Author: Ruthie Bowles

Are you taking care of your secondary customers? That may not be a question you’re ready to answer just yet. Who are your secondary customers, and why should you care? Those are all questions we answer in this podcast episode. 

Here is the podcast episode:

Or if you’d rather watch the video:

Who Even Is Your Secondary Audience?

You may be thinking, “Ruthie, I’m just trying to handle the regular customers that I have. Why are you bringing up this secondary customer?” I promise they’re not magical beings that are hard to get to. You already have them. What’s important is that you recognize them. 

In content marketing, this is called your secondary target audience. Some businesses have more than one target audience, so they may still fall within the primary target audience unless indicated otherwise by your strategist. 

They’re your second most important audience. The primary audience is typically the customer who will spend the most. Your secondary audience may not spend as much or as often, or they may not even purchase at all. 

Why You Should Care About Them

You’re thinking, “If they don’t purchase anything at all, why would I create content for them?” Ah, yes. Now we’ve come to the root of the problem, and I’ve got the answer for you. 

The Case of Product-Based Businesses

So with product-based or businesses or software as a service, it’s a little easier to see why you’d create content for your secondary audience. 

For most products, the secondary audience are services who utilize that product, so you’d create content for services that consult for your product or offer management services. If it’s a software, then offer software management services for your product. 

Hubspot

A great example of this is Hubspot, which creates a ton of content for agencies and consulting firms that specialize in working with Hubspot software. 

There’s a special email list for Hubspot agencies. Hubspot’s even created a partner program with tiers. You can be a silver, gold, platinum, or diamond level. Hubspot lists these agencies and firms on a website, and it directs customers to that website so they can find a consulting firm who can help them if Hubspot themselves can’t. It’s incredibly fascinating. 

Even if you’re not a Hubspot partner agency, there’s also the Hubspot Academy, which is content for customers. But they know that freelancers and smaller consulting firms, much like Defy The Status Quo, use Hubspot and finds value in that content. 

So why would Hubspot create content that would help Defy The Status Quo? Well, Hubspot’s gotten a lot of free publicity from me. I recommend them, I say great things about them. I got to know them as an organization through their content, and I’m confident when I direct people to their website. 

By helping these agencies, freelancers, and consultants become more successful, Hubspot itself becomes more successful. This is because these service businesses direct more people to purchase Hubspot’s software. 

The Case of Service-Based Businesses

This is a little tougher. It’s something you have to find for every single business. With service-based businesses, it may be related industries. 

So if I wanted to create content for one of my secondary audiences… Let’s say web design companies are a secondary audience. Why? Because web design companies may not always have content professionals on staff. 

So I’ve got relationships with web design companies and if they have clients who need content written, they recommend me as one of their go-to content consultants. I’m their secondary audience, and they’re my secondary audience. 

If I write an article on the topic of “the importance of excellent web design and content marketing”, it’s something that I could email to any web design companies I’ve partnered or that I’d like to partner with. 

That’s valuable because they read it, they see that I understand them, and I see how web design fits within content marketing. That’s going to move the needle in my favor in terms of likeability because nobody wants to feel like they’re unimportant. 

Oftentimes, content professionals put a little too much emphasis on content and not enough on good web design. I could write the best content for your website, but if customers look at it and they’re like, “Hey, so 2005 is calling and they want their website design back…”

My wonderfully written content just isn’t going to make it as far as it would if your website is modern, mobile-optimized, and with beautiful brand colors and designs. That’s why I would address my secondary audience of design agencies.

Entrepreneurs as a Secondary Audience

Another secondary audience for me are entrepreneurs, usually service entrepreneurs. These are typically people that I’ve met, who’ve heard me speak, who like my content on Linkedin. They may not have room in their budget to purchase my services or bring me on to consult with them, but they love my content. They share it, comment on it, and they recommend me for marketing opportunities to bigger companies. 

That’s why entrepreneurs are my secondary audience. If you go through my content, you’ll see I do have business management, development, as well as marketing content on my website. That’s because I work with B2B consulting and service companies. But I can take what my primary audience normally delivers to their even bigger clients, and apply it to entrepreneurship. 

