Brand Strategy That Converts: How to Build Authentic Stories That Sell with Lori Asbury
What if your brand could rise above the noise — not with more content, but with a smarter strategy that actually moves the needle?
In this episode, Jill Hart sits down with marketing powerhouse Lori Asbury, President & CEO of CMO Co Marketing and Advertising, who’s led billion-dollar brands like HGTV and CBS. They dive deep into authentic storytelling, the truth about organic vs. paid media, and how to evolve your brand without losing your audience. Whether you’re a solopreneur or scaling a company, Lori’s advice on brand alignment, connection, and strategy will help you create marketing that feels human — and sells.
🎧 Tune in to learn:
- Why authenticity (real authenticity) matters more than ever
- How to create brand evolution without alienation
- The secret to turning storytelling into strategy
- What every small business can learn from billion-dollar brands
👉 Take Lori’s free Sales Un-Stall Survey at LeadWithLori.com
Want premium clients from your content?
Grab a free Client Acquisition Audit and I’ll show you exactly where your message, offer, and CTA are leaking conversions—and the 3 fixes to turn your podcast/Substack into a client pipeline.
👉 Book here: https://coachsalchemist.com
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
Transcript
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: What if your brand could rise above the noise? Not with more content, but with a smarter, strategy-driven plan that actually moves the needle?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Hi, and welcome to the You World Order Showcase Podcast, where we feature life, health, transformational coaches and spiritual entrepreneurs stepping up to be the change they seek in the world. I'm your host, Jill Hart, the Coach's Alchemist, on a mission to amplify… help coaches amplify their voice, monetize their mission, and get visible. If you're ready to start attracting premium clients without chasing algorithms or hunting people down like a banshee on a mission.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Head on over to Coachsalchemist.com and schedule your free client acquisition audit. It's the first step to building a business where your clients seek you out rather than you having to hunt them down. Today, we are chatting with Lori Asbury. Lori is the president and CEO of CMO Co Marketing and Advertising, a proven leader with over 25 years of experience in senior-level management.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: strategic brand development, organizational operations, and consumer marketing. Having led billion-dollar brands like HGTV, Fox television stations, and the CBS television stations, Lori brings unmatched expertise in building powerful, recognizable brands that have driven both awareness and revenue. With an MBA from Cornell University and a BA in
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: journalism from the University of Oklahoma. She combines analytical insight with creative storytelling to help businesses craft data-backed marketing strategies that deliver real results.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: a lifelong animal lover and ASPCA supporter, Lori is also a former farm owner and competitive equestrian who brings both discipline and heart to everything she does. Welcome to the show, Lori. It's great to have you with us.
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::loriasbury: Hey, thank you so much. That's such an introduction. I'm… I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. No, I'm super excited for our conversation.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You're so young, and you've done so much.
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::loriasbury: I might be longer… younger… I might look younger than I actually am. I've been around, been around the block, that's for sure.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I, I, I hear you.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: What's the most significant thing, in your opinion, as individuals, we can do to make an impact on how the world is going?
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::loriasbury: Gosh, most importantly, I think you need to serve. Like, serve, find any way that you can serve, whether it be through your church, or through an organization that you care about. I'm super passionate about animals, and…
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::loriasbury: and the care and well-being of animals, so there's a lot of organizations that I'm involved with in that regard. Obviously, I'm into horses, I'm a horseback rider, compete in horses, and
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::loriasbury: So, have a strong passion for… for horse care, and but… but also, I really get involved in my church and find ways in which that… in that community in which I can serve. And it can be super simple things, like greeting people at the door on Sunday, or… or just, you know, joining in a life group and, you know, supporting the people around you. You know, I think it's so important
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::loriasbury: now that we just connect with humans. I think, you know, we get so locked into our screens day in and day out, and I think there's such a need for us to connect
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::loriasbury: Physically and spiritually with people, one-on-one, as much as we possibly can.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's so easy to do, and…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: most people don't even think about it. It's like, when you're standing in line someplace, turn around and say hello to the person behind you, and something encouraging.
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::loriasbury: Hunter…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Lift their whole day! You never know what people are going through, and everybody's going through something.
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::loriasbury: That is so true, and, you know, I'm such a believer in that everybody is walking through something, and, you know, you could be walking through a great time, you could be walking through a bad time. But, I mean, even just a compliment, hey, that dress is so pretty, I really think you look great today, I mean, those little compliments can really change somebody's day.
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::loriasbury: And I just think that, you know, the media wants to divide us so much, and I think that most of us aren't divided. I honestly don't think that's a representation of how we live our lives, and in the real world, and what we experience day in and day out. And I think the most, you know, the most opportunities that we have to be able to connect with people, have conversations with people, look people in the eye, shake their hand.
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::loriasbury: you know, give a handout to somebody on the street corner. I think that's really important. You know, everybody's going through something, and you know, I think that human connection is just so critical right now.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And asking for advice.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: People love to help each other.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And when you just ask somebody, you know, you see something… I went to the grocery store earlier today, so we're going to talk about the grocery store.
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::loriasbury: Yeah, yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You know, they've got some weird vegetable, you have no idea how that thing is cooked, or fruit that's, you know, odd.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Ask them about it. Let them tell you something. And it allows them to get puffed up a little bit. It makes them feel better.
