Ep 222 | What are you Famous For? with Craig Alexander

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Being known for something is what allows you get a faster path to donations. It makes it clear to people what you do and how you serve. And it builds trust with potential donors because it is clear where the funds will go. While you do lots of things in your organization, be clear in your messaging about the big picture goal of what you do.

What you'll learn:

→ what it means to be a challenger brand.
→ why it's important to listen to what the market is telling you.
→ sharing impact to drive emotion.
→ ways to keep things simple.
→ when it's time to expand.

Want to skip ahead? Here are key takeaways:

[4:45] Challenger brands are organizations that are going up against industry gorillas. This means you have to be even more laser focused on what you do in order to cut through the noise. The messaging and way you share what your organization does needs to beclear and concise.
[10:33] Listen to what the market is telling you. Talk to people! Phone calls are best because you typically get more honest responses from people. Ask open ended questions and really get their feedback and thoughts. They will be honored you're asking their opinion and will give you honest responses.
[19:02] Keep your fundraisers simple. While your organization might do a lot of things, keep your messaging clean and simple. Build tradition around your events and be known for something. It develops over time and will help with consistency in fundraising.
[26:04] When you build slowly over time you'll naturally know when it's time to expand, AND have the financial stability to do so. Serving more people before you can financially support it is where organizations get in trouble. Take your time and build your base of raving fans. It starts with consistency.

Resources

VIP Days
Challenger Brand Marketing

Craig Alexander

Craig Alexander

President, Gumas

Craig Alexander is the President of Gumas an award-winning, full-service
San Francisco advertising agency and the country’s foremost authority on Challenger Brand Marketing®. His intimate understanding of what it takes to succeed with Challenger Brand Marketing has made him an esteemed leader in his field. Craig always strives to create memorable, relevant, and motivating campaigns that are designed to evoke emotion or inspire people to take action. He has been praised by his clients for his expertise and passion for his work. Learn more: https://gumas.com

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Full Transcript

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Hey, hey, welcome to another episode of digital marketing therapy. Today, we are still talking about copywriting. And I'm so happy and excited to have Craig Alexander here to talk with you about really defining what you're best at. So it can help you create a marketing strategy and a copywriting strategy that's going to help you connect better with your ideal audience, get more donations and have better retention. Because really, that's what we want, right? When we bring the right people in to our organization through our messaging, and through our emails, and through our conversations. It means that we're going to have better retention and they're going to give over time more frequently.

Craig Alexander is the president of Gomas and award winning Full Service San Francisco advertising agency and the country's foremost authority on challenger brand marketing, his intimate understanding of what it takes to succeed with challenger brand marketing has made him an esteemed leader in his field. Craig always strives to create memorable, relevant and motivating campaigns that are designed to evoke emotion or inspire people to take action. He has been praised by his clients for his expertise and passion for his work. And I love this conversation, because we're really talking about aligning what do you want to be famous for? How do you communicate and what are your values so that everything comes together, the motivation comes together, and everybody makes that nice little marriage for long term growth. It's just such a fun conversation and approach to copywriting. And you don't have to be a copywriter to take advantage of some of his tools. So if you're trying to do this with an internal team, you totally can. We also talk about a lot of ways to make sure the decisions and the choices that you're making in your copy are data driven, and coming from your end user and donors not coming from your own personal feelings about what your organization does, and is best step. We've talked about this a lot on the podcast in the past, and it's no different here. We need to make it about our audience and not about us. So Craig is really going to help us walk through some ways to make that happen.

But before we get into it, this episode is brought to you by our VIP days, so head on over to https://thefirstclick.net/vip If you need a content review a website review. If you need some support in building these ideal donors and figuring out how you can talk better to your ideal audience. That's what these VIP days are for. We can help you craft language, we can help you craft stories, we can help you really build the audience that you need to talk to and help you figure out where they are and how to speak to them where they are. So again, https://thefirstclick.net/vip to check out those options so we can get your content and email marketing strategies rockin and rollin for you. Let's get into the episode.

