6… 7…?
Today’s episode has some really great insight into marketing and content! We’re talking to Cody Goodrich!
About Cody: Cody Goodrich is a marketing and digital strategy leader with more than 10 years of experience driving brand growth through creative strategy and high-impact campaigns. Known for blending big-picture vision with hands-on execution, Cody has led teams through complex challenges and built brand initiatives that deliver measurable business results. Grounded in a leadership style centered on empathy, clarity, and collaboration, Cody brings practical insight and creative energy to topics spanning brand strategy, campaign development, and modern marketing leadership. His work focuses on helping teams simplify complexity, build scalable marketing systems, and create work that is both strategic and human.
Cody’s plug/Contact Cody: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cody-goodrich-mba/
The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
Every week, Sean shares insights about the world of marketing and speaks to people who are working in various marketing roles – creative agencies, brand managers, MarCom professionals, PR pros, business owners, academics, entrepreneurs, researchers and more!
The goal of The Marketing Gateway is simple – we want to build a connection between all of our marketing mentors in the Midwest and learn from one another! And the best way to learn is to listen.
And the next best way is to share!
For more episodes:
https://www.youtube.com/@TheMarketingGateway
Copyright 2025, The Research & Planning Group, Inc.
TRANSCRIPT:
Sean Jordan (00:01)
Well, welcome back to the Marketing Gateway. I’m of course, Sean in St. Louis and with me today is Cody Goodrich. And Cody, I’m so excited to have you on because I just got to hear you speak a few weeks ago at the AMA and I know you have some awesome stuff to share. So thanks for being on.
Cody Goodrich (00:13)
Thanks for having me, I’m very excited.
Sean Jordan (00:16)
Well, I like to begin every episode by asking guests to just tell me something surprising that I didn’t know. So anything you’d like to share, go for it.
Cody Goodrich (00:24)
Well this may or may not be surprising, I guess we’ll see how the interview goes, but this is actually the first time I’ve been interviewed for a podcast. So yeah, I’ve helped kind of produce some and been on the back end, but haven’t been featured yet.
Sean Jordan (00:32)
Wow.
Well, congrats, and hopefully this will be a high mark for you so that it will only push you to be even better as you go. Awesome. Well, we’re so glad to have you for your first time being a guest. That’s great. And you know, in this series, we’re focused on St. Louis area, and I know you live and work around here. So tell me how you came to be here in St. Louis.
Cody Goodrich (00:44)
That’s right.
Yeah.
Yeah, I wish it was some really interesting story, but really I’ve just been born and raised in the St. Louis area. So I’ve been lucky enough to live here my whole life and just have really grown to continue to love it. And just as I grow, I see the city grow and be a part of all these great communities. ⁓ So yeah, just was lucky enough to be born and raised here.
Sean Jordan (01:20)
And ⁓ when you say born and raised here, did you go to college here too? OK.
Cody Goodrich (01:26)
Yep, yeah, yeah, so I went
to college at the University of Missouri St. Louis, so UMSL for undergrad and my master’s, so yeah, St. Louis through and through.
Sean Jordan (01:31)
great.
Fantastic. And then what is something about the St. Louis area that you wish other people knew?
Cody Goodrich (01:42)
I wish people just realized, I mean as we are in the community and doing what we do in the business community, we see it, but I wish people just knew how collaborative St. Louis was in terms of marketing and business in general. It’s a small community, but that allows you to kind of make a bigger impact with your work. There’s a lot of people that just want to support each other. There’s a ton of talent and people want to share that talent. They want to create these communities where
that talent can thrive like the AMA for example, what you’re doing here with the podcast. St. Louis has so much creativity and they just want to share that and I feel like that kind of environment is really rare when you’re at these larger cities throughout the US. So that’s one thing St. Louis just sometimes you don’t know they have until you’re kind of in it.
