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- [00:00]
Ariel Spiegel
Foreign.
- [00:08]
Daniel Murray
Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS Marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the.
- [00:33]
Ariel Spiegel
I care deeply about developing like a true brand philosophy up front, but like sometimes done is better than perfect and it's like, it's just really good to get user feedback and you can always evolve.
- [00:47]
Daniel Murray
Welcome back to another episode of the Marketing Millennials. Today we're diving into building a brand from zero, when to name it, how to position it, and the key steps to get started. Joining us is Ariel Spiegel, a brand building powerhouse with 15 years of experience. From co founding Co Fertility to working with iconic brands like Victoria Secrets, Pink and Coach, she's here to share how she helped brands go from idea to impact. Let's get into it. So Arielle, I wanted to start off and ask, how did you get into marketing?
- [01:24]
Ariel Spiegel
So way back in the day I actually, you know, like when I was starting out in college, I actually wanted to get into journalism. I always loved writing. You know, growing up I was always coming up with, with crazy stories and you know, I had editorial internships and one day I actually got lucky and got, got an internship somewhere here in Boston, which is where I'm from, but on the other side of kind of like what makes content successful. It was a digital marketing internship that was just what I was lucky to kind of get and land at the time. And it actually really stuck with me. I learned, you know, content is definitely king, but, you know, there's so much more involved with making content successful and resonate with people and reaching the right people. If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, it kind of doesn't really matter. So that was when I kind of first got the marketing bug. I think that was the summer after my sophomore year of college. And it's, it's been sticking ever since.
- [02:30]
Daniel Murray
So you've, you worked at some cool companies, coach Victoria's Secret, but you also started your own brand. Code Fertility. What is your, your first steps of starting a brand? How do, what should one a person start thinking about for the first step? I'm starting a brand. What are the first things I should start thinking about?
- [02:52]
Ariel Spiegel
Well, something really important that I think people and you know, I'm assuming everyone who's listening is obviously in marketing themselves. But you know, if somebody's starting a company, they really should think about bringing on a co founder with marketing expertise or at the very least like an early, early, early stage employee. Because you don't, you don't know what you don't know. And I think it's, it's really important to be able to define from the beginning who your audience or audiences are. And because you can't just build a product and then figure out how to market it, you really need to understand who you're building it for, what their needs are. And then, you know, you can kind of discuss how to bring it to market. But that really should have a seat at the table from the very beginning. So, you know, that's kind of the first step, first and foremost is just to make sure that there's like a true marketer really in the room. But yeah, like, you know, going back to just like audience segmentation, that to me is really the ground level step of defining a brand. And because from there you can really kind of figure out like, what are those audiences pain points? You know, what problems are you trying to solve? You know, oftentimes founders, when they start companies, they themselves have one on one or personal experience with an actual problem or a gap in the market somewhere, but they haven't really like sat down and figured out, you know, the nitty gritty of exactly, you know, what pain points their product or their company is going to solve. So really understanding, you know, what are, what are the psychographics of those audiences, you know, what drives them, what are their hopes and dreams, not just their demographics, although that, you know, definitely is super important. But you know, in co fertility Sake, for example, you know, we were very, very intentional from the beginning, my co founders and I, in feeling like it needed to kind of be divided up into two separate but related brands. So on one side of the company there's Freeze by Co, which helps women freeze their eggs more accessibly and affordably, even hopefully free, if they donate half of the eggs retrieved to another family that can't conceive. So gay dads, those with infertility, cancer survivors and others, you know, making that part of the problem a little bit easier for people who potentially want to freeze their eggs but can't afford it, or they just want to donate eggs, you know, because they're motivated by doing really good for another family. Then the other side of the company is Family by Co, which is a tech enabled matching platform for intended parents seeking egg donors to grow their families. So those, you know, all those people that I mentioned before who would be potentially working with an egg donor, I say that to clarify that like these are two extremely separate audiences. A 25 year old grad student has completely different, you know, values, hopes and dreams. They are engaging in a different way than say like the 40 year old gay dads who are hoping to give their child a sibling. So really, really defining those audiences is like absolutely critical before you can really kind of dive in and like developing what that brand actually looks and feels like.
- [06:17]
Daniel Murray
Yeah, I want to, I want to go into that a little bit. So you first figure out the audience. Product marketers are probably the best at doing this that I found. Product marketers are the best at finding finding out audience, going through strategy, talking market research, doing that, that upfront. I think so many brands don't do that upfront, which is kind of scary. They're like a year in and they still don't really know exactly who the audience is or haven't really talked to many people. They just had an idea and wanted to start with it. Right, so did you. So you found these, these audiences. Is that when you came up with name and branding? How did that happen?
