Not Knowing Your Ideal Customer Is Costing You Time, Money, and Customers w/ Aaron Orendorff, CMO @Recart

Trevor: 0:00

Yo, what's going on everybody? Welcome to the unstoppable Marketer Podcast with me as always is my lovely co host who cut his hair. Mark goldheart What's up, Mark?

Mark: 0:11

Oh, I'm doing great. I like how it's changed from the the one with beautiful hair to the one who cut his hair.

Trevor: 0:17

Yeah, you're just getting closer and closer to me.

Mark: 0:20

I'm just you know, I did see some thinning out maybe so. My, my hair days are numbered.

Trevor: 0:29

Dude, if you're in your 30s and you're not bald, and I just think like, you're just, you're good. You're probably gonna like, You're gonna be fine. Me It happened when I was like, probably 2425. Like happened to coincide with like when I had my first kid to the animal life defining moment. I don't know if it really was a life defining moment. It really was. I thought to myself, Okay, I can never let myself go. I've lost my hair. So now I can't let myself go. Physically, I gotta stay in better shape. I can't have that against me. So that's, uh, that's that's what I but I luckily I nap a nap up a life too. So she just has to love me now at this point, right? Yeah. Well, dude, I'm excited for today. We got an awesome guest. Um, and I'm I guess let's just introduce him.

Unknown: 1:16

Yeah, let's do it.

Trevor: 1:17

Let's do it. Let's do it. Okay, drumroll. Drumroll, please. Our guest today is Aaron orendorff Aaron Orndorff, who is currently the head of marketing for an SMS technical are one of them as they say I'm a technical for an SMS provider called Rijkaard. X Shopify x common thread collective. This man's rap sheet is legit. You go look at his LinkedIn profile his resume, it's legit Aaron welcome. What's up, buddy? I'm gonna

Aaron: 1:51

pull the ultimate. No, we curse on the show. Right? That's fine. Sure. Okay,

Trevor: 1:55

we'll just make it explicit. You know, but you can hear us Can I tell you something

Aaron: 1:58

blue asshole move. And I'm going to reveal like, do I have such a glorious head of hair underneath this after you're such a jerk? I know. Look at Yes, I know. I wear hats constantly because I'm lazy. And then I've got my like, lose 10 years and get it all styled up moolah. Get

Trevor: 2:22

that do man you can be in a 70s movie with that kind of hair. Like typically

Aaron: 2:27

I like to ingratiate myself to the host, but I'm just gonna side with Mark this time. And I really pour it on thick.

Trevor: 2:32

We're co hosts. So you got it. You had to pick one side. Right?

Mark: 2:36

And Trevor needs a little humble pie. Everyone's Yeah, you know? Yeah. Oh, don't we all

Trevor: 2:42

just is what it is. You know, I guess it's funny you say you asked to swear on this podcast. So you know, you know, teach their own. But I actually noticed this. So the other day, my son comes into my room. Well, we put them all to bed, right? And my wife and I just got into bed. And we when our kids get a certain age, we give them all an Alexa for their room to listen to audiobooks, like they so they fall, they'll fall asleep to an audiobook, you know, and they just love it. It's like their jam

Mark: 3:14

story is that you guys are just CIA informants and just want to make sure they have direct access to your kids. Right?

Trevor: 3:20

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And so all of a sudden my son just like comes like barging into our room like scares us to death. And he's just got this. He's like grinning from ear to ear. And he's like, yeah, he's holding up like his his wrist like this because of debt. Debt. Guess what? We're, what is this? What am I? What am I doing? And I'm like, Dude, I don't know what you're doing. My son's eight, by the way. That look, look at this. And I'm like, dude, dude, I don't His name is Jude. I'm like, Dude, I have no idea what you're doing, bro. And he goes, Mark's mom. And I go Mark's mom. And he goes, Yeah, Mark's mom, she broke her wrist. And marks marks. Sunset yucky when he saw the wrist. And I'm like, What? What is he talking about? And I'm like, why are you saying this? He's like, the unstoppable Marketer Podcast. And I'm like, What do you mean? And apparently, he's he got on. He's been listening to every episode of ours on his own on his own falls asleep to it. And Mark I can't remember if you if you can remember this mark, but you were taught you have like your mom happened to break her wrist and she kind of like wrist

Mark: 4:21

and we showed our kids that picture. And he didn't know what to say. He's like, is that yucky dad? Yeah, because, like bent out of place.

Trevor: 4:31

He just busted up when he heard that part. Just thought it was the funniest thing that your son would say that and so now Yeah, so yes. And every now and every time now, when somebody or me swears on the podcast. He'll come in and be like, Dad, you swore did

Aaron: 4:45

oh, so we might get chastised. So you're done.

Trevor: 4:48

So I had to do a shout out I gotta do a shout out to him. Dude, you're the man. You're the best. He's gonna hear that and he's gonna go like Berserk guaranteed. So now

Aaron: 4:57

I'm what a little asshole because I can't out that I've got three daughters 1012 and 16. And they could give zero apps about what I do or who I hang out with. Every once in a while I'll wander into some connection. It's typically with YouTube, like, back when I was at Shopify Plus the purple folks, I got to interview them. We did a couple of articles together. And that was one of those moments of like, oh, the egg matches people with the Sasquatch and the denona. Yeah, all right. I got a moment. I got like, I have a few of those breakthrough from time to time, but they're so rare. So yeah. Judy, and little jerk.

