Hello, I'm Kerry Guard  and welcome to Tea Time with Tech Marketing Leaders. 

Our hope is that at the end of the day, we'll learn enough from the types of customers we have coming in, even if we can't attribute it directly to an ad or word of mouth marketing. Welcome back to Season 13. It's Q4. 

Back into the school swing of things and gearing up for the holiday season, Palooza. Halloween isn't a thing here in the UK. At least not the same extent as it in the US, which makes me really sad. There are small pockets along the island that trick or treat, so I haven't found those yet, but I'm on a mission and I hope that I can find one this year. My kids will get costumes regardless because that's just how I roll. I'm a big fan of Halloween and oh man, I can't believe it's Q4 already. Q4 also means that as marketers, we're in full planning, swing mode, budgets, KPIs, goals, it's fast furious. 

So what better way to plan for 2023 than to think through your customer journey and experience? On this episode, I finally, finally, finally, finally got to hang out with Brianna Doe. Brianna came across my LinkedIn when she posted an introduction about herself, her very first LinkedIn post ever, and it went viral, garnering over 11,000 engagements, 35 shares, and over thousands of comments. 

She now has over 25,000 followers. Crazy, crazy. What a journey, Brianna. 

Oh, one post. So after reading the post myself, I knew that I had to meet Bri and I reached out and invited her to join the show and she said, yes, what an honor and what an episode. It took us months of rescheduling this and finally aligned the planets after being sick and traveling dates and just not being able to get our schedules together, but we did it. We did it. 

And I'm so worth the wait. What an amazing conversation around the importance of the customer experience and thinking through how you pull your audience in and take them on a journey. Brianna was a joy to speak to and her knowledge on the subject was endless. Before we get into the conversation, a little bit about Brianna. 

Brianna Doe is a marketing leader with 10 years of experience in driving growth and revenue and building engagement communities. Here's just some of the things she has accomplished. She's driven over a million in monthly revenue, two times the email subscribers and grew social channels by 70% for one of her customers. For another one of her customers, she developed and executed the global social media strategy and increased social media following by 9,900%. 

9,500%. She's also the founder of Soul Food Studio, an apparel and home decor company designed to celebrate the rich diversity in embedded and black culture. I will have the link to her studio in the show notes so that you can go check it out. Grab a notebook and pen or keyboard and your favorite notes app, pop on those headphones and lean into this conversation that I had with Brianna Doe. Let's take a listen. Hello Brianna and welcome to the Tech Marketing Leaders podcast. I'm so stoked to have you. Thank you. 

Thanks for having me on here. I'm really excited. Finally. Yeah, right. It took us a while, but we got here. Saved the best for last, right? Yeah, that's what's happening right now. Q4. 

This is it. Before we get into our topic, which I'm really excited to have, especially considering all the other conversations I've been having in light of this, tell me your story. What do you do, Bri, and how did you get there? Definitely. So currently I work for a company called Invencibles as our Senior Demand Generation Manager. So for context, Invencibles is CNC. So anything that you can make shelving cabinets, tables and signs, you can make that with a CNC machine. So we saw the machine and the design software. So I currently work for them. What I do is I map out our customer journey, all the touch points and interactions that a potential customer might have versus, you know, once it converted to a customer, how we engage with them, where we engage with them and the messaging that we use and avoid. And my journey's been colorful. I actually started in college, studied film, but I was working with several nonprofits at the same time. I'm doing just photography work, you know, for volunteering. 

Fell in love with it. And I realized that, you know, with new nonprofits, there really isn't a budget or a direction for marketing. So about myself, everything I would need to know to help them start pitching in. And the rest is history. Graduated from college, decided to pursue it full time. And I've always worn a lot of hats. 

This is one of my first roles where I've been able to really focus in and dive into the man gen, which is wonderful for me. But yeah, that's my story in a nutshell. We're clearly got some kindred spiritness happening here in the photography realm. Yeah. 

I didn't do film. The whole moving things sort of freaked me out. And I was like, stay still, please. 

