How to Transform Your Brand with The Power of a Great Name - BM413

Susan Friedmann [00:00:31]:

Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. 

Today, my special guest is Alexandra Watkins. Alexandra is the name behind the naming firm, Eat My Words. And if you've ever eaten a Wendy's Baconator, you've literally eaten her words. Since 2,005, she and her team have created memorable names for countless companies, coaches, and consultants. Her breakthrough book, Hello, My Name is Awesome, was named a top ten marketing book by Inc. Magazine.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:19]:

Alexandra, what an absolute pleasure it is to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.

Alexandra Watkins [00:01:27]:

Oh, I'm so glad to be here, Susan. Thank you for having me.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:31]:

So I know that your big thing is obviously creating brand names that stick. But let's start off and I want to find out what your thoughts are about the importance of branding for a nonfiction author.

Alexandra Watkins [00:01:49]:

It's really important, and I know it can be confusing because you have your personal name, the name of your book or books, and a company name as well, often. Or maybe sometimes 2 of those are the same. Maybe your personal name is your company name. Creating a brand that works across all of them, and I've struggled with this too. Like, my company colors are all pink, and my book cover is yellow and blue. Yeah. It's like, what am I? Am I the book colors? Or am my company, Eat My Words, are we the pink colors? It's really important that you can define who you are, and that you have a brand that is recognizable. So when people see it, they know, like, oh, I love when people say, oh, did you come up with that Alexandra, that looks like an Eat My Words name.

Alexandra Watkins [00:02:41]:

That's when you have a brand because you stand for something and people recognize that.

Susan Friedmann [00:02:47]:

So for you, your name well, the name of your company is your brand. However, many authors use their name, their birth name as their brand. But I'm like, is that something that somebody is going to do a search on? That's always my question to them.

Alexandra Watkins [00:03:07]:

That is a great question. Wait. I have to write that down because I've never said it that way. Because I always say it, like, they're not gonna find you organically, but that's a better way to say it. Yes. If my company name and at one time it was alexandrawatkins.com, but nobody would find me if they at that time I was a copywriter. No one would find me as a copywriter. But as Eat My Words, for instance, we work with a lot of food and beverage companies, so that speaks volumes of what we do.

Alexandra Watkins [00:03:38]:

And the reason not to name your I feel pretty strongly. Like, your company name says nothing. Your personal name says nothing about you. It does to the people that know you, to your family and friends, clients that know you. But for people that are just meeting you for the first time or coming in contact with your company name for the first time, they don't. So let me give you an example. There's a woman named Lynette Hoye. Her name says nothing about what she does.

Alexandra Watkins [00:04:06]:

She is a fiery publicist. We were working with Lynette, and she said, I need a better name that expresses who I am. So we rebranded her Fire Talker PR. And her tagline was hot on the press because she was relentless with the press. She calls herself the fire chief. She works in the firehouse. Her seminar is called ignite your visibility. She has packages like controlled burn and fire starter, And her theme song is fire by the Ohio Players, which she can blast before she does a speaking engagement.

Alexandra Watkins [00:04:45]:

That's an example. And Lynette, she hasn't written a book yet. But if she did, she could lean into that theme, right? If she wanted to. There's a lot of wordplay. I'm a really big believer in names that lend themselves to wordplay because you can do so much with them, like she has with the fire theme.

Susan Friedmann [00:05:04]:

And that's a beautiful example. I absolutely love it. And, of course, that's gonna stick in my mind now. And I actually know who she is, and I think I've actually interviewed her on the show. But I never knew you came up with all that, but it's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Now what if we wanted to rebrand? Because I've been in that situation where, for 25 years, I was in the trade show industry, I was known as the trade show coach, I left that industry, I needed to rebrand who I was. That was really challenging for me to do that.

Alexandra Watkins [00:05:39]:

Yes. When you were known as a trade show coach, was that your moniker, like, that people called you the trade show coach, or was that your

Susan Friedmann [00:05:46]:

Because Susan Friedman, especially because of the way Friedman is spelled, it's spelled the German way with 2 n's and I e d. It looks as if it's Friedman. People call me missus Friedman. And so, yes, they can't even spell my name or say it, let alone look it up. So being the tradeshow coach, people could easily find that.

Alexandra Watkins [00:06:09]:

Right. Let's talk about that before we talk about rebranding because that's a great example. So let's say you are using your personal name. You're like, Alexandra, I'm not gonna change my company name, but you have a name like Susan Friedman that people say is Bridman, and it's hard to spell. It's hard to remember. There's more than one Susan Friedman on LinkedIn. I highly suggest getting a moniker. So a moniker would be like the trade show coach.

