How to Promote Your Product and Company When You’re Challenging the Big Dogs

Written By Patrick Kothe
 
 
 
 

John Gumas is the Founder and CEO of Gumas Advertising, a full service advertising agency based in San Francisco. John is recognized as one of the country’s foremost authorities on Challenger Brand Marketing®. He is the author of the popular books “Marketing Smart” and “Challenger Brand Marketing”. In this episode John shares how the medical device market is the same and different than other markets, selling without selling, positioning to be a go-to, trusted resource, the importance of messaging, interviewing your external and internal customers to develop your messaging, common promotional mistakes, and the Challenger Brand Marketing approach.

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Episode Transcript

This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service and is minimally edited. Please forgive the mistakes contained within it.

Patrick Kothe 00:31

Welcome! Today we're going to discuss one particular aspect of marketing. Marketing can mean different things to different people. But it's important for today's conversation that we're all on the same page. Traditionally, the marketing mix involves four P's, product, price, promotion and place or some people will say distribution. In medical device, it's common for one person, often with the title of product manager to be responsible for all of the upstream activities. Think about the development of new products, as well as downstream activities. Think about promotion of existing products. Today, we're only going to discuss promotion. So if you hear the word marketing, just substitute the word promotion. Our guest today is John Gumas, founder and CEO of Gumas Advertising a full service advertising agency based in San Francisco. John's recognized as one of the country's foremost authorities on challenger brand marketing. He's the author of the popular books, "Marketing Smart", and "Challenger Brand Marketing". John currently sits on many boards, including the San Francisco Giants Community Fund, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, San Francisco State University, the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame and the Elios society. In our conversation, we discuss how the medical device market is the same and different than other markets, selling without selling, positioning to be the go to trusted resource, the importance of messaging, interviewing your external and internal customers to develop your messaging, common promotional mistakes and the challenger brand marketing approach. Here's our conversation. John, we'd like to think that the medical device industry is unique and completely different. But you deal with a lot of different companies in several different industries. From a promotional perspective, are we unique?

John Gumas 02:48

That is such a great question. And everybody in every industry feels they are unique. And you know, everyone is somewhat unique in a way but at the end of the day, they're really not. At the end of the day. This is simply people talking to people, people doing business with people I have yet in the 40 years that I've been doing this ever heard of a company doing business with another company, there are always people involved. And when people are involved, there's emotion, there's the basic points of selling the basic strategy of selling the basic strategy of promotion and marketing. And it really isn't that much different Pat, in any industry. And in my experience, I find that's where a lot of companies go a little sideways, they truly believe they're unique. And they truly believe that. And as a result, what happens is they tend to kind of look and sound like everybody else in the industry. And in my world in trying to get our clients to become successful and to separate themselves from their competitors. And and really, at the end of the day, inform somebody of a great device that they have, and how do you market that device, you have to find what makes you unique and 99 times out of 100 that uniqueness is is triggered by some sort of emotion that creates and, you know, the relevance or the size or the shape of that emotion is different. But it always is about emotion because it's people talking to people, people selling to people, people trying to inform people and that's what that's what everyone has to remember. It's it's less about the the features and all about the benefits and benefits are all evolve around motion.

Patrick Kothe 04:49

We do have different nuances. There's nuance within within each industry. So when when I say unique, unique means completely different but we have nuances and we have to wreck United's those two, within medical device, we do have a regulatory climate. And there's some things that we can and cannot say should and should not say, we also have multiple customers. And in many instances, you know, the user of the product is not the decision maker of the product. So how you market to that person and have multiple customers may be a nuance that may be different than somebody else. So if you think about, you know, the the messaging that needs to go out, let's say a website, but you and you've got three different customer types that need to come in, well, who do you market to? How do you do that? So each one of these different things are nuances. But I think as you said, it's it's people dealing with people.

John Gumas 05:48

Yeah, and you're right, there are nuances, there are new nuances on who your target audiences are. The biggest nuance in this industry is, is reaching those individuals. Because, you know, we're in an industry here that our customers are really busy people, and they have a lot to do. And, more importantly, our audience, they don't want to be sold to, right that this is a really key point I want to make is, the moment that we try to sell something to somebody is the moment we start to lose credibility is the moment we start, you know, they don't believe us as much because all of us as human beings, we don't want to be sold to, you know, you get that you know that that sales pitch, you know it, you feel it in your heart that this person selling me something. And as soon as that happens, what is the natural reaction is up, hold on now, I don't trust you, I don't believe you, you're just trying to sell me something. So the strategy that that that we've found works best, I mean, works really well in this industry is selling without selling. Alright, so what does that mean? How? How do you go about selling something to somebody in a way that they don't realize they are being sold to. And that's a nuance in this industry that is probably greater than many other industries. So because you have, you have doctors, you have, you know, therapists, you have all these professionals who are smart, busy, and you know, everyone in the world is trying to sell them something. That's really the, I think, a critical nuance of many folks that how you mark it in this industry. And it's, it's it is unique, it's more unique than other industries.

