The Mill #10 – RMFP’s Brand Strategy and How To Create Your Own (Part 3)

The Mill #10 – RMFP’s Brand Strategy and How To Create Your Own (Part 3)

But how do you know which platform makes sense for your content?

I’m Taylor Poole with Rocky Mountain Forest Products, and this is today’s The Mill. So this is part three of a series on our brand content or brand strategy and content strategy for Rocky Mount Forest Products.

So all this stemmed back to episode six, where Bryce Ballew and I from tradecraft industries discuss why brand matters. And we talked about the big metal level purpose behind it. And we had so much engagement with all of these different things that we wanted to kind of walk through what some of this looks like.

So part one, go check it out. It was all about vision and mission. Part two was what I still have on here in the board, which is our five pillars. Why do they matter to Rocky Mountain? What they are and how they can work for you. And now we’re kind of getting into the nuts and bolts of how this plays out within your marketing?

So just to kind of go back, these are our five pillars. Once again, this is pulled from our brand pyramid. Thank you so much, Tye. I greatly appreciate it.

All right. So ours were integrity, transparency being human, being knowledgeable in our products, for more information on those check out part two. So now our goal is to be able to take these ideas and pull them through to our marketing. If you can’t take these ideas, which all are based off of your vision and mission statement into your marketing, at least two points.

Then that piece of content or that marketing avenue probably is off-brand and isn’t the right thing for you to do. So I just leave those up for one brief second, so you can see it. Awesome. Now the next thing on our brand pyramid. Thank you, Tye. Appreciate it is our demographics, our audience of who we’re talking to.

So everybody has a different audience, whether you’re a building material supplier, if you’re a manufacturer, whether you’re a contractor, it’s all a different thing on the material side. Are you selling to distributors? Are you selling the manufacturers or other way around, are you selling to distributors and wholesalers?

If you’re a manufacturer, who are you selling to? If you’re a contractor you’re selling to the general public, whether you’re doing residential or commercial construction, if you’re a dealer, like we’re selling to the contractor, the architect, the designer. And because we are both B to C and B2B, we sell to retail as well, too.

So it’s isolating. Who are your core demographics of who you market to? So at Rocky, we have three primary demographics. We have homeowners, we have our contractors/land developers/kind of real estate flippers. This one’s a little ambiguous, but it is one of the ones that are important. And then our last consultant, we have our architects and designers. These are our core three. Now, when you talk about demographics, you look at not only geographics and you also look at age because we, or a material supplier, is important for us to look at the age of the consumer and then also like we are honestly, we’re really only located in Colorado. A lot of our sales go nationwide because most of our products are hard to find.

The other side of it is most people who can afford our products. Within these demographics, the only differences some of these numbers can skew a little bit younger is if they worked for companies such as those. But the average adult, you really can’t buy our products until you’re at least around 30 all the way, to 65 and up because you have to have extra income prior to 30 days, the average person is going through college or getting married. They’re starting a family. They’re doing these different things. Most people aren’t buying their first home, operating their first business, or being a decision-maker within a business until they’ve really gotten to right around that age right there. So when we develop our shows, which is also from the brand pyramid, we want to make sure that we’re hitting these different demographics with different types of content, making sure that they are distributed to these people.

But they have a contextual purpose to these three things. So one of the big marketing phrases that come out in the whole world is content is King. I heard it best from Gary Vaynerchuk. And I’ll talk about him a lot, but he used the phrase, if content is King, then context is God. What’s kind of funny about that is that King was thrown around all the time. Like. The creative is the variable to S to success. But if the person that the actual imagery is being run to, whether it’s an email, whether it’s social media, whether it’s TV, commercial, radio, spot, whatever, if the person who’s hearing it has no contextual purpose, then it’s a waste.

And so what we do within the brand pyramid is we want to make sure that everything that we’re doing kind of flows upward. So we’re going to create a show. The show is going to be for one of these different demographics. It’s going to hit on two of our five pillars. And it’s going to have the overall concept of becoming the best building materials supplier by building relationships.

