LinkedIn Brand Building: How to stand out in today’s digital business landscape with Steve Dart

LinkedIn Brand building, how to stand out in today’s digital business landscape. Welcome to Biz Bites for Thought Leaders, where we deliver actionable insights for today’s business leaders. I’m your host, Anthony Pearl, and today I’ve joined by Steve Dart, who is a fractional FMO. And a creator of the Brand Salience Factor.

In this episode, you’re gonna

discover how to optimize your LinkedIn presence, build a memorable personal brand that stands out from AI generated content, and apply marketing lessons from global brands to your business. Steve shares his journey from Red Bull to helping businesses create digital impact.

Of all shapes and sizes for brands just like yours, Steve Dart is a very special guest because he has huge amounts of insights, lots of information to give you. Get your pen and paper ready. Let’s get into it.

Hey everyone. Welcome to Biz Bites for Thought Leaders, and I am very excited to be having my guests Steve Dart with me today because Steve and I have known each other for a few years now and got to know one another better and better all the time. In fact, we were just sitting in something yesterday together, so I thought, why not get him on the program?

Steve, welcome to Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Thank you so much Anthony. Great to be spending time with you and we do seem be crossing paths a lot lately, so you’re in those good circles as well as I am. It’s great to see.

Yeah, it’s always interesting, isn’t it, that you have that situation, but we’re gonna get into that in a minute or two I think.

Firstly, I’m gonna allow you to introduce yourself to everyone.

Wonderful. I’ve got a bit of a new title after working with Steve Broman. He’s an amazing guy. So I used to be a LinkedIn trainer, but look, I’ve got this and I’m I’m a fractional FMO, which is Freelance Marketing Officer, and I’m the creator of the Brand Salience Factor, and I’ll talk about that as we go through this because Brand Salience is about building a brand online that’s remembered very quickly through a purchasing or service.

Conditions. So I work with people especially on LinkedIn or who wanna know, understanding of how to use the LinkedIn platform, especially the premium products like Sales Navigator core for lead generation, but actually build your brand profile online to be the number one in the market you serve.

So that’s a little bit about what I am.

We are gonna delve into that in a minute. But firstly, I’ve, I would like you to do a bit of a shout out to Steve. He’s been a guest on the program in the past. So those of you that don’t know Steve, check it out. In a previous episode we’ll try and put a link in the show notes to that as well.

But let’s dive in Steve, because as I said, you and I go back a little while and I guess we got to know each other. The primarily initially through LinkedIn and a around that. And I wanted to ask you that as this kind of a starting point

[03:07] Evolution of LinkedIn as a Business Platform

before we go a little bit more into brand, because LinkedIn has become, the accepted place for businesses to hang out.

Is that the best way of describing what LinkedIn is these days? ’cause it’s gone through a few iterations.

Yeah, look, I had a friend of mine call me up the other day and said, you’ve been on this LinkedIn stuff for a while now, and it seems like it’s all coming to fruition. And I said, look, LinkedIn is just a place where it’s a massive my, like it’s a place where people store data, especially LinkedIn.

And I’ve always used it as a communication platform. And the early situation for me with LinkedIn is I was on the platform early when someone sent me a connection request and I didn’t know what it was. And I built a profile out. And sorry. Build a profile out and basically left the pro, left, left LinkedIn.

I just think I, I had a job. I was working with Red Bull. Everything was going good. I didn’t really need to put a CV up on there. And then it wasn’t until I came back in 2012 where actually saw it was a different platform. It looked incredibly different. So Richard Branson was the first millionth follow up person on there, and you could create content.

I was like, wow, this is quite incredible. So I actually stayed on the platform and started building out and used it to communicate with my other business professionals lead generation, and just really storyboarding what I was doing in the market. So its iterations has happened over the last 21 years.

It was just a place you had put your CV to a place now that you actually build brand and build profiling and it’s still a recruitment tool and I understand that. But you can actually have really good conversations and a lot of lead generation activity within the platform. So yeah, that’s how I see it.

Yeah, I think that’s the interesting point for people, isn’t it that posting is one part. Getting followers is another part, but ultimately it’s about the conversations, isn’t it? I think people miss the point of that, that it’s lovely to post, it’s lovely to for an ego trip to say, I had x number of people like, or comment or share it or whatever it might be.

But that is not much more than an ego trip, right? The million followers is nice, but what does it actually mean? It’s the true engagements, the one-on-one conversations that you can have through LinkedIn, which I think are the most powerful aspect of it.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know what I love about LinkedIn is when you connect with someone, you’re giving each other authority to then talk, to get to each other on the platform.