Sean Jordan (02:31)
Absolutely. you know, one of the things I’ve noticed about St. Louis compared to other large cities that I visited in my career, a lot of times there’s like one or two really big employers that a lot of people work for in those big cities. We used to have that here, but we don’t really have that as much anymore. We have a lot more mid-sized businesses. And so when you, when you meet people, they’re often doing lots of different things. You know, they might be working, working ag, they might be working finance, might be working in, in, you know, doing creative point of purchase displays for
Cody Goodrich (02:40)
Yeah.
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Sean Jordan (03:00)
Other companies, I mean, they do all kinds of things around here.
Cody Goodrich (03:02)
Absolutely, that’s such a good point. You go to something again like the American Marketing Association St. Louis chapter, but it’s not just marketers that are there. mean you for example, like you get to meet all kinds of other people doing such cool things and they want to share that with others.
Sean Jordan (03:09)
Mm-hmm.
And that works for me because I at heart love to hear people’s stories and learn more about them. So that’s why I’m a researcher. Well, great. Well, like I said, I just heard you at the AMA a few weeks ago. And I’ll tell you a fun story. So we were at the Shack over in Kreeve Corps, which is a breakfast place. 20 years ago, I used to be a retail store manager. I worked for a company called EB Games, which got acquired by GameStop, so a video game store.
Cody Goodrich (03:24)
Exactly, exactly. I love it.
yeah, mm-hmm.
Sean Jordan (03:43)
⁓ I remember being in that very shopping plaza going and helping open a store. So it was kind of like, wow, I’ve come full circle. I’m back at this place and now I’m in a completely different life. And so and then I got to sit down with marketing colleagues and hear you talk about ⁓ taking small teams and doing big things with them, which I know is something you’re really passionate about. So walk me through a little bit of your experience in working with small teams and some of the things that you’ve been able to accomplish in doing it.
Cody Goodrich (03:50)
Wow. ⁓
That’s so funny, I love that.
Mmm.
Yeah, mean, throughout my whole marketing career, I’ve worked and been a part of or led lean teams. Sometimes just one or two people are all the way up to groups of five or six, which in marketing terms, that’s a big team, I’d say. ⁓ So no matter the size of your team, expectations are still high, but resources are limited. In those environments, you learn very quickly what to prioritize and what just really isn’t an option. You kind of learn the hard way there. But
Most recently, I’ve led very small teams through rebrands, multi-channel campaigns, pipeline initiatives where we help the sales team to where we influence sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars. So again, you have that lean team, but you just really understand what to prioritize. So it’s not really about outspending your competitors or doing something completely different. It’s just consistently prioritizing and being so focused on what the outcome should be.
Sean Jordan (05:10)
Absolutely. one of the things I like about smaller teams, when I’ve worked with them, because as a researcher, I’m often working with corporate clients. And so I’ll work with organizations of all sizes. And small teams, seem to have a lot more trust in each other. They know each other’s capabilities better. They’re able to delegate things a lot more efficiently. So I think that some of what comes with being smaller is sometimes a little bit more ability to act, as opposed to being larger and waiting on everybody to have to comment on things.
Cody Goodrich (05:26)
Mmm.
100 % I mean that’s one of the strengths of a small team is there’s less hoops to kind of jump through like you said you just have a smaller team so you don’t have to go through every single team till it reaches the top of like can we do this and by the time you reach that point there’s a lot of different people getting involved too many cooks in the kitchen so to speak and then it ends up the campaign looks completely different than what you started with so that is a massive advantage of a small team as long as the leader of that team
Make sure people feel comfortable experimenting and trying new things.
Sean Jordan (06:11)
And I think that’s so key, is having a leader that ⁓ understands what everybody can contribute and makes them feel like when they’re contributing something that it’s valuable. Not just, yeah, that they’re just being heard because they have to be heard, but they’re heard because we want to hear from them and we want to know their expertise.
Cody Goodrich (06:26)
mm-hmm
marketing I mean you can’t be afraid to make mistakes and try new things but also as a leader you got to make sure people aren’t scared to try those things because with marketing you’re always trying new things if you’re not you’re just kind of expecting the same result trying the same things so you just have to foster that growth in that room for people to mess up
Sean Jordan (06:49)
So can you give me a few examples of any small teams that you’ve worked with and things that you’ve been able to accomplish with them?
