How to Brand Your Company Using Data

October 20, 2020

Meet The Speakers

Rushford Lee

Partner and Owner of REDKOR Brands

Listen to the podcast

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Rushford Lee’s experience founding REDKOR Brands over 25 years ago
How a fight at a startup meeting inspired Rushford to take a more data-driven approach to his business
Where Rushford gathers valuable data from customers
The benefits of asking open-ended questions in customer surveys
Rushford talks about “customer love groups” and his customized research process for clients
How to create an emotional connection with customers through lifestyle photos on Amazon
The significance of shapes and colors when building an effective brand
The first steps new companies should take to set up their branding
Where to learn more about Rushford Lee amd REDKOR Brands

In this episode…

An effective branding strategy is critical to a company’s success. That’s because branding differentiates a company from its competitors and speaks to a specific customer base. So, what do you need to do to create a brand that takes your business to the next level?

According to Rushford Lee, there are several data-driven elements to keep in mind when building an effective brand, including colors, shapes, and logos. While these are necessary for communicating what your brand stands for, they are also essential for provoking emotion in your audience. As Rushford says, creating emotional connections with your customers is the best way to provide value, boost sales, and improve customer loyalty.

In this episode of Buy Box Experts, Eric Stopper interviews Rushford Lee, the Partner and Owner of REDKOR Brands, about how to use customer data and analytics to create an unforgettable brand. They discuss how to create emotional connections with your customers, Rushford’s customized research process, and the importance of colors and shapes in branding. Stay tuned.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

Buy Box Experts applies decades of e-commerce experience to successfully manage their clients’ marketplace accounts. The Buy Box account managers specialize in combining an understanding of their clients’ business fundamentals and their in-depth expertise in the Amazon Marketplace.

The team works with marketplace technicians using a system of processes, proprietary software, and extensive channel experience to ensure your Amazon presence captures the opportunity in the marketplace–not only producing greater revenue and profits but also reducing or eliminating your business’ workload.

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Learn more about Buy Box Experts at BuyBoxExperts.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:09

Welcome to the Buy Box Experts podcast we bring to light the unique opportunities brands face in today’s e-commerce world.

Eric Stopper 0:19

Hey and welcome to the Buy Box Experts podcast. This is Eric Stopper. Today’s episode is brought to you by buy box experts, Buy Box Experts takes ambitious brands and makes them unbeatable. We’ve got a team of consultants, I am one of them. And we would love to talk with you about your brand on Amazon. We’ve been doing these really cool audits lately as well that allow us to see how much of your spend is allocated towards keywords that don’t make you any money. And it’s pretty interesting, right? It’s fun to find out, you know where your money is being spent on Amazon. And for a lot of you it might really make you upset to say hey, like, we’re spending $15,000 on ads, and only 5000 of them are actually generating any sales. Well, you know, what do I do with that $10,000 come and talk to us. We’ll give you a free audit, go to buyboxexperts.com, click on the free analysis button and you’ll be connected with me or a member of my team. Today, I am pleased to be joined by my friend Rushford Lee, partner and owner of REDKOR Brands, a company that specializes in building brand campaigns to help companies and founders realize their goals and achieve financial freedom. Rushford and his team have launched over 500 regional and national brands over the last 24 years. They’ve got tons of examples of on their website of work that they’ve done. Rushford, welcome to the show.

Rushford Lee 1:41

Thank you glad to be here.

Eric Stopper 1:43

So let’s just hop right into it. You’ve got a long history, you’ve been at this for 24 years. I kind of want to know what was happening 25 years ago, just to understand like how you transitioned into this role, you know, you know, founding and operating REDKOR Brands.

Rushford Lee 2:02

I was working in LA and worked at several companies down there that were PLP design houses and spent about five six years down there wanted to come back up to Utah I love Los Angeles I lived in Diamond Bar area and and hombre la mirada and but wanted to come back up here and finish my education. So we came back up to Utah. And I did that over the next year or so and started a little agency, mostly a boutique just kind of doing graphics and design. And as we started to grow, we really got interested in what really makes customers tick. And so we started it was called Rushford, Ross Horton and changed it to REDKOR brands. And we’ve been doing that consistently for about 24 going on 25 years next year.

