Marketing - Weaponise Your Marketing

Too many business owners still treat marketing like a flyer through the door. In this unfiltered, brutally honest episode of Stay Hungry, Joel and Martha rip into why that mindset is costing companies serious growth. From DIY disasters to short-term thinking, they expose what it really takes to weaponise your marketing and why it’s the difference between stagnation and scaling.

If you’re tired of chucking spears and hoping one sticks, this episode is the reality check you need. It’s time to stop treating marketing like a gamble and start using it like a guided missile. Packed with hard-earned truths, client case studies and punchy analogies (yes, including Exocet missiles and vampire-proof fingers), this one is not for the faint-hearted.

Key moments:

🎯 The three types of business owners and why only one group actually sees results.

📊 Why data, not gut instinct, should drive your marketing decisions.

💰 What most business owners get wrong about cost vs. return on ads.

🧠 Why a proper strategy beats random posts and boosted reels every time.

📦 From lead magnets to lifetime value: building a marketing machine that works without you

Listen now! 

Links:

Website: https://www.codebreak.co.uk
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codebreakcrew/
Facebook: https://facebook.com/codebreakcrew/

Joel's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joelstoneofficial/
Joel's Facebook: https://facebook.com/joelstoneofficial/

Free Marketing Budget Calculator: https://codebreak.outgrow.us/knowyournumbers

Arrange a call with Codebreak: https://form.jotform.com/241272835208051

Transcript

0:13

Hey Marth, podcast time again. Welcome back everyone. That's more than me. And John. Thanks. So how are you? I'm good thank you, how are you? Feels ages since we've done this. It's not that long. No, what's been going on? I've just cut my finger. I was thinking more like you've booked Vegas but cut your finger could work. I've just cut my finger though, that's my priority. What have you put on there, masking tape? It's a little finger plaster. Well if you're going to commit any crimes now would be a great time. I can't tell you how much that bled Marth. That's why I was delayed to the podcast, there's blood all over my office. Because you can graft your own skin if you just stick it back on and put a plaster over the top it will probably graft itself back together. It's literally a pin prick cut that just wouldn't stop bleeding and I was concerned that I'm wearing a light jumper. Have you ever had to do your own blood test? That is what I was doing. That's never worked for me. It's like a tiny bit of blood and you're trying to squeeze it and it's like this is the line. I've been doing it for half an hour, getting stressed out in there. Why don't you collect it, send it off and just do full blood works? What? That's what I'm doing. I'm sending off full blood works. Oh that is actually what you're doing? Yeah. Oh, I thought you just cut an Avogadro up or something. No, no, I was doing a blood test in there to send off. You just do it before 11am. Oh why? If you're a man under 40 you have to do it before 11am to do testosterone I think. Because I'm getting my bloods done. For? Interest. Yeah. Geekiness. Yeah. Well I've been on a health kick, lost a bit of weight and stuff so it's like let's see what else is wrong with me. Yeah I've seen a lot, weirdly, I don't know why I'm being so discontent, about testosterone in men and how if you're low on it it can really affect your mental health. Yeah, so you get that checked as part of it. Check your lipids to see if you've got like your liver functions healthy and stuff I think. And various other bits and bobs, find out if you've got any iron deficiencies and all that stuff. But yeah, one of those weird little clicker pin pricks. Oh it actually worked, okay. Well it didn't work, I don't think you should have to bleed for half an hour to fill a vial the size of a teaspoon. And a finger surely. I genuinely would have rather they sent me a scalpel. That sounds disgusting and horrendous. But I was just like, what the fuck is this? Like I haven't got time for this shit. Like I think next time, if there would be a next time, I'm just going to pay to go there. Yeah. It'll be a hundred quid more but they'll draw a shit ton of blood out of me and I'll know, right you've got enough blood. Have you got enough? I've gone over the line. Are you just squeezing and squeezing? Yeah and bleeding everywhere but into the fucking vial. Yeah it needs to be like a big tub doesn't it rather than like a tiny little... Yeah I understand that it's shit for them as well asking all these people to do this. Well they don't give a shit, they just send it out and say either do it or don't. Yeah but there's no good way of delivering this system. There's got to be a better way than that. Yeah a blood test, a proper one. Yeah but finger? Surely there's a bit of your body that bleeds more. I've never cut my finger and thought this thing won't stop bleeding. What? Ever. You've