The Power of Language to Build Your Brand’s Identity with Chris West

In episode 105, host Eric Dickmann interviews Chris West. Chris leads the world's leading strategic brand consultancy focusing on brand language. Verbal Identity has created distinctive and engaging brand voices for global and national brands, relaunches, and startups, from B2B, B2C, and everything in between.  

Chris founded Verbal Identity in 2010 to advise clients on the power of brand language. His 30 years' experience allowed him to help brands and companies use their language to engage customers, deepen loyalty, and de-position rivals.  

Chris’ book all about his practice is titled “Strong Language” – the fastest, smartest, cheapest marketing tool you’re not using. It is a practical, how-to guide for creating a distinctive brand language, as well as winning support for change and defining the budget and ROI for doing it. 

For more information and access to the resources mentioned in this episode, visit:
https://fiveechelon.com/power-language-build-brand-identity-s7ep5/

A fractional CMO can help build out a comprehensive marketing strategy and execute targeted campaigns designed to increase awareness and generate demand for your business...without the expense of a full-time hire.

The Five Echelon Group - Fractional CMO and strategic marketing advisory services designed for SMBs looking to grow. Learn more at: 

https://fiveechelon.com

Transcript

Eric Dickmann: 0:31

Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm your host, Eric Dickmann. In this podcast, we have conversations with marketing professionals who share the strategies, tactics, and mindset you can use to improve the effectiveness of your marketing activities and grow your business. Chris welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm so glad you could join us.

Chris West: 0:52

Hey, Eric, it's lovely to see you and congratulations on the show.

Eric Dickmann: 0:56

Oh, hey, thank you so much, I really appreciate that. You know, we have so much fun doing this show and it's great to have guests on like yourself that can truly add value to our audience. You know, we're always trying to help businesses figure out ways to improve their marketing strategy, to get more effectiveness from the marketing tactics that they're running. And I know today we're going to get a chance to talk with you all about you know, brand voice and really creating that voice for your company. And I was wondering, you know first of all, if we could just start with a little bit of background on yourself, tell us how you got into this branding and how you've been helping companies develop that brand voice.

Chris West: 1:35

Sure. So I suppose the origins of what I'm doing as a business with Verbal Identity, I suppose you go back 30 years. So 30 years is a long time in what's happened in the marketing world. In those days, I was a copywriter in an ad agency in London, working on big accounts, like British Airways. And if you are writer, then it was a really wonderful world because I was considered a high producer because I produced maybe five ads in a year, right? Crazy. Like you know, a hundred words. That's, that's what made my living in a year. I set up a boutique agency in 2000, right? Working with lots of wonderful B2B, B2C clients, different sizes. And over time as the number of brand channels exploded. What I found was each time I left a meeting, a client would kind of grab me by the sleeve and say, Hey Chris, you're a good writer. We've now got 4,000 words to write before breakfast tomorrow. Help us. And that was their CRM, that was their website, that was social media. That was you know the high rate of turnover in packaging, the high rate of communications and customer service, all of that. So about 10 years ago, I realized that if I was being asked this all the time, I should really look at how brands can position themselves with language. I reckon everyone that listens to you has got a great visual identity. They would know what their logo is and they would know when it's wrong. They would know what their font is, their color palette is. But if you said to them, how well defined is your verbal brand, is your verbal identity as strong as your visual identity? I'm not sure how many people would say hand on heart. Yes, it is. So that's how the business started.

Eric Dickmann: 3:19

That's really interesting because I would agree. I don't think a lot of people think about that. You know, you're right. There are style guides that created the talk all about how the logo needs to be presented and what colors to use and the fonts and whatever, but not necessarily what to say other than maybe a tagline or, you know, a brand marker, or something like that. So how would you describe verbal identity or the voice of a brand? How do you sort of get to a place where you can start to solidify what that really means?

