Jessica Wicks

Branding | Marketing | Strategy

Jessica Wicks

Brand Loyal

Branding

What does it mean to actually have customers and clients who are loyal to your brand?

While there are many triggers to making a customer loyal to your brand – quality, service, personality – it’s also important to understand that brand loyalty is a spectrum. Some customers may already be shopping around, while others would need an incredible incentive to switch.

In a competitive market, the value that you provide might be similar to that of your competitors. This is where having the trust and preference of your customers is most valuable.

Brand Loyalty in Action

There’s no better place to watch brand loyalty in action than at the grocery store.

Most grocery stores have entire aisles filled with competitors of a single product type – tomato sauce, coffee, cereal. As groceries are a consumable product, brands at the store rely on a combination of promotions and brand loyalty to keep their sales up, while their competitors are actively trying to steal their buying power away. What’s motivating the customer is generally a tension between perceived value and quality. Basically, they want the best product at a great price. Sometimes value is the top priority. Other times, quality (real or perceived) will win out.

How many brands of potato chips have you bought over the years?

If you’re anything like me, you probably have a few brands that you really enjoy (quality) but you make a big part of your buying decision based on the deal of the week (price).

See, the brands I think are the best quality are around $4-5 per bag. While I like the product, I don’t believe there is enough value to justify that price. The store brand chips are usually $1-2, and sometimes I’ll buy those. Competitors usually in the $4-5 range sometimes go on sale, and depending on whether I think the quality of the product is that much better than the store brand, sometimes I’ll buy those in the $2-3 range.

What’s really interesting though, is paying attention to your tipping point – when the brand you prefer is priced in a way that coincides with your perceived value of it.

At what price do you decide to buy your preferred brand, even when it’s more than the competitors? If you’re extremely loyal to a single brand, you’ll not only buy it at the higher price point – you’ll recommend it to the other people standing in the aisle with you. If your loyalty is not very strong, your preferred brand will need to be the same price as the cheapest alternative before you pick it up off the shelf – even if you think the product quality is better.

The truth is, we know the higher price point is not always aligned with a higher quality.

A big part of that $5 price tag is the cost of advertising, packaging, and sometimes even literally paying for (shelf) positioning in the marketplace. There is probably a little wiggle room for higher quality ingredients, but not always. More often, that price tag is based on the fact that by positioning themselves as a higher quality based on their price (perceived quality) they are able to sell fewer bags and still make more money.

Values vs. Value

What does this mean for your business? If your market is competitive – if there is another alternative for your customers or clients – you need to pay attention to communicating your values as much as your value.

What do you stand for? What is the story behind why you do what you do? Brand loyalty is all about how well a customer knows you, how much they like or identify with you, and how much they trust you to provide them with great quality product or service at a price that is aligned with the value you provide.

A big part of our buying decisions actually come down to the script we tell ourselves. When your customer is making a decision, they are likely running the script of “I’m the type of person who…”

Don’t overlook this. Understanding the values of your target market and catering to those values is one of the most fundamental pieces to the marketing puzzle. It’s one of the key ways that you can differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Order in a Pizza

Business Strategy

I want to share with you a little productivity tip that I’ve perfected over the past few years. But first, story time.  

I can still vividly remember the first time I ordered in a pizza with my son. He was five and over the moon that someone came to our door to drop off our supper. At first, the delivery guy laughed at his excitement but was shocked when I explained it was because we’d never ordered in before.  

You see, as a young mom just starting my career and business, I was too cheap frugal to spend money on luxuries like pizza delivery when I had to pay for rent, daycare and the other slew of bills that come along with being an adult. It’s not that we never ate pizza, it was just that we cooked it ourselves or got the ‘walk-in special’.

Side note: don’t go after the customers who are still cooking the frozen pizza. They rarely turn into weekly full-priced orders.

The bright side of these financial restraints is that I learned how to stick to a budget and cut unnecessary expenses like a boss.

As the years trickled by and my business grew, ordering in a pizza became a saviour when life was just a little too hectic (read: when I worked crazy hours, my fridge was empty and my kitchen was a mess). At first, I would spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to find the best deal, ordering from different places regardless of the quality just to save a few bucks.

