[David] Listeners, no matter who you are or where you’re at in your organization, you have a brand. Today’s topic is about building brands, how to amplify your customer loyalty and you building a strong brand. So excited about this topic. It’s one of my favorite, joining me on today’s podcast is a true expert in building brands. His name of course is Bobby Palmer. Bobby has been in marketing for the mortgage industry over 20 years, spending much of his time on the lender side with key roles in both retail and wholesale. He’s got the been there, done that T-shirt. Today’s he’s the Marketing Manager for Byte Software, an Enterprise LOS technology company that will be celebrating 40 years next year. When he’s not working and helping companies grow their marketing and helping Byte grow. He’s off doing outdoor activities. One of his favorite ones that he and I engage on is fishing. Bobby. Good to have you here, friend. I appreciate you so much.
[Bobby] What an intro, it was all downhill from here after that.
[David] But the fishing part is really fun. Do we have to tell one of those stories because I think that’s pretty hilarious.
[Bobby] Yeah, I figured we can start with a fishing story and then I got one planned for the end to tie it all together. Yeah, so we had our call, I sponsor your podcast and monthly call scheduled, but it happened to be on a day that I was taking off to go fishing. There’s a lake I haven’t been to before and I heard good things about it. I go up there and I’m fishing for a few hours and nothing, not a single bite nothing’s going on and so I call into our zoom meeting to talk to you for a meeting and no joke. Okay. Three seconds after I hear your voice, the pole goes, and I’m running over there trying to, grab the pole. I’m on the phone with you and I’m reeling this fish in and it was a good size trout too and so I told you, you’re my good luck charm. Every time I go fishing now, I got to either call or text you and. Get the Fisher bite and so that’s great.
[David] That could get me in trouble. I’ve started getting a whole lot of phone calls from Fisherman, but it doesn’t always work, but it is fun. It’s fun to see that. I’m really excited about today’s topic, Bobby, because you know how to do this. You have a strong background in marketing. What you’ve done at Byte is really put them on the map on there. They are again, established brand and company out there, but you’re really helping grow that brand and you do it in some really fun ways. There recently, you announced the integration with Truv. We did a great way of introducing that at the TMC, The Mortgage Collaborative Conference in Denver. And it’s just so much fun to work with you. Richard was a part of that with Truv.
[Bobby] Which was great for you and Richard. You’re not the ones that got dumped with ice water.
[David] You’re the one that got dumped with the ice water. We’ll put a link in the show notes to that video so people could go click on it, but let’s talk about how building a brand in a mortgage company is different than other industries.
[Bobby] Yeah and as you mentioned too, I’ve been on the lender side for a long time, the concepts are the same as building a brand in any industry, but I think the mortgage industry specifically, it’s got some really unique challenges in that, you’ve got your company, right? Your brand for your company and let’s say you’re a mortgage lender and you’ve got a 100 branches and 300 loan officers or something along those, you basically have almost 300 kind of sub companies if you will, or small individual companies, many of them that kind of want to build their own personal brands. That’s their livelihood. It really does create a bit more of a challenge from a branding perspective. Then you throw in branches a lot of times branches like to have teams, the Woodburn team, the Mortgage Maestro team, things like that and they’re building their own brand for their own branches under kind of whoever the parent company is. I think that is somewhat unique. There’s probably some other industries where that applies but not as many, it’s not all the consumer brands where there’s the primary brand. Definitely has some different challenges and then you throw brokers in there too and where they’re their own brand, but they maybe lack some control over the entire customer experiencebe cause they hand the loan off and the wholesale market. So there’s a lot of challenges that come with some of the things we’re going to talk about today really can apply to all those scenarios.
[David] Yeah and I think it’s because of the sales entrepreneurial element that’s so strong in our industry, because everyone’s saying, yeah, I’m part of this company, but I really need to develop my own brand. But I think let’s start by identifying what is a brand and when you’re really talking about what are the components versus the feeling.
[Bobby] Yeah, that’s a question. Before you can really talk about a brand, you really have to define what a brand is. It means so many different things to different people, depending on your experience or even your thoughts on the matter. I did a barbecue class one time and the instructor cracked me up.
[David] Barbecue class?