That feeds my secondary audience’s need for the knowledge they can appreciate because it may take a different perspective on things. By doing that, I tilt the needle in the right direction in terms of likability. 

People do business and recommend people they like. That’s why you want to create content for your secondary customers. 

So I’m asking you? are you taking care of your secondary customers in your marketing strategy? Are you supporting them the way that they support you?

I wanted to try something new on the podcast. There’s a lot to be learned from past campaigns, so that’s what Under the Microscope is about. Once per week, we’ll take a look at a company’s marketing campaign and talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. This week, I examined IBM’s Content Cantina campaign. This campaign isn’t over yet, but it’s already generated some amazing results!

Here’s the podcast episode:

Or if you’d rather watch the video:

The First Installment of Under the Microscope!

This is a weekly series that I’m calling “Under the Microscope”, in which I select and dissect  a marketing campaign. It might be a content marketing, but maybe not. You get to hear about what made this a great or not so great campaign, as well as my favorite parts, and what I think they can improve on.  

Today, we’re bringing IBM’s Content Cantina under the microscope. This campaign was for IBM’s internal personnel, so I will preface everything I say with the fact that I don’t have access to IBM’s internal content platform. 

I can only talk about what I saw, but with it being IBM, I have high confidence that they’re doing awesome things that I was unable to log into. Yes, I tried. 

Discussing Content and Thought Leadership

A Powerhouse of Content Creation

IBM wanted to change the conversation around content and thought leadership for their internal personnel. I don’t know if you know this, but IBM makes a lot of content. They have multiple websites for different things. 

Part of why they’re able to do this is because they have decentralized their content production. Not all of it funnels up to the top. They’ve got editors, who are the boots on the ground for content, embedded throughout the organization. 

Let’s Rethink Thought Leadership

The tagline for the campaign is: “Let’s rethink thought leadership”. Simple, to the point, and great. 

IBM is considered a thought leader in many industries they’re involved in, so they clearly identified their audience. They were trying to speak to 300,000 internal personnel. 

They wanted to reach those people outside of their typical internal communications channels and inspire storytelling. That’s how they came up with the Content Cantina. 

An Attention-Grabbing Setting

The Content Cantina seems to be centered around videos, which immediately get your attention. It’s a Star Wars-themed talk show. You hear the Star Wars theme playing, and you see the Star Wars setting behind the talk show host, George Hammer, also IBM’s Chief Content Officer. 

That shows that they really know their audience because even if you don’t like Star Wars, you know about it. It’s familiar, but it’s also unexpected. 

George Hammer is a great host. He’s very energetic, does great on camera, and I imagine he’s a great keynote speaker. 

The Results of IBM’s Content Cantina Campaign

Contrarian Marketing Generates Attention

When you look at these campaigns, they often talk about their results. I think that’s fantastic because it gives you an idea of what it can be like when you do something contrarian in your marketing. 

Contrarian marketing is a low key buzz phrase, but it just means that you did something different and caught people off guard. Your marketing is outside the norm of common expectation. You can take inspiration from other people outside of your industry too, and it makes you stand out. 

So that’s what made me notice this campaign. I was like, “Oh wow, Star Wars! That’s fun!” It was an interesting setting to have a conversation about the future of content and how we can advance it. 

Results in Numbers

Anyways, let’s get back to the results of the campaign. 

• Once they started posting these talk show segments of George Hammer speaking with some incredibly serious thought leaders within the content marketing space, their Linkedin post engagement went up 130%. 
• Searches for IBM’s content on “Content Marketing” went up 100%. That’s huge, especially when you consider the number of people looking for content marketing! 
• They noted that campaigns which used their best-identified practices and thought leadership saw a 23% increase in ROI and $5 billion in revenue leads. 

They had likely planned this, which goes back to when I talked about knowing the value of your content. There’s no way that they would’ve been able to easily chart out those numbers if they weren’t clear on their content goals from the beginning. 

It’s Not Over Yet

It turns out that more episodes of the IBM’s Content Cantina are coming, which is so cool! I can’t wait to watch them. 

George Hammer announced on Linkedin that the next 6 episodes are coming out soon. If I were you, I’d go search George Hammer on Linkedin and give him a follow, so you can see the episodes when they come out. I’m interested to see what the second part of the campaign will add to the mix. 

