2023: The Year Your Marketing Gets Personal
2023 is the year your marketing gets personal.
I’m known to be an oversharer. In 9th grade health class, we had to write down our most embarrassing moment…anonymously. Why the teacher decided to read it in front of the class, I’ll never know. It wasn’t hard to guess whose it was by the shade of crimson on my face.
That’s not AT ALL what we mean.
What we do mean is that it’s ok to give your brand identity a human touch. Show that your brand is made up of real people- people who’ve experienced the same problems. Your customers want to feel both heard and understood.
Give your marketing a personal touch this year by making it meaningful to your audience.
The story your marketing tells should be about the problem you solve and your customers’ transformational journey. The StoryBrand BrandScript is one of the best marketing tools out there to clarify your messaging.
To kick off the new year of the Growing a Fruitful Brand Podcast, marketing and design experts, Raj Lulla and Ben Lueders share their predictions for 2023, how you can clarify your messaging and how to position your brand as the solution to their problems.
Please be sure to subscribe to Growing a Fruitful Brand on the podcast platform of your choice—and drop us a comment or review! (That helps others be able to find our content.)
Ep.13: 2023 Predictions
Automated Transcript
Ben Lueders:
Hey, welcome to Growing a Fruitful Brand where we discuss how to create and grow a brand that makes the world a better place for you, your customers, and your employees. I'm Ben Lueders, founder and art director of Fruitful Design and Strategy. This is my business partner and brand strategist, Raj Lulla. What does 2023 have in store for us? What does it have in store for us, Raj?
Raj Lulla:
When I was in college, we had a professor who... Hi Dr. Wood. Who talked about how leadership isn't about making the right decisions when you have all the information. Leadership is really making decisions when you have the best information that's available at the time. And so we thought that today, going off the information that we have right here at the end of 2022, I know it's 2023, to all of you in the future, that we would make some predictions for what is going to happen in 2023 based off what we know and the things that we're making decisions off of right now.
And then, of course, the world will change, and things will happen that we don't expect, and we'll make different decisions, we'll adjust and pivot, and all those things. And-
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, we're not like Nostradamus or prophets.
Raj Lulla:
I mean, who knows? That's because something wild is going to happen this year and then we'll be seen as geniuses and we'll write a book about it. But until that happens, then we're just going to talk about the trends that we see happening in marketing, business, the culture more broadly, and see if that's helpful to you as we move into this new year.
Ben Lueders:
So the first one up that we see is this idea of personal, things getting very personal, our marketing getting personal. We always are going to want our marketing and our businesses to go really wide, but we also wanted to see things get very deep this year. And that definitely seems to be a trend that we're starting to see.
Raj Lulla:
One of my best performing posts on LinkedIn this year was the dumbest, one that I put out, but it was the most real. I joked right after Halloween that next year, so this coming year here, I'm going to do an event right after Halloween, the day after Halloween, where we just all come in and invite a bunch of our business owner friends and we pour out the sack of candy that we stole from our children, from their trick-or-treating and just eat it together and talk about business. And that performs so well on LinkedIn because it just resonated with people.
Ben Lueders:
And it was just a personal confession, it was all I was. Obviously you were just trying to come clean with this thing that you struggle with, and I don't. I don't take my kids off in candy store.
Raj Lulla:
But I think that that is going to be the nature of things. I think those phenomenon has happened over the last couple of years. This is similar I think, to what we saw with the cultural changes in the '60s and '70s where people got sick of the government and corporations, with the Vietnam War. And we're kind of-
Ben Lueders:
Well, you saw those happen?
Raj Lulla:
No. Culturally, we saw those things happening.
Ben Lueders:
Raj is older than you think guys.
Raj Lulla:
A lot of grandness beard. But what we saw was weakening of trust in these institutions. And after years of COVID and political unrest and all those things, people are just looking for human connection way more than they are looking for brands or companies or governments to lead them. They're just doing their own thing, living their own lives. And so when you see those posts on LinkedIn that are... they start out with a story that seems personal, is like, "I was taking my kid to school today and they said hi to a friend. That friend gave him a big hug."
And it just reminds me how... And it's like, "Oh my gosh, I need to reach out to three people every week." And it's like, "No, don't do that. Just literally be personal." Last year we saw a big trend of things moving back towards in-person events. HubSpot had their big conference up in Boston and it was huge this year. And-
Ben Lueders:
We went to the StoryBrand conference-
Raj Lulla:
In Nashville.
