By Jessica Tha Goddess – Follow on IG & Facebook @JessicaThaGoddessxo
As you thrust into your new year goals, I wanted to help you consider your brand, and how you can make it a part of popular culture.
Pop Culture is literally anything and anyone that is widely know and accepted among a large group of people. From influencer to a product and business brands – you want to be where the action is; heck you want to be the action!
While it’s not an easy challenge to become a household name, the good news for influencers, aspiring influencers, as well as small and local businesses is that micro influencers (1,000 – 100,000 followers – topic specialists), nano influencers (1000 – 5000 followers), and locally sourced product lines continue to gain popularity and be appreciated for their organic and authentic value. These means that no matter where you are starting – there is a place for you at the ‘cool table’.
As we evolve socially, pop culture is as influenced by values and authenticity as it is by music and art. This is amazing because it gives us all an opportunity to dig deep, connect with, and live from our own internal higher-frequency – which is what YevOne is all about. Yea!
No one likes a fraud. There is no faster way to be booted out of the hall-of-fame than to try and dupe the people. With cameras everywhere these days if you are inauthentic you will be found out. The good news is we are each born with special gifts, unique qualities, and as we grow, we are all capable of creating value and developing solutions that improve our world and the lives of the public we seek to become a part of. This means that by being yourself, building something great, and honestly connecting with your public – you are already half-way to becoming the next pop culture icon.
Here are some key steps to get you started along your journey to becoming a popular culture phenomenon:
Step 1 – Understand Your Brand
It’s cool that you have a great product, or that you are the great product. However, if you don’t understand your product, or why people would love it, then you will not connect with the people.
You also need to believe in and love your own brand, passionately.
You need to exude passion and confidence. If you do not believe in your product, no one else will.
Your confidence needs to be so authentically strong that you can ride the tide of no followers, no sales, no engagement, and no support.
That’s right, if you are just starting out it may be a desert for a while and you need to be so passionate about your vision that you can feel it, taste it, smell it! Only then will it waft over to the noses of your potential public and pique an interest. You need to rock the heck out of you. You must be absolutely clear who you are so that you do not confuse the very public you are working to engage.
Step 2 – Be Authentic
The foundation of your brand needs to be honest.
It needs to be built on authentic soil so that you can hold your head high for years to come.
Once you ‘make it’ people will want to know what your ‘story’ is. You want to be able to stand strong and proud and demonstrate how clear, authentic, and honest your roots are.
If your roots are not honest and authentic the public may conclude that you lied to them…and well, as you can imagine that would not do anything good for you or your brand. It would also hurt the people who believed in you enough to support you from the start.
So, authenticity is the name of the game. We humans are imperfect, if you make a mistake along the way admit it and keep growing and improving. It’s okay to fail up, as long as you truly learn from it and truly evolve as a person and a brand. What is not okay is being fake – never be a fraud!
Step 3 – Know Your Public
Listen, you can connect with anyone if you genuinely know them or make a sincere and sustained effort to deeply understand them. There is a very important difference between lip service, ideologies, thinking you know something, opinions, prejudgments, and actually taking the time to authentically engage with the public you want to be a part of.
If you say, for example, I want to connect with young Black men ages 18 to 25 and you are a sixty-year-old white woman then you better have an authentic interest in the lives of young Black men. Hopefully, you already are connected to the community you seek to engage. It is important that you truly care about their struggles and realities as experienced by your public, not as perceived by you. Also, you should listen when they speak and ask questions so that you can start to understand what you could never live. Most importantly, you should seek to be a part of solutions in their lives, not to capitalize on their struggles or to superficially ‘connect’ with their cause – it must be authentic! If not, then you have no business marketing to them. Choose an audience you care about because it’s a long-term relationship and you need to truly be invested!
Knowing your public is also part of knowing yourself. To truly understand your brand, you must understand the people whose lives your brand seeks to touch. I think focus groups are fine marketing tools – and with my college education in Marketing and Corporate Communications I am well versed on the various methods used to tap into and connect with target markets.
However, today we crave more from the influencers, brands, and companies seeking our attention and dollars. We want to be heard, understood, and cared about. We want brands to know us, listen to us, make it clear we matter. If not, consumers will turn off the spending and engaging tap – and you will become the one who does not matter. Sounds harsh but it’s very real.
Knowing your public does not just impact initial engagement, marketing, ads, and sales. It needs to touch every aspect of business including customer service.
We the people miss the ‘mom-and-pop’ feel of customer service. You know, that feeling like the business truly cares about the customer. If a customer is unhappy with service, they want to feel like the company wants to resolve issues and make the customer happy. As the song goes – you can’t always get what you want; and because of that pervasive attitude in corporate culture many customers are left unhappy every day. This creates an opportunity for businesses willing to build strong satisfaction and retention models that reflect the customer’s needs and experience expectations to take that market share because the big boys are slipping!
Distant call centers have reduced customer ‘care’ to scripts on screens. Trying to connect with a company as a customer to invoke empathy, or achieve any out of box solution, is a thing of the past. In fact, today you are lucky if you get a live person at all.
We are in a customer care crisis and brands need to pull up their socks when managing this key connection point. Knowing your public means knowing they want excellent service – start to finish. Knowing your public means taking the time and energy when customers reach out, to treat them as a person and not a number. Truly listening to and helping customers will go a long way towards improving your customer retention. Remember, it cost a lot less to keep a customer than it does to get a new one!