A Last Note

I obviously can’t see what they did with this content on their internal processes. But if I was part of that, I’d definitely make video snippets for snackable content, and then gauge serious interest in the various topics. That could serve as inspiration for a white paper or further research. I’m certain they came up with wonderful ways to repurpose this great video content.

Anything to help the 300,000 IBM personnel! However, that’s just me and they’ve got a whole team over there. I’m sure they’re doing wonderful things inside the platform that we can’t see.

I promise, this is the last episode about your company’s ideology. I couldn’t really conclude this series without recommending Simon Sinek’s Start With Why to you. When you can infuse your “why” into your marketing, sales, and operations, you can create customers for life. In the previous three episodes, we talked about your company ideology. Remember? How your values and purpose must be discovered, not created?

I know I said that I was done with ideology, purpose, and values, but I realized that in order to do a series properly, I couldn’t let this go without recommending one of my favorite business books. 

In today’s episode, I’m going to tell you why you should read Simon Sinek’s Start With Why. He narrates it himself, which is pretty cool. 

Here’s the podcast episode:

Or if you’d rather watch the video:

What This Book Can Help You with…

Putting Theory into Practice

Simon Sinek’s Start With Why is a book that goes into how you can apply your ideology, purpose, and values into your marketing strategy. 

I had the luck of reading this book before I set up my new website, and that was when Defy The Status Quo was born. 

Figuring Out What You’re All About

After I read his book, I really started thinking about what I wanted my company’s purpose to be. What are company values that would allow us to move forward? 

And it’s right there in the name: Defy The Status Quo. It’s about marketing and content, but not necessarily written content. That holds true for my vision of the future and what I want to provide for my clients. But I digress. 

Understanding How Communication Sets You Apart from Others 

After discovering your ideology and purpose, you might be saying to yourself, “Whoa! My mind is blown! I know exactly why my company exists.” 

Well, Simon Sinek talks about how communicating your values and purpose can set companies apart. It’s all about how they use their values, what they consider valuable, and how they use that in their marketing messaging to resonate with their target audience. 

In the last episode about ideology discovery, I said that it’s not a differentiating factor. It’s not something you create, but once you’ve discovered your ideology, you’re clearer on the types of clients you want to attract. 

Infusing Your Marketing Strategy with Passion

You want to make sure you can infuse your marketing messaging with this information, because your values and purpose are the things that you should be passionate about. Your marketing should always have passion.

I think that’s key for B2B service industries. If you decisively say you’re boring, nobody is going to be interested. 

That’s where people start to think, “Oh well, my clients don’t expect content from me. They just want awesome accounting/financial/various services.” The problem with that thinking is that your clients do want content from you. All of them. It’s the age that we’re in now. 

However, the most important thing is how you present that content, because what they don’t want is boring content. So if that’s what you’re going to put out, then yes, they don’t want that. 

But if you can liven it up and speak to them in their language, then they’ll want it. That’s where your ideology, purpose, values, and passion comes into play. 

Notable Criticisms: Excluding Other Companies in Favor of Apple

I will be honest about the book and say that it seems to have a bit of a love affair with Apple. Simon Sinek talks about them a lot, and I get it. 

I know that they’re a great company, ideal for branding. Their customers are evangelists for the brand. I see the lines coming out of Apple stores. 

I know their reach, but Simon talks about Apple a lot in this book. Okay, but what about Nike? What about those people who only wear Under Armour? Or about how Linux users, who are usually diehard users?

I think he could have talked about many other brands, but I felt like he incessantly harped on Apple. So I got a little bored at that part. Every time he mentioned it, I was like, “Yes. I know. Apple, the bite out of the apple. It was great, but what about other companies?” 

So if I were to give him feedback on the book, that’s what I would say. I would have loved to see other companies’ case studies. But if you love Apple, it’ll be great for you. 

I’m not an Apple person, as you might have been able to tell. I don’t hate Apple, but I have Google everything and an Android phone. 

Start With Why is Definitely Worth the Read

I still think the book is worth a read, even if you only get halfway through. If you’re planning an ideology discovery exercise with your C-suite, then I suggest you all read Simon Sinek’s Start With Why. 

