Fractional CMO Playbook: How to Hire, Deploy, and Measure Marketing Leadership

JON:
Last week, the solution to your agency’s not caring about your margin was a CMO with a vested interest. So this week, I’m going to share how to engage and deploy one and what their initial focus should be, because a great hire pointed at the wrong 90 days is just your old problem with a better title. Welcome to From Burnout to Bought Out, the podcast for business owners who are tired of being the hardest working, lowest paid employee in their own company. I’m Jon, joined as always by Ryan, and together we’ve spent years inside owner-led businesses helping founders go from running on fumes to running a business that actually runs without them. Every episode, we break down the real problems nobody talks about, the burnout, the bottlenecks, the blind spots, and show you what it looks like to build a business that’s profitable, sellable, and doesn’t need you in the building every day to survive. Whether you’re grinding through a plateau, thinking about an exit, or just trying to take a vacation without your phone blowing up, you’re in the right place.

Let’s get into it.

RYAN:
So, we’re going to go for round two again. We’re going to go for TKO.

JON:
Yeah, well, I got feedback that I was smarter.

RYAN:
You know, I hope that little Mackie, you know, thought so. I mean, you’re daddy.

JON:
Yep, that’s right. My two and a half year old said, Daddy sounds smart.

RYAN:
Yep.

JON:
When I listened back, he was enthralled. He was like, how is dad’s voice coming out of that thing? It was weird.

RYAN:
He also thinks your dog is a cat.

So, we’ll take that with a grain of salt.

JON:
That is right. Yep, back in the hot seat.

I’m ready for it. Let’s go. Let’s do it.

RYAN:
All right, Jon, here it is. So, we teed this up last week, but give me the real definition. What is a fractional CMO? And more importantly, what is it not?

JON:
So, yeah, Ryan, a fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader who owns your marketing strategy, but is a part-time person in your organization.

However, they have, and this is important, full accountability for results. They just have fractional hours. So, they own things.

They don’t advise, they actually own things. So, you said there, you know, what is it not? And four things that a CMO is not. Number one is they’re not a consultant.

A consultant just makes recommendations and has very little attachment to the results. So, a CMO, however, decides and stays accountable for his decisions, right? So, when you come up with a strategy, when you come up with a program, you’ve got a vested interest to make it work and to make sure that lines up to business objectives. A consultant doesn’t necessarily have that accountability.

They’re also not a coach. We’re not talking about jumping in a jacuzzi and feeling good for a short period of time, and then you get out of the jacuzzi and it’s cold, right? That’s what coaching does. A coach develops the person.

A CMO does a job, and it’s a job that’s attached to the organization’s results, right? A CMO is also not an agency in a suit, right? The agency is executional. They should be getting the things done. The CMO directs the agency and makes sure that it aligns strategically with the organizational requirements, right? The CMO also is not just a part-time employee.

Employees need managing. CMOs should not need managing. So, if you’re managing them, you’ve got the wrong person.

But the whole point is really getting access to the seniority that can help you run your organization. And you can’t afford this full-time person with that senior title. So, you’re actually in it for fractional hours, so you can afford what you need. Make sense?

RYAN:
So, Jon, go ahead.

JON:
Make sense?

RYAN:
It does make sense. But I’m just curious.

You said the word owns. And so, what’s an example? What’s a call that a fractional CMO would make that a consultant never would?

JON:
A consultant can make some recommendations around systems, right? You need a marketing and tracking system. And maybe it’s a CRM platform.

A consultant can come up, do a business analysis, and say, hey, this is the one that fits your organization best. You know what? You should be able to get some revenue tracking with this CRM. Whereas a CMO would not only come up with a recommendation for the platform, but they would ensure that the revenue is pulled out of the CRM and that the revenue lines up with business objectives in terms of growth, right? So, the CRM is just the tool.

It’s not the job being complete. It’s just a tool to be able to achieve the business objectives again. So, a CMO has more responsibility.

RYAN:
Excellent. That’s usually something marketing people shirk away from, is accountability and responsibility. So, this is nice to hear.

JON:
That is exactly what the last episode was about and why CMOs should absolutely avoid that. They’ve got to take it on the chin. They own it.