Cody Goodrich (06:54)
Yeah, I’d say ⁓ now when I’m doing my kind of freelance and consulting practice, I work primarily with small teams, just where I’m able to kind of help them wherever they need it. I can come in and kind of help with just the consulting or actually do the heavy lifting for them. ⁓ So currently I’m working with a conference that they haven’t really had a direct marketing person. They’ve had a lot of volunteers and things like that. So I was able to come in from an outside perspective to kind of get their branding in order and really just guide them.
on where they should be going to reach the ultimate goal, is registrations. And then from the corporate side, I was leading a pretty small team, but five or six creatives in different aspects to where we created a marketing growth machine that was, I heard from other people in the company, that’s the best marketing team they’ve had. And it’s a company that’s been around for over a hundred years. So it’s just really nice to hear things like that to where someone comes in,
and with a small team but we’re having big results and we have that trust of the company which is just as important as creating content. The people that you work with and the people at the top need to be able to trust you. So that’s one of the biggest things there is of course we want to have a lot of sales but it’s that garnering that trust that is something that’s not always talked about that is a massive outcome.
Sean Jordan (08:16)
For sure. And we often have conversations in the industry about how marketing needs to have a seat at the table with the C-suite or marketing needs to have a direct advocate that’s speaking for them. But that only happens if there’s trust. And it only happens if you can produce real results that ⁓ people believe in.
Cody Goodrich (08:28)
Yeah.
Absolutely. Mm-hmm. Yeah,
absolutely.
Sean Jordan (08:36)
Well, you know, one of the things that you talked about in your talk was this content multiplier method. And I know that’s one of the ways that you can build that kind of trusted alignment. So walk me through what that method’s all about.
Cody Goodrich (08:46)
Yeah, this method, mean, it’s something that teams may be doing and they’re not even aware of it or have a name for it, but really it’s all about leverage. It’s kind of, so most small teams should create good content or they already are creating good content, whether it’s a video, an interview, a one-pager or a podcast. But a lot of times they treat it as a one-time event. And this content multiplier method flips that on its head to where
It basically says if you’re going to spend this time and effort and resources creating something, it should work in multiple places and formats. Instead of asking what should we create next, it’s more about how can this one idea show up in more places for more people without starting from scratch each time. It’s basically a shift from creating more to creating more intentionally. So you start with a flagship piece.
and that kind of spreads out into multiple different pieces to where you’re not having to create something from scratch each time. You have sort of that piece that is the North Star that you’re creating subsequent pieces from.
Sean Jordan (09:53)
So, you know, with an idea like this, it’s always helpful to have an example. So let’s ⁓ talk about trying to get more people to listen to your podcast as an example, right? So what we’re trying to do here. So tell me a little bit about how that method could help someone like myself get beyond just creating this single episode that we’re doing right now and ⁓ maybe turn it into something that could build some impact using this method that you have.
Cody Goodrich (10:15)
Yeah, I’d say a podcast is a fantastic example because it’s something that already contains so much value. You’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting of just getting the person here and interviewing them and you’re already have it recorded audio and video. So that’s kind of the two pieces that you need right there. So then from there, instead of just publishing the episode and moving on, you can treat it as again, like that flagship piece. So the podcast is the flagship piece.
From there you can pull out key insights or moments and turn them into social posts, quotes or clips. You have the video, so cutting that into small clips to gain excitement and things like that. Everyone loves the kind of 10, 15, 30 second reels. You’re able to slice and dice that video to make those types of clips as well. And then beyond that, apart from the digital side, you’re able to turn that into an email, a blog recap, or even a sales conversation.
So really the goal isn’t to be everywhere, it’s to make sure this core idea gets multiple chances to reach the right audience. As we know, some people prefer to see a video, some people prefer to read on a blog or things like that. So this is just the same type of content from the beginning, but it’s just in different bite-sized pieces that really reach the audience where they are.
