[0:01] Craig Moen: Welcome to Business Owners Radio episode 202. Today we have an award-winning filmmaker and marketing agency owner. He is helping business owners build their marketing in the right order so they can save time, money, and heartache. His name is Bear Wade. Bear has a new book titled Unify Your Marketing: Five Steps to Build Your Marketing in the Right Order So Your Business Can Soar. Let's get to it. Good morning, Bear. Welcome to business owners radio.
[0:30] Bear Wade: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it.
[0:32] Craig: It's a great morning to be talking about one of our favorite subjects, and that's marketing. And that covers a big bandwidth and all of the stumbling blocks in between. And I was so curious what drove you to take the mega effort to actually write this book?
[0:48] Bear: Yeah, well, you know, I've been in marketing for the last couple of decades, and working with clients over and over, I just kept saying, you know, you got to unify your branding, your website doesn't look like your brochure, and your video doesn't look like your website, and it just doesn't look very professional. So that was my big pitch. And then I kept kind of repeating these steps over and over to my clients. The biggest thing was I come from this documentary Film background. I have a film on PBS, it's been airing for the last decade. And so people would come to me for video, for corporate videos. We get in this pre-production meeting and I'd say, "Well, once we get this video out, we're going to be bringing people back to your website." How is your website working? Is it converting viewers into paid customers? Because there's no point in doing the video and dragging people to a clogged up funnel, to a website that doesn't work for you. And most the time they'd say, "Well, we have a website but it also needs work just like our video needs work." And so we kind of look at each other and go, well, let's push pause on that and take a step back and let's get the website figured out. Because there's no point in spending money and time and effort on the video if the website doesn't work.
And so we'd get into meeting for the website, and I'd say, you know, every good foundational website has a logo, brand colors, authentic photography of your product or service or happy customers, value proposition or some sort of copy, sometimes we call it a brand script, something that says why we should pick you over the others, and some sort of obvious call to action. What do they do if they like what they see? What do they do next? So I'd ask them, do you have those in place so we can make your website better, even if it's not on your website yet? And they always say, "Well, you know, we have a logo but my nephew made it in PowerPoint five years ago." And so we'd all kind of shake our head and go, yeah, we'd have to take another step back. And so I realized that by taking steps backwards, that there was an actual order to these things. Because I kept doing it backwards for the last two decades, and so I finally was like, okay, I just need to sit down with pen and paper and write out off the top of my head what this order is. It started out as like 60 steps and now we've gotten it down to five main pillars.
[2:53] Craig: That's a major contribution, we'll be diving into it. You know, as you were talking, I was visualizing this great situation of how this works out in real life or the non-business world is someone wanting to sell their house and they have this professional realtor come to their house. The realtor is looking at the house and it's going to take major work to get this house into a sellable condition. It's the landscaping, it's the visual on the front, as far as what's the street curb appeal, on and on and on. There's so many repairs, so many things that since the person lived at this home they just don't see. And when you're in your business, many times there are amazing things wrong that other people wouldn't notice right away. And to have a professional come in and help the business owner through that process is really a value. So I can imagine you got some good stories regarding situations and what's missing.
[3:58] Bear: Yeah. I mean, it's not necessarily about me going in and nitpicking anything, but it really is advocating for their long term goal. And once my clients have been through the process, they really see it. And this whole book and the whole brand steps will help illustrate your viewers or your potential customers take you more seriously, because of the big organizations they have unified branding across the board. I use McDonald's, whether we like them or not, as the example where we all know the red and yellow, and we know Target, we know their ad on TV before they flash a logo at the end. And it's because of the style, and it's because of the font they use, and it's because of the white background and the color palette they use.
And so just by defining those things upfront, it is easier to then apply them to everything. The reason why you want to follow the steps in general is because once you have these elements in place at a foundation, things get cheaper as you continue to grow and build. You don't have to spend as much time and effort and attention on things. So my example is if you hire a videographer or a video person to create that video on the front of your website to kind of give your viewers an overview of what you're about, if you hire a video person to do that for you, if you don't have your brand script and your logo and your colors and your call to action figured out, they're going to help you figure that out in the cost of making that video. And that's why video can be expensive. But if you have that figured out, all they're doing is formatting it for video.