RYAN:
Love it. So, who’s actually ready for one? Give me the revenue band, the readiness test. How do we know?

JON:
The honest answer here is almost everybody is ready.

A lot of people give guidelines, right? You’ve got to be this size of an organization. You’ve got to 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 a $2 million business or a $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 like growing at a slower rate than other businesses in the market, certainly in these times, right? Things are accelerating quickly.

So, 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 and executing. And those are different problems with the same fix.

RYAN:
You’re not too small.

So, it’s not a size test. There’s a huge collective sigh of relief from 50% of our male audience out there.

JON:
You go trying to be funny again, Ryan.

RYAN:
I’m not trying. It’s the opposite word.

JON:
I’ll try and be smart.

It is not a size test. You just need to be able to pay the right amount to somebody with a lot of experience. Five hours a week or maybe even fewer than that.

Maybe even 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. And you’ll move forward quicker than if you didn’t.

RYAN:
Excellent.

Speaking of moving forward, let’s talk about our first sponsor ad.

JON:
Our first sponsor ad. Now, a word from our sponsor. So, quick break, brought to you by Trimmers Landscaping out of Londonderry, New Hampshire.

RYAN:
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.

JON:
It is. Their smart irrigation program has remote leak detection. They catch the water you’re wasting before it shows up on the bill.

RYAN:
A neglected sprinkler system wasting hundreds a year is a marketing budget with no measurement. Same leak, different piece of pipe.

JON:
That is right. 30 years in business, residential and commercial, design, build, full maintenance, snow and ice on the commercial side.

RYAN:
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.

JON:
They sure did. Trimmers Landscaping, Londonderry, New Hampshire, 603-882-8888. TrimmersLandscaping.com.

RYAN:
Stop watering the driveway, measure the spend.

JON:
How terrible are those? We’re just terrible at those.

RYAN:
Oh, well. Hey, I told them that they were our sponsor, so maybe we get two new listeners.

JON:
That’s why we do it.

RYAN:
That’s right. We’ll sponsor you on our podcast if you listen to us and subscribe.

That’s how it goes.

JON:
That’s right.

RYAN:
So, Jon, getting back to it, what does a fractional CMO bring that an owner doesn’t even realize they need?

JON:
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. 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 a 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? The 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, you know, the competition based on price. It’s rarely price that people choose between. So making sure that your positioning is strong is another skill. And 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’ve 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 percent sales for the rest of your business time? Or do you want to be doubling the cost of your product, selling 50 percent 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 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.

RYAN:
So attribution, portfolio thinking, positioning, pricing, the margin, budget allocation, that vendor management or what I like to remember it as is applicable.

JON:
Yeah, yeah, rolls off the tongue, is essential in every walk of life.

RYAN:
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?

JON:
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, like 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.

RYAN:
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?

JON:
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. And I mean, this should separate the CMOs that have done it regularly. Like I can reel off a dozen channels that I’ve killed this year, whereas consultants would generally just try and 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, we’ll track, 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 going to do for your P&L. And that’s a person that really understands how marketing can affect your P&L. I like 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 want to hear? You know, or, you know, what are subjects that you’ll tell me that I don’t want to 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 going to be some difficult questions here. Like you need you need to peel the onion back at so many on so many different things. And there’s just got to be honest candor in in the conversations to understand what doesn’t doesn’t work and what’s important to you and what’s important to them. Hash things out, you know, 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 want to have a look at their cost, like how much are they going to charge? Fractional can be anywhere from, I don’t know, four to five thousand up to twelve thousand a month, like twelve thousand a month is getting up towards full time sort of level like you’re you’re you can afford quite a chunk of a person’s time for that. The lower end really is, you know, you’re 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 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 the engagement as well. I’m going to 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 to create some 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, weekly cadence with the team, weekly leadership meetings. Obviously needs to report to the owner, the CMO, CMO, sorry, CEO, not the sales or anybody.

You can’t bury them in the organization because you need a 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, that they the way they communicate and that they really they dig into the detail required. I would kind of start around there. An important point is a point as well as you’ve 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 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 won’t fear it. The bad ones will argue about it. Those are my tips for hiring.

RYAN:
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 that 90 days or why can’t we get there in 90 days?

