1696 – An Attractive Place To Start A Career with Delia Associates’ Ed Delia

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0:59with us right now it's ed delia ed you are the president of delia associates your website is delianet.com ed it's great to have you here thanks josh it's great to be here with you today Absolutely. Now, I was remarking that you have been at D 'Elia Associates for over 29 years. I said, well, that's a company that's been around for quite some time. And what I learned is that, no, no, no, you've been around for a lot longer than that. Can you mind, can we just give us a snapshot of who D 'Elia Net is or D 'Elia and Associates is? Absolutely, yes. So it's great when LinkedIn reminds you how old you've been and how long you've been doing what you've been doing.

1:46That's usually when I remember. That's right. I started in August of 95. But the business had been around for some time before that. In fact, my father, Michael D 'Elia, founded the company in 1964 in a very classic entrepreneurial style. So Josh, you probably heard this story many times in different ways. Little side office next to his bedroom, a typewriter back then. and an idea. And Delia Associates was born as back then a traditional B2B advertising and PR firm. And it existed that way many years. And in classic family business style, I kind of grew up around the business. So I was collating press kits when I was seven.

2:28I was helping my brother erect trade show boots when I was 13. I think I wrote my first press release when I was 16. and I was doing media analysis at 17, never thinking that I'd ever join the business. It's just what you did, you know? You just kind of help out and jump in. And then when I was about to graduate from Dickinson College, I was in line. And I said to a good friend of mine next to me, I said, I don't know exactly what I'm going to do next, but I'll be damned if I go to work for my own man. And a few months later, turning down a job and coming to DeLeo Associates full-time. oh that's hilarious yeah i did know do you have children as well i do i have uh twins who are 18 just going off to college and um my daughter actually interned with us this summer so that was generation three walking through the door so that was oh my gosh so well naturally that was my question if they had the same uh sentiment that you did i'll be damned if i work for my old man Well, you know, that's what she says now, but she's got the aptitude and the drive and the ability.

3:36So who knows what the future will bring, right?

3:44So share just a little bit about who you work with, your impact in the world, you know, and, you know, maybe just some of the great work that you've been able to do for your clients. Sure. So we often call our clients with great affection the brands behind the brands. The clients that we work with typically are living in the supply chain of a bigger brand. It may be a consumer product or a global entity. And what we're trying to do is position our clients to win. We want them to win their fair share of market. We want them to win in all engagements. So a lot of our work is driven by brand. We're big believers in the power of the B2B brand.

4:26And a lot of times in that supply chain B2B company audience, the importance of brand is sometimes misunderstood or overlooked. So a lot of times we're educating our constituents about the importance of brand building. And then we're always looking to drive a growth strategy. So a lot of times we see companies in what I'll call hope and pray mode. You know, I hope the next quarter is better. You know, I'm praying that things will turn around. and there's nothing wrong with hope and there's nothing wrong with prayer. I'll say a short one every morning, but that's not a great foundation for growing a business.

5:02So we move them to a position of plan and do. And we really get centered on some very specific, usually three to five core growth strategies that we're going to drive that brand into to win business and engage. So that's a lot of the front end work that we do. Yeah. Are there typical strategies that you find that most leaders are not implementing that you find yourself recommending pretty early? You discover pretty quickly, yeah, we can already tell you, you, like a lot of other people, likely have this gap. There's a few that we're seeing show up with, I'd say, in a more recurring fashion. And one is, especially across the, I'll say the pandemic era to now, a lot of our clients were saying, no, no, no, we don't need more business.

5:58We need more people. We need more people to come and work for us. We've got more business than we can handle. We need more talent to get on the ship. And the challenge there, especially in that B2B landscape that we work with, is those companies don't always look very attractive. to the rising generation of employees and talent. So sometimes our work on the brand is making them look not just like an attractive place to place business, but an attractive place to start a career. So that's been a big recurring theme. So we're actually working more with HR departments than marketing and sales departments in the last few years.

6:37So that's been an interesting shift. That's an interesting conversation. And I think, let me just take a pause really quick here. But to actually, you know, bring your core leadership team in, particularly on the personnel side of things and just say, okay, let's look at everything we're communicating and let's look at it from a lens, from a prospective employee. How would they resonate with this? Or if we're, let's say we're trying to attract a certain type or, you know, maybe we're looking, you know, are our values being conveyed because everything you're communicating is visible to everybody in all instances for every reason, right?