Sean Jordan (11:31)
And you’re describing my life perfectly because there are times where I want to watch a video version, but a lot of times I just want to read it, right? A transcript or a summary is much more helpful to me than watching a 30-minute video. So the content multiplier method, part of it would be figuring out, I have this recording, how can I make it reach more people? So how do you target that? How do you turn that into something where people, you’re not just putting it all out there for the whole world, but you’re making sure that it’s getting seen by the right people?
Cody Goodrich (11:38)
Exactly.
Mm-hmm.
It’s really just kind of about those bite-sized pieces to where we’re extending that life cycle of that piece to where we’re not just giving everything all at once. Like, here’s this large episode we did, here it is for free basically. So leading up to it, if we’re doing those bite-sized kind of pieces to sort of gain excitement, it’s like, here’s a clip from this podcast that we did and this quote was really good. It kind of gains that excitement. One, it’s an awareness piece of, okay, we know Sean is doing this next podcast episode.
But it’s like, wow, what they said there really appeals to me. So it just gives you the opportunity to have the audience really identify with the piece. Whereas they may not know that ahead of time and then they click in for a 30 minute episode. prior to that, they say like, I know that clip. I know this episode kind of appeals to me.
Sean Jordan (12:48)
And you’re kind of reminding me of ⁓ when I was growing up, there were lots of movies that would come out where they wanted you to go see the movie, but they would have the toys, they would have the novelizations, the comic books, all kinds of other things, movie trailers, everything to get you excited so that you would finally go and see that content, right? And so yeah, I see a lot of application there. Well, what if you’re doing something like, I don’t know, like a webinar? What could you do with that?
Cody Goodrich (12:56)
Mmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. That’s a fantastic example.
Webinar I’d say it’s kind of the same workflow almost as a podcast because it’s a conversation that is being recorded ⁓ Through audio and video so it’s really taking those bite-sized pieces too and just spreading them out in multiple ways kind of like your example of Back in the day when we were trying to gain excitement for a movie you think of it as a trailer For your webinar your podcast you’re trying to gain that excitement with a 30-second trailer so to speak for your webinar
And then you’re able to pull out some bite-size quotes that were done in the webinar or spoken by a panel, things like that. Again, just taking those little pieces that you might not think about when you’re kind of trying to see the big picture of like, okay, we did this webinar, it’s done, we got through it because it’s a lot of work. But then since you spend that much time on that webinar, let’s make that content lifecycle expand as much as we can and do those bite-size pieces.
Sean Jordan (14:10)
And you’re making such a good point. You spent so much time for this one thing, why not make it do other things for you? Why not, instead just having it be a plant, make it a tree that bears fruit, right?
Cody Goodrich (14:14)
Mm.
Exactly,
yeah, you’re spending all that time and as we know with lean teams time is such a precious resource we don’t have. We have a lot of things that we want to accomplish or that the leadership wants to accomplish. So let’s just make sure we’re helping ourselves by expanding that content life cycle.
Sean Jordan (14:38)
Well, let me flip it around to the other side. So sometimes you get that person that is really good at writing. I’m one of those kinds of people. love to write. ⁓ But they’re not so good at being on camera. So how do you turn like a white paper into something that can have all these other different permutations?
Cody Goodrich (14:44)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I mean, nine times out of 10, if they’re fantastic writer, it is hard to find somebody that’s good on camera too. So it’s almost like hiring that talent where an example I’ve had before is we had a writer on staff who would interview folks for a white paper, like getting the subject matter expert to weigh in there. So we would try and kind of have that person as who’s on camera. And a lot of times it seems to make them feel a little bit better knowing that that white paper is more so the script that they have.
people get nervous in front of cameras because they what do I say or am I going to sound silly? But this is all stuff they’ve already said. It’s stuff they know deeply. So we turn that white paper sort of into a kind of script and make sure they’re comfortable that way. And then as a plan B, if for some reason they’re still just so mortified in front of camera, that’s when you’re like, okay, let’s find somebody that’s really good in front of the camera. And again, this is a script that they have. So that white paper, again, thinking the content multiplier method, that white paper turns into
dozens of other things, but it also turns into a video script, which is kind of cool.