By the time I chose the toppings and placed the order, we would be starving and waiting anxiously by the door with my son repeating ‘when is it coming, mom?’ and ‘why does it take so loooooong?’. We mixed things up by ordering other types of takeout on occasion but repeated the process of looking for deals and ordering from everywhere under the sun.  

And finally, I got tired to a point where all of the extra effort just wasn’t worth it anymore.  

I stopped price shopping and we found a couple local takeout places we liked to order from. When I’d call the restaurant, they’d use their fancy CRM system to pull up my address and order history. It got to the point where I’d just call and say ‘Hi, send what you sent last time’ because I knew the product and service was exactly what I wanted.

This is how easy we need to make it for repeat and retainer customers to work with us. 

I also knew how long the delivery would take, and that’s when the magic happened.

When you have 45 minutes before supper but you don’t have to cook, you can get. stuff. done. Somehow, the timer (aka delivery guy) made it possible to fly through my disaster of a home so that not only would supper be on the table, but the table would be freshly scrubbed, floors swept and counters decluttered.  

The free time from not having to run to the store and plan or prep a meal allowed me to offset the cost of the pizza because I could get more work done, and the 45 minutes of cleaning made it possible for me to actually cook a meal the next night without feeling completely overwhelmed.  

This is what you’re clients actually want – whether they hire you for your expertise or just to buy back their time, they want you to make it easier for them to keep moving forward.

I’m not saying that you have to literally order a pizza, although you totally could.  

Whether it’s outsourcing or scheduling something to repeat automatically, it takes a little time up front to set up, but we all need to find the systems that free up that little extra time when things get overwhelming. Something that doesn’t require too many choices (decision fatigue is real, folks).  

What’s a system you have in place that frees up some of your time and mental energy?

5 Reminders for Sharing Your Brand

Mindset

As children, we all want to fit in. We copy our peers and live in fear that someone will notice that we’re weird or different, because if someone notices there is a real risk of a mob of teasing and bullying to follow. At least, that’s what our brain tells us after hundreds of years wired to desire human connection for survival.

Hiding in the shadows is completely safe and totally natural. But safe won’t serve you if you’re trying to grow your business.

As entrepreneurs in the digital age, the lifeblood of our business is making connections with new people and showing up to stay top of mind. We are expected to run our business and live our lives in the public eye more than any generation of business builders that came before us.

Gone are the days of a publicity team vetting every published piece of content or email, training the company spokesperson to stay on message through mock interviews. Now, we ‘go live’ and try to appear *almost* flawless so that we can be seen as authoritative – yet approachable.

I don’t know about you, but stepping into the spotlight can paralyze me with fear. I tend to over-analyze every email and every post before publishing, and more often than not I save what I have to say in a ‘drafts’ folder never to see the light of day.

Have you ever typed a comment on social media and deleted it before pushing publish? Yeah, me too.

What I’m trying to say here is that although I may have a little more experience with speaking up and although I’m able to put on the brave and confident face when I share some of the dialogue going on in my hear, I’m feeling the fear just as much as (if not more than) everyone else.

The following 5 points are not just for you. They are something that I’m putting out there so that the next time I want to bury my head under the pillow or my finger hovers over the publish/go live button, not sure whether I can handle actually clicking it, I have something to refer back to.

1. Share your opinion, even if it may change.

This is a biggy for me. I worry constantly about voicing an opinion in case I later change my mind and get called out for it. I’ve seen it happen to so many other entrepreneurs online. The truth to remember here is that you can only speak to the information and experiences you have had until this point in your life, and that information is entirely relevant and worth sharing. We all grow as people, and we all change the way we think about different topics. The worst thing that can happen is that we will have to be mature enough to say “I’ve changed my position on this topic and this is why” in the future.

2. You have no reason to be ashamed.

Selfie of me pre-shower, post-Saturday morning cleaning, about to sit down and write my email newsletter to go with this post. 

Living a ‘public’ life often means sharing photos and videos of you, your family, your work, your home. I think there are more business owners who are scared of going on video or posting photos than we can ever know, and I think they hold back because they don’t like how they look or they are ashamed that they don’t have the Instagram worthy office. I’m here to say that there is NOTHING wrong with how you look or what your workspace looks like. It’s a snapshot of where you are right now, and it’s part of your journey and your story (whether you want to admit it or not).