Step 4 – Engage with Your People Regularly
Now that you understand your brand, are articulating it in an authentic way, and know the public you are seeking to engage – it’s time to engage with your public…regularly!
Commitment and consistency – the golden Cs to successfully engaging any public. It is not enough to pop in, see what is happening with the latest media about your public, fire off a random campaign, and hope the dollars fall from heaven. As consumers we want way more than that. We want to know that if we are loyal to a brand, that brand is going to ride for us too.
Yep – consumers today want riders. Brands that have our backs. Brands that ‘get’ us. Brands that care. Brands that are proud that we are their people. Brands that claim us, align with us, stick up for us, and display the exact same loyalty to us as they are asking us to have for them. Welcome to 2021, where consumerism is a two-way street.
If you want to rock with us, you need to understand us, like us, and rep us like we rep you!
To be a rider, you need to know where we riding to. If we are on Instagram, you need to be there too. If we are on Facebook Live, you need to be there too. If we shop on Amazon, you better have your stuff on Amazon. If we hang out on Shopify, you better be on Shopify. If we are at the club, you better be at the club. If we are at the gym, you better be at the gym. If we love that Rapper, you better rock with that Rapper. You meet your public where they are, and you love it – because that’s what riders do! In return you will earn some of the most loyal customers alive – and that’s a fact. Are you ready to ride?!
Step 5 – Build Trust
Fun fact – brand trust is one of the biggest factors in consumer purchasing decisions. Also, there is a crisis in consumer trust right now – so this right and take those customers from people who are not treating them right baby!
Building trust in your brand is not something you do once, it should be woven into the fabric of all your do and be ever present in the minds of anyone representing your brand.
You ever roll with that one person in the crew you never quite trusted. You never introduce them to the person you’re dating or your other friends because you know they are not trustworthy?
Well, it’s the same with brands. No one is going to shout your praises from the mountain top if you are not trustworthy. You will not get good reviews, you will not be recommended to friends, you won’t even benefit from the gift of repeat business. You will not be brought home to momma if you are shady – facts!
So, your job is to BE AUTHENTIC, be trustworthy, and demonstrate that with action. That’s right folks, trust is an action word. CLICK HERE https://yevone.com/build-brand-trust-in-6-steps/ for 6 Steps to Build Trust with Your Public.
Step 6 – Add Value
The best brands are brands that provide real solutions to real issues. You need to find the weakness and be the strength. If you are truly adding value than your marketing shifts from ‘sales’ to awareness and engagement.
You don’t have to sell people something that improves their lives, you just need to build their awareness of the brand, how it will improve their life, and prove that it works.
Consider how your product, service, or influencer brand ‘adds value’ to the lives of your public and make sure to communicate that. Also remember to build and share proof of the value you add.
Step 7 – Evolve
They say two things are promised in life – birth and death. I say THREE things are promised: birth, death, and change!
Change is inevitable. As such, even new businesses need to build in evolutionary strategies that help keep their finger on the pulse of their public. It’s important to maintain awareness so you can respond to changing needs of your public as it pertains to the scope of your business offerings.
This prudent approach will help you maintain relevance over the years and keep you a part of pop-culture for decades to come.
Step 8 – Collaborate
Collaboration is part of remaining relevant and meeting your public where they are.
We have all heard the term ‘collaboration is key’ and indeed when it comes to placing your brand on its rightful Pop Culture throne – collaboration is the lock, the key, and the golden goose – it’s everything!
You need to make sure that the collaborations you seek truly align with your brand, brand values, and image – and that it is indeed where your public is.
Growing up my mom used to tell me not to look for my keys under the lamp post. Her point was that if your keys are in the bushes, look as you may, the light from the lap will not help – because the keys are not under the lamppost, they are in the dark bushes!
Similarly, you may have a favorite artist, influencer, or corporate brand that you are a fan of and always dreamed of working with. However, if they do not have a genuine connection with your brand’s public, or desired public, then may not be the collaboration for you.
Make sure your collaborations are something your public would get excited about. Collaborations should increase engagement. By creating a collaboration that truly excites and engages your public – you could achieve a triple win. That’s my favorite win of all! The public wins, you win, and your collaborator wins – smiles, loyalty, and sales all around!
Step 9 – Win Together
When working towards wins it is critical that you aim to ensure everyone wins. This will foster more brand trust, increase referrals, add serotonin to the customer experience, and help you become a loved household name.
It’s very important to remember that your company exists to connect with and serve its public.
If you are not creating wins for your public, I am sorry my friend, but you will not be in business much longer unless you change that.
The public is smart, they understand that they have the power, and they choose who they crown influencer, fortune 500 busines, Billboard award winner and more.
Remember the Rider we spoke of earlier. If you are a real Rider you will always be looking out for your public, and always seeking to help your public win.
Here is the truth: In an all too often dog-eat-dog world, there is room for us ALL to WIN TOGETHER.
I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. It is also the reason I started YevOne – because I truly believe that we each have something uniquely special to offer this world. I am only in competition with me because you could never be me, and I could never be you. What we can do is collaborate and help each other win – and that is a beautiful thing.
A round of wins for everyone please. I look forward to seeing you at the top my eager, motivated, on-your-way-up friend.
Xoxo Jessica Tha Goddess!
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