Sean Jordan (15:56)
I like that. sometimes
having somebody say, I didn’t write this, but I’m going to explain to you what this other person said, it’s still really valuable because then it feels like they’re telling you something that is like, I’m going to share knowledge with you.
Cody Goodrich (16:09)
Exactly,
yeah. The end user may not know who really thought of it, but they have somebody that is talking to them so they see them as the expert or the company overall as the expert. And that’s really what we’re trying to get at with thought leadership pieces like that.
Sean Jordan (16:13)
Mm-hmm.
I love it. I love it. talking about small marketing teams specifically, ⁓ time savings are obviously a big thing. What are some other ways that the content multiplier method can help these small teams?
Cody Goodrich (16:37)
So really the biggest mistake that teams are trying to make is to do everything all at once. We have all these goals again that we have on the marketing team or from leadership. So we try to do too much at once. One quote I always live by and I would always tell my team is we can do anything but we can’t do everything. And that alone just is kind of how I’ve thought of marketing because yeah we have the talent to do that but we can’t do it all and do it all effectively.
So this method is really manageable when you kind of start small. You don’t need 10 outputs. You need two or three. Pick up one piece of content you already have ⁓ and think about what are other places this can show up as. So rather than trying to invent the wheel, have a lot of companies already have those assets. So it’s just kind of switching your mind frame about what those assets are and how they can be extended into multiple ways.
whether it’s a video, just an image, like it just kind of is a way to look back in the archive so to speak and realize you don’t have to create everything from scratch. ⁓ And once a team kind of sees that working, the confidence build and it stops feeling overwhelming, I’ve learned that kind of the key is to treat it like a system that you grow into, not a checklist that you have to complete. We all have our to-do list, me every day, I’m writing down my to-do list, but you think of it as the overall goal and then
everything you’re doing just feeds into that system that inevitably is going to help you out to be a more effective marketer.
Sean Jordan (18:10)
You know, it’s a strange analogy maybe, but it occurs to me like when I think about like really good like TV shows or books or things like that, they often have a small number of characters and they try to have to do a wide range of things, right? Because you get a lot more economy out of having to explain who a few people are instead of having a giant cast of the, you know, all the Avengers or something like that. And I remember one of my favorite fantasy series when I was a kid, there were probably maybe a dozen characters in it over multiple books, but
Cody Goodrich (18:29)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Sean Jordan (18:38)
Every time the author needed a character, he would bring one of the existing characters in and just expand them out and use them in a new way. And that economy can really create deep hooks because it allows you to do a lot more with a lot less, right? So it sounds like you’re the same kind of thought processes in place. ⁓ Try to find ways to use everything you have as much as possible.
Cody Goodrich (18:43)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Absolutely.
Mm-hmm.
Exactly, we’re not trying to treat this like a game of Thrones where you have a hundred different characters you have them like you said that Avengers are the Justice League of people where you know that they can do great work it’s just helping them reframe their talents and how they go about creating that content based on the talents they already have. Of course as you grow like there’s gonna be new people introduced and you don’t want everybody to be kind of a marketing Swiss Army knife to where they have to do everything because that’s not that doesn’t last long for teams people are gonna get burnt out.
So really this is a kind of method that helps avoid that burnout as well.
Sean Jordan (19:33)
I love it. So what are some other ways this method could be overwhelming to some teams and what are some ways that they could overcome that?
Cody Goodrich (19:40)
Yeah, I think it kind of goes back to trying to do too much all at once. ⁓ It can sound overwhelming, just one piece of content is pretty overwhelming. And thinking through this whole method of like, wow, okay, now I have to create so many pieces of content from that. But I think once you’re in practice with it and kind of you see how it works, it becomes a lot less overwhelming and just start small. I mean, everybody in marketing and business in general is a fan of trying new things and then.
each time you try something you learn from it. So it doesn’t have to be where you’re starting with this big video series and trying to get pieces from that. Start with a social post or just a blog post and see how that inevitably creates more pieces of content. So my advice would be just kind of start small and be be nice to yourself. Like we’re in this business because we’re trying things. If it doesn’t work it’s not a failure. You just learn from that.
