Have you ever wondered what the actual impression and awareness of your brand are in a market? Or maybe how to compare one region’s brand performance to another? If you have, then this episode is for you.
Our guest today, is Angeley Mullins and she is the CMO & CGO at Latana, an AI-Powered brand tracking solution, designed to help brands make better marketing decisions.
She is passionate about growing companies and markets! She has more than 18 years of experience that spans between: High Growth Start-Ups, Large Scale Corporations, and NGOs.
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LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- You can visit our guest’s website at: https://Latana.com/
- Connect with our guest on social:
- https://twitter.com/LatanaBrand
- https://www.instagram.com/latanabrand/
- https://www.linkedin.com/company/latana-brand-tracking/
- https://www.facebook.com/latanabrand
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ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Angeley Mullins is the CMO & CGO at Latana, an AI-Powered brand tracking solution, designed to help brands make better marketing decisions. As a leading B2B startup, Angeley and the Latana team help users worldwide to understand key brand insights for both themselves and their competitors, enabling them to zoom in on the audiences that drive their business. She has been successful partnering with CEOs, Founders, & Investors to grow their companies as well as established Corporate Leaders expanding their organisations into international markets.
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If you are interested in being a guest on our podcast, please complete this request form or email podcast@bigskyfranchise.com and a team member will be in touch.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:00):
Before we start the episode, I wanted to let you know that we have our upcoming franchise sales training workshop on September 22nd. It’s a seven-hour training session where we teach you how to create a clear and defined sales process, how to overcome common franchise sales objections, leadership roles, and how to disclose an FDD and use that as a tool in your sales process. If you’re new to franchise sales, if you have new staff, or you’re an emerging brand or a franchise company looking to get that extra sale or two a year, this is the workshop for you. It’s only $1,500. It’s a full-day workshop and we provide you with 130-page workbook. The Franchise Sales Training workshop is next week, so this is your last chance to really sign up and make sure you have enough time to attend. Go to franchisesalesworkshop.com. That’s franchisesalesworkshop.com. And now, on with the show.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:57):
Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. And as we open today, I’m wondering if you have ever wondered what the actual impression and awareness of your brand are in a market. Or maybe how to compare one region of your company to another. And if you’ve thought about that or wondered at some point how to measure or track or identify it, then this episode is for you.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (01:33):
Our guest today is Angeley Mullins. And she’s the CMO and CGO at Latana, an AI powered brand tracking solution designed to help brands make better marketing decisions. She is passionate about growing companies and markets and she has more than 18 years of experience that spans between high growth startups, large scale corporations, and NGOs. So let’s go ahead and jump into my interview with Angeley.
Angeley Mullins, Latana (01:59):
Nice to be here, Tom. Yes. So my name, Angeley Mullins. I’m currently in Berlin. I’m the current CMO and CGO, so chief marketing officer and chief growth officer, for Latana Brand Tracking. We are a B2B SaaS company, and we help marketing and branding leaders grow their brand brand awareness and make better marketing decisions.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (02:19):
Excellent. Well, I love this brand tracking idea, so I’d love for you just to jump right into it. What is brand tracking?
Angeley Mullins, Latana (02:28):
Sure. It’s a relatively newer sphere and space. Just to give a little bit of context, the way that things currently were in the past five years is we had this whole era of data-driven marketing. And most CEOs and executives have heard of this, but we have so many different tools out there and so much data, we have gotten to a stage now of what we call data paralysis. That there’s so much data that people just cannot make a decision or they don’t know what dataset to really go with for either their strategy, opening up new markets, expanding their brand.
Angeley Mullins, Latana (02:59):
Within that, we have on, I would say, one side, we have something called social listening. So this is the era of all your social media. And let’s say your company has a big campaign or a big strategy drive for a particular phrase or a word, and everybody thinks it’s doing well in social media, but they don’t know the context of that.
Angeley Mullins, Latana (03:17):
And then you have on the way opposite end of that, you have performance marketing, and you put out a campaign and you get KPIs back, and everybody’s like, “Okay, well, did it make a lift?” So in the middle, what we have is brand tracking, and it’s the context behind the brand and behind your brand awareness. It’s the what does that mean and what is my brand worth? And that’s the big, huge question that people have been trying to solve for decades.
Angeley Mullins, Latana (03:42):
And what we do at Latana is we use mobile-optimized survey technology to ask people all across the world, companies’ target audiences, specifics about brand awareness and the brand funnels, specifics about associations with a company’s brand, and even specific questions that are very aligned to a brand’s particular business. So whether you’re selling a particular product via e-commerce or whether you have a particular service that you provide, we can ask those specific questions very quickly and give people a real big understanding of what their brand awareness is.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (04:17):
Well, that’s interesting. So is this brand awareness? You mentioned these surveys that might go out to people. I’m just thinking if you have, let’s say, a niche or a specialized service or even a business model like yours. It’s a very specialized B2B service that just a mass general audience, the general consumer probably is never going to be aware that you exist. So for example, in your own case, how would you measure? Is this going to just a general when you’re measuring this going to an average just general consumer, or how do you narrow that down?