Eric Stopper 2:52

So as the story goes, it’s like the winter of 2001. And you were presented some new concepts. So there were kind of some, some decision makers at the original what was the company? When did the company become REDKOR? What year?

Rushford Lee 3:12

Probably well, Red and REDKOR over the last 15 years.

Eric Stopper 3:17

Okay, so yeah, we’re like, we’re like 18 years ago, 19 years ago, this conversation happened, where there was no data to back up some of the decisions that were going into this project. And on your website, it says that two guys at the meeting got into a fight. And for your safety, security escorted y’all out of the building. Can you give me the the scoop behind that, like, what was going on? And what ended up happening that it sounds like that was kind of the the critical moment that evolved you into the data driven brand company that you are today?

Rushford Lee 3:58

Yeah, we had a company, I won’t mention the name or anything, but we had been working with them, they had about four or five vice presidents who had strong downlines. And as we were meeting, it was just a matter of that everybody had a strong opinion. And it seemed most like our third meeting where we presented concepts and ideas. And they were arguing among themselves so much about what they wanted and what they liked. And, you know, it was really our opinion against theirs. And in reality, the two of them got into a real battle one threw a book at the other one, and then the other one turned around and threw his stuff at him. And then they got up and started to push each other around. And the guy I was with kind of grabs me and says we had to leave. And he escorted me out of the building. You know, just they just had large egos. They were strong man. They had ideas, but we could not for anything different. So on our next round, and we had contacted a couple of BYU professors who are great people very well, Gary Rhodes and David Whitlock, and just ask Gary, can you help us come up with a way that we could do research for packaging design and for other kind of brand design, that would be good for us. That would be something that would really get us the information we need so that when we go in next time, we’re not saying, you know, here’s what we think here’s what you think. But here’s what your customers are thinking, here’s what they feel like is most important to them, these the attributes that they really would like to see us doing, the emotions they feel as they use the product. And that’s something that we started off fan and spent about a year and a half with those guys having them teach us and help us. And it ended up that it turned out to be really, really good system that we’re able to go in and do. And then very, very targeted find out and help them to know how they should talk about their brand. So and we had another client where we had gotten used to doing this went in and sat in a meeting with like 12 different presidents and vice presidents and told them what their customers thought. And the President said, you know, it’d be stupid to go against what my customers are telling me. So let’s move forward. And that turned out to be a great brand, a great brand campaign. So yeah, we just didn’t like the idea of throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what stuck and then arguing with everybody as to what they thought. So this really helped us to target much better.

Eric Stopper 6:13

Back then, when when you guys first started exploring this, where were you aggregating the data from? was it was it surveys with the customers was it their helpdesk, you know, where did you get the the information to make these these presentations?

Rushford Lee 6:27

You know, it was who we’re trying to find ways we’re in the valley here, where cost is always critical. We did a lot of focus groups found out they didn’t really work as well, as you know, you only have 15 people, and sometimes a focus group can go awry, weren’t sure that we were getting great information. So we had moved to really surveys where we could get an email list of customers email list, or we could work with our vendor on getting a list of qualified people who they would go through and make sure we had 500, or whatever, really good customers that match demographics. And then we would ask them the questions that we needed to to get the information. So it can go fairly quickly. And it’s both quantitative and qualitative. We asked a lot of open ended questions. Why do you feel that way? At first, we didn’t we just said, you know, here’s, here’s a concept, or here’s some ideas or some words, which of these do you like best, and we weren’t asking why. And it was really in the way that we found all the golden information that was in their comments and their voice and their language that really had a little golden nuggets in it. And so went to surveying and with with vendors like Qualtrics, and others, they can help you target or for a company who’s got a good email list, we can go into those and work with them. And it really gives us key stuff we need to know.