3. Accept that you feel fear, even though you are safe.

Studies show that many people are more afraid of public speaking than of death. DEATH, people. And while we can all say how crazy that sounds, the truth is that our brains are wired to keep us from standing out from the crowd. Rationally, we know that nobody is going to jump out of our smartphone screen to murder us, but it doesn’t stop the irrational part of our brain and body from going into fight or flight mode. The trick here is not to fight the fear, but to acknowledge and accept it. It’s here to keep you safe, and you can choose to let it control you or empower you.

If you want more on this topic, I highly recommend you read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. You have to be open to it for it to work its magic. I should know, it took me a couple tries to really get into it.

4. Now is the perfect time to make mistakes.

Chances are, if you keep at this entrepreneurial journey for long you will amass a larger and larger audience. In other words, right now you are the least known that you will ever be again in your career. Give yourself permission to make a mess of things. Test assumptions, and be prepared to laugh at yourself if you get it wrong. Because you will. And so does everyone else. While we *can* learn from other people’s mistakes and failures, it’s not until you get off the bench and actually try to do something that you can know what works and what doesn’t. Don’t expect perfection from yourself.

Bonus point: Don’t expect perfection from other people, either. Make an effort to connect with other *imperfect* people who don’t make you feel like an idiot for not knowing how to do everything right.

5. Someone out there REALLY needs to hear what you have to say.

Right now, there is someone feeling lost, confused, embarrassed or stressed out – and you can help them. You might be able to guide them, empower them, or even help them laugh at themselves. What you have to say might be exactly what they need to hear, and more importantly, you might be exactly who they need to hear it from. Even in the early stages when you feel like you are speaking to nobody, the messages you put out now might help someone months or years down the road so START SPEAKING. They can’t get the message if you never make the call.

I’ve shared some opinions above that not everyone will agree with. The simple act of putting your thoughts out there opens you up to criticism, and for some of us, that can be heart-wrenching. Yet if I can help just one person gain the confidence to open up and share their message, I feel like it is all worth it.

Has anything above resonated with you? Please let me know. You can comment publicly below this post, share it with your network, or send me an email to hello [at] jessicawicks.ca if you’d rather keep it private.

Overcoming the Fear of Achieving Your Goals

Mindset

I’m sure you have big dreams. We all do. However sometimes those aspirations feel beyond our reach or too far into the future to seem real to us right now.

And truth be told? Most of us are scared of achieving them.

It’s called the fear of success, and it sounds completely and utterly ridiculous. Why would you fear getting the thing you want most?

I’ll tell you why:
You’re afraid you can’t actually handle it. You won’t be able to keep up. People will judge your motives or abilities. What you fantasize about isn’t all you’ve made it out to be.

Honestly, if you were to get EVERYTHING you ever wanted RIGHT NOW you might actually be miserable because you’re not yet the person you need to be to fill that role in your life.

The you of today can’t possibly have the wisdom and experience to be the you of the future AND THAT’S OK.

Staying Safe

The problem comes when we self-sabotage or make our dreams smaller so that we feel safe. The problem is when we don’t realize that the gap between who we are now and who we need to be, no matter how large that gap may be, is filled with many smaller steps.

Some steps are easy and some are hard, but all of them are a lot more manageable than the huge void we tend to see between us and our dreams.

How do you know when you’re ready for the next step?

I don’t believe you are ever ready. If you’re waiting to be ready to level up your life, you’ll be waiting a long time. 

“Leap and the net shall appear.”

Yeah, maybe… but you also might get banged up by the rocks on the way down. The reason taking that next step can be so terrifying is that you likely WILL fall down a few times.

It’s hard to go from being good at your current level to ‘failing’ at the next one.

Taking the First Step

The first step might not always look like a step. It tends to be more foundational. 

Think of an infant learning to walk. They generally start out lying on their backs, eventually finding the strength and momentum to ROLL THEMSELVES OVER. 

Just for a second, imagine how difficult that must be for those little muscles that have absolutely no strength buildup or muscle memory. Think of how many times a child must attempt the movement – probably without anyone knowing what they were doing – before they eventually manage the flip. 

