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Whether you're operating in the black, panicking in the red, maneuvering through the gray, or aiming for the ultimate mountain of green, Scaling Uncensored delivers the strategic maneuvers necessary to advance your position in the realm of eCommerce. Intercept the frequency every week for a clandestine rendezvous with guest operatives, tactical intelligence, and classified debriefings that grant you unauthorized access to genuine exchanges with the most cunning clandestine marketers in the field. Listen in to their conversations as they divulge their covert exploits, strategic maneuvers, triumphant victories, and stark observations in the world of marketing, scaling and expanding eCommerce brands.
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Increase Conversions with The Betty Crocker Secret

Want to build an empire with products customers love? This episode unpacks the behind-the-scenes strategy of how Betty Crocker cracked the code to sell cake mix. You’ll learn about emotional resonance in marketing, maximizing what you already have, and figuring out why customers buy in order to take your brand to the next level and increase your conversions. Tune in as Tommie and Tieron dig into psychographics, growth strategies, product positioning and more game-changing eCommerce insights in this week’s episode of Scaling Uncensored.
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Key Episode Highlights

In this episode, you'll learn:

  • How Betty Crocker cracked the emotional code to sell cake mix
  • How understanding emotional resonance can dramatically improve your marketing
  • What it means to "unlock a universe" for your business and the first step to doing so

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[00:00:00] Tommie: Built an empire, want to give em that? Another big thing about this story. Cause I know it very well is that what they also understood is that if they get the moms on board, they would influence the entire market. So here's the reality, right? They understood that that was the segment that when they unlocked the emotional.

Resonance for that segment, when all of the moms started doing it. They're going to influence everyone else because if it's good enough for the mom who whatever the case may be right, especially back in them days, right? Right. You talk about cooking, right? You just still to this day, right? The woman in the household is going to have the most influence.

Correct. So now you're talking about having single people, men, kids, all of these other people are influenced by this segment. They also understood 

[00:00:57] Tieron: that too, right? This conversation that we're having today, we want to be able to offer you this same process so that you can duplicate it in your business because it's.

You know, this is like, this is a huge game changer. I was thinking about a client's product of the day and the client was just selling like this one front end product. And essentially they were just going to keep making more of these products, but it was just like, okay, well, how do we get you to a point to where you can sell more?

But what I've realized was they hadn't really cracked the emotional code. Like what is really triggering your customers to buy this product anyway? Like I get the price point. I get the fact that, you know, it's this, you know, this widget or whatever, but why emotionally are they buying? It's not just a logical buy.

Like what is really emotionally triggering them to buy that? Because if we can understand that, then maybe we can make some sort of other changes so that way you can make more money. But I was kind of stuck with what is the emotional trigger that's causing people 

[00:02:55] Tommie: to buy this. Let me ask you some, what, what even landed you there?

Right? Cause it's like, You know, I see these issues a lot, but I don't always call it out, you know? And so from a process standpoint, you know, we talked about this, right? We're trying to tighten our own process. It's almost like every scenario, you know, after having this conversation, as we're working with our clients in every scenario, we need to be asking ourselves, is there a lack of emotional resonance?

In their messaging, right? Like we need to make that a thing that we look through that lens with everyone, right? But we don't necessarily do that. So in this moment, what made you think of that? You said you was reading what you was reading or you was watching. I don't, 

[00:03:44] Tieron: I don't know if I was, I don't know if I was reading or watching anything, but I was just looking at the, I was just looking at the business model in and of itself.

And I was just trying to figure out how do we offer the customer something else that the customer actually wants and that the customer actually needs, but how do we get to offering them anything if we don't even understand why they're buying the thing to begin with? So that was my, so, so me personally, my own personal struggle with helping this client was because I'm seeing what the business is doing and I know what it can do, but I was just like, okay, well, I can't answer what to put.

What to offer them next, if I don't even know why they bought this thing to begin with in the first place. Right. So to me, so from my perspective, that's, that was, that was a problem for me. And then for the customer, the customer is saying, okay, well, yeah, people do come back and they do buy other products for me.

But because of what is costing them on the front end, you know, they'll start considering things like shutting off their ads and stuff like that because of the cost. Right. Somebody just buying this one time thing. And let's just say the thing is 25, but they paying 30. To get the customer back. So they losing 5 every single time or 

[00:04:54] Tommie: maybe even more, but which is not inherently by the way, not to cut you off, but inherently that's not bad.