And then when people stopped staying still, then I went to books to make them stay still. But I love it. Yeah. I mean, the storytelling piece, right? And that journey piece is so blended hand into the marketing side of how we speak to our customers. It's an easy transition for all those looking how to transition out of your current job and into a new one. That is easy into marketing. 

Very natural flow. Yeah. It makes it's intuitive. It makes a lot of sense, right? 

Whether you're a writer or photographer or filmmaker, you know, whatever the case may be. Sure, their marketing tactics and the acronyms and all of that, but the basis of it, so many acronyms. But the basis of it is the same. You're still crafting that story and like making it resonate with your audience. And the thing that I loved, I'm totally an autophagist, but like this is fun. The thing that I loved about photography that resonated with me in terms of marketing was the marriage between the science and the creative. Like there was still a clear box from a creative standpoint. It wasn't like painting and whatever in your mind, you're going to put it on canvas. 

Like that doesn't work for me. Working with this in front of me, I'm telling the story, what's in front of me. And then with photography, you have all the how the camera works and the science behind that to get the perfect exposure and balance there. 

And how and that translates to marketing in terms of the numbers and the math and the science partnered with the creative of the storytelling. Like there's a lovely dichotomy in both of those. Yeah, I never quite put that together and that makes so much sense. Like you, that's exactly what drew me to marketing. You know, I love being creative, but I struggled with not having like, I like the data and analytics that goes into marketing. 

I like having that structure. And it's the same thing with photography, like the rule of thirds and adjusting like your f-stop and exposure, exposure speed and all of that. It's, yeah, there is a science to it that you can't, you can't skip if you want to improve. It's a really good point. Yeah, I love the math and science and the creativity sort of like exploding together in marketing. 

Yeah, no, totally. And the customer journey is definitely important to that. Before we get there though, tell me what's going on with you right now in terms of one challenge you're currently facing. One challenge. So I started with the principles back in March. So it's been quite a while, but right when I started, we were actually shifting our customer base. So we have two products. We have our flagship product, which is targeted mostly to hobbyists, people that just want to start a new hobby or have a side hustle. And the more expensive and more heavy duty product is targeted to full-time business owners, who always focused on the hobbyists. And we're making this very dramatic shift to focus on full-time business owners, which is to higher price point, different pain points and challenges. And so, you know, it's always interesting like you start a new role and you're learning what's already in place and you're also learning all about this new segment. And what comes with that falls directly in line with my job of remapping the entire customer journey. And so it's been a fun challenge, but simultaneously learning the product and the industry and also learning how full-time, like how this specific segment speaks about their products and about their businesses and learning to, you know, create messaging that resonates with them specifically. 

It's been interesting. It's I've never worked in CNC before, so it's a unique challenge for me. And that tells perfectly what we're going to talk about today, which is the customer experience. And you mentioned nuance and pieces of that before we get into the nuts and bolts of it, what it means. What does customer engagement mean to you? I feel like it means a little something different to everybody else, but in your lens of how you're talking about it, what's customer engagement mean to you? 

That's a good question. I would say customer engagement is any touch point that you implement to foster interaction with a potential customer or a customer. That could be offline. That can be events, new products. It could be direct mail or online. It can be how you speak on social, how you communicate with them via email or in forums and with customer support. It's one, building trust with customers and at the same time building relationships with them, which I do think are two separate pieces of customer engagement. You know, you can have a customer that trusts your product, but doesn't necessarily feel any connection to it or to the company. 

And when you have both of those pieces in line, you have a brand champion at that point. So that's basically how it summarizes it. I'm going to come back to that. But before I do, I feel like you talked a lot about channels and where people are, which we will come back to in a second. But I also want to, you mentioned the word touch point. Are those the same like where people are versus a touch point? Touch feels physical, tangible versus just like where people sort of hang out. Am I reading that right? 

I would say, I know this answer can change for different people, but I would say is you have, what's an example? I'd say the umbrella would be all the channels that they live in, where they congregate, what they're doing with each channel, like how they use it. And the touch points are what you choose within the journeys they already have in place and the ways they already engage on the internet and offline. And that's the touch point is when you actually build out a process or system to, yeah, to touch them. 

