Brad Besancon

Brad Besancon: It’s a Survivor.

Riggs:, I grew up like this. You grew up like this. But it’s gone and it’s gone because of shopping malls, big box stores, and later, Walmart but although it may be gone, the principles of how to relate to a customer that walks in the door here are the still the same online.

Besancon: I mean, the way these businesses were formed, it was mom and pop, right? And I want to start a business to serve my community, right? That’s what I’m doing, I’m providing a service for my community and my friends, and my family. It should still be the principles of business today whether someone is walking in your store, a dry cleaners, or they need your help for something, or a plumber’s out–whatever the case may be, you should still have that kind of conversation marketing, that conversation attitude which is a cup of coffee and a handshake. And we’re seeing it all the time where our clients or the reason they’re hiring us is because they don’t have that and they’re really struggling online especially on social, but it really is Main Street marketing.

Riggs: So I remember walking into the shoe store on the square in Paris, Texas and the conversation did not start with, “Hey, let me sell you some shoes here today.” It was always, “How are you doing today? How’s your mom doing? And grandma?” and all of this.

Besancon: And what was the next question they ask you? “What can I help you with?”

Riggs: “You with.” You.

Besancon: “What can I help you with? What shoes do you want?” It doesn’t matter if your style of shoe is different from mine, you’re the customer.

Riggs: So that is a good point for social media online. You’ve got to put the “you” in social media.

Besancon: Yeah, you’ve got to put that. It’s customer-centric, right? And you hear big businesses talk about, “We’re going to be customer-centric. We’re going to be customer-focused,” and you go to social media, it’s all about them.

Riggs: Yeah, so for some reason, people in business have gotten the notion now that online is somehow different. I’ve got to pound it—sell, sell, sell. People do not like to be sold to online or frankly, anywhere else.

Besancon: No, I mean, we’re here in Main Street, the survivor. Why are these little businesses still thriving? Because they have a connection with their customers.

Brad Besancon: Well, hello, everyone. It’s Brad with Clarity Digital and I’m here with Kyle Kerver down at the Cleburne Golf Links, here in the Pro Shop, and we’re talking about our map program which at Clarity Digital, stands for Method, Approach, and Performance.

Today, we’re going to talk about methods with Kyle because there’s nothing more important in golf than kind of a system or methodology, right?

Kyle Kerver: Sure. We follow a process in golf much like business: you start everything out the same way. You start behind the ball to set up your shot, to set up your round. You set up everything in a process.

Besancon: It’s amazing, all that you have to go through for a little white ball, isn’t it?

Kerver: That’s correct. It’s amazing.

Besancon: And the sad thing is, what we find is at Clarity is, there’s probably more people going through steps in golf than they do in their business. So one of the things we hear in golf is that you have to play your game.

Kerver: Right.

Besancon: You can’t play Tiger’s game or Jordan’s game, or Rickie Fowler’s game; you can’t have their swing.

Kerver: Correct.

Besancon: You have to have Kyle’s swing and Brad’s Swing. So tell me the importance of playing it your way and your game. What are the critical aspects of that?

Kerver: As a teacher of golf, I teach very specific things in general but when we get down to it, once we get to a certain physical level, we do have to figure out our own way of doing everything. So my swing might be a little different than yours because we’re different body types, we’re different heights, weights, everything as far as the way we’re built, so even on the physical side is different but more on the mental side as well; we have different brains, we have different approaches of everything so we really have to find what’s best for us.

Besancon: Yes, really like the attitude of your game, right?

Kerver: Very much so.

Besancon: So you can only help mechanically so much.

Kerver: Very much so.

Besancon: And then it comes to kind of the attitude and what you’re doing, which brings us to another aspect of business which is, you have to play your game.

Kerver: Yes.

Besancon: Right? You can’t go out there and be Coca-Cola or be Walmart, or be super Target; you have to be your business, your brand, your voice. The same way around a golf course it is, you have to pick up the clubs that you chose and swing it.

So you talked about some of those steps. Let’s walk through like some very one, two, three fundamental steps that kind of apply to golf that as well as kind of what businesses should be thinking of when we’re talking about this analogy.