Ben Lueders:
... in Nashville. It was super awesome to just see people in real life.
Raj Lulla:
Yes. Now I think one thing that's going to happen there, so here's a prediction, is that while those events will do well again this year, I think that in-person local events will do really well, because a lot of companies including us based on economic conditions have pulled back on travel budgets, hotels, that kind of stuff. And so the easier you make it for people to gather in-person locally, the greatest success you're probably going to have with that kind of thing.
People are still craving that personal connection. They don't want to connect necessarily as much to an impersonal brand or company or institution. They do want to connect personally with other humans, but you have to make it easy for them based off of what their budget may be doing early in the year, based on recession worries, those types of things.
Ben Lueders:
So I'm going to make a prediction and basically just to say it so that it has to become true. We'll do some in-person events locally here-
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. I mean-
Ben Lueders:
... in our office.
Raj Lulla:
The Halloween candy thing may actually happen. It got a great response.
Ben Lueders:
Even if that's the only thing that happens.
Raj Lulla:
That said, I think there's going to be a lot of things that are more like that, that maybe don't have... it's not necessarily like, "Hey, we're going to get together for this lunch and learn and this huge expert's going to teach us about this thing we don't know." I was even just thinking of, we might set up a projector and play Super Smash Brothers with other millennial business owners who grew up on those things, or even our space would be really great for music. And we've talked for a few years now about doing a informal Christmas carol sing-along or something like that.
Ben Lueders:
Sure.
Raj Lulla:
I think you'll see stuff like that this year. And if you're not seeing it, be the one who leads it, do it at your place of business or call us, we'll partner with you, and get people together in person. It's going to drive what makes you successful this year. So let's talk about return to office. Where do you think that's going to go this year?
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, I mean, obviously, there's always going to be this element of hybrid work from home. I love our in-person office, I also love the ability to work from home if I need to. We had a couple people that weren't feeling super great today. They stayed home and one of them is working from home. And so those options are always going to be great, but I do think we're going to continue to see people coming back to the office and wanting to have that kind of separation between home and work as well.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. What's happening in the labor market right now is, there are way more job-seekers looking for fully remote jobs than there are fully remote jobs available. And I think that trend is going to continue. At least in our case, it's not at all because we don't trust our workers to work from home. It's because work is more fun, it's often more creative, especially in a creative agency. It goes faster when you don't have the lag time of asynchronous communication or the misconnections or the lack of just serendipity of being in the same room and bouncing off of each other's ideas.
Not to mention, I mean, you can't just overnight get rid of the fact that that companies are pretty deeply invested in their office spaces. In fact, a lot of them-
Ben Lueders:
Including us.
Raj Lulla:
Well, and a lot of them have done a lot to improve their spaces over the last couple of years to facilitate in-person works and facilitate the hybrid model where it may be more hot-desking and that kind of stuff, rather than private offices. But there's just that sense of connection that you get in person. Again, just same with in-person events, that employers are going to continue to want because we know that it makes everyone happier, or most people, I should say, happier.
There's a lot of you out there who want to only work remotely, but it makes most people happier to have that human connection. It brings more meaning to your job. I think we're going to see return to office continue, but it will be in a hybrid fashion, because people have gotten used to the benefit of it, and you should balance that as an employer if at all possible.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah. And, I mean, we want to be really quick to say that we're not against fully remote, because, I mean, about a third of our team is fully remote. It's still super special and we're able to see them in person though.
Raj Lulla:
Yes, a hundred percent.
Ben Lueders:
Dan's going to come home to the office here soon and it's going to be great to see him, of course, in person. But that trend is going to continue, I think, going into 2023.
Raj Lulla:
Speaking about workers, there is going to be continued disruption in the labor market as far as we can tell. The Department of Labor just said this week that there's about three and a half million fewer workers in the economy than they expected.
Ben Lueders:
Geez. Why's that?
Raj Lulla:
Well-
Ben Lueders:
It seems really hard.
Raj Lulla:
... so one of the major reasons is that more people retired early than they were expecting because of COVID. Either they were afraid to return to the office because of health concerns or they had COVID and had experienced long-term repercussions from that and are no longer able to work. I mean, locally, I know of a school principal who retired early because of how stressful it was to lead a school during that time, with parents on both sides of the aisle.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, I heard a lot of voices.