You don’t have to go to email or any other kind of communication. You can actually talk them directly on the platform and then share content and that kind of thing. I love it because it’s a place where business professionals do go to learn from other business professionals and better themselves every day.

And one of the things I love to see when people are on the platform and they are getting better and they are using it as a tool of trade, and I do call it a tool of trade because like you have a car or a computer or anything else that helps you get through business, LinkedIn should be seen as that. I call it the oxygen of business because it’s where business does.

Come to play. And if you think about it, in the market we live in, out of all those seven different apps on your phone now being Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube and all that, LinkedIn is where business happens. Why do they rob banks? ’cause that’s where the money is. And why do you go to LinkedIn?

[06:17] Personal Branding and AI on LinkedIn

’cause that’s where the people that are doing business within the social serving place. So that’s how I look.

I want to start crossing over into brand building and things as well. And I think using LinkedIn as a starting point for that conversation is a really interesting one because it’s become a playground as well for a lot of ai and trying to balance that use of AI and building your brand because they can be in conflict with one another if you’re not careful about it.

And it’s interesting to me that LinkedIn has. Really decided to embrace and even push AI to a large extent as well. And I wonder if that’s to the detriment of a lot of people and a lot of brands.

Yeah. Look, time will tell on that. I know I’m using AI every day. I am probably 10 hours in ai. I use it.

Part of my business activity, one that I’m in quite often is notebook L. And that is a fantastic ’cause. It’s an actual resource gathering where you can actually put your LinkedIn profile, you can do website and all your other assets. And when you prompt engineer it, it’s only pulling from that resource.

That’s what I love about that AI tool. But AI tool, it’s one of those things that, I think that people will discover it’s gonna be a great time saver, and I think people are discovering the more that these ai agents come into play, it’s gonna be very interesting times. One thing that I’m trying to really make stand out to most people I speak to is, you must get your personal brand out into the market.

Because the way that AI’s coming it’s now equaled the playing field with knowledge. So our brand and our personal brand has to really be positioned higher now, so people would choose us because of the experience we hold as a human being. So I wanna pick

up on something you’ve said there as well, because you referenced personal brand and I think we are in this really interesting situation because for a long time it’s been about business brands.

Yeah,

it’s the personal brand is very much taken a backseat. But that seems to have changed again, that the need to push a personal brand and trying to find that balance of where do you have a personal brand? Where do you have a business brand? And I know certainly if you go back a few years. It was, I remember seeing a statistics on Facebook and saying that on average people followed one brand only, and yet follow hundreds of people.

So it’s not a surprise that personal brand has started to build, but it’s really started to take some more momentum. And again, it’s that balance on some, on a platform like LinkedIn, how much energy do you put into the business versus the personal one? What are the risks attached to that?

Yeah, I think it’s an end story there because we know that people don’t buy off logos, they buy off people.

So that’s why LinkedIn was formed to actually put personal profiles before business company pages. But I’m seeing a real trust recession at the moment, as most people are, and people are really not trusting of brands as they’re not trusting of people these days as well. So I think by showcasing yourself as your authentic self.

On these platforms, all those seven platforms, and presenting yourself as the, the way you’re putting yourself into market and that you are trustworthy and that you’re credible, and that you’ve got competency. And that’s why I love LinkedIn, because it’s the one stop shop for displaying all that at one viewpoint is a big reason why.

You can see people are elevating into the market because they’re micro nicheing, their skills and talents. Yes. And I’ve been on a lot of presentations and podcasts recently talking about LinkedIn because I’m positioning myself as a knowledge person on that. And that’s why I’m getting asked to do a lot more of these presentations and podcasts.

[10:12] Top Tips for LinkedIn Success

And I’ve sat in on some of those presentations and I know how good you are at that. And it’d be remiss be not to ask you. Before we delve a little deeper into some of the other things what are the, probably the top three things that people should be doing on LinkedIn to really make a difference at the high level?

What are the areas that they should focus on?

Yeah, number one, absolutely publish your profile for your authentic self. And then there’s what’s called an add to profile button on your profile, which then extends it out and you can actually publish your honors and awards. You can put your, any kind of detail for projects you’ve been doing, if you’ve got any licensing, and really populate that so people get an understanding when they review your profile, what it is that you’ve actually accomplished over the years you’ve been working or in that kind of situation.

So what I have felt with the. The clients I’ve worked with is when I see them in real life and then I look at their profile and I’ve spoken to them, they’re completely different. So I want people to build out their digital twin from a, a headline that is representing of how they help people in market.