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::loriasbury: Right.
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::loriasbury: That's so true.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Or something.
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::loriasbury: Exactly, and everybody has gifts, right? You know, they make… we all come from different walks of lives, and we all have talents, and you know, we're all uniquely made, and, you know, and we all have a purpose in this world, and I think that, you know, the more that we can, you know, again, it's just that human connection, just reaching out and actually connecting with somebody. It's just… it's so powerful.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And I think this all circles back into what you do in the business world, because it's really…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: All sales is about is connecting with others and helping them, providing solutions to problems that people experience in everyday lives.
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::loriasbury: That's so true. So, yeah, I own a full-service advertising agency, and you know, I think now more than ever, the most important thing brands can do is really just tell their story and be authentic about their story. And when I say authentic, it doesn't mean fake authentic, it means truly authentic. So, really tell your story about who you are as a brand, how you're differentiated, how you're unique, what sets you apart from your competitors.
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::loriasbury: and tell it in a way that's meaningful and in a way that's going to connect, truly connect with your target audience. So, that's kind of what we really focus on right out of the gate when we start working with clients, is really, you know, having a comprehensive look
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::loriasbury: At the business overall, and really developing a very thoughtful, strategic plan that's going to help that company figure out how they tell their story. Obviously, who they're talking to, but how they're going to tell their story in a way that's compelling, that's gonna move the needle in terms of their sales.
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::loriasbury: You know, and also just how they're gonna build their brand, both qualitatively and quantitatively, and…
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::loriasbury: And, yeah, how they're gonna drive the needle. And so, obviously, that strategic plan consists of a lot of different things, but… but most importantly, it's really that storytelling part.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I love that, and I think I want to circle into the… what's the biggest piece of advice that you tried that didn't work? Because I think that's going to slide perfectly right in here.
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::loriasbury: Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. So, I think what we always discover, really, with most all of our clients, and this has just kind of been a pattern for many, many years, is that people think organic social media is kind of like the be-all, end-all, and it's… and there's such a difference between… especially for businesses, okay? So.
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::loriasbury: So, there's such a difference between paid media and then what's called organic media.
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::loriasbury: And organic would be just your, you know, your regular Facebook profile page that you have as a business. Not paid ads, but it's just your…
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::loriasbury: business page that you've put up on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and so forth, and you're posting a lot of… a lot of content every week, and you're putting a lot of effort into it, and you may not be seeing a lot of turn, return on that, and there's a reason for that, is because you are a business, and
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::loriasbury: you know, Zuckerberg, being the business person that he is, isn't gonna let you build your business on his back for free. So, that content that you're spending a lot of time and investing a lot of energy in is only getting seen
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::loriasbury: maybe 2-3% of your followers are getting served that content, so you just have to be mindful of it. It's definitely a necessary evil, and when I say that, it's like having…
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::loriasbury: active organic social channels is really critical, because search engines place a huge emphasis on it. So,
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::loriasbury: Having fresh content is really critical, and having… integrating keywords, industry keywords that, you know, people may be searching into your content, that's gonna help elevate you and show…
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::loriasbury: elevate you in search, but the other reason is because people are using social media as search engines themselves, and so they're going in, they're checking out the relevancy of your business, seeing if you have active social signals, when was the last time you posted. If you didn't post for 2 or 3 years, then, you know, there's… the assumption might be that you're not even open for business anymore. So, there isn't… there is a need for organic social media, but you just have to be really…
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::loriasbury: mindful of the expectation of what you're going to get back out of it. And so, it's just, you know, balancing that. And I think a lot of people get really confused, thinking, oh, I have these free advertising channels, and we're placing all this emphasis in it, and…
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::loriasbury: you know, we're just not getting a lot of likes, and we're not getting a lot of shares, and we're not getting a ton of engagement, and my sales really aren't really moving that much. Well, no, they're not going to. And that's just, you know, I think people just don't… they really, truly don't understand, kind of, the limitations, business… for businesses, the business limitations on organics…
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::loriasbury: on organic social media. But when you do that combined with paid advertising, it can be extremely powerful.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, and using it when you're…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Using it to, like, test stuff?
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: See what works, and then double down on it with money.
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::loriasbury: Yeah, 100%. So we develop content, what's called A-B testing. So, you know, we'll do several… we'll do posts as stills, we'll do posts as a reel, we'll do a carousel, we'll have, you know, a certain message in one post, a different message in another. We may focus on one product in one post, and we're really looking at the analytics of the performance of those posts, and then when we see a
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::loriasbury: performance, you know, a strong performance from a specific post, whether it be, you know, a video ad, or, I mean, a video post, or just even the messaging that we might be using, or the language that we might be using. Then we create what's called look-alike ads, or lookalike posts, to kind of mirror that messaging, because we know it performs well.