He has valuable things to say about what makes an enduring company that withstands the technological advancements, as well as consumer trends and concerns. 

The book does a really good job giving everybody some perspective on why these things are important. 

Now, I promise that this actually concludes the series on ideology, purpose, values, and why those things are critical to your company’s future. 

Your company ideology is made up of your business’ values and purpose. But you can’t create it. It’s a journey of discovery. Once you’ve begun this journey though, you’ll find business decision easier to make. You’ll prevent yourself from making poor business decisions, and you’ll motivate your employees. 

Here’s the podcast episode:

Or if you’d rather watch the video:

In a couple of episodes previous to this one, we talked about the two components that make up your company’s ideology: the values and the purpose. It takes some digging to discover these two things, but once you do, you’ve found your company’s ideology. 

Company Ideology: Not Created, but Discovered

According to an hbr.org article that I read, your company’s ideology isn’t created. Even if you were to hire a consulting company to help you, they’d still be helping you to discover your ideology. 

This entire process is a path to discovery. But once you identify those values and your company’s purpose, it will help you with all internal decision-making issues. 

Guiding Your Business Decision-Making

If any opportunity comes along, you can revert back to whether it holds to your values or serves the company’s purpose. 

No matter your business size, going on this journey helps you stay true to your business. 

If you’re an entrepreneur listening to this, you’ve probably experienced a situation in which you did anything if you got paid for it. Entrepreneurs are very susceptible to saying “yes” when they shouldn’t. Even to the point where it draws them away from their core ideology and what makes them the happiest. 

This can happen in big businesses too. When certain businesses acquire other businesses, sometimes you say, “Oh, that’s, that’s interesting. I wouldn’t have expected them to buy that.” 

It could be possible that the company is attempting to purchase infrastructure or talent to further business goals that are tied to their ideology. 

However, it can also be a sign that they had an opportunity to buy another business, so they did. This could be drawing them further away from their ideology. 

Getting Back on Track!

One great example of a company realigning with their ideology was 3M, who divested themselves of certain parts of their business to get back to what their purpose was. 

Another example that comes to mind is of L-3, a company I used to work for. They had a business component, which was language services for the government, which they packaged up and sold off to the company I ended up working for, CACI International Inc. 

I have to imagine that had you been a fly in the room where those decisions were made, it might’ve been just that: the language services. 

While a vital service to the government and it did bring in money, didn’t line up with L-3’s vision for the future and ideology. That’s a reason why a company may choose to divest themselves of certain business divisions that they hold, even if those divisions are profitable. 

Authenticity in the Modern Era

You cannot create ideology, because that would be inauthentic. And we are in the era of supremely authentic marketing. If you are not authentic in your marketing, everyone can tell. You have to stay true to yourself.

Your Company Ideology Goes Beyond Simple Ethics

 And keep in mind that it’s a journey, so it’s not something that you do in a day. You want to be an ethical business person. When you look at your values beyond that,  you have to specifically decide what matters to you. 

If You’re a Small Business…

If you’re a small business, it’s fine if your ideology is still evolving in the first few years of your business. You will learn new things about yourself, as well as your business. 

Your ideology should be the beacon that lights the way into your future. It should be something similar to a rallying cry. 

If you’re a solo business, it should be something you can always go back to. That’s the soul of your business. Much like the small business, it will continue to evolve over time.

If You Have Employees…

But if you’re a business with employees, your ideology should be something that lights the fire in your employees. It could serve as a qualifier or disqualifier for new employees. It should tie in with what you want your business to accomplish. However, it should be something that resonates with the right type of employee.

So it’s not like a differentiating factor that you would use in your marketing, but you could be more motivated. Your employees could be more motivated because they believe in your ideologies. 

The results of holding that ideology tightly to one’s chest are that your employees may outperform your competitors’ employees because they truly believe in the ideology that you’ve set. 

Stable, but Shifting when Necessary

The big thing here is that your ideology should endure, in spite of this ever-changing, technologically advanced world. And if there’s ever any part of your ideology that just doesn’t feel right, then you have to let it go. 

