This week, Griffin Jones hosts a Marketing Secrets Shorts episode, disseminating branding phases. Whether you are considering a rebrand for your clinic, beginning de novo, or somewhere in between, it is important to know where to start out if you want to end up with a marketable brand in the end. Listen now for tips and tricks to properly phasing your branding efforts, on Inside Reproductive Health with Griffin Jones.
Transcript
Griffin Jones 00:04
Here's a tip on differentiators, guys, if the next person next to you can say it, it's not a differentiator, I'm going to give you some marketing gold inside reproductive health audience before we start making an editorial transition, there's gonna be less fertility bridge content, more content about news coverage and fields of reporting news stories, as they have a list of new podcasts with guests. But I want to bring you more news coverage because that's what people are asking for. And we don't have a Forbes of our field, you don't have a Bloomberg of our field, we don't have that trade media outlet. It's always been the insight, reproductive health podcast, I want to bring that to you in other formats, in weekly digest and in the podcast, as well. And then others, to the extent that we get more people behind it and build out more, but the types of things we want to report on is Mark Segal stepping down as CEO of us fertility, John Pardew is stepping down as CEO of CCRM fertility, what does that mean? People doing fundraisers, and closes like engaged MD closing around recently, and so I want to bring that type of news to you, because you all are hungry for it. And for the most part, it's not being reported in other media outlets. So you're gonna have less of this type of marketing advice, or the things that fertility bridge does, those brands are starting to separate. But I want to give you some brand wisdom before I do. And I want you to do this and think about this, whether you use fertility bridge, my firm or any other I don't care, I don't care guys, this is the way it works.
When I talk about Kindbody, I'm not talking about frickin’ yellow colors, I'm talking about the power of Apple, the power of things, the power of Nike coming to the fertility field, and many of you are positioned on the complete opposite spectrum. I'm not saying that you have to go to that level of global consumer branding, most of you wouldn't be able to even if you want it to cost a ton of money. It takes a ton of effort and institutional structure to be able to accomplish it. But you can at least make sure that you're not positioned like an old general practice firm. When do I want to go there? Or do I want to go to the place that looks like it is most in line with my values and what I'm comfortable with. So I'm going to phase it out for you. And, and I want you to approach it in this phase. Because you can err on either side, when you start to do a brand, you can err on the side of the creatives and doing all of the work and you get something that isn't you or you can err on the side of you feel like you're doing everything. And like what did I even hire these designers, this brand manager, these writers, this creative team for?
So the first thing is positioning has to be done. I recently had a client ask that when we're talking about core values, isn't this like this like kind of like millennial fluffy stuff? It is if you don't do anything with it, if it's just words on paper than it is the first thing that you have to do is say these are our practices, core values, our purpose our differentiators. Here's a tip on differentiators: guess if the next person next to you can say it. It's not a differentiator. If the next person next to us said yeah, we offer personalized care to Yeah, we offer state of the art technology. Yeah, we have the best doctors. That's not a differentiator. A differentiator is something that someone else can't empirically say. We were the first egg freezing practice in town. We do the most cycles in this marketplace. We're the biggest independent practice in this state, whatever it might be. Those things are your differentiators. And with regard to your values, your purpose, your mission statement. If it feels fluffy to you, make it less make it less than but make it the things that you can point to if this person isn't these things, then they have no business working at our firm. They have no business working In our practice that is, and, and you should have no less than three of them, you should have no more than seven.
Here's a tip for you too. This is what I do with our clients. So clients that are spending more money on branding, we will actually talk with employees, and we'll do surveys, and we'll do surveys with patients and get them to sign they have authorizations that we can talk to them all that sort of thing actually have a number of the creative team talk to these folks. But for clients that spend less on branding, we will go through fertility IQ, we'll go through Google reviews will go through Glassdoor if they have enough reviews and see what people have said about them. And then when there is something that they can use, that is that is said enough, this is a frequent pattern, everyone talks about how this practice to hold your hand through the way and maybe that becomes a something that has to compassion become your core values.