Trevor: 5:40

He's the Caesar stud. Well, that errand Dude, I'm so stoked to have you on this has been a long time coming. I cannot for the life. Oh, I just remember how we got connected. If I recall, I always do this. I always try to find like Barker, I tried to find a connection to the guest. So it's not like super random that I was like, Hey, Aaron, you want to jump on? Right? I got connected through you. Because I created a piece of content. And I just just let everybody know, I am a Rijkaard user. Right, straight up I am. And I just happen to be creating a piece of content like hey, here are some like tools that if you're in a certain, you know, style business, you can't live without you. And I think I just highlighted Rijkaard. Yeah, and you had reached out like this is awesome. Thank you so much. And that was I got the introduction. I wasn't meaning to do that at all just simply just, Hey, I like this tool and this is why

Aaron: 6:35

do you remember so this item maybe this goes into our first marketing lesson unstoppable marketer right because one of my keys to being an unstoppable marketer, I don't know if you do this on the show. What are the fundamental ingredients is borderline ne full on shamelessness when something out there is good and you can use it? Because I don't know if you remember that experience. But I think we got flagged over the weekend. Somebody brought it up in our slack because I'm barely on Tik Tok. So someone else in our marketing team, wonderful woman named Isla I spotted it grabbed it. And I was like, download personal account, Twitter, LinkedIn branded account, Twitter, LinkedIn, turn it into a thread, go tag all of the other brands that you're associated with, push it out into the email, like we just took this one piece of content was my ham on it. And I was so nervous because like, I'm just doing it. And let's see how the dude response Yeah, I had no idea it was gonna turn into like, I just it's so funny to level up. I have nerves in those sorts of moments. Sure. I'm just gonna go do it. I'm just on it. Let's let's push it out. This is quality. Especially because it's unprompted, UGC, in that sense, and your real customer at both at an agency level as well as your brand's level. Yeah, I are very nervous. And you were so gracious about it. Now that I know you of course, you're now that I know you. It makes all the sense in the world. But it meant a lot to get that and it meant even more that you didn't take me to task when I check your stuff and put it everywhere and possibly

Trevor: 8:04

actually, you guys owe me like $500 for that. So no, what's what's really cool about that, like just this is just like a lesson in and of whatever you want to whatever lesson you can, if you are listening to this, you can take whatever lessons you want out of this. What's cool about that is like so I created a piece of content, zero strings attached but that's just like who I am like I don't do paid content. So there's it's always zero strings attached for me, right? Like my content is like I just want to get the most value to a customer or consumer or listener of whatever right. But since that has happened like we have done lots of business together Yeah, I've been on two or three webinars with you. You I flew out to Portland and you and me went and did breakfast so I've since like met you in person there's a lot can happen through content creation and and just through like, like you said, just like risking it like listen, I'm gonna post this about it like I would not know who you guys were or anything like that. Had you guys not posted anything, right? Like you wouldn't be would probably not be chatting

Aaron: 9:09

and people get out there and go hard if you smell like you get that instinct of this has legs. This is something this is a person I want to get up in their world. Ask for forgiveness later. Just go for every once in a while you'll run into somebody who does the kind of be a jerk about it. But for the most part, it's just go get it and I'll and I used to have this little phrase so that I would use and I'm starting to resurrect it in my own life. So I when I started I had no business marketing. I was grew up in a self consciously atheistic home. I ended up having what I would have at the time described as a conversion experience when I was about 18 years old. I then got deployed in the military a couple of times use that to pay for college and during one of the employments, I caught a cut that theological bug. So I ended up going to seminary got a master's degree Master's in divinity, built this whole previous life up and then burnt it down about a decade ago, like really successfully burnt it down. And when I went to what am I going to do next? I knew I could write good. And so I started reverse engineering by examining articles from entrepreneur from Fast Company from Forbes from Business Insider, and with zero effing credibility, I started cold pitching editors, full articles, written with the right word count, interlinks, to their site, etc, etc. And I say all of that to be what I would tell myself before hitting send on all of these things. And when I started actually pitching clients and getting clients and raising rates, every time I had a scary thing to do, I would tell myself, let's get rejected, before I clicked send. And it's this exact same thing with fear, fear. Fear is the thing that's going to hold us back. So whatever you can do to, to rig the game in your favor, if you have to call it line yourself, if you want. For me, it was making, let's just make rejection the goal. And if I pretend for a moment, that rejection is the goal that gets me over the hump, to just publish, send, post, get out there, make the call, send the email, all of these things that in its exact same piece, when I saw your stuff come across, I was like, Alright, I'm nervous. I got to fit in my stomach. Can I go this hard on somebody else's stuff? But that's paid off so immensely throughout my career, to not let the fear because the fear is the thing that's going to hold us back stop you from just doing something just taking the next step.