So just get out there and try, and I think you’ll see that this method works for many kind of more lean teams.
Sean Jordan (20:42)
You know, one of the things we talked about at your ⁓ talk a few weeks ago was metrics. Like, how do you measure this stuff? And I think, you know, we kind of talked a little bit about, you know, there’s good metrics and bad metrics, right? So what are some ways that you can measure your success and to know if you’re really being successful?
Cody Goodrich (20:47)
Hmm. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yes.
Yeah, think so it all kind of comes back to we do work for a leadership team So we want to make sure that we are showing that growth to them. They have these goals and we don’t want to Completely throw those goals out the window ⁓ Sorry, can you can you repeat the question I’ll start over
Sean Jordan (21:16)
That’s OK.
Yeah, yeah. So I’ll just have Holly catch you in with your answer. And basically, I was asking, how can you make sure that you’re measuring your success and knowing that you’re actually being successful? So go ahead. Go ahead and take it from there whenever you’re ready. Yeah, that’s OK. Sorry, I threw that at you. I’m thinking, ⁓ this will be an easy one. And ⁓ know, no spot. Yeah, that’s OK.
Cody Goodrich (21:32)
Okay, let me think through a little bit. No, no. No, it is, but I’m just like overthinking it, I guess. Let’s
see.
Sean Jordan (21:44)
Because I know a few things that we had talked about that I remember where we talked about vanity metrics being really bad. You talked about what you just talking about, which was growth, being something that you had to take responsibility for. And I think there was something else that you talked about too, but I can’t remember what it was. Maybe it all occurred to you as you’re…
Cody Goodrich (21:48)
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, let
me, yeah, the vanity metrics and making sure you’re kind of the overall goal is what leadership kind of wanted to see. then I think success too is just kind of like the amount of content you’re creating because yeah, okay. ⁓ No, no, you’re good. No, you’re good. ⁓ Okay, so I think success in business and marketing for sure kind of presents itself in multiple ways. You have the…
Sean Jordan (22:13)
There you go. There you go. OK, yeah, sorry to put you on the spot. I didn’t mean to do that. Whenever you’re ready.
Cody Goodrich (22:26)
exact success to where you know leadership has this goal that you want to accomplish. That’s great, but then you also have these other pieces of success that you want to accomplish along the way. Success could look like the amount of pieces of content you’ve created, the actual metrics that sometimes are kind of those vanity metrics of this is how many impressions we got and things like that, take them or leave them, but they are good because they show you in real time if the audience you gave the content to is really
Identifying with it. Is it popular? Do they like the way it looks and then success all the way down to is it more sales? Is it more conference registrations? Those are the more kind in-your-face ⁓ Pieces of success but along the way there’s also the other pieces to where is your team happy? Are they thriving? Do they feel less burnt out? So success can present itself in multiple ways Some that are a little bit more obvious to where we didn’t get that registration or we’re kind of having a lean month here in terms of
budget or sales and things like that but ⁓ with this method I mean the success there is just time saved in more pieces of content.
Sean Jordan (23:36)
Yeah, I would imagine vanity metrics are an interesting topic because ⁓ we know we can’t rely on them solely, but they are still impressive to people outside of the marketing team. And if you get a million impressions on something, mean, that is a number you should probably mention, right?
Cody Goodrich (23:44)
Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah, right.
Absolutely. Yeah,
they all have their place if you think of it as the sales funnel. mean, those vanity metrics are more top of funnel, but they’re such an easy way to see if your content is working for your audience. If you publish a white paper and nobody’s looking at it or downloading it, there are zero impressions or whatever. That tells you a lot too. And for a lot of these pieces of content, there is a lot of like kind of low buy-in to where really all we want is people to…
read through it or if it’s a landing page, we want people to interact with the landing page. It’s not always going to result in a hand raise of like, yes, I’m ready to work with you. So success for marketing teams may not seem like success for their overall company. So there is a little bit of difference there, but those vanity metrics absolutely do matter.