Also, a banner image that has their trust value phrasing or overlay and their photo to be up to date and current, and especially. Positioned as you would meet them belly to belly. You don’t wanna have something from 10 years old. You don’t wanna have a profile photo. It’s got glasses.

You’re at the races, it’s a professional site. Make sure you’re smiling. It’s warmth. And people want to really get a an understanding of you. They actually form a bias of you before they even met you by. So your pro profile is your digital twin, and if it’s relevant and positions you as the person they’d love to meet or do business with, it’s a great first stepping stone.

Yeah, I think that the photo is something that is actually really an interesting one because when you meet people, whether it’s physically in person or whether it’s gonna be online, invariably you’re checking out their profile before you go and have that meeting. And I had one recently where I had to do a double take because I’m going, hang on.

The person that I think I’m meeting because I did see them somewhere else and their profile photo. Were so completely different that I thought it was the wrong person and it was only when I started digging a little deeper and going no, this is the right person. Then I started looking more closely at the face and I went, okay, yes, there’s a difference here.

In the, in. In some of the other features and things, but the core of it, it is definitely the right person. And a shout out to Nancy Za as well who’s also been a guest on the podcast in the past who I know specializes in taking a look at people’s images that are there and helping you identify how best to interact with them.

So it’s, it does tell a lot and it’s interesting what you say, how often there are photographs that are. Substantially older than it, and when you start getting to photos that are 10 plus years old, then you should be going, hang on, this is, what are you hiding from? Why aren’t you showing a current professional photograph?

So it is something that’s, I think is an important aspect that is often overlooked.

Yeah, and one of the things about LinkedIn, when you actually sign onto LinkedIn, the algorithm firstly checks your in contact info card and it actually scans and has a look at the details and the photo to see if it’s a current photo.

If you can actually remove your photo, then upload exactly the same one, it actually makes you a better time value of data for LinkedIn because it’s number one client is recruiters, and if you are a better product on this and for recruiters to find you, that’s always a good thing in. In your favor.

So here’s a good opportunity to remove your photo and upload a current one, and then you get a better time value of data. So you’re doing two value exchanges there on the platform.

I wanted to ask you as well before we leave LinkedIn a little bit behind, but in ask you keeping up with. What’s happening on LinkedIn?

It’s a very difficult thing. The algorithm is one thing, and I think for the longest time people have been obsessed with how do I, crack the algorithm, which is constantly changing and almost impossible to crack. But I think it’s also balancing that with how do I keep up with what is the latest features that I should be cottoning onto?

Is it just. Fun and nice to have? Or is it actually making a difference in, the way you are going to be found and the banner image and the change of the changes that have happened with that in recent times. Is it probably a good case in point is are they something that you go, yes, you have to jump on?

How do you stay on top of what the latest and greatest is? ’cause it is literally just following someone like you. Yeah,

look, I like the way that LinkedIn has moved. Look, it is a free site. It costs nothing to join. But what it is LinkedIn is trying to upgrade people into their premium products.

’cause you get a better experience. For instance, the banner, rather than being a static placement, it actually gives you five rotating banners. And that’s good for people that have got multiple things going on within their work. Whether it be an event coming up or they’re displaying a couple of jobs that they do within their, in, in their current work situation.

So it gives you a better experience that way. It gives you a better analytics when you’re sending out connection requests on a premium product, you get to send out up to 150 connection requests. Out to somebody rather, and with a personalized note, except for the free version, you only get five a month.

So it’s really decreasing its opportunity with a free version and extending opportunities and analytics and the experience for the user in those premium offerings. LinkedIn is a business. It actually Microsoft purchased it for $26.2 billion. And it’s starting to reclaim its money, but it’s giving you a better experience in the premium offerings.

I use Sales Navigator Core because it’s a premium sales analytics tool, which gives me 40 features or 40 filtering options, advanced search just to find my ideal client profile or person out of, 10,000 data. Data points. So if you are looking for lead generation or you’re trying to get more sales activity happening, sales navigator call is the one.

It’s about 99 USD a month that is. And I highly recommend it for someone to trial it at least.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s one of those things, isn’t it? You have to make use of the tools. I think we, that’s one of the challenges in this day and age, right? That there are so many tools and you need to make use of them in order to justify their, their value.

And I think the key is as well with LinkedIn is, as I said is I’d encourage people to follow you because. You give tips regularly on what the latest and greatest is, and I think it is important to stay on top of those things. We will absolutely make sure that those details are in the show notes, but I wanted to delve deeper into this whole idea of brand a little bit more and how you are positioning yourself as well.