And so same thing if you're making a brochure, and you have your authentic photography and your brand script in your logo, and now you're just formatting it for the piece of paper. And same thing for a website, if you're building a foundation of website that's kind of a digital brochure, it's not too in-depth, then that kind of foundational website is just applying those things and formatting them for web or for screen. And so that's the reason why you want to follow the steps is if you do them in order, you're going to save a bunch of time and money and not have to go back and forth.
[5:57] Craig: It's amazing how these subliminal impressions on a company accumulate with it being at the visual with the website or their brochures or anything that the company puts out. All of those have that subliminal impact on you in getting the look and feel of what is this company, what are they made of, and what is their credibility. We know it when we see it when it's done poorly, it's just we just can't believe what we're seeing. What are you finding to be one of the first most obvious things that are broken in business marketing?
[6:32] Bear: Really, for me, it's all about having that unified look. Because if you're at that level, where you don't have an in-house marketing department and you're working with freelancers or contractors, which a lot of people are, a lot of times you kind of have that right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. And so like I said, your video doesn't look like your website or it doesn't look like your brochure. And so that really kind of sabotages your overall marketing goal of you want when people see your social media feed, and then go to your website, they should feel related, they should have the same logo and the same kind of cover photo, just so they know that it's you quickly, they know it's your company. We don't want to have them spend their energy trying to figure out if it's you again, it should be seamless. And so that for me is kind of like, ugh, this is so annoying, when I see that because I just want them to succeed. And the more you can grease that wheel of less friction between your customer finding you and purchasing from you, that's really the goal.
[7:29] Shye Gilad: So Bear, embedded in this story is this insight that you had while helping business owners create videos, essentially films to promote their business. But you yourself have kind of this interesting background and what led you to that. So, what happens before? Tell us about the genesis of your interest in making film that led to these insights and eventually launching this marketing agency?
[7:52] Bear: You know, there's this joke, which goes, what's the difference between a documentary filmmaker and a large pizza? And the answer is a large pizza can feed a family of four, which is to say that documentary filmmakers don't make a lot of money. And so while I'm trying to make this film that I'm trying to get on PBS, my wife and I are self-financing. And because I'm essentially a nobody at that point and trying to find sponsors, which we did get some sponsors but it was mostly after the fact once I had something to show, and we made it through, we got accepted through the Fall marketplace, which is kind of PBS is Sundance Film Festival of sorts. But before that, I was trying to figure out how to make the film look like it was a thing, don't make it looked like it was something of importance because documentary film, especially, I don't really know what the story is until I'm done with it. And so it's hard to figure out.
And so I had kind of two hurdles that I had to overcome—one was trying to figure out how to say what the film was about, which we now call a brand script, but back there elevator pitch. But back then, for me, I was just so young and green, I didn't know what that meant. And so we'd go to parties and stuff -- remember when we used to go to parties? I went to a party and people say, "Oh, you're traveling? So what projects are you working on now?" And I tell them about this film and I'd really like look down at my shoes and kind of mumble through it, because I didn't really have the confidence in knowing what the story was about yet. And finally, my wife would continue to bail me out. She's such the extrovert and supporter. So she'd kind of step in and be able to sum it up a little bit better. And she finally one day was like, "Okay, this is what we have to do. We have to figure out how to say what this film is about. We have it figured out now. We know what it's about. Now we just need to figure out how to say it clear." So this was where the kind of brand script came into play. 1920 because that's when this road trip happened. And we knew what we wanted to say, national parks, there are 12 national parks because that's where this road trip happened, so all 12 national parks at the time in 1920. And there were 12 people that went on this road trip, so we wanted to make sure we said 12 intrepid motorists. So we were trying to figure out how to tell the story.
And so once we did that, every time somebody asked, "So what's it about?" and then we use those words on the front of the movie poster, and on the back of the DVD cover, and on the front of the website, and when we were trying to get PBS programming directors to pick it up. So it was easy for them to understand what it was about.
But beyond that, it was really about trying to make the film feel like it was professional and that it was epic, that it was something worth caring about. And so I went through and looked at other films that were out there and not bought every Ken Burns documentary, he was kind of the guy I was emulating. But I just was diving into every documentary that I could find and tried to dissect what they were doing, go to their website and see what they had, and their DVD covers to try and figure out what they look like, and their movie posters, and just tried to find how I could translate what our film was about through what I was learning from them. Because I knew what they were doing was working so why not use that as a template. And so that's really where my brand steps, that's where I realized they were a thing of value. If you make it look important, people take it seriously, and they think it's important.
