How to Leverage Marketing to attract Superfans with Catherine Oaks

Freddy D: 00:00:00

Founder of SliceXR, Catherine Oaks is a highly experienced marketing and branding professional with a distinguished career spanning over 30 years across various regions, including Europe, Asia Pacific, United Arab Emirates, North Africa, and the USA. Catherine is well known for her innovative thought leadership campaigns that boost brand recognition and awareness for B2B and B2C companies. She is fluent in English, French, German, and Spanish, which combined with her extensive global sales and marketing background helps businesses expand their marketing research and gain international exposure. Her strategic thinking, creative genius, and tactical clarity enable her to uncover a business's core values and turn brands into magnets, generating viral impact on any platform. By bringing something extraordinary to the world that did not exist before, Catherine's visionary approach enables her clients to establish a purposeful life and achieve their goals. Hello, Catherine. Welcome to the show.

Catherine Oaks: 00:00:55

Hello, Frederic. How are you doing today?

Freddy D: 00:00:57

I am doing fantastic. How about yourself?

Catherine Oaks: 00:01:00

Wonderful. Great. Wonderful. Thank you for having me here.

Freddy D: 00:01:03

Thank you. Tell us, Catherine, how did you get started in marketing?

Catherine Oaks: 00:01:08

My father wanted me to be an engineer and I said, I'm not going to be an engineer. So he said, what else serious can you do? Because I wanted to be an actress. And my father said, you're not going to be an actress. I said, okay, but I'm going to go in marketing. That's how it happened. Marketing was still a serious topic. And it was going to involve a lot of creativity, which is what I always enjoyed. So I'm going to go into marketing. That's how it all started. Okay. And then what led you to start your own agency? Slice? Because I'm an entrepreneur at heart. I've tried to work for other people and it does not work very well for me. I think I'm too opinionated. Express my opinions too often, which very often creates a lot of chaos or arguments and, insecure leaders. don't deal very well with someone who has lots of opinions. I totally agree with that. Because we feel threatened. And so it's a combination that, that does not very well, work very well. So this is why my first agency, my first company I built in 2006, it was another advertising agency. And I realized I am made to work for myself. And I did. And since then I knew that there was no other option for me that working for Other companies is not what allows me to thrive. It's not what allows me to create to put in practice my inspiration and my ideas, and I decided, okay, that the best platform for me to have my own agency and spread my creativity as much as possible.

Freddy D: 00:02:42

So how long have you owned your own agency now?

Catherine Oaks: 00:02:45

This agency, which is was the second one, because the first one happened just before the 2008 crash, which took everything away from me, just like a lot of other people. This one I've had now since 2017. So it's going to be, it was September 2017. So it's going to be almost six years now.

Freddy D: 00:03:03

Okay, excellent. So what can businesses do from a marketing perspective that You know that they're missing out on or they're not doing a good job of doing marketing that's going to expand their brand awareness.

Catherine Oaks: 00:03:19

A lot of companies make the mistake of talking about themselves too much. You see a lot of websites where they display their products, their services. So we speak about them. That in itself does not attract a lot of people because you are not putting customers first. Everything in your communication needs to be customer centric. Someone is going to come to you because they have faith that you will be solving the problem. So you have to speak benefits. It's benefits. That's important. What's also very important is to determine what is your main product? What is your core product? What is it and how is it different from anywhere else on anyone else on the market to be put on your top banner on your website or the top areas of your marketing materials? Because you have to remember one thing. People have no time nowadays. In average, it takes people about three seconds to make an opinion of your company on your website. So if in three seconds you don't grab their attention, they're gone. We just don't have time to read. They don't read. It's simple. People do not read anymore. And then they have the attention. Yeah, we always laugh at that, but it's true. They have the attention sparrow of a goldfish, even less than that. The goldfish had about eight seconds. It's proven that humans attention in 2023. It's about four you go. If you don't grab four seconds, you lose po it hurts your company. It that's very damaging. So when I said, you have to define your unique selling proposition, i. e. USP, and what problems you're going to solve for your audience. And then once that is determined, you have to develop the confidence, self confidence, that you can deliver. Your clients are going to want to see results. So you have to provide statistical data showing progress in the right direction. And then you have to leverage technology. Nowadays, we are incredibly lucky to live in the world of the metaverse. Although there is a lot of questioning about new technologies, just like we had a lot of questioning with the internet 25 years ago. It's really critical now that businesses stay aware of the options that they are going to have. Very soon they have them now, but very soon they're going to be forced to change the way they market themselves because their competitors will have embraced new technologies like virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, everybody's talking about this, and they will have leveraged those technologies while at the same time grabbing market shares. So if you react too late, it's going to take you too long to get to that same level.