never had a bad finger cut then? So you've used a pinprick or you've used a knife to slice? This finger, great on a podcast to be pointing a finger but my index finger on my left hand, I opened a razor once and the blade came out and just took the end of my finger off and it was like a water pistol. Woah. That would have spilled the vial. Yeah. I don't want to go through that again, it took ages to heal. Imagine sending out one of the staff to be like can you get me a razor, why? I need to bleed right now. So I don't know why we went down that route. Well weaponising your... Yeah we're talking about weaponising your marketing not weaponising your finger or your life or your blood test or whatever. I think, obviously I've been in the marketing game a long time. I meet, loosely I meet three types of business owner. The business owner that does marketing because someone's told them they should. And so they do a bit of content here and there. They do the odd piece of long form. Maybe they run ads now and again. I meet the reluctant business owner who's like marketing's a load of shit, I hate it, it's just a money pit. And I meet, and this is the rare one, the business owner that weaponises marketing as a business tool. That it's one of the tools in their arsenal and they deploy it strategically. And they're quite rare. And when I'm sat opposite someone in a kick off meeting, if I was to say we need to weaponise your marketing, strategically strike with your marketing. Most people would be like this is weird bro language. No. But ultimately that's what it is. You need to get on top of your data. You need to understand who you're targeting, literally targeting. And then you need to strategically target them and not stop until you're winning the battle. Yeah until they take, in this case, until they take the action you want them to take. And I think a lot of people think oh I've spent a hundred quid on that and not seen any return. Or I've spent a grand on that and not seen any return. Yeah but what you sell is five grand. So I would say if you sell something for five grand, until you've spent ten grand on marketing, you've got no pool of data to say whether it's working or not. Especially if you're starting from nothing. It's like you haven't even got an engine to start feeding into. You've got to build the engine. Yeah and it is a part of a business. It would be like going to a business who has grown through hustle and hard work and organic growth referrals and saying where's your finance department. Well I haven't got a finance department, it's just me. I just do the books. Well same with your marketing department. At some point your business has to professionalise and you have to have these tools in place. Finance, legal, sales, marketing. It can't all just be in the business owner's head. And the businesses we deal with are sort of half million up to five million. That half million mark, a lot of it is still in the business owner's head. And then they're starting to experience things like legal confrontations where they have to actually get a solicitor and retainer involved. Things where reconciling a bank account in dollars or euros instead of pounds is way above their bookkeeping ability. Trying to do foreign transactions and understanding the exchange rate confuses them. And the same is true with marketing. If I went up to someone and said you need to build up your database. But to do your database we first need to build awareness, then we need to build top of the funnel, then we need to funnel people through. Some people are going to drop out, some people are going to get to the bottom of the funnel and convert. What systems have you got in place to do that? And if you turn around and say well every third blue moon I post on Facebook and every fourth I post on Instagram and occasionally we boost one of the posts. It's no wonder you don't like marketing. like if your audience isn't used to buying in those places. And I actually had this recently, very recently with a client, and it's hard, or like part of our job is communicating that when you start with the top of your head. Communicating is fucking hard. Business is hard. Everything's hard. Why? Because drawing blood from your finger is hard. Apparently. It takes time, especially with that top of the phone. I'm a vampire's nightmare. That's what I've just realized. It's a fucking waste of time. And you smell like garlic. Thanks. I thought that was great. You wear a lot of silver. Yeah. Sorry, yeah. It's communicating that that top of the funnel, it can take months before people are ready to buy if they've just come in on a lead mag there. And we're nurturing, nurturing, nurturing. I'd like your free guide to the five best questions to ask my accountant. And he, this client, like half given away is Jenna. Well, it's a he, okay? That doesn't really give anything away. But has pivoted to now to do high ticket, which is kind of what we said they should be doing all along. And he's like, but people are now just buying the lower ticket thing from the lead