[Intro] You're listening to the digital marketing therapy podcast. I'm your host, Sami Bedell-Mulhern. Each month we dive deep into a digital marketing or fundraising strategy that you can implement in your organization. Each week, you'll hear from guest experts, nonprofits, and myself on best practices, tips and resources to help you raise more money online and reach your organizational goals.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Hey, everybody, please join me in welcoming Craig Alexander to the show today, Craig, thanks so much for being here.

[Craig Alexander] I see me so pleased to be here and part of your great podcast.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Well, thank you so much. And I'm so excited. You're here to talk during our month on copywriting. But before we kind of jump into what we're gonna talk about today, you know, clarity and messaging is something that's so important to you. Why is that something that you're passionate about, and something you really like to share to help businesses be more impactful?

[Craig Alexander] Yeah, that's a that's a great setup. I think that from a challenger brand marketing point of view, which is what my company specializes in as an advertising agency. Everything starts with the words and then everything comes after that. So the the last thing you want to do is start drawing pictures until you know what those pictures are trying to say. So our perspective is understand what it is that your audience could be your your community, your constituents, your customers, wherever they might be, that they understand exactly what it is that you need to say to them that's going to drive them to action, and say it as efficiently and meaningfully and emotionally as possible.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Would you define to you what a challenger brand is?

[Craig Alexander] Oh, sure. Yeah. And of course, so challenger brands, they come in all shapes and sizes. They are industry agnostic for profit, not for profit, and it's really it is situated Soon with any marketer who finds himself in complex marketplaces, where there are competitors with greater resources. And resources can be defined lots of ways, although most typically, greater resources means more money. So you have more money to spend behind traditional advertising, branding, distribution, sales, all the things that you would normally throw a budget against. But those resources can also reflect things like awareness, and attitude, and equity, and history and reputation. All of those things fall into a resource that what we refer to, as industry gorillas have, and the challenger brand is going up against those industry, gorillas with fewer of those resources and needs to understand what it is that's going to make a difference to their audience, their community, without having to spend dollar for dollar with the industry, gorillas.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Well, I think where that starts it because this is speaking directly to our listeners, like they're, you know, smaller organizations with limited resources, have all of the things that you talked about trying to make the biggest impact they can. And I think a common mistake that a lot of businesses and nonprofits make is trying to do too much too fast. So how should we think about? I think one of the things we talked about before this was, you know, what do you want to be famous for? Like, how important is that, and kind of setting the framework for how we step into some of the ways that we speak to our audience?

[Craig Alexander] Yeah, and it's a good setup, because there's, there's two things there. One is focus, right, what's that the first thing you need to do try not to do too much too fast or, or expand too quickly, is to take those baby steps. And challenger brands need to find that playing field where they can, we're looking when we use an analogy that I think might help your listeners, and it's our pen on the table. Story. So I'll take a pencil. And the way though, I'm holding up a pencil, if you can't see me, but and the way we operate is that if we throw our pencil on the floor, wherever you might be, that pencil, our brand is competing against everything in the room, right? So it's competing against chairs, and desks and walls and ceilings and wall hangings and books, it's got a lot to take on. But if you take that pencil, and you put it on your desk, now you're only competing with everything on your desk, right, your notebooks or other pencils, your print, or maybe your screen your microphone. But if I take that pencil off the desk, and I put it on a notebook. Now my brand is only competing with everything on that notebook. And that's where challenger brands need to spend their time is on the notebook. And once you win on the notebook, then we can go back to the desk, and then to the floor, and then into the hallway and then take on the world in general. So focus is a good part of that. And challenger brands need to remember that, you know, play where where you can be successful. And you raise the question to Sammy about being famous and what we're being famous for. And challenger brands. absolutely understand that they have to find the one thing that they're going to be famous for exploited and make sure they communicate that articulated to their audience. Now, how do you find out what that one thing is? Right? Your marketplace will tell you? Yeah, you can't you can't tell the marketplace. What what you want to be famous for the marketplace is going to tell you this is what makes you fantastic. And we'd want to spend time understanding that the marketplace to do little more formalized research, but we can talk about that