Conversely, if they do something, that if there's a common pattern of you know, your your, your nurses dropped the ball or, you know, an example of you know, they they were slammed, were slammed so busy that we don't get back to people, we want to have a value that addresses that. So that people you're getting people in that aren't totally floored by it. So if you, if you're if you have the type of managerial behavior where you just tell people how it is, you have to have some type of value for directness, that you're getting people that that are aligned with that. So that's your position, you do that, first, you do that with your partners, that has to be done by the Chief Executive, the managing partner, whoever the senior partner is, has to be done at the very top marketing director can't do it for a CMO can't do it for you, a firm can't do it for you, you have to do the position. Those a firm can facilitate it for you. But you have to do it yourself.
Now, when you move on to the actual brand, the first thing that you want to have done is have the creative should be doing an assessment and they should be coming to you with more specific questions. Remember, the erring on either side, you can err on the side of the creative team is doing everything for you. They're suggesting everything and it's not your brand, it's something that just gets slapped on you. Or you're doing everything to change that color, change that word. And then it's like, Why did I even hire these people? And so because you can do that they should be coming to you with specific questions. I notice when we ask, you've got somebody new uncrating for example, we ask general questions. That is, is the client off? pisses me off, too. It's a bit counterintuitive, because normally the more open ended questions that you ask the more of a true authentic listener, you are right. And often the more someone feels hurt, because you're not coming in with any assumptions. But when you do that, and branding it, it especially with physicians and people that this is not their main thing that they want to be doing. They feel less heard, like, why don't you know that? Why? What did we hired you for? What does that even mean?
If you watch the movie, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, it's Morgan Spurlock, the filmmaker from Supersize Me. And he does a movie entirely about product placement. And they go to the big creative agency in Pittsburgh. And they're asking him these very open ended questions like what does that mean to you? How do you feel when you see this and his brain starts to spin? So I try to pair up creative team down more than they probably like. But if they had their way it would be infinite and the client doesn't want that. So you want to have an assessment where they're coming to you with some specific questions, not so open ended a couple open ended questions and not the infinite number of questions to six or eight questions, and then you can go down some rabbit holes. And they should also be coming with what they're ready to challenge you about your brand. If there's something about the logo that they see, not right but the marketplace, your colors, your design, your messaging, they should be able to have that in the brand assessment that discussion happens after position, that it's what helps to establish the voice in the image later on, to done positioning, then you've done an assessment which leads you into voice and image. And it's good to voice first come up with that mission statement. They can come up with options for you or you can do a workshop and come up with a tagline or a slogan for you. And then come up with your brand voice. We do taglines and slogans for people we have taglines and slogans for both inside reproductive health and for fertility bridge. And they're different the slogan, it's like the rah rah. And the tagline is literally what you do that you can explain to somebody. It's never heard of you in one sentence ever inside reproductive health. Our slogan is takeaways every time the rah-rah sounds good, if you know it inside reproductive health is, you know, that means you don't own reproductive inside reproductive health. that would just be a platitude, too. So the tagline is the media outlet for the business side of infertility. Oh, I know what that is tagline, literal slogan, rah rah. And your brand voice. We've done big brand voice sections in brand guides before. And we've also done smaller ones, for most of you for dealing feel the smaller ones are better, what happens most of the time is writers look at a big brand voice. And they end up not using it because it's not communicated what they're supposed to write. So we make a page, half a page, sometimes this how we sound and, and then make sure that your writers actually use that anybody writing for you, whether it's web content, or social media, or for stuff you're doing internally, make sure that they actually use it the length isn't, isn't the biggest deal. Like, yes, I can see why Disney would have a big brand voice. But for most of you smaller, and then just make sure that they use it. So you've done a positioning, you've assessed your brand. You've done your voice, and you're proving all of these in sections, because our goal is that you have a really nice brand guide. Before you implement anything you don't want to be not implementing. While you're doing it. You're not like, Oh, we got our slogan, let's update this on the website, or we have our mission statement. Let's make sure we got this up on the wall right now not doing any of that until your whole brand is done in that guide. You're getting your Bible first before you go out and and start changing everything. Otherwise, you go into revision hell, and everyone will hate you.