Chris West: 3:49

I think the first stop is understanding where language is working for your business, and the short answer is everywhere all the time, but you need to be able to define the voice because often it's in the founder, in the founder's head or the marketing department. Someone in their department is a really great writer. And if you want something written, go and ask Eric. Eric's got the voice. Eric knows, Eric will do it. Dah, dah, dah. And of course, Eric needs to take a hold of it. Eric, may occasionally get sick, get married, or have other personal commitments. So Eric can't do it all the time. So often what you're doing is you're extracting it from the head of the people in the business to know what the voice is intuitively, even if they haven't defined it rigorously.

Eric Dickmann: 4:38

So this is more than brand values, what our brand stands for. This is really how they're communicating those values, how they're presenting themselves to the marketplace.

Chris West: 4:50

Yeah. And I think many brands do it inadvertently, which is often you know, a route to disaster because you're just kind of saying, well, we'll just put some stuff out on social media and we're just kind of, let's just write the customer service letter as quickly as we can and let's do this with the CRM. But you would never do that with your visual identity. You would be really careful, just as you said, to have this comprehensive deck that says, this is what we do on this occasion, this is how we vary it by this moment or by this channel. And so once you have the voice defined and once you learn how to flex it for different channels, then I think what you see is that you have a voice that suddenly becomes as strong as the other elements in your brand.

Eric Dickmann: 5:33

Can you maybe walk us through that a little bit? Maybe with a current client or a past client in how you sort of defined what that voice was going to be. And some examples of what you put in that verbal style guide to help guide other people in how they would write in that voice?

Chris West: 5:50

Sure, sure.. I think the heart of what we do is a really simple framework that. we've used and reused, and proven over the last 10 years. Do you mind if I talk about that? Couple of minutes and then, oh, thanks. So a lot of people think that brand voice is just tone of voice and often if that's the def. If that's what you think the brand voice is, then you come up with four adjectives, human friendly, warm and approachable, which doesn't really help the writer. I always say, think about the writer, ten past seven at night. She or he, they've got to write something. Everyone else has gone home. Needs to be on the boss's desk tomorrow morning. What are they going to do in that situation? They're going to kind of revert back to how they've always written or they're going to look at those four adjectives- human friendly, warm, and approachable. And they're going to say, Hey, that doesn't mean anything.

Eric Dickmann: 6:42

Yeah.

Chris West: 6:43

So actually when you look at brand language, we see that it always works on three levels. If you look at a great piece of copy from a brand that you really like, you can often just put your hand over the logo at the bottom, show it to someone, hide all the other elements. Show someone and say, oh yeah, I know who that is. That's such and such a brand. So what's happening there? When we look at it, that kind of 10,000 foot level, there's an overarching narrative. What's coming out is not explicit, but what's coming out of the copy, the brand languages. This is the world we believe in. This is how we want the world to be. And that's as strong in B2B businesses as it is in B2C businesses. We want to do this, we want to make the world like this. So therefore we stand for this and we stand against that. Now in a really strong voice, that sense of their world view comes out really clearly. That's a 10,000 foot and at a thousand feet. Then you have the personality. So you almost imagine what kind of people wrote this. So if I walked into their building, what kind of people would they be? Would they be really formal? You and I wearing white shirts today. Would they be really formal white shirt kind of, but not too tightly done up kind of people or would they be more relaxed t-shirt jeans kind of whatever kind of attitude to life, and what's in between all of those spaces. So a thousand foot you've you've got the total values, the personality defined. And at the ground level, a really good brand voice, you'll have what we call the ground level details. So they're the things like, what are the phrase, words, and phrases you use and don't use in this business on a regular basis? I give you an example from the consumer world. You know the mini. Eric? Yeah. So it's a great brand, hugely successful brand. All the time when they're writing, and I think it's probably on their social media channels, in CRM, everywhere I've seen it, there's this phrase that comes up again and again, which is go-kart handling. Yeah. So minis picked this phrase cause it perfectly captures their personality, that thousand foot level and their overarching view of the world. But as a phrase in itself is pretty good for representing who they are. And so they'll use it again and again. And so the words and phrases you use at ground level are important along with things like sentence length and grammar. So you know, I was taught grammar in a really formalized way. But that's not how I speak and that's not how I write. And if you listen to people on the street, their grammar is totally different. It's not wrong. It's different. So I think what we're trying to get people to understand is even things like grammar choices really matter. So you've got these three levels and in a really great brand voice, they all work together and they'll all reinforce each other. And once you've defined them like that, what you find is that it's a lot easier to talk to your team, talk to writers and non-writers about what they're doing with the language. And don't forget, you know that's not just what, you know, brand language or comms language, it can be investor relations, It can be as I say, customer service, can be even signage in a building. It's a lot easier to talk to them about that. Once you've got those three levels agreed and defined. And it helps shape things. So you asked me a question about five minutes ago and I didn't answer it, Eric. I'm really sorry.