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] when we get to it. Well, I think that's really hard for organizations, especially nonprofits, because we're so Pat, well, I should say just any startup or nonprofits are so passionate about what it is that you do, you may have started your organization for a reason. And then the marketplace attaches to something a little bit different, still adjacent, but not the exact reason that you had as your vision for the organization. And I think also a lot of organizations are probably saying right now Well, we do lots of things. So it's it. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not so much about your messaging in your what are we famous for what you're communicating doesn't mean that you aren't doing other things, it just means that you're really focusing on this is how we're going to connect with our audience and really build and grow and scale so that we can talk about some of these other things that we do.

[Craig Alexander] Absolutely true. And it does go back to the pencil on the floor because if you put your pencil on the floor, you're talking about all the things that we're great at, but the pencil on the notebook is the one thing that were spectacular. And it's the one thing that differentiates us from our competitors that sets us apart distinguishes us in the marketplace, and will ultimately make us famous, whatever that might be. It might be our customer service, it might be our singular product line, it might be like ups are color. I mean, some things you're famous for simply because you described it earlier, the marketplace identifies you for something, and that's what made you famous.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] So how do we know what the marketplace is telling us? Yeah, so

[Craig Alexander] we need to talk to them. And so the way that we would work as as a supporter to a market or whatever it might be an agency is really what we are, we would want to structure, a research project where we would talk to users constituents. And in the nonprofit world, we want to talk to donors, supporters, followers, we would work together with the client with the marketer with the nonprofit, to identify that list of people who love you, because what we want to do is be able to understand what it is about you that those constituents love, recreate it, and put it in front of other potential followers, supporters donors, so that they'll feel the same way and do that. So we will want to conduct interviews with those supporters. And we actually do old school telephone interviews, that, that we have a phone conversation with somebody, because we don't want that face to face eye to eye contact, even in an environment like we're sitting in right now. Sammy, I can look you in the eye, and I can ask you a question and and you're gonna tell me pretty much what do you want to? Yeah, I'm gonna want to hear so I smile, and we have a nice relationship. But on the phone, you don't have to worry about that. I really just want to ask a question, let you think about it, and share with me the emotional response that you have without concern or how it's going to make me feel. So old school 20 minute phone conversation, will ask a series of questions that get that follower, thinking differently about the nonprofit that they support. And they will talk in very emotional terms, because we won't ask. Yes, no closed ended questions. Everything's going to be open ended. Imagine a world questions that gets them thinking about Yeah, these are the things that really get my heart fluttering about this nonprofit, because that's where we're going to extract the language, the messaging, the positioning, those copywritten words that we're going to put back into the marketplace to capture other like type supporters.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Well, and if you're working with a limited budget, you can't bring in an agency. Like, do you have any tips for people? Because hopefully, if you're in the fundraising space, you're having one on one conversations with people all the time. I think sometimes we just tend to not listen to the things that we should be listening to, like we're focusing on, am I going to get the money this that the other as opposed to hearing like what you said, the emotional pieces that are coming to us? So do you have any, you know, tips for ways that we can kind of prep our teams for when they're going out and having these one on one conversations, how they can come back and kind of digest and unload that information to either your marketing department or whomever is helping you with that, to also use that information as you move forward?