Patrick Kothe 07:40

When I was in sales, I started off in sales. And when I when I was in sales, the strategy that I used as much as I could was, I would orchestrate getting the r&d people into my territory and have the r&d people talk to the customers, they were the best salespeople in the company, and I and the reason why is they weren't selling, they were they're discussing and establishing relationship at a different level, I could go back and pick up the pieces, but they were doing the hardcore selling of the company that I couldn't do. So I always utilize them as a great tool in in my sales activities,

John Gumas 08:28

I refer to as the thought leader, and this is an industry where thought leadership, and proper positioning is so critical. And you know, this idea of not selling but educating, not selling, but informing, not selling, but providing a resource is critical. Versus Hey, Pat, I got this great product I want to sell to you and it's only 495 and I can get you know, $1 off. Like come on,

Patrick Kothe 08:56

if you could have the perfect product.

John Gumas 09:00

But wait, there's more today. I mean, that's that's not that's not what you do. And it's that nuance of being the thought leader, you know, ultimately what we want to do and what we what we do is position our clients to be the go to source that their clients and prospects look to for true analytical information and advice that they trust. And not not as a resource to be sold to but a resource a can trust. So trying to position a company in that way in this industry works so much more than the hardcore selling and and that that's that affects where you at you advertise how you advertise it promote. It affects that directly because many times where you promote yourself directly correlates to whether you're selling or not. And so the nuance goes beyond just one messaging, although I would argue that the most important part of this is the message. And it doesn't matter where you, you promote, where you place your message, and you can spend all the money in the world. If your message is not right. It's just not going to work as well. Or most organizations jump right into the Okay, let's start promoting, let's start promoting. We're what our strategy is, you know, oh, Timeout, timeout, let's step back a little bit, we need to figure out exactly what we need to say, and how we need to say it. And the biggest mistake many marketers make in this industry is they guess, you know, I think this is what we need to say, I think this is where we need to promote, I think, every time Is he any phrase or sentence starts with I think, yeah, that's dangerous. And and usually expensive, or almost always expensive. So you want to get to the point where you know exactly what you need to say, because what tends to happen, and we're all human, we're all human. So this, what tends to happen is, you know, your company, so well, you live it, you breathe it every day, it is literally impossible for you to step back and look at your company externally outside in like a prospective new customer would. It's impossible because you know it too well. But you need to put yourself in their shoes into a prospects shoes, and they see your company, and how do they you know, how would they see it? What do they need to hear, to get them to, to engage to hear more information. So that's a process you have to go through to learn that. We do these all the time. And I would say 99.9% of time, what our customers think their customers needed to hear is not even close. I

Patrick Kothe 12:01

often sit back when I when I'm getting a new message. And I kind of think like a funnel. If if somebody wants to bring me down into the funnel, so that so that I know what they're talking about. But if they don't give me the big pieces, I can't get to the small pieces. So for example, somebody says I'm a, we're a medical device company that deals with X market, and we supply devices to that, okay, I just took from a big picture down into into a small picture. But if somebody starts talking down at the at the fine level, I don't know what they're talking about. I think that a lot of us do that, as you as you explained is we immediately get down into the weeds without oriented people. And and people have to come there with us, we have to bring them with us. We can't just you bring them right down into the into the bottom of the funnel immediately.

John Gumas 13:00

Yeah, that's your you're so you're so right. And my favorite quote is from Mark Twain. And Mark Twain said, I would have written you a shorter note. But I did not have the time. So in other words, you're right, we tend to just spew out all the information, we have a rule that we create in our agency. And that is it for websites, in particular, it's called the seven second rule. In seven seconds, somebody needs to come to your website and understand, right that we do what for whom, so that person can X. So if you don't get that message across, in seven seconds, they will leave. So if you think about this, the the hierarchy, the strategy of messaging, and let's just take a website, for example, because that's easy to describe, someone comes to your website in seven seconds, you got to give them a reason to stay. If you convince them in seven seconds to stay, they will then move on and get more information. And that's how the flow happens. Whereas you're exactly right. organizations tend to just bombard people with all this information. And they say everything. And the problem with saying everything is you say nothing. And that's that's the common mistake that we see. And and organizations feel that their technology is what's going to sell. But you know what, they're you look at their competitors. Everyone tends to say the same thing. And we would argue that that is the absolute worst thing an organization can do you have to find what makes you unique, what makes you different than everybody else? What can you say that nobody else is saying? Making sure it is relevant to who you're talking to. And and it drives them to some type of action. And if you can come up with that, and you do come up with that going through a process not guessing it That's where you will start to see your success. That's where you will start to see all of the promotion that you do in every category you can think of, even down to the salespeople, you'll find that that they become more successful, because they're staying exactly what the targeted audience needs to hear, to engage in a conversation.

Patrick Kothe 15:20

And it's not only what they need to hear, but it's how they need to hear it. And emotion as you said, it's not the features, it's the benefits, it's an it's not the benefits, that you think it's the benefits that are actually important to the person on the other side. And we can get pretty close to the benefits for groups of people. But we also have to recognize that every individual has a different set of benefits, they may be close, you may be getting close, but you you need to have that conversation, if it's one on one, to get to the benefits of that person, not to the group. Right,

John Gumas 15:59

exactly. And I would also say that when a company messages, you want a message to someone who's never heard you before heard of you before. So someone who's never heard of your organization, never heard of your device has no clue who you are. That's what your messaging is, must be designed to attract that person. Because somebody who does know of you who has heard of you, they're there, they're starting the conversation. at second base, let's use a baseball analogy here at second base where somebody who's never heard of you, you know, they're sitting in the dugout. And that's, that's your target. That's what they're trying to reach.