Kerver: Right, so kind of how we start with our approach to every golf swing, is we look at the general area, we kind of assess the situation. Every golfshot is different. So we look in a general area and then we find what we want to do specifically for that golfshot; there’s so many things that are involved in that golf swing at that moment, so.

Besancon: A lot of muscle memory.

Kerver: A lot of muscle memory. And then on the mental side of it, you have visualizations; you have to visualize your goal for that shot. You have to visualize your own personal swing for that shot, and then–

Besancon: Sounds familiar? It’s like business.

Kerver: Exactly. And then as you step into your shot, obviously, you have to execute at the end of it. So a lot of commitment involved there, a lot of going through a checklist, setting up your business the same way.

Besancon: I mean, you just went through the steps that Robert and I go through with companies all the time: visualize where you’re going; we always challenge our clients, where do you want to go with this? What do you want to do online? What is your social media? What is overall objective of it? When you’re walking with that ball sitting in the fairway, where are you trying to go? Are you trying to lay up? Are you trying to get on the green? Can you get to the green? You have to go through all of those questions. And what’s really critical about the other things I think you said which is important in the game as well as in businesses, you kind of take a step back before each shot, right? Walk us through kind of stepping back and what you’re trying to do when you kind of, like you said, overall picture.

Kerver: Sure, sure. We step back behind the ball. Obviously, the most important thing is target. We look in a certain direction, we look where we want the ball to go, but in generally speaking, we look at all the elements: look at wind, we look at temperature, we look at elevation of what we’re standing on, elevation of the green, the slope of the green–

Besancon: Where you’re starting.

Kerver: Yes, where you start and where you want to end up. So all those things you take in, in a general aspect, and then as your approach the ball, it gets more specific and more specific, until we do execute the golf swing.

Besancon: Time for the action now, right?

Kerver: Right.

Besancon: You make your decision.

Kerver: Correct.

Besancon: Right? You pick the club, you visualized it, and now you make your action.

Kerver: Yes, sir.

Besancon: Sounds a lot like listen, think, speak for Clarity’s standpoint.

I think one of the key things that applies with golf and business is this step-by-step approach, right? You have to practice. You have to create muscle memory, and you have to approach or you have to create your own system, if you will, and your game so that you can stay consistent. And ultimately, that’s what golf’s all about, right? Consistency.

Kerver: It’s all about consistency.

Besancon: Yeah, so we really appreciate your time, man. I really appreciate you letting me come down here and kind of walk us through. And I think some of the key takeaways are this: you have to have a map, you have to have a method, an approach, and a performance tester, right? Which is what we’re talking about and you also have to be sure you’re taking a step back first, going through a system, thinking about your next shot with the basis of where I wanted to go, right? It’s the same in business: you have to know where you’re going before you can start.

And then I think the biggest thing that Kyle said was, is know where you’re starting, right? And look at all the things that are making up your starting point.

That’s Clarity clip of the week from Cleburne Golf Links. Come down here and enjoy a round.

Robert Riggs: A plan.

Besancon: You got to have a plan.

Riggs: An architect’s plan which we find is completely absent out in social media.

Besancon: Yeah, online marketing, social media, one of the things we’ve noticed here at Clarity is, we walk into companies, midsize companies, large companies, there’s no plan. We call it a map, and not like a roadmap; this is a map and we’ve got a little acronym there that we use called your Methodology, your Approach, and your Performance, and those are the three critical things you need to have that we’ve noticed over the last four years of business that people just typically are not utilizing before they go start go [00:00:48] stuff on the wall.

Riggs: So building a house is no different from building a marketing plan for social media, so let’s start with the M.

Besancon: Yeah, so methodology. One of the critical things about methodology is, what are you going to do? Who are you going to be? What platforms are you going to be involved in? You don’t have to be on all of them. If your audience or your target clients are not on Pinterest, then maybe you shouldn’t spend a lot of time on Pinterest and post on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Riggs: Yeah, you got to understand who the audience is and where are they. So now I have a map A.