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::loriasbury: And we're also doing our research and looking at, like, what in the industry is, performing well. So, it may not even just be
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::loriasbury: the posts that we're creating for our client, but what are competitors in their space doing? What type of content are they creating that's actually getting a lot of engagement? And we'll analyze that, look at that, look at data, look at market trends, and then try to shape a plan kind of based on that.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So, do you actually help, brands
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: put together that ads, in terms of… you tell them, okay, go make a video about XYZ, this is what the background needs to look like, I mean, is that how…
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::loriasbury: Yeah, we do everything. Yeah, yeah, we do everything, so we're full service. I have two videographers in-house, so if we're creating video content for social media or for paid ads, so obviously now, in the digital space, we have lots of video content that we leverage, so we lever it in paid meta campaigns, so that would be paid ads in Facebook and Instagram.
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::loriasbury: video and LinkedIn. There's also, like, video pre-roll advertising, so they're, like, it's almost like display advertising, but it's video advertising across the digital ecosystem. We're obviously using, streaming television, buying a lot of streaming television ads.
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::loriasbury: Excuse me. So we're using a ton of video, and so we are helping our clients craft those… that video content. So we're writing it, we're producing it, we're shooting it, we're editing it, we're doing…
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::loriasbury: kind of the whole soup to nuts, if you will, video production. And really.
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::loriasbury: the reason we do that is, one, most of our clients don't have that capability in-house. That's a big reason why, but also because we're pretty much overseeing their entire, advertising, you know, and drip marketing activities that they do on a regular basis, and so it's all very seamless. So, you know, if we have specific themes that we're focused on in one given month, we want that to be very.
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::loriasbury: consistent across all of our platforms, so if we're pushing email campaigns, or direct mail, or we're doing traditional media, paid, like, radio, TV, outdoor, billboards, that type of thing, and then digital, you know, we want that messaging and that campaign to be seamless across
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::loriasbury: all customer touchpoints, so…
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::loriasbury: So, yeah, it makes sense for us to be doing it, but yeah, we have all the infrastructure in-house and all the resources in-house to be able to create all that content. Same with social media. We're developing all the social media content, the written word, all the,
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::loriasbury: All the videos, the still photos, the animations, anything that you would use in a social media post, we're creating all that content as well.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So, who… who are your ideal clients? Are… are they… I'll just let you…
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::loriasbury: Oh, yeah, no, so it's, you know, honestly, it's super random. We're not really industry-specific, although we do have industry expertise in a couple of areas.
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::loriasbury: have a lot of experience in utilities, broadband, telecom, hospitality, entertainment, tourism. We have a lot of experience in that space. We actually work with a lot of manufacturing companies, so it's really all over the board. A couple hair salons, I mean, it's just everything in between. We usually, you know, try to stay within a…
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::loriasbury: like a monthly minimum. Most of our clients are on retainer, and we kind of do a set amount of marketing activities every single month, and so they pay us for our services, and then if they're doing ad campaigns, they pay for the media, but we book and plan the media.
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::loriasbury: So we negotiate all the rates for the media buys, and then we do all the ad campaign development in-house. So, our clients are extremely diverse. We have a company that actually manufactures microscopes for nanoscience research, and, you know, all the way to,
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::loriasbury: a company, a large company out of St. Joseph, Missouri, that, that manufactures, additives and supplements for farm animals, so cattle, equine.
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::loriasbury: pigs, goats, sheep, dogs, you know, and just literally everything in between. So it's a lot of fun. It keeps you on your toes, and you have to really get your arms around their business really, really quickly. And we try to, like I said, we try to be very strategic out of the gate, so…
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::loriasbury: I think what really separates us from traditional advertising agencies is that we don't just jump straight to campaign. We usually spend the first, 4 to 8 weeks, usually 8 weeks, developing a very comprehensive strategic plan that's aligned with whatever the company's revenue goals are, so that we know what we have to do to reach those revenue goals, and then we're making, you know, the
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::loriasbury: the most judicious recommendation about what they should be spending on advertising based on what those revenue goals are, what's appropriate. And so, we do that so that we have a roadmap to success, so that we're not just developing campaigns, making cool, creative, throwing it out there, seeing what sticks.
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::loriasbury: We're developing every campaign with a purpose, and that purpose is based on market research, it's based on data, it's based on the competitive landscape, it's based on the company's goals, so a lot of variables go into
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::loriasbury: how we craft these marketing and advertising plans. But it really is, I think, without question, the best way to approach it out of the gate, because then everything that you're doing thereafter is really rooted in something purposeful.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: That makes so much sense, and if you were just gonna bring it down to,
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: a smaller level, because a lot of the people that I speak to are… are generally, you know, they're solopreneurs.
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::loriasbury: Sure. They're coaches and solopreneurs, and they're… and they're getting into the…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They're… mostly, they lean on organic marketing.
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::loriasbury: There's…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: thinking that, you know, if I just post on Facebook every day and make my offers, I'm gonna make a million dollars next month.
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::loriasbury: Okay.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: which… It isn't gonna happen, but…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I'm not here to burst their bubble.
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::loriasbury: Right.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But if you… if you take what you've been saying, and… and you scale it out, and you map out what your plan is based on where you want to go.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: This… this could be scaled down, too.
