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EAG’s chief marketing officer, Jeff Randolph, explains the concept of the Content Bubble without bursting yours and chats with multi-brand franchise owner, Braden Posey, on innovation, inspiration, growing brands and his desire to help people flourish in their careers.
Transcript
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles podcast. I’m Jeff Randolph. This Small Business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising and Marketing. Yes, we are going to talk about marketing. We are also going to celebrate some entrepreneurs. In fact, today we’re going to talk to Braden Posey. Do catch this interview. Thanks for tuning in for it. We have marketing news and advice. And in fact, right now, let’s go ahead and talk some news.
Here is a marketing tip on content planning. There are a lot of models out there for planning content. One that you may consider is a content bubble. Think of this as three concentric circles, the smaller of them being your company and the next largest being your industry and then the biggest circle that contains all of them is the world. So company, industry, world. If you use this structure, you’re making sure that your content is broadly appealing to the widest possible matches for your awareness or your sales funnel.
The widest circle of content is that content that will appeal to the widest possible group like the world. Obviously, it’s still within your target audience, but it’s broad content that most people will find valuable. Now as you move inward and you get to that industry circle, you create content that will appeal to the full industry or anyone investigating your industry will be more involved and will want to know about. And finally, your most strategic content focuses on what your company can do. They should be at the smallest end of the sales funnel and be very relevant to people who are choosing between you and another company, a competitor. This is the content that swings them in your direction and helps them prefer you over the competition. It’s a content bubble approach to building content for your website. Hey, we’re here with Braden Posey. Braden, welcome to the show.
Braden Posey:
Hey, Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.
Jeff Randolph:
Absolutely. Let me start and just have you tell us about your businesses because you’ve got three of them that we’re talking about today.
Braden Posey:
Yeah, we’ve got a couple of things going on. So we own three separate retail businesses. I’d say we specialize in men’s grooming on one side and then on the other, two health related brands. But we own Kitch Meals, which is local here to Kansas City, which is a prepared meals company. We do delivery, pickup, all of that sort of stuff. We have something called Scissors and Scotch, which is just a phenomenal concept. It’s a franchise, so we’re the franchisee for Kansas City and St. Louis. But barbershop bar concept, absolutely love it. Have four locations here in Kansas City. And then finally we also own Supplement Superstores as a franchisee. We have six of those, three in middle Missouri and then three in Illinois. So a little bit of everything across the board, but we really enjoy leading teams and there’s some commonalities there that we found and we really just like running all three brands and really like it.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, outstanding. Yeah, and you are here today because there’s a CEO peer group and it happens to be meeting here at the office. And let me just, we’re going to jump into the first question and have it be just about that peer group thing. So there are a lot of CEO peer groups out there. You’re here today because of one of those. What benefit does that bring you? What are you getting out of your CEO peer group that you couldn’t get from other places?
Braden Posey:
Yeah, so the one we’re involved in is called Vistage, and our chair is a guy named Jeff Hudsal. Chair just means he’s the gentleman that puts it all together. It could be someone that was a former CEO or a military leader, but that’s his role is as a mentor and then someone that facilitates.
But I would say that for me, the CEO peer group has been a really valuable resource for us to ask questions of people that are older, arguably more successful and have been there, done that within a variety of industries that maybe touch on a lot of the same industries we’re involved in, but more importantly, a lot of the same leadership strategies, questions, concerns, et cetera, that you come across just as an owner of a business. So it’s been invaluable because really in normal life, there’s not that many entrepreneurs in necessarily my family or my immediate friends orbit.
And so, some of the issues that you run into are just unique compared to what somebody works a nine to five job working for another company, even if they’re very successful in it. So I think it’s important and it’s helpful to have people that are going through what you’re going through and can give you advice that truly is something that you can act upon.
Jeff Randolph:
And I hear that quite a bit about peer groups as well, that it’s not only the advice part of it where you’re actually solving a problem that you have because the other people in the room have either solved exactly that problem before or just get it and understand versus somebody who, it’s not the practical advice as much as you just know you’re gotten, somebody gets you, right. You go through the same things and so there’s the emotional support that you get from people who know exactly what you’re going through. Both of those equal for you or is one more than the other you really value the actual solutions or you like to be heard and understood by people?