Patrick Kothe 16:39

And, and conversation is one thing, because you're getting feedback from that person, you're able to play off of what you know, the questions that you ask. But as you started off, you know, websites are something different, a completely different animal, I can't tell you how many websites I've gone on to. And I've looked at it. And I see paradigm shifting, you know, you throw me out the buzzwords, and it's and it's on, it's on their front page, and I look at it, and I look at it for 10 seconds, and I go, I have no clue what this company does. I don't know who they are. I don't know what what what industry they're in. I don't know what they do. Are they a product company, a service company? I have no clue. And and that's that top of the funnel I was talking about is orient your customer, especially the ones who don't know who you are exactly what you do. And do it quickly.

John Gumas 17:35

Yeah, and it comes back to exactly what we were talking about. It's this concept of, you know, your company so well, it's impossible to step back and look at it objectively, as you absolutely must do. So, you know, when when you are looking at messaging, there's four questions you need to answer very, very quickly for a prospect to understand it first is who are you? What do you do? What makes you different? And what's in it for me, the website viewer, those are the four questions that you need to get across. And if you don't get those across, people are going to leave. It's amazing how many how much money organizations spend, to get people to come to their website, only that only to have them leave because they are not satisfied that that visitors need for not for you to learn what they need to know and what's in it for me as the visitor. And it's it's such a common mistake that we see over and over and over. Because it just falls back into you just assume everybody knows. And you and you just want to dive into the detail. But there's a time and place for the detail. But it's not it's not it's not at the beginning.

Patrick Kothe 18:53

On the one hand, you know the large strategic companies within the medical device space have some advantages. On the other hand, they don't. So if you're a j&j, Medtronic, Boston Scientific, you've got multiple different product lines. So how do you get that customer who's the orthopedic surgeon to come into your space? And on your homepage, you're saying you know, we we make patients feel better you know, okay, how does that how does that fit with my life but because the same orthopedic surgeon that's looking at you so there's gonna be orthopedic surgeon but then there's you're gonna cardiothoracic surgeons looking at the same page, you got to quickly be able to vector these people off into the areas that are important to them.

John Gumas 19:42

Yeah, that's it's funny. It's like the restaurant tour. It says our food is fresh. Well, you know, it better be fresh. All right. You know, I'm not going to restaurant because your food is old. So yeah, you don't want to be captain obvious in the marketing world. You really have To understand what makes you what makes you unique, and, you know, it's referred to different terms in a niche marketing is one but you know, what makes you different? What can you own? What position can you own and defend and do better than anybody in the marketplace. That's what you have to find out. And then you could talk about everything else. And we're in the, in the, what's called the challenger brand space, where, you know, our clients are, are up against the Medtronic, the j&j is they're up against these big behemoths, who have, you know, who outspend them significantly, who have, you know, larger distribution capabilities, larger sales forces, you know, just greater resources in every way. So how do you compete against those those folks, and this is, you know, our challenger brand marketing is a methodology that does exactly that. But it all starts with with a with a, what we call discovery, and it's, it's finding the information you need to know. And we do that by interviewing one on one interviews. And we don't do focus groups, we don't do written interviews, we don't do online interviews, we we pick up the phone, and we talked to some very specific people on the phone. And by the way, there's a reason we do it on the phone is because when someone looks you in the eye, or someone is in a focus group, they tend to be influenced. And we don't want that. Because the worst thing, absolute worst thing that can happen when a company is trying to determine this, is they get the wrong information. Because what tends to happen in interviews is, somebody says what they think you want to hear, or somebody is influenced by somebody else, and you don't get the truth. Actually, the

Patrick Kothe 21:47

worst thing is that you get the wrong information. The worst thing is you act on the wrong information.

John Gumas 21:51

Exactly, exactly. Right. So what we do is we go through, we have a five step process. And the first step is what we call discovery, where we interview. Actually, we have kind of three, three points. The first point would be customers, we interview customers on the phone, and we don't need to talk to a lot of them. But we want to talk to a 360 of customers, your best customers, your okay customers, and maybe your not so good customers, or maybe some customers that left, we want to talk to them. And we asked them very, very unique questions, all designed to pull the emotion out of their buying decision. So we can get a real sense as to why they bought how they bought what their process was. So we can ultimately put that into words.

Patrick Kothe 22:41

John, are you going through a script on here? Do you have specific questions that you're asking and looking for specific answers?

