3 Tips for More Strategic Marketing with Cody Hays
Branding with Friends | Episode 32
Featuring Expert Guest, big picture partner and nonprofit marketing expert, Cody Hays!
Watch or listen to the video interview below or scroll down to read the transcription.
Meet Cody Hays, big picture partner, nonprofit marketing expert, and Founder of Marketing Mission
Annie: Hi there, welcome to a new episode of Branding with Friends. The show where branding meets key business topics. Here you're going to learn tips straight from the experts on everything from content writing, to book marketing, to LinkedIn posting. We focus on what you can do right now to use these topics and the power of branding to attract your ideal clients.
I'm your host branding expert Annie Franceschi of Greatest Story Creative. I help service business owners tell their story and show their value through clear messaging and consistent branding. I'm also a former Disney storyteller, professional speaker, and the author of two best selling books, Establish Yourself and Permission to Try. And today I am so excited to introduce you to one of my friends from the business world. If you have been struggling with how to maximize your marketing, how to focus on what to do, and make that marketing better, you're going to love today's guest and today's episode.
My guest today is the incredible Cody Hays. Cody is a big picture partner and nonprofit marketing expert who's raised more than $8.5 million for organizations nationwide. His company Marketing Mission is well known for maximizing nonprofits marketing, while streamlining their time and effort. As a strategist Cody partners with nonprofit fundraisers, founders, and executive directors with his maximized marketing intensive. That's an experience where in just two days, he can develop a valuable nonprofit marketing toolkit, AKA the powerful assets you need to streamline marketing and for your staff to increase impact and funding without losing your mind. Who doesn't want to do that? Cody, I'm so glad you're here.
Cody: Thank you so much, Annie. It's so great to be here. And just I want to pause to say kudos to that amazing introduction. It's almost like you helped me write it or something.
Annie: It's almost like that, maybe a little bit.
Cody: I love it. I love it. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm so excited to talk with you today. Annie.
Annie: Me too, I wanted you to come on. And we were just talking just before we started recording that you and I do a lot of the same things. But for a little bit different audience. I work with coaches and consultants. You really primarily work with those folks in the nonprofit marketing world. But we have so many shared values. And I thought no one better than to bring on to talk about how to have more strategic marketing than Cody. So I'm really glad you're here. And if you've never listened or watched Branding with Friends, you are going to discover that we do three tips. We want this time to be useful for you. So Cody is going to give you three action tips. If you want your marketing to be more focused and more strategic, he's going to give us some ways of thinking about that that'll be really actionable that we can put into play right after you watch this. And he's also brought a free gift along for you. So we're gonna share our first two tips and make a pause for that moment just to make sure you don't miss it.
So with that being said, Cody, I know you are the king of keeping people streamlining their time and helping them really make the most of their marketing efforts. So with that in mind, talking to coaches and consultants, what is that first thing that we really want to do if we want to have more strategic marketing?
#1 Action TIP
People are different! Your marketing must speak to various personality types and how they make decisions.
Cody: Yeah, so absolutely. So, first thing that I would say, to think of or to do, or to recognize when you are working on your strategic marketing is just recognize that people are different, right? So your marketing must speak to different personality types because you have a personality, I have a personality, although we're similar, there are some unique differences. And our audience or our customers have differences as well. So some folks are quick decision makers, where they are weighing all their options, like really, really quickly, like right now. Yep, I hear this offer, I'm ready to pull out my credit card and swipe. Whereas others are more emotional decision makers and take time to think like, oh, how will this impact me? How will this impact my family? How will this impact the people around me, and some are also analytical thinkers. So, and they need to know stats or want to hear an experience from somebody before you or a customer before you. That way they can feel like they're making a strategic and correct decision for them. And so, once again, for thinking about how people are making decisions, people are making them quick, they're making them slowly, and then they're making them emotionally, or they're making them analytically. So for example, if you're sending out a, if you have a new service, and you're wanting to promote it, you wouldn't necessarily, at least in my experience, find a lot of success in just sending out a single sales email. And like that's the only promo that you do. You will actually want to consider, you know, maybe a longer campaign that nurtures your audience through that campaign. So that way, if you send out that first email, and that quick decision maker is like yep, I'm ready to sign up, swipe my credit card, great. But if you just stop there, you're missing out on day two, three through eight, or however many days your campaign is of people who needed that extra support from you and that extra information from you to feel like they are making a strong and smart decision for their business.
