How to Win podcast with Peep Laja

Building a brand from the ground up with Oyster HR's Kevan Lee

Jan 30, 2023

31:42

Creator website

Highlights

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Organic Social Is Your Best Marketing Channel

02:21

Global Employment Platform

02:21

What Does Your ACV Need to Be at to Make LinkedIn Ads Profitably?

01:55

Introduction

4min

Building a Brand From Scratch

2min

The Story Brand Framework Isn't Working.

3min

B2B Marketing Is a Shell for B2C Marketing

2min

B2B Tools - What Are the Key Pieces to the Marketing Engine?

2min

Are You Thinking About Hiring a PR Agency?

2min

What's the Difference Between Buffer and Oyster?

2min

Organic Social Is Your Best Marketing Channel

2min

What Does Your ACV Need to Be at to Make LinkedIn Ads Profitably?

2min

10.

Global Employment Platform

2min

11.

How to Build a Monopoly

2min

12.

What You Learned at Oyster in the Last Two Years?

3min

13.

Three Key Lessons Learned From Kevin Oyster

3min

Summary:
This week on How To Win: Kevan Lee, Senior VP of Marketing at Oyster HR, a management platform for globally distributed teams. Before joining Oyster, Kevan spent six years as VP of Marketing at Buffer, a social media management platform that helps brands and businesses engage with their online audience. Kevan is an expert in brand strategy, marketing leadership, and category creation and shares his expertise through regular appearances at events and on podcasts.

In this episode, Kevan walks us through some key marketing strategies from across his career. We discuss differentiating your brand story, the benefits of handling PR in-house, and why the category you choose matters. I weigh in on the power of organic social, investing in original research, and why you should strive to be a category of one.

Key Points:

What marketing strategies worked at Buffer? (01:32)
Advice for building a brand from scratch (04:08)
Kevan talks brand story structure (05:25)
I weigh in on the issue of sameness across brand stories (07:40)
Kevan emphasizes the importance of 'the why' with a quote from Simon Sinek (08:32)
Kevan lays out the important pieces of the Buffer marketing engine (11:36)
Kevan reflects on Buffer's success with in-house PR (12:02)
I weigh the benefits of PR investment with a quote from Axia Public Relations' Jason Mudd (13:37)
How is Oyster's marketing machine set up? (14:54)
I explore a successful organic social case study from creative agency Rise at Seven (17:06)
Kevan talks about Google and LinkedIn paid social (19:11)
How has timing impacted Kevan's career? (20:13)
Kevan discusses the creation of the Global Employment category (21:51)
I discuss the idea of being a category of one with a quote from Peter Thiel, founder of Paypal and Palantir (23:44)
What bets haven't paid off at Oyster? (26:02)
Wrap-up (30:31)

Mentioned:

Donald Miller's StoryBrand Framework

Simon Sinek Website

Jason Mudd LinkedIn

Rise at Seven Website

Peter Thiel LinkedIn

My Links: