Episode 201 | Build an Imperfect Marketing Strategy That Scales Your Success with Kendra Corman

In this conversation, Kendra Corman, a marketing strategist, joins the show to share her remarkable journey from starting in a Jeep call center to becoming the Jeep Advertising Manager for North America before successfully launching her own agency, Imperfect Marketing. 

She is also the author of Mastering AI in Communications. Kendra explains that her agency's philosophy of "imperfect marketing" means focusing on progress, not perfection, which is the key to accelerating growth and avoiding the paralysis caused by the fear of needing to do everything right. She encourages listeners to move forward, knowing that mistakes can always be fixed, and "nobody died" in the making of a minor marketing error. 

About Kendra Corman:

Kendra Corman is a marketing strategist who spent years managing marketing and advertising for many brands including Jeep before starting her own agency. Now she helps businesses cut through the noise with email marketing, AI tools, and podcasting. She's the author of "Mastering AI In Communications" and loves turning complicated marketing stuff into strategies people can actually use.

Connect with Kendra:

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Transcript

I am delighted to be here today with Kendra Corman. Kendra is a marketing strategist who spent years managing major brands like Jeep. Before launching her own agency today, she helps businesses cut through the noise with smart email marketing, AI tools, and podcasting.

She's also the author of Mastering AI in Communications and has a knack for turning complex marketing ideas into practical strategies that work. Kendra, welcome to the show. 

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited for this conversation. 

Then we have a couple things in common. One is that we both know Brenda Miller and we think she's awesome and she referred you to this podcast.

Thank you Brenda. And the other thing that we just discovered, we are both addicted to post-it notes, which I describe as both the Boone and the Bane of my existence because Kendra just showed me, oh, I jotted this down. And you know, of course you end up getting piles of these post-it notes, but um, yeah, I love them.

I love them. So Kendra, you have quite an interesting story and as the owner of several Jeeps, I think we've had like three Jeeps in a row. We currently, my husband, believe it or not, our brand color is orange. His Jeep is bright orange. So people see him coming. We live our brand, we walk our talk. So you started literally in a call center Yeah.

And then worked your way up. To advertising chief advertising manager. So fill us in a little bit on how that happened. 

So I was recruited out of college. Um, Penn State University is where I went undergraduate in advertising and public relations. And I interviewed for their, it was sort of like a college training program, but not really.

And you went into the call center and then you went out into the field organization and you worked with dealers and you could go anywhere in the country after that. There was no guarantees where you would go or who you'd be working with, things like that. And I was like, this sounds like fun. I wanna do this.

I love Jeep, I love Chrysler. So let's go. And so I spent about two years in the call center answering phone calls. It's like, hello, thank you for calling the Daimler Chrysler Assistance Center. It's just Kendra, how can I help you? Um, and then I usually had someone yelling at me about something broke or something happened, or lots of different things.

Then we'd call the dealership and say, Hey, what's going on? You know, if a car was just out of warranty, we'd repair it. It was. It was an amazing job with an unbelievable amount of authority to actually like, fix customer issues. But I was done answering customer calls, getting yelled at and fired.

That was one use of my post-its back then we used to like, keep track of how many times we got yelled at or fired. Um, wait a minute, you got fired? No. The, the customers would say, I'm gonna get you fired. Oh, I see. And yeah. Or they would sue us, right. They were gonna sue us. Okay. So we'd keep tallies of those.

Yeah. That 

must have been interesting. You probably took a little bit of a beating there 

a little bit. So the way I worked my way up into corporate or into the, the tower as we call it here in, uh, Metro Detroit is I had informational interviews. I didn't know what one was. I came across the director of a.

He, I think he was like, incentives is what he was in charge of was dealer incentive, the car incentives and things like that. And he said, you should have an informational interview with me. And I was like, I have no idea what that was. And back then I asked J Eves, 'cause there was no Google Jevs, I remember js, so I asked Jevs what it was.

And it gave me some sort of information. But I figured out what an informational interview was, had an informational interview, had multiples with other executives and people that wanted to talk to me and tell me about their career path. And then a job came open and they're like, Kendra I think I have a job that's the right fit for you.

They transferred me departments and then I started working my way up from there. Um, the best piece of advice I was given when I was at Chrysler was by the head of hr. Her name was Nancy Ray and she said, if you're not getting the experience for the job you want and the job that you have, volunteer and get it.

