Marketing With Purpose Kit: Bringing Purpose and Empathy into Marketing

**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Michele Brasfield** (0:17)
Welcome to the Marketing With Purpose Kit series of the Bliss Business Podcast, where we explore what it really takes for marketing leaders to create impact that goes beyond the numbers. I'm Michele, and in each episode, we sit down with marketing experts to explore their leadership approach and strategies that drive performance and resonate with their audience. Together, we'll dive into what's working, what's not, and how purpose and empathy can transform the way brands connect with people. Let's get started. Today, I'm joined by Martha O'Gorman, Chief Marketing Officer at Loyalty Brands, and one of the most influential marketers and brand builders in modern franchising. Martha brings more than three decades of experience shaping national brands, guiding entrepreneurs, and creating marketing that is both strategic and deeply human. A certified franchise executive and active member of the International Franchise Association's Marketing and Innovation Committee, she has led brand development across a diverse portfolio, from tax preparation and small business accounting to mobile pet grooming and home services. Known for finding the emotional heart of a story and expressing it with clarity and purpose, Martha helps brands attract investors, empower business owners, and elevate their impact. We're going to explore bringing purpose and empathy into marketing, and I'm excited to dive in. Martha, before we dive in, I'd love to hear why was bringing purpose and empathy into marketing, the topic you chose to explore with us today, and what makes it so important right now.

**Martha O'Gorman** (2:01)
Well, hi, Michele, and thank you for that wonderful introduction. The reason that I chose this topic is because I have been led into that way of working and that way of feeling through the 30-plus years that I've been working with John Hewitt, who's the CEO of Loyalty Brands and was also the leader of Liberty Tax Service. I helped to grow Liberty Tax Service from zero offices to well over 7,000 by the time we left to start Loyalty Brands.
That in and of itself was a very, very onerous task for someone at my age that I was then now. Of course, I'm much older and so, of course, wiser. But through that whole development process, we worked so hard to get wonderful franchisees to come into our system, to believe in our system, and to understand the value of empathy and purpose when it comes to serving customers, and especially with something as complicated and stressful as income tax preparation. So through all of that, years and years of watching people first come into the system, afraid of their first tax season, and then watching them grow into, most of them into very, very successful franchisees with multiple offices, and also lots of stories about how they had helped customers and served their community. And through that process, through that journey, it kind of changed my attitude towards business in general, but marketing in particular, since that's mainly my focus, because I realized that you could use marketing as a way, obviously, to reach customers, but also to reach customers' hearts. And I think that that's the way that you build a business, a great business, and it's also a way that you build a customer base, a loyal customer base, who comes back year after year, because of the way you have conducted business, and the feelings that they get from you and your franchisees.

**Michele Brasfield** (4:45)
Wow. Well, first of all, 7,000 franchises. That is a tremendous number of people that you worked with and supported. And yeah, I love your heart-centered approach that goes a long way with people. Not only do you end up having a very profitable business, but you feel good in the process, and so do your customers and the people that you work with. So yeah, great to hear.
CMOs are often pulled between near-term campaign results and long-term brand building. How do you ensure your marketing strategy stays aligned with the company's growth goals? And where do you find the biggest friction points in making that happen?

**Martha O'Gorman** (5:31)
Well, when you're building any kind of a brand, you have to have a strategy. And we had a strategy at Liberty Tax, which was always to become the biggest tax service in the country. We didn't quite make that. But what we did do was we followed the strategy of making sure that you were committed to the customer, that you had your campaigns aligned with the long-term goal. And sometimes you have to switch gears and do something based upon maybe a tax change or something that happened that didn't necessarily align with your long-term strategy. And so you always have to be on the cusp of change. You always have to make sure that you're following trends, that you're listening to your customers, you're listening to your employees. And of course, with the job that I had and have, you have to listen to the people, the salespeople who are communicating with new prospects and finding out what's making them interested in purchasing one of our franchise brands to become awarded a franchise with one of our 10 brands, which as you can imagine is a little bit of a matrix to build. But the bottom line is always making sure that your messaging is in line with your strategy, with your company goals, and most important is the company culture. Our culture is one of making sure that we have happy, successful franchisees because without our franchisees and without them being happy and successful, the company is really just a show.