John Gumas 22:47

Yes, we do have a script scripted main questions, but many times the conversations go off. And ultimately, what we're looking for are consistencies. And it's the consistency of the of the of the answers. But these questions are pretty unique. So if you ask the right people the right questions in the right order, you will get the information you need. I mean, well, we'll ask less questions like, you know, not not, you know, what do you how do you like the product? Do you like the blue one or the red one, they will ask if you had a magic wand, and can sculpt how you would create the perfect product for you? And what would it look like? Now then we start to get a sense of what they want, what they're feeling. And it's all these emotionally based questions like that, that really get the person to think so we ask the questions of their customers. Then the second piece of that is we'll ask similar questions internally, of the stakeholders of the company. The C suite, board members, marketing people, anybody who had touches customers will ask them similar questions. And in 40 years that we've they've, it's never aligned, in 40 years, never ever once aligned. So we do that in turn. So we have external customers, internal stakeholders, that will also do internally what's called a symposium where we'll get all the key stakeholders in a room for like, three, four hours, we'd lock the door from the outside, and and take them through some exercises, forcing them to come together. Because the biggest issue that most companies have is they're not all on the same page when it comes to a message. And what's very typical is let's say we have 15 people in a room. We'll ask them separately before you know. So give me your elevator pitch for this company, we get 15 answers. And the reality is you cannot market a company if your internal key stakeholders are not on the same page saying the same thing. So that's the external the internal part. And then the other part is we do a competitive analysis. So once you know we come up with a messaging, it has to be unique to what your competitors are doing. So you have to really dig deep. See what your competitors are doing, how they're positioning themselves how they're messaging themselves, because they're essentially selling to the same people you're selling to. So how are you different from them? So all this comes out to, essentially, you're creating a message, and a strategy based on facts and analysis, versus based on guesses and hunches. Because challenger brands, at the end of the day, get one shot at being successful. You got that's how you have to approach is to get one shot at being successful. You better damn be right. Right? When you start spending money, you better damn be right that you know exactly what makes you unique, what your position is how you need the message yourself in order to generate a response from the person you want to talk to. And if you don't do that, you just wasted money, you're just wasting money and and it's not going to work. You know, in our world, the challenge of brand marketing, we're a week we have to be right. And we have to be very, very methodical and strategic and how we how we start to brand and message and market our clients products.

Patrick Kothe 26:15

And for all you out there listening, John has written the book on challenger brand marking, he actually has a book titled challenger brand marketing. And it's a really good book because it gives practical advice on all of these different different steps. So I highly encourage you to pick it up. John, when you're discussing understanding buyers motivations and talking to buyers, does that change? Whether you've got does the methodology change whether you've got a new product versus an existing product?

John Gumas 26:53

No, no, unless unless the market changes, unless people have changed from being human to alien. Maybe they might have might make a change. But no, at the end of the day, Pat, it's what do you have to say to that person? On the other end that targeted person? What do you have to say to them to get them to either buy your product ultimately, set up a meeting with a sales rep, download some data? You know, whatever your call to action is? What do you have to say to them to get them to take that action? So that's what you have to find out. And that's the part you cannot guess. And I implore anyone out there, please, please do not guess at that. Because guessing is usually the number one reason promotional campaigns go right. Because what you're saying isn't connecting, it may sound really logical to you, it may sound like it's right on to you, it may sound like well, I know my customer, I can give you hundreds and hundreds of examples where that's been proven wrong. Because in marketing, you just have to be a little bit off, just a little bit off doesn't quite connect, it's not going to work. So that's why it's worth going through the process upfront to learn that. And for most companies, that process is the most important thing they'll ever do most most enlightening thing they've ever done to learn about their themselves learn about their customers. Because it's like taking a test now you have all the answers. Because your customers will give you the answers. If you ask them the right questions in the right order, they will tell you exactly what you need to say to them. But you just need to know how to extract that information from them because it's there. And most companies don't bother to do that because they truly believe that they know the answer. And I'm here to say that 100% of the time that's not quite aligned.

Patrick Kothe 28:54

John, sometimes we have two different things that may be working in concert or are working against each other. And that's the brand of the company and the brand of the product. So you for example, you've got a fantastic product solves a surgical problem that that a lot of people have it is a just a just a fantastic product. But your company is known as cutting corners or your company is known as not having good good representation or good training. So you've got two different things that work either against each other for each other. So when you're doing these audits, so to speak with your customers do you separate the two out or do you deal with them together?

John Gumas 29:42

Now we're we're big proponents of it's all one it's all one and we're with a lot of companies tend to fall into just naturally is their product, whatever their best product is that tends to lead the brand and the company brand becomes that product. That's hard. Because if you want to introduce other products, it's hard. So think of come up with example. I mean, let me step out of the industry and think of Nike because that's, that's a big product. Everybody knows it's easy. Nike as an organization, right? their brand, their tagline is just do it. Right? Just do it. Think about that. That's emotional. It's invoking this idea. If you're an athlete, in any sport, that's important. In any sport, if you're an athlete, we're going to give you what you need to be the best you can be. Okay, that's the brand. Now, look at all of the peripheral product lines they have, whether it's running shoes for men, or women apparel for for women, you know, whatever all those product lines are, the message for the say Men's Running Shoes is specific to a men's runner, but that product connects back to the brand. And the confidence you have that whatever you buy from Nike is this brand protecting it. So now anytime they want to expand and add new products, people think of the brand they trust the brand. So it makes it easier. And back to your original question, a lot of companies kind of fall into the trap of they don't align those two, or they brand their their product versus the company, then you start to you start to have misalignment and the marketplace doesn't quite know who you are. And when that happens, what tends to the the byproduct of that is mistrust. Or maybe you're there they just don't, you're not believable. And you have to work harder at promoting your product and convincing people that your product, your product is right for them. So yeah, it's it, they're definitely, definitely connected. And they must be connected,

Patrick Kothe 31:52

they must be. But again, sometimes, we believe our own hype, and we don't go out there and check it. And I think it's important to me, I've kind of done it, done it both ways were looked at the company brand and look at the product brand separately. And you can learn some things, you're going to dig a little bit a little bit deeper if you're just looking at the company, but I kind of look at it. As you know, as you said, it's there's an overarching feeling that you get when you deal with a company. And then there's product specific things that work or don't work within that product. But the overarching feeling that you get from that company should be an umbrella that you should be able to tap into with all of your product offerings. And it needs to be really solid at the company level. Because if it's solid at the product level and not at the company level that bleed over is going to kill you. Yes, so true. So true. Guma is let's let's let's talk about the company for a second and the industries that you go in. And I've got a I've got I've got a branding question I want to ask you. So tell me a little bit about about about the company?