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But let’s start off with the background. How cool was it working at Red Bull and why would you leave?

Yeah, look, red Bull’s fantastic. I was there in the early days and it was one of those brands that was new to market. They were coming out from Austria. Unfortunately the founder just passed away last year, Mr.

Mani or Dietrich Mani. But it was a very progressive brand. It was very youth orientated. And one thing I learned from being there was they were different to market. And I love that about the product. I was there in the early days when there was only six of us, I think, within the Queensland office with our energy teams, which is the little Volkswagens that drove around with a can in the back.

And they gave us the opportunity to wear many hats. We were sales, we were event organizers, we were dealing with PR teams. And it just gave me such an opportunity to have a diverse range of skill sets. And I worked with there for many years and thought after working there, I think for eight years, what could I actually take from the market working with Red Bull out to the SME market and see if the Red Bull way really worked?

And I’d worked with a couple of companies after that using that kind of methodology and had enormous success. So I loved learning one. Or a one style of skill within marketing and the methodology of being a mystique brand in the way that Red Bull went to market, and then taking across into smaller, medium brands and using the same philosophy.

To give you an idea, I actually worked writing a blueprint for the Hard Rock Cafe. And the first thing I did was I created an activation where we had Axel Roses Harley Davidson, that set up on a showcase piece. You couldn’t touch it, you could only just take photos. And I said to the general manager, why is that sitting up there?

He said, oh, people take photos of it. I said, why don’t we put on the ground with a banner of the hardware cafe Gold Coast with all the elements of the skyline for the guitar? Let’s let people sit on it and let them have the experience and then they can take Instagram shots and help promote. And we had basically a lineup down the stairs.

So people came for the activation of sitting on Axel Roses, Harley Davidson, and taking a photo and then sharing that for the company, and then they decided to grab a burger while they were there. It’s using that really cool activations to try something different in markets they hadn’t tried.

I think that the really interesting part about that is it’s an experience and I think that’s what people are looking for, right? Is they need to experience something with your brand in order to then be able to share it and to, take some kind of enjoyment out of it. ’cause the interesting thing about that is, the.

The burger just needed probably to be good and didn’t need to be great in order to get people to come back because you had this showpiece that was there, whereas the emphasis on trying to be well, are we the greatest burger place in wherever you are is a lot harder road to travel and it’s the experience that you get.

That was really what Hard rock cafes were all about, wasn’t it? Yeah. The experience.

Yeah, rock and roll even. I actually had a conversation with the general manager and the team and I said, unless we are relevant to the youth, because everything was, there was heritage, it was old, photos and guitars.

And I said, we have to be relevant to the youth, otherwise we don’t become relevant as a brand and they’re out, they’re outta business now. And I think that was one of the main reasons they just didn’t look at new activations or new markets to actually bring their product in front of. So it just became an old brand in the end.

Yeah, it’s interesting. Because it was, and for those that maybe that don’t even remember Hard Rock Cafe that might be listening it, they really were a phenomenon, weren’t they? They were, you would go to different ones in, around the world because you wanted to see the stuff, but the problem was that once you went once there wasn’t really a reason to go back because there wasn’t a rotation of things.

And so you went and you had an experience and you had a great experience. Maybe you went back a second time, but it’s unlikely you went back thir three or four times because. There was nothing new about it. And I think that’s the, that is also the dilemma with something like that is, is creating experiences but keeping up with, need to adapt and change.

Otherwise you do fall behind.

Yeah. One thing I learned from being at Red Bull was about you always had to re, you had to be relevant to the youth. And that’s one thing you can see in their marketing today. They’re very relevant to the youth market coming through because then they get brand loyalists starting at a young age and carrying that through.

Also with LinkedIn at the moment, the most engagement on the platform is 25 to 33 year olds, the Gen Z market. And it’s a, it’s an interesting stat when I bring that up. People can’t believe it. They think LinkedIn’s quite old with, its with, with its viewpoint. But no, it’s a young demographic coming onto it and they’re omnipresent across, seven of those different platforms.

They understand they’re native to these platforms. They know that they need to be on it to be relevant because attention is the asset. And so I, when I teach my programs within the LinkedIn platform is about making sure you are not only omnipresent, but definitely be on LinkedIn because that’s where the business is

and it keeps you feeling young, right?

We are definitely in that age group, aren’t we, Steve? Absolutely. Now I just finishing up on I’m intrigued. A little bit further just to push you a little bit further on the Red Bull thing because, I find it fascinating that I’m, engaged with Red Bull as a brand on a regular basis.