Trevor: 11:46

Yeah, like I pick, I'll pick failure. 10 times out of 10 over regret, failure over regret every single day. Right, dude, I thought

Aaron: 11:57

you were going a different direction. I thought you're gonna say failure over success. And I was gonna kind of give that a little bit of pushback of that. That no, like, Are you kidding me? No. Might you go wants to success at once the numbers? Yes. And so does my life and my monetary the considerations all want that. But failure over regret? To have a

Mark: 12:21

big that was a big thing. My high school rugby team, right, so I played for Yes, I played rugby in high school for it's a club called Highland rugby, and national championship club, right? So we we would win and win the national championship pretty often I want to as a senior, but the coach there wouldn't really ingrain in people, the mindset where it's like you either have the pain of hard work, and failure or the pain of regret. And the pain of regret lasts a lifetime. But the pain of hard work or failure only lasts for a moment. So that's the difference. Totally, because you'll never know what could have been with regret and inaction.

Aaron: 13:05

Everything that's cliche and do that drips of cliche, I don't mean that in a negative way. What I'm reading is so

Mark: 13:11

motivating.

Aaron: 13:13

It's so true. Right? It's there's these obvious truisms that I'll tell you, like 90% of the benefit of doing these kinds of things or like when you and I hung out, but definitely do in these kinds of conversations, where it's a bit more I'm aware of what I'm saying and I'm trying to sound smart is hearing those kinds of pieces right there. Listen to other people say them out loud, saying them out loud myself and working those realities that I already know are true into my from my head to my heart. I really appreciate you bringing that up. That is a you're right it's it's temporary. It's fleeting, but it also emphasizes the idea of there's pain in both directions there's

Mark: 13:52

always pain there's no such thing as a life without pain. Right so you're going to suffer no matter what are you going to suffer towards a meaningful end or a hopeless and

Aaron: 14:07

and that's an A speaks to the other the other piece is fear or the pain it's so tempting in those moments of discomfort of pain to think this means I'm doing it wrong. It should be easier this I should be better than this by now. Right? Right. And you know it's runners runners are some of the like they have the best life metaphors. So buddy mine Philip Philip Jackson from future commerce recently tweeted that we're runners say is it doesn't get easier but you do get faster. Yeah, I was like, That is such a great way to put it and business is exactly the same life is exactly the same. And I just need to say these things out loud and hear him working back in to for another day. Breathe. Live it

Trevor: 14:57

for sure. Dude, I love I love like The last couple podcasts we've had, you know, typically a podcast usually goes like, okay, Aaron, tell us about you, we kind of get into some like history and blah, you know, blah, blah, blah. But the last couple episodes have just like, like gone deep, like almost instantaneous. And I've almost like, I almost liked that format a little bit better. Because sometimes I know, you know, like, sometimes it can be like, Oh, do I want to know much about Aaron Orndorff? I don't know, you know, like, your story is great. And I do want to hear more about it. Right. But I love how that kind of went and even how you kind of like we can tie into some of your history right of what you did and how you kind of got to where you're at. So I love that. Yeah, like all day, all day long. cliche. Like cliches are my favorite too. By the way, dude. Like every cliche is true. There's no cliche that is not true. And for some reason, cliches have got a bad rap. But I love them now. Like I love them. I live by him. That's awesome. So hey, buddy. Well, let's say tell me a little bit about let's just jump into you a little bit. Okay, you were Shopify you're with common thread collective to a mate like to massively huge huge pieces of experience in the DVC space and then what you're doing right now let's jump into it and then let's just let's talk shop let's talk marketing.

Aaron: 16:18

Yeah. Okay. You want to talk shop marketing you want you want like the I kind of gave you burned down a previous career. little backstory on that I came into Shopify Plus, this was seven years ago. So I started marketing about a decade ago spent three, three years running like a madman in the way that I just described, trying to get as many logos on my site as I could picking up clients along the way. One of the clients that I picked up was Shopify Plus, which had just gone from a whiteboard in some Canadian office to a full on CRM with a growing Salesforce, they had hired their first marketer to whip up the site, gentleman named Tommy Walker, he set the stage then they brought in a head of marketing director of marketing, Hannah Abaza. And then I was the third hire, first hire she made. So third, overall, there are four or five of us in the room. The reason that's important is because it goes right back to the let's get rejected idea of throughout my career, I've just said yes, and then figured it out later. Right. It's been the so I had no business writing for an E commerce, let alone Enterprise E commerce. But because I was the only real key clicker writerly person in the room, I got this amazing opportunity in my career. And so turned out Tommy left, about six months later, there was nobody to run the trains. So I picked up the scheduling and started working on landing pages, we did the second version of the website, and we're off to the races. So by the time I left Shopify, plus four years later, I was leading all written content with a very ill advised job title that they let me choose myself. So this is lesson two, I suppose. I don't know if we're doing it right, anytime. So I call myself the editor in chief because I thought that was a fancy journalistic eyebrows sort of thing. And it was too late. By the time I left to realize nobody outside of the journalistic world knows what that is. And it didn't speak to the level of work that I was doing running content. Plus, I just had an amazing experience and fell ass backwards into opportunity there at Shopify Plus, then I had the great pleasure of working at common thread collective as the Vice President of Marketing, they really rolled the dice on me coming from a tried and true battle tested content marketer into what was at the time a three person team and eventually grew into nine or 10 of us on the marketing side of things. Little bit, the round half that on the sales side, all through the COVID pandemic post pandemic iOS 14 rollout. Um, it's just like a wild time to be at the forefront and really get to be in the trenches behind the scenes with a lot of really high growth, differentiated e comm DTC brands. So that was another one of those just fallen backwards into totally. Ah, and now I'm at Rijkaard. Rijkaard is an SMS app for Shopify businesses built a cost less, sell more and drive real growth. That's our efficiency pitch right there. Three ingredients. That gets us up today. Okay, that gets us up to date. Dear listener, mail here, what we want to talk about, here's

Mark: 19:34

what I want to I want to ask you a question. So you have a background in theology. Right? So you graduated from a divinity school? And then you get into marketing? Well, a lot of theology, especially Christian based theology is centered around converting people. Right. So you get you get into marketing. So I think there's kind of a clear, parallel there. With what you learned, and then you're getting into marketing, which is converting people to brands, right, and customers. So I'd like to know, through your experience or your background and what you studied. And now that you are in the marketing space, how has that helped you? Help brands build followings? And how do you think about that when you approach your marketing efforts?

