BIG Brand Ventures

These Marketing Mistakes Are Killing Your Brand with CMO Amanda Harrington

• Brandon T. Adams

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In this episode of the BIG Brand Ventures Podcast, Brand Manager of BBV Leah Leverich sits down with the CMO of BBV, Amanda Harrington to discuss the biggest marketing mistakes CEOs and founders are making today.

This could be inconsistent social media profiles or even not owning their own accounts. If this is true for you and your business, here's what to do about it.

Learn more about Big Brand Ventures: https://bigbrandventures.com

Follow us on Social Media:
• instagram.com/amandaharrington
• instagram.com/leahleverichh

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SPEAKER_00

Welcome back to the Big Brand Ventures Podcast. I'm Leah Leverage, the brand manager at Big Brand Ventures, and today I'm sitting with Hi, I'm Amanda Harrington.

SPEAKER_01

I'm the CMO of Big Brand Ventures.

SPEAKER_00

And so we just wanted to talk about marketing and content today because that's both of our areas of expertise. And Amanda has so much knowledge in this area. If you've been to one of our past shark retreats, she gives a digital marketing presentation. So there's just so much here, and I figured it would be a really good and impactful conversation to have with some of the girls of Big Brand Ventures because we always see the guys that we want to hear, you know, we don't want to change it up here from us. So Amanda, can you just share your background and kind of your role at Big Brand Ventures?

SPEAKER_01

Sure. Yeah, um, been a digital marketing expert for over a decade. Um, started my career in live shopping, but uh quickly pivoted to digital marketing because I just fell in love with it. Um so obviously growing up with the Harrington Brothers was very TV focused, very um, you know, product driven, um, but it was all a different medium. So once digital marketing really started to become important, um, you know, I always say it was the perfect combination because we had their, you know, their experience with TV, and then, you know, Brian and my experience with the digital side.

SPEAKER_00

So and what are you focusing on right now at Big Brand Ventures, like your day-to-day work and your overall focus?

SPEAKER_01

Really um scaling companies, like client success, and um my main role is when a client comes on the full execution of a launch. So um doing a go-to-market strategy, understanding the best way that they should present themselves, um, offers, upsells, um, really getting the foundation of how we want to market them first, and then what channels of distribution. And then, you know, I manage the whole team that executes all of that. So building the copywriting, wireframes, landing page designs, developments, ads, media buying, um, Amazon, other channels. So just the root of everything. Yeah, just kind of being your your um outsourced marketing department, if you will. Um where we can handle pretty much all of all of the launch to get get you on to onto digital and then scaling from there and seeing what's working and leaning into it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, are you seeing a common theme with the CEOs and founders that we're working with where they want to scale their marketing but they don't know how, or any habits that they currently have that you guys are fixing? It's a great question.

SPEAKER_01

Um Yeah, one thing that's kind of interesting that we're finding is a lot of people um don't necessarily have their channels set up or own their channels. Um, that's one thing that's um really big at what we do here is making sure to go the extra mile. It's a lot, it's a lot harder, but to work with them to make sure that they own all of their accounts and that they have access to all their accounts before we launch anything because um, you know, whether you work with us or with somebody else in 10 years, um, you you want to own what it's like your IP. Um, so that's kind of interesting. But um yeah, luckily a lot of the people that we work with just trust us to put the best foot forward in in the marketing message, and we bring them along through the entire process. So really explaining here's why we think the offer should be this way, or let's reposition it this way, but it's the same amount of margin for you. So just bringing them along in the conversation, but really leading the strategy.

SPEAKER_00

And you mentioned owning their own accounts, but that applies to the social media side too, with brand managing. We just worked with a CEO yesterday, Brandon and I, and he didn't have all of his accounts built up across social media, all of the usernames were different, all the profiles were different, the bios and everything, and it wasn't clear and concise who he was and who his business was. So that's a big thing that I also see CEOs a lot of them are doing is if they do have a personal brand, which they all should, um, it might not be uh cohesive all together, and they need to simplify it, make them all match, and then just repurpose content because it makes it so much easier for them, and it's so important to have it all together and as one unit so that it's not confusing for a viewer or a potential customer. Um and so that's kind of what we've been doing for you, for Brandon, uh, for Kevin, for everyone at BBV, making sure that all of their accounts are aligned and posting to all of them and getting the word out about you in the company and your personal life, your personality, and then also all the business stuff that you're doing. Um so yeah, I just that's a big point too.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's important because you make your social media accounts just quickly so that you have something, but like there's sometimes not a lot of thought there on how it scales. So, really thinking about stuff from inception to like, okay, what happens when we scale this? And it's a great point because you want to have everything under one roof and cohesive and so that it makes sense. And I think sometimes it's daunting for uh CEOs or founders if they have a lean team, because you know, how there's so many channels, right? There's so many platforms to post on. It can be a lot, but there's tools in place now where you can push the content to all of them at one time. Like, so there's just some nice shortcuts that if it seems daunting, there's there's ways around it, and just by talking to the right people, you can it can be less, less daunting.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And what do you think about having the CEO themselves doing their own personal social media? Because that was another thing that we brought up yesterday, is this guy he wants to do it, he knows he should, but he might not know how or might not have the time. That's so many CEOs that just don't have the time to do the social media. And because that's my role, I'm like, well, you just need one of me, I guess. I don't know. Um, but what do you think? Because in the beginning, obviously, it's just starting as themselves.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean, I've seen massive success with working with founder stories, and it is funny because it's almost the same narrative every time, um, slight variations, but um when you tell your story of why you created the company or why you created the brand or the story behind a certain feature or flavor, how it came to be, um it does really well and it resonates really well with the consumer. And I mean, there's countless c case studies of of how that's been massively successful. And um, you know, one, those ads perform really well. Um, and you can get lower costs for the um the media because people are engaging with it. So those are some things that um not everyone would know. But also, it doesn't have to be hard, like you don't have to make it this professional thing anymore. Um like a very great case study is um a brand who the founder just stood in the warehouse and packed orders and just like talked. Um, whether it was behind the scenes. Yeah, whether it was a live or just a video. Um, you know, we'd done that with two separate founders and it does really, really well. Um, just getting the content is important. So you don't have to like overthink it, just start doing it. Um, but you know, yeah, it's like you agree, like just start doing it. It doesn't have to be polished. A lot of times that's what does better anyway, because it's very authentic.

