Why Brand Strategy Amplifies Lead-Gen

Tom Nixon (00:02.458)
Welcome back everyone to the bull horns and bulls eyes podcast. Curtis, you’re not the only one wearing a podcasting hat today. As you can see, I’ve got my lid on here because two reasons. One is, the summer is kind of winding down here in Michigan as we speak. But one of your favorite places in all of Michigan has now become one of my places in all of Northern Michigan. You don’t want me to tell people it’s too late. I’m wearing the hat.

Curtis Hays (00:27.284)
It’s supposed to be secret.

Tom Nixon (00:29.828)
They could zoom in in this hat actually says, can you read it? Elk.

Curtis Hays (00:34.302)
Well, it says Elk Rapids, but I don’t see the words above

Tom Nixon (00:37.85)
Well, let’s see if this works.

Curtis Hays (00:40.701)
the hidden gem. Yeah, it is a gem.

Tom Nixon (00:42.234)
the hidden gem. So, I wanna thank you for being my virtual tour guide when I was in Elk Rapids recently. It is a hidden gem. Nobody should go there though. There’s plenty of pollution and the water’s no good to drink. So, but

Curtis Hays (00:56.754)
The dirtiest water in all of Michigan. Don’t go there.

Tom Nixon (00:59.524)
That’s right. Exactly. But I wanted to be on brand today because you wear a hat. Everyone’s been commenting that, is that the podcast where the guy wears the cowboy hat? So you are obviously the master of brand. but we thought there’s always more that we could learn, which is why we’re doing this podcast. And so today we’re going to be talking about branding and brand strategy.

April (00:59.587)
you

Tom Nixon (01:22.127)
So.

Curtis Hays (01:22.42)
Let’s get into it. Yeah, I mean, this is not my expertise by any means, but I know when companies do well with brand, they tend to do well. So.

Tom Nixon (01:33.39)
Yeah, I’m gonna pick your brain on that because you’ve noticed, you’ve conveyed to me, I think even on this podcast that you find that companies that are doing lead gen only versus companies that are doing lead gen supported by what we would call brand activities. The latter are far more successful at the lead gen conversion rate than those who are not doing it. And there’s a reason for that. And we’re going to find out some of those reasons today by inviting today’s guest on

She is the co -founder of a company called forthright people. She and her partner specialize in brand strategy, and we’re going to pick her brain today. Please welcome everyone. April Martini to the podcast. Hey April.

April (02:12.794)
Yeah, hi guys. Well, you know, first of all, thank you so much for having me.

Interesting for me because we also have a podcast called marketing smarts. And so I’m usually in your seat. So it’s a really nice change of pace for me today to be on the other side. And before we got on here, Curtis was like, don’t worry, I’m handling all the logistics. I’m like, well, usually that’s my job. So this is going to be fun. but yes, I am the co -founder of forthright people with my business partner and Candido. We have been, we’re in our fifth year of business now. She is actually a 20 year P and G veteran in PR and communications. And I was

on the agency side of things. our expertise allows the client and the agency to literally be in the room at all times. And where Anne and I overlapped from the very beginning was in our love, first of all, for brand strategy, but also just our belief in the power and what it can do because we’ve both seen it before in our individual careers and collectively now that we’re together. So really happy to be

Tom Nixon (03:14.18)
Yeah, interesting thing about the formation of the small, I would call you a boutique and I don’t think anyone should write. So but you both come from either a big agency background or big company background. Why did you decide purposely? And I know it’s your intent because we spoke it to keep it small and to keep it accessible. What does that give a company?

April (03:30.235)
Yeah.

Yeah, so we both saw it and you’re right, we worked on the big guys, the big brands, right? And so when we met each other, we were actually both independents at that point in time. And we had set out on my end to bring agency services to companies that were potentially too small or inexperienced to either afford it or for the big guys to have the patience for.

And Anne had set out to be what she called a brand manager on loan for similar reasons. Having worked at Procter & Gamble for so many years, it was her goal to build something. And I felt the same way. It was really all about the idea that you shouldn’t be hindered because of your budget or your size or the industry that you are in. And for the personal passion side of things, we both were a little

Tom Nixon (04:21.87)
little bit is the chance that perhaps with some of the big guys that we have here.

