A Conversation With Orshie Herbein of Brand3
How do you brand and market a farm? Are pictures of carrots and cows enough? Or do things like defining the ideal customer for THIS farm also matter? Brand and marketing expert Orshie Herbein of Brand3 joined host Matthew Dunn to discuss email in the broader context.
Brand3 has a terrific swing-for-the-fences vision of transforming one million brands "from noise to clarity." Clarity, for Orshie, requires thoughtful work such as idealized customer profiles — even for farms. It's refreshing to hear someone put the 'marketing job-to-be-done' of email in the correct tactical slot. Email alone won't grow the farm — although growing a farm without email is also a stretch!
TRANSCRIPT
A Conversation With Orshie Herbein of Brand3
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[00:00:09] Matthew Dunn: Good morning. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the Future of email. My guest today, or she, Herb, we're going to talk about more than just email, right? Hor horse. She, Yes, that's right. You have to recap what you just told me about the about, about the,
[00:00:24] Orshie Herbein: your name. My name? Yes. My name is the Hungarian version of Ursula.
Ursula. Right, Right. Yes. And it's pronounced or, but for short it's, or she, So I
[00:00:37] Matthew Dunn: just like, I like hearing you say the full name. It's, it's very mellifluous your company brand three.net. Would you call yourself an agency fundamentally?
[00:00:45] Orshie Herbein: Yeah. We are a virtual branding and marketing agency. Mm-hmm. , So don't really have a headquarters.
We have. all over the country. So yeah.
[00:00:55] Matthew Dunn: Headquarter in headquarter in cyberspace. Were you doing the virtual thing [00:01:00] be before we all got pushed to be more
[00:01:02] Orshie Herbein: virtual? I actually was. I was already I think we closed our office space in July, 2019. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. The pandemic rolled around.
[00:01:14] Matthew Dunn: Yes. Nothing
Yeah. Sidebar. Let's not go into the commercial real estate business. I think. I think the jury's out whether that's ever going to come back. So we were chatting a little bit beforehand and you were sharing some of your philosophy about this three-legged stool, which I have to assume is part of brand three.
Could you recap what you said a minute?
[00:01:36] Orshie Herbein: Yeah, sure. So you know, future of email, I'm assuming email generally is intriguing to a lot of your listeners because of the marketing and the ability to keep in touch with customers and prospects and you know, that drip, drip campaigning generally can give.
An edge because not only it gives you brand awareness, but it also allows [00:02:00] you to establish expertise in the field, in whatever field you are on a regular, you know, very tailored and targeted way. So email is a, is is just a small fraction of, of how we are approaching you know, our process or on helping business owners rethink marketing.
Mm-hmm. . There was a time not long ago when brand three was brands that deliver and it was much di more difficult for me to create traction with our own customers because I realized that branding is not what my customers want. They really have a marketing problem and I was a branding company and I really love building brands.
So today we are still building brands at Brand three, but because we are brand three the right Way to market and our big headline is Rethink Marketing, we are [00:03:00] essentially wrapping our services into what our customers. , Right. But I'm not falling short of that promise because the right way to market is really to build a brand that has the power to engage a very particular audience that my customers wanna work with.
Mm-hmm. . So we always have a process of, you know Helping create traction in marketing by not only looking at marketing itself and the tactics you know, such as email, but really looking at the brand, which is what's going to validate somebody that this is the right. Place for them. This is the, this you know, this, this company has actually what it takes to bring them value, Right?
Brand, in my mind is a perception. It happens in the mind of an audience and you first meet a brand through various marketing materials like email, for example, right? Right. So that's how you get in touch with the brand. So if your marketing material is on point, but then I go to the website, then I [00:04:00] go to your social media and I find inconsistency.
I don't find a value. There's too much noise. You lost me. Right. Even though your marketing material has created some sort of engagement mm-hmm. , I wasn't able to validate that with the brand that I met, you know, once I started digging a little bit.
[00:04:18] Matthew Dunn: Pause, pause for a second there. There was a couple things to unpack.
One that I think's worth noting legit ethical email marketing wouldn't be first place I encounter your brand as an email cuz you didn't tell me I could email. Mm. Email would be how we communicate Once you've said yes, Once you've said permission. Opt in. Yes. I want to hear from you. Whether that's as a prospect, as a customer or something, something like that.
