New Podcast Episode: Integrating Business and Author Brands with Jack Murtha

What is the difference between a business brand and an author brand?

To do a business brand in the right way, you really have to start with their customers, specifically, their target consumers. Who are they? What are the problems that they’re facing? What matters to them? Then you consider what you offer that target audience and how you support them and their pain points. That’s the core thinking behind a company’s brand. And when it comes to an author’s brand, it’s the same exact thing except for an individual person.

How can business and expert brands collaborate rather than compete?

Traditionally, the executive has served the business, and this is simply what boards expect. That’s what investors expect. That’s what EVERYBODY expects. But in the digital age, things have kind of gotten turned around. The core problem is that we’re all inundated with marketing. It never goes away. If you are a business, an executive, or a marketer with something important to say and something of value to transmit to your audience, the job is a lot harder just because of the inundation. Yes, you can still get at the core messages that the business wants to deliver, but you wrap it up in a way that people can relate to. You have to make it authentic. You know, it can’t be this cardboard cutout of a person. But when you can authentically connect with someone, that is so powerful for a business.

An author’s name can tell us a lot such as: who are you trying to reach, what are the pain points you’re addressing, how are you helping address those pain points? We make sure that your name, as the author, is the overall umbrella of your brand, therefore everything else goes underneath it. This is very similar for a business. It’s interesting because oftentimes, working primarily with authors, you are working primarily with businesses. We put the author’s name as the URL, the main umbrella, and then we’ll introduce the business underneath that. The business is part of what they’re doing, part of what they do under the brand, who they are, and what their expertise is. But also for business websites, you have the “about” page where the person is part of the overall greater business. 

How do marketing, branding, and publicity work together for optimized promotion?

The number one mistake that I see leaders make is rushing to market with a half-baked message just for the sake of rushing to market with any message at all. A good brand is all about your customer, your audience, and their needs. The brand ties that all together to build connections with this group of people. You can do marketing and publicity without a brand, and maybe even get good results. But think of it as compounding returns on your investment and getting the greatest ROI possible.

Marketing and publicity are the avenues through which your audience discovers your brand and falls in love with your brand. Marketing and publicity are hard, they are time consuming, and for a lot of people, authors especially, there’s an investment involved. So it’s easy to wonder, “Can I minimize that investment?” The answer is no, unfortunately. The problem is, as a society, we’ve traditionally viewed things like brand marketing as siloed pillars of a business and that has led to siloed operations and siloed results. 

Is it ever too early to begin branding?

So there are a couple of different schools of thoughts on this one. You can think aspirationally about your book or your product, and then build your brand based on the aspirational “brand” you create. But of course, there are some problems with that ideology. If you have no idea what it is you want to put out there into the world, then maybe you should spend some time getting to know yourself and your goals first. You should really take your time and invest in yourself. Really, once you’re an author, you’re always going to be an author, so take your time to do it right. If you need help figuring out your branding or marketing, hire someone like Map Change, Smith Publicity, or another similar book promotion expert to help you talk through, bounce ideas off each other, and really get that branding nail down exactly where you want it and then worry about publication and how to get it out there and when to get it out there. But absolutely take your time. There’s always going to be a need for your expertise. 

Jack Murtha is a co-founder of Map Change, a thought leadership agency specializing in healthcare and technology. His work has propelled the world’s most innovative companies and leaders to new heights, earning millions in new business, securing exits, and steering policy change. He’s also a co-author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book “Dead Wrong: Diagnosing and Treating Healthcare’s Misinformation Illness.”