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::loriasbury: Sure, sure. I think, I mean, I think the best place to start is, is to…
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::loriasbury: really, how much money do you truly think you can make in a year? And then… and then you should probably say, I need to invest a percentage of that into marketing myself. And it can be small, and it can be organic, especially for solopreneurs, and absolutely…
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::loriasbury: I think solopreneurs should leverage social media as much as they possibly can, but I think the best thing starting out
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::loriasbury: Is to… just what we talked about from the very beginning of this podcast is to make human connections. You know, just talk to everybody that you know, you know, ask for your friends to introduce you to people, send out emails, go on podcasts, you know, try to connect with people as much as you possibly can.
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::loriasbury: And then you start making connections, and then… I mean, even… I've been in business now, CMOCO's been in business, it'll be…
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::loriasbury: gosh, 8… I have to think about this… 15 years, this May. We'll be 15 years in business, and to this day, even with all the outreach that we do, and…
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::loriasbury: We're a 7-figure agency, and we do really well, but, like, honestly, to this day, our leads are mostly word of mouth, are mostly referrals from clients that we've worked with in the past who've referred us, or we've worked with an individual at an organization who's since left and gone on to another business, who has then come back to hire us to help us with help them with that business, so…
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::loriasbury: You know, just really leveraging as many
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::loriasbury: connections that you possibly can, I think, is really the best and most efficient way for small businesses to really start to, get some traction.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I… yeah, I… we all run on connection. You can't just, like, be invisible and think that Money.
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::loriasbury: Yeah, no, we scrape, claw, we, well, what do I say? We scrape, claw, and…
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::loriasbury: I mean, like, do everything we can for every penny we earn, you know? So it's a lot, it's hard work. And, you know, yeah, sure, we have some, you know, great successes and so forth, but we have a lot of failures, too. So, you know, as any small business, we'll take 5 steps forward to take 6 steps back, to take 8 steps forward, to take 4 steps back, you know? So it's just… it's ebbs and flows. We're no different than any other business out there.
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::loriasbury: You know, even though we've grown, for sure, over the years, it's still… we still have all the same struggles as… as we did when I first started, you know? And it was just me, really. I had a partner that had… that had,
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::loriasbury: another company that had some infrastructure that I would rely on, but it was really just me from the beginning, kind of getting business in the doors and managing accounts, and I eventually bought out my partners and kind of went out on my own, but… and then hired staff and so forth. But I did it extremely judiciously. I only hired when I really could afford it. I didn't take on debt to hire people.
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::loriasbury: You know, I was extremely cautious, maybe too cautious, maybe I should have, you know, looking back and seeing how some businesses really scale, they do take on debt to really kind of invest in the company and get resources and…
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::loriasbury: that type of thing. I think I was a little nervous because I was a single mom raising two kids, and so I just… I had a little bit of… a little risk-averse in that regard, but… but most of all, still willing to take on some risk and so forth, but…
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::loriasbury: But I mean, it's just, you know, it's just year over year, you know, day by day, hour by hour, you know, is kind of how you just kind of get through it.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, you do. Every day is a new experience.
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::loriasbury: You talk about storytelling a lot, and when you were talking about building these campaigns, and you take 8 weeks in order to, like, really understand the business, it…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: it… you want to talk about developing the story that you tell? I know some of the bigger advertising campaigns that we see out there, like Apple or Coke.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They… they… their whole… advertising… Journey takes the consumer along with them.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and pulls them into the story. So how does all that work for you.
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::loriasbury: Yeah, absolutely, and obviously it's going to be so varied, very different from… depending upon the type of business it is, and the type of resources that they have, and… and obviously the story that they have to… that they have to tell. So, you know, obviously, let's say, for example, I'm just gonna use two different examples. So, like, for our hair salon.
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::loriasbury: clients, we can get a lot more fun. You know, we can do a lot more fun, we can… we… their brand is a lot of personality. They're selling people, they're selling the stylists, they're selling their work, they're selling their reputation, they're selling their personalities, and so we really leverage that, in their storytelling. And obviously, the owners of the salon, you know, they have their own story.
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::loriasbury: to tell, and their expertise, and so we showcase that a lot. But it's… for them, it's extremely,
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::loriasbury: you know, about making personal connections for them. And then, you know, with our science client, for example, it's very different, right? It's a very different approach, so it's more direct marketing, it's more…
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::loriasbury: Reaching out and explaining the results of the research that their microscopes do, what these microscopes do that others don't do, how they're different, how they're going to elevate someone's research.
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::loriasbury: So it's just a very different… it's a very different story.
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::loriasbury: in a very different approach, but… but each business should have a story to tell, right? Each business is solving, or should be solving, some sort of problem, or should be providing, let's say it the other way, should be providing
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::loriasbury: a great solution to something. And, you know, I say that we're different from other ad agencies because we are so strategic out of the gate, whereas I think most agencies are hired to develop a campaign for a point in time, even though they may be working with a business
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::loriasbury: for many, many years, they're still, in many cases, just developing ad campaigns for a specific season or a specific event, and we're more of a strategic partner with our clients. We really operate like their in-house chief marketing officer that just doesn't happen to sit inside the organization, so we bring that C-level thinking and expertise.
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::loriasbury: That they may not have in-house, and then we bring all the infrastructure to be able to execute on any strategy that we develop, and so it's just a little bit of a different twist, but we do have clients that come to us and just need an ad campaign for a point in time, and we'll do that all day long, of course, but I think our value proposition and how we tell our story is very different from other agencies.