I had a website, and a poster, and postcards about the film. I had a DVD cover mockup, and the film wasn't done. And it just looked like it was done. People say fake it till you make it. But it was really like, no, this is the thing. This is what it's going to be. This is what it is. I'd tried to change the tents from this is what I'm envisioning to this is what it is. And people got on board. That's my big battle cry is you make it look like you're serious, people take you seriously.
[11:28] Shye: It's such a fantastic story. And so for the record, tell us the name of the film, because I'm sure people are going to want to check it out.
[11:34] Bear: Oh, yeah. It's called Paving the Way: The National Park to Park Highway. And the whole idea was about a 5,000 mile road trip that happened in 1920 to all 12 of the national parks before there were paved roads. So we had cars back then and we had our model T looking at cars, but you couldn't really take them out of town. And they weren't really roads, it was all rugged wagon trails and horse pass. And there were no signs, there were no interstates, there's no air conditioning, and no maps, no GPS. And can you imagine taking a road trip with that? There's no gas station so they took a truck with them, a pickup truck that had gas with them so they could fill up as they went.
[12:12] Shye: That just sounds incredible. And so what first got you into that idea? Why did you want to explore that in particular?
[12:18] Bear: Well, I just come off of making a film about my favorite summer camp, which is the 50th anniversary. And I started right out of college making video biographies on people. I love doing that and I loved interviewing grandparents. I had this like talking head interview style where I'd interview them. I love doing it but it was expensive. I basically made one film and sold six copies, which is the opposite of what you want to do. As a filmmaker, you want to make it once and sell a million copies. And so as I transitioned out of that idea to the summer camp film, where I made one film, and it was for hundreds of people, which is fun, but that was where I kind of cut my teeth and make a feature length thing. That was for the 50th Anniversary Gala. It was really fun. We rented a theater, watch it all together. It was really neat. And then people were asking, "What are you going to do next?" And I didn't know what my project would be next. But my wife and I, we're at Rocky Mountain National Park for our honeymoon and I came across this book called The Playground Trail, and it was written by a retired couple. They had old photos in this park to park highway route, and they basically tell you how to take the route if you were going to do it today. So obviously, some of the roads have been upgraded to interstates and stuff. But they had all these old photos from 1920, and I thought, man, this could really turn into a neat movie. And so I contacted them and then contacted the library where these photos were buried in a basement, and we got it all figured out and turned it into a movie.
[13:42] Shye: So, you know, you said this thing was very interesting to me, which is "When I make a documentary, I don't know what it's going to be about until it's over." What does that mean to you?
[13:51] Bear: Well, you know, part of it is it's hard, you have to have faith that you're going to turn this story into something that has an arc to it, that has a beginning, middle and end, and it has some sort of hero in it and it has some sort of drama that keeps people entertained. We found all of that, which was surprising, as we went along. But it's hard to sell, it's hard to be like, "Come with me. I'm not a proven entity and I promise it'll work."
[14:20] Shye: Bear, you're describing every startups journey, right, every accidental business owner out there, the person that started their firm and maybe didn't know exactly what they were going to do, but they had an idea. They're in pursuit of something or maybe they backed into a customer and now they have to launch a business to support it. And it is a little bit of a journey, right?
[14:40] Bear: It is. I mean, I had faith that it was going to be great, because I'd been shooting enough and had enough experience that just keep going and keep crafting the story until you made it interesting and made it neat and kept finding interviews that were worth showing. But yeah, you have to have that experience to know that the process is going to work or you got to trust the process and your experience and your resourcefulness, especially if you're starting a business or something like that. It's one thing to be good at what you do and it's another thing to run a business doing it. But yeah, that's kind of where I was, it was like, no, I know this is going to be good. I just need to figure out how to get through it.
[15:14] Shye: How do you apply that same curiosity to your own marketing agency?