SPEAKER_00

So just start and um I feel like to a certain extent, there are some CEOs that we've worked with where I'm like, why would you post that? Or like you didn't want to trim the beginning out. Um, so it has to be like right for social media, but other than that, like the content that we're posting for Brandon and Kevin, it's really them just out and about, like the infamous Brandon working out with his shirt off. Like, for some reason it works for him. I don't think we would do that, but um, it doesn't have to be anything more complicated than just like documenting your daily life.

SPEAKER_01

What I would say is we can't replicate them and their content, but we can polish and make an edit out of something. So, like, as long as they take the time and energy to get the content, they can work with anybody to get it social media ready or to clean it up a little bit. But if there's nothing to work with, then that's when there is no founder's story.

SPEAKER_00

So what are your thoughts on having each CEO or each personal brand have like a title that goes along with it? Um, like Kevin is the original Shark on Shark Tank, um, personal branding expert, the sleep doctor. Like, can you explain the importance of that and um how a CEO can simplify theirs? Because you see so many even on LinkedIn that's like, I use AI to drive innovation, all these like keywords that I'm like, what do you do though? What are you? Like, how can you simplify it?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean, it's essentially your elevator pitch, like in a sentence. So um, it is really important both for CEOs and also for brands. I think you know, that's an exercise we just went through with one of our clients. Um if you remember, it's like, you know, you get asked all the time, like, what do you do? What what does your brand do? And you want to be able to say that in a concise and powerful way. If not, people are left like a little bit confused, especially with innovative products. Like, you know, that makes you unique. You've created something that's innovative and doesn't exist, but if you can't articulate it in a way that people understand the problem you're solving and why they need it, then they just say, okay, great, that's cool. Um so it is super important that yeah, that that you know it's a thought exercise to really think about okay, what do I bring to the table? Like what do I bring that's valuable to the people that I'm talking to? And then that helps you find your niche of, you know, more customers or more um, you know, people that you can help if you're in a service industry.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and that's the root of branding. So I think that's very important. Um, is there any one takeaway that you'd want the listener of this episode to um just start implementing right away with their own marketing? Is there like something they can do today to just make it a little bit better?

SPEAKER_01

There's, I mean, a lot of things, but I would I really like focusing on content. What I've seen in the landscape now is um, especially on the the paid channels, is the algorithms are now all focused on content. Um, so really diversifying your content and trying to scale through content is really important. Um it's it's more about how you can find new audiences with different ways of talking about your product or showing that your product is valuable to different segments, um, and that's through creative. So um really just start thinking about all the different audiences that you serve and how you would talk about it to each of those audiences because they're vastly different. So um really making content pieces that speak speak to each segment.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and for the personal branding side, I would say build up all of your profiles, make them all uh match with each other, and then just start repurposing content, post to one, start on Instagram, and then take that over to Facebook, LinkedIn, X, uh, YouTube, TikTok. We're working with a company called Parlor now. That's another social media platform, and I'm probably missing one at this point, but there's so many different channels, and even if you don't understand them in the beginning, just get the content out there so that your brand exists everywhere and you're reaching as many people as possible. Did I miss anything there? It's great. Listen, how can people uh work with us further, work with you further if they have any questions?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, um, you can find us on Instagram, either myself personally, or our Big Brand Ventures accounts, and um, yeah, just email us any questions. We're here to answer them.

SPEAKER_00

If you want to join us at one of our events, pitch the executive team or work with us further, you can check out bigbrandventures.com to see where we're gonna be at for the upcoming months. Thank you, Amanda, for this conversation. I just felt like it would be a good time to talk about marketing and you know hear from a great dynamic here. Um so thank you for your time and for sharing your expertise. Of course,