[Bobby] Yeah, I know, there’s certain things that are just going to come up. Yeah, I know there’s certain things are just going to cause arguments, right? Do you wrap or not wrap your brisket? He said it turns into a three hour conversation and a Jerry Springer fistfight and sometimes talking about what a brand is or a brand isn’t can go that same route. So for the purposes of this call, the way I’ll talk about a brand is a high level. It’s not just the logo. It’s not just the fonts or the colors. Those are part of a visual strategy and it’s not just your positioning or your tone of voice, your style, your tagline. There’s all those components. A brand for me is what is a person’s gut feeling about it, right? How do they feel about the brand based on every interaction they have with that company? It’s a culmination of all that person. Yeah, exactly. And it develops their feeling on it. When you look at it that way, the reason I like to look at it that way is because now it’s impacted by everyone in your company. It’s not just the marketing people. It’s not just the loan officer that’s talking to him. It’s the loan officer assistant, the underwriter, the processor, do you have a good process to where you’re asking them for the same document for an underwriter three times? That impacts their customer experience with you. Are the fees communicated correctly so there’s no surprises at the end. When you’re trying to build a brand, You have to have buy-in, right? You have to have buy-in from the top down, and everyone needs to understand how their role can impact the brand. And when you look at it from the perspective of, everybody has a piece in this. Look at the strongest brands. You mentioned at the beginning I don’t know if you mentioned that or not, but I worked for Disney when I first started.
[David] Yeah, I know. I was gonna go into that but I’m going, it’s a good point to interject that right now you did work at Disney, you worked in a hospitality. It’s fascinating how that plays into the success of what you’re doing now.
[Bobby] Yeah and Disney’s huge, right? Global brand. One of the most defined brands in the world. And when I was there, I was in high school, there was no guarantee that I was going to work there for a long time, but yet they invest in every single employee that comes through their doors and or I should say as they call us there and before we ever foot step foot on stage, you know what they call it, you go through this training program, you learn what it means to be part of the Disney brand and that’s how they help control the experience for their customers. So, when I started, I was in the parking lot. You wouldn’t think that would be that important, but that’s all part of the guests.
[David] That’s where it all starts.
[Bobby] Yeah, exactly. And we can set the tone for their day. The fact that a company like Disney is willing to put in the time and investment, there’s a lot of investment that goes into that to teach and educate every employee on what the brand is and how they can impact it. It’s a great example.
[David] That is a really good example. Yeah, it starts in the parking lot. If it starts bad there, it can snowball. I think that’s how saying, getting back to what is the brand, if you were to use the fewest number of words, what is someone’s brand. And I want to now speak almost individually to what is someone’s brand. Is it the experience that someone has when they do business with them? Is that what you would say that is?
[Bobby] The best way I can describe it is it’s a feeling, it’s a feeling you have. It’s the reason why, I’m wearing a Byte shirt, but I’ve got a Nike swoosh on my sleep here. Yeah. There’s a feeling the Nike Swoosh provides, is it because I want to feel more sporty or something like that. Cars are the same way. It’s really comes down to a customer’s feeling about a brand and if you get enough people all feeling the same way about a brand, that’s where the power comes in. That’s really good. Now all of a sudden it’s not a company anymore, it’s a tribe. When you look at it that way.
[David] When I think of my loan officer that helped me with my mortgage loan, last mortgage loan that I did, I started thinking, how did I feel about that? so that is really an important distinction right there that you may want to ask those that are listening to this, you may want to go ask and do a customer survey and say, what was that?
[Bobby] Yeah. What did you experience me? How did you feel about the overall product? No one’s going to feel bad. I’m not necessarily good about the mortgage process because it’s so convoluted unless they’re using Byte because it makes it a lot easier. A little slip that one in there, but anyway, why is it important to focus on building a brand? Now that we’ve identified what a brand is, why is it so important to focus on building a brand and what do you mean by building a brand?
