Marketing Buddy #5: "A strong community is one of the most powerful forms of organic growth that you can experience and it's free" with Tyler Stambaugh

👋 Hello, Branding and Marketing builders. How are you doing today?

Holidays are here, mixed with political revelations, and it's a necessary time to recharge. I hope you will take the time to reflect and relax during the holidays. For me, that's my plan. I will be sharing 1 or 2 more interviews, and then I will take some time off. I had planned to immerse myself in the Space Brands issue, but I will save that for the back-to-school season.

To celebrate the growth of the newsletters in September, there will be some exciting things for all of you to enjoy and engage more with the content I have been sharing here. I can't believe we have published more than 40 issues, alongside my other newsletter. Not an easy task but it is such a school.

By the way, I would really appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to share Your Story of Your Branding Letter. Your feedback is super valuable, and it will only take about 5 to 7 minutes to complete the short quiz. Let me know what you like, what you'd like to see more of, and if you have any questions. Thank you!

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This week, let's discover our new guest in the series ‘‘Marketing Buddy’’ — a great addition to our Brand Revealers. Occasionally, we will invite them to join the letter and share marketing wisdom and strategies. We have to become friends with the craft of Marketing, so let’s bring them in and grow!

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👋 Marketing Buddy: Tyler Stambaugh

I discovered Tyler's work after he commented on a post by Mark Schaefer. We kicked it off with an intro chat, which was already like a full podcast. Tyler shared many valuable insights and was incredibly kind and generous. After several months, I am excited to share his interview just in time finally. It's perfectly timed as he's celebrating the second anniversary of MAGNETIQ. So, happy anniversary and cheers to many more years to come.

☕ Grab your coffee or cocktail and enjoy the read.

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Who are you? What is your profession?

My name is Tyler Stambaugh. I am the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of a commerce community platform called MAGNETIQ.

Tyler

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Where are you located?

🇺🇸 New York City, USA.

Tyler

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Where can we discover your work? (website, socials…).

MAGNETIQ
LinkedIn • X

Tyler

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What is your definition of Marketing? And what is, in your opinion, the main difference between Branding and Marketing?

Marketing is the act of communicating the mission of a company, teaching the world how they can help, and, most importantly, why it matters.
→ You leverage marketing to attract your initial customers, and you use branding to sustain them and create an emotional connection.

Tyler

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Seth Godin, the marketing expert, says, "You cannot be seen until you learn to see". What do you think about this superpower of seeing what others do not see and providing a solution to it?

I think it's literally the cornerstone of any successful business. However, just creating a solution to it in a vacuum does not equate to success. You must create a great solution and find a way to communicate to people why it effectively fills the gap (and why it's worth paying money to do so).

Tyler

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Do you have any tips for creative entrepreneurs and Brand Revealers to improve their marketing skills in three steps?

#1 • It's very difficult, but be intentional and, dare I say, creative when thinking about how to represent ROI to stakeholders. For most management, it's what primarily matters.

#2 • Don't fall into the trap that being everywhere and on all the time is the end-all-be-all strategy. Targeted messages on the right channels often do wonders more for brand building than using a megaphone.

#3 • Creating experiences that your target customers can interact with can create a stronger bond. So perhaps you want to create a video, but go the next step and see if you can make it interactive or tied to some sort of feedback or user-generated outcome. This will begin to be infused into more and more marketing as time progresses, so start to adopt it now!

Tyler

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What are the repeated words you hear about your Branding and Marketing from your audience, teams, and people who discover you? (3 to 5 keywords)

✦ Sleek ✦ Professional ✦ Impressive ✦ Thoughtful

Tyler

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Do you have any recommendations for mastering marketing, such as books, podcasts, conferences, etc.?

❇️ Mark Schaefer → Start reading his work from the start. He's always skating years ahead of the puck, and it's been great to see his predictions come to fruition.

Tyler

This is the transcription of the sur-mesure
questions you can listen to in the audio of the post.