Freddy D: 00:06:18

You'll miss the window of opportunity, it'll have gone by.

Catherine Oaks: 00:06:22

Not going to miss the boat,

Freddy D: 00:06:23

Yes. Yeah, and as you mentioned, I think a lot of companies get caught up and says I just got the stuff and it's all good and stuff, but it really needs to evolve marketing needs to be continually changing, adapting with the times and the approaches and the messaging needs to be refreshed on a regular basis where people build it. And, I've heard in the past where, people says I used to show up on the front page of, Google now I'm on page 27 and that's when's the last time you up posted anything to your website? About three years ago. There you go. So it's a consistent and constant effort. It's being very light on your feet because you need to adapt very quickly. You don't have months or years to adapt anymore because the speed train is going at a higher speed nowadays. So first you have to educate yourself to really understand your options. Then you have to bring with you the right partners that can help you along the way, establish the new strategies that will take you where you need to be. And then you have to implement properly. So you have to have the right team with you to be able to implement a team you can trust. Because there is no way you can do everything on your own. You have to have the right team to put in place your strategy and your tactics and ensure it's done with professionalism and it is constantly measured. So Catherine, how can, we're talking about market hustle, how can a small entrepreneur, small business, medium sized business take marketing to engage with their customers and create and convert those customers, those business partners into superfans that in turn are out expanding that brand awareness for that particular business.

Catherine Oaks: 00:08:14

First of all, you have to have a very clear message that resonates with your core audience's needs. Once you have that message, you have to spread the message on all social media channels and communicate every day. And that's, it's not just once a day when you launch communicate two or three times a day, use videos, use audios, use mediums that most people don't want to use because we just don't want to be on video for some reason, or they just don't want to make the effort of. Developing an audio message, so you have to do what others don't and leverage social media. Social media is very inexpensive. You don't have to buy paid ads. You can make organic social media by posting with the right hashtags by commenting on people's feeds that are your target audience by engaging others. We've posts that are not just sales oriented, but posts that are going to provide inspiration that are going to entertain them because people need that nowadays. They need to be entertained too, so that they feel better. Once you allow your clients to feel better, guess what? Everybody's emotional. They're going to talk about you. And this is how you're going to generate those super fans that you're talking about. And, but key is consistency. You have to do it. Day in day out. That's beyond the network.

Freddy D: 00:09:31

So for example, on the social media, you start getting a super fan is someone that would start reposting because they resonate with your message. So now they're reposting it to their audience and their people. And so now some you're growing. Brand awareness is growing exponentially because you've got, let's say, 55 super fans that really like the messaging and the service and the business and the products that, you know, whether it's a service or product that your business is providing. And now they're starting to promote the messaging to their audience. And let's just say that. You have a following of, let's say, a thousand people, I'll just keep it conservative, and they have a thousand people. So you've got five superfans that reposted that, now you've got an audience of 6, 000 people.

Catherine Oaks: 00:10:20

That's exactly what it is, and that's very important. There's one thing I think is even more important, is that you have to have a personality. You cannot blend and be just like everybody else. You have to have a personality, which means you have to have self confidence, you have to know yourself, and you cannot be afraid of being a little bit eccentric. Because people like that, they want to be entertained. Remember if you're flat boring, nobody's going to follow you. If you're a little eccentric and fun and you go over the edges a little bit while still being very correct. I'm not telling people to not be correct and being very ethical and respectful. But if you find a way to, to establish a personality that's unique and that will be attractive, then your super friends are going to grow a lot faster.