[Bobby] You have to get with the why, right? That’s how you get built in from the top down because if you don’t have that, I’ve seen great brand concepts fail very quickly because they didn’t have buy in from the top down and that’s partially because they didn’t communicate the why is comes down to two main things, right? Loyalty and Consistency. So we have all heard the stories about, in sales or marketing that it’s it costs so much more to go get new customers than retaining your current customers or getting repeat business from your customers or even referrals from them. When you have a loyal customer base, they’re loyal to your brand, you’re so far ahead of the game at that point, they almost become brand advocates for you. How many times do you see that? whether it’s a car company that you associate with, or there’s certain brands in our everyday lives that, we’re a Toyota guy, we’re a Chevy guy, whatever, right? Think of it like a cycle. When you have a strong brand and your brand helps drive your company, it can almost define some of your company decisions so that you deliver a consistent experience and that consistent experience is what drives the loyalty, right? If they come back and, let’s say Byte, right? They call Byte and part of our brand is our people, right? and if you call Byte and you get somebody that is helpful and friendly and they know Byte inside out and they help you with your problem, that’s great. Then you call back the next time and you don’t have that experience. You get somebody that maybe is having a bad day and they’re really not that knowledgeable and they really don’t help answer your question. That impacts the Byte brand and that doesn’t make them as loyal customers. The thing I love about Byte and we’re so grateful to have such loyal customers is, I guess I answered my own question, right? We have loyal little customers at Byte. You go to any show and talk to people that are on Byte. We always hear them say, I love Byte and why is that? And part of that is because we’re consistent, right? When we make a new product, it’s really hard in technology to not just go chase the flashiest newest thing and try to be first to it. We don’t want to sacrifice quality, right? Quality is part of the pillar of our brand and it’s why people love using Byte, and they’re so loyal to Byte, because it works the way it’s supposed to. It’s fast. All these sorts of things. If we impact that, then we lose that loyalty, and we lose business.
[David] And I’m thinking of Erin Dee who I just saw at the TMC conference and she left the company she was at where she was using Byte, moved to another company. And I said, are they a Byte user? She goes, not yet. I’m going to work on getting Byte over there. And I think that’s a good example of you guys doing a good job of building a great band brand, a great experience so much so that when someone leaves a company that has Byte and moving to a new one, they’re going to do everything they can to bring that along with them.
[Bobby] Loyalty man, its about loyalty.
[David] And those loyalty especially when you find someone like Erin Dee, she is so loyal, fiercely intelligent. It’s really fun. When you look at the whole building a brand, there’s entire books dedicated to this MBA programs dedicated to this. Are there three tips that you could share with our listeners that will help build both a company and individual brand?
[Bobby] Yeah, absolutely. We could talk for hours and days about how to do it. I would. I love it. I love this stuff. But yeah, to narrow it down for everybody, if they can walk away from this interview with three things, I want them to remember to number one, most importantly, be authentic. You have to be authentic. Number two, connect. You have to be something to someone. And you have to connect on an emotional level. Number three, you have to be memorable, right? There’s so much noise out there and we’ll talk about noise a little bit later in the interview. But if you’re not memorable, it doesn’t matter what your story is, you’re not getting it through.
[David] Yeah. So let’s walk through each one of those. If you can give us some examples. On each one of those points. Start with the first one.
[Bobby] Yeah. Authenticity, man. It’s always been important, but it’s even more important today.
[David] Actually in a trusted financial transaction, such as a mortgage, it’d be, man, you’ve got to have trust and authenticity as a foundation of trust.