April (04:23.027)
disenchanted perhaps with some of the big guys that we had worked for so long. And I’m always quick to say my pedigree came from that. What I learned came from those big brand experiences. But at the end of the day, you I was about 15 years in when I went on my own. And for me, it was, okay, I have it, I’ve done it. Now I want to bring it to the people that maybe don’t understand it, haven’t done it before, or like I said, haven’t been able to afford the big guys.

Tom Nixon (04:49.806)
Yeah. Well, Curtis, before anyone either fast forwards or turns this episode off because it’s not about generating leads and all I want is new business. I wanted to have you chime in real quickly because you have told me and I think you’ve told listeners to this podcast that you found from a lead gen standpoint that there’s a big difference between those companies who are trying to do lead gen only in terms of what their success rate is and those who pair lead gen with

branding and I’m for the listeners I’m doing making this umbrella sort of gesture above everything because it does live up there and it does sort of act as a atmospheric sort of overlay to all the activities you’re doing on the ground. So give us a taste for why people should not tune out at this

Curtis Hays (05:35.026)
Yeah, well, you brought up in our last episode, the book that you recently received, forget the funnel. And I’m going to bring up the funnel because it’s a good, it’s a good visualization because I think what these companies try to do is skip the funnel. So, which is essentially skipping marketing. And I often say activities they want clients hire me to do.

are more of a sales activity than they are of a marketing activity. It’s like in the modern age, we’ve forgotten a little bit what marketing really is. And they go right to lead gen, which means we need conversions. And that’s a sales activity. Bringing leads into a CRM, into the pipeline is a sales activity. It’s not a marketing activity. Now they’re closely related and maybe some people would argue it’s a marketing activity.

but I would just say they want to skip the funnel. they, come to us and they say, Hey, you do Google ads. Well, we think Google ads is a great opportunity for us to generate leads. Can you help us run campaigns? And then we start asking questions like, well, who’s your target audience and what messaging resonates with them so we can create ad copy and we can make sure we’re targeting the right people and those types of things. And they have difficulty answering those questions.

Because they haven’t done their branding first, you know, they haven’t done their research first. So the likelihood when we go to spend money in a channel like that, that they’re going to get the results they’re looking for. It’s pretty low. again, a couple of reasons we might be off with our targeting and our messaging, but we also haven’t warmed up the audience yet. We’re going straight to an ask.

Tom Nixon (07:19.493)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (07:31.224)
We haven’t educated them. We haven’t made them aware. All these things we talk about that are in the funnel, awareness and consideration and all this. We’re just trying to skip with a landing page. It’s like we can condense everything that’s important about your company down into a landing page and expect somebody’s going to scroll down and convert. It just doesn’t happen. And then you say, well, that’s not successful. That’s supplement that with remarketing. It’s like, nah, not necessarily. So, that’s where I’m at with it, you know, and I think when

Tom Nixon (07:31.397)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (08:00.838)
We see companies that their names are recognizable. Now, when they see an offer, let’s say a download a white paper or sign up for a webinar. Well, I’m going to do that because I already know this brand. already have some level of trust with this brand. I feel like they could be somebody who’s going to be knowledgeable and potentially solve a problem or issue I might have. Then they’re more likely to do that. I got plenty of case studies on it. We don’t need to go into that right now, but you get the idea. Yeah.

Tom Nixon (08:28.324)
Well, we may come back to that, but the short version of what you’ve always said, and you’ve said this to and I love this is if you’re doing lead gen only, you’re asking people to take the last step first, which is never going to happen. Right. So let’s go back to April. So obviously, see April, you’re nodding your head and everything. The brilliant Curtis Hays is saying here. So there’s a process to this, right? It’s there’s something that happens before you start making the ask, hey, put all your goods in my shopping cart and hit checkout. Right.

So could you give us at a high level what your approach is to solve this problem that eventually is going to come up if you don’t do it back to what Curtis says? Hey, this isn’t working. Let’s just try some remarketing. Where do companies need to go before they actually start getting into execution?