’cause I happen to love Formula One and Red Bull is very prominent in Formula One, of course. But I’ve never drunk a Red Bull and I don’t think I ever will. But I love the brand and that’s a really interesting thing, isn’t it? Because you do have these brands out there that are like that, that you want to champion.

Because you like what they stand for. They’re the, they’re on the edge, right? They’re a brand that is of a similar ilk to Virgin in that they’re not afraid to take risks and they’re not afraid to go out there and promote. New things, but it’s interesting. I find that it with such a prominent brand that their market is, they’re not expecting me to be in their market either.

That’s the interesting thing about it is I don’t think people my age are picking up a Red Bull for the first time. I think their target is a lot younger. Yeah I think there’s a lot of lessons to be learned from those kinds of experiences as well. That you have to know your market, but doesn’t mean you can’t be.

Seen in a broader sense as well.

Yeah, and obviously that was one of the big programs for Red Bull was the marketing of the sampling program, where they sampled you the product and they actually told you about the benefits and the ingredients and things like that. And so they spent a lot of money and time on educating the consumer on why the products functionality use and when they should have, and how they should actually, use it because it is just a delivery through the can.

The actual energy, it does give you wings and you might not be a consumer at the time, but if you are gonna make an energy drink or a drink consumption and you need energy because you’ve got that brand persona of Red Bull supported you, you are more likely to grab that as a product than you would as a competing product.

So just putting Red Bull in the conversation.

And I think the question then becomes for you is, as you’ve delved into this role, and I love the interesting title this whole idea of being a fractional operator, it’s become a, a trendier term. I’ve heard that used a little bit more in recent times.

So explain to me what that is and explain to me how you take learnings from. Your experiences in Red Bull Hard Rock Cafe what you’re doing with smaller businesses through LinkedIn and other places, how does that play out in what you’re doing now?

Yeah, look, I’m just coming in with fresh eyes and I deal with a lot of head of brand just to come, just speak to them about what they’re doing with their programs, their marketing strategies, managing in-house teams.

And a lot of them are, they don’t have the wisdom of seeing what brands going from, startup to being more progressive in the market. And so I just come into these businesses and I just see what they’re doing now and work with their head of branches. Just say, look, maybe you should make. Try these, you should be broadcasting your branding message across different platforms and just being fresh eyes to what they normally know.

Like when I started with Red Bull, one of the first things they said to me, if you’ve got a marketing degree, don’t worry about it. We don’t use it. We do it our own way. And I thought that was really interesting that they said that. And they were a hundred percent right. They didn’t do anything. That I was learning in marketing.

And so I actually take that into marketing teams now and I say to people, especially even on LinkedIn, make sure your marketing in the year we actually live in, doesn’t matter what you’ve done before. Have a look at what the market’s doing. Look who the creators are, look at the culture of things and make sure you are relevant in today’s market.

And a lot of people, especially with their LinkedIn, talk about the good old days. We’re not on the good old days anymore. We wanted to work with leaders who are progressing ourselves and our brands forward. And that’s what I love about where LinkedIn can place you in today’s market because you can be talking about in your content what you are doing as a business professional and you’ve learned from those scars, but you are, you’re looking forward and that’s what people are looking at.

One of the reasons, I dunno if you know this, but why is the emu and the kangaroo on our coat of arms is ’cause they’re only two animals that only will go forward. They’ll never go back. So I dunno if you know that, but that’s what I love to see if people are progressing, not about the good old days.

And once upon a time.

I love that. And I vaguely remember hearing that somewhere once before. Maybe you told it to me. I can’t remember. Okay. But I love that It is and it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because we are living in an age where the rate of change, I believe, is faster than it has ever been.

Absolutely. The efficiencies that are being created from ai. In particular are allowing more space to do things. And I think that’s one of the big areas. And when you talk about marketing, it’s creativity, it’s fresh ideas. That’s the big space that marketing has an opportunity to really grow. And in fact, AI is not countering that.

It’s actually. Creating more opportunities for that to happen because the drudgery of what’s in marketing, if I can call it that, where, things like placement of content or and generating reports and other things can now be much more efficiently. Done with some AI assistance. So I wouldn’t say ai, do it on its own, don’t do that.

But you’ve got mo greater efficiencies in there, which allows more space to be creative because in the face of all of the AI and LinkedIn’s a good example of that, the face of all the AI that has been used to publish content, the way to stand out. Is the uniqueness, your unique stories, creativity, fresh ideas, which again, I’m not, I don’t wanna dwell back on Red Bull, but that’s and Virgin is the same.