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::loriasbury: And so, I think, again, just every… every brand has a story to tell, and I think it's so critical now with so many messages out there, and…
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::loriasbury: And, you know, I don't know what the numbers are, but they're insane. We talked about this… I talked about this recently with somebody else, but the number of impressions of ads and messages that we see every single day is just so high, it's…
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::loriasbury: It's insane, and so for us to retain any kind of information, it's so important that we
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::loriasbury: are very clear with our message, we're very differentiated, unique, and that we also are authentic. And when I say authentic, what I mean by that is that
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::loriasbury: Whatever we say we are is what we actually are.
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::loriasbury: whatever we put out there as an ad message, when somebody hires us, that's the experience they'll actually receive. So, I think people took authenticity for a long time, and was just like, oh, I need to show behind the scenes of our business, or I need to…
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::loriasbury: you know, get, you know, have a conversation with somebody and have it be really raw. I mean, I guess you could say that's authentic, but truly, to me, what I think true authenticity is, is being who you say you are.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And… and when it comes to… to marketing and storytelling, involving the audience, your potential clients, in a community, you bring them into the experience with you.
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::loriasbury: And allow them to…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: to feel what they might feel if they take the next step with you, versus being advertised at, which I think we're all really tired of and we're blind to so much. We need to see, you know, it used to be, like, 7 times. Now.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I'm… I don't know for sure, but I would suspect it's much higher, because we are marketed Rather than.
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::loriasbury: All day long.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: invited along for the journey.
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::loriasbury: That's exactly right, and I think that's… that's one of the things that we're really focused on, too, especially with the clients that we work with, and when we're doing social… they're, like, helping them with their organic social media, is we're like, not every post should be an ad. Not every post should promote a product. We… you… every… you know, we want you to make sure that you understand the lifestyle of the people that you're targeting and what they truly care about.
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::loriasbury: And what's gonna connect with them, and it doesn't always have to sell something. They… people want to know that businesses get them, that they understand them, that they know what they're going through, that, oh, I can relate to that, you know, because,
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::loriasbury: That's what you're gonna connect with.
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::loriasbury: You know, and it's not to say that you shouldn't have, you know, every now and then have… mention a product or what have you in a social media post, but it truly is not to be, like you said, every single customer touchpoint shouldn't always be a selling customer, you know, a selling message. It should be a, I connect with you, I understand you, I understand, you know, that lifestyle. You know, and that's where we do use a lot of
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::loriasbury: Market research, a lot of data, try to really get inside,
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::loriasbury: you know, a specific target audience, if you will, so it's making sure that you really understand, you know, who that target customer is, what they care about, what motivates them into action, what's gonna resonate with them, what type of messages will move the needle.
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::loriasbury: And a lot of that, sometimes you do experiment… experiment with, but…
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::loriasbury: But having a really good understanding of who your target audience is, first and foremost, is one of the most critical things, obviously, that you can understand.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And when it comes to,
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Putting your message out there, being able to relate.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Put content out that your ideal client looks at and says, That's me!
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: to draw them in is super important. And then for them to have the feeling like, oh, yeah, they really do get me, they could probably help me with this problem, versus…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, I think that they might be able to help me. That sounds sort of like… Maybe.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: maybe I'll just look at it, and instead of being really confident, and so when you do make the offer, they're like.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: heck yeah, I'm gonna do that, because…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They've said all of these other things that make me want to feel that way.
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::loriasbury: Yeah, absolutely, and I think, you know, it is hard, like, for, like, for example, in our space, as an ad agency, you know, we have all these diverse companies coming from all these very different and unique industries, and certainly we're not…
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::loriasbury: you know, proficient at every single industry, or really live the lifestyle of every single target audience that they're going after. And so, you know, like I said earlier, we have to get our arms around their business really, really quickly, but we also really rely on the business.
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::loriasbury: who knows… nobody knows their business better than the people who own and run their business, right? So, we have to really rely on them to tell us, are we on point? Does this sound like something will resonate? And then once we kind of get a good understanding and a good feel, then we can
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::loriasbury: You know, then we can elaborate on, you know, on what we've started and…
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::loriasbury: And kind of be less reliant on the client to guide us, but, you know, a lot of times what happens is brands end up telling their target audience what they think they want to hear versus what they actually really want to hear, and that's just being out of touch. I mean, that's just, you know, you see it in politics, you see it in a lot of brands just, you know, doing campaigns that are just completely out of touch with their target audience. Bud Light, for example, Cracker Barrel is another example.
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::loriasbury: I mean, you know, I'm just… like, literally, those are just two examples that are just mind-blowing to me. Like, how could you be so out of touch?
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::loriasbury: With your target audience. And again, that's a case where you have a CMO who thinks they want to shift the audience to who they want it to be, and not what it actually is.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: NFL!