Braden Posey:
I think I’m a little bit more on the tactical side, so I really enjoy the solutions approach that we can look at from just having a variety of inputs from people, like I said, who are also CEOs who’ve been there, done that. But I don’t want to discount the fact that when you’re going through a really tough time or you’re having an issue, there is a tremendous value in just knowing that yes, somebody else has gone through this. They’ve made it through that, and they’re sitting across from you having been out on the other side from it and just experiencing success despite whatever major challenge that you may be struggling with at that point.
Jeff Randolph:
Well, let’s jump into the tactical then. If you could solve one marketing challenge for your business, what would it be? And you’ve got three that we could talk about. Scissors and Scotch and Kitch Meals and Supplement Superstore. Pick one, pick all of them, whatever you’d like to do.
Braden Posey:
So I’ll start with Kitch because that was the brand that we started from scratch. And for me, one of the biggest marketing challenges is understanding the balance between branding spend versus the balance with just pure return on investment marketing. And knowing from a marketing standpoint, how do you allocate your funds, how do you allocate your attention and your efforts between the two. Because if you read any branding book, they talk about brand before everything. You’ve got to really establish what the brand means, who it attracts, what it stands for. These things are huge, but there is a cost to putting your name out there to branding.
Jeff Randolph:
True.
Braden Posey:
On the other side of that, there’s plenty of internet companies that have very little branding, but just hit a niche and they have a widget and they sell the widget for $3 less than someone else sells the widget. And their return on investment or the return on ad spend rather might be just absolutely fantastic. But it’s trying to figure out, for us as a company that does want to build a longer term brand that does have a product that people actually consume and have to trust, how do we balance that spend? And knowing that balance and knowing how to allocate it with a limited budget of a startup is something that we constantly grapple with.
Jeff Randolph:
It is, I think there’s, especially in the small business world, there is that, you understand that there’s a halo effect. You understand that the more we’re out there, the more our brand is out there, the more people resonate with that brand. We insulate ourselves from brand switching and just trial so that there’s a little more of our brand loyalty that we see. If we have a good brand that helps, if we have major media advertising that gets that brand out there, that creates a halo effect where our digital marketing works better because it’s like the tide that lifts all the boats. If you go to paid search and you’re looking for something and you have a search result set of three or five ads that are showing up there, the one you’ve heard of before, usually gets that click.
So branding is important. At the same time, lead gen is important. So yeah, that balance is a lot of the art of marketing as much as it is the science. There are some metrics we can get to, but I think for a lot of small businesses, yeah, you just [inaudible 00:08:24] faith a little bit that we do need to do brand building, but at what point does it stop? When do we pull back and just push the other one? That is the constant question.
Braden Posey:
Yeah, totally agree. I don’t think it’s easily solvable, but it’s something that I think is worth looking at, arguably on a monthly basis. It’s never going to be perfect, but just the activity of looking at whether or not it is a good mix is probably the best you can do.
Jeff Randolph:
Talk about Scissors and Scotch or Supplement Superstore there. What marketing challenges that you’d want to solve?
Braden Posey:
Yeah, I think one of the most interesting ones is, so within Scissors and Scotch especially, we’ve got a really, really cool brand. But at the same time, I think in that marketplace, haircuts for example, there is a lot of loyalty there. So really what you’re trying to do is not only are you trying to convey to whoever it is that yes, this is a great concept, it’s a cool place to come, but also it’s worth overcoming tradition or habit so that you can basically start a new relationship because that’s really what it is with your stylist and with us because we have a bar, it’s also with our lounge or our bartenders. But I think for us it is just how can we market in a way that makes us so appealing that we can overcome that tradition, overcome that, “Hey, I always go here to Jim. He’s been my barber for 30 years. Am I willing to switch?”
Jeff Randolph:
Right. Yeah. What is that thing that will cause somebody to try something new?
Braden Posey:
Yeah. And is it just beating them over the head with repetition, “Hey, we’re available.” And eventually their barber goes out of town and they try us?
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Braden Posey:
Or is it some sort of, not marketing ploy, but a good marketing message that just finally snaps whatever streak it is that they’ve held onto.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah [inaudible 00:10:09] survey questions to new customers, how’d you find us? What made you switch? What were you thinking?
Braden Posey:
We’ve done a little bit of that in the past. I think the branding and the upscale experience is what draws most of the guys in. But we could probably could be a little bit more pinpointed with some of the questions we ask because yeah, are you coming in purely because of the ad or was it literally, “Hey, I looked at this for three years, but really the thing that turned me was that my barber went to Barbados for two weeks and I just couldn’t get a haircut [inaudible 00:10:39].”
