your content isn't working
as well as you were hoping for,
it's likely because it's either unrelated or unappealing.
Unrelated content means that the words, images,
and overall messages that the business is using
are irrelevant, just not that important.
Saying something that people don't really care
that much about and trying to sell something in a way
that doesn't resonate with the actual pains, problems,
fears, and frustrations of the customer.
Unappealing content is simply a message
that's packaged wrong.
Or in other words, it's boring, forgettable,
and it just blends in with everything else.
The solution to both of these problems
comes down to number one,
knowing your audience and how your business helps them.
And number two,
being strategic about the content you're creating,
which can happen by planning things ahead of time
and also by staying plugged into the community.
But we've only just scratched the surface,
and there are a ton more great takeaways and lessons
you can learn not only from this episode of "Connections,"
but the entire series
where we're talking with CMOs from every industry,
and you can stream it now completely free on Salesforce+
just by clicking the link in the descriptions
below this video.
And for more actionable takeaways
to help you grow your business,
make sure to check out the video I've got linked up
right here.
So make sure to check that out now
and I'll talk to you again soon.