EntreLeadership - #252: Jen Sievertsen-The Top Marketing Trend Now

Episode Date: March 8, 2018

In the final installment of this special four-part episode, Jen Sievertsen, chief marketing officer of Ramsey Solutions, explains the best way to spend your marketing dollars now. She says the biggest challenge today is breaking through the overabundance of messages competing for your customer’s attention. Her best advice? Simplify, simplify, simplify. Tune in to find out how it’s done. entreleadership.com/podcast The Ultimate EntreLeadership Reading Guide Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Entree Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders by leaders for leaders. Thank you for joining the conversation. Our feature conversation this episode is with Jen Sieverson, who is our chief marketing officer here at Ramsey Solutions. You're going to enjoy that, and I know you'll enjoy the free resource from our Entree

leadership team. Well, Jen Severson joined Dave's company as executive director of internet marketing and was very quickly promoted up the ladder to where she is now, our chief marketing officer. With more than 20 years experience in marketing and strategy, with companies such as lazy boy and Motorola, you can imagine how vital she is with the 200 team members that she leads in marketing and creative and public relations. So she's here to give us some great information on how to market well. Here is my conversation with Jen Severson. Well, this is big fun.

Jen Severson, welcome to the Entre Leadership Studio. Thank you, Ken. You've been on the show before, but never in our new studio. Yeah, this is fantastic. Oh, so fun. Okay, so we have been talking about marketing trends, big theme here and talking with our tribe about this. And I want to jump right in on something that you and your team,

when you're looking across the board of Ramsey Solutions and all the different business units and the varied list of products and services, you think it's very important that in marketing, anybody listening here, that they simplify, simplify, simplify, specifically you say this applies to what we are communicating and how we are communicating. Unpack that for us. So the number of messages and the types of messages that consumers, on average, are receiving today is overwhelming. Our email boxes are full. We've got text messages is going all the time, not to mention social media, like everywhere, we are completely bombarded

and most feel pretty overwhelmed by that. And so as marketers, our job in order to be effective is to be able to cut through all of that and make sure that we are hitting the consumer, how they need to be talked to, and really hitting on those core points for them, and then doing it in such a way that it cuts through the clutter of all the messages that they're getting. It's really important, and it sounds easy, but it's not. That's right. Well, yeah, you talk about that, and you mentioned a trap. I've heard you talk about this before.

And the trap is that we hear simple, because you've got people listening and they're going, Jen, thank you. That's what I needed to hear. I've got to keep it simple. But it's not a simple process to communicate simply. You've got to really dig deep. And you say the trap is that thing, well, we can just come up with a super simple message. Take us into maybe a process at Ramsey's Solutions where you,

you can teach us on guidelines, how you make sure that we are communicating simply. Yeah, so the trap is that when you're in the business, when you know all the things about the product or service that you're selling, that you default to trying to communicate all the things at once. And you actually, it's much easier to do that and deliver a complex message than it is to simplify it. And so we do a few things to combat against that. One, we focus a lot on Donald Miller's story brand. Across the board, we are constantly looking at that, refining it, and making sure that we're hitting on those key story brand items

so that our message connects and it helps you to simplify as well. The other thing that we're doing is some people can do this naturally, but very few people. You have to get outside of yourself into the customer's state of mind, really, and look at things from their viewpoint. Again, most of us can't do that. So a good way to do that is really to talk to your customers or if you're a larger organization, make sure that you're getting regular research, feedback from them. It helps to kind of shock us outside of ourselves and everything that we know about the products and services and instead put us in the shoes, if you will, of the customer who's looking at this maybe for the first time.

And all they need is this much of the story. Later, they'll get all the depth of everything that product or service might deliver for them. But you just need to hit them where they are and where their pain point or where their need is. Yeah. Talk to us about, well, you've got this unique situation where you've been a chief market office of other companies and things of that nature. But Ramsey's really unique in that you've got this guy, Dave, right? He's this tribal leader because he's just been such a great guy. And fantastic marketer, by the way.

Great market. Yeah, right. No pressure, right? And you've got this guy who has for 25 plus years help people change their lives. You've got this crazy loyalty. But then I'm hearing every day people that will call in and say, I just started to listen to your show day. So he's got what we refer to here as white space people outside of this big tribe. They've discovered Dave.

So you've got these two kind of unique audience members in that people who just, whatever Dave says, they go for it because they trust him. He's earned it. Then you got people go, I kind of like what this guy's saying, I need this. How do we listen to both parts of those audiences? Because those are different needs. Sure. Yeah, they absolutely are. Let's start with the person that's been listening for a long time or has been part of that tribe for a long time. They're loyal for a lot of different reasons and their loyalty. It's almost like you've earned the right for them to have to work a little harder to find the things they're looking for. It doesn't mean we don't want to try to get them quickly to whatever their particular need is at the time. But we've earned some trust with them and they're willing to cut us some slack so that we can serve that first-time customer, that person that's coming in cold. And so when we call it here putting the cookies on the bottom shelf, that expression means if you want the kids to be able to get to the cookies, you put them on the bottom shelf in the pantry. And so we take everything. We simplify it down to kind of its core, most basic thing, so that the first-time person coming in,