E.T. Yes, exactly. That's how I was envisioning it. So I want to make sure we're on the same page. So as my questioning goes on, we're talking about the same thing of channels being the umbrella of like just where people hang out versus where you actually engage and make that sort of E.T. phone home moment happen. Trust versus engagement. 

I love this. Because it's like, well, if they trust you, like, and you are in a place channel-wise that you create engagement, then why wouldn't that be a touch point? So why are those separate for you in terms of trust versus engagement? 

Or does engagement come first and then the trust happens? What sort of the... I think it's three layers. 

I think it starts with engagement and then it goes to trust and then it goes to relationship. An example I could give would be... I, okay, I exclusively use, I exclusively shop at Ulta for all skincare and makeup and all of that. I trust them if they release a new product. I have that extra layer of confidence in whatever they're choosing to recommend, because I have had mainly good experiences with them when I've tried new products. 

However, nothing about my customer experience is personalized. I do feel like a number. Just, I'm just another person that they email to. And so I trust them. 

I will buy based on anything they tell me to in an email. But because I don't have that extra layer of feeling at all like they care about me specifically as a customer, if I start to have a worse customer experience, it's a lot easier for me to just find some new. I'd say a relationship gives you that extra comfort. And the engagement piece is what ties that all together, because you can't build trust or build relationships if you're not engaging in a real way. 

I love what you're saying too. And you're giving it from a lens of being an existing customer. So I wonder how that translates. If you're not an existing customer and it sounds like it starts with that point of engagement. And the way that I've heard other people talk about, I'm curious if your point of view on this is in terms of like, you're not an existing customer, but you need to create that engagement to then build that trust and build that relationship. It sounds like you need to start with value. 

Yeah, I would definitely agree. I think a lot of brands that I've worked for some of them, they start with pitching their product. But value doesn't just mean like the value that your specific product brings. It means showing how you can help that customer. And that can be in a variety of different ways. 

It's going to depend on the industry. But if you're dealing with a potential customer or somebody who knows nothing about you, you're asking them for space in their day-to-day life and their day-to-day decisions. And so you need to earn that by showing that you provide more value than just this one singular product that they're going to buy from you. You want to be more than just a company they purchase from. 

Yeah, start with the value, creating engagement, and then building in that trust, which is either trying the product like you do with Alta or sort of like that proof point, even if it's a small engagement, then that proof sort of happens. Yeah, and they can happen simultaneously. It's not like step one, step two, step three. I've noticed if you're working on building trust, you're probably going to be building a relationship at the same time. 

I'd say it's when you, when I personally get lazy with the marketing of the customer engagement, that's when you can still build trust because you're still churning out deliverables that could help them, but you're not personalizing the experience. Personalization feels really, it feels really tricky because it's beyond just using the person's name. Yeah, it is, I think, yeah. So for you and Alta, what does personalization look like for you in that? So yeah, with the Alta example, what I would say is they don't know any of my pain points. They don't know why I'm shopping with them. If they are keeping track of my shopping trends, they're not using it well, using that data well. It's, for me, personalization would look like you've taken this skin care quiz on the website as an example. We've noticed this, this and this about your shopping and how that relates to, you know, your skin needs. 

Here's what we would actually recommend. This, this isn't the case for all customers, but I don't care much if my name isn't an email or anything like that. I think a lot of marketers, and I used to think this too, I thought that's all you needed. Like, hi, Carrie, thanks for signing up today. Like, you know, it's not, it's not real personalization. Actually connecting with a customer means you've done the work to understand their challenges and understand how what you're offering actually helps those challenges and makes their life easier. I'm going to touch on this because I think it's something that's sort of happening right now in the world and I love your point of view on it. Data is like a very personal thing and we collect a ton of it as brands. 

