The Fractional CMO Playbook: How to Hire and Evaluate One

How do we know? The honest answer here is almost everybody is ready. A lot of people give guidelines, right? You gotta be this size of an organization. You gotta be doing this much revenue. In my opinion, there is no floor. Everybody needs to think clearly about where their marketing dollars are going. You always need high level thinking about your spend. You know, a $200,000 business or $2 million business or $20 million business, all waste money in the same way.

They just do it with more or less zeros. And so the real crux is that the smaller you are, the more every dollar you waste hurts. So actually, smaller organizations need this advice and this level of thinking and strategic ownership even more than the larger organizations, because those dollars are critical to their organization. So for me the real question isn't am I ready, it's do I have the time not to have somebody in that role, both in respect of the owner's time to do the job, but also you're slowing your growth.

If you don't have somebody have expertise in that area, you know, the owner normally doesn't and we're going to talk about that a little bit more, but if you don't have that level of expertise, you're not growing at the rate that you potentially could and you can't afford to do that. You can't have your business growing at a slower rate than other businesses in the market, certainly in these times. Things are accelerating quickly. You need that high level thinking. If the owner is doing it, really, do you have the time and skill? I would say even owners that are good at marketing don't have the same level of experience of 20, 30 year pros.

And do you have the time? Is that what you should be working on? A lot of times you're up in the middle of the night, running your Google campaigns, doing what you do, learning about other systems, and it's exciting. It feels really good. But if you have somebody come in who knows exactly what they're doing for the right cost, then you get the hours that you need, you get the growth that you need, and you can spend the time on growing the business in other ways.

That's just an experience level. Most owners don't actually have the time, so they just do a poor job at it or don't do it at all. And really, you're not really too small. You're just too busy to get somebody into the role in executing. And those are different problems with the same fix. You're not too small, so it's not a size test. Correct. There's a huge collective sigh of relief from 50% of our male audience out there.

You go trying to be funny again, Ryan. That's right. I'll try and be smart. There is, it is not a size. You just need to be able to pay the right amount to somebody with a lot of experience, right? Five hours a week or maybe even fewer than that. Maybe even if it's just a few hours a week with somebody with a bunch of experience will guide you in the right way and it's not going to break the bank.

You'll move forward quicker than if you didn't. Speaking of moving forward, let's talk about our first sponsor ad. Our first sponsor ad, now a word from our sponsor. Oh, quick break, brought to you by Trimmers Landscaping out of Londonderry, New Hampshire. And this one fits the segment. Jon just said the smaller you are, the more every wasted dollar hurts. That's Trimmers' whole irrigation pitch. It is. Their smart irrigation program has remote leak detection.

They catch the water you're wasting before it shows up on the bill. A neglected sprinkler system wasting hundreds a year is a marketing budget with no measurement. Same leak, different piece pipe. That is right, 30 years in business, residential and commercial, design, build, full maintenance, snow and ice on the commercial side. And their own website leads with integrated technology and strategy. A landscaper that thinks in ROI. We didn't even have to write the metaphor. They did it for us.

He sure did. Trimmers Landscaping, Londonderry, New Hampshire, 603-882-8888, TrimmersLandscaping.com. Stop watering the driveway. Measure the spend. How terrible are those? We're just terrible at those. Well, hey, I told them that they were our sponsor, so maybe we get two new listeners. That's why we do it. That's right. Get new, we'll sponsor you on our podcast if you listen to us and subscribe. That's how it goes.

That's right. So Jon, getting back to it, what does a fractional CMO bring that an owner doesn't even realize they need? Yeah, this is the key here. And this is the hardest thing in business, right? You don't know what you don't know. So the hardest gaps to see are the ones around the skills that you've never had, right? You don't miss them. You just quietly underperform. It does its thing, and you just call it normal.

And you're not even aware that you've got a problem. So there's a number of blind spots here. Here are the skills that I think are super necessary as the CMO steps in. Number one, always number one, attribution. Knowing which dollar produces customers, owners genuinely don't know. They don't have the technical ability to choose the platforms correctly. They don't have the ability to wire it together so that you can actually measure attribution.