It the majority use, if you will, is, is Establi is in an established relationship. Not in a, You've never heard of me from Adam, but leave that one aside. There's a book. The [00:05:00] brand Promise author is Dwayne Knapp actually happens to be a, a friend of mine lives about half an hour from here.
He's been at this for a long time. Mm-hmm. and the lead line of his book, which is very much what you said, is a brand as a promise. Mm-hmm. , what do you think?
[00:05:13] Orshie Herbein: A hundred percent. We actually, that's part of our process to build a brand promise for every brand that we build. Yeah. And the idea is, you know, we talked about brand and marketing.
Mm-hmm. , the experience is what if essentially needs to be aligned with that promise. Right? So we have to align the experience or that promise we cannot. Not meet it. We have to at least meet it or exceed that promise in order to get those five star reviews. Right. And to your point, I know that we're not gonna get you know emails without permission per se, but even if, you know, if there was a campaign strategy, of me meeting a brand on social media, then clicking and finding a landing page, and then I signed up to get emails, right?
Mm-hmm. , I might not have seen the entire website because [00:06:00] maybe that campaign was presented properly, but then the website itself or some other materials, whatever, there's inconsistency in it. And again, a lot of customers that walk in our door, They don't even have that, you know what I mean? They don't even have consistency within the campaign.
You know, they would have a really great ad that goes to the website that looks completely different, and I completely lost that. Awesome, whatever. Or maybe the ad is not great and they're not even getting clicks. You know what I mean? So it, it is really the, the the brand has the ability. To engage an audience if it is perceived as value.
Okay. Right. Okay. So if brand is a perception, my job is a branding. Expert. Mm-hmm. build brands that are perceived as value to not everybody and their mom, [00:07:00] Right. But to the ideal customer. And ideal could be just your best customer, you know, that you actually adore to work with. Mm-hmm. , you know, a hundred times.
You know, If that's Becky, how do we find more Becky? You know, and then really digging deeper and identifying everything we know about Becky and building a brand for that Becky's out there so they can walk in and really targeting them with the tactics. Right.
[00:07:27] Matthew Dunn: Any, any any companies or brands jump to mind to you that you think do this really well?
Whether or not that your, your clients, like who does, who's doing this well?
[00:07:38] Orshie Herbein: I think a lot of brands are doing it well. This is actually what makes national brands so successful, that impeccable consistency of message and image. The, the, the ability to bring value, you know, over features and benefits.
You know, I mean, you look at the, some of the local brands and they say 35 years in [00:08:00] business family. Nobody cares. I don't even know what you're doing. Right, right. But then if you say something to me that I value mm-hmm. , you know, I mean the great example is Apple, for example. Right. You know, when they came up with the iPod, The iPod, right?
The, the times of CDs when we're like 12, 15 songs on a cd, then you had to switch to another CD or something or have those six car changers, et cetera. They come up with the iPod and they're not taunting features and benefits of how many gigabytes or REM or space, or 32 millimeter or whatever have.
they're saying a thousand pop songs in your pocket. Right,
[00:08:39] Matthew Dunn: right. Right. At two
[00:08:40] Orshie Herbein: one that sign me up. Right. That's value right there. You know, like when I'm struggling with this or I have like this big binder in my car digging through it while I'm driving, not trying to crash. Mm-hmm. all happen. We've been there.
Right. So when they come with a thousand songs in your pocket, [00:09:00] that's, that's makes, makes sense to me.
[00:09:02] Matthew Dunn: Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. , my, I've got this side bed about brand conversations and the number of times Apple ends up coming up. I, I, I don't know whether or not they're actually one of a kind, unicorn. Any other companies jump to mind?
I'll challenge you there. , not Apple, , and I'm surrounded by Apple stuff. By the way, .
[00:09:26] Orshie Herbein: I don't know. You see, I got stomped on this question before and I actually said to myself that I will do some digging mm-hmm. and have some samples, but I I didn't do it yet. So I am, I am sure that there are a lot of, lot of companies that are doing it well.