magnet. And I'm like, yes, it could take three months for people to get to a place where they downloaded the lead magnet. They might not even look at it for a month. They might've been too busy. They see you do a post on something similar. They come back to it. And that's where it becomes a plan. And that's why I'm talking about it from like a weaponized perspective. You wouldn't decide, right, I don't know. We're gonna invade Wales. England's gonna invade Wales. We wouldn't do it without a plan. Wouldn't just be like, oh, tomorrow we'll rock up in Wales and chuck a few spears and see what happens. That's fucking mental. So if you've gone next year, so let's say in 2025, oh, our business did a million pound. Next year we'd like to do 1.5 million. Well, where's that 500 grand coming from? How much are you gonna invest to generate that 500 grand? What channels are you investing in? How, what leads do you need? Where are they based? What demographic are they? How are you gonna target them? What hooks them in in the first place? How long does it take for someone to get on your radar for them to purchase? What's the acquisition cost? And also if you throw a few spears that miss, don't give up. Yeah. Because even the best spear thrower is gonna throw spears that miss the target. Yeah, yeah. It's like, it's. But the next one we'll. Trying to explain to people that it costs us between four and seven grand to acquire a customer. But the lifetime value of a customer's 36 grand. So that's okay. And there was a time where it was taken as like 18 months from first contact to walks in the door as a client. Because that's what business is. You don't go to a builder and say, can you build me a new office please? And then the following day rock up and go, why isn't it ready yet? Like, and that sounds bitter. I don't mean, oh, woe is me. I'm a marketing agency owner. Give me a chance to prove my worth. But I can also point to three clients right now off the top of my head, probably 30 if you give me a bit of time, who've worked with us over a long period of time and are seeing massive success now. We've got one client at the moment that's spending seven and a half grand on a seven day ad campaign. I was gonna say this, but he, not always. And what did he like? He did 80K off his last webinar, but he's also done webinars where he did 3K, but he didn't hand in the towel. Like it was like, right, now what? Well, I think like without naming names, when we met him, he was doing under 100 grand. Then the following year he did just under 200 grand. And then the following year he did just under 400 grand. And now he's on for like a million this year. And that hasn't come easy. And I think sometimes you have to give your head a wobble and realise like, this is a fucking battle. Like we are in a situation where other people, competitors are after your clients and they're after your prospects too. And you've got to show, not only are you the better option, but make people aware of that. Show, meet them where they're at. So show them that you understand the predicament they're in and how you can solve it and then deliver. And that isn't for everyone and that's fine. But we're in this like space at the minute where there's a lot of businesses that rely on launches and they just churn through people. They're not actually building their business. They're just selling constantly. And it's a bit like market selling. You don't get repeat custom. If you sell someone a dodgy video on a market, you'll never sell to them again because they'll get home and put it in their video player. I mean, it's not 1980, I'm aware, but it doesn't fucking work. They're not coming back. Like get out of that mentality and get into the, I'm building a structure that could exist without me, whether you plan to leave it or not. I was chatting to my PT literally last night about this. And he was like, like asking him, like, cause he's going to start like a membership gym somewhere. And I was like, there is no better agency than us to help you like with that. Like, but what you've got to remember is a lot of gyms will like basically we need to go through your numbers and see how viable it is first, because like I had somebody approached me the other day to say like, can you help me sell my book? And I was like, how much money do you make per book do I sell? You sell 25p. You have to sell a lot of fucking books. Yeah. Unless he's selling something on the other side of those books, which he wasn't. Which he wasn't. And, but like, I was like, but like, the likelihood is you're going to have to be happy to break even on getting the new members in because I'm on two, three, four, five, six. I've just spoken to a membership gym in South Shields this morning, asked me some advice. He's in a mastermind with me. And he said, running local ads, I've spent a grand. My program's 500 quid and we've got two customers from our spend. So he's broke even. But it's also generated 300 leads. And we're running at a frequency of four, which means everyone in the local area in his target