Alexandra Watkins [00:06:36]:

I like really creative ones. So for instance, there's an attorney named Lauren Vasquez. There's a 1,000,000 attorneys. Right? Lauren is a cannabis attorney, but there's also a lot of cannabis attorneys. How does she differentiate herself? She calls herself this isn't the name of her company. This is the her moniker, and it's the fired up attorney. Right? And that's easy to remember because you can picture it in your head. If you can have a moniker, like, what I just did, a a real estate agent who is a bubbly blonde, who used to be a flight attendant.

Alexandra Watkins [00:07:08]:

Everyone loves to talk about travel. She still is very attached to that identity she has. Just like Susan, you were with your trade shows. I rebranded her I gave her a moniker, which is the flighty realtor. And that's really fun. Right? And it begs the question, why are you called the flighty realtor? And someone might say, well, that sounds self deprecating. That's okay. She is.

Alexandra Watkins [00:07:30]:

And no one's gonna think, like, oh, that means she's flaky. No one's gonna call themselves a flake. So she's having fun with it. There's another guy. This is a coach and consultant or consultant, and his name is Bruce. I can never pronounce his last name. He is the father of cause marketing. That's what he's been called.

Alexandra Watkins [00:07:50]:

That's what he's known as the father of cause marketing. But that's kind of a mouthful. So I did some consulting for him live, and I said, you're the cause father, like the godfather. Right? And he loved it. He had business cards made with him wearing tuxedo. That's his favorite movie, by the way. And now he loves giving out his card. The Causefather is easy for people to remember.

Alexandra Watkins [00:08:14]:

It sparks conversations. But again, like, how can you make yourself memorable? And if your name isn't memorable, give yourself a moniker that is.

Susan Friedmann [00:08:24]:

I love that idea. It's fabulous. Listeners, this is Gold Dust. So I'm sure people are, like, starting to play with names and things because I know even, you know, naming a course or naming your keynote. And as you gave us that example earlier, you can carry that name into everything that you put out there. That's all part of your branding. Correct?

Alexandra Watkins [00:08:49]:

Yes. Absolutely. Can I give another example of when I just

Susan Friedmann [00:08:52]:

said do?

Alexandra Watkins [00:08:53]:

Okay. So this woman came to me. She already had her business name, and it was Full Bloom Financial, which I thought was a beautiful name. And her audience was Christian women. And I said, hey, hire me for an hour. I will do your tagline, and I'll come up with a bunch of other things for you. So she did. I came up with her tagline, which is I had to find a word that was related to financial services and Christianity, and that word was abundance.

Alexandra Watkins [00:09:22]:

So the tagline I did is live in abundance. I did an eight hundred number for her, which was 1800 Grow Joy. I did a title for her about something about cultivator, you know, wealth cultivator. We did her info at email address, like, at at eat my words are info at is hungry at. So I did one of hers hers for, you know, I think it might have even been, like, grow at, Full Bloom Financial. So those are the things you can do with a name with legs, but it's an example of somebody who's really leaning into their name. And if she had just used her personal name as a financial planner, her personal name doesn't say anything about her, but Full Bloom Financial, it's a beautiful name. It's easy to remember because people can picture it in their head when they hear it.

Alexandra Watkins [00:10:12]:

We're all familiar with, you know, a flower and blooming, and I love it. It's very feminine, so it speaks to her target audience of women. But that's what you can do. But I feel like having your book name so with me, I'm only ever going to write one book, as far as I know. Hello, My Name is Awesome. I love my book. My publisher has asked me to write a book on book marketing, but I don't want to. So but I'm happy to share all of my wisdom with you.

Alexandra Watkins [00:10:39]:

But if you are just identified with your book, you know, your book might go away or you might write more books. So find an umbrella brand name and put everything under that.

Susan Friedmann [00:10:50]:

Beautiful. And that's great advice because you're right. Things go away. Things change. You change. You grow. You develop. You know, my business has taken many different ways of the way I work, the way I do things, so all of that is incorporated in a brand.

Susan Friedmann [00:11:09]:

Now you talked about book marketing, and I know this is something that's near and dear to your heart because you're so passionate about it. Let's transition into that because I know we talked earlier, and you said, I've got all these tips I want to give your listeners. Let's talk about some of those that have really worked for you because your book has, you know, done gangbusters. So what are some of the tips that you feel our listeners could use from your expertise?