And if we start using it in a way to try and get you to essentially buy more, is that it's like this balance between wanting to personalize the experience and say, we know you, we understand you, we want to help you do, do more of what you need for you, but at the same time it's like to what end? That's a big question. That's a very big question. And there's so many gray areas. I, so I used to work in web three and blockchain, specifically in the storage space. 

And that was one thing we ran into a lot. You actually, part of the whole thing with web three, not to change the industry, but part of the whole thing with web three and blockchain is there is this extra level of security. Everything is decentralized. 

So you don't have to worry about your data sitting in a data center and being hacked or something. It's spread out all over the world in tiny little pieces. And so when it came to marketing, we were collecting next to no data about our customers. I couldn't tell you what company any of them worked for. If they chose to, I wouldn't even know what country they were in. They had to opt in quite a bit. And the reason we did that was because we wanted to build that trust, right? Data is actually secure. 

We're not keeping track of anything. And so that's one end of the spectrum, you know, from a consumer standpoint, it makes perfect sense, right? We are, it feels like our data is being sold everywhere. Like you say something during a call and then two hours later, you're getting an ad for it. And it feels very invasive, which is why I'm a fan of opting in. 

Like I would, I would have to opt in to give my information to this blockchain company and let them use it. I think that's really important. Well, that's what's happening, right? I mean, you've opted in, you're buying their products, they're collecting all this data on you, and then they're using it to further your experience. And sounds like because you've given them your information and they can track your buying information, you're saying as Brie, I'm okay with that because I'm part of your brand. 

Is that? Yeah, exactly. It to me, it's different. I think people start to feel taken advantage of or violated if they haven't opted in. 

If you've ever gotten an email that has, you're all, you just subscribe to newsletter that you never subscribe to. So, you know, things like that, it feels, this isn't like a professional term, but it feels icky. And it's gross, to be honest. 

And so that's the line. If we're not opting in, and if the customer isn't choosing to give us that information, then I personally am not comfortable using it. I rely really heavily on research, though, to be existing customers to offset that. I love what we're talking about because going into a cookieless world and going into Web3, Web3 is coming whether we want it or not, folks. It's coming. It's happening. Every time I listen to a podcast or a blog, and I'm looking at the news, Web3 is coming for us all. So, we figure out how to navigate it now. 

And really, it's what you're saying. We're going to go back in time to opt in. We're going to go back to lead generation to a certain, it still demands, but then capture. Right. And we have to, we have to embrace both sides, which I think is an interesting, when you're talking about the customer experience. 

So, let's take a step back for a second. How do you understand your customer's experience? So, for your brand, you're switching now to a more B2B centric business owner, pain point, standpoint of high ticket item price. Where do you start in trying to figure out what that customer experience is going to be? So, the way I go about it with the disclaimer that we're not a new company, so there are existing customers to speak to. I know it's a different conversation if it's brand new, but with our current customers, I started with what felt basic. 

So, I started with a survey of all of our customers that had purchased our higher ticket item, segmented out by what their main focus was, because we're focused on a specific full-time business owner. Then, over the last couple of months, I've been interviewing them like crazy. I've never interviewed so many people in my entire life. 

So, I gained a lot of information from the survey and then dug into specific questions based on their responses, analyzed all those answers. Wait, are you listening? Brie talked to her audience. 

This is key. I talked to people. You talked to people. You picked up the phone and asked them what was up. Oh, I feel like as marketers, we're so scared of this concept of like, we have to talk to them. 

I know, right? We're not salespeople. Why are we talking to customers? Our job. 

No. But it's wonderful. We have a very kind and open customer base, which made it especially easy. So, they picked up the phone for you. Like, they weren't scared of seeing your number and they like wanted to talk to you. 

They wanted to talk to me. It was, I would send out the, my calendar links. They could choose the time. 

Calls would be booked within minutes. They were or raring to go, yeah. So I started seeing trends in their responses. I asked questions like, not just the good questions, where we learn what they like about us, but also what were your initial hesitations before you purchased? What problems were you trying to solve? And which ones have we solved? 