Could you share with me the genesis of your company, MAGNETIQ? I love the name. How did the idea come to you?

My co-founder Kaylan and I were leveraging blockchain technology back in 2022. We worked on numerous projects for social impact organizations. One of the reasons they used NFTs was as an identification anchor for people who opted in and supported their cause. They aimed to build a community around these supporters using that digital asset as an anchor. We worked on many of these projects and saw the power of these assets in building communities, but each project was bespoke. We had to customize every single time.

So we said, "Let's create a platform for this, and let's make it really accessible for brands and consumers, especially brands that already have IP they can leverage and have already created connections." We came up with the idea by feeling the pain, and it was really special. Now, it has evolved into a community platform for consumer brands looking to build a community around their brand with their super fans.

Tyler

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You told me that you had an engaging Discord community that helped you experience the power of community. Could you share three lessons learned from that experience?

#1 • One thing is that a strong community can be one of the most powerful forms of organic growth you can ever experience, and it’s free. The amount of word-of-mouth promotion I received from my community and the things they did for me, such as creating content and artwork, and contributing to moderating my chat when I streamed, was really special.

#2 • What I also realized is that it's one of the best ways to get to know the different facets of the people who are engaging with your brand. They would come to me for a particular thing, but then I would open up different channels where people could discuss various topics. I could then take that feedback and incorporate it into my content and the entertainment I was providing. People would grow with me and give me the ideas—valuable insights that every marketer wants to know.

#3 • And the last piece that I have learned is that a community is living and breathing. You have to give it tender love and care. If you don't, you'll miss out on the benefits, and people will move on. It can reach a point where it self-sustains, but it takes a lot of work to get there. Once it does, it's truly special. However, you still need to maintain it; it's not something you can just launch, set, and forget.

Tyler

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Why would the brand need to onboard the community on a community platform rather than creating one for themselves or leveraging social media tools?

Brands have created these communities themselves. Sephora's Beauty Insider Community is one of the biggest examples, right? But that's a behemoth of a program. They are a multi-billion-dollar company and part of a large conglomerate, I think LVMH. They had the staffing, resources, and executive buy-in to build one of these communities. It takes a lot of time and effort to put the necessary features together and create it.

For small to medium brands with a strong following but limited staff and resources, a community platform is the best way to realize the value of community without breaking the bank or your back

Using social media tools is fine, but they merely create an audience. If you're building a community, you really need a home where people know they can come and belong. A place with a sense of exclusivity of who goes in there, right? People want to be there for a reason. On social media, you are somewhat just floating around, capturing people as they enter your algorithmic orbit. It's not the same; it won't generate the same results.

Tyler

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What has marketing taught you about leadership and more largely, what has it revealed to you about creativity?

What is really interesting is that I came from very product-heavy roles throughout my career. I never really understood marketing or its value. Now that I have launched this company, I have come to understand that marketing is one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle. You can create the best solution in the world, but if no one knows about it, why it's important, and how it helps them, then it doesn't matter. It could be the best thing ever, but if you can't effectively market it to your target audience, there's no point.

It has also revealed to me that I do have a creative side, and I now lean into it and cherish it. It's different type of work, but I really love it.

Tyler

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You can connect with him and discover his mindset and work @Tyler Stambaugh

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🧠 Scale that Marketing!

• 🏆 Entrepreneurship World Cup (Is your company solving some of the world's biggest challenges? Maybe you should give it a shot. Best of luck!).

• 🦄 Community building strategy (People & Company is now owned by Substack, paving the way for community know-how beyond the platform).

• 🎯 A founder’s roadmap to progress (You need a clear cut between failure and success. That is the only way to ensure you learn something). 

• 🔋Better Booch is a branding crush (Gut Health has never felt this cool. Well, it visually pops, engages, and turns heads with fresh illustrative language). 

I hope you enjoyed this new interview.
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Sending 🧘🏽‍♀️vibes
Keva.