[00:09:43] Matthew Dunn: Well, let's, let's freeform freeform it for a second cuz I, I, I do find myself wondering about the, the conundrum of branding in this fast evolv. And exhausting landscape of of, of being a consumer or being a business. When [00:10:00] Google launched, their branding was crap, but their product was fantastic and nobody cared about the branding because the product was so good and that became their brand.
But it wasn't like they had, It wasn't like they had someone with your level of expertise, how can helping craft the brand. It's like they delivered a color search engine on an empty.
[00:10:22] Orshie Herbein: But, but hear me out. Tons and tons of businesses right now are surviving only because they have a great product and service, right?
Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . But they're wasting. A, either they're not marketing and they're just relying on referrals. Mm-hmm. , or if they are marketing, and this is where if they are marketing. Yeah. If a company who has a great product and service mm-hmm. , but has a crappy brand that does not reflect the greatness of their product and services, throws money at marketing.
Mm-hmm. , I guarantee you that they're wasting [00:11:00] 80% of their marketing. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. You know? Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I'm, I'm trying to fix. So if you can essentially build brands mm-hmm. that reflect the greatness of your product of service and services to an ideal customer base, and then throw money at marketing.
Mm-hmm. . That reaches that ideal customer base with tailored messaging that presents as value to them. And then you're getting traction. So if you're gonna spend money on marketing mm-hmm , you better make sure that you can be validated as value. Once those customers pay attention to you,
[00:11:38] Matthew Dunn: right, the actual experience, the like what, what they get when they, when they sign up or use.
My
[00:11:44] Orshie Herbein: favorite clients and any prospect right now would walk in here with five star reviews, but looking like a dinosaur. I love those clients. Those are the best clients because we are literally, they're so much easier than somebody who's maybe [00:12:00] looking great but has bad. Hmm, I, I don't kind of want that client, client, I mean, you know, it's a challenge, but you know, to me it's much easier to create that transformation.
And build their values into a brand that reflects it. Mm-hmm. , you know, then, then fix the problems. U usually customer reviews that are brand is because they're not listening. They have like some employee return high turnovers. Something is broken internally that I can't touch. Mm-hmm. , you know, as a branding and marketing ex expert, so I can't really go there.
Yeah. But if it's five story review, And looking like a dinosaur. Yeah. Love,
[00:12:41] Matthew Dunn: you know? Yeah. Dig. Dig into that a little bit. The looking like a dinosaur comment or qualifier sort of
[00:12:47] Orshie Herbein: it. Well, it's a lot of noise. Right. Okay. Yeah, it's a lot of noise. So you go to a website and if you can't tell within three seconds what they do mm-hmm.
that's, you know, like you could [00:13:00] look great, but sometimes there's, there's various ways that you can go sideways. Maybe it looks great. So, first of all, I'm getting good feelings because it's professional, organized, clean. Right. But I read a really clever headline. , but someone thought of in a, in a marketing department or whatever, and I don't, I don't even know what I'm looking at, you know, like, or the name of the company.
Like there's some great examples I can't remember what this acronym used to stand for, but some sort of a consulting corp or something like I I C S. Some, some sort of a service consulting corp. Yeah. And it turns out that they are actually an IT company. But you know, I didn't get that until I talked to the business center.
I'm like, what does it actually do? Right? I, you know, you didn't know what kind of, Is it medical consulting? Is it legal consulting? Is it whatever? Because it's so vague, right? Mm-hmm. . So let's say your name is something interesting like, And Okay. [00:14:00] And I don't example recommend, I don't recommend that a startup or a small business has such interesting name because sometimes it's actually better to have the name something to do with what it is, right?
So it immediately allows somebody to put your. Put your business in certain categories of their name. So, but if you have an interesting name, like a last name or a Nike or a whatever, the best thing you can do is add a descriptor to your identity. You know, fa you know athletic goods, Nike, athletic goods, you know?
Right, Right away I'm thinking sports, you know, like if I don't need that, I can go away if I need, that I can read on. Right. So even just with the identity, We can tweak and communicate as much as possible. So my job is actually, I'm in a, in a business of minimalism of like how I take vast amount of in information and big concepts and translate it into very, very small items.
[00:15:00] Because one thing nobody's gonna give you is time. You're not gonna read paragraphs, they're not gonna read through a lot of stuff. So if I can't tell in two to six seconds what you do, then the phone rang the doc. Yeah. Yeah. It's cried and you lost me. Yeah. That's all, all I gave you right?