listening to the radio show, coming to a site, receiving an email, our goal is that they can quickly get at what they need at the very basic level. And then over time, they can get to where that other customer is. And we do try to customize it to a certain extent. But if we can't in whatever particular medium it is we're talking to them, we'll dial it back to what's the most basic. What's the most simple? Okay. Staying on this track, but now I'll assume we've simplified what we're saying and how we're saying it. On this how track, you have some great thoughts on communication. So as you're communicating the message about the product or service, you say that companies tend to either be in one of two buckets, either they're over communicating. So they're

part of this onslaught that you described at the start of the conversation or just kind of stop communicating at all. Sure. Yeah. I think that's both of those trends can be seen. I believe with a lot of small businesses, I know we tend to have a lot of small business owners listening to us and engaging with us. So again, like it is with the complexity of the message and getting it to be a simplified message, it's actually not easy to do. It's much easier to send 20 emails than to have to figure out how do I most effectively communicate with our customers around this product or service and understand what level

of information they need, how often, and then not to overwhelm them with the customer. the by now all the time as well. And then the other thing that can happen on the very other end of the spectrum is that you can have a small business, say you're a pet resort, like a pet boarding service. And there's really a reason that if people trust you to keep their pets for a week while they're on vacation, that you probably have earned the right to talk to them over time about different tips and things that they should be aware of around pets. But they don't take advantage maybe of that opportunity. Instead, you see them, you know, twice a year when you're boarding your dogs.

It would actually be more effective for them to remind you that they're around. And so, you know, you're planning just maybe an overnight trip. Oh, right. I don't have to get the neighbor to take care of the dogs. I can just go board them because they're top of mind because they've been giving me helpful information, not necessarily sales messages at different points throughout the year. How do we strike that balance? what are a couple things that just practically someone's listening and going,

okay, you're stepping right on my toes there. What are maybe some questions or processes that we use that these folks can go, okay, here's how we find that middle ground. It doesn't have to be complex. Just ask some of your customers. Just talk to them. Just talk to them. You know, I recently got a survey from our kids' school, you know, around communication,

literally around communication, how do we best communicate with you and how often and where do you think we're doing well and where are we not? and don't just talk to one, but talk to several and get their feedback, and it doesn't have to be, you know, a long discussion, but just get their feedback. They'll tell you. Yeah. Curious how it made you feel as a parent when they asked you those specific questions. It made me feel valued. Yeah. Yeah. Made me feel like, oh, they really care. Right. And the other thing that they do well as a school is, I've seen them take the feedback and make changes based on it. And so that's what you want to do as a business, too. Your customers, when they see that their input is valuable,

and that you're actually going to make changes based on what they tell you, that just endears them more to your company because they feel valued and taken care of and well served. Then they become evangelist. And again, I see this. I know over the years you can speak to this and I want you to. When we survey people, I know you guys are always doing surveys because we've seen it for the Ontario Leadership Podcast. It was wonderful. That was one of the greatest pieces of information I've ever thumbed through.

We had over 1,000 people respond to this program and they told us all kinds of things. Well, take Dave's financial peace university, you know, I mean, you're talking or, you know, the smart dollar, which is the corporate version, okay? These are end users that are using it. And when we hear from them and we make those changes, what's the end result of that? Well, listen, at the end of the day, if we can serve them better, we're all excited about that, right? Of course, it helps your business grow. But it's almost like that's the natural byproduct. everybody working on the smart dollar team, for instance,

cares about doing a great job, right? And when we get that input and we find out we can make some tweaks and how we're delivering things or maybe the way the product is interacting with the customer, everybody's excited to make those changes because everybody wants to serve our customers well. And that's the same. We're not unique, right?

That's the same for every business that's listening here. Nobody goes to work saying, oh, I don't want to serve our customers well or I want to do a bad job today, right? Like, we all want to serve well. Really good. So, big theme here. Simplify, simplify, think simply, test simply, communicate simply. You can't go wrong there. But it is hard work and there's a process. Good stuff.

Jen Severson, chief marketing officer here at Ramsey Solutions. She's no stranger here. To the Entree Leadership Program, thanks for hanging out with us. Thanks again. Big thanks to Jen Siebertson for hanging out with us. Hope you enjoyed this special week. Hey, I've got a special resource for you from the Entree Leadership team. I want to tell you about, I'm a big reader. I love to read, and I can tell you that all leaders are readers. And the people you've heard from this week are readers as well. That's why you're hearing from them.

It's why people want to know what they think. So I've got this resource called the Ultimate Entree Leadership Reading Guide. 50 books every small business owner needs to read. And so, let's just put this in perspective. Bill Gates reads 50 books a year. That's about one book per week. Mark Cuban reads more than three hours every day. Two billionaires. I just want to hammer this home. This is intentionality. But when you read like this, you have no idea of the benefits. And so we want to encourage you to read. So we've done the homework for you. What are 50 books that we recommend in the biography category, company culture, leadership, marketing, money, personal development, productivity, relationship, sales.

Those are great categories. All of you would do well to read one book a year in those areas. So here we go. 50 books in those nine different categories that we think you should read. You can print it out, use it as a checklist, great accountability, share it, but most importantly, read them. Here's how you get the list. Text 50 books, that's 50 books, no space.

text 50 books to 33444. That's 33444. Well, that's going to do it, folks. On behalf of Will the producer, Jim the engineer and the entire Entree leadership team, thanks for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.