Jeff Randolph:
Exactly. Or moved to Lewisburg or whatever the case may be, and you just go, it looks like I need a, wait, I can have booze too? I mean, it just puts itself together at that point, so nice. Where do you find inspiration for your businesses? What drives the innovation?
Braden Posey:
I think for me, I’m driven entirely by growth of our teams. So the inspiration on the business front is yes, I do enjoy seeing the brand itself grow and seeing new exciting things come there. But what I love is seeing the people within our business grow to be successful because the business has become successful. So most of my inspiration has come from a deep desire to take some of the people that have been the most loyal to us long-term and give them career positions and the only way to do that is to create a business that can thrive for decades. And so, most innovation is a by-product of really just a desperate desire to think outside of the box so that we can create those opportunities.
Because without growth, you can have just the coolest culture, the coolest whatever, but eventually people are going to stagnate and the brand will stagnate. So it’s hand in hand, right. And I think we’ve been able to, over the years, grow at a pace that provides opportunities, but it’s just a never ending battle because you want to create those chances for someone that took a chance on you.
Jeff Randolph:
Man, outstanding. Yeah. Let’s call this a transition into the lightning round. Here’s how the lightning round works. The lightning round, there are no wrong answers. We can say whatever it is that comes to your mind.
Braden Posey:
Perfect.
Jeff Randolph:
And you almost have to justify it. If we really need to find out more information, we will ask the follow-up question. But it’s the questions can range from marketing to business to just personal and whatever else, like butter or olive oil, which is it? Butter or olive oil? Which do you prefer?
Braden Posey:
I’m going to go butter.
Jeff Randolph:
Butter, a hundred percent. And I’m on the same page there. All right. Lightning round questions. Best business advice you’ve ever gotten?
Braden Posey:
Never stop learning.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, that’s a good call. Good call. Education, number one. Without looking, let’s see. Oh, sorry. Marketing blank cheque question. The marketing blank, if you had a blank cheque, where would you invest that money?
Braden Posey:
I would spend a disproportionately large amount of that blank cheque, as in probably all of it, on trying to get as many people as possible in Kansas City to try our meals from Kitch, because the quality of our meals are so good that I think the challenge we have is not necessarily keeping people, it’s just getting them to try the first one. So give everyone in Kansas City one meal.
Jeff Randolph:
So it’s the Taco Bell Crunch wrap after the, because somebody stole the base during the World Series or something like that. They do the giant marketing campaign and just drive trial.
Braden Posey:
A hundred percent.
Jeff Randolph:
And all the time, just driving that trial.
Braden Posey:
And you can do that if you have a great core product. And we only invest in and believe in companies where the core product is truly something we can be proud of. So to me, yeah, just get it out.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, good product goes a long way. What keeps you up at night?
Braden Posey:
I would say losing good people. I never want to lose good people. Occasionally it happens, but to me, I always want us to be a place that people love to work. And so, it’s rare, but anytime we lose somebody that I care about it really bothers me.
Jeff Randolph:
And finally, how do you celebrate a big win? Whether that was, you use that blank cheque and things start rolling in. Could be a home project, could be some fitness goal, whatever you got. How do you celebrate that big win?
Braden Posey:
Go out to eat with my wife.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, anything in particular? Is there a specific restaurant or is this just any date night is [inaudible 00:14:36]?
Braden Posey:
I would say we’re partial to Rock Hill Grill. Shout out to Rock Hill Grill, Downtown.
Jeff Randolph:
Good. They’re blocks away.
Braden Posey:
Yes. But no, nothing specific, but I’m a creature of habit, so my wife would have us try a new restaurant every single time. I would be happy going to the same three places for the rest of my life.
Jeff Randolph:
I understand that mindset. If I could just pick tacos, I would pick tacos. I just want tacos. Braden Posey, Scissors and Scotch and Kitch and Supplement Superstore. Thanks for being with us today.
Braden Posey:
Really appreciate it. It was my pleasure.
Jeff Randolph:
And that is our show. Thanks for listening to the Small Business Miracles podcast, brought to you by EAG Advertising and Marketing. Thank you to my guest, Braden Posey, for being here this time around. Remember to subscribe, leave us a five star rating and review. Drop us a line on the website at eagadv.com if you have some thoughts. Until then, we’re going to be out here helping entrepreneurs with another Small Business Miracle.