John Gumas 33:06

Sure. Well, we're closing in on 40 years, we're a full service, branding and advertising agency, mostly digital marketing nowadays. And what what we did we talked about earlier, our specialty is challenger brand marketing, we invented the term we trademarked the term, we own it, we've owned it for years. And it's a methodology. And it's a methodology designed to help companies compete against their larger, better funded better resource competitors. Because when you have a lot of money to spend, it's a very different marketing strategy. When you have when you're watching your dollars and and you don't have as much money to spend or you don't have the resources as others. It's a very, very different marketing strategy. So we've perfected that over the years and have a very methodical process of gathering information creating the messaging and strategy from that developing the visual creative materials from the strategy than going into the what we call go to market plan, how do you surround your customers in a way that they'll believe you and then the ongoing management of that because most of our clients will we'll take them through then they'll have it's become almost their, their their marketing department that we either report to a marketing manager and execute everything for them. And in this way, we're kind of held accountable to the results as well. So we do that we have we have all the services in house to to make that happen. And we have a great team and you know, that's that's our job is is really, really simple. You know, we do branding and marketing and digital advertising, but our job is to make our clients grow their business. That's at the end of the day. That is our job. We just use all these fun strategies and marketing tag It takes to make that happen. But we know why we're there. We know and and because of the, you know, if our clients aren't successful, we're not successful. So while we take it pretty seriously.

Patrick Kothe 35:11

So here's my challenge back to you. Speaking of challenge, what's the name of your company?

John Gumas 35:16

Good, most advertising gurus.

Patrick Kothe 35:18

So that's my challenge to you. Advertising, it's pretty specific. You do more than advertising. So my, my challenge to you is to say, are you an advertising agency or your marketing agency,

John Gumas 35:32

but if you notice, very seldom do you see advertising, Google's advertising is our legal legal name, but we refer to ourselves as boumous, with a big period at the end. And, you know, and we call it in our tagline is champions of the challenger brand. So you know what, in fact, that's, that's a good example of how companies transform, right when, when this company, my company, started 40 years ago, advertising was was it right, and that was our legal name. And so fast forward now, 3030 years, 35 years, we've transitioned to adjust to what the market is. And I say that because it's important for all companies to do that. The markets change. So fast. And marketing needs to be nimble. And and you need to be able to, to adjust with where the market is going. And, you know, if that means adjusting your name, you know, if you're, you know, Goombas widgets, and all that, or for goodness, buggy whip company, all right. And obviously, they're not making buggy whips anymore, maybe we just become Goombas. So every company has that. And it's, it's just, it's just kind of a normal transition through time in this this crazy, ever changing world we're in.

Patrick Kothe 36:47

I'm glad that we went through that because you're absolutely right. And we all need to modify what we do and how you know how much we how much wiggle room we've got to be able to make changes is important, when we're setting things up to make sure that you have the ability to make make changes, sometimes there's a complete rebrand that you need. But hopefully, you're going to be able to live with your logo, you're going to be able to live with your your, your colors, and your font and all the rest of that stuff for a period of time. Because usually, you know, the old thing you know, when you when you want to change, change something, you know, waited another five years and then change it. So we always are more impatient than the market is. But giving yourself enough latitude to be able to do things like reseed the name, advertising, and move the name Gunas up, those are things that we can we can do and live with and still have the legal entity name being being one thing, but I think that that's a, that's a really interesting conversation on how you transition.

John Gumas 37:56

Yeah, it's so funny, we tell our clients, it because they, they see their marketing their brand all the time, and they start to get tired of it. Personally, this is just kind of a human nature thing. And, and what we tell them is, is the moment the market, everyone in the market starts getting tired of it, that's when it happened. And that the period that between when you get tired of it, and the market has seen it too much is a very long time. And that the length of time really depends on how much money you're spending right out there. But it's we tell our clients, you know, we want consistency, consistency, we want people to recognize not only the visual of the brand, but the tone of your voice, the style in which you do things. You know, when we get to that point, the first thing we need to do is high five each other because that, you know, we know we've done it. And that's that's the goal is to get to that point where everybody in the market, everyone who cares to you in the market knows you understand you trust you believe you and wants to do business with you because you have such a great reputation. And that doesn't happen by accident. Because when it comes to branding, you have two options, you can let the market control the brand and create your position. Or you can you can you can control it and create it yourself and maintain it, you have two options. And we choose the latter always obviously, because that is the best way to go. Because every one is going to get branded. Whether you choose to control it or not is up to you, but everyone will be. And if you don't control it, it will become something that you want. You don't want it to be. And once you're in that position, it's really hard to change.