April (08:56.337)
Yep.

April (09:10.938)
Yeah, I mean, I have so many things to say. It’s hard for me to keep my mouth shut as you’re talking, Curtis. But I totally am, obviously, yeah. I’m in total agreement because where we sit, we often will get a phone call and it’ll go something like, I think I need a website, right? So similar to what you were talking about, it starts at a very tactical level. And so our process, Tom, is to take an immediate step back and say, that’s great.

Tom Nixon (09:17.796)
He gets that a

April (09:39.684)
Why do you think you need a website? And then from there, we back up into what is actually a true business challenge. And then we address brands through that lens. And so our immediate, I guess, result we’re looking for is to have impact as fast as we can with that business. Because Curtis, I think the reason that…

that happens from, I just wanna do Legion or I just wanna buy the thing or I wanna place Google ads is because digital has moved us faster than ever, right? And people see it work for other people, but they don’t take the time to understand why that actually worked. And so for us, when we back up and we get into what is the business challenge that got you to I need X thing, then we start our process of the brand. And it is often

pieces that you mentioned, how do you talk about yourselves different from the competition? Why do you exist? Who are you trying to serve? What do you do different in the category or better than anybody else? All of those types of questions. And so that usually kicks off their, not only the process of building a brand strategy, but their belief in it. Because we say, we’re gonna solve your business problem through brand.

and brand is gonna become your differentiator. And because of the world we are in now from a digital standpoint, we used to say, you know, it takes seven to 10 touch points to get someone to know you enough to convert. Now, it might be 10 times that, especially when you’re in the digital channels, because you’re not only competing with direct competition or your category at large, you’re competing with everyone who’s targeting that individual at the same time. And so our, yes.

Curtis Hays (11:22.716)
In an election year, we are about to go into, you know, inundated with ads and everything that goes along with that and social media.

April (11:32.156)
Yes, 100 ,000%. And so that’s usually where we try to catch them because I think historically for Anne and for me, even though she was at one of the biggest, you can argue the mothership, the master of branding, and I was working for these big agencies, it didn’t even matter with the big clients. There’s always skepticism about taking a time out to work on your brand. And so for our process,

We don’t, we no longer do that, you know, three to six month, we’re going to tackle this thing and we’re going to come back and unveil to you this beautiful brand strategy. What we try to do is address the client exactly where they are through that business challenge and whatever they might be doing currently so that then they can start working on their brand strategy with us, but more through a test and learn process. So, you know, we’re not going to go and talk to consumers and focus groups for six weeks. We’re going

put stuff out there in the marketplace right now and test and learn, but through the lens of a brand. And this is also a great way to bring them along because we can show exactly what you said, Curtis. We can show them one that is brand agnostic, I would call it, you know, that anybody could say that they sell this widget, this thing, and one that is more on brand message. And we work through it that way so they can also see real time and they don’t feel like…

they’re waiting or sitting on their hands or stopping business because they all have their day jobs and the things that they’re responsible for delivering outside of building that

Tom Nixon (12:55.824)
What do you do April? It’s interesting. I just wanted to follow on what you just said about we used to do the same thing. We just take 90 to 180 days and it was exhaustive and it needed to be but that was at a different time in a different place and we’ve because of technology we can do things quicker too. So what do you do to get your clients customer insights that maybe they don’t have already and maybe aren’t even considering what are the things I see people?

making mistakes on is just looking at themselves and then putting on their website everything that they wish somebody thought of themselves, right? It’s like the the vain ego test that looks in the mirror and says, it’s perfect. And let me tell you why. Right. And I don’t think that’s going to resonate with people. So how do you get customer insights if you’re kind of moving quickly, more quickly than you used to in the past?

April (13:28.464)
Yep.

April (13:34.544)
Mm -hmm.

April (13:43.236)
Yeah, so we have a variety of ways to do it because we want to meet our customers where they are. So the first thing we just say is, do you have any feedback from your customer? Anything. Have you done a survey recently? Is there anything we can use right now?