Angeley Mullins, Latana (04:52):
That’s a great question. So first of all, Latana, we really focus on consumer companies, because like you just said, we’re focusing on brands that are usually small to mid-size and they’re growing, because these are the companies that want to increase their brand awareness and they’re usually at a stage where they have their product market fit, they know they have something solid, and now it’s scaling for them. And whether that’s within their own home country target market or they’re even growing to other countries or even possible other business lines.
Angeley Mullins, Latana (05:21):
So how we do it, like I said, we have all of these different surveys. So if you’ve ever went across your shopping experience, gaming, et cetera, and you’ve gotten this survey, so you actually opt in. So you know you’re taking the survey, you know the purpose, and you’re asked specific questions. So for example, if it’s brand awareness, they’ll say, “Are you aware of this brand?” And if it’s down the brand funnel, “Would you consider purchase this brand or prefer the brand?” And then we can ask very specific questions. So we’ve had a mattress company, won’t name names, but a very well known mattress company, for example, come to us and say, “We want to know, and our target group people of this age demographic and this particular location, are they interested in buying a mattress or have they purchased a home or have they rented a flat or an apartment in the last 12 months?” because those would be key indicators. So this is how we go about doing this and this is how we get specific answers for companies who are looking for that.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (06:16):
Interesting. Okay. So let’s say we go through the exercise of gathering this information, and I think you said it very well, this data paralysis that occurs where there’s so much information. I know I’ve had that myself where there’s so much information you don’t know how to weigh it, what’s more important, what isn’t, and determining that. So now you have this data and information. How do you help support or what’s a process to help support making a decision then?
Angeley Mullins, Latana (06:47):
So I’ll give you another example. There was a very popular banking, Neobanks, a very popular mobile banking app that came to us. They wanted to launch in a different country and they said, “Okay, we think that we’re going to focus on students, because we want to start when somebody’s young and then grow with them over their lifetime.” And they thought that their brand image was cool and progressive and trustworthy. So they said, “Okay, Latana, can you basically do a survey with this particular demographic and really find the associations?” So we’re asking their target market, “How do you associate with this particular brand?” And it actually was interesting. It came back, it was not trustworthy. It was not progressive. It was not credible.
Angeley Mullins, Latana (07:27):
And so then when you ask about what decisions then does a company take, it’s how do we reposition the brand or reposition the value proposition, the positioning of the company? Do we actually launch in this market? Is this the right target audience? And these are questions that if companies don’t get it right, you can have a really big mistake, and sometimes they can be critical or fatal mistakes within a business strategy. So that’s why information like this is so important before you go on these types of directions.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (07:59):
Interesting. So before the show, we had talked a little bit about some of the clients that I serve and my company Big Sky work with. And we’re typically working with this small to midsize company that’s hit a certain level of success and now they’re ready to start franchising. So they’re starting to franchise. So maybe someone that tunes into this will be thinking about this. But let’s say they have a, you mentioned maybe some retail or a restaurant business or something, and they want to know. They have maybe 10 or 20 franchises out there. How does this work for a franchise model where we have this corporate entity that wants to know from the whole market, and then you also have the local owner, the local franchisee, that while they care about the whole system, they’re really focused on their own local community that they serve. So how do you work with something like that or how would this brand process work in a situation like that?
Angeley Mullins, Latana (08:59):
It’s really exciting actually, because, I mean, most small business owners, they’re buying a franchise for what? The name, the branding. That’s the exact reason that they’re considering to purchase and go into the franchise opportunity. So with this, we actually do what’s called city based tracking. So a lot of small businesses that are looking to open franchises are looking at, okay, what’s the location of this franchise? What’s a particular city or area of a particular zone? And so we can actually do very targeted surveys to understand what the brand perception, what the brand awareness is, what the associations are within that particular city.
Angeley Mullins, Latana (09:37):
And this is where it becomes extremely applicable for franchise owners, because they can say … For example, when I was in the United States, one of my favorite franchises was Coldstone Creamery and I love the ice cream and it was fantastic. So Coldstone has a particular brand and I want to move it to a different city and open up my own store. Is the brand awareness the same? Are the associations the same? Is the target market, the target audience, the same? How do I actually go to market? And so these are some of the things that I believe a franchise owner would want to know to be able to make the critical decision. Because it’s a huge investment opening up a franchise or sometimes even a series of them at once.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (10:16):
Interesting. So I’m thinking maybe if I worked with you, I had a franchise, I’ve got let’s say 20 or 50 or 100 franchises, and I’m going into a new market. I could survey all of my current markets, get a sense of what my brand awareness is, maybe go to this new market and survey, and it would help quantify what the market awareness is. Would I be able to also then see even if they’re … I would imagine for most brands, and I’ve worked with a few very large well-established franchise brands. For example, one primarily out West that was looking to go to the East Coast, and the brand awareness was almost nothing. It was very, very, very low just because of geography and so on. And so I tend to see that happen, but your numbers would validate that. And my question where I’m going with this is would we be able to take the data from the target customer, that target profile customer, and match that up in these prospective markets? Or how would that work?
