Useful Content Podcast with Itir Eraslan when you look at the marketing world and the type of marketing tactics that you can do, probably there's like, I can easily count 100 things that you can do to grow your brand, but it depends on. What's my strategy? What's my budget? And what's my resources with resources meaning that who's the team who's going to execute this? if you don't have the team in place to do that, you cannot do email marketing, PR, influencer marketing. You cannot do them all. You have to pick your playground. Hello, and welcome to the useful content podcast. And today we have a brand new teacher in our useful content classroom. Iter Erslan. Hi Iter. Hi, Juma. How are you? I'm doing, doing pretty well, doing pretty well. And I'm happy to have you on today. And I know we have lots to talk about, but brand strategy and about marketing. But before we get into that, could you please share with the people what you do and how you help your clients make useful content. Mm hmm. thanks for inviting me, by the way. Uh, and I'm, I hope that I will be able to, um, invite you soon, very soon as well, because I have a lot of burning questions about content and video production and so on. Uh, so, um, I'm, I ha I own a boutique marketing company. Uh, I. Try not to say it agency because the thing that people understand from agency is completely different. And, uh, and since I founded my company, which has been, which was seven years ago, I always say I'm not a marketing agency. Uh, but what I do is I'm a brand strategy, uh, and marketing expert. And I partner with brands, uh, to. Grow their brands, uh, meaning that I do a brand strategy and I helped, um, uh, manage their brand teams, build their internal external teams. Uh, but I also work with, uh, the industry experts in, in branding, visual identity and tone of voice. So when I do the strategy work, depending on the needs of the customer client, uh, we also work. Like an agency, although I say I'm not an agency, but which means that we develop the branding, the visual identity, the tone of voice. We also build websites, but this is where I partner with the. Some of the best people, uh, freelancers, solopreneurs or studios, and that I could find in the world, So what do you prefer? Do you prefer to do the thinking part of the business, which is the brand strategy part? Or do you prefer to do like the creative doing part of the business? uh, that's, uh, um, this, that's the biggest dilemma of probably any marketer because, uh, there has been some times when I tried strategy only, and there has been some times where I do strategy and execution. And it's always with mixed feelings because when you only do a strategy, you Executing it because you just, you know, just let it after like two or three months of strategy work, you let some, someone else do it. Uh, and somehow you want to be a part of it. If you are so left out, you just want to be involved in and still help the brand. Uh, but when you are too much into execution, then there is this. It's everyday tasks, operational things, people are asking sometimes to me, like, are you the graphic designer? Can I ask you my graphic design needs? So, so anyway, you know, so. It's a dilemma and how I find the best ratio for me. I'm not in that best ratio right now with my business is a 70 percent strategy and 30 percent execution. And why I need that execution is the feeling, the feeling of seeing that execution to come to life is what makes a marketer so happy for me. It's the same. It's that thing. Uh, but it's also makes me fresh and up to date as a marketer when I execute. Yeah. Yeah. And this is good for all the, all the, uh, agency owners, well, agency owners and all the people out there who. Give this type of service for them to hear because we kind of in a similar position where we do strategy, but we started in the execution end of it. when you are somebody who is the doer of the things like the, after it's all the brand strategies all done, and then you have to do the visuals, do the actual, um, brand thing. And then you do that for a long time. You get pretty good at that. But when you go up the rungs. Into the strategy part of it, you still have some desire, like how Christo says he's a recovering graphic designer and in the same way, you still have some desire to put your hands in the stuff and do a little bit of it. So I can understand the tug and pull between those things, but that's 70, 30 seems like a very good ratio to have, you know, I I'd love to have that, you know, that's, that's, that's good stuff. So in terms of the, you've, you've said before, you know, That branding comes first and then marketing comes second. Why do you feel, or how do you know this to be true? So for people who sometimes confuse branding with visual identity and visual branding, branding is actual strategy, part of brand strategy, marketing strategy, part of business. So when I say branding first, I mean that it's the strategy part of the business. So as a business, you have not only as a marketing, but you have. Business strategy, right? Like you have a business strategy and that business strategy cascades down to a sales strategy, to a marketing and brand strategy and to a finance strategy. So, uh, that business strategy shows the brand marketing person to understand where they want to focus on. Meaning that let's say the business goal is to. You know, increase the woman's share, uh, in the markets. And then which it's cascades, cascades down to brand strategy saying that we have to win with her, and then you have strategy priorities underneath as a marketing team to try to communicate to women more so that That will eventually change the, uh, marketing sales. Uh, and, uh, then why we need branding first, which means like why we need brand strategy first, because if you don't have a brand strategy, there's a possibility that. Not a possibility, but a high possibility that you're going to do mistakes when you are making your marketing investment, which means like just think about yourself. If you start the day saying that, okay, I have to start the day with a post on LinkedIn without thinking that why I'm posting on LinkedIn. What's the purpose? Why am I doing it without doing that? If you start the day With a tactical thing, then a day would pass. But if a year passes like that, without knowing what the exact, why exactly you are doing that thing, there's a chance that this will not culminate to the end goal that you are trying to reach. That's why it's always helpful to start with a strategy and then build a marketing plan based on that strategy. Uh, there's one more thing, uh, that I need to add here is that for a marketer to be To have a much easier life, let's say in the team, uh, it's always helpful to have a strategy because once you have that strategy, if someone comes to you and says, we have to push PR now, because we have to push it because you know, people have an idea of how marketing can be done. And if someone comes to you saying that you have to push with PR and with the specific magazines, then if you have a strategy, you are like, Why are we pushing it? You know, you can question the things, tactical things that comes to you on a day to day basis. Uh, that's why a strategy work always helps, uh, the marketer execute better. Mm Yeah. So, so your strategy helps you validate the tactical things. It helps you, say that I'm doing this for this particular purpose, and so if you, you know, have a budget, let's say you have a limited budget, something, let's suppose your budget is 1 million to spend on marketing, then you would not waste any of that money doing things that you're not supposed to do. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, exactly. I'll give you an example here that will help people understand better. I was talking to a potential client, uh, and they are in the cosmetics, beauty business. And they, two years ago, they spent 2 million, exactly 2 million on influencer marketing. Uh, and they couldn't see any return because they think that cosmetics and That's, that's the, you know, format and that's the standard. Every cosmetics and beauty brand, they are investing into influencer marketing. And they say that all the money that we have in marketing, let's focus on one thing and it should be influencer. And we are going to do that. Nothing else. But they couldn't see any return because the reason that they couldn't see any return, the brand, the branding, the visual identity, the strategy, tone of voice, it was not there. It was all around and it was so complicated that it was the wrong time to invest in influencer marketing. But I mean, for them to know it, they had to, first of all, start with a strategic work. And from that strategic work, they could have come up with, okay, we're going to work on the branding. We, Make sure that our visual identity and tone of voice is correct. And we know how do we want to position the brand. And then maybe they can decide influencer marketing would be the only path that they're going to pursue. But without doing the strategy work, uh, they cannot do that. So. I think it's a must have for every single brand to start with a strategy work without jumping into marketing. And that's how I work as well. I never do executional work before I do the strategy work. helps tell you if you're making the correct decisions with regard to your marketing and communications. And so you have a guide. You have something that tells you. And then, of course, you can go back and assess those things and see if they're matching up with the overall strategy to know if you're heading in the right direction. Yeah. Okay. That's great. Let's talk. Well, you know what? Let's talk a little bit about your, your, cause you have a podcast as well. And that's in the marketing meeting. You've been doing that since 2001. Yeah. I wish it was 2021.