Which ones haven't we? Questions like that. From there, I'm able to use that information while I'm still interviewing to put myself into the shoes of our customer and approach the internet with verbiage that they would use. So I walked myself through their journey as if I was looking for this product. And then I walked myself through the journey as if I wasn't looking for this product, but I was looking for a solution. So you were actually on the internet doing searches or looking at ads, or like you were sort of going on the fact-finding mission as if you were a customer? Yes. Yep, I coupled that with organic search trends. I'm looking at our competitors and their keyword trends. I don't hear that often. 

Yeah, it's fine. I hear the research often, like, oh, I looked at Sam Rosh and I dug into this, and then I looked at competitors and I did an audit, but I've never heard somebody actually say, no, no, no, I actually put myself in the customer shoes and tried to find the product as they would. I'm sure people do it. I've just never heard it with that. I hope people do it, but I've just never heard it with that lens, which I think is so powerful, like when you really think about it. It is. 

It's very powerful and very effective. And I'm going to thank my film school experience for that because they trained me to put myself into character shoes and become the character. So it's like an easier way for me to build out the journey. So I'm still doing all of that now, but we've built out the roadmap at this point, and now it's just a matter of activating the tactics. What's one really interesting thing you learned that you didn't see coming in the journey of just, in just the fact-finding journey, from the research to actually putting yourself in their shoes and doing the search yourself, what was sort of like an, oh, like an aha moment for you? 

Specifically with our customers. So I learned one set of pain points and challenges from like sitting down and doing the research. And I established like a priority ranking based on what I'd learned that way. 

Our customers, we actually spoke to both existing customers and I speak to potential customers in this space. They have a completely different ranking, same pain points. But what I put at the bottom was actually at the top, which is very interesting in it. Only cemented the idea that you can't have just research and no interviews or vice versa. But that's, I'm actually still wrapping my head around that because it was a complete shift from what I expected. How's that change your strategy? I mean, does it or it's just like a tweak here and there in terms of the keywords, maybe some landing page copy, or did it totally flip your whole strategy on its head? It doesn't change our strategy in terms of where we're going. What we're doing for paid media, who we're going to market with, what events we're going to sponsor, anything like that. But it changes our messaging strategy because it prioritizes what we're going to call out. 

Any ideas we had for headlines for landing pages, the main focus for the website messaging, it's different now. And it's highlighting those pain points that they've told us about. So it's a pretty big shift. Yeah, message takes an undertaking. 

It is. It's a lot of fun, but it's a lot of work. It's hard to get it simple. 

Less words, more impact. It is. It's. It's very hard. It's easy to create, you know, like flowing language. It sounds really pretty, but doesn't get to the point until like three paragraphs in. 

It's very easy to do that. Yeah, yeah, it's harder to get it down to a six word headline and that resonates. Yeah, yeah, super tricky. But language is really important when we initially talked. 

You actually had the way that you wrote it. Learning what resonates from a messaging standpoint, vocabulary, slang, enveloping yourself into their world. So did you find with this particular audience, especially in a B2B world, it feels like it'd be very easy. Like, oh, we just need to use very like professional language, never that means. But, you know, in terms of the way you talk to this audience, was it. Did it use a lot of their words that felt very key to the industry? 

That was sort of this. You know, I feel like sometimes we talk about in messaging, we want to be careful not to use acronyms or like words that we think they know, but they don't. But like, you know what I'm saying in terms of almost trying too hard, like I know you. So let me use all the language you use versus just trying to. Like you, it's not like you, right? So I feel like there's a there's a balance to that. 

I would assume there definitely is the balance. It's it's this mix between like industry specific terms. But they might not actually use in their day to day. 

So we are we have to deal with a combination of both. As an example, here's a simple example, industry specific term, we would say something like. Reduce your overhead and increase your capabilities. Buy an Xcar Pro, you know, you say that to a customer. 

And he's like, I don't know what that means. Is this going to run fast, perform well? And will I be spending more money keeping it running? So what they want to know is save time and money. 