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::loriasbury: Yeah, and it fails. It fails. Absolutely. Fails big. Fails really big. And so it really is important to, you know, have a very… as much understanding of your target audience, and… and that's, you know, again, you get that information through…
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::loriasbury: Through data, through market research, through, you know, customer satisfaction surveys, that type of thing, but also really relying on your client and your, you know, the business to tell you what their history is, to tell you what they know. You know, their salespeople are out in the field, they're talking to
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::loriasbury: to their target customers, they're talking to their current customers, so, you know, they know, they have no better understanding of the pain points that their customers
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::loriasbury: You know, have to face day in and day out. And so, us having a better understanding of that allows us to craft the best and most compelling messaging that we can that's gonna help them move the needle.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I had somebody tell me not that long ago that
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You need to look at your clients and give them what they want.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Not what you think that they need, but what they want, because people want what they want, not what they need.
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::loriasbury: Sure.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You can give them what they need.
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::loriasbury: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But let them know that you know what they want.
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::loriasbury: Yeah, and it is a fine line, because sometimes the client wants something that isn't probably very good, either, sometimes, you know, because they think that, oh, this'll be… they have their own personal opinion about what they think.
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::loriasbury: something should be, or who they think… they think maybe that they're the target audience instead of who their true target audience is. So, I think it's just having open communication and dialogue, and having a respectful relationship. You know, as an agency, we try to really have really all open channels of communication. In our case, it's a little different, because we're a boutique agency, so we maybe operate a little differently than a large ad agency, where
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::loriasbury: you know, you're just… everything's very siloed, and so we have a lot of, you know, open communication with our clients, and most of my team members speak to our clients directly, so we have really great dialogue, and we can form pretty tight relationships. But it's keeping that open line and open channel of communication, so…
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::loriasbury: and mutually respectful communication, so that you can say, hey, I see where your idea comes from, but let's go back to the strategy. Let's go back to who that target customer is, and remember what we told you, or what we all kind of agreed on, that they care about, and what we think is going to really motivate them and resonate with them, and is this approach on point?
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::loriasbury: And, you know, so it just allows you to have
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::loriasbury: Kind of more conversations and make sure that you can talk things through before you make a big mistake.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, and when you start getting into, like, paid marketing.
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::loriasbury: both.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Those mistakes can… blow up quickly, versus just doing some research and getting everybody Getting the story ARC.
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::loriasbury: Right.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: All in sync before you start going out there and talking about it, or telling it.
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::loriasbury: That's so true. That's the digital age that we live in right now, because, you know, you put something out there, there's no taking it back.
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::loriasbury: It's repurposed, it's reshared, there's no taking it back. So, and also, it just shows you the power of the digital ecosystem, and kind of the way that ads flow, that communication flows, that social media flows, how people can latch onto it, and then just, literally, it can spiral super, super fast. I mean, that's what really happened with, you know.
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::loriasbury: most recently with Cracker Barrel, and it probably just got way out of hand, you know, before
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::loriasbury: You know, before they could even… even…
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::loriasbury: address anything. It was just so blown out of proportion, and… and so it's just really, really important that, you know, you're mindful about, kind of, the messaging that you're putting out there, and especially if you're doing big paid campaigns where you're spending a lot of money behind
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::loriasbury: digital advertising, and television advertising, and billboard advertising, and, you know, you've got your messages in a bunch of different places, and, yeah, it can… it can, go really, really south… south fast if it's, you know.
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::loriasbury: If it's, the wrong message to the wrong audience.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, the whole Cracker Barrel thing is kind of… Interesting. I… I'm not…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I don't know, because I really wasn't following it all that closely, but it just seemed like somebody went to Canva and made a little Canva thing.
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::loriasbury: Yeah, I know. Well, and I think it got… I think it also got twisted… like, I think it also… people put their own spin on what they were… what they thought Cracker Barrel was trying to do. I think it… they… and this is just my personal opinion, so I'm just gonna preface this comment by that, because…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah.
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::loriasbury: everybody has their own opinion, but I think, you know, it became somewhat political when it really never was meant to be a political statement at all. I think Cracker Barrel was just trying to, you know, evolve as a brand. I don't think they were trying to purposely offend anybody in any way, but…
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::loriasbury: I think that somebody thought that since they removed a character, that it was a political statement, and it just… then it just spiraled, and it just… then sides were drawn, right? Then the line was drawn in the sand, and then sides were taken, and, you know, it just became this huge, you know, snowball that just, you know, went… it just went crazy, and I think that it… I don't…
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::loriasbury: think, personally, that was ever Cracker Barrel's intention, was to, like, shift complete gears and offend their whole, you know, core audience, or all their target customers.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: them into the.
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::loriasbury: They were just trying.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: century. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So instead of being in the 70s.
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::loriasbury: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I thought maybe we would've, like… Facelift!
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::loriasbury: Exactly.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And then it escaped before.
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::loriasbury: Well, and I think that one thing that they really… where they really missed the mark, in my opinion, was that they just removed the nostalgia out of everything, and that was what that entire brand was built on.
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::loriasbury: And it was just, all of a sudden, it became, you know, like Denny's. It wasn't… they just… the facelift in the stores that they were… that they were promoting, and then the revision of their branding, and, you know, the stripping away the cracker, if you will, and the barrel, and just having the text there, and kind of that whole, you know, nostalgic, you know, look back to the past, the way we used to live, sitting out on our
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::loriasbury: front porch in a rocking chair. You know, that was all stripped away, and that was what people really identified with the most. When they went into Cracker Barrel, they wanted that experience. I mean, the food's good, but you can get the food.