At the time I was on the board of our women's forum, which was one of the employee resource groups that we had, and I loved it. That experience as the women's forum and leading communications for that group got me into marketing and I was the SRT Marketing Manager and then eventually the Jeep Advertising Manager and I manage the entire brand of Jeep for North America.

It sounds like quite the job. The informational interview, that's an interesting thing. It reminds me of a recent guest we talked about mentoring and how, you know you, that's really interesting. They must have seen that potential in you to say, would you like an informational in interview? But yeah, it's a term we don't really hear as much anymore.

And it's something that, hey, it's a good reminder that you can always ask someone, can I have this informational interview to learn more? Um, it's no 

pressure for them. And they wanna talk to you. They wanna share their journey with you. And it works in business too, right? If you're trying to get bus, you can have informational interviews with organizations to learn about what they do.

People love to share what they do, how they've grown and where they're headed. It opens up so many opportunities. 

And it sounds like being a part of that women's forum, I'm sure also. Helped people notice you, you stand, stood out, I'm sure did things that were very fulfilling. Was that really an important part of what you did?

Yeah, it was a great way to get connected to other women throughout the organization. And because we were very siloed, right? You didn't get out of your department much. I mean, it was a five minute hall from the parking lot to get to your desk, 5, 10, 15 minutes depending on how far away you had to park and, people.

So people didn't really leave the building. A lot of people, you know, they came in, they went home at the end of the day. And the Women's Forum really allowed me to make a lot of connections and relationships that are still around today. 

That's good. And this podcast is all about supporting women.

So of course that resonates with me. I also come from an automotive background, as you know, started out selling automotive muffler. Know the automotive world. Uh. Fairly well, although it's been a while so let's, let's, so I'm not sure exactly how it progressed from leaving Jeep to be in advertising to starting your own agency.

You can either talk about that or just let's broach in, broach imperfect marketing, which is the name of your agency, which I love that. Thank you. Tell us about what that means. 

So for me, one thing I found out when I had left Jeep and left this huge company with all these set processes and ended up going to work for some smaller organizations, I felt like I was robbed by the agencies that we were working with.

They were nickeling and dimming and charging us for everything. And I'm like, I can do better. We, they, the company that I was with was paying $90 a box for business cards, and I'm like, $90 

a 

box for business cards plus shipping. And I'm like, what? And this is a long time ago, we're not gonna talk you.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Um, but it was a long time ago, so I got them down to $32 that included shipping. Just by putting in processes of having things bid out on a regular basis and putting those practices into place. And I just really noticed a huge hole really, where companies smaller sized companies just didn't have the rigorous processes that we had at Chrysler.

And I felt that it was really important to share that with really the rest of the world and to help them do that with their marketing. And so. After I got my MBA, I had enough confidence to start my own agency and I started working with small businesses and nonprofits and making a difference for them.

I love working with organizations where I can make a difference, um, business to business, nonprofits, places where there's just so much low hanging fruit because they don't have people with the expertise that like you and I have. And it's so hard for them to do that. And so they can bring us in, as fractional marketing departments.

And that, that term fractional is, I don't know how new it is, but fairly new. But yeah, you can, you know, as I mentioned, I like to deal with companies that don't have a marketing team. So yes, it's, that's kind of that concept of having someone who's an expert come in and help you. The business card example, it reminds me of the fact that these small business owners, which of course that can range to, many millions of dollars and still considered small, but they are at a disadvantage.

Something like, you know, they don't have the time they're so busy running their businesses that even something like paying too much for business cards can be something that, you know, you could come in and say, Hey, this is not right. And you know, I've got advice on many, you know, in, in many areas. So I think that's interesting and.

It's good for us because there are a lot of companies, you know, we're both small business owners. We've done it all for ourselves, and so we can help other people do it too. And of course the imperfect marketing. I wanna get back to that because I think perfection stops. A lot of us, and I really have been reading more about this, that, you know, procrastination is one is an excuse, you know, or perfectionism is an excuse one way or the other, that we're so afraid that we have to do everything right, that a lot of times we become paralyzed.

So first of all, what do you mean by imperfect marketing? Kidding. 

So. Progress, not perfection. You wanna, nothing is ever gonna be perfect. It is not. There's just, there's no way you can proof everything. You can send it out a hundred different ways. Somebody's not gonna like it. Somebody's gonna have a different preference of something else.