But cut cabinets faster as an example. It's interesting. It's like you can get away with using the other terms, you know, in the previous example, but if you want to take it to the next level and show that you actually know your customers, that's when you're you're talking to them as if you're in, in this case, in the workshop. 

With them as opposed to speaking at a conference that they're attending. Save time, cut faster. Save time, cut faster. Yeah. 

What's the office quote? Because like less words. Why use more words when less words do? They like that. Yeah, it's like the big easy button. Yeah. Yeah. 

But I mean, that's what happens, right? Like you've been talking to your customers, you said exactly what they needed. And then I was just like, oh, yeah, save time, cut. Exactly. Faster. I see. I'm on the roadside. There you go. 

We'll give you credit at the bottom. Please don't. I don't know. 

I don't know. I'm more of the three paragraph kind of person, like skip to the end. I love that. So you have the messaging. We've talked about channels a little bit, but I also want to mention and sort of touch on here because. You know, how do you measure? 

Before I get to that question, let me ask this one. How do you measure the effectiveness of this? Like engagement is important. The customer experience is important. The channels, the touch points, the messaging. 

How are you? How are you measuring the success of? Of the customer engagement piece? That's a big question. 

We're working that out right now. And so one thing we do is we ask our customers. So when they purchase, they get. We're I'm like obsessed with talking to customers. 

Yes, I'm going to have you meet Danny. Well, if it's going to be amazing. Yeah, keep going. Perfect. Yeah. So as soon as they purchase there, they have the options to fill out a survey. It's three questions. How did you hear about us? What are your plans with this product? 

A couple options. Because like I said, we're focusing on a specific segment of our audience. So learning as much about that and how that's resonating is important. You know, if we're getting a lot of customers that don't follow that segment, we're doing something right because people are still purchasing, but we're not we're not hitting it yet. Aside from that, that's what we're building out now. 

I'd say it's a mix of. You know, typical metrics like as we're building out more nurture flows, onboarding flows, all of those. How are the results? Are we seeing increased conversions? Open rates, greats like that. 

But then also. When we go to trade shows, how are we doing with leads and qualified prospects? When we talk and interview more customers, you know, as they join the inventables team, are they expected and also big on reviews as well? So we track our NPS scores and see how well what we are we promising and delivering? 

You know, are we doing what we promise? Or does somebody purchase our product and end up returning it? Or maybe a really bad review. 

Where are those reviews happening? Is that something called? Is that like a tool? Yeah, we use something called ask nicely. And that integrates into we use to have integrated into Google reviews, I think. And now we just have hope if they leave us a really nice review, we ask them to go over to Google and do the same thing. 

It's really nice. It's hard to get customer reviews, like authentic customer reviews in terms of like how things are really going where even think like we do that on 45 days with our customers like, OK, you've been hanging out this for 45 days. How's that going for you? Because if it's not going well, let's course correct it as quickly as possible. But if it is, let's figure out how we can either double down on that or take that information and go find potential customers or some of the like. 

It's important. But getting customers to respond. They're so busy. It's hard. It's always a hard ask in my opinion. So when they do respond, I take it with like great weight of like, oh, you spent my time and I'm so grateful. 

It's it's a really hard ask. And this is this job is spoiling me because we are over like inundated with reviews every day, like dozens and dozens of why didn't like this? Or this is great. You should do more of this. So it's been really helpful. It's. I'm so spoiled. 

I've never had it this easy before. I had an interesting conversation, not on my round table, but leading up to it in our in our work working session. And somebody asked, we've all sold products we don't believe in or aren't very good, but we know that we have to sell them anyway. 

Like, right? It sounds like there's definitely room for improvement on your product. But maybe you're very lucky right now that you just have like a really great product and a really great product fit and there's some magic happening for you. 

That could be a two. Like I said, Inventables, it's been around for 20 years at this point. So and it's shifted a lot in terms of focus and main products. So there's one thing like the third iteration in one of our products based on customer feedback. So you're right, there is a level of it that just comes with. 