JON:
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 to make and make some pivots or grow something out. Right. And so say you want to expand a 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 in what they what they what they do throughout the engagement. The first thing they’re going to want to do is try and understand results and accountability for current programs. And they’re going to have a chat. They’re going to look through all the data. They’re going to find stuff missing, missing. They’re going to go to the agency or the internal person who’s running campaigns. They 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 then you spend a month or two getting what you need. Then you start making decisions about what you cut and what you start 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 know, you then start making some decisions. You say, OK, we’re going to move these channels. We’re going to 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 of months more for them to bet in and show actual change. So we’re steering a big ship here a lot of the time. You know, I don’t just want to 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.

RYAN:
And I think the takeaway from that, too, is you’ve got to vet very carefully because there, you know, you don’t want a lot of attrition in that because programs need time to grow.

JON:
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 time. Come and audit our business for 30 days. And that’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.

RYAN:
Audits are always fun, folks, even from the IRS. It can be a lot of fun.

JON:
Yeah, it’s like an anal probe.

RYAN:
He went there.

JON:
Yeah. All right. Time for another break.

RYAN:
Quick break. Trimmers Landscaping, Londonderry, New Hampshire.

JON:
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.

RYAN:
Strategy plus execution. Not just cutting the grass.

JON:
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.

RYAN:
That’s your one.

JON:
That is my one Canadian reference. 30 years residential and commercial. They’ll design it, build it and maintain it. One team, one plan.

RYAN:
Which is the whole fractional CMO pitch. One person owning the plan end to end.

JON:
Trimmers Landscaping. 603-882-8888. TrimmersLandscaping.com, Londonderry, New Hampshire. Why do I always get to do the numbers and the web addresses? You never have to do the web addresses.

RYAN:
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.

JON:
Yes. Yes.

RYAN:
And more hate mail.

JON:
Yeah. Oh, yeah.

RYAN:
God, some people hate you so bad. Half of them are my relatives. All right, Jon. So good stuff. Now we’re going to get into it. Right. So take me under the hood. What’s the engine look like when a fractional CMO first steps in? You know, what do they evaluate? And then what’s the ongoing rhythm from there?

JON:
OK, so, yeah. Step one, this initial evaluation. Before changing anything, assess. Right. Nobody should be rewiring the engine like as soon as 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’ve got to find a thousand customers on a $2,000 budget, that’s not feasible. You’re not going to do that, especially in the digital world. Right. 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. Right. 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. You’ve done a lot of the blocking and tackling 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, you know, job scheduling systems, et cetera, et cetera. They look at 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, you know, 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’d 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 of whether they’re good or not. And, you know, perhaps it goes back to some of the agency grading stuff that we talked about last week as well. Usually, you know, 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. Step two, creating a bit of a loop, right? Because they 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, et cetera, pipeline close rates, things like that. Week two, they should be able to make some feeding and starving decisions. Hopefully, if the numbers, you know, come through, they should be setting up members, you know, 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, et cetera, et cetera. 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, right? 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, right? So 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? So 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 strategic, the makings of a strategic plan, right? 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’ll, 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 be 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, and 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 conversation, 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.

RYAN:
All right. I love it. It’s like a cat with a hairball.

JON:
Oh yeah. It feels like it too.

RYAN:
So let’s say you sign somebody on Monday, what will we actually see day 30, day 60, and if I add another 30, day 90?

JON:
Yeah, you’re a math guy.

RYAN:
Close, 89 days.

JON:
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, tracking of data on a regular basis, understanding the cat furball, CAC, at least at a total level, like CAC by channel, super hard sometimes, depending on all the way tracking goes, and whether you’re, you know, direct to consumer or not, right? Like 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 you know, 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 are have won in the past. And it should be some new tactics and some experience based additional channels that should that can drive results, right? So I’m day 60. I’m putting a strategic plan in place.

I’ve got 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.

That’s 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, this 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, it’s 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 starting to come in. So that’s why the extra time is super important.

I mean, I’ve got an example, a typical composite story, names, you know, change, et cetera, et cetera. You know, a business I work with, which was mostly a consumer, I’m sorry, a wholesale and trade based business, little direct to 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’ve got to go direct to consumer.

