Episode Summary
Today, people use social media a lot, and the promotion of brands on social platforms has become an integral part of business.
But many companies have a misconception about what it means to make social media work for them and fail to realize the importance of strong personal brands that can contribute to the company’s growth.
In this episode of Rep Your Brand, host Nick Bennett welcomes Mark Jung, VP of Marketing at Sales Impact Academy. They get into the importance of social media in building a strong personal brand and discuss changes in the way brands incorporate social media into their businesses.
Guest Profile
- Name: Mark Jung
- What he does: Mark is the VP of marketing at Sales Impact Academy.
- Company: Sales Impact Academy
- Noteworthy: Mark is building B2B SaaS brands that are winning. He currently leads marketing at Sales Impact Academy, the no. 1 learning platform for revenue teams. Before that, Mark was the VP of marketing at Dooly, where he helped create a leading brand and a new category in early-day revenue.
Key Insights
- A personal brand opens many doors. Until May this year, Mark worked at Dooly as the VP of marketing and then got into a brand new role as the VP of marketing at Sales Impact Academy. As he points out, his personal brand helped him make this transition. "Your personal brand will open doors that you didn't think were possible. It is the force multiplier for your career progression. And I'm a big believer in that. If you build a personal brand, one: you will never have to write a cover letter for the rest of your life, and two: you will be able to create more income streams — by a 5x to 10x ratio — than you could otherwise in an inbound way."
- Social media is an important aspect of building a strong personal brand. All big brands and companies dedicate a lot of time to their presence on social networks because, in recent years, the extent of social media’s influence on brand-building and company growth has become apparent. But according to Mark, many older brands do not adapt to trends and do not invest much in this area. "I look at companies now that still aren't doing social, they're not on LinkedIn. They're not really looking at investing in the areas because they don't see their customers being there, and I would challenge that because [it’s] a key part of winning in today's market. And it goes to why HubSpot acquired The Hustle newsletter — for those of you who might be subscribers — you need to win the hearts and minds of your audience. How do you do that? You show up where they are, and you meet them on the channel that they're at and [give them] what they expect to see."
- People buy from people. A lot has changed in the evolution of personal brands. In Mark's opinion, one of the most important things is the development of the personal brands of employees — giving them more freedom to publish content and develop relationships with people within the company. "I think what smart brands start to realize is that people buy from people. At the end of the day, your company can be like your news feed ticker; it can be information about your company, what you're doing, the exciting things [going on]. Smart brands started profiling employees and creating relationships with their teams. So in that way, it's not just like, 'I know Alice, I know Nick and Alice, I know A, B, and C.' And that means there's a personal connection. I'm following them — their content, their point of view. That, by association, becomes part of how I show up in the market. That's been the biggest change, and companies who get on that bandwagon are winning."
Episode Highlights
Important Elements of Good Marketing for SaaS Brands
“A personal brand or social company brand is one of the strongest ways that you can drive the strategic narrative and category design and focus on why you are the new way or the different way. When you make that change, you start to see a very clear picture of how you can change the narrative in your conversations. And this could be in sales and marketing. […]
Number two is — be different, have a strong stance. But I like to reinforce it because my favorite analogy is what I call ‘the wedding chicken dish.’ You go to a wedding and get that medium chicken dish with potatoes and green beans. And it’s fine, but you were never going to go home and tell your family about that chicken dish you had at that wedding. That is the same thing as having a gray area or a medium or soft stance as a brand. So my recommendation is to take a strong stance, believe in something, have a challenging perspective, and use your social [media] to have conversations about that. If you’re just finding yourself in the middle, like that chicken, you’re never going to build something that’s gonna be memorable to help you differentiate.
Third, it is really about empowering the people in your team. So again, if you don’t have it, build a program internally. Elevate your people, create ways to support and incentivize content creation and personal brands collaboration, and use it as a sounding board.”
The Importance of the Leadership’s Mindset
“It’s people who have seen your content, visit your events, listen to your podcast, who type in your name and then convert. It doesn’t capture any of what’s happening, which leads to bad investments because they say, ‘Oh, our social [media] is not working; this isn’t driving results. I’m not seeing the leads.’ And then you get marketers who are incentivized to behave the wrong way. They’re making the wrong decisions. They’re then investing in lead gen and outsourced SDRs, and they’re not investing in content, podcasts, or social [media], and it’s probably the worst vicious loop that exists today. Leadership does not get marketing; attribution is not done properly; therefore, we must come back to doing sales activities. Marketing doesn’t do marketing, and you get the spinning wheel of death.
And I don’t know how long it’ll take us to fix it, but it is probably the biggest problem that I see in brand and content marketing today. And I hope any leader who might be listening to this — if they changed their thought process and started thinking differently, one person, I consider that a win for today. So if you’re out there, give your team some love and make sure you understand the value of brand and content.”
How Can Employees Better Communicate Their Organization’s Brand?
“Think about what your mission is at that organization. What are your values as a company? What are you building towards? How do you show up? Company culture, the state of your talent and your team, and the big picture stuff that you’re aligned with — why you want to work for that company — are very easy things that a personal brand can talk about on social. That is probably, from a strategic lens, the area where you can focus.”