Alexandra Watkins [00:11:42]:

Yeah. My book does have 750 reviews on Amazon with a 4.7 average. And one of my best tips is if a reader writes to you as an author and says that they like your book, of course, you want to write them back. But say, I would be grateful if you would be willing to willing to it's the key phrase here. If you would be willing to write a review on Amazon, do not ask for a 5 star review. You can't do that. But just if you would be willing to write a review on Amazon and tell other readers so help them make a decision if the book is right for them. Then say, but you have to give them something to do this.

Alexandra Watkins [00:12:22]:

So say, if you would be willing to do that, I would be happy to and then give them something. Sometimes with me, in my book, I tell people, if you read my book, I list all of the creative resources that I use and links to them. But I say, if you want these for yourself, so you can get the live links, just email me and I'll send them to you. So then that way, I send them a lot of times people well, if somebody just likes your book and they write to you, like, oh, I love your book, then say, I would be happy to do a 15 minute call with you, consult, or give you some free brainstorming resources. Whatever you have, something that wasn't in your book, for the people that do write to me that did read the book and want the brainstorming resources, I say, here they are. If you would be willing to write a review on Amazon or Goodreads, I'd be happy to give you 5 more that I didn't include in my book because they're too good to share. Things like that. And then one time this guy gave my book a one star review on Audible, and I was completely devastated.

Alexandra Watkins [00:13:27]:

The guy was a total jerk. Right? So I, for a long time, I was really wanting more Audible reviews that were positive. So if somebody did listen to the audio, I would tell them, hey. Can you please review my book on Audible? Some jerk just gave it a one star review. And you know if somebody liked your book, they're gonna be angry about that too. Like, what the heck? Why would anybody give this great book one star? Align them with you. So those are some tips I've used. Another thing you can do, I use my book as a marketing tool to get me consulting gigs or, you know, naming projects.

Alexandra Watkins [00:14:01]:

And every time, I give away a lot of copies of my book. So when I speak at Stanford at the grad school, I give away a couple hundred copies of my book, and then I have a bookmark in them about share the love. And if this book helped you come up with a name, you know, gave you some creative ideas, blah blah blah, The nicest thing you can do for an author is write an Amazon review. I ask them to do that and then give them some incentive to do it. I mean, I would hope that free book would be enough. It's not always. But, yeah, you can try different things. But definitely look at your book as a marketing tool, not as a vehicle to make money.

Alexandra Watkins [00:14:41]:

I have my book in airport bookstores for a long time. It's still in a couple of them, and that was a great marketing tool. And for me, when you give away your book, or it's somewhere like an airport bookstore, it's all about the optics. I want a couple hundred students at the Stanford Grad School walking around with my book. It looks great. Right? People are gonna ask about it. It's not like it's on their phone or their laptop or their Kindle where they're reading it. They're actually carrying it in their hand, putting it in their library.

Alexandra Watkins [00:15:13]:

Same with at a airport bookstore, that's giving you incredible credibility of somebody saying, wow. If they're in an airport bookstore, this book must be really, really good.

Susan Friedmann [00:15:24]:

Yeah. But that's expensive these days. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know that that's something to do.

Alexandra Watkins [00:15:31]:

It is expensive. But if you have really high fees, you know, if it's getting you a $25,000 consulting gig, then it can be worth it.

Susan Friedmann [00:15:38]:

Mhmm. Agreed. Yeah. I love the idea of the reviews because I know that so many authors actually struggle with getting reviews, and they ask people, and people say, Yes, I'll do it, but they never do. And then you get embarrassed because how many times do you ask them and remind them The idea of an incentive, especially when they send you, you know, a screenshot, let's say, of the review that they've done, then you can send them whatever gift that, you decide to send them.

Alexandra Watkins [00:16:12]:

One thing I'm doing in March, and I'm sorry if this airs after March 2024, but all of you can do this too, is I'm doing a giveaway where if you upload your review, just a screenshot of your review, to this Google form I created, and it can be a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or Audible. Or if you follow me on Instagram at Eat My Words Names, you get entered to win all of these naming and brainstorming services, which are free for us to give away. I have a naming course that costs $899. I give away 10 of those. That's $9,000 in value. Right? 1-hour brainstorming call with me has a high value. So things like that, if I'm giving them away, and then I can say it's our 19th year anniversary in March, I'm giving away 19 $1,000 in value, and I'm only giving away one book. Because books can be expensive.