Eric Stopper 7:45

That’s really cool. We, so we were I think we’re actually using this tool right now. Where we will scrape the reviews from a from a customer and look at the frequency and sentiment of the of the words in those reviews. And then build those into the listing in some way. It sounds like it’s a very similar process, just taking all of this information from the customers and then applying it to a brand deck. I guess the the one the one piece that I feel might be disconnected is you’ve got some stats in your website that talk about let’s see, the brand connects consumers with an emotional response, which by research, we know that 94% of people said they’d be highly likely to recommend a brand they were emotionally engaged with. And so I guess the the question that I have is, if you get all this survey data from people, how do you really make sure that you are asking and getting insight into the emotion that they had around the the purchase or the interaction that they had with the brand? How do you ask those types of questions? And are these the things that that Gary Rhodes and David Whitlock, at BYU, were helping you with?

Rushford Lee 8:54

Yeah, it really was. A part of that is to understand the why. And it’s sometimes as simple as setting up a situation a visual situation where you say, you know, you’re walking down, you know, for a Walmart, and you’re looking for weightlifting equipment. And what are you thinking, when you’re looking for it? Why are you looking for it? Why is it you’re motivated to come in and try to find this? And what are you looking for on that package? What is it that interests you most? Those could be questions that could be asked, and they are open ended questions. So we do a lot of open ended questions much more than most survey will do. And some sort of survey people say, well open in is really hard, because you have to really go through code it just like I think you’re doing. But the bottom line is it’s in those answers of what made you feel a certain way that they’ll say, Well, you know, I’m really tired of just being fat. And I felt like if I could least do this for half hour a day, it would help me. And so you start to understand the emotions they’re feeling as they’re looking for that product, or they’re looking at that brand. And that’s the That open ended why questions about and sometimes there’s literally a saying what what emotions do you feel when you’ve done business with this bank that really have tied you to the bank itself. And they’ll tell you I had experience with the manager who, you know, came out to my car and helped me jump the car, or they came over to my grandma, my mom’s house when we were trying to do some things and brought the papers to us. And so you start to see an emotional situation that they had, that helps explain why they stay there, why they like that product, why they’re part of the love group of that customer,

Eric Stopper 10:34

the love group. I so and for those for those listening, I I attended BYU from 2011 to cost like 2080 and it took so long. Gary Rhodes and David Whitlock were two of my teachers. Both have since retired, I think Rushford and they both have moved away. I Gary might still be in town. But they they took me through some very similar thinking and it sounds like Rushford was able to incorporate these, these core business insights into his business model for for all of his for all of his brands. So when when you say love group, Rushford, talk to me, talk to me about what you mean there.

Rushford Lee 11:21

But we’re all looking for customers who really loves your product. So if I can find out, if we can find out why that customer loves you and your product and what you’re doing your service so much, then those are the people we want to recreate. And so a love group might be the top customers that you have, they might be the ones to buy the most of your product, they might be the ones who have engaged with you the longest. But there are customers that you wish you had, all of them have that attitude. So as we try to understand the attributes behind a product, from the standpoint of the customer, and then standpoint, also of the business, and the benefits that they’re receiving and what the emotions are that are wrapped around the benefits, that really sets up a great opportunity to hear their voice and to know what they’re thinking. So the best group to start with is that love group, the people who enjoy you and love your product the most, how can I duplicate, you know, make all clients part of that love group?

Eric Stopper 12:21

So this is one of the insights that you gain from that. So you have crafted a customized research process for each of your each of your clients. Is this something that can be democratized? Like? Can everybody just follow the same framework and, and come up with with similar insights? Or is there a specific process that you have to take them through when you’re onboarding them to really help them get it? Like how, how easy How simple is this process that you apply to the brands?