Eric Dickmann: 10:14

No, no you did. And I appreciate you setting up that framework because I think it helps give some context to what we're talking about because sometimes, you know, in my mind, what comes to mind is you know, when you listen to a CEO speak, maybe at an investor conference in and you know, all of a sudden the word synergy pops into the conversation, you're like this guy is going to be saying a whole lot of nothing for the next half an hour because they're trying to avoid specifics and talk in generalities and things like that. But it doesn't really communicate much of anything. And then I think of politicians as well, who oftentimes, you know, walk around at question with a lot of verbose language, but never actually answer the question that was asked. And what you're really talking about is not that you're really talking about trying to create something that communicates what a brand stands for in the tonality, in the language that uses, not what they don't stand for, what they don't want to talk

Chris West: 11:09

Yeah. Yeah. And you are. Yeah, exactly, exactly right. And of course the other expression we have, everyone is talking about. at the moment is pivot. know Eric, have you pivoted this week? Because you know it's been 72 hours since I pivoted, so I feel like I'm behind,

Eric Dickmann: 11:24

You are behind, yeah, I've done it twice today, already. Yeah.

Chris West: 11:28

So, yeah. And a good example of a company using this kind of language is Alphabet has this wonderful place over in mountain view, Silicon Valley called X, which is their moonshot factory.

Eric Dickmann: 11:40

Okay.

Chris West: 11:41

And their moonshot factory is doing all of these things, which I would say, you'd be crazy to think you can do that in technology, which they're proving you can. So they're hosting these ideas. technology-based ways of changing the world, changing significant problems. So Waymo that driver's car is coming out of there. So people will know that. But there's other projects that they've nurtured quietly, secretly for years and years and years, until they're ready, like a contact lens which will constantly monitor your blood glucose level. So what a wonderful place. And their challenge when they talked to us was look, these are top-secret projects. We're not hiding anything, but just because the nature of the project, what it is, we don't talk about it until we're actually successful with it.

Eric Dickmann: 12:30

Hmm.

Chris West: 12:31

So their communication challenge was really we need to be able to express exactly who we are, communicate all of our values, but in a really narrow bandwidth. Because really the only times that we'll communicate to the outside world are through recruitment.

Eric Dickmann: 12:47

Okay.

Chris West: 12:48

Because. Eric comes to X, he's got this great idea for this piece of technology that will solve the world's problem, one of the world's problems. And you're going to be in there for eight years and slowly, you're going to be acquiring the world's best minds onto your team. And that's the only thing you can communicate. So it's almost like the ultimate test in a B2B environment because it's so narrow, but you have to be so precise. And what they said to us, what they were X, the leaders X said to us once. What we're trying to do is attract the best minds in the world to come and work with us, literally with such a narrow bandwidth of communication. And we're trying to persuade those people that they don't go to NASA, they don't go to MIT, that they don't go to these big, cash rich VC-backed places, but they come and work for us. So really when we understood a lot more about X and their view of the world, we were able to create a voice. We were able to say, you know, this is the world they want to create, so these are the things they stand for. What they stand against, often you can make it explicit. You didn't need to make it explicit for X. But you know, they, weren't interested in kind of a quick investment, quick return. You know, they're interested in changing the world for the better. In terms of then what their personality is, that kind of patience and intelligence that comes down from that worldview that became the values for their brand voice. So without going into the kind of confidential details of how their brand voice was defined, what we saw at the 10,000 foot level, we could bring down into a personality at a thousand foot, and then we could say- Okay, what are the words and phrases you want to use on a regular basis? How do you want to be with your grammar? How much jargon do you want to use? Things like that. So we were able to find a voice and suddenly what we find is it unleashes creativity. So even in a narrow bandwidth like that, where you're really talking mostly in communication, mostly recruitment. But of course, you know, social media as well.