Once you've done voice, now you're ready to do image, the first thing should be your image guy. And yeah, taking photos or doing videos. At this point, it's just this is what our images look like. This is the style that we use our lab posts, we don't use our lab coats, we take candid fun ones or we don't. You should have images that represent that style. And that should be your guide before you start doing video and photo. Do your fonts and your colors separately isolate the variables. I've seen clients and creatives do this opposite that they've each erred on either side, the best way to think of this is you make you pick out your dress first positioning, then you pick out your shoes, then you pick out your belt, then you pick up the accessories not have to wait for to see which one looks for best with this one. It's which shoes look best with this dress right now which belt looks best with this shoes. And this. And this, I understand that some of you are going to buck from that. And there's probably some brands where it makes sense to buck from that for the vast majority, especially those multiple partners having say, do it that way, pick up your fonts, pick up your colors, pick out your image guy and do this all before you do the next phase. Because you will you'll you'll run into less of those variables.
So when you're looking at fonts when I have our creatives present fonts, I have them present the fonts in the clients normal colors or in there or in black and white. And then when I have them do colors I have them do with their existing font in their existing logo. So they're not, they're not seeing so many variables at once. Okay, I like those fonts. I like those colors. So, if you've improved your positioning, you had an assessment that set you up for your voice and you went through and you improved your voice and your mission statement, your tagline your slogan, your voice guide, then you've approved then you went on to the next phase with the image and you prove Jeremy's guide your fonts or colors, then you can start to make some of the the templates and And that is a great brand story.
If you know that you're going to be wanting doing video soon, and I recommend most people do have a brand story for videos, it's awesome that gets everybody excited, it can last for years, it's worth spending a ton of money on. And it's worth closing your office on Thursday or Friday. And coming in on a weekend, if you have to do it, as long as you do it, right. So that's where the brain storyboard is, if you if you're going to make a video about your brand story, build out the whole storyboard first, prove that first. That's where your logo your redoing logo, that's where that's going to come into play is that now you have a new logo. And because you've already approved the fonts have already proved the color. So you're just looking at what any approved your voice, so the logo should be representative of that it should, it should be some kind of symbol for that, even if you're just updating your logo. So we have some clients that would really like this, though, tell us more about what you'd like to buy, tell us more. And then and then we'll often end up updating. So you know, we'll come to them with the design principles or other things to consider in the marketplace. And and then we're updating it based on net. So when when you're approving your logo, it should be you're looking at the logo, and you're not thinking about all the other potential things because it will it will drive you off track.
And that's when you start creating templates before you start implementing. And this is the web page mock up this is the social media mock up our business cards. And so at the end of this, you want your final brand guide, it can be maybe 12 pages you have most of you probably should be more than 20. There are some of you that might have really long brand guides for those of you that are like consumer brands, global consumer brands, but that's only a few of you listening for the most part, it's going to be somewhere between 10 and 20 pages for your final brand guide. The point is that people use it, it's not. It's not how long it is. And that's worth spending time on it's worth spending some money on. And then you can implement those things, we do it in that order, you got to have a brand you're happy with that your position well, but against the consumer global brands coming in, you don't look like an old doctor's office, old pharmacy or whatever kind of company you are. But you also haven't just copied somebody else and you haven't forced yourself so much into the rah rah or the fluffy that doesn't feel like you do it in that order to thoughtfully spend some money spend some time but those are the phases you do those things you're going to have a successful brand.
So I hope this has been useful too. And if you like some of my tips on it, just send me an email Griffin at fertility bridge calm. And I hope you enjoy this episode because there's only gonna be a couple more like them. And as we start to cover more of the news content in separate the fertility bridge, and inside reproductive brands, some more anti reproductive health brands some more. I should be reading from my guide.
18:22
You've been listening to the inside reproductive health podcast with Griffin Jones. If you're ready to take action to make sure that your practice thrives beyond the revolutionary changes that are happening in our field and in society. Visit fertility bridge.com To begin the first piece of the fertility marketing system, the goal and competitive diagnostic. Thank you for listening to inside reproductive health