This is actually how most of our clients really scale in the millions and millions and tens of millions of dollars, because they can't lose that little 5 cause they know what they're going to make. When the people come back and buy more, right? Exactly. But in this scenario, they're not getting a lot of retention, which is why it's a challenge to say.

What else can we sell them? Correct. I don't even know what got them in, in the first place, which is like, let me look at their, the emotional resonance going on here because something's missing, that's kind of how you land there. 

[00:05:36] Tieron: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. and then once we figure that out, then we can build out an entire universe.

[00:05:44] Tommie: Absolutely. How we build out a universe. Essentially. That's it. 

[00:05:50] Tieron: So. I know I re I know I reached out to you and I was, and I was running this by you. And I know me and you kind of, I don't know if we want to go into that either. We didn't want to talk about something else, but I know I kind of reached out to you.

It was like, yo, this is what I think is happening. And this is how 

[00:06:03] Tommie: we had a whole call about it. You know what I mean? So I thought it was going to be like a 10 minute, you know, five minute scenario, right? And I ended up talking like an hour on this. Thanks. 

[00:06:13] Tieron: so this cycle, this psychological deep dive was, was, was deep and it just did.

It didn't, it didn't just, it didn't just come off of the cuff. And you think as long as we've been doing this, that it just would've been easy. Easy. But if you didn't speak about, 'cause I was speaking about it from the label, that the label that other people had labeled this audience particularly, right?

But then you came in and you was like, well, no, I am the audience. I am. And my perspective of who I am when I use these words to describe me is totally different from them. Right. And that unlocked that unlocked everything, 

[00:06:46] Tommie: right? So essentially what he's referring to, is basically, you know, without giving their business away, but it's like someone is willing to wear something on them.

They're willing to wear a statement, correct? And some of the statements being made are statements that I would be willing to wear. Right. Because I'm willing to wear that statement. I'm willing to not give a shit about what somebody think about the fact that I'm wearing this. Right. But the point of me wearing that statement is if you feel some type of way, good.

Right. Whether it's you feel some type of way and you ain't really, you know, checking for what I'm saying, good. This, this will push you away from my energy field. Exactly. If you resonate with what it is, it's going to draw you into my energy field. Exactly. So that's why I would be willing to wear a statement.

Right. I mean, and so that's how we ended up going down the rabbit hole long, you know, and then I'm speaking from my perspective. So through that conversation. We're starting to talk about it through two different lens, right? Right. You're coming at it from the business owner's perspective, fighting for the client.

I'm coming from the prospect's perspective, fighting for why I am who I am and why I'd be willing to buy from you, Mr. Business Owner. And through that experience and that engagement and that conversation and that exercise, we was able to unlock something that we was able to give the client that was like super duper powerful.

Ooh, yes. Super duper powerful. 

[00:08:19] Tieron: Super duper powerful. And essentially this conversation that we're having today, we want to be able to offer you this same process so that you can duplicate it in your business. Because it's, you know, this is like, this is a huge game changer. Huge. You go from, you go from selling.

Even if let's just, let's just say there's, let's just say this particular client or you yourself, you got five different products that you offer or 15 or a hundred different products just because somebody came in and bought a, you know, bought some canned soup from you doesn't necessarily mean that they want another thing of canned soup from you.

Right. If you don't know why they came in and brought that canned soup to begin with, then you can't offer them the next thing. So if you got, let's just say the, I don't know if people are familiar with this story, but there's a story of, I think it's like Pillsbury. It's either like Pillsbury or one of these cake makers.

And essentially they had the, they had the cake mix or the penny crop mix. 

[00:09:10] Tommie: Betty Crocker. You might be talking about Betty Crocker. Yeah. 

[00:09:13] Tieron: Betty Crocker. They had the pancake mixes with her. I say cake mix, but it was a pancake mix. 

[00:09:17] Tommie: Because Betty Crocker was cake mix. Oh, it was cake mix. Betty Crocker was cake mix.

So it was struggling to sell 

[00:09:23] Tieron: it. They were struggling to sell it. Yeah. So they had, to, so they knew who their target market was. It was a target market was women. They knew the demo. They knew the demographics. Busy, busy moms, 

[00:09:34] Tommie: busy moms. Busy, busy mom, married mothers. 

[00:09:37] Tieron: Exactly. But it was the, but it was one of the key psychographics that they were missing that unlocks a billion dollars in sales.