Raj Lulla:
So you're not doing enough or you're doing too much.
Ben Lueders:
People working in schools or even police and other people like that, people in these jobs that just got really stressful during that time that just decided to retire a little bit early and not have to deal with all of it. It's really sad in some ways. But what kind of opportunity does that bring? So obviously, anytime you see something like that, it's like, "Oh man, this is kind of a sad and unexpected headline." It can often mean opportunity for the rest of us. So what does it mean?
Raj Lulla:
So again, along this line of being personal this year, all of what you hear today from us is going to be, I think 2023 is the year of personal. You have to get down to the personal level of connection. Now there's a couple ways companies can do this. Number one is, I think founders, owners, heads of HR, key leaders in your company need to be a part of your marketing this year. Recruiting is going to continue to be just as hard as selling and so your brand needs to be more personal in both directions.
And so having, like I said, founders, owners, key leaders in your company on long form marketing podcasts, short form like Instagram reels or TikTok videos, that's going to continue to be really important because if people are leaving a situation because of the disruption and stress of the last few years, they want to have a sense of connection to the new job before they even apply for that new job. They want to feel like, "Oh, the values of that company are something that I feel like I will be taking care of better there."
And I will say too, if you're leading a team, some of it's not going to be your fault. It's like you had to lead through a few really difficult years and people are going to hold you responsible for that whether or not you really are. You had to make policies around masking, and COVID, and all of those fancy things.
Ben Lueders:
Really fun stuff.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah.
Ben Lueders:
I mean, it was a good time. Tensions were not high.
Raj Lulla:
I can almost guarantee, even if you have your MBA, that wasn't covered, of, "Oh, by the way, here's how you handle your pandemic policies."
Ben Lueders:
Well, global pandemic happens.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah.
Ben Lueders:
It's going to be fun.
Raj Lulla:
So you're going to get tagged with some of those things. People are going to leave you and they're going to have hurt feelings about that. But there's going to be other people who are having hurt feelings at their current job and be more attracted to you. It's going to be a very weird few years I think for a lot of business owners. And you just have to keep going. And the best way to do that is to be true to your values, your brand, and just speak it out into public.
And this is what Seth Godin describes as leading a tribe. And so you just need to put it out there, who your brand is, who you help, the kind of workers that will be successful at your brand. And some people will be like, "No, that's way too much my last job. That's the stuff I'm moving away from." Other people will go, "Yes, this is what I've been looking for." And so there's going to continue to be that reshuffling in the labor market, and so getting yourself out there personally. Again, this is leaders, key figures, the personality of your brand, is going to be really important.
Ben Lueders:
And really, I think, one of the ways that you draw those people, younger people who are looking for a new opportunity, it's really through your own personality, the personality of your brand. They just feel like you're going to be able to take better care of them than their previous employer. And so that's why getting more personal, showing more of your company's culture, your personality, your values in all of your marketing is going to be really important because a lot of it's going to be feeling space. You're not feeling like you're fitting in at your current space, you're going to be attracted to a place that just looks like they get you a little bit more.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. Now, I will caution you on this. I would highly recommend that the things that you say, even as you're expressing your personality, are on brand. We've created a lot of StoryBrand BrandScripts just for the purpose of recruiting for a lot of companies over the last few years, because it's easy to go off a ledge here. I'm part of a marketing group on Facebook and all the time, they post these job ads. You've probably seen them where people are like, "If you are actually going to show up to work and not be full of drama and blah blah blah" and everybody immediately recognizes that as a toxic place to work.
Ben Lueders:
I mean, I get it, but yeah, you can't let that out.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. Well, and it's like, everybody recognizes that that person is not motivating their people to show up to work. They're not taking care of the people such that they're excited to show up to work. And even companies that have really difficult jobs or organizations, police, teachers, all those kinds of things, construction, jobs that are actually just hard, can still take great care of their employees and make their employees the hero of the story. That's how we use the StoryBrand BrandScript to do that, to position your employees as the hero of their career, of their story. You can definitely still do that even with really physically or mentally-demanding jobs and still make people feel like they are doing their best work.