Most entrepreneurs change the way they express their ideology, even if the ideology itself stays the same. The words that you use to express your ideology may change. This change is a great opportunity to help your employees better resonate with your ideology.  

All right, so that’s us wrapping up our series on company ideology. Don’t forget the two key components: your values and your purpose wrapped together, which creates your company’s reason for existing. 

This has been an episode of The Defiant Business Podcast. Go ahead and leave us a comment, wherever it is that you’ve found us. We’d love to have a discussion with you. 

Goals, strategies, and tactics all change, but your purpose should stay the same. Today we’re going over the second component of your company ideology, and that’s your company’s purpose. Why does your company exist, beyond wanting to make money? Why is this important? We’ll find out. 

Here’s the podcast episode:

Or if you’d rather watch the video:

Continuing on from our previous episode on defining your company’s ideology, we’re going to move into the second part: purpose.

What Is Your Purpose

Your Purpose is NOT Your Goals

There are two parts to your company ideology: your core values and your purpose. 

Many people confuse the purpose with the goals, but a real purpose should be able to stand the test of time. It may be even last a hundred years, or more. 

Disney’s Future Streaming Platform

Disney is a great example of this. Disney is a 95-year-old company and their purpose is to make people happy. It’s pretty succinct and to the point, isn’t it? 

How you choose to act on your purpose may change, but your purpose itself should not. So if your purpose is clear to you, then business decisions become easier. 

Consider Disney and their goal is to make people happy. Business partners that they choose and other business decisions, like creating their own content streaming platform and pulling their content out of Netflix, make a lot more sense when you tie their values and their purpose together. 

Their purpose is that they want to make people happy. The value is control over the Disney magic. So to continue making people happy and to continue with their value of controlling the Disney magic, making their own content streaming platform just makes sense. 

When your purpose is clear and it’s communicated effectively throughout all of your marketing and your sales materials, then your customers aren’t confused about your decisions either. 

Again, with the Disney example. Disney wants to make people happy. So when they started building theme parks, it wasn’t really all that confusing. Sure, they were capitalizing on all these great and wonderful characters that they had made, but it made sense. It was not confusing to anyone. Whereas if Hewlett-Packard suddenly started making toys, that would be confusing and pretty suspicious. 

Ask Yourself Why

If you’re having trouble with your purpose, you want to start with a service or a product that you offer, and then ask why. Why is that service important? Why is that product important? 

Yes, you want to make money. That’s true. But most businesses still have an underlying purpose. They want to provide something of value in exchange for money. It’s an honest need for many of us. 

Another question you can ask yourself is how your company is drawing the best out of people. That’s what the purpose revolves around. If you didn’t need to work, what would motivate you to continue running and growing your business? What would continue to motivate you to work within the company that you’re in right now? 

If you’re not the owner or a key decision-maker, what would continue to motivate you? What would continue to push you forward? That’s another way to look at purpose. 

Purpose Takes Shape with Time

Purpose and values aren’t necessarily something that you come up with overnight. It’s not going to be a matter of sitting down for a few hours and just writing these things down. 

As a solo business owner, my company’s purpose and its core values are something that I’m still developing. 

Purpose and values may be developing with a company that’s 50 years old. As times change, we have to look at how our purpose and values adapt, how they come to mean something else, or how they’re perceived by our customers or clients. 

They will come to you in time, if you give them the opportunity. So it’s something you want to start churning, but allow those ideas to come to you from your intuition, or wherever you get your inspiration from. 

Talk It Over with Your Board

If you have an advisory or executive board, this is something that you’re going to want to work on defining with them. Your board may be made up of a marketing expert, an operations expert, a financial expert, information technology expert, etc., and they’re all going to have different perspectives. 

What’s important is that even with those different perspectives, the purpose and the values still ring true. So this is an exercise that you need to go through, but once you do, it’ll be something that you’ll be able to engrain throughout every aspect of your company. 

If your company mission statement and vision are all ironed out and they ring true in your heart, please leave me a comment or shoot me a message. I’d love to hear what it is. But more importantly, I’d love to hear how you came to that conclusion. 

Your company’s core ideology is your business’ identity. Strip away the business goals, strategies, methodologies, and more, and this is what’s left. Your ideology is made up of your core values and purpose. Today, we’re going over values and how you can develop them for your company. 