[00:15:23] Matthew Dunn: That, that I, I, I, I, I agree with what you're saying, and at the same time it irks me, because companies that bring out new, not not fitting in an existing category, innovations have a hell of a struggle on their hands because not everything fits in three to six seconds.
[00:15:49] Orshie Herbein: I think that's what I love about it. And sometimes for small business mm-hmm. literal is your friend, you know, and my job is to be literal and creative at the same time, [00:16:00] but I wanna make sure that creativity does not. Hinder from easily understanding what it is. Right? Yeah. So, you know, if you had Nike, you know, athletic goods right there mm-hmm.
and then maybe you are serving an elite market, but I still don't see that from that identity. But right there, maybe like on the, on the headline, I could say something that relates to luxury, you know? Okay. You know luxurious exercise products or something like that. I don't know. Just making stuff up, you know, or, or bring luxury into your exercise.
And Nike doesn't do that. I'm just making an example, right? Sure, sure. You know? Yeah. How could, So what, what we do inside brand three is we we have this, this twofold job. So we have this very in depth discovery with the business owner because we need to find out their goals, right? What is broken? What is the pain point?
Now, if I meet a person who is a solo printer, I'll ask the question [00:17:00] like, Hey, do you wanna be a solo printer for the next 20 years? And then you knowing that when you stop working, you're done working. Or do you wanna grow an enter? Where other people doing it the way you do mm-hmm. and depending on the answer mm-hmm.
is our job because if they say I just wanna be a solo printer, then I can use something unique like their name. Mm-hmm. And stuff like that into the brand. I can weave their personality into the brand and it becomes almost a personal brand. Right. Versus if they wanna go and become a business and train employees.
Like they would, they can eventually phase out or sell a business. Mm-hmm. , my job will be to build in their own values into a brand that can stand alone. And I would highly advise that they don't use their last name. Right. Or, or, you know, something like that. Because the last thing you want for a business that you're gonna.
Get ready to sell five, 10 years from now is to everybody point [00:18:00] back to Steve. How Steve Great is great because if Steve sells the business, then there's no more Steve and there's no value to the business. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, there's a way to increase your, the, that sale value by building your, your own values into the brand and teaching, recruiting a team to carry that out, right?
Yep. So, and then, and to deliver an experience that you would. So a printer is a very, very different situation, right? So we take this vision, mission, goals, and then we take it with what they do and what value they bring to the market and kind of mush it together, right? Mm-hmm. into a brand that kind of, you know, serves the internal goal purpose, but then also allows to, to, you know, bring in the customers that you know, they need to.
And they can serve really real, really well. Mm-hmm. . So, you know, you don't want to work with the non ideal because then [00:19:00] you, you are risking the experience, you know, And we already talked about that, how big of a deal that is, because very quickly nowadays, they can destroy you on social media, on Google, and you don't want that.
Right? So we always wanna make a promise back to that brand promise doesn't have to be grand. It just has to be something it can meet or exceed. That's all. Hmm. Gotcha. You know, and it has to be something that somebody values. Yeah. That,
[00:19:28] Matthew Dunn: that, that hopefully your ideal customer or your customer segment values, like if you can solve the problem that that set of people has in, in a sense, your job is, is connecting me with that set of people.
Yeah,
[00:19:43] Orshie Herbein: so I, I have an example for of a brand promise for a farm that we are working on right now. Yeah. So they are a, they are a, a csa, you know what a CSA is? Yeah, sure. Cooperative share agreement. Sure. Yeah, exactly. So they, they have, they're crops and then they, you know they want members that's, they [00:20:00] came to me because they want more members for the csa.
Mm-hmm. . So as we are doing through the discovery process, we, I'm talking to them. So let's talk about this ideal customer. Well, the healthy person is really not the ideal customer for us. They say because it's not about the healthy food, it's about the real food. The, our ideal customers, they just love to cook.
They just love the crooked carrot, the whatever, like the dirt, the soil, the, you know, they always say that our food is beautiful, but it's like dirty. You know, it's the dirty, beautiful and whatever. Just, you know, and then we are talking about the memberships and I'm like, Membership It. You know, they are talking about, you know, these guys just kind of love real food.