Ben Lueders:
All right, so 2023 is a year of being personal, getting personal, going deep with your audience no matter how big or small they are. Personal is going to be the way to go. So next up, after personal, partnerships. There's all going to be P words, just a little heads-up here. Partnerships. And so, one of the things I think is so cool about being a business is, we're not the only business around. There's lots of other businesses around and we're all going through this together, but sometimes you're going through something, another company isn't going through that exact same thing and you're able to help each other out.
And so, one thing that I've always loved about you, Raj, especially lately, is how you're sometimes able to see... I'll something like, "Man, these folks seem like a big competition or a threat to us." And you look at them and be like, "I think we might be able to collaborate. We might be able to partner. We might be able... You see opportunity in connecting. So can you talk a little bit more about that kind of a mindset?
Raj Lulla:
We frequently recommend inquiries that come into us to other StoryBrand agencies because they specialize in things that we don't. And the reason we see that as collaboration over competition, which I don't think is always true by the way. Sometimes there's just straight-
Ben Lueders:
Yeah, we can be competitive.
Raj Lulla:
... competition. But the reason we see those particular opportunities as collaboration over competition is that, in the StoryBrand world, if I can be so bold to say it, one of the best design companies in the entire StoryBrand world. And I-
Ben Lueders:
I think we do say so ourselves.
Raj Lulla:
And we've had business referred to us for that reason. So I think there's some actual objective proof of that. But there's people who do... We don't specialize in paid media, Facebook ads, those kinds of things. We have connections for those things, if people need that as a part of the work that they're doing with us, but we often connect them to either other StoryBrand agencies or other just agencies that we trust in general, because we know that the number of people who are out there doing that poorly is really high.
And we also don't want to be one of those people doing it poorly. So I would rather refer a potential customer to another business that I trust and have them have a great experience and have them have a positive impression of fruitful because of that referral. Then to underserved them, just send them away, or, God forbid, have them be subject to a less scrupulous firm that's going to just not treat them well.
And so partnership can be really beautiful and can work really well. Now, along those lines, there's also a lot of opportunity for unlike brands to work together. For example, we've partnered with Hardy Coffee for years and years now. We worked with them for their branding originally, but we've just stayed in touch. We've worked on versions of their website, we've worked on packaging, those types of things for them. And in return, we've often also been customers of theirs.
If you've ever received a Christmas gift from us, there's probably at least a 50% chance I had some Hardy coffee in there. And so in a year where leads might be a little slower to come in, a business might be a little bit slower, business is partnering together. So we hopefully may host an event with Hardy Coffee this year to help people talk about using storytelling for their marketing or-
Ben Lueders:
Stay tuned.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, hi Autumn. Or they may want to host something with us. And there's great things that come out of those kinds of relationships. You can both promote to your email list, so you get a broader audience distribution from that without having to pay the great evil Facebook for it. You have other opportunities to just connect with each other's audiences. So let's just use an example like that. Hardy Coffee does their own roasting and they are going to be expanding into even greater presence in wholesale coffee, so that could be other coffee shops.
We branded a coffee shop this year. Now they also do their own roasting, but other businesses, there's a big hospital here in town that serves Hardy Coffee. And so the kinds of companies that we work with might be great target customers for them for some of this wholesale expansion. And so there's great opportunities and if you are looking for great coffee to serve at your office or hospital or wherever, then reach out. We'll get you connected with those folks. They're great.
Ben Lueders:
Raj is so good at that kind of stuff.
Raj Lulla:
And likewise, they're going to have business owners who are in their world, who are on their marketing list, who just like to get a cup of coffee before they go in, but need our services. And so when we connect, then we're going to serve each other well. It's going to be so important to have these partnerships and so beneficial too. I mean, think about it. If we're hosting an event here, again, whether it's playing Super Smash Brothers or eating Halloween candy together, what are they going to drink?
And it's like, why not partner with a great coffee shop, a great coffee company as a part of that? Especially because everybody's going to get sleepy after eating all that candy. So you need to do something to stay off the sugar crash, and we might need a protein company of some kind as well to help even things out.
Ben Lueders:
Well, speaking of having to drink things to be able to deal with things, the next third P we want to talk about is political. Let's get political in 2023. Is that what is this point, Raj?
Raj Lulla:
Oh gosh, no.
Ben Lueders:
But 2023 is going to be political, for sure.
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. Over the last probably three or four presidential elections, the campaigning has actually started well into the previous year, sometimes even two years prior to presidential election. So 2023, if you do your math, is the year before 2024.