Somebody's, you're not gonna like it in 30 days and wonder what the heck you were thinking. It doesn't matter. Like, right. I've done that so many times. It doesn't matter what it is. But when I talk about imperfect marketing, it's moving forward. It's progress, not perfection. Um, an example is that a friend of mine was starting her own business and she wasn't a hundred percent narrowed down on exactly what she was doing, but she came from corporate.

And so the first thing she built was a website and then she had flyers, and then she had swag. Then she had, I'm trying to remember what else she built, all the things that a large company had. Now the question that you're probably gonna ask me next is, how much business did she have? That was zero.

Because she didn't put it out there because she wasn't ready. She didn't have all the things she felt, she felt like she still needed more. And I'm like, what more do you need? I'm like, you need business before you spend another dollar. And I think a lot of us, especially those that come from larger organizations get, get stuck in that.

Right. That we want it to be perfect because it's representing us. I mean, you talk about UNC copyable you and being you, and building a, a brand that transcends trends and time. And it is, is that lasts. You want it to be perfect, but it doesn't have to. It should be authentic and it needs, and you know what?

If there's mistakes. I always tell people, I'm like, nobody died. In the making of this Facebook post with a typo. We'll fix it and we'll move on. Right. And now 

that, yeah, there's a new advantage to being imperfect. I laugh about this because we were talking earlier. It's so easy to spot AI easier and easier.

Put the damn typo in then. Although it's not ai. A hundred percent. There you go. I, I did it on purpose. As an author, I'm sure you've had this experience, everyone listening, you've sent an email, you proof it, you look at it, the, and you, everything's perfect. And then you hit send or publish and of course, immediately, oh my gosh, I haven't, I wrote the word the twice.

The other thing though, that when you're reminding, when you're talking about this woman, the client, about all these, it's tactics that she was developing, and I think that's the beauty of working with someone like you or me, is that what's the strategy? I think that is just so common. It make it's common sense, but it is also common that people will call me clients.

We're thinking about doing postcards or we're thinking about doing, gifts packages or something. And, and I say, okay, well what's the strategy? What's the purpose? So there are two problems with that. One is that, yeah, you've gotta figure out your whole strategy, but then, yeah, just don't get so bogged down in all of the things.

Well, and a key piece of your 

strategy is who's your audience, right? And who are you? And so again, if we go back to your personal brand and who you are and what you're delivering I need people to know that I'm not perfect. And if they're looking for someone who is, they can keep going to another agency because that's not me.

Again I don't. I very rarely send things out with typos, right? I've done it before. I very rarely send things out where the link doesn't go where it's supposed to. I used to have a heart attack every time I hit send on a client's email. Especially I have a client that has like 15,000 emails that it goes out to.

I had a heart attack every time I hit schedule or send. Like, it just made me so nervous because I was all worried that there was something that I missed or that they missed because of course I sent it to them too. And always nervous that we all missed something. But nobody died. 

Nobody died.

Nobody died. And of course you know that we call the ideal customer your target market, your moose, and I totally agree you. Want a moose that wants to deal with real people, real world stuff then that's the person who you're gonna resonate with. You're gonna click with, they're gonna value what you bring.

And if they are wanting something completely corporate, button down, you know, legally is whatever that might not be you. So think about, yes, you're moose. We have on our website actually, we always have our rules and that's something that keeps us unc copyable. And we have things like we don't do legalese and, and our family is more important than your family.

And your family should be more important than my family. So I, I like that really what resonates with the type of customer, the type of client that you want. Um, what I 

also think. Being authentic, being yourself, bringing your brand personality out, right? Whether it's just you or it's you're growing.

And again like you talked about, don't have a marketing department, whoever that is, whoever your moose is, like we don't have the same one. If we described our target audience, they might sound almost exactly the same, but they're not. And that's because you and I are different, right? And someone that's gonna resonate with me might not resonate with you and vice versa.

And that's okay. And I think that you have to admit that upfront, especially if you're in the service industry that not everybody's the right fit. And if you have the wrong fit, then you're gonna be miserable. And they're gonna be miserable too. 

That's true. Even if they do say yes, it's not gonna be a, a win-win.

So that's a great point. So let's talk about these businesses we're talking about. They don't have a marketing team. They've got all these things to manage. I used to joke that when people would call our office, I'd say, if you want marketing, press one. You want sales, press one. If you want janitorial, press one.

I love that. So these business owners and entrepreneurs that are so overwhelmed, so many choices now, and we talked before and you said you had a pretty clear idea of what you would recommend and maybe a mistake that you made and you didn't do this when you started. So hopefully you know where I'm going with that.