[Bobby] You do, but also with today’s social media. Before, if you experienced the brand and you maybe tell a couple of friends, a couple of family members about it and that’s it. Today, you can share your experiences with millions of people all over the world, right? A brand can’t hide anymore. You have to be authentic. Otherwise, people are going to see right through you and that’s just the way people have come to understand branding and marketing and things like that, it has to come from the soul, so to speak. I’ll give you an example. If you’re a car company and you’re like an outdoorsy lifestyle type car company and you’re your target audience, they’re probably a little more environmentally conscious, right? That’s why companies these days are investing in things even outside their product where they want to make sure they’re trying to reduce their waste their carbon footprint, if you will, right? Because they know that’s important for their target audience, and it’s all connected that way with being authentic. It’s super important. I’ll give you an example of what we did at Byte, right? You have to start internally. Marketing just can’t make something up. It has to be who you are as a company. When we got here, went through some exercises with our top executives want to get their kind of extract their feelings on Byte, right? and then break it into quantifiable attributes. Then I go talk to the people that actually interact with our customers, our sales, our support, things like that. Are those aligned? Are there similarities? Are there places we can connect there? And then, most importantly, you got to go talk to your customers. I went and talked to many of our top customers. What do they like about Byte? What do they not like? Why did they pick us? All those sorts of things and in our messaging, you’ll hear this phrase about having the freedom to do business the way you want to on Byte. That came directly from talking to our customers. It was amazing to me. They all said the same thing, maybe a little bit different words, but they all said the same thing and so then I look at that and I say, does that fit with our position that we’re taking as an LOS? and they did. And it was fantastic. So, if going back to why we’re talking about this. If you’re an originator and you’re trying to build your own personal brand, we’ll look at you as a person, what makes you unique? And then go talk to your past clients, talk to your referral partners. Why did they come to you? Why did they choose you? Why did they refer you? and then, dig a little deeper, right? I can’t tell you how many times you hear, Oh, cause I give great customer service or because I actually answered my phone. You got to go beyond that and try to find a way to find what makes you unique. And then we’ll talk about how do you connect.
[David] It’s just so important. I think it’s true to say that we all have a brand. We all have a brand. It’s what you’re developing a brand. Every time you get up and wake up in the morning, you’re developing a brand with your family, with your people and everyone you interact with. So, it’s how do we consciously make a good brand? Let’s move on to tip number three, expand on that a little bit more.
[Bobby] Real quick. Number two. You have to connect, right? You have to connect to your target audience, so we did, we are authentic. Now we have to connect. This is where your brand needs to resonate with them so they feel like they’re part of your tribe, right? We talked about that a little bit earlier and I had this college professor when I was in advertising and she came from one of the largest ad agencies in LA and she used to just drill this into us all the time, right? it’s better to be something to someone than nothing to everyone and it’s probably the hardest thing to do in this whole process because you don’t want to feel like you’re turning business away, right? by positioning yourself or taking a stand, if you will. Don’t think about it like that and I really encourage people because that’s usually the first thing, especially like a loan officer, right? You want to get loans from anywhere you can but just because you create your brand, it doesn’t mean that you’re only marketing to those people and I’ll give you an example. That car company we talked about earlier, you’ve seen their ads, they got the car, they’re parked on top of some beautiful cliff overlooking the Grand Canyon or whatever, they got their campfire out there in the wilderness. And it’s Oh man, that’s so cool, right? They’re not just marketing to the people that will actually have the time to do that. They’re marketing to someone like me, who it’s called an aspirational identity. I want to associate with that lifestyle. It’s not actually my lifestyle, right? I live in a city with 150,000 people. 98% of the time I’m driving my car, I’m in the city. But, I could go up and drive up to the Grand Canyon and park on the side because I got this four by four car, right? The pool of people that you can connect with your brand, doesn’t have to be so focused as your messages, because of that kind of aspirational identity. It’s really hard to do, but you have to do it because the number one way you can build a brand that doesn’t connect to anybody is you have too many components, right? It’s not focused enough.
[David] That is really good. It’s such an important thing. Be laser focused on what you do, which comes back again to your why. Let’s move on to tip number three. Expand on that a bit.
[Bobby] Tip number three. This is the fun part for me. You have to be memorable, right? we’re authentic.
[David] For good reason.
[Bobby] Yeah. I don’t know if you’re a celebrity. Sometimes you could be memorable for that, but no. Was it no press is bad press.
[David] I’m thinking of a loan officer. You know what? Yeah. I remember you, your company did not close my deal. We were two weeks past the closing day that created all kinds of problems for me. So yeah, it’s been, yeah,
[Bobby] So you got to be authentic. You got to connect once you have those things figured out, you got to figure out how to break through the noise, right? there’s so much noise today and this is where the creativity comes in. This is where the storytelling comes in and the concept of story branding. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that. I encourage people to go take a look at that. Even if you don’t follow the exact methodology, it really gets you thinking in that way. How can I tell my story in a unique way that’s going to be memorable to someone and really break through the clutter.
[David] And that sounds like someone else. It genuinely. It’s you. That’s such an another point is, it’s fine to imitate for a while as you’re trying to figure out who you are and what you are, but you better figure that out pretty quickly. So, it is really branded and built around you.