Eric Dickmann: 14:55

Sure

Chris West: 14:57

But what you find is that suddenly writers go, oh, okay, right. So if we stand for this, if this is our worldview, we can talk a little bit about this. Yeah, absolutely we can. Everyone is talking about climate change, but knowing what we stand for, what we stand against, we can take this angle on climate change, which is our informed angle and suddenly knowing what to talk about, what angle to take on it, what personality to convey through it. And also getting away from some of the things that slow you down. Like what word or phrase do you use? Having all of that unleashes a huge amount of creativity. And I think we were able, I mean, they're a super team. I mean like the best thing you ever want to work with and they were able, once we'd help them define their brand voice to suddenly step change the amount of communication and how fast things can be turned around inside the business.

Eric Dickmann: 15:50

You know as you gave that example, something comes to mind. You know, we're recording this episode in mid September, and I just got done watching earlier this week, an Apple event where they launched their new iPhone. And you know, we always tend to use Apple as marketing examples because they're just so good at what they do. And this was another killer presentation that they put together. But what's interesting in the context of brand voice is that there was a time when Steve Jobs got up on stage and he was kind of the brand, right? He was the voice of that brand. But now over the years, they've made a very conscious effort to have lots of different people standing up and explaining the new products and services, but yet they all have to communicate with that same brand voice. And of course, there's a very heavy hand in that I'm sure. They're not just winging this off cuff, but as they go from product to product or, or new announcement to new announcement, there's a very consistent theme. You know, they talk about privacy, they talk about the environment, they talk about the recycled materials that they use and how they're reducing packaging and all this. But it's consistent from one announcement to the next. And that to me is another great example of how that brand voice, that brand identity is filtering through everything that they do. What's your thought on that

Chris West: 17:11

I think you're absolutely right. And of course the joy that, the great thing about having your brand voice defined properly is you've got it defined everywhere. So if you go into an Apple store, well, you know, guess what, if you go into an Apple store near you or an Apple store near me, they kind of sound like the same business and that's immensely reassuring. You know if my phone is busted and I'm near you and I go into an Apple store, Wow, they sound the same. So they probably know as much as my local store do. All of that sounds great. And that's one of the most amazing things about Apple. They have a really clear sense in their voice. But from that, then, that voice flows out through all of their business. It's the same kind of clear voice on their website, same kind of clear voice on social. It's pretty impressive.

Eric Dickmann: 18:01

I know sometimess when listeners, especially if there are smaller businesses, they listen to discussions like this and they say, okay, you're talking about Google. You're talking about Apple, you're talking aboutMini. These are big companies with big marketing departments, a lot of resource to be able to throw at a problem like this. I'm a smaller company, I've got a three or four person marketing team. How should I define my brand voice? Does it even matter? Am I big enough for that even to matter for me? Or should I be worried about other problems? How do you look at this when it comes to businesses of all sizes and shapes and flavors?