Yes, sir. 

[00:09:47] Tommie: So what do you end up like billions of millions of dollars in sales, built an empire, essentially want to give it to him. Give it to him. The secret that unlocked it all. You're going to share. Yeah, 

[00:10:01] Tieron: mean, so essentially what they essentially what they figured out was is that yes, yes, the moms wanted to be able to bake these cakes for their family and they wanted to do it quick because they didn't have a whole lot of time, but they but the psychological thing that unlocked it for them was they felt like they wasn't being a mom.

They really wasn't making this for their for their family. So, so if they could, if they could, Add to the recipe somehow they could add to the recipe. Then they felt like it would be coming from them versus coming from a box. Correct. So the bridge, so the bridge for that was to add an egg, 

[00:10:36] Tommie: add an egg 

[00:10:37] Tieron: that they had to crack and put inside the bowl and then mix everything up and then slide it into the oven and then bake it.

Once they 

[00:10:46] Tommie: get out of here and it ain't look back and ain't look back. And it opens span into the pancakes and everything else, right? Exactly. Open the lane for all of those other things like that. Yes. 

[00:10:59] Tieron: for the people that, this is kind of a side note, but this is that just lets you know how powerful this information is.

When they discovered that you can best believe that either Betty Crocker locked that down where that became confidential information or the marketers themselves locked that down. Because as you just said, Tommy, now we can go from, okay, Betty Crocker, you guys are in the cake lane, but now we got somebody up over here that's trying to sell pancakes.

Pancakes. Now we can take that Move it over here to pancakes, 

[00:11:32] Tommie: move it over here 

[00:11:32] Tieron: to cupcakes, move it over here to any other thing that's in the packaging that moms want to cook, but they want to be a part of it and it's going to do this with the sales. So essentially this is what we were trying to do to unlock a universe to unlock a huge back end for this particular client.

But the first thing we had to figure out was what is the emotional thing that people are resonating with that's causing them to buy it in the first place. And then I got some real 

[00:11:58] Tommie: quick before you go too far. I want to make sure that, you know, another big thing about this story, cause I know it very well is that what they also understood is that if they get the moms on board, they would influence the entire market.

So here's the reality, right? They understood that that was the segment that when they unlock the emotional resonance for that segment, when all of the moms started doing it. They're going to influence everyone else because if it's good enough for the mom who whatever the case may be right, especially back in them days, right?

Right. You talk about cooking, right? You can still to this day, right? The woman in the household is going to have the most influence. Over that. Correct. So now you're talking about having single people, men, kids, all of these other people are influenced by this segment. They also understood that too. Right.

Which made it even crazier to think how the depths of research that they were going into to figure out how to sell their product. Right. Pretty, pretty crazy. And once the bombs hit it. It spilled over to everybody else. And that inflow was spilled and it just, it 

[00:13:15] Tieron: was out of him. and from a growth standpoint, you have to also factor in, if you've been cooking this to your kids, you didn't just get one customer, you've got an entire family, family next.

So the next door, son, anybody that's going to go cooking something, all of the, all of the bonding times and all of the experiences that I had around my mom making pancakes and making cakes. And she was using Betty Crocker. Guess what? We're going to have an outhouse old Betty 

[00:13:38] Tommie: Crocker. So when you're building brand, you understand that you looking at what you doing today, that's going to last a hundred years.

That's their mindset. They tried to build a hundred year brand. So it's like, well, if we get the moms, it's a wrap because everybody else in the household and families and cousins and uncles and all kinds of friends, family members, church members, all kinds of stuff could be influenced by this. matriarch person.

Correct. Which then, when the kids grow up and the this and the that or whatever, right? Exactly. What you think we gonna do? What my mama did or my auntie or my whoever made the fire cake did and she gave me the secret sauce. It's out of here. That's powerful. Yeah, man. 

[00:14:25] Tieron: so essentially what we're talking about here is showing you how to unlock something that you really can't put a value on. Can't put a value on. Because last time I checked Betty Crocker, I probably got some Betty Crocker in the pantry. I'm sure 

[00:14:37] Tommie: I got some Betty Crocker in my house right now somewhere.

Right now. 

[00:14:41] Tieron: Right now. And I can't even tell you why, I can't even tell you when Betty Crocker was not a part of my life and why it's just, it's just a utility. Now we're going to make something. I'm going to go grab some Betty Crocker off of the shelf. I don't know why I trust the brand. I don't know anything, but because you just grew up with this, what else are you going to choose?