And the brand wasn’t ready for direct 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, 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 result of all this and, you know, 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 market, the target market. So, yeah, a couple hundred thousand to one and a half million in six weeks. 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.

RYAN:
So, I’m just going to say what our listeners are thinking right now. Shut your lying, filthy birdie mouth. How do you go from six for six weeks to 1.5 million? Was it the rebrand or was it the measurement?

JON:
It was not the measurement.

The measurement was based off of pipeline job 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.

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 the 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.

RYAN:
All right. See, folks, it’s a science.

JON:
Marketers never lie, Ryan.

RYAN:
That’s true. Rinse and repeat. Yeah. All right. So, there is a science to this, folks, and it also can become an art form when you get to there. So, good stuff, Jon.

JON:
Okay. Last break, Trimmers Landscaping.

RYAN:
Commercial angle for this one because there’s a real business case.

JON:
There is. Their site cites 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.

RYAN:
That’s a marketing spend disguised as a hedge. The landscaping is the storefront.

JON:
Trimmers does full commercial maintenance, construction, seasonal colors, snow and ice management, 30 years of it.

RYAN:
Same principle as the whole episode. The thing you think is overhead is actually driving the number. You just have to measure it.

JON:
I’ve got to do the numbers again. Trimmers Landscaping, Londonderry, New Hampshire, 3 Aviation Park Drive, 603-882-8888, TrimmersLandscaping.com.

RYAN:
The storefront is a line item. Treat it like one.

And for those folks who do not want us to be a sponsor on our podcast, you can give us $100 each episode and we will 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.

JON:
Yeah. And PACE is ours, right? Each CMO will probably have a model, a framework, an 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… 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. 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, right? 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.

Right? 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 want to 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 going to 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, it’s a good CMO is going to say right up front that, you know, this is what you need, backs it up with some numbers and some experience.

And, you know, for that, 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 that, 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’ve got people that are interested in products and it’s a it’s a quicker path to conversion. Right. Capture is it converts faster.

Right. Cultivating now cultivating super important. Sometimes you do this first.

Right. Sometimes you 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, additional revenue just by nurturing them, sending them a few emails, offer them some incentives to repurchase, cross sell, upsell. Right.

These guys already know you and they bought from you in the past. And it generally is like the first 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, programs, you know, getting lawn signs out there, boring stuff like that. But it’s actually really, really profitable. It’s the highest 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 discipline and the monthly feedback loop to be able to track what every dollar is doing for you? Right. So execution is 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.

RYAN:
Good stuff, Jon. So owners sold.

JON:
Yeah.

RYAN:
What’s the first move to actually get going this month?

JON:
OK, 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 are you going to focus in on 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 you’re generating as well. Like ballpark is fine because at least you’re going to have some numbers and you’ll be speaking their language right off the bat.

You got to 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 know, you don’t want people cutting teeth in your market. You can run that pay trial I mentioned, you know, a 30 day scoped engagement and not an audit to 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 marry the one who tells you the truth in the audience.

RYAN:
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 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.

JON:
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.

And 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.

RYAN:
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 we covered, you know, agencies and now CMO and and all that kind of stuff. But the good news is, is folks is the pain’s over our next episode.

I’m back. And you’re welcome.

JON:
I don’t know.

I enjoy this.

RYAN:
And you know what? Based upon our feedback, you were the only one.

JON:
Yeah.

You are funnier than me. That really sucks.

RYAN:
Oh, sorry.

Well, hey, Jon, great episode. You know, marketing is such a myth. And, you know, 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 gonna be good stuff.

JON:
Excellent. Great.

Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for for sitting in my my Bengay and sweat hot seat that you enjoy so much.

RYAN:
I burned that thing. That was horrible. It was.

I couldn’t sleep at night. I was like, my daughter’s crying. What’s that smell? Daddy? I mean, it was horrible.

JON:
Well, great. I’ll do it to this one as well. Look forward to relaxing when I’m when I’m in your seat again.

RYAN:
Be contacting Redfern for some seats.

JON:
Yes, that’s it. All right.

Thanks, guys. Enjoy. That’s it for this episode of From Burnout 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. And 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.