Chris West: 18:39

Well, yeah, I mean I think once the brand voice is defined, you're good with the brand voice for five years, three years, five years, ten years is one. Same really with your visual identity. I mean I don't know many businesses that would say, we're too small to make our logo consistent or we're too small, ready to produce our brochure in the same way, or it doesn't really matter What our website looks like from day one to day five. All of this stuff matters and it's the consistency of communication, not just what you're saying, but how you're saying it. That consistency builds confidence. So I think whatever size you are, it should be on your agenda. And then how do you go about it? Well you know, scale your ambition, if you gonna scale your resources, but I would say what you know, thank you for kind of giving me a lead to talk about a bit more about the book's strong language. What I would say is you can read strong language in a weekend. And you can take something into the office on Monday morning and say, look, we're not going to change everything. But look, can we just look at this, look at that, and look at that. And there are some exercises in the book. It's a really practical how to book. And I reckon within if you did that on Monday, if you read it over the weekend, and you came in on Monday by Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, your brand voice would have changed a lot and everyone would be aligning with that one voice.

Eric Dickmann: 20:06

Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to the podcast. But first, are you ready to grow, scale, and take your marketing to the next level? If so, The Five Echelon Group's Virtual CMO consulting service may be a great fit for you. We can help build a strategic marketing plan for your business and manage its execution, step-by-step. We'll focus on areas like how to attract more leads. How to create compelling messaging that resonates with your ideal customers. How to strategically package and position your products and services. How to increase lead conversion, improve your margins, and scale your business. To find out more about our consulting offerings and schedule a consultation, go to fiveechelon.com and click on Services. Now back to the podcast. What is so helpful about that I think, and I speak from personal experience here is, you know, the economy has changed, right? These big marketing agencies that you use to hire to do work. A lot of that has changed. And we're now in this freelancer economy where you may hire one person to do a website revision, maybe somebody to help you out with social media or do some graphics, or whatnot. And so being able to communicate that voice is so important because as you're outsourcing work, they don't really know your company, they don't really know kind of what you stand for. You've got to some way, give them a template, give them some rules to follow. And that's not an easy thing to do, especially when it comes to writing, right? Getting people to capture your voice is a challenge especially if you go off shore. That can be a real challenge because language is just different. You talked about the language people use on the street, it's not wrong, it's just different. But it might not be what you want in a business.

Chris West: 21:49

Yeah, that's absolutely right. And you're trying to move fast as a business and you've got a freelancer that's trying to move fast with you. So just taking a moment to say, look, what kind of world do we believe in? We stand for it. We want to create this kind of world so we're going to stand for this, we're going to stand against that. Okay, so what kind of personality do we have as a business? Okay. So let's just quickly talk about that and that might exist already in the business. And then if you can agree some of the kind of key words and phrases that you love and some that you hate, suddenly your freelancer goes, right, I know what we can talk about, I know how we're going to talk about it. And I know actually what we're going to put in the copy in different places. We're really good to go. So I think you're right. It's something I hadn't thought about in that way, but we are increasingly dependent on people, what we might not see on a regular basis. So actually, a business skill is being able to communicate who you are to your partners instantly and having some kind of definition about who you are, what you stand for, how you communicate that in language is probably more and more important.

Eric Dickmann: 22:54

We spend so much time talking about things like buyer personas, really identifying who are your buyer personas. But what this sort of reminds me of is this is sort of a company persona, this is your corporate persona that you're really identifying with many of the same kind of traits and attributes that you might assign to a buyer persona.

Chris West: 23:15

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And buyer personas worked really well when you take the time to scratch below the surface and actually get into the nuance. And if you don't do that with your company's brand language, then you just kind of sound like everyone else. But when you do scratch, I would say, well, actually, no, we really do believe in this. And I know everyone in our kind of category says We've all got it. Yeah, sure. But actually our take on this is this, when you've got those kinds of things really clear, then you're you, everyone in the department, everyone that's writing for you suddenly feels a voice, much easier to access. It flows much better. And you actually, then if you don't mind me saying, I reckon you then start saving a lot of money on your communications budgets, those kinds of media budgets and everything else. There's a great example from the consumer world. I don't know Eric, if you are a Dairy Dodger like me, but I don't have milk anymore. I don't know if you. I mean, I don't have anything against milk. It's just, it doesn't work for me anymore.

Eric Dickmann: 24:21

I was born in Wisconsin, the cheese state. So I'm legally obligated to like dairy.