So I was like, Well, how about community? And instead of promising dirty, beautiful food, because it is kind of weird. Right. You know, our promise is starting to shape like this. We promise to build [00:21:00] and nourish a community of real food lovers. Right. Interesting. So we are now no longer just a csa, right? We are a community, and a community means a little bit more than membership because membership is like, if I pay, I'm a member.
If I don't pay, I'm not a member. It's kind of like a subscription type of deal, right? . But a community is more of a lifestyle, you know, So that allows us to, you know, this is where we are, but it will allow us to build a brand that kind of per, you know, is perceived as a community. Like, I wanna belong here.
I don't, don't wanna just be a member, I wanna belong, I wanna, I want this lifestyle. And I think what's really interesting is that the owners don't wanna build a c. But if you set it up like this, the community will build the community and they will share the recipes and they will share the real food stuff.
And look what I've done with the crooked carrot type deal. And, and if [00:22:00] you just create the avenues for it, and by the way, the owner's vision and mission is to kind of be out. They don't wanna be the family that, you know, like ties all this together. They just wanna grow the. , but now the community can kind of live outside of them and that they don't have to be the value.
You know, the value is the community. So it's very interesting how these things can pivot and how you can find nuggets to position brands uniquely, even though there's a hundred million CSAs out. You know what I mean?
[00:22:31] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting challenge. Maybe use them as a, as an example, but switch gears a little bit.
You've got a background in visual design, if I recall correctly. Yes. I'm a graphic designer by trading graphic designer. The, the visual aspects of, of a really effective brand, tremendously important, tremendously difficult, seems to me these.
[00:22:57] Orshie Herbein: Yes, there [00:23:00] are, There's a method to the madness, right? Yeah. So, you know, I, I again, minimalism, clean, simple, right?
Consistency. Mm-hmm. , the truck has to look like, the email has to look like the social media has to look like, whatever, both visually and message wise. Yep. Because a lot of companies aren't Nikes who have millions of dollars to throw at advertising. Right, Right. The, the benefit of the big brands is that they can come out of tap constantly.
You. But if you have made you know, some wave by intriguing someone's interest by an interesting marketing material mm-hmm. , if they go to your website and has the same message and image, then they send it twice, then they are interested, they dig more or go to your social media, they read your reviews and everybody's.
Regurgitating the values that you already said you had. Yeah, and I've seen it once, twice, three times. So that [00:24:00] repetition of seeing the same thing, is that what allows me to get sticky? Yeah, it gets it's sticky in people's heads. So big brands solve it by throwing a lot of money at marketing and having the frequency at which time you encountered their.
Small brands have it, you know, have the ability to do the same thing by building consistency inside everything. So, you know, that validation that now nowadays educated customers do. Mm-hmm. will allow them to remember the brand and then, you know, if you can throw some money at brand awareness and they kind of see here and there, you have much more likelihood to get to the engagement even even easier.
Gotcha. Gotcha. The visual side of it is, what can I say with less? Same thing as words, right? How much can I say with less? You know? So logos that look like an complicated illustration [00:25:00] are much harder to retain than just look at the Nike Swoosh. Again, we can learn so much from national brands. Simple Color Pet.
It's always the same red for Coca-Cola. You're not gonna see a blue Coca-Cola. Right. It's that impeccable consistency that allows brands to be retained, right? So retention is where we can really take this visual side of the brand to a science. And you know, what is really good for me is that I can now move away from subjective to objective.
So when I build a brand and me talking about a farm, right? And I'm utilizing greens and brands for various reason, because that allows somebody to put them in the category. But why isn't it pink and purple? Because it's gonna be harder for me to make that leap, you know, from pink and purple, purple to farm, right?
So it's, there's so. You know, [00:26:00] like it, we have to be. Of course we wanna make it beautiful, right? But the more categories we able to put on it in terms of consistency, minimalism, clarity, you know, like how quickly can I retain that this is food related or vegetable related, or farm related, or whatever have you, right?
All those are tools in my pockets to. Faster for someone to realize what the heck am I and how I show up as value in their eyes. Right.
[00:26:31] Matthew Dunn: Run with that a step further though. And let's take your comment about the million CSAs, which, which I'm sure there were . I'll bet if you lined up the visual brand, the visual elements of brands from those million CSAs, they'd look remarkably.