So what does that look like with it? Rocky Mountain, something to get rid of part of this board, we’ll leave some of these basic ideas up there. So I’m going to be pointing to them. So within Rocky Mountain, we do one of the things that we do is we run a flock. Okay. It’s called the Rocky Road. The Rocky Road was going to bring you data here.

Okay. It’s our blog, which is also a video blog. There you go. You need to know what this is. You can Google it. So the Rocky Road is our block. There’s no ultimate purpose other than two specific things, which are lanes on our ability to be transparent. We film it. It’s literally the day in and day out of our business.

Some of it’s cool. Some of it’s boring, whatever. Like that’s just part of how our world works. But it’s also the human aspect of our business. It’s bringing the approach, and being approachable to whoever and consumers that blog runs directly to our homeowners. It’s purely meant for entertainment value only.

There’s not really much education that goes on there. It just kind of gives people on the outside world a little bit of a peak into who we are and this blog to where it’s actually distributed, which is going to be where our shows live, where they end up is going to be on Facebook. We have YouTube and that’s pretty much where it lives.

Why take a little clip and we might show something on Instagram. But overall for the most part, this is just kind of how it floats now. That’s our long, our next one that we have is four are our contractors, which is actually contracting designers.

This is kind of the piece that we’re talking about. Now. This is called The Mill. It’s more of our business kind of in depth level on who we are as a company, how we function, things of that nature. And so we’ve got our mill. Which is very much,  it’s a business show. It’s something that you would see on CNBC just a little more raw because we don’t have all the production value.

Okay. So this is going to touch base to these two, these two demographics. Now this content is specifically produced for LinkedIn and we also have it in a podcast form. It’s going to be released in mid December.

Do you notice that two different types of content are targeted to different people and they’re not running across all the individual platforms, but both sets kind of role to our five pillars. This one is talking about our integrity, our transparency, our knowledge up here. This is more of being human and also a transparency.

So sometimes they can cross over, but both sets of content jump up into the total picture of building relationships with everyone around us who interact with our organization. So we can become the best buildings, building materials, supplier targeting our homeowners, contractors, and architects with specific content that matters to them and this plays out all the way through. We have a blog that we do right? Every single week for all of our different brands. The blog is distributed primarily on our website and on Facebook we use for the masses. Then we have other little things that we have. So we’ve got one of our block series called in those. We trust us, our contractors, who we work with, we go through, we do an interview. We write a blog about them. Kind of talk about who they are. Those go up. Instagram only because it’s kind of a cool, cool long form thing, and it might be something to get someone to just stop as it rolls to their feed. And then also on Instagram, we do some of our shorts.

We do a little bit of a material, information dump, or, we’ll put something up. That’s kind of a funny joke within the industry. And so it’s just a different touch point, different types of content for whoever you’re trying to reach. And the platform that exists. The last thing I want to go over before we kind of stop it is like, okay, for you, who are your people, who do you sell to most?

Is it males or female? Is that people in-state, out-of-state all over the country? Are you looking for specific income levels? Are you looking for something specific, subgroups of specific niches? Are you looking for land developers that build up to this point, but they don’t do this, or are you looking for real estate companies that work on this, but not this,  who your demographics are.

The goal is to make sure that the contextual purpose of your content, it’s your vision. It’s your mission. Here’s those five pillars. And then the content that you produce is pushed out to who, to who these people are. And lastly, what we’re going to break down before in this video is how do you know where to distribute this?

I’ve got five different things written on here, and there’s many more that exist. Is it your Facebook? Is it your YouTube? Is it your Instagram? Is it your LinkedIn? Is it your podcast? Is it your website? Is it the signs on the side of your building? The messages on your trucks are a print ad, a radio ad, a TV spot.

How do you know where all these different things live and how they function? Most people in our world produce a single piece of content. And what they do is they take that one individual piece of content and they use it as distribution platforms. The problem with that is what will work well on LinkedIn may not work well on Instagram.