audience has seen that ad four times. He said, what do I do? And I just voicenoted him out saying, that's a fucking excellent result. He said, oh, what do you mean? I was like, you basically advertise for free because they paid for themselves in the first campaign, which not everyone, that doesn't happen for a lot of people. So you've also got 400 new people in your database who, even if it's one in a hundred convert, that's four more sales. So that's another two grand in. So for a grand spend, you've made three grand back on first combat, for want of a better phrase. And yet you've got the next two years to email those people and convert them. Who were interested in something that you're selling because they put their hand up and said, I'm into fitness and this could be something I'm interested in. Yeah, whereas I think people go, oh, I've spent quite a significant amount with this marketing agency, another significant amount on ads. And if I don't see a return in the first month, I'm gonna go find an agency that can do that. And the reality is there will be agencies that can promise that, but it's more luck than judgment if they deliver that, because this is a long-term thing. I can help you do a launch and get you a big result early doors, particularly if you've got audience, but you haven't converted them before. But then the next launch isn't going to go as well as that one because we've exhausted the audience on the first launch. We need to look at a strategic way to get really, really dialed in on what you're trying to do, who you're trying to attract, what the lifetime value of that person is and how we create this cyclical acquisition of customers that you can predict and cash flow and build from. That was very powerful. Yeah. Clip that, Jack. Yeah. So, Martha asked me before the podcast what the fuck's an Exocet missile? I didn't even know how to say that word. Yeah. I don't know where it's come from. I think it must have been a big thing when it was like Russia and America were arguing. It must have been the brand of missile that could reach, like loads of missiles can reach now, but it was a big deal. So, they were really accurate and they could go a long way. I don't know. I don't know. People used to get excited about things like Exocet missiles and Harrier jump jets. Ever heard of a Harrier jump jet? Never. It's a jet that can take off like a helicopter. It doesn't need a runway. But still is a jet in terms of- Yeah. So, it can go up and down like that. So, it hovers. Yeah. And you can take off on a ship without needing- Does it have a propeller like a helicopter then and then uses the jets- No. The jets point down at the ground. Oh, like a rocket. And it goes up like a rocket but controlled and then they move back and it can go that way. But how is it moving without hitting the ground? Well, I'm assuming they have to flip to- You wouldn't want to be on the ground when that's happening, would you? You wouldn't want to be underneath it, no. But that would be like you wouldn't want to walk into a helicopter blade. Have you seen- Actually, that's a bit sad for the podcast. We won't talk about this now, but- Well, you've got to now. I'll tell you how it got there because my mind does jump and I feel like a lot of people might listen to the podcast. I have to manage this. Just show everyone. So, I was thinking that would be suicidal to be like, I'm going to walk into this while this is taking off if you knew how it worked. And then I saw this girl, she was paragliding and she just undoes all the equipment and falls to her death. Why did she do that? Nobody knows why. The company is saying that she could have panicked about the equipment being faulty and had a panic attack and just been like, I need to get down. Apparently, she was shouting, get me down, get me down. But there's the footage of the- because they were filming it for promo of the thing. It is paragliding, isn't it? Where you sit in and the boat goes up. With a propeller behind you. Oh, no. I think that's parasailing. Parasailing, sorry. Yeah. So, she was above water on a tow rope floating in the sky. And they're filming it. And then she's like, get me down, get me down. And then she just undoes everything. And doesn't realise that that level of fall onto water would be like hitting concrete sort of thing. Well, maybe that's what it was. But I'm sure they said all she went through was a safety thing, she knew what to do and then- What depths of the internet are you watching this shit? Have you not seen that? Have you not seen that? I hate it when people do this. The other day, when that terrible thing happened in Liverpool with the car ploughing into the Liverpool fans, my social media was full of videos of it happening. And I was just like, guys, come on, wind it in a bit. I appreciate there is a journalistic reason to sort of see that. But I could be sat with my nephew on my knee, who's three, not even three yet. And he sees that. Well, he's just scrolling on whatever- Yeah, I hope he's not scrolling on TikTok yet. But yeah, you never