2129 - Aligning Your Marketing with Authenticity with Lorrie Thomas Ross

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1:05With us right now, it's Lori Thomas Ross. Lori, you are the marketing therapist. You're found on the web at webmarketingtherapy.com and also your personal website, loriethomas.com. Lori, thank you for joining us. Great to be here, Josh. A fellow Southerner transplant to the area. You're up in Atlanta. I'm in Orlando. Well, it's great to have you, Lori. Give us an overview of what you do as a marketing therapist. So first and foremost, I did not set out to be a marketing therapist when I started my business in 2005. My clients who did not know each other said this common thing of, I got to get on your therapy couch, Laurie, or oh my gosh, you're my therapist.

1:46Whoa, I was so stressed and I feel so much better. You're like a therapist, right? So in marketing, you pay attention to patterns. rebranded in 2007 to marketing therapy, never looked back. And what we do, and it's not just me, it's my dream team. We put the puzzle pieces together. Some marketing clicks. If marketing feels icky, yucky, stressful, expensive, overwhelming, any of those things, it's time to hit the pause button. Marketing is the act of maximizing relationships. That needs to be enjoyable and dare I say fun. Yes, I busted out the F word so early on in our time together. But yes, when we approach marketing in a way that's not only on brand, but it's on purpose, then the ease and flow happens.

2:30Laurie, here's my theory on this. Anytime that we're in business, and I think a lot of times we gravitate toward a certain line of work or industry or specialty or whatever our superpowers are, because we're good at it, we like it, we tend to do well, look like there was a pretty good opportunity at the time. So here we are. And, you know, I believe that there's a couple of things that are probably the biggest stressors, or I think put a distaste or make a business feel like a job we don't like. And I think that especially in sales and marketing, I think many of us look at sales and marketing, unfortunately, as maybe sometimes a necessary evil, right?

3:12You have to do that so that you can do what you truly, really love or what you're on the earth to do. Like if you're not on the earth to be a salesperson or a marketer, like that's okay. Like few people are, you know, but I think that, you know, getting to my point, I think when it comes to sales and marketing, when we feel like we have to do something that is out of alignment with who we are, or it feels yucky when we say, well, I don't want to slide into people's DMS and cold email them or cold market, or like, I don't want to be doing this weird hustle thing on Facebook in front of my family and friends.

3:46It just doesn't, it feels awkward and uncomfortable. Like to me, that makes business feel like a sucky job to me. And I'll speak for myself. And I suspect that there are a lot of other people that feel like that. Oh, absolutely. And we get should on all the time. You know, you should do this. You should do that. And as business owners, we need to be critical thinkers. And alignment is the magic word, Josh. It's a matter of doing what feels right for you. And that's not saying to not sometimes step outside your comfort zone. I mean, experience, Cher, I love to be behind the laptop, supporting my team, supporting my clients.

4:25And visibility for me is not the easiest thing. So what do I do? I do what I do best. I hire others to do the rest. And I need that accountability. And when we think about just even like the psychology of how we operate as owners, what works for us? I need accountability. When I wrote my book a jillion years ago with McGraw-Hill, I needed McGraw-Hill. I needed big, scary, and actually they were wonderful to work with, but I needed a big publishing company to say, we need this deadline by this. If I was, I'm not self-motivated to do it. I needed that accountability. So whether it's someone on my team saying, here's the social post, what do you think?

5:01I just need that. And I can edit all day long, but what we need to think about is what helps get the job done and doing things that make sense. And yeah, I'm with you. like, yeah, if someone's like, oh, you should do LinkedIn and do all these DMs, if that doesn't feel right, listen to that voice, you know, and we want to attract ideal clients. We don't want to attract everybody. Actually, one of my favorite pieces of advice in marketing is to be repelling. And, you know, I mean, my gosh, right? Like my company's marketing therapy. If someone's like, oh, that's weird. Great. We're not a fit. I'm spending my time talking to ideal clients, people who have self-selected.

5:37In a former life, I was a teacher. I taught for UC Santa Barbara, UC Berkeley through their extension programs. We were always taught as educators to teach to the smartest students in the room, to bring it and not to like hold back and don't treat adults in my students role, adults in business owners, entrepreneurs, to do your best and to bring your best. And so when you would teach that way, why wouldn't we market the same way? And when you're educational, and that's actually one of the biggest mental shifts with marketing, Instead of thinking of marketing in its old school academic, like if you Google definition of marketing, what you'll often find is the act of pushing.

6:15And believe it or not, that word pushing is in there. Pushing or promoting products and services. Well, of course, we're going to think sales and marketing is gross. Like who wants to be like, but wait, there's more extra special offer, right? No, like that's gross. But if we look at marketing as the act of educating our ideal audiences, just flipping it to think about marketing as education. How do I help my ideal audience understand this? I love to ask my clients, what do you want to help your audience understand? If you're a speaker, that's a different question than someone who's selling a product or a service.