Aaron: 20:32

In the healthiest expressions of religion writ large, in the healthiest expressions, the goal of the evangelist is to communicate in order to affect change. In its ugly forms, it's about rallying the base or preaching to the choir. And it's sort of like retention versus acquisition as right, there's always a play for customer success are your are your existing followers being served followers, I mean, there's so many of these like, pun just waiting there. I was really lucky to, I fell in. And and I don't mean this in relationship, but the people that I gravitated towards and consumed during seminary during those short couple of years, when I was actually in full time ministry, were those best expressions of it. So one of the people that probably taught me more about marketing than anyone else is a guy named Tim Keller. And Tim Keller is a pastor out in NYC, planted a conservative not in a political sense, but in a religious, Presbyterian, Jesus love and sort of sense church out in the heart of Manhattan. This was probably 1520 years ago now. And they've just grown like wildfire. And the the trick with that is Keller's entire ethos is I don't get to disagree with you, until I can articulate your position better than you until I crawl inside your worldview and understand the sources and the authorities from which you derive your meaning the story that you already live within what you wish, or live as if we're true in the world, right? Until I can articulate that position as well as you to create identification, understanding and empathy. And then I can turn that corner into, but there might be a better way. So on the on the brand marketing side of things, it's about identifying your ideal customers, pains, fears, Hell's frustrations, complaints, hates suspicions, is all the negative emotions that are swirling around them, picking one, possibly two, for anything that you create, whether that's an ad that leads to a landing page that then has a CTA, and it goes into an email sequence, right, an emotional through line that is relentlessly honest and focused on what is the one boogeyman that is most predominant. How can we deal with that as honestly as we possibly can and say, Ah, but there might be a better way. Right. And that's a lot of highfalutin, like theological meets marketing. Shin that. I'll give you an example. If you weren't trying to put flesh on us. Yeah. This is a live example that that I'm working with right now. For Rijkaard, what we really struggled with was deciding on who is our ideal customer. And that meant a lack of focus on the website and in the emails and in the ads that we produced. And so the first step in that is really drilling into who is it that can help you make the most money? Right? It sounds like a really crass way to put it. But what is the size of the business? Who is the decision maker? What are the ingredients they need to pay off and pay off quickly? And then once you've identified those, what what what do they? What are they most suspicious of and most complaining about when it comes to something like text message marketing? Right. So the opening gambit I've been using, when I'm meeting one on one, and now it's on the website is you know how you think you suspect you're overpaying for SMS and you don't really trust the results. Sure. And that is like, let me tell you, that is such a simple line. That took me months to get to totally and I wish I'd gotten there faster. Right? Where it just that's it's the simplest encapsulation of so much Share of what people don't trust and what they don't like and what you see on social media about it from founders and marketers on the brand side. Yeah, that's the fundamental issue. But that's really that's all of marketing into like, they wish there was a better way. Because that then leads right into. So what really matters, driving real growth? What does real growth mean? Well, it means honest attribution, clarity of costs, and tight attribution windows, and just picking up all these little things along the way, where then you can build this, like, it's not going to be perfect. We're gonna try to be really honest with you about it. Yeah. But there's an avenue into building trust and getting someone to raise their hand and be interested in a way that without that, if you're just going features if you're just going demo first, that kind of thing doesn't exist.

Trevor: 25:46

That question that you asked that. You said that was that lightbulb moment? What? What did it take for you to get to that question like What did you have to do to figure that out?