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::loriasbury: Anywhere, yeah. So it was really just the overall experience, and that was kind of stripped away, and I think that's what people really, truly were reacting to, but somehow it became this whole political thing that I think it really was never… that was never the intention of it, but…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And it goes to show that when you're doing marketing and you're telling a story, you're helping people to have an experience. And Cracker Barrel's experience that they offered to their clients was this whole nostalgia thing, and when they shifted everything, that went away. And so.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: really, their business disappeared behind this new marketing campaign, and it's really easy to do that if you're not careful and strategic. If you're shifting your messaging, you've got to make sure that you're not shifting the experience behind that messaging, which is, I think, would…
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::loriasbury: No, absolutely. I think… again, I think it's
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::loriasbury: It's absolutely fine, and it's probably extremely necessary for an evolution, right? I think every business needs to evolve with the times. My business has evolved, I don't know, 4 or 5 times. I mean, we've always been at the core, you know, if you will, like, filled this kind of absent chief marketing officer for companies that didn't have one internally, and that's always kind of been our core message, but in terms of the emphasis of
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::loriasbury: of…
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::loriasbury: our business and the marketing and advertising activities that we focus on, that's evolved a lot just because the markets demanded it, right? And so I think it's really important
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::loriasbury: to, you know, obviously evolve as a business, as market conditions change, but you have to remain in touch with your audience. And, you know, Cracker Barrel has a very, if we're using them as an example, again, they have a very loyal
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::loriasbury: Following, a very elderly following that's been with them for a very long time.
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::loriasbury: And, obviously, they have a need to evolve so that they can attract younger consumers, and that makes a ton of sense, but you don't want to do that at the expense of alienating your core target audience, and so it's just, you have to take those things into consideration, and it's just got to be an evolution over time.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Small, incremental changes, not.
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::loriasbury: Absolutely.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's a big sweeping, let's get rid of everything and start over, because.
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::loriasbury: Sure.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Get rid of everything and start over, including all of your customers that are existing.
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::loriasbury: Sure, listen, in my media days before I, you know, I worked for major media companies before I started this agency, and I worked for major media companies that did that very thing, where they just said, all of a sudden, we're gonna go from a target audience of, you know, 58 as our core target audience, and we're gonna try and be an 18-year-old network. It doesn't work that way.
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::loriasbury: You don't get the 18-year-old, and then you lose the 58-year-olds, and then your host, and then you don't have anybody watching you. So, it definitely has to be a process of evolution and a thoughtful evolutionary process. Again, just keeping in mind who your core audience is, who's paying your bills, who's gonna consume your products.
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::loriasbury: Making sure that you're constantly, you know, aware with them.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And moving… If you want to go from an audience of 58-year-olds to 18-year-olds.
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::loriasbury: you start moving down slowly, and you're inclusive. You start including people in, not alienating.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: the core base.
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::loriasbury: Exactly.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Budweiser… They just alienated their core base.
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::loriasbury: Oh, God.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Instead of just being… trying to be more inclusive, you know, we love you guys, too.
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::loriasbury: Yeah.
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::loriasbury: Yeah, that was a… that was a huge fumble. I will say that was an absolute huge fumble, of not knowing… I mean, look, Bud Light is, like, it is fraternity boys drinking that kind of beer, because it's cheap, it's affordable, and… and it is… And overweight.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: white guys.
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::loriasbury: Absolutely, and it just… I don't know what they were thinking on that one, but again, yes, there could have been ways to maybe broaden the audience and been more inclusive without having it to be, you know, taking the approach that they did.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah.
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::loriasbury: That was never… that was never a bright idea, I don't think. But in hearing the CMO talk about that, you could tell she was completely out of touch.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I… I…
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::loriasbury: It was what she wanted the brand to be, not what the brand was.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You know, yeah.
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::loriasbury: And that's just, again, that's something just you have to keep in mind, is, you know, if our customers come in, or our client comes in and says, this is what I want to be, you know, we're always like, okay, well, how do we move the needle there, but what are you now? Because we don't want to, you know, we don't want to alienate every dollar that's coming in the door. We want to make sure that you have an income stream, and that we're still resonating with your core audience, but at the same time, there are ways in which
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::loriasbury: Which we can, you know, open the doors to new audiences.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, and that… therein lies why someone would need to hire someone like you to help them move their story along and evolve their story to be more inclusive, rather than make these
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: mistakes that… it's really easy to make mistakes like that, or to… to think that, oh, I've got this great, great idea, and just, like, suddenly you're something different. It's not about not reimagining what's possible, but it's… it's about…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Having somebody else there to say, well, this is the overarching story that you're telling, does that really fit in where… or where does that fit in in the story, and the journey you want to take your customer on?
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::loriasbury: Yeah, and it's not only that, it's also, where's the money, right? So, like, you may say, I want to appeal to this audience, but that audience may have no spending power, and so they're not going to be necessarily the consumers of your products. And so, you know, it's… we have… we've had this happen to us quite often, actually, where we've had somebody come in with a bit, you know, wanting us to help them with launching a new business, launching a new brand, creating a new brand identity for a new business.