Or what will work well on YouTube may not work well on a podcast. Sometimes they overlay, sometimes they don’t like right now, one of the most common things, and we’re doing it as we speak, I film videos, we talk about these different things. It allows us to take this video. And my team is going to dissect it.

I’m going to have one of my interns watch the whole thing. They’re going to pick out bits and pieces of content. We’re going to create graphics for social over here, whether it’s Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook,  Twitter, whatever. Then we’re going to take that. Then we’re going to rip the audio out of this.

It’s going to run over to a third party vendor that I had that mixes it down for my podcast. And then my videographer is going to edit all this up, get it all mastered, insert our video clips. Thank you so much, Tye. And it’s going to live on one of these platforms, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, whatever you want can use the same content, in different places, as long as it makes sense for the contextual purpose of who your audience is, but how do you know which platform makes sense?

For your content because we all are different human beings, all of these platforms. Let me elaborate the best way to kind of explain this. Is that you as a person interact with your outside world differently, depending on who you’re around, the way you talk to grandma. And you ask her how she’s doing and you talk about her dogs and the candles and everything that’s you got going on is different than how you hang out with your parents and how you talk to your buddies at the bar. Then how, when you go to work, you act in a professional manner.

You’re still all the same person. You’re still all the same individual. You have a reputation across the board, which is also a brand. But you slightly change it based upon the person that you’re talking to. You’re the person that you’re interacting with. Okay. So I’m going to write some of these down and kind of talk about some of the different new ones.

So Facebook. How do you use Facebook overall? Is it the general family? You talked to your family, your friends, you might jump on there to kind of look for material. It’s just kind of the basis of where we start off who you are as an individual. This one has the widest demographics of all the different platforms.

Everybody from the ages of 13, all the way up through basically dead uses. And anybody nowadays, you said. He says well, but it’s social media, older people don’t use social media. My grandmother is in her seventies and she is on Facebook every single day, telling everybody her thoughts and feelings about any political thing that she sees.

And she gets on there and she argues with her children then inherits kids and whatever else. But if my seven year old grandmother, who’s not tech savvy in any way or capacity, is on Facebook. Well guess what guys. Your target audience is on this platform, no matter who it is, Joseph understands that this is kind of the feeling when it’s who we are most of the time, the next one that we like to talk about just because it kind of falls down and next one on popularity.

This is a grant Instagram, definitely skews a little bit young, but overall, this has started to turn into a very mature platform, the fastest growing segments of users jumping on it are 40, this 50 year old, sometimes up to 60 year old women. So when you think Instagram isn’t necessarily your cup of tea, well guess what, it’s the next iteration of this because it’s starting to mature, but what’s funny about Instagram.

Is this a purely picture based, and this is the one that I get a kick out of, because this is kind of how you talk with your buddies. Like you are real. But you slightly make your life always look a little bit nicer. These are the normal you want to put your best suit on. When you go out and you hang out with them, I’m going to make sure that your car is an accident wash before you throw something out there.

It’s a picture based thing, but it really is. They were most people kind of, they’re not raw. Like they are on Facebook. This one is how do we position ourselves to look just a little bit cooler, live a little bit younger life. On a social platform. That’s Instagram. Next one, my popularity, Twitter, everybody knows Twitter.

Because our wonderful president kind of had its rebirth. Twitter is basically the water cooler of the internet. Anything that’s going on, whether there is something in sports or news or just daily life. It’s up on Twitter and then everybody gets to put their 2 cents in on what’s going on.

Here’s my opinion on this subject. And lots of times it’s very unadulterated. It’s very fast and abrupt. Here’s how I look. Nobody really cares because we’re standing at the water cooler BS, cause we’re about ready to go back to work after a break. That’s Twitter next. We have our website. Your website is literally a business card for your organization. Yes. People have business cards, just exchangeable. Nobody looks at them. You should have one because people ask because if you don’t have one look silly, Let’s be real. Nobody looks up, you know what they do. They go online.