Aaron: 25:57

There is no replacement for time spent with an honest conversation with the people you serve. The easiest way to get into that is, first and foremost, if you've got frontline customer success, customer experience, whether you're on like a product side or SAS size agency side, you've got folks in your organization on the support that if you ingratiate yourself to them, if you show them support, if you're make yourself available to add value first right to serve them, then you can carve out time to really get 1530 minutes of what are the common struggles that you see people face, particularly when they're onboarding or first using the product itself. Alright, so you've got internal resources of the people that are closest to the people that you're serving. That's usually the easiest way to start things off. The second then is so like, I always had my aha moments at Shopify, at common thread collective when I was doing freelance deputy editor work for Intuit and QuickBooks. Now, Ricart, like across the board, it's always when you get into the case studies, and you try to have an honest conversations like dude, okay, okay. Okay. The best effing line on our homepage is is not just that opener of the use suspect you're overpaying and don't trust the results. Right? Ricard is an SMS platform for Shopify businesses built to cost less, sell more and drive real growth. And then right below that is a direct quote from Ryan, the CEO of blend jet, one of our largest merchants, huge, multi channel, Omni channel in retail, massive DTC online presence, land check. In that conversation, when we did the case study interview for it. It was it was one of the most awkward case study interviews I've ever done in my life. And Ryan, along with their CMO, or their VP of marketing, and their Chief Brand Officer, all three of them, were there. And I kept trying to figure out why did they make the switch to Ricart from the competitor, right. And I could not get a straight answer. Until the CMO started talking about when we came over to Ricart. We were warned a couple of times, it's going to look like your performance is worse. You're going to see lower attributed revenue than you're used to seeing lower in platform ROI. But what we want is the truth, because this is part of that piece of like, don't trust the results. Right. So the pregame them for that. And then she said this line about real growth, not fake growth. And I was like, No, that's such an obvious line. But to come from her mouth, and then Ryan repeated it later because she said it and so we put it into the case study. And it was just like it was one of those aha moments of and every place I've been has always been really it's the the conversations where someone's pretty happy. But there's some awkwardness because you understand the frictions that are still going on. Maybe they didn't have the best coming inexperience or they're carrying baggage from like, like dude in the in the case study, right riot tells a story about we didn't want to leave, he literally said the phrase we came to regard kicking and screaming. I remember in the interview being like, What the hell am I going to do with this right? What am I going to turn this into? But then it comes to like, oh, because another SMS platform, another migration, another onboarding, another set of statistics, we're really not sure we can trust and it was in those conversations where you have you have like a breakthrough moment like that. It doesn't come anywhere else than just spending time with the people that you're serving. And getting to a place where they're comfortable enough to just kink shoot straight with you. That's where the real go Old starts to come in come into. And then I would say the third place is just to become a student of what are people saying in the ether on social media. And go get yourself embedded in like, three, four or five different slack groups that are predominantly occupied by your your market. And don't go there. Facebook groups are really good for this. If you're in a product brand Reddit, do Reddit is Reddit and YouTube comments are the dark underbelly of the internet. And that is where real value and insight lives where people are like, they are going to tell you the Ross effing feelings they have about specific types of products about specific brands, across the board from every different type of SAS agency to physical product. Those are the places where like internal subject matter experts who are really close to your customers, getting to those customers, yourself. And then third, go into the places where those people are there Rost, and just soak yourself in that ugliness. And you come back from it being able to speak their language. That's what it's all about.

Trevor: 31:08

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Mark: 31:36

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Trevor: 32:17

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Mark: 32:39

Yeah, like I like a lot of what you've been saying. And what's interesting about people in general and what you said, like if you can sit with someone understand that person, I think another way to view people, and the way they see themselves is that we are the summation of the stories we tell ourselves. So there's an internal story happening to these people. For example, a good way of imagining this, I think, as a marketer, is when you watch a movie like Star Wars, right? Who are like, who's the character that they relate to? Like, who's the character that they see themselves? As? Do they see themselves as the Luke? Are they seeing themselves as a lay? Are they seeing themselves as a Han Solo? Are they seeing it? Like, who's the character in that? What's the inner dialogue happening? Because it's a funny example, because you can see it in kids, right? Kids naturally will take those characters and play and roleplay those characters. So it's easy to see who they see themselves as nobody sees himself as the dumb Stormtrooper getting shot on the side of the road. But that's who most of us are right? Like in like a real situation. Not all of us are this like hero, but we all see ourselves as either the hero or the victim of a certain story. So as you see these stories, I think what stood stood out about what you said was, you can you're not trying to change the whole story of how someone sees themself. You're just trying to pick out the angle just to help turn them around a corner instead of having them go straight.

Aaron: 34:13

That is it. That's what Tim Keller taught me. That's what old school copywriters taught me when I consumed all those dead white guys from the 1910s 20s and 30s. By all the old letter books of like the long form newsletter, and newspaper and direct mailers like those is they understood that psychology of I can't create a desire for this product. All I can do is take an existing desire something somebody wants to avoid or something they want to get closer to and say this will keep you from that. We will get you closer to this. Okay, I'm

Mark: 34:50

glad you brought that up because the next thing I wanted to ask you is what's more motivating for someone pursuing Heaven or avoiding hell?

Aaron: 34:59

People Do you hook people with the habit and you close them with avoiding hell. It's the same way people buy with their hearts. But they need to be able to justify it with their heads. Hmm. And I, this is a really big lesson I'm learning right now, too is as we've narrowed in on our ideal customer, at least 25 to 50 mil in annual revenue brand, which already cuts a lot out existing SMS subscriber list of say 50,000 to 100,000. Minimum, those are the people that can hit the ground running and that we can win for win for once we identify that audience. The place I fell and I lost a lot app was I thought what they needed to know was we do all of the things that you need to do. And so the the first iterations of like, the new decks, the new emails that I built, were all about these like points of differentiation, when what I now see that people really want in that first initial when they hit the website, when they get into a meeting with you is what is your vision for what could be? And how does your product point towards that even if it can't actually do it yet. That inspires people and also just an emotional environment of enthusiasm on the side of whoever is doing the presenting of you thought it was this way for so long. This is the new way, this is a way for it. And it actually overlaps with that deeper relationship. You want higher LTV that you want with your client, you want your customer and your leads to convert quicker, it's it's doing all of these things in a way that no one else is going to allow you to do. Right? It's painting a vision of the future that's right there on the edge with a couple of points up. And that's where I think it it threw me off. It was like I kept getting stuff stuck on like the but we can't really do that yet. And what I've learned was people don't really care. At the care point is, you might gonna look like an effing idiot if I buy. Yeah, right? Can it's like they still want to check off the boxes at the end of like, if I get this, can it still actually do all the things I need to do? Yeah, but what gets them and move them close to that point of setting a dotted line. So that then you can go through the list of yeah, do we check check, check integrations, etc. All the unsexy things is that first initial vision, so and it's that heaven environment. And I think it's the same thing for consumer products, as well, that it's not leading with the fear, it's leading with tapping into the that desire of what they want to be who they want to see themselves as what they want to accomplish that kind of thing first, and then making sure when they hit the lander, there's the price check and the social proof and all the product details, etc, etc.