Here’s the podcast episode:

Or if you’d rather watch the video:

So far, season 2 has focused a lot on understanding internal business mechanisms and values. We’re going to continue on that vein. 

Within season 2 we’re starting a series on company ideology and branding. So buckle up because we’re going to dive deep for the next several episodes on how you can better understand your own business, and in turn, better inform your marketing and sales efforts. 

Today’s episode is called defining your company’s ideology values. 

What Is a Core Ideology

Your core ideology is your business’s identity. No matter the technological advances or developments in business strategy, your identity is your identity. Your business may go from local to regional, to national, to global. Your identity stays the same, even if your tactics, strategies, and goals change. 

So ideology is made up of two parts; core values and the core purpose. Today we’re going to focus on the values. 

The Core Values of Your Organization

Your core values are your organization’s principles. It’s the few beliefs that you hold to be true. 

Johnson & Johnson CEO Ralph Larson said it best, that “We have core values because they define what we stand for. We would hold them up even if they became a competitive disadvantage in certain situations.” 

What this means is that there isn’t a right set of values. It’s true, and it’s different for each company. You can emphasize great customer service without it being one of your core principles. 

There are some companies that do not hold quality as one of their core principles. When you think about it, if the quality was not a measurement for success in our industry, would we still want it to be important in this company? If the answer is no, then it’s not a core principle or value. 

Maybe being on the leading edge of technological development is as a core principle. So maybe quality is not, but innovation is. That’s how you need to move. 

Walt Disney’s Core Values in Their Business

Walt Disney has core values. You should probably have about 3-5 core values. The best and longest-standing companies don’t have any more than five. 

Disney has gone way beyond animations. We’ve got theme parks all around the world, as well as Disney-themed hotels, stores, toys, clothing, costumes, etc. It’s embedded deeply within our culture, and it goes way past animation. 

The Acquisition of Marvel: Creativity, Dreams, And Imagination

The best example I can think of is Marvel. Disney owns Marvel and they’re crushing it. How does Marvel tie into their core values? Well, one of their core values is the pursuit of creativity, dreams, and imagination.

Superheroes have captured the world’s imagination, whether it’s children or adults. The sort of following that these movies have is almost baffling. I mean, I love both the movies and the comics, but the firestorm they created has been amazing.

Just the other day, we were watching Avengers: End Game, and I’m cheering and yelling at the TV because… er, wait. I don’t want to ruin it for you. You won’t cheer if you know it’s coming.

A Disney Streaming Service: Control over the Disney Magic

When we look at another one of Disney’s core values, which is control over the Disney magic, you can better understand one of their latest business moves. 

Disney is pulling away from Netflix and developing their own platform, which we’ll have to subscribe to because we love Disney. And if they’re not going to be on Netflix anymore, what am I going to do? I’ve got four kids. We need Disney. I see another subscription in my future. 

Disney isn’t a technology company, but they’re willing to offer a technology platform for consuming their content in order to hold true to one of their core values, which is control over the Disney magic. 

At first, it just seemed like Disney was being petty. Why are they trying to pull this from Netflix? Why is Disney making their own platform? It costs money to do that. And that’s true, but it holds to their values. 

That’s the thing about values. Even if they’re a disadvantage, Disney has assessed that in the long run, building this platform and hosting their own content holds true to their values, and is therefore true to their identity as a company. So I’m sure that we’re going to see some awesome things coming from Disney. 

Establish Your Core Values Now

As I said, 3-5 values are probably about what you want to have. It’s something that you’re going to have to think about. You can even have core values for a department, as the head of a department. 

However, if you’re a CEO of a growing or even an established company, and you’ve never gone through the exercise of establishing company values, you really should. This goes for things beyond “We value trustworthy relationships with our clients.” Oh Geez. I was looking for an untrustworthy company, so I guess I should just move along.

Don’t say things that don’t really mean anything. Some things are just a given. So if you are going to say something about trustworthiness, you’re going to have to make it really good.

Ask yourself, when you’re considering your values, whether you’d still want these values if there was no benefit, but an actual disadvantage to your company to hold these values? Would they still be values that you’d want to hold at the company’s core?