And attribution is complicated. So that's one. I'm not going to go down the attribution path right now. Two, portfolio thinking around all your different channels that you're executing in. And you really need to treat it as an investment portfolio. You've got to feed the winners. You've got to starve the losers. You can't just keep your budgets going thinking, oh, we're going to do a little bit of everything here and hope, right?

Numbers generally tell you how it's performing. So treat it like an investment portfolio. Getting your positioning right, and I'm talking about brand positioning, right? So why a customer picks you over the other guy. You need to think through that. You need to make sure it's on point. That changes as your organization changes and as you're in business longer, right? Owners don't normally think, oh, I want to rebrand. They think it's expensive.

Or they're just adjusting based on the competition, based on price. It's rarely priced that people choose between. So making sure that your positioning is strong is another skill. Brand marketers are excellent at what they do. Next skill, pricing to margin. So making sure that you're understanding that your pricing is on point. Not necessarily what you think it's worth, not necessarily value-based, nor what your competitor charges, you got a price based around the volume that you sell and where you can make money. And it may be counterintuitive. Like, do you want to be running 10% sales for the rest of your business time? Or do you want to be doubling the cost of your product, selling 50% of the number that you have to sell, and still making as much money? That seems easier to me. You've got to sell less and you make more. So there's lots of different strategies to understand what your pricing should be. But that's generally done by gut feel

from owners. It's not done with market research and a strategy. And then also making sure that you allocate your budgets and your campaigns well. You do the math around it. So how much should you spend? What do you have to hit to hit your growth number from each of the different channels? And you need to work backwards with that, right? So doing that most people aren't aware that that's how you structure your marketing campaign. So another skill that a lot of owners don't necessarily have.

And they don't have the time, they might have the skill, but they don't necessarily have the time to manage all the different vendors, right? Hiring them, briefing them, firing them, getting agencies, getting freelancers, finding the gaps in their marketing programs to make sure that they actually perform. So that's actually a skill or time-based step that a lot of owners don't necessarily tackle and run very well. So owners generally have built their businesses on grit, good products, and it gets you to a ceiling.

And those skills are what take you to the next level. They take you to a different set of tools, different set of engagements, right? So for me, lots of blind spots there. The biggest one every time is attribution. If you don't know what's working, then every other decision really is just a guess. So attribution, portfolio thinking, positioning, pricing to margin, budget allocation math, vendor management, or what I like to remember it as is epiphan.

Yeah, yeah, rolls off the tongue. Epiphan is essential in every walk of life. So Jon, let's play marketing hunger games for a second. What does feeding the winners and starving the losers look like in real time, like a real budget? Right. So the first thing you got to do, and most CMOs will naturally evolve to this conversation as quickly as they get their feet under the table.

You've got to be able to measure, right? So if you've got advertising dollars being spent, it might be some in radio, some in TV, some in newspapers, some in digital, etc., etc. Some of those are notoriously difficult to measure. But as soon as you can get some measurement in there, how many eyeballs on things, what the cost per eyeball is. As soon as you understand how many people are coming in and converting into customers back to the attribution conversation, then you'll get a clear set of tactics that win.

And you'll get a clear set of tactics that you don't know what it does. If it does anything, then you're surprised by it, and there's a dollar amount that you're spending on those campaigns. So you just got to cut them. At least do a test and switch them off for a couple of weeks and transition the budget over to something else. And then look at your numbers.

See if you get more gain out of it. See if you get more leads and more revenue. So that's what starving the losers and feeding the winners looks like in real terms. Good stuff, Jon. So let's say that the owner's got three candidates and a budget. How do they pick the right one and how do they set it up so it actually will work for them? Yeah, I think let me give you three key questions.

Obviously, you want to get into detail with each of them and you want to talk about their experience level, but here are some questions that kind of differentiate people. Tell me about how you've assessed channels and what you've maintained and what you've killed and why. I mean, this should separate the CMOs that have done it regularly. I can reel off a dozen channels that I've killed this year, whereas consultants would generally just trying to add more tactics in, right?

They'll make a recommendation as opposed to, as to, you know, have some real ownership there. How do you, second question, how do you tie in campaigns to dollars in my P&L? And if they start the conversation around, well, I'm not really sure. And, you know, there's a number of impressions, here's a number of leads we get, and we'll track leads. Then, you know, next, that's not really the conversation you want.