Oftentimes there isn’t. So what we will do is a handful of things. Sometimes it’s a really quick survey out to clients. Like I’m talking like five questions, right? Or we’ll do like 30 minute voice of customer interviews where it’s a handful. It’s not exhaustive. It’s not that, you know, three months study. It’s just, let’s give us your top five or six. Let’s talk to them. And then what we do with that information, however we get it.

is we compare it to what we hear from them internally. And so if we do, for example, those short interviews, we do the same thing internally with the teams because you’re exactly right. A lot of times there’s fear around talking to the customer because they don’t know what they’re going to say, or there’s no, no, we think we know it all because we work with them every day. And that’s all well and good, whatever that looks like. But we take what we hear from them and compare it over here. And then we really do remain objective about it. And we just feed

factually, you you thought you guys were selling and you are 80 % of the time, but here’s one opportunity area and by the way, here’s what I think we can go and do about it. And so again, it becomes really actionable really, really fast so that they feel the impact as immediately as we can do

Tom Nixon (15:08.824)
Excellent Curtis. don’t want to put you on the spot, but I’m going to hopefully you remember at least closely enough. You once shared with me some data, some AB test that you had run campaigns. I think for a client that was doing branding or not doing branding. Do you remember what that? I mean, we’re talking with a significant percentage differential between conversions and when you’re doing branding and when you’re not. Do remember that data that you said it to me?

Curtis Hays (15:32.212)
Well, yeah, so I mean, what I can think of offhand, so we do a lot of LinkedIn advertising and a typical conversion rate in LinkedIn for somebody whose brand, I would say, isn’t well established, say for a sign up on a webinar, right? We would probably say successful is maybe 5%.

But you’re at CPCs where you’re at like 20 to $25 a click, right? So this can get pretty, pretty expensive to get, to fill 20 people into a webinar at less than a 5 % conversion rate. But depending on the business and the lifetime value of that customer and those types of things, it might be worth it. So we had a client recently, well established brand in a specific market anyway, but in that market we were advertising.

knew who our target audience was and had that dialed in inside of LinkedIn. And then we had a timely message. We knew something that was important to them. things were happening in their space. kind of from a legal and business perspective, they had knowledge concerning that they knew customers would have questions, offered up a webinar, push that out of LinkedIn. had a 25 % conversion rate.

I sort of go from that five to 25 % when you’ve done these steps to know who your audience is, know what’s important to them, know the value you provide and you have a well established brand. So, you know, $2 ,000 goes a lot further for that company than say a company, you know, again, I’m talking one single campaign, but it goes a lot further for them than it does somebody who hasn’t done those steps.

Tom Nixon (17:24.368)
Yeah, which goes back to like when I was doing a lot of the work that you’re doing April years ago. I had a brand strategy boutique as well. And part of I thought the hardest sell for us was just getting buy in conceptually or philosophically for the client who wants to hit the ground running. We don’t have time for this. And again, at the time it was maybe 90 days. We don’t have time. We need sales today. You just heard this data, right? And that was just one use case. But I mean, it’s the last of I think reality. Why are companies

still in this, I don’t have time for this. Are there other reasons that companies might be reluctant to embrace a brand strategy process and how do you get them to overcome

April (18:03.002)
Yeah, so I think it is still systemic of all the things you said. We don’t have the time. We need sales now. It’s that more short -sighted thinking that we see oftentimes. And that’s why we work really hard to tie it back to a business issue that’s happening for them. And then we walk them through how to solve it. And we try really hard as often as we can to connect the dots to show metrics. So similarly, we have a case study. I’ll give you an example where,

we had a client and they were having over 100 % attrition. And that was based on the fact that like the retention had to be so long for it to count as a person, right? As a person in the seat. so initially they came to us and they actually did want to do Google ads. And we were like, well, you we asked all these questions that I’m talking about. Well, who are you targeting for these positions? Where are you going to find them? What does that look like?

And we uncovered that they were spending tens of thousands of dollars on all of the big recruitment platforms. And then getting hundreds of resumes that then inundated internal teams having to shift through them. And by the way, out of 100, maybe one person was a good fit. So that was an opportunity to take a step back with them and say, we are certain we can cut that attrition rate.