[Craig Alexander] Yeah, I think collecting data is always going to be important. Any decision made, that's data driven decision has got a better chance of being successful? Avoiding the idea that this is what I think my support base Yep, loves about us or wants to hear from us, is risky business, right. We call that gas marketing. We don't we don't want to deal with guest marketing, like dribble, we want to be able to understand what it is and most importantly, why they have attached themselves to the organization. So when members of a an organization are out in their community having a one on ones, we want to gather that data in a more structured way. So it can be aggregated, combined to confirm consistency of response and ensure that that we know what what we're hearing. So now from a cost standpoint, and there are organizations that for whatever reason, can't bring on a structured agency like ours, and I will also say with with a comma here that we work in nonprofit all day, every day. There's not a time when our agency isn't working with a nonprofit. We're based in the San Francisco Bay area. So we've got our connections are large and consistent in terms of supporting nonprofits and later we can talk about some Some of those specifically. But if you don't have the budget to manage that there are lots of tools available that can do the work for you, right, lots of survey type applications that you can create and then submit to your to your user base, your support base, and just get back that sort of two dimensional response, which is not as advisable, because you really are lacking the emotion that you're hearing. And in a conversation, unlike just simply asking somebody to fill out a survey and answer questions, fill in the blanks. Those, those tend to be a little bit less useful. However, for the money. It's the you can't beat it, because you can essentially do it for free and collect some information that'll that'll lead you to where you're going. However, there is nothing beats the the human to human connection. Well, it's better

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] to do something than nothing. No doubt. Yeah, let's let's look good, better, best, right? Like, we want to get out there and do something. But like, let's always continue to strive to do something better. So you can get better data to make better decisions

[Craig Alexander] you want to be doing is making large scale decisions, at least from a marketing standpoint, based on what you think to be true, or

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] a board member things are what works. Right, the focus

[Craig Alexander] group of one Yeah, one board member that is seems to be the loudest in the room. That person tends to influence everybody else.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yep, nope. i Yes. 100%. Okay, so once we start to get this message, I know a common pitfall that organizations have is that they tend to talk solely about themselves or talk about this is what we're doing. This is who we are, and, and what you've given an organization with all this data, and information is a way to really speak to the motivations and ideas of the ideal donor, right to make them feel like they're part of your community that you understand them, you get them. So how do we start to kind of think about our copy, and take this information and maybe kind of rewrite readdress, or kind of refocus the way that we're putting things out there?

[Craig Alexander] Yeah, it's a mindset, Sami is a matter of knowing that whatever you need to meet, whatever you're going to say needs to connect with that community in a way that drives them to action. And action is driven through emotion and the emotion is based on impact. So if you think as a marketer, right, a nonprofit marketer, the first thing you need, whatever you're saying, it has to be impact driven, or results driven, or in traditional business, it's benefits driven. Yeah. Lots of companies like to spend time and money marketing the features of their organization, isn't this great about this? But if a customer or in our case with nonprofits, a potential constituent says, so what, then our message is not clear, yet be able to answer that question. So what So? So the the person that's seeing our message, leaves that with the idea of this is exactly what I've been looking for? Where have they been all my life? This answers the question, what's in it for me? So mindset is, think about language that speaks to impact? And what's in it for that potential user supporter, donor follower constituent?

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yep. And I think, you know, you could also then use these statements and things that you learn if you're speaking to the motivations, like an impact, you know, a lot of times we have levels of saying, Okay, well, I at this dollar amount, the impact is this at this dollar amount, the impact is this, right? So by gathering all this information and looking at your copy, like that's a great place to match up those motivations of what you heard from donors, versus what you think the motivation should be for why they would want to give? Yeah,