They’re always about fresh ideas and new things. It’s, you’ve got to keep moving forward.

Yeah. Red Bull was never about being a copying brand. It was always being a leading brand. And I used to sit on round tables with athletes and they’d basically, they’d have to come up with something in their category that had never been done before.

So if you know that when the Red Bull air race happened, that came from the concept of downhill skiing. Going through the gates, but doing it through aerobatics and things like that. So they’re always very progressive in the market. Red Bull was never about following. It was always about leading.

And I take that into what I do every day. I’m always, I’m an early riser. I dunno, I think I think, but I’m up at three 30 every morning and I’m into the gym and I’m listening to two hours of the best podcast of business professionals and forward leading thinkers like Gary Vaynerchuk and Alex Mosey, and I’m listening to that every day for.

The whole year. So whenever I come into my first meetings, I’m talking to clients, I’m energized. I’m like, this is what’s happening, because I know that they’re being bold in what they’re doing and they’re testing the market and I’m listening to what’s happening and I’m relaying it to my clients. And that’s one of the reasons that I’m doing so well in Mark at the moment because I’m paying attention to what’s happening through leaders who are trying new things.

Plus, there’s a lot of great LinkedIn trainers out there. I’m listening to what they’re doing. I’m sure they’re listening to what I’m doing, but together. We’re all help benefiting people’s opportunity to understand how to use this platform LinkedIn in a day-to-day operation and be and to be better.

1% every day.

Yeah. And that’s the key, isn’t it? It’s taking your influences and being on the edge and not being afraid to try things. I think for so long, business has been about what’s my competition doing? And I better just match the competition or try and stay a little bit ahead. But I think you don’t even almost have to pay attention to your competition anymore.

It’s about what you can do, what you can bring to the table, what ideas you have. And bringing the audience along with you, because there’s still, and that’s the interesting thing about brands these days, is you have to almost be like Apple has been for the longest time where they’re, what they believe people will want in the future, not what they know they want now.

Yeah. And also treating your customer, not as a customer, but as a community member. One of the brands I was working with for many years is LSKD, and they’re an Australian brand out of Logan south of Brisbane. And they, every time they’re across all their socials, they’ve got an engagement officer that when they post content and there’s engagement, someone goes back as the brand and has a voice and consistently talks and nurtures that relationship.

So they’re not customers anymore. They’re community members, and I love that about that brand and that they wear that brand in their heart whenever they’re making a purchase decision, which is salience. That’s why they’re growing at an enormous rate. So the takeaway is don’t treat people as customers.

Treat them as your, as a community member or your big sister, to be honest. Go over and above every time you deal with someone.

So let me put you on the spot and tell me about some of the brands that you, whether you’ve worked with them or not, that you really love at the moment. And I think what’s important is that we can, as we have, we’ve talked about, big brands, but let’s talk about some of the smaller brands because most of the people listening to us these days are probably part of a smaller brand and want to know what they can do to make a different, so what’s inspiring you on some of those smaller levels that are making a difference?

[34:44] Making an Impact as a Fractional CMO

Look, I’ve obviously, I do love Red Bull on it and I do love Harley Davidson, some of the biggest brands in the world. But LSKD is one brand that’s doing extremely well. There’s so many that I can’t really put a name to what they are ’cause I’m not following in directly. But anyone that’s, giving it a good red hot go.

That’s the main thing. There’s many brands out there that will come and go, but the ones that you know, have resilience, they’re bold, they’re willing to have a bit of a step in the dark about trying new things. That’s what excites me mostly about brands in the market at the moment.

Obviously Virgin’s doing well. I just love brands that had that hero statement status of progressing forward even at the toughest times.

Is it achievable for smaller brands? You’re spending some, you’re spending time going in to working with smaller businesses and dealing with them.

Are the real takeaways that you can have from what some of those bigger guys are doing? Is it true that’s actually in many respects, easier to be out there? For smaller brands because they don’t have the bureaucracy and the level of decision making that needs to happen, but they may not have the, counted with the fact they may not have the budget.

Few people would have the budget of a virgin or a red Bull in terms of marketing.

Yeah social media’s been the big equalizer because people don’t have to have big advertising budgets. They can actually use their phone record content and upload it across those seven platforms. And if you do that every day and for long enough, you’ll get noticed.

Even if your product’s good, you’ll survive. And if it’s not good, you won’t survive. One of the good things about. The state of play at the moment on the internet is we’ve all got an equal opportunity to be seen and discovered. And so that’s why it’s important especially for LinkedIn, is to people not to post every now and then or frequent it.