[15:20 ] Bear: Oh, that's a great question. Well, we work with any industry. We haven't really niched down like lots of agencies, because I want to come at it with the same ignorance, the same fresh set of eyes that I do with documentary. I have a general understanding of a lot of things. So if I'm working with a CPA, which I'm working with now, you know, I have to use a CPA to run my business. And so I asked questions as if I'm a business owner, and that helps my CPA understand how he is or isn't communicating to his potential customers. And that me being ignorant about how CPAs work actually helped him communicate in a clear way, in a simplified way, because he'll use insider or language or he'll use he'll which tax form I'm supposed to use. And I'm like, so what is that and where do I find that? How do I get there? Do I need to fill out all of this or do you fill out all -- and so I'm just going at it with fresh eyes. And same thing, we're working with a mortgage company now, and same kind of thing. It's like, yeah, I've bought a house before, I understand how it works. And so how does your process work and why are you better? It's been really neat to pull that out of business owners and then reflected back to them and have them go, Oh, I see. Okay, so I should say like this. Oh, I see. Okay, right. Right, right. And they really get out of their own head, you know, they're too close to the canvas. And so we get to step back and reframe it for them and watch them articulate what they do in a clear, simplified way. And it's neat to see them grow.
[16:49] Shye: Oh, I'm sure. There's so many businesses that really want to leverage video but just don't really know where to start, how to do it. They want to hire someone to make it look professional but that seems intimidating and really costly. And you mentioned that often what you've discovered is then when people do finally reach out to someone like you to come do that work for them, it sounds like what you find out is they just aren't ready. And they're not ready because they don't have some of these other elements in place, right? And so at least you make them aware of that or I'm sure there's some people that just might go ahead and shoot the video with what they have, but that probably won't get the results that they want, I imagine. So other than, you know, you mentioned this idea if your logo maybe was done by your nephew, no offense, your nephew might be brilliant, I know mine are, but maybe that's one telltale sign that you might need to take some additional steps in your marketing. What are the other things that you notice? What are other markers that I can look for as a business owner to say, "Huh, I wonder if this book is right for me, and I wonder if this is going to help or just be a waste of money?" Because maybe I think I already have these things in place.
[17:56] Bear: Yeah. So, the book works great on a macro level. So if you feel like you're stuck somewhere in your marketing, you can go through the steps, reevaluate. You don't have to start over necessarily, you might say, well, we have a brand script done, we have a brand identity, a brand media is all good, our pricing structure is fine, but maybe our website needs to be updated because it's not pressure. Sales funnel needs to be adjusted because we're getting traffic to the website but we aren't converting them. So maybe there's something there that needs to be adjusted. Once you kind of go through the steps, you can evaluate. It just points stuff out, it doesn't say you have to start over. But on a kind of micro level, you can say these steps work for a campaign. Let's say you're launching a new initiative, a sales initiative. Like for my agency, let's say we're coming up with a new package for a logo design and a website, kind of like a starter kit, then let's say, well, we need to give it a name, we need to start over. So what's the brand script? Why would somebody need a starter kit? Why wouldn't they need the whole thing? Well, it does get you up and going, it validates you online. Maybe the starter kit needs some sort of brand identity, so we might call it something like Launch Lab or something. What is that thing we're going to call it? So we give an identity so then people when they see it online or see it in person, they have something to attach that idea to.
[19:16] Craig: Bear, I really wanted to dive into this book. There's so many great action items and great perspective. In a high level, can you run through the five steps?
[19:27] Bear: So, the unified brand steps are broken into kind of five pillars. And with that, there are kind of three sub steps underneath each one. All of this is at our website, you can get it for free so don't feel overwhelmed if you can't remember it all while you're listening here. But the first phase is defining. You want to define your brand script, your brand identity, and your brand media. That's your photography, your testimonials and your brand video. Step two is building. It's now building your pricing structure, which seems kind of out of place, but if people don't understand it what you offer and how much you charge for it, then it's going to be very hard to sell. And the pricing structure doesn't necessarily have to be customer-facing. If you're a certain type of industry and you want people to call in and you do estimates and you have a different sales cycle or sales process, then just order from the website, then you want to still have that in-house and you want to have it define how that scope defined for what you're doing. So then you want to have your website, have your domain name figured out, some sort of sales funnel, which is basically how do you get them from getting to your website to purchasing from you and possibly with some sort of upsell opportunity to make their life even easier, like driving through the fast food restaurant. You might have just gone for a burger, but if they offer you a drink and a side, then you are even more satisfied. So that kind of thing. And then you want to update your social media channels to look like your website. And then from there, you want to update any print media. So your brochure and postcards and business cards, any other handouts. Phase three is growing. So you want to make sure you're keeping track of your customer list. I didn't do this for the longest time and I still kind of kick myself for that. I just would do a job for somebody for something they asked and I'd send it along and I never kept track and kept reaching out to them. So, make sure that you keep a customer list and keep touching base with them. And then define your lead generation spigot. How do you find more ideal customers that you can bring in and convert and deliver for them? And if you get too busy, you can kind of turn that spigot off, and then turn it back on when you need to. So if that's running ads or going to networking events, how can you bring in new leads in a predictable way?