Annie: I love that. And I love that you bring in the psychology of it. And I don't know if people get granular enough with that. And I love that you brought this as a point. I think a lot of people on Branding with Friends across our thirty plus episodes have started with some sort of point about who is it you're talking to? You know, and that's branding 101 is, who is it for? And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing you say is that this isn't even about like not having an ideal client. You're not saying have twenty ideal clients, what you're saying is within your ideal client umbrella, recognize that specifically, people have different styles of decision making when it comes to investing or in your case donating. You know, whatever those things may be and so it is really wise to leave some breadcrumbs and to mark it in a well rounded way to a specific audience but to remember that there are going to be those quick, you know, card swipers, and then there are gonna be the people who need to see it from a couple different angles. Is that what you're trying to share with us?
Cody: Yeah, absolutely. So putting an example to that, you know, if your audience is similar to my audience, if your audience is thirty something year old moms, we know that all moms are different, right? We have moms that are, you know, very quick to make decisions very reactive. And there's others that are like, oh, I want to go consult with my family, or I want to talk to my partner about this before I make a decision. And so if we’re just talking to the moms that are like, yep, I'm ready right now. Swipe, swipe, swipe. We're missing out on some potential audience or some folks that we would enjoy working with down the line because we haven't marketed to them. We haven't given them the space that they need to feel ready to make that decision.
Annie: Right. So this is really about having a big picture view in mind about how you're approaching, launching any particular thing that maybe not just one. Making sure that you're covering off on how people make decisions and I think you gave a great breakdown for that. I think that that is so important about when we articulate our value in a branding perspective and making that always an easy yes for people. And that's what I always teach in my coaching and how I set up brands for clients. It's always about how can we remove pieces so it is easy to just make that quick, I’m in decision. I think people sometimes overcomplicate it, and they're trying to give us all this stuff and they don't just make it easy to buy it. But then it's also thinking about, it's not just the free consult button. It's also the content that's on your website. It's also how you talk about it and how you're showing up in other ways. Because there are going to be people who you meet them right in the right season. And then there are going to be people who take four years of knowing you before they call you up because it's finally the right time. And so I think you’ve given a strategy that is well rounded there. So people are different. We need to meet them especially – and they make decisions differently. I think is that biggest tip. What is the next thing we want to consider? We know that we’re covering off on a strategy and launching things that really take people's decision making personalities into account. What is the next thing we want to be mindful about?
#2 ACTION TIP
In this cluttered digital world, consistency is key!
Cody: Yeah, so I think the next thing that we want to be mindful of is, especially in this cluttered digital world, consistency is key. But I know we've heard that literally like a thousand times from folks, especially like social media managers, like just be consistent. Yeah, exactly. Well, when you're just starting out, or really, if marketing isn't your forte, I recommend yes, being consistent in the number of posts that you're putting out, or the number of emails that you're putting out and testing various formats within that bucket of days that you've given yourself.
So for example, if you give yourself three days a week to post on social media, you may consider testing a quote sign on day number one, on Monday. Say, I'll use myself for an example. On Mondays I wanted to throw out something about inspiration, something inspirational related to mindfulness, wellness, and getting the mindset right so we can show up for work. And I knew that you know Mondays was my day for that. And for two months, I tested various types of content to fall into this bucket. So for example, I started with a plain graphic and noticed, a quote graphic and noticed like oh, that got you know, twenty likes. And then I tried using that same style and I just swapped the background for a video instead of a photo and that got me you know, thirty likes. And then I realized, oh, if I change this format into a reel, now that gets me a hundred likes. And then we just keep going down this testing and saying, oh, whoops, this one didn't, this one tanked. So that's not the strategy I want to be using.
So I think if you can keep your content buckets or those days in which you're sending out your content consistent, but then use that flexibility and that creativity and especially rely on your analytics, you can have that to evaluate the performance of the content that you're putting out. That's how you can ultimately not get overwhelmed with this chaos that is marketing and trying to adjust 1000 things at once. You can focus on one specific topic or campaign or piece of content every single week, and just try to fix or improve that one specific area. And so you may even take this in phases and say, you know, for Q1 I'm just going to do this for social media. And in Q2, I'm just going to do this for email. And in Q3, I'm just going to do this for the website. And then by Q4, you're gonna come around and be like, oh, I have a system for my social. I have a system for my email. I have a system for my web. How can we streamline this or automate it or improve this process so it's saving time?
And so just to recap, in this section, in this digital world, consistency is key. But let's not be so overwhelmed by trying to get the perfect piece of content out, let's just try to improve every single week by a tiny little percentage. And overtime, we know the compound effect that will ultimately pay off in multiples.