6:49And education becomes your North Star and your guiding light. And then you find yourself coming up with what to post or what videos to create. And yeah, so education is like usually like the biggest way to take a chill pill from marketing and get yourself on a happier, healthier, wealthier path. Yeah. I want to ask you about this because I love the energy that you bring and kind of the role that you bring. And I'd like, I'd love to get your kind of your internal perspective on your role or your relationship with your clients. Because again, you're using the, and I mentioned to you before we started recording, my wife is a licensed family therapist.

7:32She's very good at what she does. And so I went to school for therapy as well. Like I love the connotation. And it's interesting because as I'm thinking about that, and I hope to our friend that's listening, you didn't miss the line when Lori, when you mentioned that you very actively repel the people that you're not a good fit for. And I love that context. But I want to get your perspective back on, because I think the concept of being kind of like a web market or a marketing therapist, absolutely, that's a positive and negative filter. It's going to attract some people. It's going to repel others.

8:07But what does that mean for you to kind of fulfill that role? And how does that impact the dynamic that you have in the relationships with your clients? So therapy is about growing. It's about healing. It's about being your best self. And where we start in the therapy process and where we end up is, I mean, it's an evolution, right? And, and so I look at my role and web marketing therapy's role as being of support. It's not our job to enable or to, you know, make sure clients are dependent on us. If anything, we're big on no dependency. Everything we do, we're empowering the client, but also it's going deeper.

8:46And instead of selling services, which is what most agencies do, we listen, we understand. I talk to every prospective client myself. We diagnose, prescribe, and guide. And we're also paying attention not just to the like WhatsApp marketing, the website, the social media, the content, the emails, all that. But we're also paying attention to the leader. And being that I've run a business now for 20 years, going and approaching any prospective partnership and even our contracts, they're called partner agreements. There are no contracts and there's immediate outs if there ever is need for that. But we want to make sure that we're supporting the owner in a way that works for them, prioritizing need to haves, of course, documenting the nice to have.

9:32So we do that after the foundation set, but also paying attention and being sensitive to what the owner needs. And my approach to marketing therapy is definitely a little tough love. And if someone is being endangered to themselves and others, we get paid to be great, not nice. And there are times where clear is kind. And I have to say, I don't support that. I'd actually much rather see you take your life partner on vacation and flush money down the toilet on that idea. And then they're like, and, and I don't, you know, I look at it as I'm there to be, you know, of, of support in that growth journey.

10:09And we train employees of our clients' companies. Sometimes we'll often identify immediate, you know, shining bright talent that's like, I want to learn. And so anything we can do to help our clients invest in marketing versus spending in the old way is essential. And it's truly a partnership, a collaboration. My favorite analogy, it's weird, but you'll never forget it. Our clients are Batman. They're the superhero. We're like the invisible Robin trusty sidekick. Like if we need to like come in and do a few punches, but whether it's the, I think I'm about to go on a big press thing, or I need support, or I need this.

10:47Even if we're not the team, like we do everything marketing wise, but PR and video, but putting those puzzle pieces together, we can say this, this, we can refer you to a media trainer. We can do this. Do we need a PowerPoint deck? Do we need this? Let's make sure the website says these things. And so any business owner knows that there's a backup team that's able to just divide and conquer and make sure everything is set. But it is about being of service. And, you know, of service doesn't mean necessarily selling services. Like there is no menu of like, here's your social media plan. It's like, actually, you're doing a good job with this.

11:25I'd turn this up, turn this down. But it is very much a diagnostic thing. Everyone's different. Every business is different. Talent's different. Goals are different. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, to those of us who have any kind of appreciation whatsoever for voice acting, I think that my I've I've loved you. I've loved when you've done that voice. I'm like, oh, you could seriously do cartoon voice acting if you wanted to like the way you. I'll tell my team. Sorry, guys. I'm going to pursue my next gig. Yep. So, Lori, if you would, you know, here we are, you know, into 2025. So many things happening so quickly.

12:07What do you see working well generally? And again, you know, we're just talking generally because every client's different. Every client's goals are different and so forth. But what do you see working generally well in marketing today that maybe not enough people are paying attention to? And also, if you want to lump this in there, too, what's no longer working? But unfortunately, marketers keep pushing it. Ooh, OK. What is the biggest opportunity that a lot of owners are not tapping into? It's the power of their personal brand. I cannot tell you how many times I do consultations and the website, the social media, and I'm listening to this dynamic business leader or asking them about their story or how did you found your business?

12:56Like what inspired you? And suddenly this magic starts to emerge. And then I look at their LinkedIn and I look at the about page of the website, which, believe it or not, is the number two most visited page on a website. Why? Because people want to know who's behind a company. storytelling is selling. And that is such a neglected piece. We're always going to be in business, but the industries we're all in grow and evolve. They change. The only constant is change, but our personal brand is going to also grow and evolve. Some of us are going to sell companies, but we, the entrepreneur owner thought leader, that is a really important piece.

13:35And I love to help these thought leaders extract their expertise and so many things that we take for granted, right? I mean, there's so much that you do on a day-to-day basis that people can learn from. Same with me. And how do we share that in a way that's relevant, useful, dare I say, entertaining? And so that's a big untapped piece of the marketing puzzle. And we do projects for employees where we'll train all the employees at a company on how to optimize their LinkedIn, because they're all representatives of the brand. Actually, I did a talk a couple years ago at the auto show for a major auto brand, empowering their salespeople on how to tap into the power of their personal brand so that clients who love them could find them more easily, right?