Sean Jordan (24:40)
And again, thinking top of funnel and bottom of funnel is always going to be important in any kind of ⁓ strategy that you have. And I think with different kinds of content too, you kind of have to think about where they’re driving people. Because there are things that you want to drive people towards that purchase decision or registration or whatever. But there’s others that you just want to build awareness, right?
Cody Goodrich (24:44)
Mm-hmm.
huh.
Absolutely.
Yeah, there’s yeah exactly like you said is this an awareness piece and that’s kind of goes over into the beginning of before we even create the content What is the overall goal is a brand awareness? Is it? Registrations anything like that brand awareness is just as important because that’s something a campaign that’s always on To where it’s like we’ll talk about ourselves the person we’re targeting may not be ready to buy then but at least then we’re top of mind for when they are ready to buy and that’s the overall goal
of kind of those brand awareness pieces.
Sean Jordan (25:31)
strategy always being the background, the skeleton of what needs to happen before you create anything,
Cody Goodrich (25:35)
Yes,
absolutely. You want to have a strategy there and a lot of times it’s from top down of like we want this to happen and then there’s a strategy that kind of we create on the marketing side of how do we accomplish that so we don’t want to just create content for the sake of creating content there has to be that strategy.
Sean Jordan (25:54)
So I want to talk about an elephant in the room that comes with ⁓ having a small marketing team. A lot of times when have a small marketing team, it’s because you’re working for a mid-size or smaller company and you may be under-resourced or maybe don’t have as much executive support because they just kind of view it as, well, marketing is expensive. So you’re trying to get your vision across to these executive leaders. And they know they need to be doing marketing, ⁓ but they don’t necessarily understand what your vision is or how it plays into what they’re trying to accomplish as an organization.
Cody Goodrich (26:06)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Sean Jordan (26:24)
How do you get that across? What do you need to say to them in order to get them to be aligned with what you’re trying to do as a small team?
Cody Goodrich (26:31)
Absolutely, there’s been times in some of my past roles I have to present to senior leadership about our marketing plan and things like that and as each company is different but I think really what kind of spans between all companies is leadership does not want to be surprised. They want clarity about what you’re doing but they also want to make sure that you present to them that you heard what they want to accomplish. Again, everything’s kind of from the top down like we have stuff that we want to do on the marketing side but in the end
the leadership is who kind of writes the paychecks and makes sure we have a job. So we want to make sure our their goal is being kind of followed through on. ⁓ So again, leading with clarity about what we’re doing, about what we’ve tried and might not have worked. No surprises. ⁓ So your long time vision as a marketing leader should match with those overall company goals. And that’s really the starting place for your campaigns. Again, talking about that’s your North Star for how you explain to leadership what your team is doing.
and the results of that effort. The results good, bad, or the ugly. It’s just letting them know this is what the goal was, this is what we’ve tried, it’s working great, or we’re going to pivot a little bit. So if you’re talking to them about something that may not have worked so well, you’ve got to have a plan for what we’re going to do. It’s like, okay, this didn’t perform well, but we’re already thinking about how we’re going to switch it based on analytics. So everything should be strategy based and analytics based ⁓ based on what you’re presenting to the leadership.
And really for marketing, you said, every company knows they need to have it, but not every company knows exactly what marketing is or what they do. They’re like, they post on social media, but marketing is so much more than that. So it’s really being your own biggest cheerleader and as a leader being an advocate for your team. Because if your leader is not advocating for the team, nobody else is. You got to show kind of what the team is doing and the value that they’re bringing.
So in terms of bringing it back to kind of that content multiplier method, when you’re explaining that ⁓ leadership teams, you kind of frame it around the outcomes, not the outputs. So instead of saying, we published six pieces of content, we can say, we built a system that increases visibility, consistency, and sales alignment. That kind of really speaks to the top to where it’s like, yeah, that’s great. We created a ton of content, but what am I getting out of that, so to speak? ⁓
It also helps to show how content compounds over time. That one flagship piece supporting multiple initiatives is easier for leadership to trust rather than a constant stream of disconnected efforts to where it just seems like, we’re throwing something out the wall to see what sticks. It really shows that there’s a method behind the madness, to speak.