Chris West: 24:27

Yeah. I like it, but it just doesn't. I mean I love cheese, right. It just doesn't work for me. So I now have oatmeal in my coffee and my tea. And what is oat milk? Oat milk. It shouldn't even be called milk. You know, it's oats in water and there's a couple of brands that sell oat milk and I've never met anyone that can taste the difference and one is root health, oat milk, and the other is root health

Eric Dickmann: 24:52

hmmm

Chris West: 24:54

And they're both sold, it tastes the same. They're both sold in one liter packs. The packs are exactly the same, they're from tetra pak. They're sold in the chiller cabinet. They're sold in the chiller cabinet in the same shops in the same cheddar cabinet on the same shelf next to each other. And the only difference you can really tell is the language that root health uses to describe itself., which is kind of like everyone in our sector talks about being a bit healthier. So we'll just talk about being a bit healthier. you read what it says on the back of Oakley's pack, particularly if you come from Wisconsin, you're going to be shocked, right? That they're taking the battle to the dairy industry. They're saying that whether they're right or not, that's not what I'm not what we're into here, but they're saying the dairy industry shows you numbers for your impact on the climate. Dairy industry. shows you whether you're good for people or not as you know, things like this. They taste the same, they're sold in the same place. The only difference is their language. Root health is valued at 70 million UK, 70 million pounds. And Oatley was floated this year for 12 billion, it's now worth 13 billion. And the difference is the language and the language is leading the attitude, and the attitude is reinforcing the language. That's what language does. That's what language is amazing for.

Eric Dickmann: 26:17

We often talk about this when we talk about things like corporate environments, corporate culture, and is corporate culture, just that poster that's on the conference room wall that says our values or are those values, really something that people are living? Is the company actually doing that? I've had a number of guests on this show where we talk about environmental things and this whole movement of greenwashing, you know? Where you just simply say that you are support this environmental initiative or that, but actually the company is not really involved in anything and could be a toxic polluter, but they're trying to embrace something and it's inauthentic. That just sort of gets to the point, it's authenticity, right? You're trying to speak from an authentic standpoint, and if you can, that's where that language really has power.

Chris West: 27:05

Yeah. And it's the same for people, it's same for businesses and why wouldn't it be? Because businesses are people. But you know, it's sometimes difficult to be really clear. Who am I as Chris West? What do I? What's the world I'm trying to create? What do I stand for? Therefore you know, how do I come across in my personality and things like that? What are my choices? It's difficult for me, right? So it's no surprise that it's difficult for businesses. But you're a great communicator and you are very clear. Your personality comes across and that's why people listen to you, you know? Because it's really clear. When you can make those leaps, when you do spend a bit of time looking at your brand voice, it doesn't have to be a lot, it's not a forever project. When you do that, what you find is you focus in on what is authentic. The kind of the half secret about us is a lot of people come to us and say, Hey, Chris, we've got to order our brand values sorted out. But, it's just a language, isn;t that right? And we say, sure, sure. But you're happy with your brand values and they go, yeah, yeah. And then we start working with them on the brand language and about halfway through they go, you know what, Chris, this is really helping us focus more tightly on our brand values. I go, yeah, yeah. And so it should, right? You know, that's the joy of that, the language becomes as you say, an authentic representation.

Eric Dickmann: 28:32

And Chris, you mentioned it earlier. You've written a book by the time this podcast is live, the book will be live and available for purchase. I'd love it if you could just tell us a little bit more about that book, what sort of inspired you to write it and where are people going to find it?

Chris West: 28:48

Thanks Eric. It was clients that inspired me to write it because they were saying, well, you're talking about this stuff, Chris. Where can I read anything about it? And I was thinking, well, I can't find a book about it. And then we'd go through a project and they'd say, Chris, I want to tell people what we did. You know, you've written a book surely, right? You've written a book, where's the book? And I was like, I haven't read a book, I haven't read a book. So for the last five years, clients have been saying, where's the book? Where's the book? And I took time last year. You know, there are various things going on as we know.