Freddy D: 00:11:06

Absolutely. That's why, my business name is Frederick and for this podcast and stuff is the Freddie D dude. He's much more fun, much more relaxed, business is, the tie and everything else. And here we're having a show. We're having fun and we're educating people on how to grow their businesses and build their own superfans. So it's

Catherine Oaks: 00:11:26

Very important to be approachable. Yes.

Freddy D: 00:11:29

So what do you think about rewards programs and retention programs that from a marketing perspective that businesses could be doing or should be doing to retain clients and get repeat business out of those customers?

Catherine Oaks: 00:11:43

It depends on the business. If it's a B2B, maybe you have to have a rewards program that's different, obviously. But I'm always favorable of using rewards program. People love rewards, or even referral programs. People love to get something in exchange of sharing somebody else's information. So these are additional benefits. That maybe others don't offer and another way of differentiating yourself and bringing value and rewarding saying thank you with a little gift. People love that. Just, we're still big kids. We will always be big kids, whether we are five or 95 years old. So you have to play those cards.

Freddy D: 00:12:25

Because yeah, loyalty program is a great way to say thank you to a unique way to say thank you to the customer, especially if you're the B2C type of a business, you keep them there, but you got to make it work so the loyalty program is worthwhile and the goal and the achievement of. The prize, whatever it is achievable. It's not something that, is designed as a gimmick to where, the chances of really getting the reward is slim and none versus, oh, wow, I come here five times and I get something out of it. I'll be back here five times,

Catherine Oaks: 00:13:02

it has to be simple and achievable. Yes.

Freddy D: 00:13:05

That's important. What about when you look at email marketing and engagement of that, how important is that today? And do you think cold email marketing is coming back?

Catherine Oaks: 00:13:20

I think it has to be part of your marketing mix because it's an additional touch point. And the good thing about emails is that people passively get messages in their inbox. They don't have to take any initiatives themselves. It's a passive way of communicating. Now, a lot of people don't like it. That's okay. They can delete it. Even if you delete the email that you're sending, they're not going to see your name. It is brand awareness. It can be positive, right? Like I said, they want to delete it, they delete it. So I always recommend including email in your marketing mix because it's an additional touch point. And the more touch points you have in marketing, the better. However, it has to be consistent. All those messages that you're sending out, whether it's on social media, via YouTube, with with PowerPoint presentations or emails, you have to have that consistent core message. Consistent branding because this is how people will recognize you and this is how you will build credibility. That's very important. This is why I always tell my clients before you start a program or strategy or communication strategy, you need to have a brand book. You need to know exactly what to say, when to say it. You have to have your own style. You have to use the same colors. You have to make sure everything is presented in the right way, because this is part of your brand and the more you follow your brand. The more successful you will be.

Freddy D: 00:14:47

Yeah, no, absolutely. That's absolutely 100 percent correct. And I think another part, component in the engagement of various marketing channels is people forget to use, we've got all the social media stuff and all these other tools, but there's an old platform that works very well, and that is Mail. And, mail still works because it gets to the person, there's a couple countries, I think it's Canada and Germany, that you can't do cold email suits against the law. And, but you can do anybody and that will get into their email, their mailbox, and most likely people don't get real mail anymore.

Catherine Oaks: 00:15:32

And so it gets open. And so you have a solid chance of being seen.

Freddy D: 00:15:37

Absolutely. That's something that most companies don't use anymore. So if you have, I do a couple of oversized mirrors that are very beautiful, very attractive, that communicate the message clearly. And they are so beautiful, so big that people don't throw them away in the trash. Very often they keep them on their desk. And guess what? That's something that your competitors probably don't do. And when you're top of mind all the time, you have a better chance of getting some business.

