E346 - Crafting strong brands with discipline, consistency, and strategy | with Eric Holtzclaw

The One Big Tip Podcast with Jeff Mendelson

Eric Holtzclaw is a serial entrepreneur who truly understands that marketing requires discipline, consistency, and strategy. As the Chief Strategist and Dojo Master at Liger, he is the resident expert in guiding businesses to find their identities and core values, craft their visions, and establish their brands. Eric also hosts The Claw podcast where he interviews business owners and entrepreneurs to discuss their goals. He has contributed to magazines and online publications and wrote the book, “Laddering: Unlocking the Potential of Consumer Behavior”.

Eric is a recovering technologist, he spent the early part of his career running development shops, and then for a period of time, he owned a research company where customers care about marketing, which is a combination of understanding your customer and technology. He mainly worked in the services side of the business where he also does a lot of B2B work. B2B is not as open to putting someone out front. They really have to do that in today's world in order for you to get attention. No one wants to buy from a company, they want to buy from individuals. Still doing some things that are old-school tactics.

When Eric started his business, it was about the business brand and then there were people behind it. Now you want to know who runs the company and understand there's a brand behind them. It's really not about B2B or B2C, it's about humans selling something to other humans. In the B2B space, it's more important because it's based on relationships. Making decisions in B2B is way riskier than it is on the B2C side. You would want to know who you are buying from on the B2B side because if you don't like that car, you would never be able to buy from that auto dealer again. But if you purchase a piece of software that the company's going to use, you could be stuck with that for a long time. That relationship has to be strong. You need to think about who is going to support you in the B2B space to make sure you are successful.

Eric and his team focus on helping companies figure out which platform their customers are on, be it Facebook, LinkedIn or TikTok, or others. More important than the platform you pick is that you pick multiple platforms because you don't own the platform. If you put content out on one platform and something happens to it, all of your credibility and time that you’ve spent on just that one platform could be gone. Make sure that you're thinking of at least two, maybe three, and that you're getting your content out of those so that you're not investing too much time into them all.

The mission statement of Eric and his company is: Saving the world from boring, broken marketing. Using the proven discovery process that they take clients through gets Eric and his team to define the words for any brand. As a B2B company, you need to think about all of this in a different way. B2B companies often feel like they're in these boxes and different from others which are not true. They should stand out, and get a reaction by bringing more people into the conversation and then educate them about why they're the right choice. Be aspirational, although that aspiration will take time because you have to really understand who you are today.

In this episode:

[02:00] Eric helps brands and companies get involved with social media marketing.

• No one wants to buy from a company, they want to buy from individuals.
• It is an interesting hurdle for B2B because they see it for business-to-consumer brands.

[05:00] All the different cable stations, video platforms, and networks available in the US today.

• Know the platform where your customers are.
• Picking multiple platforms to get your content out.

[08:00] Follow the rules of improv to keep the conversation open and build upon ideas.

• Continuing the conversation by saying YES.
• Talking improv to a B2B client, and how that conversation manifests itself.

[10:00] Their Mission Statement is to save the world from boring, broken marketing.

• As a B2B company, you think about it in a different way so you're going to stand out.
• Being more open to bringing more people into the conversation to educate them.

[12:00] Putting forth a thought leader that is in line with what your brand represents.

• Your brand already has a persona, you just have to identify what it is.
• Using a proven discovery process for clients getting them to define words for the brand.

[15:00] Describing a brand as it walks into a room, what words would be used?

• As a group therapy type of environment, to get everyone to speak the same language.
• One example is if someone said, let's go skiing, you may think of snow skiing and the other person about water skiing.