7:12Right. That's a really great action item, I think, for a lot of folks listening to this. It certainly can be. I mean, if you think about and we use a very simple definition for what is a brand. The brand we say is unique times three. It's a unique entity with a unique offering to an equally unique audience and unique meaning unlike anything else. The same logic applies to attracting personnel. Right. There's a reason why certain types of people or personas are attracted to brands, whether they're buying that brand's goods and services or whether they're coming there as an occupation to work and to start or extend their career.

7:50So the same brand logic applies. And to your point, Josh, yeah, the brand is omnipresent, right? The brand is holistic. It doesn't turn on and off for certain audiences. It's one identity. And as some of these manufacturers, especially manufacturing community, that's where I'm really concerned. because the industry is not doing a great job of positioning manufacturing as a great career path or destination, in my humble opinion. I think industry associations could be doing more to say, hey, this is a good path for you. So you're seeing a lot of talent aging out, retiring, and there's nobody coming in to fill those seats.

8:27So that's a real concern, especially in manufacturing. right? The other often, I'd say switching gears a little, other overlooked opportunities for a lot of companies is the business right under their nose. And that I mean, a lot of times companies want to market to new, market to new, go get new business. And yes, that's very important for growth, but sometimes they forget to speak to their existing customers or existing pipeline of prospects or existing contacts. And you always have to be reaffirming your brand to those audiences too, because they've already bought from you. So the chance to upsell or extend or expand that relationship is a far easier proposition than going after somebody brand new.

9:06And a lot of companies overlook that. That's, you know, in my view, sometimes that's money being left on the table just by not communicating to people you already know. Yeah. What would be some examples of companies that you've been able to work with? And what has that relationship look like? And typically, I would imagine it looks like you generally work with companies for a little bit longer periods of time, right? It's not just like, okay, bring us in and in 60 days, we're going to make all your wildest dreams come true. I wish it was that simple. Yeah. But sometimes we can get rolling in as quick as 60 days.

9:47Usually we start with a serious conversation about the brand and where the brand is going? And, you know, is it living up to its potential? And that's usually where the conversation starts. It often starts with a top executive and usually their senior team is to say, you know, we call it the brand vision gap. Basically, the company's vision and where it's going is outpacing the brand. And the brand is starting to become like, it's kind of like running with a parachute on your back, you know, harder to do than if that parachute was cut loose and you can run free, right? So a lot of times the brand is holding the company back and they're wondering, why are we always coming in second?

10:25Why are we not getting invited to these bigger opportunities? You know, why are people going to other competitors? Why are they not even giving us a look? And the why is all related to brand. They are not seeing that the buying audience is not seeing that company as an attractive solve to whatever issue or problem they have. So by igniting that and illuminating that, and then driving that through marketing communications, and we do abide by a broad array of marketing. So it's not just a website fix and you're done. It's digital, it's print, it's trade show, it's video, it's content, but all driven through the lens of brand and all messaged through the lens of the brand.

11:09So that when people see that message and the right audience. For a lot of our clients, we say it's not about quantity, it's about quality. I'd rather furnish a client with five awesome prospect opportunities than 100 that are garbage. Lots of people can do that, but it's the five right ones that are ultimately going to drive the business forward. That's really where we focus. Quality brand attracts quality, right fit prospects, and they're going to do good business together. So that's really where we focus initially. And then we support them often as like an outsourced marketing department to make sure that all the channels are addressed properly on an ongoing basis.

11:50But it usually starts with the brand and it starts with, you know, what's the growth strategy to drive this brand forward and to be prosperous? Yeah. Talk about, you know, when we're thinking about what we're communicating with, you know, with our brand and in all places, right, this balance between what we do and who we are and what we stand for. okay okay so great question that's kind of a big topic and and maybe that was kind of a little vague and how i asked that but i'm just i'm curious if you see my suspicion my thesis is that i think the inclination is to i think a lot of us maybe start you know really kind of focusing on what we do uh and and anyway i don't mean to lead the witness here but i understand i was just kind of re-thinking it in our speak.