Rushford Lee 12:51

You know, I think it doesn’t seem that complicated anymore, after years of doing it, we really are using a laddering system. mapping system, which is a research tool that has you has a variety of different ways of looking at it. But we specifically look and say to our customer, first we meet with them and say talk to me about what your attributes are that this product, or this service you’re doing you think are the best attributes you have as a company not benefits, not what the customer sees. But just First of all, you know, you’ve got a big blue button that adds more horsepower, or you have a product where you’ve got guarantees, they just they talk about their own attributes. And then we prioritize those, you know, what’s the most important attribute your company has, and it is a fun exercise because they try to come in and they have to start to agree on well, who are we and what is our most important attribute, we do the same things with benefits. And the same things with emotions, we do that with a customer first, and then we put that into a ladder into a mapping, that puts all of it on one page, and they can look at it and go Yeah, that’s exactly what we think. Then we go do that same thing with their customers or even a set of potential customers. And each time we put that on a ladder where we can compare what they think to what their loved group thinks, to what new customers might want, and think that helps them to go gosh, that we’re not thinking the same as a customer. And that’s usually what ends up happening, I’d say half to three quarters of the time, what they thought was the most important benefit the customer got, might not be what it really, really is. So those exercises go together to help to create a visual view on a map or a ladder, that shows what those customers feel and what their values are too. So there’s there’s attributes, benefits, emotions and values. And so that’s the process that we use, and it’s worked really well for us.

Eric Stopper 14:42

Attributes, benefits, emotions and values. I mean, if you’re, if you’re listening to this, like just write all those down and you can and you can come up with like a, a basic framework and then go to and go to Rushford and in this team and let them and let them refine it for you and make a plan for you. So Rushford, I’m I’m interested in and hearing a story of a time that they the brand was just absolutely dead wrong about what their customer wanted. And how you guys were able to come in present this framework and get them to the point where they were aligned with what their customers care about. And were able to institute a campaign that helped them in a major way that that, you know, help them reach their goals, do you have a good example that you can share with us?

Rushford Lee 15:32

Yeah, I think I’ve got a couple without without mentioning exact clients name. So we had a customer who had had a product that they used for horses. And it was really interesting, because it’s mostly all men who ran the company. And as we went through the process with them, and asking them what they thought, why our customers buying this product, you know, this is almost all females, there’s probably 80% females who buy this product for their courses to help them make them healthier. And they even come up with some packaging they like, which was very, very masculine, it was very, very, might even have been award winning, it was really cool. But as we talked to them about what they thought they only went out and talk to the consumer group, which was females specific age category had to own a horse had to own a horse for over a certain period of time. And we talked to him about the product. And we started asking the questions, you know, what, and these were people who were in the love group, they had used the product before, and they had a list of those. So we were able to say, Okay, what do you love about this product? You know, what is it that that you like the most what benefits you the most with your horse. And as we started to look at the emotions, and the situations, it was really interesting, what was coming out was that they love the horse more than they love their husbands. They like the horse was more their friend, it was this was a friend that they were taking care of like an amazing dog that you have that just gets anything at wants. And then as we then design product to fit that actual packaging. The as we test it, we’ll also go out and test our designs against a love group or a Open Group, and say, which of these designs do you like best which fall, which solves the following problems best for you. And as we came back with a new designs, the the the owner and the others figured, oh, this can’t be right, because this model we think is cool, didn’t even register. And the designs you did, which the designs showed a owner next to the horse, patting it, loving it and emotional feeling about their horse, because that’s what they kept saying, that’s why they use the product. And it was funny, because he said, Well, I’m gonna have my girls in back come up, and look, they all fall into this category. And if they don’t like it, you’re fired. And they came up, they looked at the ones and they all pick the ones that all the other women had picked. Because it had an emotional meaning to them. And I think that happens quite a bit where somebody who’s a male is has a product for a female or for an older person or for a younger, and you have got five daughters and my wife and and i don’t know that i understand the way they think yet really. But I’m a man. And so you’ve got to focus on who the client is and what they think. So in that case, it worked out really well and was a good product for him.

Eric Stopper 18:14

Interesting. So you, you are probably one of these people who, when you’re looking around, you just are analyzing brands, just while you’re driving down the road. Anytime that you are considering a product, are you are you playing just all the time with like evaluating whether or not they’re hitting the emotion correctly? Or are you able to stay pretty agnostic and keep your head in the clouds and not analyze every brand that you see just walking on the street?