- [06:57]
Ariel Spiegel
Yeah, well, so CO Fertility is actually kind of like gone on its own branding journey. I founded the original CO Fertility, which really started out as like a content focused site that aims to provide resources and tools for people who were facing fertility challenges. So I was still at Victoria's Secret Pink at the time. My husband had just sold his company. I was interviewing with other brands and thinking about my next move. We were thinking of moving to Boston, but all the while we were having a really hard time getting and staying pregnant. All in all, it ended up taking us about two and a half years to get pregnant with my first son. And even though I was talking with these other companies, I had this nagging feeling that I wanted to do something in the fertility space. And this was 2018. At the time I felt like, you know, anytime you ever googled any fertility related question, the consumer experience was pretty poor. It was like really janky forums, blogs that were very anecdotal, fertility clinic sites that were very impersonal and there was nothing out there that felt like truly educational and informative and useful and trustworthy, but still with like a brand tone of voice and personality that really could like connect with consumers. And you know, I was really, you know, I felt like there was a huge white space for that in the market because I, you know, fertility challenges affect. One in four American people trying to conceive will face some sort of fertility challenge. Really. You know, they used to say one in, one in eight then it was one in six. Now, you know, we're kind of seeing it might be one in four. So I knew this was like a really underserved market. So that's how Co Fertility originally began. And you know, really just like aiming to provide that content that felt really trustworthy but like actually relatable. And you know, fast forward about like a year and a half after I had launched that company, I ended up joining forces with who eventually became my co founder, Halle Teko, who's this really prominent and really respected entrepreneur and investor in the health tech space. We had collaborated a ton within the, within the fertility space. Cause she had launched her company Natalist around the same time. So we were kind of partners in that way. And she had kind of mentioned the idea of, of, you know, what, what Co Fertility eventually evolved into being. And you know, her, myself and our third co founder, Lauren Mackler, who is still, she is CEO of the company. She comes from Uber. You know, the three of us fundraised, we, we raised about 5 million for our seed round from all female investors, which was, and you know, we built in stealth for about a year and then we publicly launched in the fall of 22. But you know, going back to your question about the name, you know, when we were building the company, that was like really a sticking point was figuring out, you know, what our name could be because we already had the name Co Fertility, which is what I had kind of come up with originally. You know, the way that I kind of came about that was I was just kind of thinking about all of the, all of the emotions and all of the feelings that I really wanted this brand to evoke. You know, I wanted to make sure people felt supported, you know, that there was a sense of community, compassion. We wanted to, you know, and the word, the prefix co just really kept kind of sticking out in my mind as a way to emphasize that people are not doing this alone. As the company eventually evolves to focus a little bit more on third party reproduction and the donor space, that just becomes even more symbolic. Right. So, you know, we did go on like a whole naming journey when we, you know, when we were taking Co Fertility in this new direction and you know, I joined forces with my co founders and we were not set on keeping Co Fertility. You know, we really did a lot of brainstorming. We hired naming consultants and you know, we, we debated and brainstormed and you know, we actually came pretty close a couple times to naming the company something different. But, you know, everyone we talked to was kind of like, why don't you just stick with CO fertility? It really, it plays so well into what you guys are doing and this sense of community and that you're providing. So ultimately we just like stuck with it and I'm really glad we did. I think it, I really do think it's like the perfect name for the company still.
- [11:36]
Daniel Murray
It is a great name, but I want to, I want to go into. So you first figure out when you're starting a brand is you do deep audience segmentation. For your case, you kind of had to serve two markets because it was a marketplace basically.
- [11:52]
Ariel Spiegel
Yep. I mean, anyone who's like starting a company or who's starting to, or who's thinking about marketing an early stage company, kind of like creating a brand from zero, you know, if you, if you're working, if you're starting a company or you're working on launching a company, you kind of already have an idea of like the problem you're trying to solve. So, you know, obviously that needs to be articulated, but really that first step is defining those audiences, figuring out like how they think, how they feel, what platforms they engage on, what kind of things do they talk about at their dinner table at night, you know, what are their aspirations, what other brands are they consumers of? You know, where would they travel, what music would they listen to. All of that really would kind of go into that audience segmentation exercise. And then once you kind of have figured out who you're trying to serve and you already kind of know what the problem is that you're trying to solve, that's when you can kind of start to move into that next phase of really defining what is the company's mission, really refining. There are a lot of really great AI tools out there. I mean, ChatGPT. If somebody like doesn't necessarily have the knowledge of like different tools, you know, even just like a chatgpt would be amazing at just kind of helping refine, you know, what you think the problem is that you're trying to solve into just like a really clear and concise elevator pitch, ideally that would have already been done with whatever your pitch deck looks like, because, you know, you'll need to be able to kind of concisely define your business in order to help raise capital. But you know, really that's when you guys can figure out what your brand stands for, because you'll need to understand your audience first and then you'll be able to figure out like how to tap into that audience and what would.