Angeley Mullins, Latana (11:23):
Absolutely. So we do a couple different things. One is called a general population sample. So that would be something the United States across the whole country. And then we can go very regional. So like you were saying, East Coast versus West Coast. We’ve had customers that have done even more regional. So southwest versus northeast, state versus state, for example, or even city versus city. So in Europe where I’m currently based, we have a lot of e-mobility, so scooters, e-bikes, these kinds of things. And we have companies opening up, one in London, one in Paris, one in Berlin, one in Copenhagen. And yes, the product’s the same, but the positioning may be different for the different markets. So it’s the exact same thing in the United States and our clients there. And especially if you’re opening, if it’s retailer, it’s digital. But these are the things that make a difference to how you open position and what your strategy is moving forward.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (12:18):
Very, very interesting. Well, I can certainly see the value from just the general marketing standpoint of really saying, “Am I hitting? Is my message and the marketing and whatever product or service I’m delivering, is my customer interpreting that as well what I want them to be?” and see where you match in that regard. And then number two, from the franchise perspective, you can use this in terms of maybe helping franchise sales efforts, maybe identifying some markets you would not have otherwise thought. Maybe it’s a better match than you may have thought. Maybe it’s Tulsa, Oklahoma is a great match for your product or service. That may not have been in your top 10 right away. So I really like how this approach. That’s really neat.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (13:12):
Well, how does a process start? Just I’m curious. I’m sure someone who listens in might want to know that, too, but how does it start? How do you engage with your clients and support them through this process?
Angeley Mullins, Latana (13:23):
Sure. I mean, we support them every step of the way. We really focus on small to mid-size businesses, and a lot of business owners in this arena have usually not tracked their brand awareness before. And so we help them understand what the differences are between tracking brand awareness and performance marketing or social listening, which are the other two ways that you can measure campaign and measure audiences.
Angeley Mullins, Latana (13:49):
Then what we do is we take them through the brand funnel and we help them identify their target audiences. So of course they’ll have an idea usually of what it is, and then what we do is we test that. And we always say test but verify, so trust but verify. And we test that for them and we come back and we say, “Okay, well, based off of our survey, this might actually be a better target audience for you.” Or look actually who’s resonating with your brand.
Angeley Mullins, Latana (14:14):
So we start there, and then usually what happens is business owners have a particular question that pertains to their business. So it really depends on the service they’re providing or a product that they’re selling. Is this customer, do they have the propensity to purchase this in the next usually 12 months? Have they purchased this? How often would they purchase? And so then we can start to drill down on a much more granular basis so that they can understand the customer behavior. And so that’s really the golden nugget. First, it’s the perception, then it’s the behavior, and these are the building blocks of predictability that of course leads to your revenue growth.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (14:50):
Yeah. Well, and it’s interesting I think with what you’re doing this. I think for a business that hasn’t gone through this process, you’re going to help establish a baseline and say, “Here’s a baseline,” and now you have a measurement, something that you quantify and can now look to make adjustments from and see how the ebbs and flows and changing trends and consumer preferences and so on are impacting it.
Angeley Mullins, Latana (15:14):
And that’s the beauty of brand tracking is that you track it over time and it becomes stronger over time because, like you said, you have that baseline. A lot of our customers are tracking monthly or quarterly, but we’re even now starting to go into weekly tracking. And the way the whole industry is going, you’re going to see in the next few years is daily continuous tracking that you can grab datasets. And this is where it becomes really amazing, because then, regardless in which market you’re in, let’s say Starbucks would just be a great example just for purposes of example. Starting off in Seattle and America, and then, of course, they have tons of different stores and some franchises in different countries, and this is where this kind of information becomes absolutely powerful.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (15:59):
Yeah. Well, this is fantastic. Well, Angeley, this is a great time in the show for us to make a transition here. So we ask every guest before they go the same four questions. And the first one is, have you had a miss or two in your career or journey and something you learned from it?
Angeley Mullins, Latana (16:16):
The biggest miss I would say for myself is not going for it sooner. So I actually came from a big corporate background environment, and now I’m more in the startup and hyper growth type of company environment. I wish I would’ve done this sooner. And for me, it’s a miss because all of the learnings that you have and the growth that you have, it’s so much faster, so much quicker. But I would also add a caveat. You have to be up for it. So it’s kind of being on the fast track. If you want it, that’s great, but you have to really want it. But I say my biggest miss is not going for it sooner. I wish I would’ve done it even five to eight years sooner than I did.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (16:52):
Oh, yeah, totally relate to that. And let’s talk about a make or two that you’d like to share.