Rushford Lee 18:43

Oh, no, after so much time you look at every brand and you look at it. And you kind of think hey, you know, this is one little shop and they probably can’t go through the process of that. But colors, colors mean things. I mean, color is the second most important thing that people look at shape is first and then color. So color fonts, all of those things become really, really important when you’re coming up with a brand. Also writing style in the in the brand voice by asking a lot of open ended questions. People come talk to you and their voice and now you can start to write back to them in their voice and with what they want. wanting to know. But for Yeah, for me, I look at stuff and I kind of go Yeah, that’s not working or I don’t understand who their customer is. But almost always that’s the first question. Tell me about the customer. Who are they? Who are your most successful customers? How old are they? What do they look like? They walked into the room? Who would they be? You know, and so that you start to understand who that is. And that becomes critical. So yeah, you do see a lot of brands and you look at them and you think it’s really pretty but wow, it doesn’t say a thing and I can’t read it from a walk away and it looks more like an art illustration. It’s not readable. So but I think everybody who’s a designer and so forth, they look at stuff and and they have their opinions. Every designer has a different opinion.

Eric Stopper 20:00

Sure. When you are I Are you an Amazon Prime member?

Rushford Lee 20:05

Yes.

Eric Stopper 20:07

When you are looking for products, you’ll notice that there are there are a couple different types of pictures right? There’s obviously the white background photos that are that are standard, do you need those to be able to sell on platforms like Amazon, and then you get into like the product and lifestyle shoots. And I love asking branding agencies questions around this topic, because I myself when I’m looking at some of these lifestyle photos, I think they look generic, and kind of lame. And just like what you would expect, I’m never I’m never surprised by lifestyle photos anymore. Do you get the same sense yet? Talk to me about about these?

Rushford Lee 20:45

Yeah, your photo styling is a brand style. And I think that emotional content is really an image is most important element, regardless of the photographic technique. So one of the greatest ways of communicating the emotions to your client is show them in that successful situation. And make it the photo of the of the age of the people that you’re selling to. They might want to be thinner, they might want to be stronger. But in reality, the images that we choose should allow us to create a visual of the emotions and benefits that we focused on in the research. And so it’s harder to do that with stock shots, it’s great when you have a customer who can go in and shoot those shots. But really, the emotions, their feelings should be the emotions you feel when you look at a photograph. So if you’re selling a product on Amazon and the products supposed to do something for you, you can do a little glamour shot, or you could show them solving a problem with the shot, you know, I mean, so it’s it’s an IT needs to be consistent, a brand should have its own consistent photo styling. And we try to bring that out for our customers and show them samples and, and how they had to shoot it selected focus or whatever. But most of all, find that emotion. And that comes through with color, style, overall tone, the props that are in it, the elements, all of that speaks to an emotional photo. And that’s what we try to get him to do.

Eric Stopper 22:10

And you create these style, these style guides these photo guides for your customers, right?

Rushford Lee 22:18

Right, we look create a guide that has everything in it from the brand foundation of what the brand is keywords, stories, testimonials. And if you have those items in a priority, and you know what those key words and feelings are. You can write social media around them all day long for a year, two years. And you’re always targeting it right on what is the right thing to be saying to them. So we’ll go in, obviously, we developed the visual items, you know, photography typographic t brand logo, but we also teach them why it’s important to have a specific writing style, what does our brand narrative customer stories and key messages, brand keywords, we give all of that stuff to them, so that their social media person, the person like you who’s creating a better awareness on on Amazon or so forth, you know exactly what the customer is looking for. You can take those elements, you can take the style, and you can create something that’s focused and stays the same. It doesn’t change every time a new marketing director comes in.

Eric Stopper 23:23

Right? Yeah, it’s a it’s it’s consistent. You know, he earlier you mentioned, color as the second most important attribute that customers look at. But the first one you said was shaped? Can you? Yeah,

Rushford Lee 23:40

yeah. So you’ve got, you’ve got the shape of something, you’ve got the color of something, you have what it says on it, the font and the logo itself. So the shape logo is something that it’s not a brand, but it is a key element of the brand. And it should be a kicking off point to talking about what you do. But if you think of something like campbell soup, what colors Campbell’s soups on the shelf, it’s, it’s red, and you know that and those colors, things like that stick in our mind. And the colors tell us about who we are, you know, a yellow can be a Walmart special color, or green can be a color of trust a blue is a very good trustworthy color. And so all those elements combined to create a brand brand mark that people remember you’re always trying to get. You’re always trying to get into their minds something that they’ll remember that doesn’t go away. So you want them to find something a little bit discoverable within the brand within the color. But But color rather than shape is more closely related to emotion. And and colors are very emotional elements. So you want to try to make sure you have the right right emotion and that means the right colors.