- [13:39]
Daniel Murray
Resonate with them for people who don't know. So I'm just trying to recap everything so everybody who's listening. So first, please figure out your audience, do audience research, understand their problems, understand their pain points beyond demographic. Second, now that you've done that, you have to get a statement, elevated pitch, put that problem into something concise. AI is a great partner when you're starting now because everybody's using it. And if you know how to use it right, and prompted right, you could probably get 90% there. So after that, what is the next step of. Of building a brand?
- [14:16]
Ariel Spiegel
You know, it depends on the company, right? Because, like, as you mentioned, Co Fertility is really kind of like a marketplace model. In our case, a lot of what kind of took place next was really defining, like, the different segments of the business. So if you are launching a brand that carries various products or actually is like a marketplace model like Co Fertility, or has different, like, subsectors that, that serve different audiences, getting all that out on paper is really valuable. And, you know, even if it kind of like lives in your brain, developing at least, like, I'm kind of a visual, that will just really help you clarify the structure of the brand. Because sometimes even within one brand, like, you might have different products or, you know, just different verticals that speak to different audiences in different ways. And then, you know, you can kind of refine if there's, like, specific language that you might need to use for different verticals of your brand. That's kind of like what would happen next then, right? Is like actually diving into each specific part of your brand to figure out, like, what is language that we would use, what is language that we wouldn't use, you know, what are, like, the specifics around how this works. You know, I'd say the first part of developing a brand from zero is kind of figuring out the more abstract, who are we serving, you know, what problems are we solving, you know, how would we define our business? And then it starts to get a little bit more specific, right? So, you know, then you get a little bit more specific into, like, well, what is this? What is the structure of this company and this business? And how does that play into, like, the brand ecosystem? After that is kind of when you would start to figure out, like, how does it come to life visually, textually, you know, whether that's figuring out what the brand actually looks like in terms of look and feel, typography, you know, obviously their, you know, logo exploration, color palette, things like that. But I think that tone of voice is actually even, even more important because that's what's going to determine how that comes to life visually. So I guess I'm jumping around a little bit, but like it would go abstract to specific from like audience definition, business definition, tone and like brand attributes and things we do or don't say. And the visual is actually kind of how that comes to life at the end. And actually naming really should also come at the end of this entire exercise because you want the name, which is so important to really evoke everything that you've already defined.
- [16:59]
Daniel Murray
You also said at the beginning you started this as basically content, right? It was a content machine. How does actually building an audience basically up front to help this, this journey? I feel like you learn so much from just putting a lot of stuff out there and seeing people's reactions. So how do do you recommend when people are starting to start something that like you did, where you're putting out a bunch of content, people are reading you, understanding your audience deeper and deeper through that or could you explain a little about that journey you went through?
- [17:30]
Ariel Spiegel
Yeah, well, I mean the original Co Fertility was like a very SEO focused business. So, you know, a lot of it was and it's, it's tough because with something like that you have to be really patient. It's not like an instant gratification. Like if you're running ads on meta, you will know like within like a week to two week period, like what content is kind of resonating versus like what's falling flat. So basically like while I was building CO Fertility and while I was like writing content and building the tools and getting the branding set up and everything, I would like, you know, I'm not the most patient person. So, you know, I literally just started posting on Instagram. This was in 2018 and originally it started out like, because I didn't really have any branded content to share and I knew from the beginning that I did not want this to be like a personal influencer situation or blog. Like I wanted Co Fertility to be a trustworthy brand, but because I didn't have that yet, I was like, I'm just going to start engaging on Instagram, like within the fertility community, which really is like thriving on social because a lot of people don't have, don't have a lot of others to turn to in these situations. Even though fertility issues are so common. I started just like posting on Instagram. Whether it was like personal updates or you know, reposting other infertility content that like made me laugh or providing like hot takes on like regulatory updates to fertility Treatment mandates at different, in different states around the country. There wasn't a huge strategy to it except for I wanted to make sure that anything that I posted, you know, felt aligned with what I eventually wanted the, the brand to feel like once it did launch. So it, we definitely kind of amassed a little bit of a, of a community on Instagram for sure. You know, that's part of why it made sense for me to join forces with my co founders because I really did have this like innate understanding of the fertility community and we have like this built in community of so many intended parents or you know, hopeful parents that for the family by co side of co fertility was extremely relevant and you know, figuring out the right way to engage with them kind of early on I think definitely helped.