Ben Lueders:
Oh, I-
Raj Lulla:
I know it's difficult math, but-
Ben Lueders:
I didn't realize that.
Raj Lulla:
... there's going to be a presidential election coming in 2024. I would expect certainly by mid-year, but probably as early as the spring, you're going to hear a lot more political talk. And so attention is going to be cheaper at the beginning of the year. And here's what I mean by that. As political issues and bloviating become distracting, people are going to have less attention to spend on your brand, because the headlines are going to be... I mean, right now I'm going to date this podcast by telling you what's happening exactly right now, but there was an ABC News video about how Kanye now known as Ye, tricked Donald Trump into having dinner together.
Yes. I could not believe the story was insane, tricked Donald Trump into having dinner with him and then allegedly, supposedly invited Donald Trump to be his vice presidential candidate in Ye's, 2024 run. The fact that I even know about this, and I certainly don't care, is a perfect-
Ben Lueders:
And see, now I'm completely distracted. I don't even remember what we're talking about. And all I want to do right now is get off this podcast and start searching and [inaudible 00:22:46]-
Raj Lulla:
Because I have so many questions about this. I sent that video to my wife and I was like, "Is this Real Housewives? What's happening here?"
Ben Lueders:
How can I donate to this campaign right now to make this more real? Just kidding. Disclaimer.
Raj Lulla:
But exactly that point, is that attention is going to become harder to come by when people are talking about whatever the insane water-cooler story is later in the year and they are going to be insane. I can almost guarantee it. That's a 2023 prediction, for sure. Something insane is going to happen politically this year. And so you're going to be better off if you start really focusing on your marketing, getting that personal, touch marketing out early in the year, I mean, starting as early as January, because I'd say from July onward, you're going to have to fight bad timing.
With whatever the distraction is right now, people are saying a lot of horrible anti-Semitic and racist things and it sucks up people's attention. And so it's hard to walk in the middle of that and say, "Hey, do you need accounting services?" And it's like
Ben Lueders:
[inaudible 00:24:03] tone deaf. It's just like, "No, I'm just trying to do my thing." But everyone's like, "No, we're talking about something else right now."
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, that marketing group that I'm a part of, they remind people frequently. It's like, "Hey, this tragedy just happened. Make sure to pause your ads that have anything to do with blank or blank."
Ben Lueders:
Oh wow. Yeah.
Raj Lulla:
And people don't. Sometimes they forget and then brands get caught flatfooted, walking into the middle of a crisis or even just a politically-hot moment. And so it's going to be easier earlier this year to have clear, undivided attention rather than divided and kind of tense attention. And a lot of us don't have the luxury of putting things on hold. We have to do business all year long. And so some opportunity here would be to position your brand as a respite from the insanity.
And you can do that by, again, making your customer the hero of the story. I think in addition to being personal, this year's going to be more about Main Street than Wall Street or even Pennsylvania Avenue. I think there's going to be this sense of fatigue with the national circus and that it's going to be local brands, it's going to be small businesses that are getting together, hosting events together, partnering together to make it through inflation, possible recession and just working together.
And honestly, the funny thing is that when you do that, you tend to have a much better year. It's like, "Oh, all the stuff that we should have been doing all along, we're forced to do now and it's going to make our brands stronger." Leads might take a little longer to come in, but they will come in, especially when you're working with other great brands and great companies to help each other survive through those things.
Ben Lueders:
Yeah. And I think I love that idea of your brand feeling like a respite from that kind of turmoil. It should feel like a sense of peace and kind of a pause from some of the cast going on in the world. Obviously some of the bigger brands that we all know, they'll align themselves probably more clearly with certain political individuals or-
Raj Lulla:
Causes.
Ben Lueders:
... or views or causes, and there's a lot of good reason for that. But I would go out on a limb to say that probably most of our listeners and most of the people in our orbit, it'd probably do them better to not align themselves so much politically. Obviously, there's some things that are just right to align yourself with, or some things like racism is bad, things like that, that are like, "It's okay to say these things in a time when you really need to."
Raj Lulla:
When you feel convicted.
Ben Lueders:
When you feel convicted to in a way. There's nothing wrong with that. But in general though, I think there's a lot of people out there that, just like you, are trying to take care of their families, they don't have the luxury again to put things on hold and they can come to you for a place of just sanity and security.