Catherine Oaks: 00:16:05

Yeah, absolutely. It's I think direct mail is overlooked in a lot of cases. And postcards is another good platform, I think, not the smaller ones, but a bigger size postcard, because at least it gets you a chance to get, someone's going to look at it and okay, they may toss it aside, but it's still registered and got the message across. And they may say second time they see you at night, you hit them with an email marketing or they see on social media. I was like, Oh yeah, I remember that. I saw that company someplace. No, that's true. This is why I mentioned each time. The average person reacts after touch point number nine. It takes an average nine touch points for someone to start remembering you. So people remember that because a lot of people give up after touch point number three. And they say marketing is not working. That's the reaction we have. So this is unreasonable type of reaction. It's it's not grounded on the right type of strategy. And it's something that needs to be rethought when they have this type of Belief, right? Nine touch points. I'm going to remember nine touch points.

Freddy D: 00:17:15

No, that's very good. So how important is it? If a company is looking to create superfans, basically brand advocates are going to be going out there, promoting their business, which would be, customers, business partners, employees, and stuff like that. How important is tracking your efforts in your marketing initiative?

Catherine Oaks: 00:17:37

Tracking is always important, no matter what, because whether you're looking for investors or you're looking for partners or you're looking for influencers that can become the source of your super fans, they're going to ask you for statistics. They are they're going to want to see the amount of people who come to your website every day and where those people come from. They want to know how old those people are, if they are part of your target audience. So they are going to ask for data that needs to be organized. If you don't have it, they won't talk with you. It's as simple as that. So that's something that you need to do regularly and keep track of in reports and in a way that's ready to be shared professionally.

Freddy D: 00:18:18

So what are some things that a small business, you've got the solopreneur, you've got the small business that's, 10 people in your organization, how can they manage their marketing efforts themselves?

Catherine Oaks: 00:18:29

Can tell you, I've launched my company on my own, no seed capital, nothing. I did everything by myself. You, if you really want something, you find a way.

Freddy D: 00:18:39

What tools what tools could they be using?

Catherine Oaks: 00:18:41

You can nowadays with artificial intelligence, you have incredible platforms out there available. That's going to save you so much time. Chad GPT is one of them. You have content creation tools, design tools that do the work for you. All the AI tools are there. You have thousands of them nowadays. It's like having 25 assistants that are working with you, saving you huge amounts of time. I did not have that when I launched my company. I did everything on my own. I learned. You learn Photoshop, you learn Illustrator, you now Canva. Canva is an incredible tool to create your own graphics. You can even create videos using Canva. You can create audio using Canva. These are tools out there that are really easy. They are very user friendly. They don't require a lot of training in order for you to use them. And YouTube. Everybody knows YouTube, you can train yourself on YouTube. There's a tropic on everything on YouTube. So when there's a way when there's a will, there's a way and too many people give up because it's so difficult. Yes, for sure. Most businesses don't make it because it's hard. So if you want to, you can learn and you can make anything happen. Then what's really critical is to work on your mentor, because I just said it's very difficult and because it's very difficult. People give up. You have to have the mentor of a warrior. Where you have to push every barrier in front of you, every wall in front of you, you have to make a conscious decision that you will not give up because you will be tempted to give up 10 million times. So surround yourself with positive people, have the right mindset, develop self confidence, work on yourself. Have a healthy lifestyle because this is going to take everything you have is going to take your strength, your mental strength, your physical strength. So you have to establish a healthy environment at all levels. If you want to succeed and determine that you will reach your goals at the same time, be flexible because you're. Vision or your tactics may have to change. So don't establish tactics that are not going to change. You cannot have something that's set in stone. You have to be flexible. You have to make some adjustments along the way. So I think that's really the recipe for success. But the most important thing is to have the right mindset.

Freddy D: 00:20:56

MIndset. And then it's, that's everything. Mindset is everything. But at the same time, I think that you have to track what you're doing to see if it's working. And if it's not working, you also have to be, be able to have the wherewithal to make the decision, say, okay, the strategy that I'm using, I've tracked it and I've, I've done my Google analytics, I've done my, I looked at my Facebook marketing activities and stuff like that, and I'm not getting the traction, I'm not getting the conversions and therefore that effort. Needs to be scrapped and I need to start all over again and go a different approach because that didn't work where I think a lot of people get stuck and say I put all this effort, I put all this money. It's got to work. It's got to work and let it run a little longer. And now they're just wasting money and are hurting their brand versus helping their brand.