They Google you. They want to see what all you do. Your website comes up. The first thing that they do is they click on your website and they read about you. Then if they think you’re interesting or they think your website holds some validity and then they go start checking out who you are as a person, you don’t have a website, even if it’s not like it doesn’t have to be some crazy thing.

But this holds true that it shows that you’re relevant in today’s society. So now I have a website. If your website sucks, redo it and make sure it mimics all the other things that we just talked about on the brand pyramid. Next one, LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is like the boardroom and a corporate office or the cigar bar. Everybody is talking about how great they are in business. Pontificating about whether or not their business is legit, how big they are. It’s kind of the award ceremony of what you do in your career. But what’s interesting is originally thought to be like this recruiting platform.

Let’s see, that’s how it originally developed till Microsoft bought it. Once Microsoft bought it over the last 18 to 24 months, it’s really turned into a content platform. The part that I think is kind of interesting for anybody who’s used it is, it reminds me of really old-school myspace.

We have to send a connection request. We bring them in. We only interact with the people who we think are kind of the coolest within our group. There’s all the different subcategories based around all the different ideas, kind of like Facebook groups, but it’s definitely all business content because we’re looking for people who believe what we believe to do business with.

That’s LinkedIn and there’s tons of other ones just trying to cover the big ones.

Pinterest is a club or hobby group. I don’t know. They’re like the sip and paint places. We go drink wine. You paint. Everybody’s there to paint everybody. Everybody’s there, the craft, if you’re not, if you’re not under that, it’s like going out with your hunting buddies or your basketball team or whatever hobby you have, the way that Pinterest kind of works is there’s a sub category for groups for every single thing.

And as parents only the phonetics of that, of that medium. Okay. So, if you’re looking for your people, there’s fanatics for what you do right there. And it’s short form and it’s long form and these are the people really are into what they’re into.

And then you have things like your YouTube or your podcasts. Those are much more kind of in line with your website.  but they’re definitely just kind of basic distribution things, but this is kind of. How I explain when you’re, when you’re thinking about the content that you’re going to produce, that’s why we had different content that runs on different platforms, because I’m a different person than all these family oriented.

I want to look like an awesome person, the greatest person in my image of myself. I can put it out there. Everybody needs to know what I think. Here’s my cleaning up. We’re going to a party where I know people, it’s the family reunion. You got to kind of show the perfect image of yourself, but you give a little bit of this information, a little bit, this information, maybe a tiny bit here, kind of this, and maybe the one thing that you’re super interested in, it’s kind of a mixture of all LinkedIn.

I’m the best businessman you can possibly imagine within my area history, Pinterest, here’s my like-minded souls. So when you’re developing your content, you have to start with your vision and your mission statement, whatever they are. Then you hit your five pillars, then you jump onto who we’re marketing to. Then we have all of our shows and then how do we develop whatever concept it is to fit the contextual purpose of the actual platform that we’re running the media on?

Facebook, this would kind of fall in line with your TV spot. Radio might fall up into Facebook, lots of summons. Radio’s a little bit more, LinkedIn, any probably more it would probably fall into the same category as this, print is going to be much more of a peer or here that’s where these things kind of fall into.

So, don’t really have a segway past that point. I hope you enjoyed watching all three parts of this. If you have any further questions, do you want the document that we flashed up on the screen? A bunch. Thank you again, Tye. Really appreciate it. Feel free. I can shoot you over a version of it and once again, just, just look through this for your business.

Start at the top, work down, and then once you start producing content, start at the bottom and work back up. I’m Taylor Poole, with Rocky Mountain Forest Products. This was part three of our brand and content strategy. Thank you so much for watching all three parts. If you didn’t, please go back and look at them.

If you’re not following us, they don’t really ask us very often. Go follow us. If you’re interested in our building empires trade summit, you can check that out as well. You can DM us. You can call us at three zero three 65 64 42. If you want to get involved from a sponsorship standpoint. I think that’s it.

I hope you have a wonderful day. That was today’s The Mill.