Raj Lulla:
I think a good rule of thumb there is not... Would I say this at Thanksgiving dinner? But should I say this at Thanksgiving dinner? And there are some things that as a matter of conscience, do rise to that occasion. If there was something racist happening at your Thanksgiving dinner, you should speak out.
Ben Lueders:
Put your foot down.
Raj Lulla:
But for a lot of you, especially if you're in the B2B space, you have no idea what the political affiliations are, of your audience and people are going to be a lot more conservative or a lot more liberal than you expect them to be because you all just generally talk about business and you're going to have a minefield to work around if you start waiting into those issues, not thoughtfully. Again, this is a great idea to have your BrandScript really leading the way in your marketing instead of just spouting off whatever your personal thought is for the day. We put a lot of work into the podcast, into our marketing, to make sure that we're staying on brand all the time. And so I'd recommend that for you as well.
Ben Lueders:
All right. The fourth and last point P word is persistence. And so we've already talked about this a little bit, this idea of persistently working ahead to gain your customers favor early in the year, before things start to get crazier politically, et cetera. Anything else you'd add to that, Raj?
Raj Lulla:
Yeah, several things. One is, here's a prediction for you. You're going to continue to see the decline in effectiveness of ads, especially social ads because of the changes in iOS. I've been so surprised this year how much better our organic content has performed than I thought that it would.
Ben Lueders:
We should do a whole episode of that.
Raj Lulla:
Oh, we're definitely going to, yeah. But we've basically doubled our website traffic year-over-year by putting out podcasts, by writing blog articles, by being helpful to people. And I will say that hasn't directly related yet to doubling of sales, and that's because we're in the middle of really weird economic headlines.
Ben Lueders:
We're just getting started too.
Raj Lulla:
Yep. Gentleman that I just met, Mike Schumer at Union Bank and Trust sent me an article about how the yield curve right now, which is generally a indicator of a recession, is actually really good news for inflation. And so we're in both good news and bad news territory right now, and so that makes it really hard for... Again, especially if you're B2B and your customers are pulling back on their expenditures and waiting things out a little bit, it can be easy to get discouraged and say, "Okay, well, I'm not going to do any marketing either, so I'm just going to wait this out."
But as I mentioned, if you do that, you're going to risk going into the season of the year where political messaging is heating up and distraction. I think that we're going to see what's called recession fatigue kick in again this year where probably around summer, people are going to be so tired of talking about inflation, talking about recessions. They're going to travel a lot again, they're going to be out of the office. And we already saw that happen this year where people just spent like there wasn't a recession because the stimulus bills from early 2021 are still hanging on.
People had literally trillions more in savings, and so they can ride out inflation a little bit. And so in 2022, they spent like it wasn't happening. And that's part of the reason why inflation went up so bad. I think you're going to see a similar effect this year, but those savings are dwindling. And so it may not be as intense, but it's going to be harder to get people's attention later in the year, I think. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do anything, it means you should be starting now. Because if you get their attention early and they join your email list, then they'll still listen when things get crazy. What's going to be harder is to capture new attention later in the year.
And so get started now. Really be working on building your email list now using your StoryBrand BrandScript to create your marketing material. By the way, we'll do a whole episode about this, but you can use your StoryBrand BrandScript to create hundreds of pieces of content for your brand. There's the seven elements of story plus the aspirational identity, and you can create at least 20 to 30 pieces per box, which if you do your math, I mean, you're talking probably two, 300 pieces of content.
And for some of you that only put out content once a week or less, that could be 2, 3, 4 years worth of marketing content that's specifically on brand all the time. And you can do that right now. You can get started right now with that kind of stuff.
Ben Lueders:
And it can still be personal too. I think some people-
Raj Lulla:
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Ben Lueders:
... might hear that and be like, "Is this going to sound corporate or robotic or something?" I think the fun thing about that is it gives you a framework and then you can just have a lot of fun with it and you can make it personal and still be on brand. And so we definitely need to do a full podcast on that.
Raj Lulla:
It's actually more personal because one of the things... Again, really cautioning you against just getting on a microphone and spouting off your thoughts about whatever's happening, I promise, usually, if you think it's a hot take, it's probably not a good idea to post. Even in our predictions here, we put a lot of thought into them and it wasn't just going in and Illinois and saying, "I think Kanye's going to be the next president." I don't.