Catherine Oaks: 00:21:51

That's so true. That's so true. I've seen many cases where people have invested a lot of money and they are not willing to adjust anything. And then we think it's inevitable. They're going to sink because especially nowadays, things change at the speed of light. So like I mentioned before, you have to be flexible on your feet. You have to be adaptable,

Freddy D: 00:22:12

Right, and that's the thing that I think that's what a lot of businesses make mistake is that they don't, they're too afraid to Say, okay, that didn't work, and admit that it didn't work, and make an adjustment, regroup. Go back out, change the messaging, improve the messaging, make the messaging more as we talked earlier, customer centric. Not about them because nobody cares about them. And, but everybody cares about, what are you going to do for me? How are you going to help me? How are you going to solve my problem? That's what everybody's at. And so the messaging has to come across that way to. Get somebody to make the phone call, and then more importantly, okay, so they found your website, they made the phone call, they filled out the form, the next, that's all the marketing, but then. The response has to be the same messaging within the people that the the team at the company has to have the right attitude and the right mindset to continue that messaging of being customer centric.

Catherine Oaks: 00:23:15

That's important. And on top of that, you have to have the right management style. You have to be themselves. You have to allow people to be creative and not watch every single move they make and criticize everything, single thing they do, right? That's the difference. I always compare, there's a difference between Apple and Microsoft almost, I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea. It's, it, when you have a management style that allow people to be creative and to feel secure in their environment, it's a game changer.

Freddy D: 00:23:46

Oh, absolutely. Because, yYou can have the person that handles that inquiry, and they feel unappreciated they haven't been recognized for any of their efforts and stuff like that, so they're gonna they're told for that prospect that's actually looking to potentially do business with you, and that could turn that person off, and it's just all that marketing effort that was just done, the money that was spent, the effort goes out the window, thank you. Because you have a begruntled employee because, you didn't recognize them, didn't appreciate them, and they feel underappreciated. And there's a disconnect. And so you can have all the best marketing and the best approach, but you have to have the team mentally on the same page. So

Catherine Oaks: 00:24:31

true on the same page and motivated. It's part of the the success picture, right?

Freddy D: 00:24:37

Yes. It's important. Yes. It's very motivated. Yeah. Yeah. So the company has to have their own super fans with, of the employees. So it comes across to the new prospective customer that, this is an exciting company. As people were excited to work there, there was an example that somebody brought up to me is you go into a circle K gas station. They have them here. I don't know if they have enough in Nevada, but you go there and the person they don't even say hi to you. They don't say nothing. It just you go in. There's a cutie, which is a different a gas station. You walk in and the tenant might be working with somebody look up and say, Hello, welcome to cutie, and it's just a whole different Ambiance and just that little thing is a huge marketing aspect. That's why you look at, a QT gas station here in Arizona. And I think there's there in a few other states, they're always packed. And you look at some of the other stations that are not, and this is just simple gas station level stuff, but, they don't have the same level of customers. Everything

Catherine Oaks: 00:25:38

trickles down from the top. Yep. So you don't have the right management. Yep. Yep. It's all important. Catherine, how can people find you? They can go to slicexr. com. It's sliicexr. com. Slice with two I's. And we'll have them grab a slice of their market. Everything is in there to connect with me.

Freddy D: 00:26:02

Okay. And do you have anything that that you're offering any of our viewers and listeners?

Catherine Oaks: 00:26:08

Yeah, so people can send me an email at info at slicexr. com and I can provide them with a deck that gives them the guidelines to establish a presence in the metaverse.

Freddy D: 00:26:17

Okay. All right. Great. Catherine, thank you very much for being on this show. Appreciate it. It was great conversation. Great talking to you. And I'm sure we'll be seeing each other again on the show down the road. And thank you again.

Catherine Oaks: 00:26:31

Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.