Alexandra Watkins [00:17:10]:

Right? It's a book, and I have a goodie box that I do that has the book in it and a lot of other fun eat-my-words goodies, like a licorice pen and a little coaster that looks like a piece of toast. A lot of food-related things because we're eating my words. Yeah. Those are things that you can do as well to get reviews because I know so many people have read my book and not reviewed it, and I have an email folder called book readers. And I'm gonna send an email to every single one of those people saying, hey. You can win this, because I wanna remind them about my book. And I probably should have something in my contest about and if you post it on Instagram, you know, if you post your review, you can get entered as well. Yeah.

Alexandra Watkins [00:17:54]:

There's all kinds of things you can do to boost your reviews.

Susan Friedmann [00:17:57]:

That's fantastic. Again, just talking about it the way you have and the few things you've already talked about, the fact you've got all these services, you're tying all of that in to this great promotion that you're doing, I'm gonna say I'm guilty of not having written your review, but we're gonna change that.

Alexandra Watkins [00:18:17]:

Oh, thank you. Then then when I do my contest or the giveaway, you can post it. By the way, the reason I started this in the first place is I'm fine on Amazon reviews, but Goodreads have 4.7 stars on Amazon and Goodreads, which now Amazon, I never paid attention to my Goodreads reviews until Amazon started posting that number as well. And it's 4.1. I'm like, you know, I'm in danger of going below 4. That's why I started this, was to get the Goodreads reviews. But I have 850 Goodreads reviews, which I didn't even realize. I feel like, to me, Goodreads feels like fiction more than nonfiction, but I guess a lot of nonfiction readers are there.

Alexandra Watkins [00:19:02]:

But I think all of the authors here will agree, they've seen that trend as well, that good re re reviewers are much harsher than Amazon reviewers, and I swear it's because everyone's a critic on Goodreads. Right? They really fancy and I'm sorry. I'm sure a lot of you are on Goodreads, but my impression is people really fancy themselves as being an expert, and it's almost like they enjoy saying, like, well, this is not what I believe, or what about the name you know, they'll say a name that, you know, what about the name Wells Fargo? That's a great name, and it violates all of your rules, Alexandra. And it's like, yeah. It's you know the name Wells Fargo because it's been around for a 1000000 years, but if Wells Fargo was to launch today, you would have no idea it was a bank or what they stood for or what they did. I think Goodreads has a way more haters on it.

Susan Friedmann [00:19:53]:

But you're right. I think, as you say, they fancy themselves as critiques of the books here, all these books, and they're out there to be critiqued. And they're going to not necessarily give you 5 stars.

Alexandra Watkins [00:20:06]:

They're super stingy with their stars. Something else that your readers can do with their Amazon reviews is if you have a bad review, it's hard to get a bad review removed. However, you used to be able to respond to comments, and you can't anymore, which I don't know why they did away with that. One time, my first one star review was from this woman named Linda, who gave it one star, but then she wrote her headline was practical and very useful, and she wrote a really nice review. And I realized she was confused and thought one star meant you know how first place ribbon, like, first place is a one? She got confused thinking a one meant the best. I don't think she was from the United States, maybe. So at first, I was horrified. I wanted to get it removed.

Alexandra Watkins [00:20:54]:

They wouldn't remove it. And then I thought, you know what? We all know when we go to Amazon to buy something, we look at the top reviews and the worst reviews. And I thought, okay, let that be my worst review because that's actually good. And I wrote, you know, Linda, when I first read your comment, I cried and had to eat a donut. So I was funny about it and said, and then I realized he thought one star meant the best. And, you know, I'm so glad you found my book helpful. But then last year, this total jerk guy gave it one star because he said it was like I think he used to call me a porn star, and it was full of sexual innuendo. Because I named a nail salon hand job, I had some other kind of risque names in there.

Alexandra Watkins [00:21:40]:

Oh, I named a frozen yogurt store spoon me. And this guy was so offended by this. And I was like, how am I gonna get this removed? So I wrote to Amazon and I said, this guy is a misogynist. He's calling me a porn star. This is so unfounded. If you look at my other reviews, you can see there's none of this in there, and they took it down.

Susan Friedmann [00:22:01]:

Oh, that was great. That's good to know that if you stand your ground with something and you made a case, hey, why not? Take it down.

Alexandra Watkins [00:22:10]:

And another thing you can do, if you get a one star I helped the Heath Brothers down in Chip Heath. You know, they've written a ton of business you know, I think they've had board meetings. Stick.

Susan Friedmann [00:22:19]:

The made it stick. Yeah.