If they start talking about systems that follows leads all the way through to completion to be able to track revenue and customer lifetime value, then that's a really healthy conversation about what marketing is gonna do for your P&L. And that's a person that really understands how marketing can affect your P&L. I'd like an answer like that. I think there's some managing up things as well. I think you can ask them a question like, will you tell me what I don't wanna hear?

Or what are subjects that you'll tell me that I don't wanna hear? Because if they can't answer that, if they don't have specific examples, then they're not really at that level to manage you as the owner, because there's gonna be some difficult questions here. Like you need to peel the onion back at so many different things, and there's just gotta be honest candor in the conversations to understand what does and doesn't work, and what's important to you, and what's important to them, hash things out, all in a way that supports the business.

But those are some difficult questions sometimes. You know, hey, they may come up to you and say, hey, I hate your brand, you need to rebrand. And that's deeply personal, right? So those are some difficult conversations that you have. So yeah, those are three questions I think that help. I think you wanna have a look at their cost. Like how much are they gonna charge? Fractional can be anywhere from, I don't know, $4,000 to $5,000 up to $12,000 a month.

Like $12,000 a month is getting up towards full time sort of level, like you can afford quite a chunk of a person's time for that. The lower end really is, you know, you're getting a fraction of a person's week. If you're getting below that, you're generally getting a manager or coordinator who's just executing with a bit of a flavor around how to direct your business. It's not really that C-suite accountability that you're after.

So yeah, I'd have a look at exactly what they're charging and what it includes. I'd look at how they structure the engagement as well. I'm gonna sit on the CMO side here and say, look, I think you should have a minimum six month engagement. You know, a lot of people like to go with three months, but I think it's so difficult to turn the ship sometimes that certainly a month or two is really quick to be able to create some change.

Six months is a good trial period where you can actually turn the ship substantially. And it takes time to build some systems to give you results for them to be able to make some decisions as well, right? You need some weekly cadence with the team, weekly leadership meetings, obviously needs to report to the owner, the CEO, not to sales or anybody. You can't bury them in the organization because you need to direct line of sight to exactly what they're doing.

I think you could set up with a 30-day trial audit on all the things that your business does and that's a good way of engaging and not committing to that sort of six-month term. Make sure that you like the cut of their jib, the way they communicate and that they really dig into the detail required. I would kind of start around there. An important point is a point as well is you got to be prepared to give them budget authority, right?

They should be asking for how much, how many dollars they need to be able to move the organization from X to Y. If you don't freely give them that authority and the ability to make change within it, then honestly don't bother, right? Because you've got to give somebody, they've got to run their own department and be able to create, you can oversee it, but they've got to create this change.

And you can't be sitting there like tying the purse strings and they shouldn't have to come back to you every time they need a dollar to do something else. So otherwise you're really just strangling them and you've got an expensive suggestion box. So yeah, put a 30 days mutual exit in the contract. The good ones, you know, won't fear it. The bad ones will argue about it.

Those are my tips for hiring. So Jon, we live, a lot of us live in 90 day worlds. Why six months? You alluded to a little bit, but can you go into a little bit detail like what breaks at 90 days or why can't we get there in 90 days? Yeah, and I mean it kind of depends on the stage you're at, right? It depends on what you're trying to achieve as well.

A lot of the time people engage with a CMO when they're trying to make a big business decision and make some pivots or grow something out, right? So say you want to expand the business unit, right? You want to double sales in that business unit. The first thing a CMO is going to do, and I think we're going to dig in a little bit on how to engage and what they do throughout the engagement.

The first thing they're gonna wanna do is try and understand results and accountability for current programs. And they're gonna have a chat, they're gonna look through all the data, they're gonna find stuff missing, they're gonna go to the agency or the internal person who's running campaigns and say, I need these other data points. Like it can take four to six weeks to get more data points built into reports, right?

You know, just the way some of these things work, right? So you spend the first month like analyzing and understanding what you need, then you spend a month or two getting what you need, then you start making decisions about what you cut and what you starve, and suddenly you're at three months and you haven't really done anything where the additional business unit growth is starting to bear fruit.