[Craig Alexander] absolutely true. As as an example, one of our clients is the San Francisco Giants baseball club, the Giants community fund. And they have their own established fiber ones, three independently operated philanthropy based in San Francisco built to support 30,000 kids around Northern California, Southern Oregon, Nevada. And impact is at the core of everything that I'm on the board of directors as well as being a client. So it's an important connection to me personal. So everything we say needs to be impact base this weekend coming up in San Francisco is our annual glove drive. And so what used to be Hey, everybody come to the ballpark see the Giants and bring a year old beat up glove, and we'll donate it to a kid who doesn't have one as evolved into here's $20. We'll buy a new glove kind of thing. So it's a fundraiser, steal a glove drive, but the impact is $20 Get you one glove, a kid gets a free free, beautiful new glove and the impact of a new glove to a kid is hard to measure. But $200 is a whole team's worth of gloves and $500 sets up a league and all those sorts of things that you can apply to to direct impact. So I think that might be an example of language that that would connect with the community.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] I love that. And I love that reframe because, you know, it's an exciting, it's a fun event, people are gonna want to come but that's how you increase the dollars that are coming into your organization. Because you're really saying, Okay, well, yeah, you know, I have capacity to give 200 bucks, I was only going to give 50. But I have capacity to give 200. And if it's going to, you know, hit that and this is the event that I'm at, like, that's super awesome. Like that feels good. Like that makes me feel much better about what I'm what I'm doing. So if we think about our organization, now we have like, better language that we know speaks to our audience. But we also have our values as an organization for how we want to show up whatever that might be. So have you ever found like in cases where it's hard sometimes or to kind of marry how you talk about like, these are the values and this is the motivations, like if the priority of the I guess I'm not saying this in a very eloquent way, but it the priority of our values for organization and the priority of the motivations for how our donors are giving don't fully align? How do we kind of navigate through our messaging? Or should we even care as long as there is some sort of cohesion there? That makes? Well, yeah, and

[Craig Alexander] I think we should always care? Yeah, I think there's a matter of priority that that connecting with the emotional level of the constituent is more important than ensuring that your values align with what they're trying to achieve. I think a good example, will stay with the Giants Community Fund for a second, you know, the glove drive can touch a nerve on anybody and just feel like, yeah, I can. Here's $20, a great, great glove. But what you don't know is all the things behind that's beyond just the glove drive, and goes into scholarship programs and anti bullying and a whole world. You can't tell that story at any given moment. So you start thinking about priorities. And a lot of times, that's how you build your websites. Right. So when you think about nonprofits, who tell their story on a website, we like to think that you have seven seconds. Seven seconds to tell your story that's, you know, maybe that's that's devolved over the years, but seven seconds to say who you are, what you do and what you stand for. Right, you have seven seconds to make that statement in the first page that you land on the website. So if after that seven seconds, you haven't convinced that visitor that, yeah, this is the this is the place for me, the impact that they offer connects with me on an emotional level, then I'm clicking out and I'm moving on to the next thing. In that seven seconds, though, you are able to capture that emotion and connect with with that visitor, then they click on whatever that next step click is learn more, here are our values. And that's when you start telling your story seven seconds at a time. The first seven seconds being that's the instinct to get you in their door. This is where where you're going to first make a connection. But then each step down the way is the next level of priorities, right? You go from values to history, to leadership to Where did to donate, to become a volunteer to all the other seven seconds of layers down below that gives you a chance to spend some time with them. Websites can help you do that. Yeah, so

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] good. And I think that's such a great way to rationalize and think about how we move people through the journey to become, you know, what is the goal of the piece of content that we're doing the event that we're doing, right, like your event with a giant is like the that is a very particular purpose, we don't need to try to muddy the waters with everything else, like our follow up and how we can communicate with them afterward is how we can kind of share more more of those messages. So I think that's really smart. But I want to touch on something. Because the people that we lose, I think we tend to want to then like vomit information because we don't want to lose anybody. So we want to give them everything so that we don't lose them in that seven seconds because once they bounce we've lost them. But I think the power and what you're saying is that it's okay to lose those people because they're not the right people. So could you talk a little bit about like how we should just really feel comfortable with what we're doing and how we're talking to our ideal customer and not worry so much out all the other pieces of furniture in the room.