Annie: Yeah, I love that. And I think it's a really interesting take on consistency you just shared. Because what I heard is like consistency with flexibility for creativity for sure. So like, I think there's some permission in what Cody is saying that you could, for example, be really consistent about the stories you are telling. Like you are always out there talking about maximizing your marketing and streamlining your time while doing that for these nonprofit folks. And so as long as what you're doing touches that, you know, what you are experimenting with is what format works best for these people. Right? Like, I don't know. And so let me try that. And so that's a really good strategy then versus like, I'm gonna do a quote graphic every day for two months and never look at whether that's doing well. Remembering that you can play with things. And I think people also get off of consistency, because it feels boring. And so it's like, well, this, what you just described as sort of this playful experiment, that as long as you have some consistency, think about it like consistency variables. That's kind of what I heard you say is like, keep some consistent variables. And I as the branding person would say, yes, and those consistent variables should be this is for my ideal client. This really speaks to some brand’s story, pillar, something that is an overarching theme, a reason why clients hire me versus anybody else. Right? Like, what is so great about what I do? If I'm showing up in lots of different formats about that you kind of can't go wrong, is the beauty. So I love that you brought up this other way of tackling consistency.
Cody: Yeah, I think I mean, going back to the brand stories that we worked on. I use the brand stories, I'll first use it and like an Instagram caption and see how my audience is resonating with it. And if people are commenting on there, engaging with me, sending praise I’m like, oh, people are interested in this, let me repurpose it and add it to my nurture email sequence. And, again, I've had people – the same Instagram posts that I've went and turned into an email, people are replying to that email because it's resonating with them. And so I'll be like, okay, let me play with this a little bit more. I'll go and record a video with the same exact script as that caption and I don't have to do any more work other than hold up my phone and hit record. And so we can repurpose that message or those brand stories that you so eloquently help us create into ways to be consistent in our messaging. Let's spread that message across various different platforms, formats, mediums, etc.
Annie: It's that creativity again to play with the formatting but remember, like paying attention to what stories are really resonating with people. I think people get really hung up on like the format and stuff like that and they don't think enough about what is, what story you're trying to tell and that's branding 101 is like well what I want to be known for and what makes my business great. What makes me great? If you don't understand that none of your content is going to work right. Like that is the thing you can be as consistent, king and try all this data and all of that but it's not going to – like what good are likes if they don't translate to business right? There's just vanity metrics.
So all this, I love having you on to talk about this and other people on Branding with Friends because it is all hand in hand with branding. But I love how you approach consistency. And I think hopefully that's some permission for people who've been off the consistency bandwagon. I will also say too just to add on this, for anyone listening, I think I love that Cody brings on this perspective that I don't have, right. You are checking your data you're looking at, like, I almost as a religious philosophy do not, personally. I don't. But I also don't use social in the same way that you do. You use it to grow your business. I use it to show up as a credible expert. But like it's not my primary driver, like my primary driver is really client relationships and referrals and speaking. And that works really great for me. And that means I personally don't do a lot of data experimentation and things like that. But I think even if that maybe felt above your head, it might encourage you to maybe try something. Try a little bit of a different format. Try a little bit of a different email. You might write repurposing some content. I heard a lot of permission around that too. And I think these are universal themes, even if maybe likes are not your language as they are not necessarily mine, per se. But I'll even share an example that I've just started doing this week. I mean, I almost am famous for never posting on social. I have like a tool where I put a bunch of content, and I have it post for me. But I've started posting on my Instagram Stories, just what I'm doing for the day. Like, hey, this is like I posted it and you know, you saw it because I was interviewing you. And it's kind of – I was like, let's try this because I recognize that I liked when another branding person that I follow was sharing their day. And I'm like, well, let's see, you know, and it's been fun. It's kind of nice for me and like cool I'm kind of celebrating. I'm in the moment. So it's like whatever feels accessible to you that feels on strategy is worth playing with is what I hear from you.
Cody: Absolutely. Absolutely. We're on the same wavelength for sure.
Annie: This is so valuable. And I know you've got one more tip for us. But before we do that, I know you brought something along for our Branding with Friends, guests. So what do you have that might be useful for our folks?
Don’t miss this special opportunity for “Branding with Friends” fans…
Grab 15 free Canva templates for nonprofits here.
Cody: Yeah, so let's be honest, we've talked about it a lot. Staying consistent with marketing is challenging, especially when you are reaching max capacity which I know so many of us are. I feel like there's always just more and more and more to do. And so we have put together fifteen Free Canva templates specifically for Instagram to help you raise awareness about your organization, about your nonprofit, and your business as well. And so you can grab those at MarketingMission.org/freebie. You can add those at MarketingMission.org/resources. Yeah. I recently put all of my freebies on one page to make it easier for folks. And so I'm like, oh, forgot that URL change.
Annie: Don't forget your redirects, and we'll put it in the show notes down here. Fo sure. So wherever you're watching this that should be accessible to you. Well, those are so helpful. And you've been talking us through all of these pieces. And I will say if this has gotten you thinking about your branding, and maybe you don't know what story you should be telling in the first place, you can always hop on my calendar for a free consultation. Check it out at GreatestStoryCreative.com.