Time and really intentional updates, which is nice. It can be hard when you have to sell a product that either you don't believe in or you're learning there really isn't product market fit, but you still have to sell it. That's a hard, it's a hard place to be. Yeah, I've been there. 

I'm sure we've all been there. I had a saying for a while, I was working on on a yogurt brand and I was like, it's all the yogurt. So like it's yogurt. So yogurt down now. These so hard babies. 

It's yogurt. Exactly. In terms of measurement and success, I wonder about because there's a big conversation happening right now on on LinkedIn, particularly where I hang out or where we met around the dark funnel. Like as we shift away from cookies, as we head into Web three, like we're going to be it's going to be harder to measure, especially before people opt in. Like how are you taking that into consideration as you think about measuring the success of your customer engagement? 

Are you is it is the is talking to your customer sort of the linchpin to that for you right now? Or are you thinking about the long term of how that scales? It's a great question. And it's a huge thing. A lot of our customers and potential customers like won't make a decision unless they know other people in the industry and their peers use it. So they might not be they could hear about us, you know, because we sponsor a podcast or you know, because they saw us on social media, but they're not going to make a single decision unless 10 of their friends use the product to. And so we have to temper our expectations. 

One, in terms of asking how did you hear about us? That's always you always have to take that with a grain of salt. But to understanding that we are going to be able to fully measure attribution. We're working out the details on that now because as much as possible, you want to write, you want to be able to track all of it. But our hope is that at the end of the day, we'll learn enough from the types of customers we have coming in. Even if we can't attribute it directly to an ad or word of mouth marketing. We we want to work specifically with cabinet makers. So if we see enough professional cabinet makers purchasing our products for the next year, two years, at least we're trending in the right direction. My manager says that all he cares about is if we're in the right direction, you're making progress and just a matter of learning and, you know, pivoting from there. We are looking into a loyalty program, too, because that's a nice way. 

He's going to ask about that. You know, at least temper that. People love free things and they love discounts. You can say that about just about any industry. 

So if you can implement that, you'll be able to track your dark social at least a bit more. It also feels like if you had some sort of. What do they call it here? So like a tradesman, like a tradesman discount. Like if you work for trades, then you get a certain discount versus because you're going to buy more often potentially. 

To the point that's a very good point. Yeah, it's a thing here. It's a Guernsey. 

I've been trying to like take tips from the small island community sort of living and how they do advertising. It's very fascinating. But trades is a big thing. Like if you are a tradesman and you go to certain shops, you're going to get certain loyalty discounts. So certain tradesmen send us to certain places versus other tradesmen who send us to other places like they have. 

Yeah. And whether you're a plumber versus where you're a carpenter, like they have their spots, it's all very interesting. I like that. That's a really good idea. 

The other thing I'm wondering about for you, too, that feels like makes a lot of sense is. A referral, like a referral program. Or partner program. Are you guys thinking about that in any way? We are. So we're building that out now. 

Because that will be huge for us, too. The thing with rents, bulls, you buy the big products and then you have to keep buying little parts for it called bits, different add-ons that you can keep cutting. Those will just wear down over time, just the nature of the business. So building out a program where they'll at least, you know, as for as they're spending more. 

They'll want those discounts, right? They'll want to refer to their friends. And if they're already buying more, it means they trust the product. So it's not a hard push to trust. Trust, touchpoint to trust. The relationship. 

Exactly. We touched on a lot of things today in terms of wrapping up here, Brianna, do you have any like last words of wisdom in terms of creating your customer engagement program and and how to find that journey for your users and how to implement it? What I would say is as much as possible. You know, we all hear it, speak to your customers, practice active listening, so don't just take their answers and move on. But analyze the trends that you start to see. 

And once you feel like you know enough to put yourself in their shoes, I strongly recommend putting yourself in their shoes and walking through what you think the journey would look like. It's been a complete game changer. I discovered channels that I didn't think would have much success for us that have and. 

Just takes us to that next level. So really, really, I'm an active listening and move from there. But couple that with research. I will always be a fan of looking up search trends and, you know, digging into social media strategies. Which is my hair doing, but. 