We’re gonna do the brand strategy work to get started because you don’t know who you’re targeting. Like it’s walking them down the path of you don’t know. You can’t answer these questions like you said before, Curtis, that you’re asking me and that’s why this is happening. We’re gonna cut your spend. We’re gonna cut the attrition rate and we’re gonna get the right people in the seat. And so.

We did a brand strategy exercise. I think it took maybe four or five weeks with them. And then we partnered with our usual person who does the placement. actually switched them to Facebook ads, because based on what we learned, that made more sense for them. And we cut that attrition rate by 55 % immediately. And so now we have that case study where we can show the actionability of what I’m talking about and the impact that it can actually have. And we’re solving, again, the business

April (20:11.172)
So I think what happens too often is companies like us go in and they’re right in the in the belief that brand can do this right Curtis, like you said, it’s not that they’re not good at what they do or they don’t, you know, and I’m not trying to knock on the competition. It’s just, if you’re not tying it back to the business and then the subsequent impact it can have on the business, that’s where we find that it falls on deaf ears. And then we’re also targeting small to midsize B2B and service based and philanthropic type.

companies and they’re the ones that have less knowledge and sophistication when it comes to this and that’s not meant to be a knock it just is what it is and so we have to have a very different conversation to get them on board where if you’re going to a major CPG they know what brand is they’ve been doing it as part of their role forever so it’s a very very different conversation to bring them

Tom Nixon (21:01.166)
Yeah, absolutely. You touched on one of the things that I found when I worked with clients in this space. There were two major blind spots. I always found one is they don’t know what the customer thinks, right? They assume what the customer thinks. And then we go do the research and maybe they’re aligned. Most of the time they’re not. So that’s a big aha moment. The other thing that we always find out is, you know, our client will tell us in the initial stakeholder interviews, we don’t have any competition.

April (21:21.135)
Right.

Tom Nixon (21:30.03)
We are the only ones that do it this way. Right. We’re the only ones that offer this at this price point. Our people are the best. Our process is the best. We’ve been in business a hundred years. Nobody else could claim that. So we go and we do our competitive review. And what do we find out? They’re all saying the same things. Right. So that’s the other huge blind spot is everything that you say on your website, going back to that vanity project of mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the best product of them all. It’s reads almost verbatim to all the competitors.

April (21:30.086)
Yeah.

April (21:43.056)
Mm -hmm. Yep.

April (21:53.147)
Mm -hmm.

Tom Nixon (21:58.532)
How do you, know, a compelling brand, I think is one that sticks out, not that one that fits in. We’ve to be in category and all those things, but how do you have a specific process for making sure that the client is not just mimicking everything else that the competitors are saying.

April (22:14.832)
Yeah, so one of the very first things we do when we get that comment about we do it better, different, blah, blah, blah, blah, do a very fast audit, usually of website or easy to get communication. And we cover up the logo and we say, if you could place any logo here, which you all are sharing the same language. And that’s a huge aha moment to be like, shoot, like just putting the words right back, right? Like they’re all saying the same thing.

And then we go down the path of it’s because you’re competing with each other on a commodity basis, right? We hear we’re the best. We’ve been around the longest, like you said. We do better customer service. Yeah, our people are the best. Our people are what make us. All well and good. But what they’re missing is the reason that the consumer actually picks them. And that’s where we get into the…

Tom Nixon (22:51.502)
Our people are the best.

April (23:05.504)
More logistics tactical stuff that you do versus why do you do that? So we always answer three big brand questions Who am I how am I different? Why do you want me and? That’s you know, how are you positioned? Who are we targeting and how am I different from everybody else? And when they give those initial answers we go back to that exercise and say remember It’s not about price or quality or time or your people

or your history, those things. Like truly, what is it different? And then that becomes our job. And we always are, you we say you’re the experts in your business. You do this head down every day for X amount of hours a week. You can’t be unbiased therefore, when it comes to the marketplace at large and who you’re serving. We just see it and hear it differently. And so while you are the master of your business, we are the master of the brand piece. And so we’re gonna bring you.

all of our experience across all these industries and different projects and companies that we work for and our thinking is just automatically different. And then you tell us everything you know about your business will be the cross section and the representation of the customer, know, consumer, whoever your client, whoever you’re, however you define that in order to find that area where we can define what you actually do best in language that your target’s going to understand.