Patrick Kothe 39:36

So for those of you out there who are CEOs or board members, and you've got a new VP of marketing comes in or a new CEO says we're going to rebrand this thing. You better start asking some questions because change for the sake of change is not necessarily a good thing. Couldn't agree more. We've talked about getting that customer feed Back and understanding things from a market standpoint, that's kind of the main thing that we need to do in order to craft the messaging that we need in order to, to get promotional programs that resonate with the customer get out of the features and get into the emotional situation that our customers have. We've changed a lot within within medical device. It's primarily for years and years, it was pretty brochures and showing up at the trade show. And and doing some things from the podium at the meetings. But like everything else, social has has come into our field as well, doctors are actually consumers do so help with their people, too. So everyone is consuming things differently. And our industry is been slow to do that. I think a lot of that has been companies are very conservative in our space. And specifically, when you get into regulatory, how much of the messaging comes from the company versus being distributed out into the hands of everyone within the company has led a lot of large companies specifically to be very conservative and their approach to social. What is what has been your experience with the migration of our segment, in medical device, and in moving into social Are we are we close are we way far behind where are we

John Gumas 41:40

companies are less willing to accept change, or accept it as quickly in this industry. But they need to, and if COVID Wasn't awake up, then I don't know what it is. Because think about that for a moment. All of a sudden, you're you couldn't access the hospitals or the clinics, you couldn't see the doctors, the therapists, you couldn't see them. And add to that they were not only busy, but they were probably the most stressful stress people in the world at that time. So what happened, there was no way to reach them, because of the conventional means that most companies use were pretty much cut off, it's the perfect example of shifts, and how you have to shift to to reach your audience. And you said something earlier that is so right on. They are people doctors are people, therapists are people, they're not any different than you or me or anybody else. They are no different, they're emotional, and they don't want to be sold to. So every company has to figure out alternative ways in which to communicate with these folks outside of the conventional means your trade shows or art, you know, those those are good because you get to see people one on one it's it's it's, it's still the personal touch, which is great. Credit is not as effective anymore. And I'll tell you why. Is because the digital world. What it does, it allows people like us to know immediately how effective something is immediately. Print, you know, anything conventional, you don't really, really know, you might know two, three months later, I kind of think kind of sort of kind of almost, I think it worked. Somebody called me that was good. But under the digital sphere, we know everything, we track everything. So we can tell you if that particular ad that particular message that particular time of year, that offer worked or didn't work. And we can tell you pretty pretty quickly. So what that allows us to do is get better and better and better at what we're doing. So we're learning every day, every week, every month we're learning and adjusting. So you have and you have so many new tools now did you look at all the social media you look at you look at look, look what we're doing today, a podcast. You know, that what a great way and we're huge fans of podcasts for our clients to do exactly what you're doing at getting the word to people that that that it's important for them to understand all the wonderful topics that you discussed on this podcast, how else are they going to get that information while sitting you know, at home while driving in their car while while you know their spare time. It there are so many tools like that. So we as marketers need to help our clients determine which ones are best in which combination. There are certain types of media that may not have as much credibility as other types of media. So it's learning that it's understanding that and we those are we didn't talk about it but during our discovery, we also find out what type of media that our customers Customers consume and what they trust. And that's key is we all have certain types of media we trust. So let's say you're, you're on a certain, pick your favorite sports app, and then an ad for something comes, do you believe that? Do you follow it? Do you click on it, those are the things we find out. But if it's, if it's in a different format, in a different platform, are you going to believe a little bit more, you've got to know that information. If you don't know that information, you're going to be guessing you're gonna be placing your ad. And believe it or not, some of it may actually hurt you, instead of help you because it starts to erode your believability, your credibility, because of where you're placing your ad, not to mention what you're saying.

Patrick Kothe 45:43

And that's an interesting term that you're saying, add, because if we if we think about the change in how people want to learn things, they don't want in my estimation, they don't want a brochure. They don't want a digital brochure. They want something that's giving them something of value that they can immediately put in so and the traditional sense of an ad may not be appropriate for many of these digital platforms.

John Gumas 46:19

Absolutely. So now let's talk about what does work. Okay, so ads are, I would say a thing of the past, ads have, and that's such a broad term ads. But but those types of tactics are good at building a brand building brand recognition. But not all companies have the luxury of having the resources to run ads just to do that. They have they have to return in investment, our strategy that we like the most. And then we implement for almost every client we have, because it works is a strategy of thought leadership, and search marketing. I'll get kind of geeky here for a second. So one of the things we'll do is, say, for our medical device clients, we will do a very thorough analysis of what our customers and our prospective customers are searching for online, what are they looking for? What are they? What are their issues? What are they trying to find out. So we will then work backwards and create content that is then search optimized to all the different things that they need to know. And then we will take that search content, and then optimize it and place it out in the search world, to where our customers customers are finding them. And when somebody finds you, that is the most effective type of prospect you can find. So it's not just, you know, content on Google. And I'm gonna ask you a question. How do you know the second most used search engine behind Google? YouTube? Very good. Yeah. Nobody ever gets that. Right. Yeah, it's YouTube. So think about that. So it's creating content, not only on on Google, but it's, you know, it's on YouTube, like we're doing here, podcasts and other forms of content, that so instead of placing ads, like the, you know, not too distant old days, you're really creating a search generated marketing strategy designed to get very relevant and very helpful content that makes you I'm gonna refer you as a company, the brand, look, credible, believable, smart. And most importantly, I'm not selling you anything. I'm just giving you information. And then you are going to look at that and go, boy, these folks really know what they're talking about, I need to reach out to Company X and find out about this new product that they have, because that's exactly what I want. Well, that whole connection process didn't happen by accident. Right? It started at the beginning through the discovery, finding out exactly what our customers needed to hear. It was taking that content, turning it into a strategy and messaging then into the creative and then into the plan itself. That's the strategy it's it's less about placing ads in magazines, placing ads on Facebook and stuff, although that has its place as well. But it's creating that kind of that that that reverse type of search strategy that positions our clients as thought leaders as the experts and whatever that niche category is we want them to be you know, famous for and that's and that's kind of a little a little thing we have internally in our company is is what do you what do you need to be famous for? Because if you're famous for something people will remember you. Versus Yeah, we do everything and it's at that point it's really hard.