Besancon: Yeah, when we talk about approach, what’s your voice? What’s your brand message? How are you going to make those conversations and those connections with your target audience or your particular clients? So for example, are you going to be cute, calm, or creative? Those are kind of the three C’s we use.

Riggs: And then the P of MAP.

Besancon: The performance. You’ve got to test. You’ve got to track. You’ve got to look at the data and all that really stems back on your methodology, right? So what are you trying to accomplish in the beginning?

Riggs: And so one of the things that we do to try to get to the bottom of the M and the A of the map is a brand storming session. Yes, to really understand, who are you online? Who are your customers? How do you need to talk to them? But that really is like the foundation of this house.

Besancon: I mean, these common-sense conversations.

Riggs: And what you have to think about as a business now, you’re a publisher. You’re a media producer. You’re a news company because no one can tell that story better than, no one might–not even tell it. Nobody can tell that story better than you can tell it.

Besancon: If you’re not telling it, who is? Someone out there is going to tell your story.

Riggs: Yeah, a critic, maybe your competitor is telling a story about you but you’ve got to understand who’s your story. It all starts with map.

Besancon: With map: methodology, your approach, your performance and your platforms.

Riggs: That’s the Clarity clip.

Robert Riggs: Hi, I’m Robert Riggs and this is Brad Besancon with the new Clarity Digital. We’ve learned a lot over the past three years together and so we’re kind of changing our approach and how we do things. So for starters downtown, Dallas behind us, how many people do you think, as we’re speaking, have a smartphone in the palm of their hand no matter what they’re doing?

Brad Besancon: All of them.

Riggs: All of them.

Besancon: All of them. I mean, one of the crazy things we have learned, Robert, over the last few years is that’s our biggest distraction, in addition to 3,000 to 5,000 brand messages a day hitting us–I think I even counted on my desk. I’m just sitting on my desk, there’s 20 brand messages just on my desk. We touch, tap, or swipe our phones 2,600 times a day and most of us who are in social are on 60% of the time or an hour mobile phone. And the other thing we’ve learned that we just consistently keep running into, we can’t believe it that all these distractions are going on but what happens in online marketing, nobody has a what?

Riggs: A plan or what we call a map, a method, an approach, and a measurement of performance.

Besancon: Exactly, and it seems real simple, right?

Riggs: Right.

Besancon: Before anything gets done, before you go to a grocery door, what do you do?

Riggs: Oh, you make a list.

Besancon: You make a list.

Riggs: You make a plan.

Besancon: You make a plan.

Riggs: “What’s on aisle 5?”

Besancon: And yet we consistently visit with companies that don’t even have a plan or an objective, or goals, or any of the stuff in online marketing.

Riggs: And online marketing has really gotten tougher because of the distraction. There are so many things going on inside that smartphone as well as all around.

Besancon: It’s everywhere.

Riggs: Yeah. So how do we break through?

Besancon: So you’ve got to learn how to break through and that’s what we do. And one of the other things we always see is me, me, me, me, me, me, me. “Let’s go sell them something in social.” “Let’s go tell them how great we are,” and what did we learn?

Riggs: It’s not about you.

Besancon: Not at all

Riggs: And people in this day and age, they don’t like to be sold to. Frankly, they don’t really trust big brands and companies. You got to earn it.

Besancon: And we have a saying, “It’s what you’re telling them, not what you’re selling them,” and that’s kind of been our new focus, what people earn.

We hope to work with you someday. If you find this interesting, we’re here for you. We start out with our brand storming and process called listen, think, speak, and it’s all about the customer. It’s all about your target audience.

Riggs: And we talked about audience or you might think of it as a market, and we have a phrase we’ve coined of Audience Speak and that is, are you speaking the language of your customers and clients? Because if you’re not, they won’t care.

Besancon: And someone else is.

Riggs: Right, and you won’t break through the disruption. You won’t disrupt all that distraction going on; it won’t happen.

Besancon: No.

That’s our Clarity Digital Focus. We hope to maybe work with you someday.

Riggs: Yeah, and if you find out that your likes and engagement are stale and going nowhere, you need to give us a call.

Besancon: Absolutely. Looking forward to it, guys.

Riggs: Thank you.