I do. I do. So when I was starting out, I and I still am do as I say, not as I do if you're taking my marketing advice, right. But I, the first thing I didn't do is build my email list. I was out at chamber events, I was networking, I was in local business networking. Still am. I was building my business, not building a pipeline and not building a future and not building my brand.

And yes, I was posting on social that a whopping 6% of the 20 followers I had at the time, you know, could see things. I was overwhelmed trying to be on Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram and all the things, right? Because I was a marketing agency, I need to be in all the places and feeling like you have to be in all the places is a first off the biggest mistake you can make.

Pick, pick one, pick two. If you wanna be out there on social media, that's fine. But work on building your email list. Social media is about reach. The end goal for me, for all my clients on social media is to get them people on their email list. If my email list isn't growing, and again, people can go away 'cause they evolve, they're in different seasons of their business or their lives, or they no longer like hearing from me, whatever it is that's okay.

But my email list should be growing at all times because when I needed an email list, I didn't have one. And it was, it was because I wanted to change my business. I wanted to grow and scale more, and I had more than enough business to keep myself going, but I didn't have emails in a pipeline to get to that next level.

And that. Is where I really realized that the advice I'd been giving my clients was really good and that I should have followed my own advice. But if you're starting out, if you're, or if you're overwhelmed and you've got a bunch of business, the first thing that you need to do focus on building your email list.

And if you have nobody on it, that is okay, add your friends and family and start talking to them as if they were your client. 'cause I'll tell you right now, friends and family forget what you do on a daily basis, um, because they don't live it. Right? And that's if they even understand what you do to begin with.

But add your family on it so that way you don't feel like you're talking to nobody. And then start emailing. That is just so important to stay top of mind. People wanna go viral on social media and do the, I just wanna talk to the people that wanna hear from me and that are potential prospects.

I don't wanna talk to the whole world. They're not going to buy from me ever. And that's okay. 

Right. We don't wanna sell to everyone. We probably can't sell to everyone. But yes, the email, and we always hear about this and it's so true. I mean, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, they can just change the rules, whatever they want.

I mean, even Brenda Miller, who introduced us, we've hired her to help us with our LinkedIn strategy, has got been locked out of LinkedIn. Locked LinkedIn jail, right? 

Briefly. Oh my gosh. I remember when that happened. That was just crazy. I was like that. That totally freaks me out. 

And the way that I learned about that was that I'm on her email list and she sent an email.

So yes, that is, I totally agree that that's step one. Social media is so overwhelming, so many platforms and you know, you put something out and then it's gone in an hour depending, or the algorithm smiles on you and. You know, gets far big reach and maybe you get lucky and you hit the jackpot, but emailing consistently people get to know you.

You can give them value, create that relationship. So that, I totally agree with that advice. And I would like to, and I know some of what you do to create your email list, because I've been on your website and I've seen the resources that you present. So how does someone get someone on their email list?

So there's a couple of different ways. So depending on what kind of business you're in, but the way that I do it is with freebies. So what are the things that I can offer somebody that. Would that they would be willing to pay me for with their email address. Our email address. Like if you think about driving home and getting mail out of your mailbox, you know there's gonna be a bunch of junk mail, and you're okay with that for the most part, right?

You're like, okay garbage. You get junk in your email inbox and you get frustrated. You look at your Gmail or whatever it is, that's your personal email, and you look at the 2,389 unread emails, the little on your phone. Ooh, that's even worse than 

mine. 

Yeah. I do not go into my Gmail at all. I only manage my work email.

But you go into those things and you don't like seeing people that you didn't invite there. So we protect that, right? We don't regularly invite many people. You have to give me something very valuable for me to give you your email address. And so you need to figure out what that is for your moose, right?

For, is it, is it a freebie? Is it a download? Is it access to your custom GPT, um, which is one of the ones that I've been rolling out lately. What is that? And then let them pay for it with their email address. Once they pay for it with their email address, then you can talk to them when you wanna talk to them and end up in their inbox and stay top of mind.

Even if they delete your email, they saw your name. Just saying it's, it's perfectly fine that they don't read everyone. And every successful business person I know. I had a guest on my podcast who 10 xd her business by starting an email newsletter. She sells Phish. She sells Phish. Like real fish. Real fish like salmon 

and co in halibut.

Yep. 

Yep. Yeah. And it's and I can give you the link to her website, but she's, she tens her business by talking about fish. 