Patrick Kothe 49:50

mom and apple pie doesn't sell everybody's mom. But, but are you are you the the worldwide leader in something Do you do your best customer service in something do you have? Do you solve a particular problem that nobody else does, you know, all of those things that are defensible, that are, you know, you could put the flag up and say, This is exactly who we are.

John Gumas 50:16

I give you I give a really quick real world example with a client and, and I'm going to keep their name out. But if they're in the aerosol delivery category, and I'm sure your listeners know who this company is, but but we've been working with them for about 10 years. And when when we were first hired, they have a I mean, they have a very high, high quality product, the highest in the industry. And it's priced accordingly. And so there were all of a sudden influx of competitors, who are coming from other other Asian markets that were undercutting them. Bye, bye. Three, four times price wise. So now the sudden you had you had all the procurement folks say, Well, look, I can buy four of these for one of these, and that it was starting to hurt their business. So what do you do, and that was that was our challenge. So we took them through this, this this process that I've painstakingly described so many times today, and discovered that what their market loved about their product, was because it made a difference in lives. It mattered to the lives of their patients, it mattered to how long it took, let's say a respiratory therapist, to be with the patient and make a difference, it mattered. So all of a sudden, what we showed was was the price was justified, or their whole marketing message was it matters. It matters, lives matter. You know, Quality Matters every it matters. So it wasn't necessarily about the product, but it's about this emotional aspect, it's time to push back, it's time you know, we our patients deserve what's best. So then a lot of the learnings came from showing the market that you know, if someone's going to come back to the emergency room every week, because they have a cheaper product. Well, what's that cost versus buying a product that's maybe twice as expensive, and you're talking a couple of dollars, right? expensive, but that patient doesn't come back for six months? What is that, where's the value there. So it's sometimes it's looking at things a little differently. But this particular case, it was the motion of you know, company name means that matters. You know, everything they do means it matters. So that's kind of a you know, the Nike just do it. The idea of whatever you buy from this company, there's a lot of thought and effort that goes into quality assurance and patient outcomes. This was speaking to an emotion, and it turned the company around, it literally turned it around,

Patrick Kothe 53:01

kind of going back to one of the topics that we discussed earlier is multi headed customers. So I I've got I've got a company that is in the emergency department. And we have a product that keeps people out of the emergency department. So that that's that's what my company does. But when I talked to clinicians who are making the decision to use the product, not to bring the product at the hospital, that's a different group, the people who are making the decision to use the product, they don't care about price, price means nothing to them, they have no clue what the price of the product is. What turns them on is something completely different. It's solving the problem, it's speed, it's not bringing people back into the emergency department for follow up visits. It's how quickly they can do the procedure. It's the pain that the patients have. So it's taking those things and amplifying them. The price. I don't even talk about the price to those people. But to get it into the hospital. That's the value analysis committee. Well, now we've got a completely different cell. So so it's understanding who your customers are. Because when you're in this space, and you've got multi headed customers, you need to know who you're talking to, and how to market to them. Because they're all different. And if you try and do a VAC committee presentation to a clinician, it falls flat doesn't work at all, you got to understand who you're talking to. Yeah,

John Gumas 54:36

so So Right. And you know, having multi multi targeted audiences is normal, it's normal, but as long as it all feeds back to the brand, it feeds back to the brand and you know, it's it's an emotional buy again, it's people buying people and, you know, most clinicians, most therapists most doctors want to do what's best for their for their patients. You know, and there's Just looking for products they can trust, right, that they that they can trust to have that value, and they're backed by a brand. And if I have a question, right, I can call you, Pat, and you're gonna give me an honest answer. And that's, that's, that's, it's really simple. In terms of, of, you know, humans dealing with humans, you want to somebody who you can trust and rely on, and believe.

Patrick Kothe 55:25

So, John, is, is email dead?