Every now and then, it’s actually put a plan or a strategy in place to be on the platform and telling you your unique story. In a way that it’s interesting in informing for the potential client, because most people with your product in market, only 3% are interested to buy now, but 97% are looking for trust value from you and your brand.

And so across those seven platforms. Especially with LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram, just keep showing up and being your authentic self and you’ll be discovered. The main thing with providing content is when you do get pro content that actually starts to get some great impressions and that, and it’s doing well.

That’s the time to boost it with some advertising spend and it’s called brand format. And that way when it’s working, you know it’s working, you put some money behind it and it does well then you can get some really good return in advertising spend and revenue starts coming back in the other way.

Yeah, I think that’s important for people to understand that you can. Compete as a small business owner, you don’t have to, in the past it was like we were dominated by big brands and felt dwarfed by them. But in truth, because of your ability to niche and to be quite targeted in what you do, and you’re talking about, LinkedIn is a great way of.

Being able to find who your, if you know who your core audience is, you can find those people on LinkedIn. It’s not just about the old days where, there were three or four TV stations and you, your chance to was to advertise to absolutely everybody and hope that you hit the right program and spent a huge fortune on it.

Nowadays it’s become more and more targeted, right? And it doesn’t have to be through advertising. You can engage with people in lots of different ways.

Yeah, a lot of brands, smaller brands are using influencers now through social media and getting huge engagement by, user generated content from these young influencers because, TikTok and Facebook and Instagram, they’re getting, hundreds of thousands of followers, and if you have your brand associated with them, you’re getting eyeballs seen on your product.

So the influencer market is becoming a big play within marketing.

So tell me, when you go into businesses these days and you’re performing this fractional role, how do you make an impact? And that seems like a, a a high level question, but it’s, if there are people that are maybe a little bit cynical about what difference someone can come in and actually make, what is it that you can see as a difference?

How do you, how does being independent and coming in on a regular basis, but. And a small way gonna work for businesses.

Yeah, look, a bit of housekeeping. Number one, making sure on their website alone that nothing’s broken, no links are broken, they’re easily found. Also, have a look over their, all their pages on a website and see where they’re actually letting the customer know where the pro, what the problem is that they actually solve.

A lot of people on their websites go straight into the, the value proposition of their products and services, but they don’t actually indicate to the potential buyer of the problem that they solve within their products and services. So that’s number one. By having a look over your website and just seeing if it’s actually speaking to the client that they’ve got the issue, that you have the problem that you, that they, that you solve for them.

That’s number one. Also, making sure that you do have a social marketing plan across the seven. Channels that we were talking about before, LinkedIn being one, if it’s B2B and just looking what assets they’ve got within the business to see what they can profile. What’s their unique value proposition?

What do they have that no one else has? And that’s a big part of just building a strategy out around that. The main thing is attention is the asset and whatever business you go to, the reason they’re in business is because they’re solving a problem or they’ve got a product that is value orientated and you just need to get that message out.

To the people that need the product or services. So it’s just some of the basic elements.

Yeah, and I think it’s, it is important that people don’t underestimate the value of someone independent that’s specializing in it. I think the beauty of these fractional roles that have started to come about and there’s certainly marketing is one area, certainly finance is another.

Where I’ve seen that happen and other parts of the business as well, is it allows to have someone who. Can have a consistent view of what’s going on, but are not encumbered by the day to day and can add, high level strategic, ongoing advice.

Absolutely. There’s a sports brand I’m working with at the moment that’s got an outstanding athletics product.

And once that gets passed through an certification, IAF certification that’s got go global distribution opportunities. There’s a few things in place that have to happen with a rule change, but once that happens, this small business they’ll be working with, who’s going over to Germany in, in a couple of weeks will then have the opportunity to sell their product worldwide.

And that’s another challenge this business is going to have from a small business doing, product and service delivery around Australia, Australasia to the going worldwide. So that creates another challenge that they’ll find. So it’s about having those different moments in time where you’re moving from one to the next challenge, overcoming that and then moving to the next.

So it’s working with someone like myself who’s been with these brands where they’ve started off small and you got larger, and what some of the challenges we faced and how they might come overcome them as well.

I think it is an important aspect that people don’t realize. They often stay with the teams that they’ve got, that they’ve built them up through a period of time and they want to keep them there.