Focus on putting yourself in their shoes. I can't help myself. My curiosity gets the best of me. What new channels have you said you discovered some new channels? What what sort of surprised you? What channels read it? They're really. 

Yes. Personally, I think because personally, I don't really use Reddit. I didn't think that would be a thing for this industry. Huge on Reddit and TikTok, which I know is huge right now. But, you know, with the general demographic of our customer base, I didn't think it would be such a big channel for them. 

The last time I looked, it's like one of the hashtags had like 100 million views. You know, it's I mean, I heard this crazy story where somebody was trying to figure out how to fix a plumbing issue and like then being a gen. X or whatever. And then the Gen Z. So the gen X went on to Google and said, how do I fix it? And then see went on to TikTok and they found it faster because they went on TikTok. Like, my gosh, it's it's becoming a big search engine of like how to do things. So that fits right in with what you're talking about. Like exactly the price. But that makes a ton of sense. It does. 

I think I saw that on LinkedIn the first time I heard it, that it takes us to becoming a search engine. And I didn't realize how often I myself was doing it. It's just such a natural transition. I'm staying away from TikTok because I'm afraid I would get so sucked in. Yeah, don't do it. 

As somebody who's on it too much and had to put like a screen time cap on my phone, don't even start. Love it. My husband said my husband's into it. He's like, you got to cultivate it. We get the right content. I don't have time for that. 

That sounds like out of energy. I'll do you're just my TikTok guy. You're just going to send me great videos. And I'm good between you and my friends. I have my own curation. 

You're on TikTok feed. It's perfect. Oh, Pryanna, I'm so grateful that we finally made this happen. Him too. 

This was great. Before I close out here, I do have my people first question. Just a chance for people to get to know you beyond being the videographer and marketer that you are. Are you are you ready? I am ready. First question for you, which maybe an easy one, because you've been you've had the travel bug lately and you are off and running. 

Hi. But if you could travel to anywhere in the world without COVID restrictions and long lines and vaccinations and testing and all the things that hold us back, where would you go and why? Or maybe you've already been. 

You know, I haven't. I would go to Ireland. It looked just the sweeping hills and the food. I've been looking at Airbnb is there because we are planning to go in the next two years or so. And it's just gorgeous. 

It looks so open and beautiful. What about you? Where would you go? Where would I go? Oh, Ireland's on my list. Scotland. 

I really want to see Scotland. It's beautiful. It's like right there. It's all right there. 

I just got to like get across the channel and that it's all right there. And then I also have like Northern Europe on my list. Like I want to go to Amsterdam and Brussels and the Nordics. Like I've always been South in Europe, Spain, France and Italy. And now like we're here. Like let's go north. That sounds beautiful. Yeah, great trip. 

But Ireland. Yeah, let me know. Yeah. I'll expect tips. It'll be great. Oh, of course. 

I take detailed notes for itineraries. Brianna, this was amazing. Thank you so much for joining me finally. Guys, you don't understand this has taken us like I think the first time we talked to three months ago. 

Yes, I just looked at that actually. It's been a while. But we made it happen and maybe we'll make it happen again now that we're in the girl. Exactly. Yeah, we'll be like second nature at this point. Absolutely. I love it. Thank you so much. 

Thank you. That was my conversation with Brianna Doe. You can find her on LinkedIn. She shares career advice and experience. If you've recently been laid off and are looking to spruce up your resume and find your footing, definitely reach out to Bri. She is on a mission to help folks find their next opportunity. 

Her link is in the show notes. Thank you for listening to Tea Time with Tech Marketing Leaders. If you enjoyed this conversation with Brianna, be sure to like, comment, subscribe and share. This podcast is brought to you by MKG Marketing, the world's premier marketing agency for cybersecurity vendors focusing on SEO, digital ads and analytics. It's hosted by me, Kerry Gardt, CEO and co-founder of MKG Marketing, Music Mix and Mastering done by Austin Ellis. And if you'd like to be a guest, please visit MKGMarketing.com to apply.