The loss of control when they get past the halfway mark for the first time and start plummeting back down to the ground face first would probably feel terrifying to many of us #controlfreak adults. Of course, we know what’s coming when we roll ourselves over now, but it wasn’t always that way. 

We used to be so brave.

The Hardest Part

Next for the little one comes the step of pushing their torso up enough with their arms that they can lift their heads from the floor. Have you ever seen a baby push-up? It’s all shaky arms and lots of face-plants on the ground until they master the move.

And I’m sorry, but no matter how many play mats or blankets they are on, after a while it’s got to hurt to repeatedly smash your face off the floor day after day. 

Sometimes they give up for a couple of days or even a week, and go back to rolling over – because hey, it feels good to practice something that now feels almost natural. Something you’re getting good at. And it’s easy to forget how difficult it used to be for you.

Do they give up completely? Do they think ‘this is too hard’ or ‘I’m not capable’ or ‘moving with my own free will is overrated anyway’? 

No. Again and again, they smash their little faces and their disproportionately-large-to-their-body heads off the ground because they are willing to endure the pain. I mean, who does that?! 

We did. At one point, we hadn’t yet learned the lesson that repeated failure is cause for embarrassment and shame. That there was another option: to give up on our dreams and stay where we are because it’s #easier.

Getting Closer

So, now the baby is able to hold their head off the ground. It’s still a little shaky and sometimes their arms give out, but it’s time for the next move. The crawl.

This move isn’t as much a test of strength as it is a feat of coordination. Which of course, for a baby, is a whole new world. Figuring out which limbs to move together, in which direction, at which time… it’s hard to imagine how incredibly complicated that would seem. Daunting. Overwhelming.

Many infants start out crawling backwards. They see where they want to go and keep getting further away, but it doesn’t stop them.

Actually, some of these little guys and gals actually discover that if they turn their head to the side, they can navigate themselves exactly where they want to go in reverse. Others, unable to accomplish the hand-knee coordination, will army crawl to their destination. It might not be the fastest or the easiest way to get there, but it works. 

It’s still hard, but the progress and freedom feels so good.

Giant Leaps

Some kids are content to stay crawling for a really long time. I mean, if it gets you where you want to go, why not stick with what’s working?

Eventually though, something pushes them into the next step – standing and walking.

Maybe it’s a toy on the coffee table that is desirable enough to to go for it. Perhaps the child is the last crawler in the play group and is inspired by his or her peers. 

Whatever the reason, eventually the baby decides it’s time to pull themselves up to standing position. And often times, it’s not that hard to go from crawling to standing. That’s not to say it’s smooth sailing from here. New skills include balancing on two legs, and eventually taking those sweet sweet first steps. 

Yet after all that practice, it can actually come pretty easily. Months of trying to accomplish something new (including repeated failure) and building their strength has prepared the child for this next big step. 

Best of all, being on two feet comes with a completely new view of the world.

The Final Step?

Is taking a step the last part of the ‘learning to walk’ journey for a child? Of course not. It’s that destination that they have been aiming for and that they are cheered on about, but there are so many things to learn after everyone says they’ve ‘made it’. 

They’ll learn to run, slow down on uneven ground so they don’t trip, watch out for the stairs. Eventually they will learn rules for walking on sidewalks and that texting + walking = disaster.

There is no end to the journey.

Support and Judegement

Little do these little ones know they are being judged and compared to their peers and siblings. They are being measured against developmental milestones charts to see if they are ‘ahead’ or ‘behind’ their peers. 

Honestly, I think one of the biggest perks of being so young – one of the reasons that eventually everyone figures out how to get themselves from one side of the room to the other – is that they don’t know they are being judged. 

Some kids walk before they crawl. Some have siblings they are trying to keep up with, or relatives that give them lots of practice with the whole stand-up-and-walk-while-you-hold-my-hands thing. But no matter which order they learn or how much help they get or how long it takes them to figure it out, they all have to eventually learn how to pull themselves up or crawl. 

By the way, it’s OK to accept help. There is no award given out to babies who learned to walk without help from their parents. Allowing or asking for assistance doesn’t take anything away from the win.