Ben Lueders:
Well, no.
Raj Lulla:
Because of what's happening in the headlines right now. It is way better to stay on brand, and if your BrandScript positions your customer as the hero of the story, then it's going to be personal to them. And then you saying it makes it personal on your side as well. This is how we stay out of territory of saying dumb things, but also how we stay out of the territory of saying irrelevant things like-
Ben Lueders:
Yeah. That's a-
Raj Lulla:
... telling your grandpa's story of how he started the business and all of that, which may not be important to [inaudible 00:33:37]-
Ben Lueders:
That's a great point. I'm glad you said that too because I don't want people to get confused with our first point about keeping it personal. That doesn't mean just sharing personal, "Here's what I ate today." This doesn't mean early Instagram or everyone just showing pictures of their lunch or whatever. I even did some of that on Twitter early on, but that's not what we're talking about. Personal, it still has to be relevant to your audience.
It needs to be personal to them, not just about your... It has to be a personal anecdote or something that was meaningful to you. Now, sometimes if something is really meaningful to you, chances are, might be meaningful to someone else, but there still needs to be some thought put into, how do I make this more accessible, more meaningful to my audience, not just to myself personally?
Raj Lulla:
Yeah. I was talking to one of our partners, again, importance of partnership this week, Jason Rothfuss, over at Red Fox Consulting and...
Ben Lueders:
Hey, Jason.
Raj Lulla:
Hey Jason. We were talking about how leads have been really funny this year. There's been some weeks where things were real dry and then there'd be other times where it's like, "Oh my gosh, we can hardly keep up." And he said something I thought was really smart. He said that so much of business is staying in the game long enough to ride that next wave. And so this is where persistence really comes in. Sure, you want to have solid business fundamentals so you've got enough cash to get to that next wave and you want to have great partnerships that help you find new audiences and also just support each other through leaner times.
But persistence, keeping your messaging out there sometimes despite how you're feeling and making sure that you're speaking to your customer, the problem that you're solving for them, showing empathy for them, that's what's going to get you to that next wave.
Ben Lueders:
So to recap our 2023 predictions episode here, keep it personal, develop good, strong partnerships, avoid all the political strife and nonsense of 2023, and be persistent. Raj, do we have a call to action for our audience today?
Raj Lulla:
As I mentioned at the top of the episode, this is going to be the year of personal, and in order to be personal and also be relevant, then it's so important for you to get your messaging right, keep your customers the hero of the story. If you need help with that, developing your StoryBrand BrandScript, then give us a call. But otherwise, I mean, it's available. Buy the book, go to mybrandscript.com, get into it. Establish your customer as the hero of the story so that when you are personally connecting with your customers, you make sure you're relevant.
Along those lines, developing those great partnerships, you can reach out today. Reach out today to somebody that you've been meaning to call, whether it's another local business, and they don't have to be local anymore. There's so much remote business to be done. It may be a friend who's across the country that you've been meaning to reach out to. How can you host webinars together? How can you host in-person events together locally? Maybe you do go to a conference, but you go together and you connect there and you create business ideas together.
Those partnerships are going to be so important. And you can start today, right after the first of the year when you hear this. People just went through the holidays, there were probably people on your mind that you thought, "Oh, it's been a long time since I've seen that person" reach out. And it doesn't even have to be super strategic. Call somebody, it doesn't matter what industry they work in, and just reconnect and then think about what you might do together. And that could be anything from, "Oh, hey, I know somebody who needs to work with you" to, "We should work together" or, "We should host something together." How can you be generous this year?
That's part of that persistence thing, is, give away as much as you possibly can this year. Tell people how you do your process. Tell people how you can solve problems for them. Help them solve their problems. I mean, me telling you that you can buy the StoryBrand book and go to mystorybrand.com and fill out your BrandScript, you might do that and you might not pay us to do that work, but I know it's going to be better for your business and that's why I want you to do that. And so all of those things work together for what's going to help you get through this year.
Ben Lueders:
Thanks for joining us today on Growing a Fruitful Brand. If you found today's show helpful, don't forget to subscribe and consider sharing it with someone who might also enjoy it. If you'd like to work with Fruitful on a branding website or messaging project of your own, you can always reach out on our website, fruitful.design. So until next time, don't forget to grow something good.