14:23So what's the thing that maybe is overdone? you know like I said the only constant is change and not paying attention to the changes you know doing dated practices or you know I think actually I think one of the biggest things that is just not working anymore is the spray and pray approach like let me just throw a ton of money at ads and it's all about pointing and shooting. And so it's being so clear on who, whether you call it your ideal avatar, ideal client, geographic location, what that looks like, and then being very mindful of that. Yeah. I mean, just spending money on marketing mindlessly and being like, Oh, well, what if I don't, what if I turn it off and things don't work?

15:16Turn it off, turn it off. See what happens. Like if you really want to know, I think fear, actually I'll, I'll wrap it up, Josh, with the thing that is not serving owners anymore is fear. We can't approach marketing with a fear-based lens. Yeah. Uh, Lori, tell me about, um, your engagement, like what does engagement look like with you? Uh, how is it generally structured? How do you fit in? Um, you know, are you kind of coming in as a, as a fractional CMO or, you know, what is that relate? What does that dynamic look like kind of, you know, from a typical, like your engagement, I guess. Yeah. And typical consultant answers, it depends.

15:56But to that point, it goes back to listening and understanding and taking the time. I can't tell you, I think it's nine out of 10 times I do a consultation. It's Zoom, you know, because I'm, you know, my clients are all over. Most of my clients I've never met in person. I have employees I've never met in person. And we listen and we understand. We ask a lot of questions. We finish these Zooms and they say, I can't believe how much time you spent with me. And I said, well, how can we know what you need if we don't? And sometimes the questions are very surface answers and we go deeper and we go deeper.

16:33It's like the iceberg, right? You see the tip of the iceberg, but underneath is like the big, meaty, what really needs to be addressed. And then we go back and we take our notes and we have a five-factor framework, credibility, usability, visibility, sellability, scalability. And then we map out our observations and recommendations based on those five factors, then coming into the prioritization of month one, we're going to do this. Month two, we're going to do this and beyond. And then we have a really clear idea of what's going to happen versus starting with the client and just making social media images.

17:13Sometimes it's a new website. Sometimes it's you're doing everything right. Now what? That's a very different conversation to go to the next level versus someone that doesn't have a proper foundation or needs a logo refresh or things like that. Or photography. We have a phenomenal photographer on staff too. Yeah, so it's really lovely to collaborate. I love people more than marketing. I love business owners. I'm just, I'm enamored. It's so funny because even though I'm an owner, I still sometimes forget that I am. And I'm just, I want to know all about where they're at, where they want to go, opportunities, challenges, all of that, and just becoming that support system.

17:53So where do we fit in? Sometimes we need to come in in a larger capacity. Sometimes I might say, you know what? You've got some star talent or the people doing your paid search or social, they're good and they're affordable. Like love them, keep them. Here's a few things we might do. And it might be a super teeny weeny in and out type of thing. So yeah, it's really custom. And we're a boutique agency. There's 10 of us. We love to work with clients. Our ideal avatar is an intentional leader. And while we don't blast that phrase all over the website, someone who comes to us who's like, I need to sell 50 ,000 things, that's not our ideal client.

18:31Someone who's like, here's why I love what I do. Or this is my team, or this is the company I founded. And we're willing to invest. and I want to make sure that our team is trained or whatever, like we can start to tell like who's really in it to win it, not just for themselves, but for the greater good of the overall organization. And those are the clients that we just partner with beautifully. Well, your website, Lori, is webmarketingtherapy.com. Also your personal website, loriethomas.com. To our friend listening, you can just click around in your podcast app and you'll see where we've got those direct links.

19:05Pull those up right now. So Lori, there may be some folks that might be interested in engaging, but I suspect there are a lot of people that just want to get to know you a little bit more. I bet you have a great about page, about us page, but also any other resources that you would recommend for folks that want to get more of a feel for your thought leadership. Absolutely. So anyone who is listening, if you email us through our website and just ask for the WMT audit guide that gives you a how-to of walking yourself through our five-factor framework. We can also send you a super short video that's a good resource guide.

19:45When you are able to critically evaluate your marketing, looking at those different factors of how strong is my communication? Is my site easy to use? Those kinds of things. It helps you prioritize. The exciting thing with marketing is that there's so many options, right? You and I can geek out on that all day long, but also the reality is that's overwhelming. And where on earth do I start? What do I do first? Should I do this versus that? And looking at your marketing from these five factors helps identify the critical need to haves, and then can also prioritize some of those nice to haves so that you're doing things in a logical order.

20:21I use the analogy of baking your marketing cake in order. You wouldn't put the cake in the oven without eggs, right? Like you got to think about these things in a logical way. And that doesn't mean that you have to be a professional marketer. You do what you do best, but also whether your team's doing it. But yeah, just ping us, ask for that audit guide and one of my team members or I will be in touch. I love it. Lori Thomas Ross, you are the marketing therapist. Your website, webmarketingtherapy.com and lorietomas.com. Lori, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.

20:58Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from.

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