You then start making some decisions. You say, okay, we're gonna move these channels, we're gonna do this. You have some operational things that you need to discuss, maybe you have a capacity issue and you need to change some things up, and suddenly you're four months in and things start to happen around, perhaps they start to happen around then, so you need a couple months more for them to bed in and show actual change.

So we're steering a big ship here a lot of the time. I don't just wanna throw six months out there and say it's this hard, fast rule. But you know what? If you're doing something more simple and straightforward, yes, perhaps you see some results in 90 days. But if you're steering a big ship, if you're pivoting, if you're looking at a different model of executing, then you need some time to be able to create the change.

And when they're getting their feet under the table, they're really looking at systems that might need to be built before they can even start making some decisions. So a little bit of leeway I think is helpful. And I think the takeaway from that too is you gotta vet very carefully because they're, you don't want a lot of attrition in that because programs need time to grow. Yeah, and you can be six months in if they're not any good and you're like, oh, well, holy crap.

We need to start again with a new person and that affects your business model. So I really like the thought of that 30 day audit, come and audit our business for 30 days, and that's — it's a paid audit, they get some money for it, they should be open to that, and then it really gives you some more information about making a decision for the long term. Audits are always fun folks, even from the IRS it can be a lot of fun. Yeah, it's like an anal probe.

You went there. Yeah. Alright, time for another break. Quick break. Trimmers Landscaping, Londonderry, New Hampshire. And the tie here is design and build. You don't hire a landscaper to mow, you hire them to design the whole yard and then build it. That's a fractional CMO for your marketing. Strategy plus execution, not just cutting the grass. Trimmers does patios, walkways, retaining walls, granite steps, plantings, the full design build.

As a Canadian I will say they also do snow and ice management, which is the only part of this I'm truly qualified to evaluate. That's your one. That is my one Canadian reference. 30 years residential and commercial, they'll design it, build it, maintain it. One team, one plan. Which is the whole fractional CMO pitch. One person owning the plan end to end. Trimmers Landscaping, 603-882-8888, TrimmersLandscaping.com, Londonderry, New Hampshire.

Why do I always get to do the numbers in the web addresses? Never get out of the web addresses. You just say it so well. You're so much better than I am in every aspect. You're more handsome, you're taller, you have more kids, more bills. Yes. So, yeah. And more hate mail. Yeah. Some people hate you so bad. Half of them are my relatives, but... Alright Jon, so good stuff, now we're going to get it into it.

So take me under the hood, what's the engine look like? When a fractional CMO first steps in, what do they evaluate and then what's the ongoing rhythm from there? Okay, so yeah, step one, this initial evaluation. Before changing anything, assess, right? Nobody should be rewiring the engine like day one. That doesn't make sense. And the key thing is the financial aspect, right? We alluded to this last week, taking a look at the P&Ls, understanding what the business objective is, running the numbers through on feasibility for growth targets for the year, right?

So let's really get at that business growth angle and understand do the numbers add up? Because if you got to find a thousand customers on a $2,000 budget, that's not feasible. You're not gonna do that, especially in the digital world. So they should be able to punch the numbers. They should be able to tell you almost off the top of your head whether something is realistic or not.

They then really should start to get their head around CAC, the cost per acquired client. They should start trying to do calculations around margin per customer and then looking at those ideally by channel and understanding what the spend is and what they think they get from each individual channel. Nobody usually has these all clean and set up. And I think if you do, that's great. Like you've done a lot of the blocking and tackling that necessary for people to come in and make decisions right away, that's great.

But a lot of times those things need to get cleaned up before somebody can start making an informed decision about really how to roll out, how to create some additional strategy. They'll look at measurement. You know, what's actually tracked? Is it all platform reported vanity? Is it tracking things through on CRM systems to actual revenue dollars and job scheduling systems, etc., etc. Where the money's going, whether they've got direct access into the platforms, they'll have a chat with the agencies as well.

They'll have a look at the positioning of the business and, as I said before, with brand positioning. They want to understand what the market thinks of them as well. There might be some brand awareness studies that they recommend. Those are a little bit difficult and sometimes expensive, but they're super useful. And they want to talk to teams and vendors like who is executing, what are they doing, they should be able to make some judgment calls or whether they're good or not.