Alexandra Watkins [00:22:20]:

They wrote made the stick. Yeah. Dan Heath blurbed that he wrote the cover blurb on my book. And, yeah, Made to Stick is my favorite business book. And I looked at Made to Stick at, like, who would give that book one star? And I saw that a lot of people were giving it 1 star, not a lot, but there were 1 star reviews from people where the book arrived late, or the package was damaged. It had nothing to do with the content of the book. So I alerted I I know those guys. So I alerted them and said, have one of your admins contract Amazon Author Central and have those taken down because you can, and they did.

Susan Friedmann [00:22:56]:

They weren't applicable to your book.

Alexandra Watkins [00:22:58]:

Right. And another thing I did, and everyone can do this, and I did it with them. I said, you know, on page 47 of their Amazon reviews, because there's so many there is a it will go to the top of your reviews. That's something that we can all do, and I'm guilty of not doing that lately, is get a group of friends. They can all be author friends and upvote your very best reviews to the top. Because the ones that show up at the top are usually the most recent ones. Right? But if for top reviews, it might be a couple years old. You know? Get something that's newer than that.

Susan Friedmann [00:23:39]:

These are incredible tips. And, Alexandra, I know that our listeners want to know more. You gave us a little bit about your promotion, but how can they get in touch with you and find out more if they wanna get a copy of the book? Take it away.

Alexandra Watkins [00:23:56]:

Go to my website, EatMyWords.com. You can find my book there, and it will take you to Amazon. Then, if you wanna follow me on Instagram, I'm in Eat My Words names. I'm going to recommend that everybody follow my editor on LinkedIn. His name is Jeevan, and it's jeevan@barrickkoehlerpublishers. I cannot tell you his last name, how to pronounce it, how to spell it. It starts with an s, and it's a very long name. But, yeah, Jeevan, he is so wise about nonfiction book publishing, and also the Northern California Nonfiction Book Publishers Association.

Alexandra Watkins [00:24:37]:

Stephanie Chandler that runs that, she has great tips. Yeah, there's so many resources out there. Yeah, I'm not the only resource, obviously, or Susan. I mean, there's so many people with great information. But, yeah, follow me on Instagram, connect with me on LinkedIn at Alexandra Watkins. And, yeah, get my book. There's so many helpful brainstorming tools in there. And if you're really stuck, hire me.

Alexandra Watkins [00:24:59]:

I will help you. You can hire me for an hour, and I will help you get unstuck and come up with a bunch of really creative marketing, branding, you know, verbiage. I can help you show you Canva. I can show you how to use ChatCpT. There's all kinds of things I can show you that will help you be more creative.

Susan Friedmann [00:25:17]:

Fantastic. And I know that you got a little giveaway that if they leave a review of you on this podcast, that you will send them

Alexandra Watkins [00:25:29]:

Yeah. We're gonna do a giveaway. So if people leave a review of the podcast and, you know, mention you listened to this episode, we'll enter everybody that does that into our contest, and I will send a copy of the book to the name that we pick. US only for that, I can send that PDF version to anybody who wins from a different country.

Susan Friedmann [00:25:50]:

Fantastic. And that's really generous. And that's an incentive, if nothing else, listeners. By the way, you can do everything that Alexandra has told you here, that she's done, because they're just great tips that you just put 1 or 2 of them in place, and I can already see the domino effect that it'll have for you. Thank you. And, Alexandra, we always leave with the golden nuggets, your words of wisdom. What would you like those to be?

Alexandra Watkins [00:26:23]:

Surround yourself with color. Color is such a great way to spark creativity. I have a lot of toys, like, you can't see my background, but, like, I have a Barbie Corvette. I have all kinds of toys in color. And looking outside, I've got, you know, 2 giant pink flamingos float floating in the pool. I have a really colorful surfboard fence. My desk is purple. I have another desk in here that's orange.

Alexandra Watkins [00:26:49]:

I have a sofa made out of stuffed animals. And that's how I stay creative. It's just being around color. It just makes me alive, and it just activates my brain and my creativity center.

Susan Friedmann [00:27:03]:

I'm pleased you're not the only one because I'm surrounded by all sorts of things here, and I'm with you. I sometimes I think, is it too much clutter? But then I'm like, yeah, it's inspirational. So why not? So I love hearing that. Well, Alexandra, this has been a real joy. I'm so excited that you were able to make it on the show. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.

Listeners, by the way, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expected to, let's you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales because you've invested a whole lot of time, money, and energy, and it's time you got the return that you were hoping for. So go to BrainstormWithSusan.com to schedule your free call.

Susan Friedmann [00:27:52]:

And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.

Here's how to connect with Alexandra:
Website: EatMyWords.com
Instagram: Eat My Words names