[Bobby] Yeah, I’ll give you a quick example with Byte. We can sit here and we could talk about custom fields and custom screens and, AI and, all these components of an LOS right or I could sit here and I can spout off my brand essence to you. Which is delivering powerful craftsmen inspired technology that makes mortgage lending easier and gives you the freedom to do business the way you want to, that’s too much. So how do you do that in a creative way? We boil that down to being an LOS control freak. The people that do well on Byte, they love the fact they can get in there and do things the way they want to. In fact, you brought up Erin earlier. I remember she made a comment on your podcast that she’s the type of person that doesn’t want to be told what to do. She wants to do what she wants to do and that is a persona.
[David] She does it with a pleasant smile on her face, but she definitely has a clear compass of where she wants to go and how she wants to go.
[Bobby] Absolutely! as do many of my clients. That’s why they love Byte because they know how they want their process to run. The persona is that kind of savvy independent thinking lender. That’s I’ve been in this business a long time. I know how I want to do things. Just give me the tools to do it and we brought that down to, are you an LOS control freak? If so, you’re going to love being on Byte and that actually came from a client as well, too. I was talking to, and he even said, he’s I’m a control freak. I, and then he went into all the things he loves. That’s just a very simple example. of a way that you can do something that’s a little more creative, a little simpler. But at the same time, if you get the right person that’s our target audience, they’re going to connect with that. They’re going to be like, Oh yeah, I’m a total control freak. What’s this all about? What’s Byte all about? So that’s just a little example for you.
[David] That’s a great example, when trying to communicate about your brand, how can someone break through the noise? We were talking about noise. Today’s media. There’s so much noise. There’s so much noise sometimes just in our head, as we’re thinking about all the things we have to do and what we’re trying to accomplish.
[Bobby] Yeah, breaking through is hard when you look at marketing it’s ultimately about getting the right message to the right person at the right time. And what is noise to one person maybe not noise to a different person. It could even be the same type of person, just a different stage in their life. For example, if you’re doing down payment assistance, right? or you’re talking about as your lender, you’re originating, you’re going to do a Instagram video or something on down payment assistance or something along that line, you’re putting that out there and you got a couple in their late twenties and they’re out, they like to live downtown and go to all the restaurants and they love to travel. They do that’s probably gonna be noise to them. But as soon as that same couple, maybe they have a kid. They have their first baby now all of a sudden, they’re thinking about how in the world are we going to afford a house now? It’s in this not noise. So, it really comes back to making sure that you fully understand your target audience. You fully understand your message and then at that point it becomes, this is the marketing’s part art, part science, right? Half and half. This is the science part. You look at, you have media buyer, right? where are you going to put your message out? How are you going to use the various data sources available to you to make sure you get the right message to the right person at the right time. And then how do you track your marketing? That’s where you really need to focus in on. Tracking your marketing efforts is so much more important today. I think that it used to be because there’s so many more options.
[David] Interesting.
[Bobby] Yeah. Like I said, that’s probably one of the ways you can try to break through the noise. The cool thing is there’s so many more options for you today, right? There’s programmatic advertising, there’s social, all these different forms to be so highly targeted based off of data and things like that. The possibilities are almost endless to really personalize your marketing. You can even create so many different variations of the same ad based on data points, so it’s so hyper personalized now. I will say this though, that also makes it very overwhelming for somebody that’s getting something, right? So if you’re a loan officer and you’re like, okay, I’m hearing all this, that sounds great, but I don’t have the budget to do programmatic advertising. I don’t even know what that is or where to start. What I would say is start with what you have. All right, start with what’s at your fingertips. You’ve got your customer data. You’ve got your referral partner data. You’ve got your social platforms. Start simple. and consistent, right? Go back to those three things we talked about, be authentic, find a way to connect and then be memorable and then track and test and then repeat, right? There’s no magic bullet. Consistency is the key, right? Consistency with frequency and content so that’s where I would start.
[David] Great point. Good thing. As we wrap this up, what are some parting thoughts you want to share with our audience? Especially those that are going, I’m so hungry to learn more. Wrap it up and then where can they go get more information that you would recommend as a great place or a great resource.