[Craig Alexander] Well, that's that's it, right? That's our pencil on the floor. Let's keep that pencil on our notebook where we can control our audience. And if the people aren't connecting with us in our first seven seconds, then they may not be the people who are going to be with us. Not only seven seconds, but seven years down the road, right? We want constituents that are passionate about supporting our mission. Right now, tomorrow and seven years from now. And I think by thinking about who's going to be on that notebook, and not just everybody in the room, speaks to targeting and addressing your message to those right people and attracting them. And because to your point sanity, if somebody that's just in the room happens to click on the website, and you know, they're fleetingly interested in your message, but it may or may not make sense. If they don't click, they don't put an eye for us anyway.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] So how do we know when it's time to move from the notebook to the desk?

[Craig Alexander] Yeah, so I think that's, that's the whole idea of expansion. And when when is this organization able to still live up to its mission, whatever those values, those core beliefs are, to be able to still live up to that while serving more people, whatever that might be. I'll stay house stay with the one example that we have the Giants community find. It's a 30 year old organization that began in 1993, talking to 50 people in downtown San Francisco, right. So now we're 30,000 People throughout a larger footprint. But the only way that that organization expands success successfully, is to the the ability to raise enough money to deliver the services on the same consistent high quality level and be able to deliver the impact for 50 people as it does for 30,000 people, when they're if there is a time when some people aren't benefiting from the the impact of our efforts, then we have to cut back and make sure that we're still able to, to manage the the community that we're serving. So I think to your direct question, I think we we start moving from the notebook to the floor, when we're able to serve more people at the same level we're serving the fewer people. Yeah, I

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] think you're talking about consistency. I mean, we talked about this in marketing all the time, you don't need to be on all platforms all the time. Pick one that you can be really consistent with, get it going do it well, make sure it's working and then expand, right, because that quality, legal, we're both talking about quality, and that consistency is critical to sustainability. And then take the next step. And then take the next step. Like we have to kind of squelch because especially as entrepreneurs and like, and founders, that patience is the hardest part of growth in an organization.

[Craig Alexander] Yeah, no doubt. And you said something else I thought was interesting, just a little side note is that that consistent quality is critical. And it will build an organization. And just as quickly, consistent, lack of quality will destroy it. Yeah, it won't take long. In fact, it takes a lot longer to build up through consistent quality than it is to destroy through a lack of quality. So something to keep in mind.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] I think that's extremely true. Um, any other kind of copywriting tips that you might want to share, as people have gathered all this information, and they're ready to make some changes, or they're, you know, ready to start writing different words on the website, you know, kind of what other tips do you have for people that are like, Well, I'm not a copywriter? How they can kind of approach them.

[Craig Alexander] Yeah, and a lot of things that we touched on. So remember, you have a limited amount of time. So I would say the most important stuff up front, don't beat around the bush and build a case. You don't have to say that against me.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] You don't have to be too cutesy.

[Craig Alexander] Oh, yeah, don't don't like you have to be emotionally connected. So you've got we said seven seconds. longer format, right? If you're going to create something, the most copywriting you should ever write is 30 seconds. 45 words, if you're writing more than 45 words, at any point, on your website, on your collateral materials, your brochure, you need to rethink it, because you are absolutely saying more than you need to say. So that's the longest format. So the positioning language which we talked about earlier, seven seconds. 30 seconds is bass Max. Remember that you're speaking to a concert vigilant, a prospective constituent who needs to hear from you on an emotional, impactful level. So those first things that they see on the website needs to connect with them in terms of impact that that their support does this. We have a good friend of ours, his name is Steven Wesner. And I he created a theory of of website creation called the XYZ theory, from a messaging standpoint, and the XYZ theory says, We do x for y. So you can z, which is to say we do X, what do we do? Again, this is like, first time you get to the the website, we do x, this is in that seven seconds, right? What it is you do for y for me, I'm the visitor, it's clear that this is from I'm the I'm the audience that that belongs here. So you can see. So what do I get out of that relationship? What's the impact, we do x for y. So you can see, that's the copywriting tip that we can give you that's going to help you get what you need out of those first seven seconds, and then the rest of it just becomes gravy,