Mark: 37:59

I think a good example of that would be ford f 150s. Right, the best selling vehicle in the United States for how many years? Okay, let's let's be realistic and say how many people out there and predominantly men who buy them actually need a truck?

Aaron: 38:23

To get into Europe? Not? Not yet.

Mark: 38:26

I mean, none of them. Right. Maybe maybe the ones on farms, and the ones going to construction construction sites. Yeah, right.

Aaron: 38:36

But manly men among us and yeah,

Mark: 38:39

look, you look down my street, and I think there's two or three ford f 150s. Yeah. How many days in a year? Do those have anything in the truck bed? Yeah, I mean, literally, never. And do they need a truck bed? No. But like the aspiration? What does what does a man or woman feel like when they get an F 150? They feel capable? Right? They all feel like they're going to use it all the time? Oh, yes. Like I have a truck. I am now capable. I can do these things. The feeling of it. Right? And then obviously, you got to check all the boxes of what a truck is and the brand, whatever. But I think the Ford f150 is a perfect example of you know, it's not practical. Yeah, in any sense. It's not useful, really for most people. But why does it sell so? Well? It's because people want to feel like the American man or woman in a big f150 truck.

Aaron: 39:36

It's the it's the vision of myself that it completes that I that I wish. I want to be seen as Yeah, even if I don't Yeah, that's actually a really, that's a great example of form beats function. I'm not buying it for the things that can do. I'm buying it for the person

Trevor: 39:56

I can become. There it is.

Mark: 39:59

But you I check all those function boxes off as justification, right? Well, well, hey, I can help move furniture that one time every five years I can. I can help someone out of a gutter. I don't know, like, you come up with these reasons why you need it.

Aaron: 40:13

And I still need to run well, and yeah, safety can play a part of it. Yeah, there's like these things that like you still gotta be this tall to ride the ride. Yeah, absolutely.

Mark: 40:22

My family safe in its big exam.

Aaron: 40:25

Yeah. That's the that's actually new to me, too, as well, like, people are more motivated. This is one of those fundamentals of just human psychology, we're moving, we're more motivated to avoid pain than we are to pursue pleasure. That's the flip side of this is. Yeah. It's just a dance. There's art to all of this about, at what point do you push on what I am?

Trevor: 40:53

Now very interesting. It's so funny, as you guys go through that example, as I'm sitting here, like listening. I've been contemplating a truck for, like, six months now. And I'm like, yeah, they like I've, you guys literally just went through everything and made me feel silly for thinking about wanting to buy a truck. I don't own a boat. I don't own a camper. You know, what's the what's the one I got? One, I got some breaks from time to time, I might need a break, you know, move around. It's a nice,

Aaron: 41:24

single truck, flag and ego. And that's all you need. Trevor is eventually that'll be that. Yeah. Especially if you let yourself go. Because then it's like, then you gotta get a big old truck, you got to get a truck that'll be pushed, they will know what happened. If we see you rolling down in here. Yeah,

Trevor: 41:43

I've gained a few

Mark: 41:45

10 pounds, man. But it's a it's a fascinating, I'd like to add that you said it's an art. I think at the end of the day marketing is an art right? And I think the problem is that too many people try to turn it into a formula and a mathematic equation. And, yes, a lot. There's a lot of math and strategy and data to pull behind it. But ultimately understanding a person and connecting with them on an emotional level is a lot of an art form. And I think you probably learned a lot of that through your background and how to write and how to synthesize these key points. And my question for you is what are a lot of consumer brands, in your opinion missing when trying to connect to their audience and build a brand.

Aaron: 42:38

There's still very few consumer brands that do content well, and the ones that do. There's a reason names like liquid death, the creative angle, if you subscribe to their email and SMS, it is off the charts. And it's just a simple extension of what they're all about knowing their audience and creating a multiplicity of options to engage with them through merchandise, through snark, through humor, through dark humor. I think them I think of somebody like the hundreds streetwear brand. Obviously many Katana Isaac is just getting all kinds of love out there in the social world right now. Because what they're doing with tick tock and short form video and YouTube shorts, and the I mean the meteoric growth of their brand on the back of that sort of contents,