And perhaps it goes back to some of the agency grading stuff that we talked about last week as well. Usually owners are just kind of letting — owners and existing senior leadership are just letting the kind of campaigns run, getting performance reports sent through that they don't totally understand and like right away looking at those reports I know whether it's BS, whether it's useful or not, I can tell you right away whether you know the campaigns are actually doing what you're hoping.

So yeah, that's the first step really. Initial evaluation, diagnosing things, it takes a couple of few weeks. If people are changing things right away then they're guessing and that's the last thing you need is somebody coming in and guessing. To — creating a bit of a loop, right? Because they're just baselined all the performance and then they want to set up their rhythms with upwards and downwards. They want to review the numbers week one, understand CAC, ROAS, etc. pipeline close rates, things like that. Week two, they should be able to make some feeding and starving decisions hopefully if the numbers come through. They should be setting up members with the leadership teams. So you have your weekly L10s like we do on upwards into the C-suite. They should be setting up marketing L10s with their department to make sure that they've got everybody, all the stakeholders within the marketing department in discussions. They should be able to collectively make some of those decisions I just mentioned on reviewing

the numbers, feed and starve, etc etc. They should be having all the conversations with freelancers, agencies as well and I think by week four you really should have a bit of a summary to be able to report to the leadership team on progress. Here's what I've done, here's what I've observed, here are the things I'm concerned about, here are the things I'm not concerned about, and that should start laddering up to an overall strategic plan. Remember, we've had those discussions around business objectives, like the first day they step in and the first conversations, what are you hoping to achieve? After the first month, they should have what has been achieved and what the possibilities are and they should be able to connect those two things there with the makings of a strategic plan.

Ideally, I'd like to see a scorecard being put together and KPIs being tracked. That should be part of those L10s. You should have that within a couple weeks. There should be some numbers that are being tracked and trended. And yeah, really, they're starting to grade the actual execution. They should also be able to have a conversation both with their marketing department and upwards into leadership team about tactics, right?

Like Google, Facebook on the digital side, you know, are we producing enough content to be present for organic traffic? They should be talking about a little bit about the traditional marketing that you run, like traditional, I've mentioned it before, is notoriously difficult to measure, but they should be talking about how long campaigns have been running, they should have been talking about the stations. I always ask the question, you know, what more can we be doing with you to each vendor because it excites them.

It's, oh wow, okay, these guys want to do more, these guys want more, and then they'll give you all the possibilities that you can run, and then you get the cherry pick a little bit. You say, okay, we've been running this program, I'm not really sure it's working, but we like what you said about this stuff over here. We want to get into your email list, and we want to email 15,000 people with our product.

Can we do that? And generally the answer is yes, they want to work with you. So yeah, have all these vendor conversations, and if any of those campaigns can't really be tied to a dollar amount, an outcome, then it should really, you should stop, they should look at stopping running it. So, you know, that's the time period that I'd start running down the campaigns that I'm not convinced are working. So yeah, quite a lot there to get done in a short space of time.

All right. CAC. I love it. It's like a cat with a hairball. Oh yeah. It feels like it too. So let's say we sign somebody on Monday, what will we actually see day 30, day 60, and if I add another 30, day 90? Yeah, you're a math guy. Pretty close. 89 days. Yeah. So yeah, I think I just kind of described the initial getting their feet under the table.

Day 30, a bit of a measurement infrastructure existing. Scorecards, yes. Of data on a regular basis, understanding the CAC furball, CAC, at least at a total level. Like, CAC by channel is super hard sometimes, depending on all the way tracking goes and whether you're direct to consumer or not, right? Trying to do a B2B business, understanding CAC channel on a long converting cycle B2B business is like nigh on impossible.

It can be done, but whereas if you're an e-commerce business and you know if you spend money on a Google shopping campaign, you watch the revenue come in, you got some direct line of sight there, right? So CAC is easier to calculate in those types of environments. But ideally, they've got high-level CAC of total marketing dollars in, number of customers that it's influencing. And so yeah, that's by day 30.