[Bobby] Oh man, there’s a bunch of great books on it. I’ll find some and I’ll give them to you and you can put them in the link at the bottom of the episode if you will. There’s so much great content online. I will say story branding was a good place to start as well, too. There’s if you Google that.
[David] How to tell your story and tell a story and then tell it well, and it finds your story, tell it well and it’s so important.
[Bobby] It really forces you to answer some serious questions about what you want to communicate and who you are and what your brand is and simplify. That’s it. So I did tell you though, I was going to end with a a story, right?
[David] Yes, so I wasn’t going to let you off this interview with it.
[Bobby] When you go fishing, you never know what the fish want at a particular time, right? or on a given day or if they’re even hungry at all that day of time. You know what you’re fishing for, right? I know I’m fishing for rainbow trout. I know they like worms. I know they like power bait. I know they like a variety of lures. But to catch one, you much like you do in marketing, you have to have the right bait, the right time, when the fish are hungry and in the right location and that sort of thing. So, going back to noise. Noise versus value. And I think this is another thing that people get have a hard time with is should I just be posting something every day? Does it matter what I’m posting? And I almost think that’s where the art form gets lost a little bit these days is there’s so much content and so much stuff being pushed out that sometimes they don’t think about what they’re doing and that’s like fishing. Like that’s like putting a pole all around the entire lake with a different bait or lure on every single one you’re not taking into account is the water clear or murky. Is it windy or is it calm? Is it hot or is it cold? use the tools that you have when you create content. But frequency is important. If you take the time and you create content that’s valuable and you put some time and thought into it, maybe you do a 20 minute conversation with a realtor partner. Now you can take that video and you can chop it up into 30 second or 45 second bits and that becomes maybe you post twice a week that gives you multiple weeks worth of content. You get the benefit of having a higher frequency, which is needed today, but you also are creating content that you’ve taken some time to put some thought into it, craft your message the right way. Stay on brand, as we like to say. But you’re not having to do that with every single 32nd post, you’re creating multiple posts out of that one thing. So that’s probably a tip I would have to get started. In addition to some of the books that we’ll put in the caption here.
[David] Yeah. We’ve recently discovered the power of reels and those sorts of short little segments. We’ll make a whole bunch of reels out of this interview today and then it draws people into the longer conversation that we’ve had here, Bobby, what a great conversation. This is just scratching the surface. How can people reach you to learn more about Byte? and then if they want to talk to you about some marketing?
[Bobby] Yeah, absolutely. You can I don’t know if we can put it on the video or not, but my email address is just robert.palmer@bytesoftware.com. You can go to bytesoftware.com and find the phone number there or just look me up on LinkedIn. That’d be the coolest thing. I’d love to connect with anybody. Like I said, I can sit here and talk marketing all day. Even if you’re just a loan officer and you want some ideas and things like that, hit me up on LinkedIn. I’d love to talk to you and that’s probably the best way.
[David] That’s good stuff, Bobby. Thanks so much for being here with me today. I really appreciate it.
[Bobby] I’ve been looking forward to this. This is good fun.
[David] Yeah, it’s always good. And hopefully you’re going to get a chance to go out and do some fishing this week.
[Bobby] Still a little warm, still a little warm. Give me a couple more weeks. Maybe maybe after Acuma hopefully we’ll get to see some people at Acuma here, but a couple of weeks I’ll be out there.
[David] Oh, that’s right. You got that coming up. Thanks for being here. Appreciate it. Wish you continued success, friend. Thank you for your sponsorship as well. Thank you.
Important Links
Bobby has been in marketing for the mortgage industry for over 20 years, spending much of that time on the lender side with key roles for both retail and wholesale mortgage companies. In addition he has worked for 10 years in the hospitality industry, including starting his career with a crash course in guest service spending 7 years working at Disneyland.
Today he’s the marketing manager for Byte Software, an enterprise LOS technology company that will be celebrating 40 years next year. When he’s not working to help companies like Byte grow and create personal connections with mortgage lenders, he enjoys playing ice hockey, coaching little league, playing with his kids and of course, fishing…especially when he gets an assist from yours truly. (ie. David)