And maybe, and there's a limit to how many I'm
[00:26:53] Orshie Herbein: gonna remember it. It all depends. It all depends [00:27:00] because it all depends. So you are not seeing logos flying at you on a white background, you know? Mm-hmm. usually see them in context, so to. The very least, you're gonna see an identity with a picture and some words, you know?
Okay. And I think right there you can make a differe. , you know, because if I, if I take a hundred CSAs mm-hmm. , and look at just their top section of the website, I guarantee you probably 50% of them, you can't even tell that they're a csa. The csa,
[00:27:31] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Well, I would, I would,
[00:27:33] Orshie Herbein: You can't see the logo because you don't, you know, it's like, looks like a blob of colors and, and it, you know, the type is too small or, or it says Nike.
Yeah, and it doesn't say that it's farm, you know, So it's like, you know, you have no idea what you're
[00:27:47] Matthew Dunn: looking at, you know? Well, I'd take, I'd, I'd actually take that and, and, and put it on a different axis and, and I'm picking on CSA in particular, but I think there's some applicability to other realms of business, the brand of a [00:28:00] CSA in fill the blanks, Illinois doesn't matter to me at all why I'm in Washington.
I'm never gonna subscribe to a CSA from Illinois. , many small businesses forget to say where the heck they are. Mm-hmm. , when there's inherent geographic locality to what they do. Real estate agents, I love picking on them. Right. Hi, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Tell me where you are. Or, I don't really care why, Cause I'm not gonna shop for a house where I don't live.
[00:28:30] Orshie Herbein: Yes. But hopefully you're, you know, they are smart enough not to advertise in outside of their geo. You, you
[00:28:38] Matthew Dunn: don't, you don't control where information goes on the net.
[00:28:41] Orshie Herbein: No, I, I do know that, but I, you know, if in order for me to like know about a csa mm-hmm. in Illinois, I would have to like look up CSAs in Illinois.
They're not gonna come in front of me. They're not gonna spend paid advertising on Facebook for me to. You know what I mean? But again,
[00:28:58] Matthew Dunn: that's not the, that's not the only [00:29:00] potential channel of exposure.
[00:29:01] Orshie Herbein: True. One of the first thing that this firm in particular did by our recommendation is fine, they are called Flying Plow Farm.
Mm-hmm. currently, but I made them buy Rising Sun csa, which is very Rising Sun Maryland. And that's the, the area they wanna saturate. And I live close by to that area, but I didn't hear. So again, I, I, I found an, an amazing client for me, right? Mm-hmm. , great product and service customers love 'em. Nobody knows about them, right?
Right. Love that, love that challenge. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, because, you know, then we can just kind of tweak that foundation and then they can they be ready to go to market. Yeah. And hopefully we are inviting the. You know, again, there's a dilemma. It's not for everybody. Right. And I think everybody needs to know that it's not for everybody, it is for the real food lover.
Right? So [00:30:00] we're gonna be catering to that message. So if you like the convenience of the grocery store, you are not gonna be an ideal customer. Right? Right. You know, if you, if you care about real food and you are wondering where your grocery food is coming from, because let's say you're a stay at home mom and you're cooking and you know, peeling the carrots and.
Why is this slimy or whatever have you, I don't know. We might be
[00:30:22] Matthew Dunn: for you, you know? Yeah, yeah. . Yeah. My my wife is in the ideal customer profile for, for the, for the CSA you're talking about. That's why I have a little background in, in csa. My experience with smaller businesses, which I, I enjoy, is that they're, they underestimate the challenge and investment.
To be effective with branding and marketing these days. Any reaction to that?
[00:30:51] Orshie Herbein: Yeah. That's why we had to like boil down to, you know, our services to the smaller guys for something very effective, effective and efficient. [00:31:00] Yeah. You know, I, I
I have a package for smaller businesses for that reason, you know? Yeah. And it's very, it's very efficient, but I need them to trust. You know, if you're gonna bicker about. The shade of green. Yeah. Or the, the shade of purple or the, you know, whether I like that font or not. Yeah. I'm not gonna present anything that isn't gonna engage your audience.