Eric Stopper 24:51

I’ve flipped through pretty much all of the the decks that you have for testimonials and examples on your website and I see that there Are there a few, you know, very strong color changes and schemes that you’ll put into the branding for whether it’s packaging or even like the, the design of somebodies logo or building? Can you give me an example of a time that you made some pretty dramatic color changes to a brand that they may be were reluctant to or, you know, dubious of that actually ended up making a big impact for their business.

Rushford Lee 25:29

Yeah, I think those examples like work that we’ve done in the past for, for customers like Deseret book, or wear the colors inside there, the brand on the walls, the elements that are there are colors that are soft, you know, who we’re trying to appeal to, with that customer is probably a 35 to 65 year old female. And she might be a specific religion, she’s looking for trust, she wants things. So the colors that would be in there would be colors that show trust, colors that make them feel warm and comfortable when they’re there. Whereas if maybe you’re you’re, if you’re a bank, where you’re looking at something, and somebody might say, well, I want to use red, or I want to use something really bright, a yellow, and you suggest him Let’s go with a blue or green with maybe some red accents. Because it’s not always the case. But in a lot of cases, that blue is a very trustworthy color. It’s a color that makes me feel warm, it’s trusted, you can take around people and say, if I was thinking of a color that’s trustworthy, or trusting 80% will say Blue 10%, more would say green, because those are colors that are trustworthy. So in several cases, we’ve gone in with colors that were different than what they had before. But the colors were giving the wrong, wrong feeling. You know, red is aggressive, it’s so forth. So that might not have been the best color for let’s say, a credit union or a bank or something like that.

Eric Stopper 26:56

And then you have, I’ll take the example of British British Petroleum BP, for instance. They they made that like, Oh, you remember the old BP logo? It was like a green shield? Yes. And they and they changed it after the oil spill to that really like cool, vibrant flower looking thing. For for a brand like that it was a shape change and like a highlight change. What do you think was some of the thinking behind like a big brand change like that? Where it wasn’t necessarily like the greens are still there. But they they went for like sharper colors and more flowery? Look, what do you think with some of the the, the branding logic that went behind and goes behind changes like that.

Rushford Lee 27:45

And I’m looking at that, I think their idea was, they wanted to say we are environmentally thinking. So this kind of a flower, in a sense, it’s got very natural colors, bright colors, you know, those colors of spring. And that we’re conscious of those things. We’re not a big conglomerate, that’s just a big gray color machine. We are somebody who cares. And those kind of colors really say that they make you feel warm and fuzzy. And those are those are colors that I think make a real difference as you start to proceed it in. And color is such a huge emotional element that you want to make sure you do that. Right. But I think that’s that’s really why they made those changes. And I and I think that’s important.

Eric Stopper 28:32

Um, I’m looking at some, I’m looking at some pictures of they cut, they cut it in half and made it look like it was a rising sun over the water and the waters, the waters all black man, maybe maybe not the good move, because they just they got they got mean to death on that change. But as as far as your clients go, I noticed that you have some testimonials on your site, and one of them stuck out to me. It’s a company called thrive life. Yes. And there’s like six videos from their founder just talking about all the different aspects of the campaign and what you guys ended up doing for them Can Can you give me some of the background of that what they were trying to accomplish? And then how this how your process came into play and what the overall impact with the campaign was at the end of the day?