As adults, we’re acutely aware of where we stack up compared to our peers and siblings. We judge our self-worth and potential on past performance, accomplishments and how much we earn. 

The thing is, developmental milestone charts are meant to track the societal average. What it doesn’t account for is that you don’t have to play in the same ballpark as average.

You can choose to create your own journey where the pace at which you make progress is completely and totally up to you without the ideas of right or wrong or good or bad tied to it.

Are You Ready for Your Next Step?

I’m not actually telling you it’s time to take that next step. Contrary to most entrepreneurial cheerleading and professional development content, I don’t think that now has to be your time to leap.

You might still be learning the step you are on, or you could be like one of those babies who learned to walk before they crawled meaning you might have to go back and build up your foundational skill gaps.

Yet if you’ve gotten pretty good at what you do, you might be subconsciously sabotaging your goals because you’re scared you won’t be good enough to reach them.

Remember that who you are now and what you’ve done in the past is not an accurate indicator of what you can accomplish in the future. Your possibilities are infinite.

What’s been holding you back and what step are you on in your journey to your big dream right now? Let me know in the comments.

Why You Need to Create a Quarterly Content Calendar

Marketing, Social Media

Do you ever wonder how other businesses and entrepreneurs seem to have a never-ending stream of content showing up on their social media feeds? How they can be constantly publishing updates, yet also do the work they actually get paid for?

The key to achieving this is to create a content plan and batch as much of the updates as possible. A well thought out plan will give you a task list to complete, making it much easier to promote the right thing at the right time in your business without always needing to be thinking it through.

I’m going to suggest planning your next three months of content all at once. I’ve done this for my own business as well as for clients, and it’s always been a good amount of time.

Why three months?

  • It’s enough time to make the whole process worthwhile. You’ll see that there is a fair bit of work involved, and to be honest the plan should take almost the same amount of time for 3 months as it would for 1 month.
  • It’s not so long that your plans will change dramatically. In business, we have to be nimble – yet even if you decide to change your core offer or run a different promotion, it will likely take a few weeks to plan and implement that change.

Creating a Content Calendar

There are a couple different pieces to a content calendar, so it can be a bit overwhelming to get started.

You can have a promotional calendar, content creation calendar, and social media calendar all working within your content calendar.

A simple way to get started is to create a spreadsheet with the days of your calendar (start with 3 months) across the top and your different marketing platforms (e.g. social channels, email marketing, blog, digital ads, radio ads, print ads, etc) down the side.

Promotional Calendar

I like to start with my conversion-based content. After all, there’s no point in creating content for people to know, like and trust you if you’re never going to ask them to buy something or at least sign-up for your email list.

Starting with your promotional calendar, mark the dates that you plan to be selling and fill in the cells with a quick description of what you’ll do on each channel to share your campaigns.

If you follow a launch model, you’ll have periods of highly concentrated promotions followed by longer periods of blank space.

If your products and services are evergreen, you’ll likely sprinkle the promotional material throughout the calendar, thinking about the seasonality of what you offer (think pumpkin spice latte) so you can focus on one feature at a time.

Highlight the cells of the promotional pieces in a single colour. Later, you might use different shades to denote different campaigns.

Content Creation Calendar

If you create original content (blogs, videos, graphics, etc.), start by scheduling them out on their native platforms (e.g. video on YouTube, blog post on your website). How often do you currently produce content on average? Try to keep your first 3-month plan as close to your usual pace as possible (because if it’s not realistic, you’re never gonna stick to it for 90+ days).

If you have different categories of content, you can identify these in the cells descriptions (e.g. email newsletter vs. drip campaign) with a number next to them (e.g. marketing video 1, marketing video 2).

In the past, I’ve put in specific titles of what I was supposed to write about, but I have found that it makes content creation pretty dry. Instead, I try to draft pieces when I’m inspired and jot down ideas as they come to me. That way, when I have to publish something I’ve got a pretty good starting point.

Next, plan how you will market your original content on the other channels. You might choose to schedule the same piece multiple times on social media the week it is published, then once a week for the rest of the month, then once a quarter after that. This will depend on the platform, type of content, and audience – but most people spend too much time creating content and not enough time promoting it.