- [19:53]
Daniel Murray
I love it. I think so many people take building audience as an underrated thing. And I also like that you said you also curated a lot of content. I think people are afraid of doing that up front. But I still want to go down the journey of you now you understand your tone of voice, your brand. What is the step to now go to market with all this cool branding, all this tone of voice, this name, how do you go to market with that?
- [20:20]
Ariel Spiegel
I think, you know, it still goes back to having just like a really solid understanding of your audience and, you know, where are they engaging and your, your kind of marketing mix probably looks pretty different depending on, you know, who you're trying to serve. So freeze by co, for example, you know, where we're helping women freeze their eggs, you know, at hopefully an earlier age where they can actually like do something proactive about their fertility. Those women are engaging in like a completely different way on completely different platforms than someone who is googling, trying to find, you know, an egg donor to help them grow their family who like matches their cultural and ethnic background, for example. So in terms of like bringing it to market, you just have to play around with different platforms. Hopefully you'll have a solid understanding of where you should be based on all that audience research and definition you've done up front. But if not like, especially if you're an early stage company, you know, I'm a big fan of testing. You just have to, you do have to have a little bit of patience. And you know, I would encourage early stage founders or marketers at startups to really like embrace testing, make sure every single thing you do is measurable and make sure that when you do launch, you do it in a way that feels cohesive. But like just test and learn.
- [21:51]
Daniel Murray
I love that There wasn't a specific playbook there because I actually think that a lot of markers are just trying to figure it out, trying to put a lot of stuff out there, try to figure out what working or what's not working. It's. It's not like you said, my first step is like, I knew I should go to Instagram and Instagram, and it might be Instagram, if you actually knew your audience was just, like, all hanging out there, which you kind of knew because you posted a bunch of things. But I think that form of testing and figuring things out is a skill that marketers need to overcome at the beginning and now and having that urge to just keep putting things out there, testing, failing. But also, I like the key point you made too, of then make sure these things, these tests are measurable.
- [22:40]
Ariel Spiegel
Yeah, I'm a big fan of, like, my boss at Victoria's Secret used to say all the time that done is better than perfect. You know, it's hard, especially when we work in marketing and, like, you know, we hold ourselves to a really high standard. And I always say that, like, marketing is the one of the only fields where literally, Joe Schmo off the street could go on any marketing platform and, like, criticize how you are performing as a marketer or, you know, weigh in on what you should be doing or send you things like, try this. And that's why, you know, I think marketing Millennials is amazing for, like, the content you. You share about everyone and their mother thinking that they're a marketer. But, like, at the end of the day, it really just, like, all goes back to trying to understand your audience. And, you know, if you need to test and fail and pivot, that's okay as long as there's not, like, some massive amount of budget tied to whatever it is that you're testing. If there is, then that might be a different story. And, like, measure twice, cut once, but just do it. Like, if you're, if you're building something from scratch, like, I know you want to launch it and like, for it to be perfect and for it to be this, like, bright, shiny curtains up moment because, you know, it should be something you're really proud of. But at the end of the day, like, you know, there might be areas that, like, you could launch sooner and quietly and get, like, early feedback or beta test. And, you know, I don't think people should. I care deeply about, about, you know, developing like, a true brand philosophy up front, but, like, sometimes done is better than perfect. And it's like, it's just really good to get user feedback and you can always evolve.
- [24:23]
Daniel Murray
What's the difference of figuring out your audience when you're first about to launch and then you've launched? What is the process of continuing getting feedback and knowledge and figuring out new audiences and figuring out this doesn't work or that doesn't work. What are some things you did for that?