And Cody, you have brought us through this so eloquently of strategic marketing. We know we need to remember that people are different and that they have different decision making strategies, right. So we have to, our marketing needs to meet them where they are. The second thing is we need to be consistent but we can be creative and how we practice our consistency through formats, through data, through repurposing, right. What is that third thing you want to leave us with about strategic marketing?
#3 Action Tip
Realize you don’t have to be perfect to start delegating (Trust an expert to help you start to delegate.)
Cody: So once you've identified what it is that works for you, as an individual, as a creative and what's working for your brand and your business, we want to batch work like it's nobody's business, right? So once we find that winning formula, then let's just repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat to save time. So my top performing content series right now are bringing back to the quotes, trailside quotes. What these, it started out as a good graphic with a random inspirational saying and I realized you know as we climb that ladder and for testing different formats that oh, if I put this in on a trail sign –
Annie: Like it’s a literal graphic of a trail sign. Yeah.
Cody: Yeah, literally a graphic of a trail sign and then put a, the forest, video of the forest in the background. That's gonna get me ten to twenty times my usual feed engagement. And what I've also noticed is that when I batch work these short explainer videos, where I'm literally pulling out those brand stories that we read, that we've written together, and not even the full brand stories. Like I'll pull out like two sentences from said brand story. That's where I'm getting a ton of new followers, folks that are reaching out because that's thought leadership. I'm putting out my original thought leadership content. And so I think when we figured out you know, what is that system? What is, what are those pieces of content that are consistently getting results or performing high, or performing the way that we we are wanting it to, then let's create more of that because we know our audience is resonating with it and we know that it is working. And what I love also about batch raking, I love to batch work on campaigns within a quarter system. And once we've ran through that quarter, we can go back to those analytics. We can see what's working, what needs to be adjusted, and then we can make those adjustments, you know, that last week of the quarter, and then reschedule that campaign for Q2. And we don't have to do a ton of more writing for our social captions or writing. I know you, Annie, you're a really big fan of batch working social media even do a year at a time, right?
Annie: Yeah or more really like two two years.
Cody: So I think, you know, where we find success is kind of testing those, those pieces of content. Speaking to our audience in ways that resonates to their personality type, their decision making process, and then being consistent with our constant improving, just tracking, and then putting out that content. And then batch working like it's nobody's business. And once we get into that flow of like, Oh, I know what my audience likes, I know what content I need to create, it makes the actual time that we're spending on content creation, it just like nosedives, right. We go, weeks at a time, it's like, I don't know what to do. Literally I can sit down for two hours and batch out a quarters worth of content for my business.
Annie: Because you know, what you're trying to create? That's, everything goes back to strategy, right strategic marketing. And so I think that's spot on. And you know, I love batching so much, I take a whole month to just work on my business, which is the month of December, but you know, batch days, batch months, batch afternoons or mornings work, you know, just as well. But I think Cody's point is not just to batch it, but to really hone in on what is working, what works. And you know, you can't experiment forever either. That's the other thing I see a lot of branding and marketing is like, just being in motion is not moving forward. And so sometimes you just kind of have to go with your best data and your best information and you start doing it, you start, you know, you found that Trailhead graphic, and you might, okay, I'm gonna make 20 of these, I'm gonna make 30 of these like, and you can make them so much faster if you do them all in one flow. And you kind of have this plan. So that that is how I like to approach any kind of marketing, if I can sort of do it all at once. Do it in groupings, so that it isn't this like, constant poll at you. And so I love that that was your big tip. So we know that we going forward, we need to remember that people within our ideal clients audience are different, and we need to meet them where they are when they're making decisions. And we want to build that into our marketing. We want to test things out but using consistency as our sort of bandaid on sort of, you know, hold our table around the world to make it make sense. And then once we have that information, we really want to make the most of our time with it and make the most of our results by batching and doubling down on it.
Cody: That's right. All right.
Annie: Well, thank you again, Cody. It has been amazing to have you share your genius with us.
Cody: Thank you so much, Annie. I really appreciate it and looking forward to connecting with everybody.
Annie: Yeah, we'll check out Cody. We'll have all the information about him here in the notes, and we hope that you enjoy yet another episode of Branding with Friends. Many many thanks to my special guests, Cody Hays with Marketing Mission. Tune in next time when we're going to tackle yet another topic where branding and business meet. Until then I'm Annie Franceschi of Greatest Story Creative. You can find all our episodes, branding resources and so much more on our website GreatestStoryCreative.com.
Stay awesome!
“Branding with Friends” Episode 32
Show Notes + Resources
Here are 3 key tips for strategic marketing in business:
People are different! Your marketing must speak to various personality types and how they make decisions.
In this cluttered digital world, consistency is key!
Once you’ve identified what works for your brand - batch work like it’s nobody’s business!
Resources:
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