And then blast for phase three is defining a campaign initiative. So, like that example of trying to get a package of something together and promoting it, obviously, a campaign initiative would be like a Black Friday sale or a Cyber Monday sale. Something that is timely, holidays like Mother's Day might be another campaign initiative depending on your industry.
Phase four is ongoing. So now that you have defined, build, you're starting to grow, now you just want to maintain. So, ongoing is all about creating and defining your content pipeline. So, you're going to continue to deliver content to people through your email through social media, and you want to define who's doing what with that. So if you're writing the content, you want to hopefully not be doing the entire content pipeline yourself as a business owner, or else you just burn out. But try and find other people that can help you with social media or help copyright or help graphic design for you, and outsource that button clicking for you and leave you as the master of the content because you're the Pro. Then it's all about coming up with the schedule for your content, trying to figure out what's coming up next, and getting ahead a little bit. So you aren't writing your blog post and your e-newsletter the day it's due, you want to be months out so if you get busy or want to take a vacation, it's still publishing for you.
And the last phase is scaling. So, analyze what's working. There's no reason to keep doing what's not working. So you want to analyze what is working, and then work on your project management. So, I put this in here, it doesn't really have to do with marketing. But if you aren't fulfilling the orders that you are getting when you make your sales, that does come back to what people think about you. We think about amazon.com is an obvious one, where if you don't get your package in two days, you're kind of upset, but they continue to deliver quickly. That is part of what we think about them, and that has to do with branding. And then the last is about hiring, training, delegating and monitoring. So growing your team, coming up with standard operating procedures, and continue to grow your company.
[23:41] Craig: Bear, this looks so much like the film Paving the Way as far as defining and aligning with this roadmap in a marketing sense. What you've done is pulled together so many different facets of marketing and the wide span for the general branding of the business all the way down to the product marketing. So you really consolidated this really nicely into my marketing roadmap for business to start diving in and refining what they have. So, really appreciate you spending that effort and appreciate you joining Shye and I today, and I enjoyed every moment of it.
[24:17] Bear: I appreciate it for having me on.
[24:18] Craig: So Bear, is there anything else you'd like to leave with our audience today?
[24:22] Bear: Oh, we have a lot of free resources that I encourage you to check out. You can look at the brand steps and learn more, and we even have a quiz or an assessment on our websites you can figure out which brands step you're on. All of that is at bearwade.com, or you can go to unifyyourmarketing.com, where you can find the book and kind of takes you to the same place. But yeah, love for you to check out the free resources at least, and if you want to pick up the book, we designed it to be easy to digest and easy to get through, and that's for every business owner that doesn't have time and needs to get to growing their company quicker.
[24:55] Craig: Our guest today has been Baer Wade, author of the new book, Unify Your Marketing: Five Steps to Build Your Marketing in the right order so your business can soar. Bear is a creator of the award winning film on PBS Paving the Way, a film about the roads connecting the national parks. Owner of Unify Creative Agency, Bear helps businesses build their brand in the right order to communicate their value clearly and concisely so they can grow. You can learn more about Bear as well as find links to his website, download the exercises featured in the book, and get free access to the first chapter, all on our website at businessownersradio.com.
[25:39] Thank you for joining us on Business Owners Radio. We hope you enjoy today's show. As always, you can read more about each episode along with links and offers in the show notes on our website, businessownersradio.com. We want to hear your feedback. Please leave comments on this show or suggestions for upcoming episodes. Tell your fellow business owners about the show and, of course, we would love the stars and comments on iTunes. Till next time, keep taking care of business.