Sean Jordan (29:17)
I love that. You said so many several insightful things there. Leadership doesn’t like to be surprised. You need to put it in language that helps them to understand their success. You need to show them how that has a compounding effect and all of those things. I mean, we could do an entire podcast on each of those topics. They’re so important. And yet they really help, I think, giving marketing credibility and not just being, as you said, oh, they’re just off their post and stuff on Instagram or TikTok.
Cody Goodrich (29:24)
Mm-hmm.
Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Okay.
Sean Jordan (29:47)
But no, they’re out there really championing our brand and helping us to look like we are somebody that people want to do business with. mean, that’s really what the goal of marketing should be, is to make the brand look like something that’s effective and meaningful and attractive, right? ⁓ You know, one of the things that I was also thinking about as you’re talking about leaders too, is a lot of times they don’t have any formal training in marketing. And they don’t really, I mean, they might’ve taken business school classes in it and…
Cody Goodrich (30:02)
Absolutely.
Mm-hmm.
Sean Jordan (30:15)
If they’re like me, I my business school classes, everything I learned in marketing back in 2008 is completely different now.
Cody Goodrich (30:21)
Yeah, right. Marketing is constantly
changing. So it is hard even as a marketing professional to stay on top of those trends and the new things that are happening. So we can’t really expect leadership to do that for themselves. As I mentioned, we have to be our biggest advocate and that’s not just about the great things we’re doing, but bringing those ideas to the table. Like, hey, we’re seeing this out in the market. This might be something good for us to adopt or try. So also showing that forward thinkingness of the team too ⁓ creates that trust as well.
Sean Jordan (30:51)
I just think it’s fantastic that you come up with this way of articulating all this and putting it all together in a way where you’re not just out there just, we’re gonna do whatever we can to just throw things out the wall, but really having a strategic purpose behind it and saying, let’s take the things that we know work or the things we know we can build well and then multiply them out so that they have a ⁓ much more ⁓ pronounced effect.
Cody Goodrich (30:55)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely, and I mean I’ve been guilty of doing the to where I’m just throwing things and seeing what works which a lot of times that’s how you learn things but as I’ve gone through my career I’ve seen this method seems to be just a really kind of universal piece to just help really I’m just trying to help from burnout of marketing teams all teams are overloaded but marketing especially is very overloaded underfunded so how do we just kind of help ourselves create the most content and the most value that we can
Sean Jordan (31:43)
Wow. Well, Cody, it’s been great talking with you. And at the end of our discussions, I always like to ask every guest if they have something they want to plug. So here’s your chance. You can plug anything you want. Go for it.
Cody Goodrich (31:51)
⁓
Yeah, I just like to plug like I mentioned, I have my own consulting and freelance practice. I love helping kind of those more lean marketing teams ⁓ help make an impact and just kind of fit in wherever I can just to make their lives easier. That’s as I’ve been through my career, that’s what I love to do. And I think it’s something that all teams kind of need is that support. And sometimes it’s the outside perspective. So if anyone is listening is in that place to where you’re part of a lean marketing team, I’m
more than happy to talk, I’m happy to connect on LinkedIn or anything like that.
Sean Jordan (32:26)
And of course, all of Cody’s information is in the show notes. So please do connect with him. I know he’d love to hear from you. And Cody, I’m just so glad we were able to have you on. Again, I enjoyed hearing you speak. ⁓ we got to unpack a lot of that on this episode. I feel like I learned a lot. So thank you so much.
Cody Goodrich (32:34)
Me too.
Thank you.
Yeah, I appreciate this. This is my first podcast, like I said, so hopefully I’m glad to hear that it went well and I really enjoyed talking to you and I really appreciate you coming to the AMA chat, but then also inviting me onto the show.
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