When you promote your content, you might straight-out share a link or do something more custom like creating pull-quote graphics.

Again, highlight all of your content creation in a single colour. You might use different shades for promoting different original content, but you should be able to clearly distinguish your original content from your promotional marketing.

Social Media Calendar

The easiest way to create your social media calendar is to audit what you’re already posting. Do you share a lot of timely content or personal stories?

If so, highlight cells on the different channels in a new colour in a pattern that reflects the number of posts you put up so you can see how often you need to post in that feed.

You might distinguish certain goals (such as doing live video every week), but otherwise, you just need to be conscious of getting on there and posting.

If you post shared media (links to external content), you can simply highlight the cells you’ll be sharing links in another shade of the same colour.

I use Pocket to bookmark and tag articles/posts/etc that I think are relevant to my audience. Later, you might use those tags to categorize your shared media.

Another often unlooked source of content is informative or inspirational status updates. What types of things do people ask you that you can answer quickly and easily? What types of things anger or inspire you? Use these to write updates in the form of tips, statements and quotes.

I find it’s easiest to use a social media scheduler to batch my links and preplanned updates for the next three months, leaving gaps for real-time content to be shared.

Keep Consistent

The trick is not to be overly ambitious with your plan and to focus on consistency rather than volume. Don’t start out planning to create more than you currently create and keep a little extra content in the bank for a rainy day. You can always add more as you go.

Just as a budget is meant to help you get the most out of your money, a content calendar is meant to help you get the most out of your marketing.

The Creativity of Entrepreneurship

Mindset

I often meet people, especially those in professions that are considered to be very practical and logical, who tell me they are not ‘creative’. These people are using a standard definition of creativity that says you have to be highly imaginative and produce artwork that the masses may admire, though not fully understand.

Yet artists aren’t the only creatives on this great blue sphere. I would argue that many entrepreneurs are highly creative as well.

Personally, I’ve had an odd relationship with my own creativity. As a child, my mother was a wonderful and talented artist and my older sister had her own unique style. As for me, I could never get things to look the way I wanted and was too afraid of making a mistake to stray far from the instructions. I loved to read and was good at math, but I rarely created (writing, drawing, etc.) just for fun.

High school and college helped me explore my creativity more, but again I struggled with the imaginative type of creativity and instead focused on problem-solving with my art. Give me a blank canvas with no instructions and I’d freeze up.

Early in my career, I worked as a graphic and web designer. While I was certainly strong enough to hold my own, I was never the most talented designer. My lack of inspiration for passion projects that fellow designers seemed to have in abundance left me feeling like a fraud.

What I did have in abundance were business ideas.

Everywhere I looked I could see opportunities to serve people in a way that would bring in money but was terrible at committing to an idea for fear that I would get bored over the long-term. So I continued to learn and work and eventually teach, expanding into public relations and marketing, never really feeling like a true creative by that standard definition.

But what I’ve come to realize over these past couple years is that there are many different forms of creativity. Anytime you find a novel solution to a problem you face, you are using creative energy. By these standards, even the most logical of professions can be creative.

Take an accountant, for example. One of my best friends is an accountant and many people consider this work to be dry and boring, yet I would argue that taking unique inputs (different incomes, expenses and requirements) and fitting them into the best boxes to return the most favourable outcome using sets of rules that must be observed can be highly creative work at a certain level. Logical, no doubt. But creative too.

However, not all accountants would be considered creative by my definition. Many will not put the creative energy into finding the best solution, instead just repeating what has been done before.

Ask yourself a question: Which would you rather hire?

Yet, you don’t have to stray too far from what has been done before to be ‘creative’. Many of the most famous pieces of art and music and writing can be viewed as a slight deviant of an existing work. Some of the most innovative companies in the world have taken business practices from one industry and applied it to another.

True creativity lies in taking something that has been done, and doing it in your own unique way.

In entrepreneurship, doing something in your own unique way is imperative to standing out from your competition.

So the question you must ask yourself, regardless of your profession or industry, is whether you are following the blueprint or breaking the mould.

Do you strive to be a creative entrepreneur, or are you happy to play the game by the rules set by those who came before you?