There is no other option. you want the moisture or the super moist 

[00:15:04] Tommie: Betty Crocker got the moist and the super moist is deep, bro. So the crazy thing about it, as I was studying that story, they knew this also what they wanted to get out of this. It wasn't just cause they wanted the sales to soar.

They wanted to build a they trying to build a hundred year brand and they're trying to infiltrate the family dynamic. Where their brand going to be passed down generation to generation is deep. I was like, yo, this is on this different. This is different. So let's, let's bring it back down to reality.

Right. Cause I know maybe we ain't like pie in the sky at some point, but nonetheless, I know that story very well and it blew me away. Right. Yeah. That's powerful. So 

[00:15:47] Tieron: powerful. So if I'm, so if I'm a product owner and I'm selling, you know, widget Y, right. Let's just say I'm selling, you know, orange sheets of paper and people are, people are running in and buying these orange sheets of paper.

But after that I got, you know, black paper, white paper, you know, purple paper. And that's pretty much, this is the same pretty much scenario that this customer is in, right. Everybody's coming in buying the orange paper, but how come they not buying the white paper, the black paper and everything else? Like, what is the difference between this other paper versus this particular orange paper that they had?

So it's like, how do you, how do you have that conversation from, how do you figure out emotionally why are they buying that particular paper? So the, Exercise that we went through was to one, I first went and said, okay, well, from the research that I'm doing emotionally, people that identify with orange, with orange stickers, you know, they say that they are happy people.

Or they say that they are actually the research is saying that these people, let's say depressed. And so I was like, well, the research is showing me that people that buy these orange stickers are typically depressed. But then on the other side of that, when we started talking to an actual customer, in this case it was Tommy, Tommy was the actual customer, he was like, well no, that's not how we identify ourselves, we don't identify ourselves as being depressed.

We identify ourselves as being conquerors. So we use this, we use this orange sticky, this orange sheet of paper to identify and show people that we are conquerors. And I was like, Oh, he was like, and, and, and because we are conquerors, this is why we're able to wear this particular product that this is why we're able to use this orange sticky in order to show people that a.

We're willing to stand out because we are already conquerors. And we have a story inside of ourselves. So once we had that back and forth, that's how we unlock that. so essentially, if you want to be able to unlock with the emotional resonances between you and your customers or to, or to get the key emotional words.

You need to have a conversation with the customer. You got to have a conversation 

[00:17:55] Tommie: with the customer. Not just one, right? You got to have conversations with customers so that you can find the commonalities in what they're all saying. Yes. That's what, that's what the exercise is. Yes. Some people don't want to do that and that's okay.

Right. If you want to get what we talking about, that's what you going to have to start at. You know, unless you and our master, man, like, you know, when our plans is and they was able to get. This. Right. But I digress. Right. But you know. But that's, you know, 

[00:18:25] Tieron: I do, but I do, I do have to, I do have to pat us on the back for, for a second.

And I'm, this, this is not me trying to be narcissistic, but there was no reason we wasn't being paid to do this. No, this isn't an offering. This wasn't something that we offer, but because we care so much and we on some nerdy geek shit, when it comes out of this too, like we're, we're learning and getting is, is breaking through different levels in our own brain to this process.

That's why now we got content to be able to talk to you and share with you. So that's, so, and so as soon as we unlocked it, we was like, yo, here's something she she's already in other mastermind. Let's just be clear. She's in other mastermind. She's doing six figures and everything else. This has never been unlocked for her in her 

[00:19:07] Tommie: business.

Absolutely not. 

[00:19:10] Tieron: So now, so now, so now I digress. But for me, once we, once we were able to unlock that now, now she's able to start dialing in her messaging and her sales and copying everything else. And now she's able to build out, she can go from a physical product to a now digital product product.

[00:19:28] Tommie: Cause that's just Go ahead. So you can do a bundle of digital and physical. So you can do a bundle of digital and physical. So you know, it ain't just going from one to the other. You can also bundle and create a totally unique offer. Correct. Without really even adding any real cost facts because you already got physical.

You just take a digital bundle with it. Now you've got to offer it as unique in the marketplace that came to by even compete with you. And you're speaking emotionally to them and you might can change the pricing on that to increase your average order value. Come on now. Yep. Come on now. And we already had helped her get her c p A down facts.