Angeley Mullins, Latana (17:01):
For me, I love seeing people grow. So I mean, there’s all kinds of business success, but what I would actually say for myself is working with individuals who thought that they didn’t have the skills or couldn’t make it and actually turned up ending up being powerhouses. So for me, that is some of the biggest success, because I feel that as a leader and in a leadership role, the best thing that you can do is to empower others. And to me, that’s bigger than any business success that you can have because that leaves a legacy moving forward and you’ve helped to change someone else’s life.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (17:37):
Oh, that’s amazing. And let’s talk about this idea of a multiplier. The show’s called Multiply Your Success. So we always like to see what kind of multipliers you’ve used.
Angeley Mullins, Latana (17:46):
So beyond the traditional ones, I’ll actually talk about a particular campaign that we have in our company. Of course, your listeners now know that we focus on brands and brand tracking. We actually did a campaign, and we started to focus on the particular awareness of different companies. So we actually track companies. We gather the data and we put that data out there into the universe and talk about these different companies. And what has happened as far as multiplying our success is we see companies react to it. So we did one just on Bumble the other day and their brand awareness and what they could do or not do for their strategy. They’re reacting to it. They’re commenting on it, and then they’re starting to ask us, “Hey, can you help us?”
Angeley Mullins, Latana (18:25):
And so in the marketing universe, it is gold. It is absolute gold to be able to write about a particular company, put it out there, have them react, and then have them basically walk in the virtual door. So talk about multiplying your success. I mean, the leads and everything have gone up tenfold and plus. So it’s been absolutely amazing.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (18:45):
That’s a brilliant idea. And I mean, what you’re doing, just to translate that back, it’s like walking through the grocery store with the free samples or the new restaurant opens up in town or Coldstone, like you mentioned, that maybe says, “Come on in. The first one’s on us. Try it. You give us a chance. Let us show you what we can do.” So I think that strategy is brilliant. Brilliant. Great. Well, the last question, Angeley, that we ask every guest is what does success mean to you?
Angeley Mullins, Latana (19:17):
Success for me is not about necessarily what you’ve achieved. It’s about what you’ve had to overcome to get there. So for me it’s about overcoming adversity, overcoming different people out there that say, “You can’t. it can’t be done,” and then doing it. So this is what success is about for me. And for everyone, for all the listeners out there, I would say don’t compare yourself to anyone else. You’re only competing against yourself. And at the end of the game, just keep believing in yourself and you’ll win. And again, for me, it’s about what you had to overcome.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (19:52):
Yeah. Oh, that’s wonderful. Well, Angeley, as we bring this to a close, is there anything that you were maybe hoping to share or get across that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
Angeley Mullins, Latana (20:03):
I would just say for all of your listeners, if you’re interested in understanding brand awareness, brand perception, your target audiences, understanding that a little bit deeper, come visit us at latana.com. If you want to talk about anything related to brand and growth strategy, they can always reach out to me on LinkedIn.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (20:23):
Perfect. Well, and we’ll make sure we include the link in the show notes, but someone’s probably listening to this. Would you mind spelling Latana and how they get there?
Angeley Mullins, Latana (20:31):
Sure. It’s L-A-T-A-N-A, .com.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (20:36):
Angeley, thank you for a fantastic interview. And let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. So takeaway number one is just what brand tracking is. And I like how Angeley described it. She made it simple, that it’s a combination of social listening, which you may have heard of social listening and looking at social media accounts and getting an aggregate pulse or sense of what’s being talked about on your brand there, and performance marketing, which is looking at results and data and looking at the trends and tracking this over time. And so that’s what brand tracking is and that’s what she does and specializes in along with her company.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (21:20):
Takeaway number two is when she talked about data paralysis and how that is becoming an increasing problem for business leaders all over the world and both large and small, businesses where there is just so much data you have to question where do I start? What’s important? What isn’t important? So it’s a real problem and just something for you to be aware of.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (21:45):
Takeaway number three, I thought it was great when Angeley shared one of her misses was not going for it sooner. I liked how she said that. She didn’t go for it sooner and she wishes that she would’ve jumped into working with startups sooner rather than later.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (22:04):
And now it’s time for today’s win-win. So today’s win-win is when Angeley described what success means to her, and I really liked how she summarized it. She said, “Success is not about what you have achieved, but what you had to overcome to get there.” And isn’t that the truth? It’s really the journey. It’s not the destination. It’s the journey you take to get to that destination that makes it so worthwhile.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (22:38):
And so that’s the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise their business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at bigskyfranchiseteam.com. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.