Right. Yeah. Yeah. I gotcha. And my, my, I always put myself in that in that position for them. Like, Look, you are on the inside. I'm on the outside and I'm gonna do everything I can to look at what we are building from your market's perspective. Yes, I want you to like it, but what I want more is for your market to respond to you.
Yeah. You know? Yeah. There you go. That's what I want. There you go. You know, because honestly, I'm telling you right now, you know, I, you know, I outta the three logos that I presented to you, any of 'em at work is I'm not gonna present. That's not gonna work. Right? I was only three because I wanted you to be able to kind of give me our 2 [00:32:00] cents and you know, I also want you to know that I, I care about you liking it.
Yeah. But, but that's not the point. And you know what, If it's going to be, I'm happy to go back 3, 4, 5 times and create 10 more logo variations. Or options for you. Right. You know, But then we are, you're good. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. That's why I sell. I actually send, sell them bundled hours and then it's very clear, you know, it's a minimum set of hours and here are objectives.
And I, and I tell them there were many, many times I hit it and they're, many times we went a little bit over mm-hmm. and there are many ti there's few times and we've went a lot. But the customer knew that it is because they just can't make up their
[00:32:45] Matthew Dunn: mind. Yeah, yeah. . Yeah. Yeah. I've run a creative agency in the past and it is one of the, it is one of the tensions in that, that job of expertise in what seems like a squishy and subjective field.
You're [00:33:00] like, you're kind of going like at a point you have to, You know what? You hired me because you don't know how to do. Yeah. So at a certain point you wanna go, just shut up and do what I tell you. please. And, And
[00:33:11] Orshie Herbein: Matt, the secret sauce to me is to be subjective. Yeah. I mean, objective, not subjective.
Objective. Yeah. So then less you are subjective and more you're objective. You know, And again, my objectiveness comes from, will the market respond to this? She agreed. Or this shade Agreed. Yeah. Who don't care. Yeah. And we move on. Yeah. Pick a green , you know, , it's not gonna matter to the market.
[00:33:42] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. You know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Things like consistency, which you've mentioned are, are, are likely to matter a whole bunch more. Let's map it back since, since I stuck it on the title of the podcast. What kind of advice do you find yourself giving clients about the, the email. component [00:34:00] of, of their marketing communications and so on.
[00:34:03] Orshie Herbein: Okay. Thank you for asking that question. And I think number one is look at email holistically and where it leads. Right. So, you know, I am assuming that, you know, the, the trend is always to keep it short and sweet, value based, right? To me, it's always about elevating the value. Have a call to action. Once they click, make sure there's consistency.
You know, and make sure that you consider the bigger part of the campaign. So Campaign has lot of components and sometimes email is just part of it. Sometimes it's just an email campaign, but it can't really just be an email campaign if there's a brand attached trade and your website, you know, and your reviews are gonna be checked and whatever.
So just look. All the components. You know, like if you have a Facebook link, make sure your Facebook link looks like the website and the email and the whatever. So just kind of bring that [00:35:00] consistency in. So, because it's an opportunity for you to be retained, right? Mm-hmm. . Yeah. And remember. Yeah, right? So it's not just an opportunity to make a, you know, that call to action be something very actionable, like download or sign up or whatever.
But it's also because you're gonna be validated before somebody makes a decision to do that. I feel like that's an opportunity for you to be retained, cuz they're gonna dig around a little bit, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, . That's so just look at it from the, from, from a holistic point of view. You know, I think part of the problem is when we are silo and I meet these business owners all the time.
Like my SEO guys here, my web guys here. Yeah. My graphic designers here. Yeah. I have an internal who helps. It's social media posts and nobody talks to each other. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? And that's why we're all over the place and it's, It's a disaster. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And then I [00:36:00] send the emails by myself.
It's like, no, , You know, we gotta kind of look at, look at it in a holistic approach. Like, how does everything look? Because you gotta remember prospects nowadays, they're gonna dig before they engage. And what is the number one driver for engagement is trust. So if your brand is inconsistent, it's gonna be much harder for me to trust it.
In fact, I won't. I'm just gonna go with somebody who may have a subpar product to yours or service. Yeah. But they are consistent and I, and they feel like I could trust them better. You know what I mean? And you're mad that they're, you are losing customers to the competition. But that's why, because you are not looking trustworthy, you're not feeling like I could trust you from that outside perspective that, you know, I could kind of draw before walking in your door.