know. Yeah, but that's the thing, isn't it? We could be looking for Peppa Pig videos. Can't serve that shit. That's a bit- I don't know. I find it- we've all got morbid curiosity. I'm not an idiot. But- Yeah, I don't like- I couldn't even watch, you know, when those dogs were fighting and the guy's like, I know what to do. Yeah, I've seen that. I couldn't even watch it because I couldn't get past the dogs ripping each other apart. Yeah, it's horrible. That Alsatian is- Is it okay if the dog went for it? But that was everywhere. I couldn't get away from it. Yeah. Yeah, he's also wrong. But it did work. Do you want to know a funny story about that? It didn't work. Oh, it didn't work? No. So, people listening, this podcast is fucking unhinged. So, there's like an urban myth that if a dog has got a locked jaw, so usually like bully breeds, and I've got a bully breed, so I'm a bit- I don't like that they get a bad rap and then it's a big softie. But I totally appreciate- I would never leave him unattended with a child or something. I'm a fucking idiot. But yeah, they can lock, although this was an Alsatian and I'm not sure they can do this. But anyway, if you stick your finger up their bum, supposedly it like shocks them into unlocking. Now, in this video, it doesn't work. And also, in a little village near here, my mum encountered like the local dickhead's dog doing that by attacking someone else's little dog. And she told the local dickhead, oh, you need to stick your finger up his bum. And he did. And it didn't work that time either. But my mum, I think the dogs were okay. My mum always feels quite funny that she managed to get the local dickhead to do that. But yeah, I think the actual advice, if you read like RSPCA and stuff, is to lift their back legs. And spin. Yeah, because they don't like balancing on their front legs. And then they will- but obviously the risk is if it's a big dog, you might get bit yourself. So. Yeah, I mean, I've- a few dogs have come towards Maya before, and I was just ready to volley at them. Like, I was like one second away from them, one step closer, and they were getting a kick in the face. Obviously, you know my dog, George, and he is a staffie, but he's so soft and quite scared of other dogs when they're aggressive. And lots of dogs just attack him. I know, it's horri- he literally has run in the road to like swerve another dog so hard when I've been with him. And everyone's always like, eh, pulling that dog away. It makes me mad. Yeah, he's like, don't worry, he's not going to come near your dog. It's your dog, you've got to worry about it. The worst is when I'm walking him, and people walk their dogs off lead because their dog is behaved. There's a fucking reason my dog's on his lead. He's scared. So, like, you back off with your chihuahua that my dog could accidentally eat. Chihuahuas, yeah. But yeah, anyway, let's get back on. And they live forever. Speaking of focus, your marketing needs to be focused. So like, having like, again, when you're weaponising, what's your guidance system? How do you know these leads are right? Do they reply to the questions you ask them correctly? If you polled them, would you get good data? When you make sales calls, when your sales team's speaking to them, you know, are they who you thought they were? So if you've targeted 40-year-old men that like Gremlins, I'm nearly in that category, and then when you ring them up, they don't know what Gremlin is, and they're not 40, something's not right. So like, getting really clear on your guidance. Like, are you actually targeting the right thing? So if you've made an assumption that everyone that lives in SY10 is ABC1, and then all the leads you're getting are like, unemployed people looking for a job. Something's gone wrong, there's an assumption that's gone wrong at some point in your marketing stage where you should have actually, oh perhaps I should go and drive around SY10 to see what the houses look like, what cars people drive, is there people sleeping in tents on the street, oh sorry it's not LA it's Shrewsbury, so many, so many, and it's not getting distracting. I'd also say I think a lot of people when they first come to us are like oh but I don't want to say that because I don't want to put, they could, this person could still buy from me, but it's not like who could buy from you, who is buying right now, let's dial in on that. Fine, you're organic and deal with who could buy from you, you're paid, should deal with who should buy from you. Yeah, or who already is and let's look for more of them. Because when you, for example if you've been very successful on Instagram, gained a big audience and built some organic leads, you will have no doubt found that you're suddenly a very good salesperson because organic leads who've built affinity with you are very easy to sell to. Paid leads who are looking for, actively looking for a service or a product or whatever, you know, an item, are harder to sell to because they've got options and they've come into your world at short notice and they haven't built