And that's good. I mean, just my mind. I live in the Seattle, the Northwest. We're all about seafood here. So just to, I, I can just imagine all the helpful content, the good stuff you can give you know, facts and mm-hmm.

Fun facts and all things about seafood that would, and even the stories make Yeah, stories. Oh, that's great. Because you talk about stories. I do. One of 

her one, it's, um, Selena C and I'll, I'll find that for you. But yeah, we'll put 

it in that, in the show notes too. 

And so one of the things that she did is that she told a story about her son.

They were at a wrestling competition the weekend before. And so the email that went out on Monday or Tuesday was about the wrestling competition and how he won. And what gave him the edge was the fact that he ate healthy and fresh fish, like she actually tied it into the fish, which I thought was amazing.

That was one of her best performing emails that sold more fish than any other email. And yeah, it's a story she welcomed them into her family, showed behind the scenes and really tied it in to the point where she wanted to. But that, those stories are what connect us. 

Connect us and also set us apart from everyone else.

But yes, I mean, yes, I preach stories all the time and I tell stories and you know, we remember stories. If you've gone to a speech or even read a book or read an email, we'll say, and what do you remember? I bet people remember that story of her son. I hope she gave her son a cut of the profits. 

I think he got his wrestling paid for.

Yeah, that's right. He probably got a lot of things paid for anyway, but I love that. And as a small business owner, you've got stories. That's one of the big things we talked about. Talk about in UNC Copyable you because. Even if someone can copy what you do or what you sell, the product you make, they can't copy your stories and your background.

And the fact that you started in a call center for a big company and, and became the advertising manager. So, um, that's a story that no one else has. I love that story. So we're talking email. You've given us some examples of how you can build that email list and you, I notice have quite a few free resources on your site.

So it's not just one thing. Is that something that you came to, was that your original intent or did that come from somewhere? How did that happen? 

Um. It was my shiny object syndrome. I actually don't recommend it. I had shiny object syndrome and it was like, oh, I'm all excited about this and let me make a download for that.

And then I was at one point trying to match up downloads to each of my podcast episodes and that were solo episodes. And I don't know, I got a little crazy on it. Um, so there was a lot there, and I felt like I had a lot to share and so I kept making it. You only need one to start with, right? Yeah. Just who, what does your moose need?

Really? What do they ask? What's keeping them up at night? What problem do you solve for them? And how can you get them to understand that you're the solution for that problem? And that. There is a solution. 'cause one of the things, like I tell people all the time, email marketing is, is probably their solution.

Nobody wants anything related to email marketing. They don't wanna write emails, they don't want better subject lines. They don't want any of that, right? They wanna know how they can grow their business using posting on LinkedIn or Facebook or running some ads or something. That's, I'm gonna use the air quotes easy 'cause email is easier than you think it is.

But they don't, they want to go viral. They want to know the secrets to all those things. That's not what they need. That's what they want. And so you gotta get them from what they want to, what they need. And those downloadables are a great way to do it. But you really only need one. 

Right, and I, I do think people get starry-eyed with the viral video or the viral post and you just really don't have any control over that.

Even the best post could just, be a clunker. I don't know. So. It could go 

viral, but who did it go viral to? Mm. If it didn't go viral to your moose and one post went viral to your moose, right, and went out and got engagement from 10 people and you got three pieces of business for it, I'll take that all day, every day over something that a million people saw.

No kidding. And Amy Porterfield is one of the people I follow. I'm sure you know about her. Oh yeah. And she says, you don't even have to have a huge email list if you have the right email list. Of course, if you've got people that are wanting to know what you are telling them, want to buy your products, that's a great point.

It can go viral. And what does that matter? Why do you care if some wrestler, oh wait, a healthy seafood eating wrestler reads your content. Well, that's all great stuff. I think the, that you've given us some really good concrete things that, that the listener that I can be reminded of too.

So Kendra Kendra, tell, give us your website. It's kendrick 

corman.com, correct? Yep. It's kendrick corman.com. Kendrick's with a K and Corman is with a C. And you can go to kendrick corman.com/resources and you can get access to all of those freebies and even the different things that I recommend if you're looking to start email marketing or podcasting or leveraging ai.

Yeah, check that out. I think one of your downloads is on building your email list, right? 

It is, definitely. It's so, there you 

go. Ask no more. You know, you can go there right now and get that. So, Kendra, this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate it and of course appreciate Brenda. So I'll just close this out by saying so much for being on the show.

Thanks so much for having me.