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] we do something similar. What what is the problem you solve? Why? How do you solve that problem? And why are you the one that should be solving that problem? So same? Right, it's right there similar format. And I think instead, most organizations start out at the top saying, like, you know, talking about themselves and the amazing thing that they're doing and what they need from you, as opposed to this is the problem we solve, from the standpoint of your motivations for why you would want to give

[Craig Alexander] Yeah, or or worse me, starting with your history. Yeah. Yeah, oh, my goodness, you're gonna lose more audience that way, saying that we were founded in 1967. In a nobody care of a, you know, a hobble and wherever, downtown, wherever. You've already lost everybody. So yeah, I think we're on board.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] I think the hardest thing about copywriting and marketing in general is dropping the ego. And also understanding that everybody has multiple decisions. What you do is not unique, right? And so what you have to do is, communicate better, why you are the right fit for someone as opposed to communicate better about why you're amazing. Because there you know, I mean, there could be five other organizations in the Bay Area that are providing sports equipment to kiddos. Now, granted, the Giants have name recognition. I mean, that's not necessarily a fair assumption. But that doesn't. So you know, all those other organizations would be your challenger brands, like you've been sharing about, and it's, everybody has a message and a story to tell. So how can you connect them to your local community better than what the giants do? Like you can it's not an uphill. I mean, it's an uphill battle, but it's not impossible.

[Craig Alexander] I think you said you said it all. Sammy, all I'm gonna do is pull out some of the words that you said. And really the one word is why, yeah, I think they articulate why, well, that differentiates you from the 20 organizations in your community that are doing the same thing for the same constituents. Your y is different than anyone else's, and that Y has to connect with the marketplace with the community. connect those dots. Got it?

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yep. Okay. Well, I know you have a great book that's out if people want to learn more about the challenger brand. And I know you have a lot of other resources that you can share with folks. So if people want to connect with you, Craig, how do they do that? Okay, so I'm showing my book. Yeah, so head on over to YouTube. If you're not watching the video version

[Craig Alexander] is utilize it's called challenger brand marketing. John Gomes and I wrote this book as a follow up to marketing smart but really challenged by marketing is everything we've spent the last half an hour plus talking about, and that books available on Amazon. It's available@dumas.com which is the agency that John and I work at in its Gu M A s.com. Everything you need is there. talks all about challenger brand marketing, you'll see it in the first seven seconds, that's what's going to connect with you. So yeah, and in the book. I think we I also told Sammy, that this that challenge brand marketing was the number one best seller. That's exciting and a first time for me. I'm a first time author, so I'm kind of loading on all of this as you should. And if anybody wants to reach out to me directly, please don't hesitate. My email addresses see the letter C. Alexander. At Gomes Gu na s.com. So reach out

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] And we will link all of that up in the show notes at https://thefirstclick.net/222 . I hope to is your lucky number because that is that this is Craig, any last words to leave with our listeners?

[Craig Alexander] Yeah, I think the one thing that I wanted to tie it all together was for, for everybody to know that what you think is less important than what your constituents think. So base your decisions on what's most important to the visitor, the listener the potential supportive donor, thinking in their terms and you'll be fine.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] That's awesome and easy to do doesn't take a lot of just takes a mindset, but it doesn't take taxpayer money or anything to do that. So I love that. Well, Craig, thank you so much for being here with us today.

[Craig Alexander] Such a treat, Sami, thanks for inviting me and it was great.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Thank you so much again, Craig for joining me on today's episode, so many things and so many great reminders. Again, everything will be linked up in the show notes at the first clip dotnet slash two to two. And if you want to see his book, it'll all be linked up there as well so you can check it out. Remember to subscribe wherever you listen so you don't miss out on a single episode. Don't forget we have bonus episodes that have been launching as well. And the only way to know that they happen is to make sure that you're subscribed wherever you listen, or if you want to check out the video versions. We're here on YouTube as well at Digital Marketing therapy. I am so grateful for you for listening to this episode and I will see you in the next one.

 

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