trust and affinity and suddenly when you were the world's greatest salesperson before, you might not be so great at selling now because you don't know how to overcome objections, you don't understand consumer mindset over affinity mindset for want of a better phrase and you don't know the metrics that you're dealing with in terms of right, what's my time to buy, what's my allowable acquisition cost here, what's going to be my return on ad spend if this comes over the line, when I'm talking to this person what do I do if they say oh I need to speak to my partner, like what do I do if they say oh it's too much, what do I do if they say it doesn't look like it solves my problem. If you don't know how to do all of that, that means that you haven't got your business fundamentals in place, be it marketing, sales, legal, accounting, operations and like they are like the five segments of business that when you're professionalizing your business and maturing as a business you've got to have your ducks in a row and like the one that gripes me that I don't like having to have sorted is legal because I'm like in a fair world I shouldn't need this, but the world's not fair. In a fair world you shouldn't need marketing. Yeah if you've got a good product and service you shouldn't need it. Yeah it should speak for itself but it's not how it works. I really, in your notes, you've put the dangers of marketing amateurs, handing weapons over to people who have never been trained. I really liked this because when I was at my old job and they actually kind of still used the templates that I created, I look at them and I think they are shit. They're shit and they're clearly made by someone who's like oh I like social media so I probably know what will do well. It's fucking mad isn't it that 20 years on there's lots of established companies passing the marketing to the apprentice, the receptionist. I didn't want to say receptionist but everyone knows what I mean when I say that. It's like are you insane? Because they see marketing as banging a leaflet through a few doors, popping an advert in a local magazine and sponsoring the local cricket club or something or showing up buying a table at the local awards night. It's like what are you doing to strategically grow your business? What are you doing to strategically grow your database? What are you doing to strategically nurture that database? What are you doing to strategically turn those people you've nurtured into customers? What are you doing to keep those customers? How are you remarketing to those customers to upsell them? Oh I don't know. I was talking to Jim the other day and he asked me if I could have another door. I thought well alright but I think it's like reframing that narrative from marketing just costs me money, it's an advert in the county magazine, it's leaflets through a door, it's paying such and such to print me these brochures. No, marketing should have a clear return on investment. It might not be profit to start with but more leads into your business you need to get on top of okay for every thousand leads we have in our business how much does our turnover go up by? There might not be a direct correlation in the sales data but for every thousand leads we have in our business how much does our turnover go up by? Because I know what it is in code break and then okay for every 100 boxes we send out to prospects how many sales do we make? Start working on the data that shows you where to put your investment and work with your agency or your freelancer or your marketing department to get really really clear on that because it's much easier to deal with definitive data than it is gut instinct and emotions. Yeah because they can change can't they and like one thing as well is like seasonally like you could so easily like go into the summer holidays and if your target audience is parents who have kids you're probably gonna see a massive dip even with your marketing that's been working for the rest of the year if you throw in the towel then and be like oh it's not working anymore you must have gone shit. Yeah that same client that's gonna do a mill this year July and August is shit for him and he knows and he knows because for the last three four years that's happened every year regardless of what marketing we're doing regardless of what sales we're doing so now we prepare for it because we've got that data it always drops off in the summer holidays so what we're doing well we're having a massive May and massive June and a massive September okay what we're gonna do in that downtime well in his case he's meeting up with us to strategize on what else we can do in the next period we're gonna consolidate some of the stuff we're gonna market to our existing customers we're gonna upsell some of the existing customers starting to like be really strategic about what the data shows us to do which is what you would call an exocet missile that's the one so yeah it's it can't be a gamble it's got to be a calculated strike and here endeth my bro marketing weaponize your marketing podcast