Mark: 43:40

all organic to until recently, all organic

Aaron: 43:45

track Smith is another shining example of every time they do a new lookbook release. It's accompanied by these long form journalistic picturesque landing pages, and in some cases, even microsites. And then what's so interesting about those sort of pieces are, it's this content backbone, that isn't easy. And it in every one of those cases, there is the deep sensibility and union where you know, the people that are producing this content are the same people that are producing this product. And they are part and parcel of the community that producing it for that they're runners or they're obsessed with streetwear and fashion itself. Or, like Jim shark was such a great example of the way that they they hit that sweet spot between aspirational people that are just yoked and beautiful and you're never going to look like that with a whole host of I mean, like the untraditional, non traditional choices they've made in models alongside that backbone of very traditional, it's like you go to the site, and it's like, okay, like, but then they've got this content side of transgender, differently abled people, folks from oppressed groups, where they pick the spotlights that shine into. And it seems like they're walking in both worlds. And it gives them an unfair advantage, when they go out to do the thing that every brand has to do, which is advertise. It's that content backbone that's built on. They are so obviously a part of the communities that they serve, that they couldn't not create that particular form that they create, and it builds a bridge and then gives them just an unfair arsenal with which to load up into the ad account. Alright, and if you looked at either one of those in isolation, it'd be easy to think what we need to do is go get more creative. And what it really is, is digging deeper into like we were talking about the story, and making sure you're not inviting someone into your story, but entering theirs to be of service and spending that time inside the community serving the community. I think about kalo is another really good example. We're in primitive, both of those initially starting out serving the CrossFit community and then expanding out from there, where these brands are just synonymous with the people that they serve. And they create content driven experiences to bring that to life.

Trevor: 46:19

You know, we we had a, we had the founder of will the CEO and founder of raindrop agency on the podcast. You know, Jacque Spitzer. Yeah. And he said something that kind of like blew our minds. It's so stupid, because it's just like, Oh, yeah. You know, it's not about your why. It's about their why. Right? Everybody's been so caught up in like, Hey, make sure you understand your why as a company as a brand. But at the end of the day, it's like, no, it's about their why, why did liquid death make that can, the way they made that can write when you hear the success story? It was because you know, if I remember right, it was because they were at events like UFC, and everybody's out there drinking. And for the people who wanted to look the part but didn't want to drink. They could do that. That was their why it turned a commodity into a brand. But you don't see at

Aaron: 47:22

this time. What's great about raindrop is it also shows you how you do need that science. These are professionals side of things as well. Because I mean, some of the stuff they've done for like, Dr. Squatch, and loom,

Mark: 47:42

you know, native native. Oh, right. Da reg Alamy. They just served reg up a net new ad.

Aaron: 47:51

Goodness. Right. And it's the bringing together of those two, that's so powerful. Totally.

Mark: 47:58

Yeah. And clearly there is a science behind it. I mean, even with storytelling, so everybody knows the hero's journey. And why? Why is it that the hero's journey always resonates with somebody, right? Like, that's the journey that everyone wants to see, like you can make every movie is a hero's journey, right? And everyone will still go watch those movies every single time. And it just follows the same template. But there's different emotional connectors in that journey of why it relates to certain audiences or, or others, right, or why it resonates with certain audiences, and not others. So there is but then again, it's still an art to put together a movie or an ad. And so

Aaron: 48:36

gills and there's reason pacing, yeah, timing matter. And opening with the fire, opening with whatever, you know, especially the difference between Long Form storytelling and cinema and short form creative that works either organic, social, or especially pay opening, with the climax, opening with the reveal, to grab that attention to break the scroll to get them to stop, right, these sorts of things where there's a lot of analytics behind that. And I saw that a time at common thread collective, where we would just go through these eight metrics of attention. What's the does it break the impressions versus three second stop? Right? What's What's the attention rate?

Mark: 49:20

Like that is stopping rate. And these

Aaron: 49:23

things were like, and if you can't get the first one, you don't get

Trevor: 49:26

any of the others? Yeah. Right. And so

Aaron: 49:29

there is there's a system to it at the same time as there is. But you can smell the difference, right? You can taste the difference. When this was made for us by us that kind of piece. Yeah. You can tell.

Mark: 49:46

Totally. Yeah, you you totally can tell and I think a lot of smaller brands. Well, this is maybe not all small brands, right? But when you're just getting going and you're lean If you're trying to create something, you're trying to get something off the ground, there might be a tendency to try to just dissolve everything to the most, quote, efficient way. And as you do that, like yes, maybe that is the most efficient way. But then you start losing that creative flexibility of how maybe you want to present something, or you want to grow something. And it's a balance, like you need to do what works like you don't want to just go out there and try to reinvent a wheel that's already been invented. Right? But you can add some rims to that wheel.

Aaron: 50:34

And you've got to say like, the mistake I'll make is, I think more is more, that is the like, that's one of my giant flaws. And if you've ever read anything I've put out or seen like a Twitter thread is like, how many of these are going to be guy Come on, calm down? Right? That's, that's the piece where

Mark: 50:50

actually seminary that's the seminary background. Yeah, it's giving a sermon.

Aaron: 50:57

The ability to distill put first things first. Is is also it's at a premium, you know, as competition ramps up, not just competition for wallet share, but also for attention share. That's a ability to do to distill. brevity is the soul of wit, I didn't have time to write a long a short letter server a long one, instead, write these kinds of growth right back to the cliches. Yeah, it's really it is so much harder to write a pop in 100 word, ad or email than it is to write a 1000 word plus blog article.