Tom Nixon (24:22.552)
Yeah. Well, April, I’d like to demonstrate quickly if you don’t mind how I converted an old school, right brained digital strategist into a brand strategist. Curtis, you always have to lead with. Boom, right? It’s not what you do. It’s not even how you do it, because how you do it is what appears on anyone else’s website. Why the customer cares about what you do is what you need to lead with. So Curtis, that’s

April (24:33.638)
Let’s do

Curtis Hays (24:37.065)
Why?

Curtis Hays (24:50.44)
Yeah. You know what I’ve really been thinking about as you’ve been talking a couple episodes ago, we interviewed Chris Jimenez and with Chris, we talked about active listening and it’s like branding isn’t so much the bullhorn and saying great things about your company and your people and all that. It’s listening. like April has to be a good listener and ask really good questions and then listen to uncover.

April (25:00.176)
Mm.

Curtis Hays (25:16.286)
You know, all of those insights and good things and nuggets that you can do something with. and in addition, then you got to listen to your customers, right? And truly listen to them, not just do a survey and then, you know, throw a score to it. You actually have to understand what it is that they’re saying and then potentially do something with that. So, it’s interesting that most of us think marketing is talking, but actually it’s a lot more listening.

Tom Nixon (25:40.292)
That’s a great.

Tom Nixon (25:46.128)
It’s this bullhorn that you referenced that we should probably clarify some 24 episodes into this podcast. That it’s not just go to the top of the mountain and start speaking through your bullhorn about how great you are. It’s talk to a very specific set of people and tell them back to them that you understand that you’ve heard them. Right. So it’s a great point about active listening. I wanted to ask April, because I know you specialize.

in part or in whole in the nonprofit space. So I wanted to you can clarify that but be is there anything unique about a nonprofit from a brand strategy standpoint?

April (26:20.89)
Yeah, so we do small to midsize B2B service based and then nonprofit. And what we actually find, you we started in the small to midsize B2B and then we added on the service piece. And then more recently we’ve added on nonprofit, but actually what we see is a lot of similarity. So when you were saying before, Tom, like you go in and they’re like, but we’re different, but we do it, you know, totally different. We’re like, okay, okay. You know, we entertain it to a point, but the.

Tom Nixon (26:49.029)
Mm -hmm.

April (26:51.726)
It’s usually the same problem just with different symptoms or different vernacular in how they address these types of things, right? So with nonprofits specifically, we find that the group of stakeholders changes. And so you have whoever you’re targeting at the end of the day, but you also have the people that you’re trying to give whatever time, money, be on your board, you know, those constituents.

then you typically have the board, and then you have the team that’s doing the work within the nonprofit. So when we talk about target audiences, I think automatically one of the things we see people wanna talk about is who they’re going after, right? Who’s gonna buy the thing that I’m selling and nonprofit? Who am I gonna serve? Who’s that end user of what I’m doing? But what we have to get into is yes and.

There’s also these other audiences that we need to serve. And then also one of the things that’s interesting about nonprofits specifically is we have to make choices about who we’re targeting primarily with the language and the things we’re going and doing, right? So for example, if I bring back the website or the ads or whatever, we may

targeting the people you want to come in the doors with this campaign, but we may be doing another one to attract people to give their dollars, their time, their whatever over here. And this is where the brand again becomes really important because when we get in there, not only do a lot of times they not realize they need to talk differently to these audiences, but also the channels in which you do it and all of those things, it has to be right message to right person at right time to break through the clutter of what I was saying before.