John Gumas 55:27

No, it's not, it's not. And if you don't offer in the header, a benefit to that reader in a couple of seconds, then it will you know that that email will not be opened. So, again, don't sell anything, you know, how do you create a benefit? But more importantly, do you know what that what that recipient of that email needs to hear? If you know what they need to hear, then all email works phenomenally well, if you don't know what they need to hear, then you're going to think it's dead because it doesn't work. But I would argue it's not email, it's the sender of that email. And and what that message is, the most important part of marketing is messaging, by far, second to none, his messaging. But I'll give you a little anecdote, you know what we're finding that starting to come back, it's no one's doing it, it kind of died. Good old direct mail, remember direct mail where you go to your mailbox. And I'll take that to the next level is, we've been doing these what are called dimensional mailers, where we instead of sending a letter or card with you know, you send something that that is either different size, it can simply be an envelope with something in it, or it can be a box, that is it's a sent to a recipient, and those can open, they get open. So if you're trying to reach, we will do these programs where let's say we're trying to reach 1000, respiratory therapists, we'll we'll send maybe whatever our budget allows maybe 10, a week, five a week, 20 a week, and we'll send them something creative, then we'll have somebody follow up with them a few days after, and and their breakthrough rate is high. So yeah, good old fashioned direct mail is coming back, because it's less and less of it. Now.

Patrick Kothe 57:23

What's interesting, too, about direct mail, and it's kind of counterintuitive. You think direct mail, it's got it, you know, we're going to have something that's short and concise and get the message through. And that's fine, if you're just trying to get one idea through. But if you're trying to convert somebody, think about this. If you're if you're in the market for a new car, and somebody sends you a piece of information, it's got a couple of pictures, and it's got, you know, a couple of specs on it, you go yeah, that's pretty nice. But if you're truly in the market, and somebody sends you a 47 page, thing that's got all of the specs and everything and you're really interested in there, you'll you'll digest that whole thing. So So and that's, and that's who you're trying to reach is that person who's ready to make a decision. So a lot of times we think about direct mail, we think it's got to be short and concise. Is it or? Or is it something that's going to be more robust? For the for the percentage of people that are really interested?

John Gumas 58:30

That's right, and direct mail is not? Yeah, direct mail is one of those mediums in which you can do that. Because direct mail is one of the most efficient ways of marketing because you have a name, you know exactly who you're sending it to. I'll give you a really quick example is we had a client years ago, not too long ago, that was selling an incredibly expensive product, we knew exactly who the target was, and they were hard to get to. So we sent out a box essentially, it was a kind of a remote control vehicle that represented this this client's product. We sent it out overnight to these these very specific people that we knew would want to buy it. But we purposely left one item out that was the remote control for so

Patrick Kothe 59:24

you're a bad man.

John Gumas 59:27

So so we would follow what we have that you know, there was a very small a couple of salespeople. So we would send out maybe a couple a week and the salespeople would follow up and say can I you know what? And most of the time it was part of the joke Yeah, good one Gotcha. Can I bring over the remote control and meet you in person? They had such a high close rate of meeting these these very elusive high end individuals with a high high ticket item. Just by being fun and and you know Most people appreciated the strategy and it was such a cool item they wanted it. So, you know, my point is just be creative. Be creative, know your audience. And marketing really, really works. And you do it right.

Patrick Kothe 1:00:15

John, thanks so much for a great discussion really enjoyed it got into a lot of different things. And we started off talking about, you know, we're unique. The other thing is, it seems like so many things are changing. The world is changing, and marketing is changing how we do things, it's all you know, it's all changing. Is it really, are things really changing? Or are there some some basic marketing tenets that that we need to keep our eye on?

John Gumas 1:00:47

Yeah, it's, I think, when you when you get caught up at the deliverables, all right, how you get your message out there, yeah, that's changing. But the most basic form of marketing is is me talking to you, person talking to another person, human to human, that that that's not changing, that will never change. If that guy little pet peeve of b2b marketing, it's I've never heard my lifetime of a business doing business with no the business. I've heard of a human doing business with another human. So that I think I've not seen that change that whole, that whole process of just trying to learn what you need to say to another human wants, wants to know about your product or service, that will never change. The way you get the message to them may may adjust but not not the former that will that will never, ever change as long as there's a human on both ends.

Patrick Kothe 1:01:41

Most of the time, when any of us introduce a new product, we're the challenger. Whether we're selling against a large multinational incumbent, or we are a large multinational, and we're entering a market somebody else owns. When it comes to promotional strategy, we should embrace the challenger brand marketing approach. A few of my takeaways. First, our audience does not want to be sold to not a big surprise none of us like to be sold to. And the moment we try to sell is the moment we lose credibility. As John said, they hear I don't trust you, I don't believe you as soon as you bring out the cheap salesman tactics, the best approach is selling without selling. Second, there are many channels to distribute your message, not just one find yours. Digital is obviously the the hot thing over the past several years. But email, direct mail dimensional mailers, some old school approaches can have benefits too. So be creative in your approach, and make it stand out regardless of what channel you're going to where you're going to get it distributed through. And finally, the most important part of promotion is the message. We hit on this several times throughout the conversation. And the way that you get to it is you got to spend time with the customer. You've got to get it directly from the customer. What is it about your product that's gonna get them excited? What is it about the problem that causes them pain, so get it directly from the customer. But once you get it, then you have to work internally to understand exactly what it means refine your message and then unify the message throughout your whole organization. Thank you for listening. Make sure you get episodes downloaded to your device automatically by liking or subscribing to the mastering medical device podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Also, please spread the word and tell a friend or two to listen to the mastering medical device podcast as interviews like today's can help you become a more effective medical device leader. Work hard. Be kind

 
Patrick Kothe
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