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::loriasbury: And they, in their minds, have this idea that, you know, this type of product should
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::loriasbury: You know, generate a million dollars in the first, you know, two years, and, that they're open, and, but…
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::loriasbury: they haven't done any market research. They have no idea if there's any kind of demand for that product. They have no, no concept of what the competitive landscape looks like. They have no idea where to be on pricing. They… they… they come in and say, oh, I want to price it at $150. Well, maybe you can get that same exact bag for $45, or, you know, or that same exact product for…
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::loriasbury: you know, 5 bucks less, just, you know, what have you. So, it's… you can't… it's more than just having a good idea, or, you know, your gut instinct absolutely should be factored into it, but it should not
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::loriasbury: be the guiding… the guiding principle for all your business decisions. I really encourage people to do their homework.
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::loriasbury: really do your homework. Do a strategy, you know, look at how your business is positioned in your competitive landscape. What are your competitors saying about their products and services? How are they saying them differently than you're saying them?
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::loriasbury: Where is the lowest hanging fruit in terms of driving your sales? What is the best potential for you to get incremental income in the door?
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::loriasbury: And how do you find those people who are most likely to purchase your products, and then how do you communicate with them? So, and there's so many things that go into that. It's not only the storytelling, but it's the media buying. How do we reach them? Where do we find them? You know, how much money do we need to be spending? All these variables that go into it, so…
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::loriasbury: You know, that's why I always say that the creative and the messaging and the look and feel of a brand, that's all the fun stuff, but that really comes after the heavy lifting
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::loriasbury: Of doing all the research, all the strategy development, and really having a good understanding of, you know, what's going to move the needle in terms of driving your sales and how you're telling your story.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And can you make sales? Yeah. I see so many people, they have great ideas, and they're, like, trying to bring it to the marketplace, and the marketplace is, like.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: We don't have any money.
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::loriasbury: Right. I would love…
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You know, I'm your ideal client, but I can't buy that. I can't put food on my table. Right, right. Yeah, that would solve a problem, but I can't buy it.
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::loriasbury: It was just like… it was just like me starting an agency 15 years ago. Ad agencies have been around for hundreds of years, right? So how are we going to be different? And really, you know, I knew that I wasn't going to be able to compete with large agencies, huge, large global agencies, nor did I really want to, per se, because I knew there was a gap.
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::loriasbury: in terms of serving businesses, let's say that we're anywhere from a million to $100 million in income.
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::loriasbury: that that was our sweet spot. That could be our sweet spot, because those companies were in high growth mode, they were wanting more sophisticated, more strategic marketing and advertising, but they didn't necessarily have an internal CMO that could help them put together that strategy and that plan and actually execute on that. And they also couldn't afford a large global ad agency, you know, to put them on retainer either.
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::loriasbury: You know, they needed an agency that could
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::loriasbury: Kind of, you know, they could work with, that they could partner with, that would bring that strategic approach, that could help execute
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::loriasbury: on that strategy, and keep it at a price point that was reasonable within their income. And I knew that was kind of a sweet spot that we could fill, and, you know, hey, 15 years later, here we are. So, it's just, again, you have to have a plan, you know, you have to figure out how you're going to be different.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And that takes us to your free sales unstall survey.
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::loriasbury: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, thank you. This is my little pitch. No, actually, we do have a survey on our website. If you just go to LeadWithLori.com, it's L-E-A-D,
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::loriasbury: with L-O-R-I.com. That's gonna redirect you to our website, which is CMOCO.com, so either one will take you there, but Lead With Lori will take you right to this dedicated landing page.
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::loriasbury: And there is a survey there that if you are struggling with sales right now, or your sales have stalled, slowed down, or you just feel like they're not
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::loriasbury: growing as quickly as they should be. Take this survey, and we'll take a look at it, and we will send you some action items, some things that we think that you could do to maybe, you know, help move the needle, or at least some things that you could consider, that if you're not doing, these are things that you might want to implement. It's free, there's no charge to do it. We'd be honored to kind of, you know, give you some ideas and give you some thought starters. There's also some other resources
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::loriasbury: there. There's some downloadable PDFs, like the five things that every business should be doing to market and promote their business, so that's a free download. There's some other downloads there that…
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::loriasbury: That people can take advantage of. But yeah, we'd love to… we'd love to help if anybody's kind of in a place where they feel like they're a little stuck. Not sure that we can unstuck you complete… unstick you completely, but we're certainly happy to, give you some ideas.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Love it, love it. Thank you so much for joining me today, Lori. This has been a great conversation.
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::loriasbury: Yeah, it's been a lot of fun, I appreciate it so much. Yeah, it's always a good conversation. Thank you.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: To learn more about Lori, and to take her free sales unstall survey to get instant action steps to start generating momentum, please visit LeadWithLori.com, and we'll be sure to put that link in the show notes below. Thanks for tuning in today to the UWorld Order Showcase Podcast. If you're ready to amplify your voice, monetize your mission, and start attracting premium clients, your next step is simple.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Head to coachsalchemist.com.
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::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And schedule your free client acquisition audit. Be sure to join us for our next episode as we share what others are doing to raise the global frequency, and remember, change begins with you. You have all the power to change the world. Start today and get visible.