And so that usually becomes again, the proof of like, why do we need this brand? Because we go through that same exercise of yes, you’re passionate about this. You do this every day. You have committed to make this your job. And also it’s cause -based, which means it’s even more of a passion area. But there are how many nonprofits in the area I’m in, which is Cincinnati, like Northern Kentucky, I think there’s like 14 ,000 versus nationally, how many are there? And so you can see who you’re competing

April (29:07.866)
and why it’s so important to draw people in at that human level, whether they are your target donor or your target end person or you wanna hire them or whatever that looks

Tom Nixon (29:19.704)
Yeah, that’s, great. It’s we did an episode, Curtis. I’ll have you refresh my memory in a second on the nonprofit space. And two things, think one is you articulated to both. One is I think it’s more challenging because of the trifurcation bifurcation. I don’t know how high vacation goes up, but of the audiences, because you’ve got not only the end user, you’ve got volunteers, you’ve got your team, you’ve got your donor base. You’ve got it. The general public even, which on the for -profit side, I don’t ever say, our customer could be anybody.

April (29:37.052)
you

April (29:43.994)
Yes? Yes?

Tom Nixon (29:48.878)
maybe it could be on the philanthropic side. So, but the opportunity is there’s a built in why. So, you don’t, I don’t have to go looking for the why. There’s already this why. It’s your mission, right? And so, if you can amplify that mission and engage people emotionally, people are gonna wanna volunteer their time. They’re gonna wanna donate to their cause. They’re gonna wanna sign up for the services that they receive. courtesy, I think we heard that very thing. Who was the guest? Freshman memory.

April (29:57.532)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Curtis Hays (30:11.988)
Yeah, Lindsay Moser. Yep. With Prosper Strategies. Yep. She’s in Chicago and 12 years probably in that space. I think they do that very well. And they only do nonprofit. So they don’t do for -profit and have a specific process for interviewing all of those different audiences and stakeholders and pulling this all together to make sure that their messaging then when they go back out is on point.

Tom Nixon (30:41.764)
And you’ve done some work in the space too, right? So there are tools now going back to what April suggested. You have all these different audiences that maybe need to hear different messages from different places. We can do that, right? We have all the technology to do that, but we need the other stuff first. It’s like, tell me why and to whom and tell me when and where and all those things. Don’t we Kurt? Yeah. Cool. All

Curtis Hays (30:59.292)
Yeah, we do. My big question, I do have a question of your mind, Tom, it sort of came out of this is I think how often, so say you do this process, right? How frequently are you revisiting it? Resurveying, re -interview. So again, you had mentioned in the nonprofit space, you might be doing it more frequently, especially if there are significant changes to say board members or volunteers and you

Tom Nixon (31:05.732)
Yeah, go for

Curtis Hays (31:28.21)
You know, some level of turnover. There’s a lot of turnover we see quite frequently in the B2B space, usually high tech like SaaS. Yeah. Here’s a new marketing manager, a new VP of marketing, a new person in charge of rev ops. Like, you know, there’s, there’s some turnover there who, who all want to kind of do their own. Not necessarily their own thing, but they’re certainly going to make changes.

so how, yeah. And of course your customer can change your product could change things like that. So how frequently do you suggest April you revisit

April (32:07.836)
Yeah, so first of all, I’ll just say, I’ll give a shameless plug for us. We just did a 10 part series on the creative industry in total and how it has changed. And a lot of it was around this discussion of not only have the channels changed, but the days and years in a certain position have changed, which makes it really hard when you’re talking about something like branding and marketing, which is more long -term.

when you have turnover and everyone’s trying to come in for 18 months, say, to do their next stint, to get their next promotion, that looks very different for what their goals are. And so it does become very much of a balancing act.

Another part about the way that Anne and I work is our model is coach train do so we can do this work on your behalf, but then we often are training internal employees and because we’re in the B2B service philanthropic where it is a little less sophisticated when it comes to this stuff. Oftentimes people are in positions where they’re not traditional branders or marketers. And so what we will do is we will do the heavy lifting the first time to answer your question, Curtis of

You’ve never done this. You haven’t done this in seven years, know, whatever that looks like. And we’re also teaching them best practices. So how often you do it really depends on the industry client. And I know that’s kind of like a sandbag answer, right? But it really does. So if I give an example, we have a company in the construction space. They had not really done ever a brand story positioning, true exercise, identify, do the voice of customer, all the stuff we’re talking about. It was more anecdotal and had been forever.

the marketing person was not a marketer. And so at this point, we now consult on a regular basis to help assess when these things are needed. So we said at least quarterly, you should be doing a high level competitive review. Now that you know what that is, go look at the competition quarterly.