And then a kill list. Yeah, I mentioned that as well. Day 60, understanding what the full strategy might look like, right? There should be some strategic discussions there to say, here's how we're going to achieve our overall objective. And they should be coming up with a media plan and budget. And it should be clearly focused in on the tactics that have won in the past. And it should be some new tactics and some experience-based additional channels that can drive results.

Right? So day 60, I'm putting a strategic plan in place. Here's what we're going to market with. Here's how we're evolving. I've assessed whether the brand is strong or not, whether we're positioned correctly, and whether we need to bring in a brand agency to do some sort of refresh or tuning. Super important to do that relatively early on because that case cascades down across all the things that you touch in future, right? So identifying these things within day 60, so two months. Three months in, really, it should be in a rhythm now. Like the elements of the strategic plan should be being executed. The numbers should be known. The team should be educated on what to expect from each weekly meeting, and understand whether things are working or not.

Really, you're starting to see the execution side ladder up to a growth target. That's where the conversation should be after 90 days. So back to the six month engagement. Well, hey, we're three months in now, and we're just getting to, hey, is what we're producing reaching a growth target? Now, if you've got to do things to pivot and grow business units, that's where it's really starting to kick in and the data's starting to come in.

So that's why the extra time is super important. I mean, I've got an example, typical composite story names changed, et cetera, et cetera. A business I work with, which was mostly a consumer, I'm sorry, wholesale and trade-based business, little direct consumer, not much. New investor came in, saw a ton of potential on a direct to consumer model. But the old brand really couldn't live up to it.

So the first conversations we're having is what's working, what's not working, where do we want to go, what does the following financial year look like, and the objectives were clear. We got to go direct to consumer. And the brand wasn't ready for direct to consumer. It was segmented across different business units, and there was no cohesive kind of visual identity or brand guidelines. So we needed a rebrand and a real direct to consumer push.

And so it took that time to frame that all out. We did it within, I want to say, 30 days, which is super quick for a refresh. Had a little bit of a headway, a little bit of a head start with that. But it wasn't much more than 30 days to be able to come up with a full brand refresh. I didn't paint the logo. I didn't build the logo.

The brand agency did it. They created the visual identity, they created the language, a really deeply connected brand with the consumer, did really, really well. And at the same time, we got the campaigns kind of mapped out and built measurement scorecard, tracked some KPIs, and the site got rebuilt as the next step. And so everything as it launched and rolled out straight into Traction-based scorecards. So we understand how performance began.

So I mean, the results of all of this, and it was a multi-part brand refresh and business unit evolution. The pipeline went from a couple hundred thousand in the pipeline to $1.5 million in six weeks. So huge uptake after the refresh and then the launch of the new site and brand and targeted engagement with the target market. The target market. So yeah, a couple hundred thousand to one and a half million in six weeks.

That is, that was a huge pivot. That brand is continuing to pivot on a full pivot across all business units in under a year. So yeah, a lot of progress there and without senior marketing leadership, that would have been a real challenge. So I'm just gonna say what our listeners are thinking right now, shut your lying, filthy party mouth. How do you go from six for six weeks to $1.5 million?

Was it the rebrand or was it the measurement? It was not the measurement. The measurement was based off of pipeline revenue estimated. How it went through those numbers was the launch of a website which was truly connected to the consumer, so completely different visual identity. The language was on point, the product set was on point. And so when it launched, it then also went out in concert with targeted marketing direct to consumer and email to existing user base and trades and wholesale user base as well. Right. So it was exactly the right target market with exactly the right message that was on brand. And the number of jobs just started initially it was a trickle and then they started pouring in and the focus of the campaign was really on point. The messaging was on point and yeah it went from a pipeline of I want to say I can't remember exact number of jobs that were in, I want to say 30, 35, up to a pipeline of 60, 65 north

of that and targeted exactly the right audience where the job type had more revenue associated. So yeah, really solid results and I'm not lying. Alright, see folks, it's a science. Marketers never lie, Ryan. Yeah, that's true. And repeat. Yeah. Alright. So there is a science to this folks you know and it also can become an art form when you get to there so good stuff Jon. Okay last break Trimmers Landscaping.