Eric Dickmann: 29:19

As we yeah.

Chris West: 29:21

I took time and wrote the book and yeah. I'm delighted with it. For me personally, what it's done is all these bits that were in my head about, yeah, we can do this in this situation. This is how you work with this. This is how you achieve the quick wins, this is how you build you know, this to last forever, this is how you get senior support. know, can you prove ROI on doing this yet? Let's do it. What are the human? Yeah, all of these were in my head and they come up at different times in different projects and I was able to bring them all down into the book and go, yep. Okay. So now they're not in my head anymore. That's great. What they are in my head, but you know, they're in the book as well. So that's a relief.

Eric Dickmann: 30:02

No, that's good. And it sounds like a useful resource. You know, we get lots of authors on the show here, and this is honestly something that is a unique topic I think coming at it from a very unique angle. So clearly there was a need in the marketplace for somebody to articulate this. I'm excited that you got a book out and what a great time to write a book. So for our listeners here, where can they find out more about you, your company, and where they could go ahead and order the book?

Chris West: 30:27

Well thanks, Eric. I mean I don't expect everyone to rush out as much as I'd love everyone to rush out and buy the book straight away. They can find me on LinkedIn, Chris West. I've got one of those names has probably a few thousand Chris West's out there. So on LinkedIn is where I publish some of our recent research, some of our recent tips. So if you go onto LinkedIn, look for Chris West Verbal Identity. You should find a man that looks like me.

Eric Dickmann: 30:53

Yeah.

Chris West: 30:53

If you go across to oss to Amazon then from September the 28th, which I think would have happened by the day we go out with this podcast, if you put in Strong Language, Chris West, then I should think you should find my book. If for some reason you don't want to buy through Amazon, then you can buy, you'll be able to buy through Barnes and Noble, few other sites. If you get stuck wherever you are in the world, then you know, connect with me on LinkedIn and I am now going to use Kanzi technology to show a picture of the book. You were very kindly setting me up

Eric Dickmann: 31:31

Yeah, perfect. Let's see it.

Chris West: 31:33

There we go. Can you see that?

Eric Dickmann: 31:37

No, we can't.

Chris West: 31:38

No, you can't see that. Okay, well, there we go. Hold on. Y a T Y cause there's a big button there. March share. Eric, you know what? No one wants to see a picture of a book. It says strong language

Eric Dickmann: 31:52

We will make sure to put it on the blog so that people can see it. Yeah. It says Strong Language on the front. And then I wonder, does it have a subheading?

Chris West: 31:59

Yeah. The fastest, smartest, cheapest marketing tool you're not using.

Eric Dickmann: 32:06

That's excellent.

Chris West: 32:08

It could also have been a great tactic by us to talk about the book, the book cover, and then not show it. So everyone the show notes.

Eric Dickmann: 32:16

It builds some suspense. I think that's great. I give so much credit to anybody who can sit down and take the time to write a book because they're valuable assets, a great way to share your knowledge with others. And that's what we really try to do on this podcast is share knowledge so that people can really up their marketing game. And so, Chris, I'm just delighted that you were able to come on the show today. Congratulations on the book and I hope it's a big success. Thanks so much for being here.

Chris West: 32:44

Uh, Thanks, Eric. Thanks for inviting me as weAnd you know, I love sharing advice as well. So if anyone wants to find me on LinkedIn, ask me a question, any size business, whatever I can to do to help, I'll do it.

Eric Dickmann: 32:56

Perfect. And we'll make sure to have all those contact links that you mentioned in the show notes. Chris, thanks so much again.

Chris West: 33:02

My pleasure. Lovely. See you Eric, take care.

Eric Dickmann: 33:07

Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Virtual CMO podcast. For more episodes, go to fiveechelon.com/podcast to subscribe through your podcast player of choice. And if you'd like to develop consistent lead flow and a highly effective marketing strategy, visit fiveechelon.com to learn more about our Virtual CMO consulting services.