- [24:42]
Ariel Spiegel
I think just asking your community, number one. I mean obviously like yes, you would, you would compare metrics. There's the quant, there's like, there's quantitative feedback and there's also qualitative feedback. So like I mentioned, you should really only be doing things that you can measure. And on some platforms you'll know pretty early on how things are resonating. On others it might take more time. So, you know, make sure that you're just like staying on top of, you know, every piece of content that you're, you're coming out with or you know, every email you're sending or whatever your goals might be. It just, it totally depends on the company and the audience of course, but there's so much value and just like good old fashioned user surveys and interviews and you know, one of my favorite things to do, you know, I'm actually, I'm not with CO Fertility full time anymore. I'm an advisor now. But one of my favorite things to do when I was full time with CO Fertility is, you know, interview our freeze by CO members. Every single woman who goes through the process and has applied to potentially participate in the split program where women can freeze their eggs for free if they donate half of the eggs retrieved to another family. You know, we would get on zoom and connect with them face to face. And you know, of course part of it is like informed consent, disclosure, things like that. But the other part is just like hearing from them like why they want to do this, how they found out about us. Although we, based on our, the metrics, you know, we knew how they found out about us or what brought them in. But like, you know, just hearing straight from them, you know, upfront in that case, but also like throughout the process, like pulse your audience to see if there are any like true brand evangelists who like care so much about what you're doing that they like want to help you guys early on. That's the beauty of an early stage company is that like your early users or your early community members probably feel like they're brought along the journey with you and they will, they'll be happy to give you feedback or at least Some will. And if they're not, then you can always incentivize them with like an Amazon gift card. But there's really no substitute for like actual connection with your core audience. I recently got on a zoom. I got, I had to get a space heater for my son's bedroom and I was like having, I mean they really needed some help with their instructional collateral, but I was having some, some difficulty actually like setting it up. It's this like super techie space heater that I can control from my phone and the seat. I reached out to their customer support and the CTO actually like got on a zoom with me and like walked me through the whole process of like the setup. And you know, why they designed it the way they did. And that was like as a founder, I loved that he did that because you know, it's so important to like actually get that face to face interaction with your audience so that you can kind of like hear firsthand how things are resonating, what's working, what's not, and continue to like refine and evolve your brand.
- [27:47]
Daniel Murray
Also I think it gives you so much insights and data that you don't get from the Internet. I mean you, even with tracking you could figure out they might have came from Instagram, but you could talk to them and say, oh my friend told me about your page. And I then I went to Instagram or my, I was here, I saw this first, but this is my first interaction with your brand or I'm having trouble doing X, Y and Z. Can you help me with this? You get so many things that you wouldn't get on a form or on right pixel.
- [28:22]
Ariel Spiegel
Basically, yeah.
- [28:24]
Daniel Murray
Lastly, where, what's a marking hill you.
- [28:27]
Ariel Spiegel
Would die on Marketing hill that I would die on. And you know, this might be somewhat controversial from an. An early stage founder is not to sleep on organic marketing. You know, so much focus is placed on growth marketing, especially when you're launching a company from zero. Obviously growth is the priority, but you know, depending on the industry that you're in, there's so much value in organic marketing. You there, there's just such a place for it when it comes to actually driving conversion down the line. If it is like a long tail funnel business like Co fertility for example, you know, if you have the resources to do it right. I think that a lot of early stage founders do sleep on organic marketing and you know, it definitely has the potential to help grow your audience if done in the right way.
- [29:27]
Daniel Murray
I mean I'm always going to plus one organic Marketing. I also think if you can build that, you can have a repeatable thing that doesn't rely on these growth engines that a lot of companies just rely on. And when prices go up, it's harder to sustain that growth. You did, but if you have channels that are own channels that are your channels or a way to connect your audience through an algorithm, you're way more likely to sustain.
- [29:59]
Ariel Spiegel
Yeah, I think, I think it's, I think it's hard for early stage founders because they're under so much pressure for growth, you know, but it's tough to sustain and you know, I think sometimes it can be helpful for people to kind of like think about it in a little bit of a different way and perhaps like investing money that might have gone into like a paid media strategy in hiring like a kick ass content marketing specialist or something. It feels different because it's like money going into a hire, but that could potentially lead to more leads and you know, perhaps growing your audience compared to investing it in paid, that could get like super expensive. So it's, it's challenging. I know I've like worn that hat, but, but it can pay off if people are patient.
- [30:50]
Daniel Murray
Lastly, where could people find you and what you're doing?
- [30:54]
Ariel Spiegel
Yeah, people can find me on LinkedIn. I'm Arielle Spiegel. That's Spiegel with a P. And they can also find me on Instagram. I'm Arielle R. Spiegel. I do integrating integrated marketing consulting for all different types of brands. I help with growth brand and I also help scale happy, efficient, productive marketing teams. So super passionate about all and would love to chat with anyone.
- [31:27]
Daniel Murray
Well, thank you so much for joining and sharing your knowledge and I truly appreciate it.
- [31:33]
Ariel Spiegel
Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for having me.
- [31:37]
Daniel Murray
Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.