Commercial angle for this one because there's a real business case. There is. There's — site — Right? It — Commercial spaces with quality landscaping get about 7% higher rental rates and shoppers will pay around 12% more retail with good landscaping out front. That's a marketing spend disguised as a hedge. The landscaping is the storefront. Trimmers does full commercial maintenance, construction, seasonal colors, snow and ice management, 30 years of it.

Same principle as the whole episode. The thing you think is overhead is actually driving the number. You just have to measure it. Ah, I gotta do the numbers again. Trimmers Landscaping, Londonderry, New Hampshire. 3 Aviation Park Drive, 603-882-8888, TrimmersLandscaping.com. The storefront is a line item. Treat it like one. And for those folks who do not want us to sponsor your pod, be a sponsor on our podcast, you can give us $100 each episode and we will, we'll have you not sponsor it.

And butcher everything. So Jon, what tactics should a good fractional CMO put to work? Use a framework for this, PACE. Walk us through it. Yeah, and PACE is ours, right? PACE is, each CMO will probably have a model of framework and approach. And I think if they've got one, great. It needs to make sense though. PACE is position, acquire, cultivate, and execute. It's not always done in that order, but we'll start with position.

Because this is really, and we've talked about it several times already today, why a customer picks you over the other guy. And sometimes you need to fix that before you spend anything on your advertising. Great branding and advertising amplify a message. They won't fix a bad one. Great ads on weak positioning really just lose money faster. So, you know, and there's a really tough part of this.

Sometimes when you confront the owner and you say, hey, look, your brand has a problem and we need to rebrand here. It's the conversation owners least want to hear. They've built the brand. It's personal. They've got a deep connection with it. They spent years looking at it. If the logo is that way and has been that way for 30 years, then they love it and they don't want to change it.

It's the logo on the truck. It's above the door. It's the name, et cetera, et cetera. So there's deep attachment to these things and people often find it difficult to have that conversation. But if your brand's confusing, dated, or says the wrong thing, it's basically a tax on every single marketing dollar you'll ever spend. And that's important, right? So a rebrand, if somebody comes in and says, hey, you really should consider it, then you really should consider it.

You know, it's painful, it's not what you wanna hear, but a great rebrand accentuates the original owner's vision and it's exhilarating to deliver and move forward with, right? Like you won't like the initial conversation, but if they're good at their job and the brand agency is good at their job, then they're gonna put something in front of you that has that attachment to every single piece of history that the organization has gone through and there should be a connection to it.

And if you get that and you can see the future and how you can build and grow, then really it should be a very positive thing to move forward with. So, you know, a good CMO is gonna say right out front that, you know, this is what you need, backs it up with some numbers and some experience. And, you know, for the brand we were talking about earlier, that rebrand really was the beginning of the entire pivot.

You could not do that pivot to direct to consumer without that rebrand. So yeah, important. The A there is for acquiring right now. You're buying attention. You want to capture demand that already exists, that exists out there. So we're talking about the Googles, the searches, people looking for things that they know exist, right? And then you want to go and create new demand. And that's where you're creating new awareness.

Like these are things like social, display advertising, interruption advertising that educates people around a specific product. So I would always do it that way around. Capture demand that exists already and win market share, then create some new demand, making sure that your awareness is out there because you got people that are interested in products and it's a quicker path to conversion, right? Capture, it converts faster, right?

Cultivating, now cultivating is super important. Sometimes you do this first, right? Sometimes if you've got an existing customer base and you haven't really been nurturing them very well, you can actually get a lot of low hanging fruit and additional revenue just by nurturing them, sending them a few emails, offer them some incentives to repurchase, cross sell, up sell, right? These guys already know you and they bought from you in the past.

And it generally is like the first step at generating some additional revenue for cheap, right? So I like all of the tactics around this, email nurturing, repeat purchase campaigns, referral programs, getting lawn signs out there, boring stuff like that, but it's actually really, really profitable. It's the highest return on investment tactic that any business can engage with, and it's ignored by almost everybody. So super important, cultivate.

And then execution is more around, do you have the systems and measurement, the discipline and the monthly feedback loop to be able to track what every dollar is doing for you? So execution is about the platform and the elements themselves. Most people running marketing campaigns will just jump straight into the advertising platforms. They'll try and acquire and they won't necessarily sit down and look at their positioning, cultivating, and making sure they've got the tools to execute, to measure things properly.