Now we know we gotta strengthen that message. Correct. To get more people through the door. And then now we're starting to work with her on understanding how to increase her A O V and her L t V. Yep. And once we nail out of them things, the brand gonna be going crazy and people gonna be like, yo, this brand going crazy.

Yep. Exactly. And now our fingerprints gonna be on ex Exactly. 

[00:20:27] Tieron: Ex Ex. Exactly. Now going, going back to the scenario of the. Orange, the orange sheet of paper. And now I got black paper, white paper, and purple paper on the back end, and nobody's buying that. Now that we know why people are buying the orange sheet of paper, we can now reposition the white paper, the black paper, and the purple paper to get people to buy, to get people that came in.

And bought the orange paper, we can now start to have this conqueror position for all these other pieces of paper, too. So now they can take these other sheets of paper and buy them because they're planting other, other flags in the ground to support the initial situation, which is. I look at myself as a conqueror.

I look at myself as an overachiever. I look at myself as this. Well, when you buy this black paper, you know, historically black was seen as a dominant force in the world and in conquerors and kings. This is the, this is the paper that they were right on with white ink. I didn't know that now that, well, you never told me that before.

If you told me that I would have bought that. So now you got people that's came through with the orange on some Conqueror stuff. Now you send them an email or text messages talking about King X, Y, Z, who wrote with white ink and, you know, he signed all his letters. Once he conquered a country on black paper, I gotta hate that.

[00:21:40] Tommie: Yeah, I need your black paper before, because I need, 

[00:21:43] Tieron: I needed to own, I needed to own this paper, but now that you telling me to be a Conqueror and this is the seal that this is the paper that the King would write on with the white, I need the black paper and I need that white ink. Yeah, 

[00:21:54] Tommie: you sir, so this is, so is going, but this is going to be a, 

[00:21:57] Tieron: um, a short one cause cause we had, we had to get this out there, 

[00:22:00] Tommie: but what do you, what are your thoughts?

Any last, no, I just, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna pick back up on this. We got to have to do a part two on it. Cause we got, we're not going to have time on, but I think, you know, at the end of the day, you know, the big takeaway, it's having conversations with customers and really dig in, you know, hunting for that emotional resonance, figure out how to integrate that into your messaging and you go, it's going to, it's going to dramatically improve what you already doing, right?

If you just convert more of what you already doing, this is one of the ways to do this. This is one of those hacks that you don't got to go spend no extra money or spend more money on ads or someone to do your website, duh, duh, duh, duh, like no. Just tap into this level and you can maximize what you already doing.

So that'd be my takeaway. 

[00:22:48] Tieron: And just as I'm, so my takeaway is going to be a piggyback on what, Tommy's takeaway is right. Obviously figuring this out early is a cheat code because now if you know that the initial product is bringing people in is on some conqueror stuff, that's the mindset that they're on and that's why they're buying it.

Then now the theme, the look, the feel, everything is now on some conqueror type stuff, the whole ecosystem is on some conqueror overcoming type stuff, right? All of the influences that you're messing with is on some conquering overcoming type stuff. It just, it just branches out into this entire ecosystem, this entire world.

So once you know that it unlocks all of those things for you, you're able to take your business to the next level. To a whole nother 

[00:23:25] Tommie: level. That's what we do a year, 

[00:23:27] Tieron: a hundred year brand building exercise and levels to these levels, levels to the end. One last note that I would give you is the Y factor axing.

Why, why, why, why, why going down and finding somebody that is willing to open up. And share with you these wise and keep, so that way you can get down to the root. That's going to help unlock a bunch of things too. So it was like, okay, well, I wanted to fit, like, why does, why does someone feel the need to be a conqueror?

Well, it's because I was stepped on so much I had to overcome. So now you essentially know what the enemy is. People stepping on people are the enemy of my conquerors. So if I want to trigger my conquerors, I'm going to talk about being stepped on. Hello. 

[00:24:07] Tommie: Too bad. We got to get, you know, cut it short, but we're going to leave on that note.

We're going to leave on that note. We're going to catch y'all on the flip side. Make sure you like, subscribe, comment, all of the things, whatever, whatever I'm forgetting about. Yep. And leave, leave a review, leave a review. Let us know. Let us know. We should take an episode. Yes, sir. All right, y'all. Holla.

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