April (34:04.636)
And that could adjust, right? If they’re like, hey, you know, 90 % of our competition is still the same for a year. Okay, well then that exercise becomes yearly. So it does change, it never stagnates, but we look for those inflection points. We’re back with them again right now because they’re doing executive strategy planning. They’ve never really done that before. So we’re in to do the heavy lift, but the idea is at the beginning of every year, it’ll be a sort of waterfall process of, okay, we’re in there to help with the first few sessions.

then you’re rolling it out. And then we also say, like you said, anytime there’s a change in the marketplace or change in position, and a lot of times we’re brought back in when new people come on board, not to stop the change when it’s not needed, right? Because your brand, once you do that foundational brand work, that is the essence of who you are. I don’t wanna say forever, because we say a brand’s a living, breathing thing, right? But if you do that work, the beauty of it is that it holds up for a really long period of time.

And so the role becomes being the educator of why and how we got there and trying to then help that person. Yes, make an impact. You bring external people in as new employees also so you get fresh perspective, right? But doing that balancing act of making sure that if we’re changing anything, it’s more on the campaign level as much as possible, not wholesale change, and that there is an objective reason.

something’s changed in the business or we’re going after a new customer or we’re adding some expertise that we didn’t have before and we need to address that head on, but always through the lens of that brand strategy that’s the foundation.

Tom Nixon (35:43.342)
Yeah, great. And going back to the word why this is why I think, you know, branding, I think is an exercise in why right in why typically don’t change your house may change, right? Apple’s house are totally different in their what’s are totally different, but their why has always remained the same and your brands probably will too, especially the nonprofit world. So great. And then just rule of thumb. I think if you haven’t done this work since covid, then almost every one of you need to consider doing this because everything’s changed. Great.

April (35:52.432)
No.

April (36:07.484)
Yes. Yes.

Tom Nixon (36:11.854)
All right, April, thank you for coming on April Martini, co -founder of forthright people. us where people can find you and your partner and your podcast, which I highly

April (36:21.53)
Yes, so forthright -people .com is our website. You can find lots about us there. Marketing Smarts is our podcast. So look that up. And if you do listen, please rate and review. You guys know how important that is to helping you rise in the ranks. And if you want to reach out to me specifically, you can reach me at april at forthright -people .com or on LinkedIn. I’m super active there and we’re always on there promoting the podcast and whatever else we’re doing.

Yeah, and I’d love to continue the conversation. Hopefully you’ve heard that this is something I’m super passionate about and representing both Anne and me, we both really hold this as a foundation for making a business succeed.

Tom Nixon (36:50.498)
Awesome.

Tom Nixon (37:02.648)
Love it. Good.

Curtis Hays (37:03.092)
Yeah. You just got a new subscriber, for the podcast. was with the 10 part series you mentioned about how creative has changed. Yep. Is that that I got to go listen to that.

April (37:06.716)
Hey, look at that. -huh. Yeah, so we, you can see them all and we outline, we started it. We launched one a week for 10 weeks. So we’re through the series now and we’re actually about to do a culminating episode of the best points. That’ll come out about the middle of August or so. But yeah, definitely go back and listen. And we tried to do a cross section of folks, client, digital.

Tom Nixon (37:12.688)
Yeah. Cool.

April (37:36.047)
traditional CPG, people not from the United States, like all kinds of different lenses, but it’s interesting if you listen to them all, the themes are loud and clear, so.

Tom Nixon (37:45.817)
Great. Well, Curtis, you go listen to that. I am going to go enjoy the vestiges of summer with my new summer cap courtesy of you sort of Elk Rapids. Remember the hidden gem, but the water’s polluted. The air is polluted. There’s no reason to go and visit. but I’ll set.

Curtis Hays (38:00.18)
I’m going to go in three weeks. I’m there in three weeks and I, I’m not going to touch the water. I’m not going to, cause it’s so horrible there. I’m just going to put on headphones and look into this podcast. That’s what I’m going to

Tom Nixon (38:14.675)
Hopefully, Curtis survives that and we’ll see you next time on bullhorns and bullseyes.