12:41So our speak is functional and emotional. So a lot of companies lead with functional. We do X. We provide Y services. We do this, right? That's a functional position. That's a position of what you do. You know, an emotional position would be, you know, maybe like a role-based position is like, this is how we serve or a territory. This is where we live, Right. We had a very successful campaign for an engineering company, which is basically basically at the cross section of innovation and imagination where basically they are innovation and execution. So they were the bridge between innovation and execution.

13:24And that's where they live. And we made that very real and territorial. and that became a very strong position for them. For people that were trying to bridge that gap from the big idea to commercial viability, this was the right firm in certain industries. So we're trying to let the brand stand for more than just what they do because people typically looking for a functional need are often going to say, okay, everybody kind of looks like an apple and there's no orange in sight. So if I have to choose between three apples and they're all priced differently and they all look the same and they all probably taste the same, I'll probably pick the low cost one, right?

14:01Why wouldn't I? But if I see a super big, awesome, shiny deluxe apple that looks better than all the rest, yeah, maybe I'll gravitate to that one because it's special and it's different and it excites me. So we believe that a lot of B2B brands sometimes forget about that emotional component. And even professional buyers are influenced by emotion, right? Even a purchasing agent is influenced by virtue of being a human being is influenced by emotion. So we're looking to really tap those emotions in a very positive and authentic way. And authentic is very important too. You can't really go out and claim what you're not.

14:40You can't offer something that you can't deliver on. You got to be true. You got to be authentic to who you are and what you represent in the best possible way to the audiences you're trying to serve. Yeah. Someone that's been listening to our conversation, let's talk about, okay, I love, Ed, what you've been talking about. What is that kind of that discovery process or, you know, how does someone begin a relationship with D 'Elia? Great, great question. So our discovery process, we call it a 360 discovery. So it starts with internally, internal discovery as to what the people who represent the brand, how you see yourselves, what you stand for and what you believe in.

15:23Externally, we do qualitative surveys of key relationships to find out what your key relationships see that's unique and special about you as a brand. And then we do a competitive study to say, OK, what are the options in the marketplace right now? Who are we competing against? And what are they doing or what are they not doing comparative to us? And then we'll actually score the brand against the competition. So by virtue of that 360 look at internal, external, and then competitive landscape, we can start to formulate some key insights that are going to drive the brand development process forward and say, OK, out of the gate, here's some things that here's some opportunities already that the marketplace isn't seeing.

16:06in some instances, we once did this survey, and I won't name names, but the survey respondents on the external survey said, gosh, I wish we could hear from them more. I mean, gosh, when do you hear that? I mean, basically, it's like your clients are basically saying they want to hear from you more. Yeah, we should go do that. We should go initiate more communications direct to existing relationships and existing customers because they are expressing an appetite to hear from you more. So let's go do that. And lo and behold, more business came from that when we did. Yeah. Your website, DahliaNet.com.

16:46Someone, again, from this podcast, I know you have some really great content. You have some really good, looks like really interesting webinars that you put on. But any other resources you'd recommend in terms of next steps? There's a number of resources in our resource library from videos, some how-to guides, a few e-books, some recorded segments. So we try to put as much as we can in the way of learnable, shareable content out there. And it's all free. It's all, you know, you can just go and download whatever you like. But one that is a useful tool for, especially this time of year as we're heading into towards Q4, is a growth worksheet that we put together where it helps companies start to think about growth in a more prioritized strategic way, focusing on what we call the three methods of growth, acquire new customers, retain, expand, and increase buying frequency.

17:45And then we've documented corresponding growth channels to those three methods to help people prioritize and think about growth in a more organized fashion. So that's a good resource for people to take a look at as they start to begin their year-end planning for the coming year. And again, the website, DahliaNet.com. And then certainly, you know, for someone that wants to have a conversation, what should they do? They're free to give me a call. My contact info is on the site or hit me up on LinkedIn, eDahlia. I'm pretty findable. And I'm happy to, I'm always happy to have a conversation, right?

18:27and see what the needs are and what the opportunities might be for any given brand. Yeah, you're a great, you have some pretty great content on your LinkedIn as well. I just want to compliment you for that. But again, Ed D 'Elia, president of D 'Elia Associates, a website, again, d 'eleanet.com. Ed, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Josh. It was great to be with you.

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