Rushford Lee 29:20

Yeah, I think for a lot of firms that do graphic design, they are doing something they want to be award winning, they wanted to be beautiful. And I think when we started with them, we went back into Okay, who’s our client? What do they think of us? What is it that they are looking for the same thing that I said to you before? And I think what they started to realize is that sometimes it doesn’t matter what we think as designers. Designers often say well here’s the solution. I know this is the greatest and it’s kinda like how do you know that? Are you a customer? Have you talked to the customer are their customers, mostly females, you know, especially with thrive that was the bulk of their clientele is females who buy food dry, you know, freeze dried food to put in for their use for their meals or they use it for storage? And do you know what she thinks and why she thinks it. And I think we brought that to them, and help them to be able to see that more than they already did to get insights that they didn’t have before. And before we started to do what we’re doing now, where we’re creating a full brand playbook, here’s everything you need to move forward. We often just did the graphic part, but we still did the research. And often our clients would take the research and apply it to their sales, to their social media, to other things, and we weren’t doing that for him then. But I think that’s getting those insights and saying I understand my customer now much better than I did before. And then I think then being able to do great design work it rather than being just decoration. It’s intelligent design, the colors are for a reason, the brand mark is because of a reason it should educate them to what you do, the way the photographs are taken, the way the colors are done, all of that should match that story you’re trying to tell. So that it’s not just decoration, it’s really smart design that is designed the way it is because of what we understood from the customer. Does that make sense?

Eric Stopper 31:16

Absolutely. That makes sense. So for for those people who are brand new, no pun intended, actually, no pun intended. So for those that are brand new, that they’re just getting started, what are some of the first steps, I mean, it sounds like there’s a, there’s a pretty clear framework that they can follow to set up their initial branding. But let’s say that I just I just created a product, I just made a couple hundred units of it. I’m looking to list on Etsy, or Amazon or my own website, or just to post them on Instagram, to nail the branding, to nail the logo to nail the essence to get all that stuff and set a solid foundation, what is the absolute first thing that you would tell those people to do?

Rushford Lee 32:10

I would first thing gather your group together and talk about what you think are the most important attributes and benefits and emotions that drive your customer and put them into priority. Just choose one marketing stuff because you can’t market 30 things you can’t market a dozen things, you’ve got to market one thing or two things. So understanding the right thing you have to be marketing and selling with your brand, is the first thing and the second would be then go understand the customer. Don’t think you know the customer. I mean, unless if you’re a 25 year old designer, and you’re really good and you’re going to design a product for another 25 year old designer, you might do okay, but that’s almost never the case. So get to know that customer understand what they think what are the attributes they like? What are the benefits they want from that product? And and if it’s a successful product, what are the emotions, they feel that it always start there, and then make sure your design reflects that and there and there are some companies that they they don’t see it until they actually see it and they go Oh, I get it. Yeah, that that mark actually expresses exactly what we do. And and that’s what that’s the first thing that you want to do before you put a pencil down on paper is know who the customer is and know how they think about it through their mind and you need to get him half a chance of doing some good stuff.

Eric Stopper 33:32

I have a chance at least. Rushford, thank you so much how how can I send people to go get in touch with you where should I send everybody

Rushford Lee 33:39

you know be consented to our website, you can give them my phone number and tell them to give us a call and something we always love to do to start out with is just do a stakeholder audit with them. Really at no cost, we just want to find out if we’re a good fit for them and they’ll be a good fit for us. And so by going through that exercise for an hour or so, it really helps us to send them to see if we’re a good fit. And so we that’s the babblin Give us a call we’ll do stakeholder audit and see if we can help them out. In the long run. We’d like to write a book that shows other people how to do this because you know I’ll be gone someday we’ll be gone and and there’s good designers good products out there that need to reach the market and it’d be great to have people know how to do it.

Eric Stopper 34:21

Perfect. Go to redkor.com, redkorbrands.com. redkorbrands.com. They’ve got the phone number they’ve got a contact us they’ve got tons of information go and talk with Rushford and his team. And again, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Rushford Lee 34:40

Thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun. Thank you.

Eric Stopper 34:42

To finish today’s podcast I want to share some final thoughts for third party sellers to be successful on Amazon. You’ve got to get reviews. We Buy Box Experts are really big fans of the team over at e commerce engine. And it’s tools that help Amazon sellers simplify the process of soliciting reviews from Customers who purchase their products. For more information go to ecommerceengine.com. Thanks for joining us today.

Outro 35:07

Thanks for listening to the Buy Box Experts podcast. Be sure to click subscribe, check us out on the web and we’ll see you next time.