Trevor: 51:39

So true. So true. Yeah, that's I mean, like, we used to market I used to work together in a previous life. And we managed a big massive, we were a content creating machine, you know, so articles, blogs, we were just generating leads, because we were just driving traffic. And that was one thing, we'd always tell him like, hey, like, it doesn't matter. Like, if you can't get somebody to stop for three seconds, and you're not a good writer. Anyone can write 2000 words, 3000 words. But like those seven to 100 words, like that's the hardest part. Right? You're not a good marketer unless you can get that.

Aaron: 52:19

Talk about understanding your audience. And also, by the way, we're, I'm acutely aware of how long we've gone, given the exact topic that we're talking about. So we'd better wrap this up soon give people Yeah, but one of the things I did when we were rolling out this new messaging was to also meet with as many people that I had acquaintances with, who were inside that ideal customer audience. And so I hit about 1520 2530. I'm just keep doing this over and over again to continue to hone it. So I'm still in the process of doing this. One of the people I met with was Eric Bandholz from Beardbrand. And that this is so perfect, right? Let's make maybe this is the story to end on to. Because the same way that interview with blend jet was the most uncomfortable case study interview I've ever had in my career. And I was like, What am I going to do with this? Yeah, and then it turns into suit it just glorious. That conversation I had with Eric was wildly uncomfortable. And it's because I opened with the whole, you know, what do you suspect don't trust, we've engineered efficiency through five features, no other SMS platform offers, and nine times out of 1099 times out of 100. All the other people I met with go Interesting. Okay, what are those five things? Not Eric? Eric says, why not just one thing? And I was like, I do not have a good answer for that. Yeah. And that is probably the most honest response to that idea of less is more that I didn't want to hear. And now that's like, the next frontier for me is like, Okay, how do we distill this even more? How do you get to that one thing? That is the reason that fits their narrative that fits their story that puts your product, your service, in the light that they want to see it in, like, that's the next frontier. That's the really difficult part, too. And when you've got that the unlock can be enormous.

Mark: 54:20

Well, what he's what he was saying, calling out I love that story, because you listed five things and he said, Why not one thing? And maybe that one thing is what you learned in another uncomfortable situation, which is, hey, real growth, not fake growth. Right? There's your real I'm not the guy to make the call. But there's the one thing summarized, and then you have all the reasons which is the five things right like that's the hook. And then you have your five things. This is what

Trevor: 54:52

keeps you around now.

Aaron: 54:55

Y'all been good. I got to work out some of my little bit. A little bit of brainstorming.

Trevor: 55:02

Well, yeah, this has been. This is, this is the beauty about this podcast. And so for those of you listening like we never like we were telling Aaron this before, like Mark and I never have questions. Like we just don't that's not our vibe, right? Not that there's anything wrong with that. But like, that's the beauty because I did not see this podcast going this way. Personally, I don't know if I No, I thought we were going to talk a lot about writing and we have talked don't get me wrong, we have like, but, um, yeah, I thought we're gonna talk a lot more about SMS. But this what's been beautiful about this podcast is like, I think every brand is struck every brand, as you know, whether they're in the product base DTC, or and they're, they're in the SAS space, every, every brand is struggling with this problem. However, nobody's identifying that this is the problem they're struggling with. Instead, people are like, oh, let's, What channels do we need to be working on? What you know, when in reality, it's like, do you even know who your ideal customer is yet like that, like that is this is a second podcast in the last what week that we've recorded? Brett from kissick said this exact same thing. Right. It was just, you got to know it talked about the person talk to him talk about a brand that knows their customer. Right. Oh, and

Aaron: 56:19

in their content. Yeah, they've got that unfair. That's Oh, they're added. It's such an unfair

Trevor: 56:27

advantage. Totally.

Aaron: 56:29

You have some of the most memorable Oh, you're right. That's such a good one. Yeah. And go figure it comes from somebody who's talking about that exact same thing. Exactly. Where are we for? And where are we not for?

Mark: 56:41

Yeah, bingo.

Trevor: 56:43

This has been awesome. Aaron, thank you so much, man. We really appreciate you. You coming on the podcast. We went a little longer than probably anticipated, you know, but this was amazing. Dude, Aaron, where can people find you? You're not You're not just you're not just a marketing expert. You are a content creator as well. For those of you don't know this guy, the written word both on LinkedIn and Twitter. He is owning those channels. So please tell us where Dells where people can find you.

Aaron: 57:10

I believe I'm the only Aaron Orndorff on Google. So I'm super easy to find Aaron orndorff.com will take you to my personal website iconic content. You can find me on Twitter at Aaron Orndorff on the same slash Aaron Orndorff on LinkedIn. I have posted once to tick tock and zero times to Instagram but I do have accounts there so you can you can go check out the video I've made with my daughter's suit years ago on tick tock and if you really want to ingratiate yourself to me for some reason. That's that's the low hanging fruit is just gonna say something nice or comment on the one video I made with my kid I was on Tik Tok.

Trevor: 57:46

Amazing. Aaron, thanks so much, my friend. We really appreciate it. We love working with you love that you came on. Everybody. Thank you so much for joining the unstoppable Marketer Podcast. We'll see you next Tuesday. Thank you so much for listening to the unstoppable Marketer Podcast. Please go rate and subscribe the podcast whether it's good or bad. We want to hear from you. Because we always want to make this podcast better. If you want to get in touch with me or give me any direct feedback. Please go follow me and get in touch with me. I am at the Trevor Crump on both Instagram and Tiktok thank you and we will see you next week.