Once I walk in your door, I might have a great experience and give you faster reviews, but I guarantee you it would've been [00:37:00] a lot easier to get me if you had looked the way of what I'm experiencing. Yeah. You know?
[00:37:06] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Bar bar's pretty high these days, isn't it? Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Yeah. What's the three? I'm thinking there's more than one answer, but in, in brand three, what's
[00:37:15] Orshie Herbein: the three?
It's it's brand marketing and experience. Okay. But in internally we are a faith-based organization, so it's the father, son Holy Spirit aspect, which is kind of just in there for us. Nice, nice subconsciously.
[00:37:30] Matthew Dunn: So try, try you in brand as they say.
[00:37:33] Orshie Herbein: Well, yeah, exactly. You know, it just reminds us who owns the, the business really, and we are just stewards of it.
[00:37:40] Matthew Dunn: So, nicely put. Where where do you see yourself taking this in the next couple of. So,
[00:37:48] Orshie Herbein: I, I really think one, one of the things that I'm underutilizing in my brand is the education piece. The education about the right way to market, teaching about the right way [00:38:00] to market. So, you know, not only do I.
I, I feel like our process is very educational for our customers because they really have a new mindset about marketing. Once they walk in, walk out, you know, they walk in like, Oh, I need marketing, and they have upside email. Like, Oh, these are the just tactical stuff that's in their mind. And then they walk through our process and they understand.
This whole holistic approach and this plan approach that we have you know, more to the strategic side of marketing, that's really, really important in order to make those tactics effectively work, right? Mm-hmm. , it's one thing, but in order for me to do that, in order for me to grow, I need a team. Mm-hmm.
with the with that. So our mission and vision is to transform 1 million. Businesses from noise to clarity. And if that's attainable, I wanna change it to 1 billion. And the way I'm doing that, Matthew is not myself, but I actually have a [00:39:00] really massive desire to teach young designers or marketing students about this.
They don't, they don't get this in school. And I feel like the more so, so I have a huge. Part for interns. You know, if anybody's wants to intern at us, you know, just come in. We are on unpaid internship, but it's extremely knowledgeable. You're gonna walk away with a lot of knowledge and in fact, , a lot of our interns don't walk away, but that get to work with us afterwards.
I'm not gonna change 1 billion businesses from noise to clarity, but an Army will, who does it the right way? And I think part of the problem is the marketing companies out there that are selling these digital marketing packages, which includes three post on LinkedIn and five whatever, and six emails a, a quarter and whatever, whatever.
But they're not having this approach of really taking the brand into consideration and the experience in, into consideration. And [00:40:00] essentially they are not, you know, they're, they're wasting a lot of time and money, you know, because they're not, you know, they promise you leads and that you will get guaranteed.
You're gonna get tons of leads. 95% will be crap. Right, right. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And that's what you don't want.
[00:40:18] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. That's what you don't want. Well, that's a, I I love, I love the mission. I like that's, that's a swing for the fences mission, which is awesome. Not everybody
[00:40:29] Orshie Herbein: does that. Yeah. But it will take an army and the more, the more people do it the right way, the better, because then it's better for the entire small business landscape.
Hmm. Yeah. You know, because they're gonna waste less, they're gonna get more traction. They're gonna be able to position themselves uniquely. And, and really, you know, really work to serve an ideal customer base that's going to be a pleasure to work with. Pleasure to work you
[00:40:55] Matthew Dunn: with. So that's a good goal right there.
So, or she, if someone, if someone's [00:41:00] intrigued by this and they're listening, where do they go? Hunt your agency.
[00:41:04] Orshie Herbein: So Brand three's website is brand three.net, and there's a schedule a call button on there that goes directly to my calendar, so anybody can talk to me right
[00:41:11] Matthew Dunn: there. Perfect. Well, or she, Her by Anys.
Been, It's been fun and a pleasure chatting with you. Thanks for making the time.
[00:41:18] Orshie Herbein: Same here. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. All
[00:41:21] Matthew Dunn: right, we're
[00:41:22] Orshie Herbein: out. All right. Bye.