And that's why the ads don't work. It's not really the ads fault. It's because you don't have the systems in place to be successful with them. Good stuff, Jon. So, owner sold. Yeah. What's the first move to actually get going this month? Okay. I would, number one, before you sit down with candidates, before you interview, and by the way, use your network, because your network should tell you some good people.

If you need good people to be referred to, let us know, we can help. I would sit down beforehand and look at your revenue goal and say, you know, what is your goal for the next 12 months? Let's get a number. Let's understand how you're going to achieve that goal in terms of product and business unit. You know, are you diversifying? Are you launching new products? Are you gonna focus in on one specific market, et cetera, et cetera.

So have some thinking around what you want to achieve. Get your best guess at a current acquired customer number and ideally understand what your margin is for each individual customer that you're generating as well. Like ballpark is fine, because at least you're gonna have some numbers and you'll be speaking their language right off the bat. You gotta know your current marketing spend by channel and ideally do this for the last 90 days.

So yeah, if you can't give any of those and oh my gosh, you really need help. Get some help right away. Yeah, I think then you have some conversations with people, some people you know have the experience, ideally that have experience in the vertical. You don't want people cutting teeth in your market. You can run that paid trial I mentioned, a 30-day scoped engagement in an audit to learn the business more.

And that's not really to delay things. It's just an interview that tells the truth. But the first move I would make this week is I would write down those three things. And even if you never hire anybody, you'll learn something uncomfortable within it and it'll be useful. Yeah, then reach out to your candidates. And yeah, marry the one who tells you the truth in the audience. Nice.

All right, Jon, so we got some feedback from last time. We lost 15 viewers because you really screwed the pooch on the takeaway from last episode. So they did say they'd give you one more try. All right. And so this could start a streak of getting this well. So what is our one takeaway from this episode? And do not blow this for me. Oh, the pressure, the pressure, the takeaway.

A fractional CMO is a senior marketing judgment part-time with full accountability. Somebody who owns a strategy, not somebody you have to manage. Almost every owner is ready. The real variable isn't size, it's time. Someone has to do the high level thinking about where your marketing dollars go. And if it isn't you, you need to buy it. The skills a good one brings are the ones owners don't know they're missing.

Attribution above all. That should be top of the topics that they bring to the table. Pick one by asking what they've killed, how they tie campaigns to dollars, and what they'll tell you you won't want to hear. Give them budget authority, or don't bother doing this at all. In the first 90 days, you should go from the lights are on to a repeatable engine. And the way to start is cheap and honest. Write down your goal, your CAC, your spend, then run a 30-day paid trial before marrying them. They don't do the work, they make the work pay.

All right folks, I'll let you decide on that one. I'm on the fence, but that's just me. I'm a cynic. Jon, great episode. We covered agencies and now CMO and all that kind of stuff, but the good news is, folks, the pain's over. Our next episode, I'm back, and you're welcome. I don't know. I enjoy this. And you know what? Based upon our feedback, you were the only one.

Yeah. You are funnier than me, that really sucks. Oh, sorry. Well, hey Jon, great episode. You know, marketing is such a myth and what's out there, so I think you did a great job explaining this and doing that. So we'll bring Jon back in the hot seat soon. You won't want to miss our next episode, it's going to be good stuff. Excellent. Great. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for sitting in my — your — my Bengay and sweat hot seat that you enjoy so much. I burned that thing, that was horrible. It was. I couldn't sleep at night. I was like, my daughter's crime. What's that smell daddy? I mean it was horrible. Well great, I'll do it to this one as well. Look forward to relaxing when I'm in your seat again.

All right. Be contacting Redfern for some seats. Yes, that's it. All right. Thanks, guys. Enjoy. See ya. Bye. And I'll see ya. That's it for this episode of From Burnt Out to Bought Out. If something we said today hit home, don't just nod in agreement. Pick one thing. The number you've been avoiding. The process that only lives in your head. The conversation you've been putting off for six months.

Do that one thing this week. That's how it starts. If you're not sure which one thing to pick, drop us a line. We'll happily point you in the right direction. New episodes drop every week. Until next time, stop burning the treadmill and start building something you can actually sell.