But sometimes you’ve, you outgrow those people. And I know I’ve experienced it when I’ve been employed in the past, and I won’t say where, but I remember, the particular organization I was with that we went through a growth phase and the CEO stuck around and I think it was to the detriment of the organization.

Because as, as great as he was at getting us to a certain point, he wasn’t really the person to take us to the next level. And I think that can happen within an organization as well. And you have to recognize those things. And sometimes it, it might not be that someone like that had to step aside, but it’s bringing in the right people around to help make sure that you can take it to that next level.

Because you do need that experience. You do need those people that understand what what it looks like on the other side.

Yeah, absolutely. And, I can’t remember the book, but it’s get the right people on the bus and that’s, getting the right people in the business that’s gonna project you forward.

And I’m noticing a lot of CEOs now are coming back into businesses and sitting on the development or in the marketing teams. To get more involved with what’s happening. They’re not sitting in that high element within a business. They’re getting more ingrained with the business, and I think that’s important.

So they actually see how the business is operating from inside and they’re part of everyday activity. I think that’s a big part of the CEO’s and also GM’s role to have a look how the actual business is going in internally. Is everything cohesive and is the culture good? Most businesses struggle with culture.

Yes, that is a big area and one we might delve into another time. I’ve got a couple of final questions I wanted to ask you. Give me some tips on what you believe is where things are going, not just LinkedIn, but generally in terms of marketing. Where do you think people need to be in terms of focusing their attention?

[41:16] Future of Marketing and AI

Yeah, definitely spending one or two hours on every AI tool that they can see at the moment and getting familiar with it because technology doesn’t care about, it’s coming here and it’s arrived. So getting familiar with the different AI tools and how they work and how to start looking at giving them commands.

And also in regards to platforms like, LinkedIn, things like that. Getting familiar, how to navigate around them. They are a tool of trade and if you understand how to use them, they. They make your day a lot quicker to actually, do general tasks by communication and then posting and getting seen.

It’s interesting I believe with the advancement of ai, especially the way that it’s coming so quick, what we believe to be happening now will be completely different in the next three years. I dunno what that’s gonna look like. I’m excited for it. It’s gonna be challenging. It’s gonna be exciting, but we have to invest our time to understand what’s coming at us.

And one of the tools I’m playing around with at the moment, I said before is Notebook lm? And I think that’s an amazing tool to have a look at and if your viewers can have a look at that and getting involved with that a bit more, it’s a great tool to have as an association within your business. It

is a fun tool.

I know I used a little while back to do to consume a lot of my podcasts. And to do a bit of a review of it, which was really interesting because it delivered a conversational review of the biz Bites for Thought Leaders podcast, which was which was a bit of fun. Yes, if anyone’s interested in that, maybe I need to find that video again and repost it.

Absolutely you should. Yep.

It’s one of those things. Now just to wrap things up, a question that I love to ask all of my guests that come on the program is what are the aha moments that people have when they come to work with you that you wish more people knew they were going to have?

That I give more than I take.

[43:18] Closing Thoughts and Contact Information

So I’m very generous with my time. I sit on a lot of 15 minute calls. I give a lot of advice to people. Sometimes that turns into business, sometimes it doesn’t. I can lay my head down at the end of the night and say that I gave it all my that day and tomorrow’s gonna be a better day. And I love helping people and I love spending time that they can be better at what they’re doing.

And if I can just support that I’m a very happy person.

Fantastic. I love that Steve. And we are gonna include all the details of how to get in contact with you. And people that are listening in can jump on one of those 15 minute calls with you. I know how much value you bring to those 15 minutes.

And I encourage people if you have looking after groups of people as well. Steve is a great speaker to come in and add some real value to that. And lots of things that we didn’t even touch on connected with LinkedIn and other areas. Such as my most trusted and a shout out to Scott and my most trusted as well, which is a great tool to add on to your LinkedIn profile and other things as well.

So you can ask Steve about that as well. And or just hit me up as well because I can also introduce you to that particular one. But Steve, thank you so much for being an amazing part of the program, giving so much advice and tips and insights along the way. Really appreciate it.

Thanks Anthony, and thanks for everything you are doing.

I appreciate it and it’s great having a platform like you that we can tell our stories.

Absolutely. And we’ll look, we encourage everyone to make sure you don’t forget to subscribe and leave us a like or a comment on anything that you want to see on the program coming up in the future. And we look forward to your company next time on Biz Bites for thought Leaders.

Thank you everyone. Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bites. We hope you enjoyed the program. Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Biz Bites is proudly brought to you by podcast done for you, the service where we will deliver a podcast for you and expose your brilliance. To the world.

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