Today I want to talk about how to build a powerful brand with passion, purpose and payoffs.
If you’ve been keeping up with me for a bit, you know about my dog, Buddy Guy, who is a 100-pound black Lab. We’ve faced some tough times recently. He’s getting older, and while I still take him for walks, they used to be a full mile long. Then he started having issues with his hips and legs — we’re not completely sure what it is — and the walks shrank to eight blocks, then to two blocks, and it got to the point where he would just collapse. His back legs would literally give out.
I went online looking for solutions, and like anybody else, you turn to Google, you turn to Amazon, you look for something. One of the treatments that the vet recommended was laser treatments.
Now, laser treatments are supposedly great because some of the research that I did said how it actually can help heal and also take away the pain. I could not find anything that would solve that problem.
Then, one of my clients who happens to have a machine that helps people with knee replacement surgery was contacted by somebody who has laser blankets or coats for dogs. This person contacted me and I contacted the company, and we ended up getting one of the blankets and putting it on the dog, and the results have been amazing.
Now, there are three things that drove me…
Passion
I had a passion, and passion is an intense desire or enthusiasm for something. In this case, that something was to keep my dog alive, because the bottom line is that if he can’t walk, he can’t do anything. He can’t eat, and he can’t do what most dogs have to do.
Purpose
So I had a purpose, and that purpose was I wanted to find a solution, I wanted to find the right solution for him. A purpose is a person’s sense of resolve and determination, and I was determined to find something. I didn’t want to have to bring the dog in twice a week for laser treatments at the vet. Not so much for the expense, but for the convenience of getting a 100-pound dog in a car and also losing time from my business. And there’s no guarantee it would have worked.
Payoff
The last one is the payoff, and the payoff is a final outcome, a conclusion. The payoff in this situation is that this blanket worked. The dog is walking much better. Now it’s a work in progress, but it’s helped.
A Client Is Born
These three things, the passion, the purpose, and the payoff, were incredibly important to me. When I started working with this company, he was talking about, “Hey, I want to get this thing into pet stores. I want to get it covered by insurance. I want all these other things.” I don’t necessarily disagree with that, but in order to get it into pet stores, you have to create awareness, and you have to create those three P’s. People need the passion, the purpose, and the payoff. This therapy is not inexpensive. It’s over $1,000 for the size of dog that I have and it’s about $700 for a smaller dog. There is some expense involved in this.
People have to be passionate in order to want to do this. And in order for stores to want to carry it, you have to create demand, which means that you need a tribe of people out there saying “I want this”, going into the stores and asking, “Do you have it?” It’s the same if you’re selling a book or offering any kind of training, whatever it is that you do. It could also be just a service that you provide. When people have a passion, they understand the purpose and they get the payoff. Now you’ve created something of value.
Growing A Facebook Group
The first place I decided to turn was Facebook, and I decided to create a Facebook group called Holistic Dog Health. The second thing that I did was figure out who would become passionate about this. In this case, those were influencers. I invited vets and pet food store owners and dog health experts and also people that have or train performance dogs, like dock diving and dancing and all that kind of fun stuff. Those people are very passionate about their ability to get animals healthy.
Then finally, I had to invite a bunch of people who were dog owners, who maybe had a senior dog with a problem like I did. Next, what I had to do was build engagement amongst this wide group of people. We had some people that were influencers, who could answer questions or maybe provide some kind of sense of what works and what doesn’t. They could at least give some validation or social proof to different opportunities and techniques. There are a lot of things out there that can help pets. Glucosamine chondroitin, MSM, CBD oil, laser treatments, acupuncture, chiropractic. There are tons of different things, and they all work well, but they work differently on different dogs. Then of course, there is also diet and exercise and all that kind of stuff.
I had to find that group of people and pull them together and start the conversations. We’re not there solely to just sell this thing. We’re there to create a passionate audience, some people that want to get engaged.
Create Engagement
To supercharge the engagement, I created theme days. Now I’ve seen this in a lot of other groups, but I decided to do it a little differently. Here are the seven days of the week. I have created:
- Method Monday
- Tell Me Tuesday
- Wag Wednesday
- Throwback Thursday
- Fun Friday
- Share Saturday
- Selfie Sunday
Method Monday is along the lines of Hey, does CBD oil work? Hey, does acupuncture work? Open up the conversations to what’s working for people in the group, and they love to engage with that.
Tell Me Tuesday is about connection and sharing. It could be something funny about a dog, what’s their weird habit or thing that they do? It’s just another way to create engagement with the group.
Wag Wednesday: What makes your dog’s tail wag? What makes your dog happy? Is it food? Is it parks? Is it water? Whatever it is.
Throwback Thursday: Show us a picture of your dog as a puppy. Show us the dogs that you’ve owned before, whatever that is.
Friday Fun. Give us a dog meme or a joke or something of that nature. And obviously, if it’s around a holiday, we’ll pull something together there.
Share Saturday is there to reward the experts, the influencers, to promote their business one day a week. That’s the key, because we don’t want this to turn into a promotion fest, because that can kill a group. It can kill the passion.
And then finally, we have Selfie Sunday which is a picture of you and your animal.
Pretty straightforward stuff, but the bottom line is you have to manage and monitor this group so it doesn’t get out of hand. You’ve got to make sure that people are following the purpose behind it.
Final Thoughts
When you can find a bunch of people with passion for their pets, with a purpose of keeping them healthy and a payoff, the payoff is their dog lives a better quality of life. In some cases, the payoff might be financial. For example, maybe some of these vets or pet food stores or dog experts could make some money selling the coat. The laser coat has an affiliate program on the website, so I invited some of them to become affiliates so they could make some money if they sold some coats. That builds their payoff, which is they are in business and maybe they can make a little bit more money.
Ultimately, what it boils down to is creating a group of people with passion, purpose, and a payoff. The payoff doesn’t always have to be money. It could be lifestyle. The question is, is what can you do with your brand to create something very similar to this, that gets people excited about what you have and what it can do for them? Think about it.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas or questions about showing the concepts presented. Have you had to overcome any of the presented concepts? What worked and what did not live up to expectations? Do you have any ideas or advice you could share?