July 10, 2022
Fractional CMO Insight on Building a Community with Stacey Danheiser
In episode 120, host Eric Dickmann talks with Stacey Danheiser- Founder and CMO of Shake Marketing Group, a B2B focused marketing strategy group. Stacey has years of experience helping B2B companies to grow their revenue, build connections, and uncover customer value as a fractional CMO. As a community builder, she helps other marketers connect and grow through The Soar Marketing Society, a professional online marketing community.
Shake Marketing Group provides B2B marketing strategies that help business leaders drive more revenue and internal credibility through customer insights, a powerful value proposition, and a marketing strategy that the C-suite understands.
For more information and access to the resources mentioned in this episode, visit: https://fiveechelon.com/fractional-insight-building-community-s8ep5/
Send us your questions or comments
A fractional CMO can help build out a comprehensive marketing strategy and execute targeted campaigns designed to increase awareness and generate demand for your business...without the expense of a full-time hire.
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WEBVTT
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Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.
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I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
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In this podcast, we have conversations with marketing professionals who share the strategies, tactics, and mindset you can use to improve the effectiveness of your marketing activities and grow your business.
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Today, I'm excited to have guest, Stacey Danheiser on the program, Stacy is the Founder of Shake Marketing, a Fractional CMO consultancy for Fortune 500 B2B businesses in the technology and telecommunications space.
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She has also founded Soar Marketing Society, an exclusive community for professional B2B marketers who are looking to elevate their impact.
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Stacy, welcome to the show.
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Thanks so much for having me.
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It's great to be here.
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Our podcast is really focused on the whole Fractional CMO space and how fractional CMOs can help businesses.
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And I'm excited always to have other Fractional CMO guests on the program.
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And I was hoping that, you know, you could give the audience a little bit more of an expanded introduction of yourself.
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What was your career trajectory in marketing before you became a fractional CMO.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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Well, let's see.
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I don't go way back.
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I always loved kind of the marketing and sales side, even when I was in middle school and high school.
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And so I knew I wanted to get into business.
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I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do.
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I took one marketing class, fell in love with it, and then ended up getting a degree in marketing.
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And so my first job out of college was in consumer marketing actually.
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So I started in the cable industry and I spent probably six years working at different consumer companies in the cable and retail financial services spaces, mostly for big Fortune 500 companies.
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And then I switched over to B2B also for another Fortune 500 company.
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And really got my feet wet, kind of between the marketing and sales function, um, built strategies.
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They'll execution plans spent sort of equal time in strategy and execution.
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So I got a really well-rounded education and experience there.
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Um, did one more stint at a financial services company, just to you know, figure out and see, you know, I think a lot of times we start, especially in marketing, you start within one industry and it's really difficult to move into another industry.
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And so I wanted to see, um, you know, work on the B2B side, but in a different industry.
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And so I did that for a couple of years, and then I ended up leaving and starting my own consulting firm and it started off with mostly doing customer research, doing some marketing strategy building for companies, including some of my past employers.
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And, and, and then, um, it has expanded since then to.
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Kind of this Fractional CMO part, where I have a big piece of my businesses consulting, where I still come in and kind of do projects, a lot of customer research, a lot of marketing strategy building, but then some organizations, especially in those kinds of scaling organizations to stay on and play with.
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I have a heavy role in overseeing the execution of the strategies that I'm building.
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And those have been really rewarding experiences because, you know, they don't necessarily know what to do and they don't know how to do it.
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And so it's been great to build the plan and the strategy, and then bring on the team and educate the team, and mentor the team.
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And so that's kind of sore marketing society, as you mentioned, kind of evolved out of that.
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You know, is a place for B2B marketers to come and connect, and really that we have a shared sort of vision and goal which is to help elevate the profession, help marketers think and act more strategically so that they get a seat at the leadership table so that they can help explain what marketing is and what it's not.
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Because I think a lot of times, especially in smaller scaling organizations, you have the CEO running marketing, they don't really have a marketing background, and really that function ends up becoming kind of a tactical executer, order taker, unlike you have somebody kind of overseeing the strategy.
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So
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A lot to unpack there, which is great.
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I'm curious, as you look back and your experience with all these different companies, both on the consumer side, the B2B side, where was it that you think you made the greatest impact?
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Where was it that light bulbs went off and said, you know, this marketing stuff really works.
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Yeah.
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I mean, for sure on the consumer side, what's really different for you know, working in B2C versus B2B is we had really big budgets.
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I mean, I was managing multimillion dollar budgets, you know, pretty young and early in my career and we didn't have to fight for every single dollar.
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It was very well known, sort of in the organization, sales are down, we need sales to be up, let's do a marketing campaign.
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Here's some money let's go, you know, and we were very deadline driven, it was very fast paced, it was a lot of fun.
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We were doing commercials and radio spots and sponsorships and just really big things.
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And then I went over to B2B and it was completely different, majority of the budget is actually given to sales, to hire salespeople.
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But I loved working with the sales team.
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And so I kind of figured figured out early on to build a relationship with the sales team.
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And so I think, you know, one of the most sort of rewarding parts of my career was, was that first job that I had in B2B, where I had to work with the sales team and they were looking to me, you know, to drive the strategy.
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And they thought that they knew what they wanted.
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It was a lot of events, you know, event based marketing at the time, and being able to change their minds and, you know, implement campaigns and implement really great content and insightful customer interactions.
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And we did a customer advisory board and, and just things that they had never done before to kind of bring customers in a completely different way.
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So that was exciting and kind of started my trajectory of educating people on what marketing is.
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Because I realized, you know, working in a consumer organization, everybody kind of knew because marketing was sales in those organizations versus in a B2B, there is a very clear sort of distinction and perception about what role does marketing play versus what role does sales play.
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And so I loved being the bridge of that gap and building those relationships with sales.
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And in fact, I was one of the only marketers always to go attend sales training.
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And so you know, I would show up and everybody's staring at me, like, why is there a marketer here in the room?
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I'm like, you guys, we want the same thing, we're both trying to get customers.
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We're just doing it in a different way.
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I'm thinking longer term, bigger, you know, mass kind of programs.
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And you're thinking one-on-one, but I'm like, we ultimately want the same thing.
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So when you know, once I understood the sales process, it could speak their language, like my credibility went way up with the sales organization.
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I think that's very insightful because I think oftentimes when talking with other marketers, when you're on the B2C side, you know, focusing on consumers, sometimes the levers that you pull can have faster results, right?
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The things that you do, the promotions that you run, you can see the results fairly quickly.
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When you're in a relationship selling world when you're selling larger dollar products or services, sometimes it's a slow grind, right?
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You could have 12, 18 month sales cycles for some of these products where marketing plays a bigger role in terms of that customer journey.
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And it's different.
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It can be frustrating waiting to see the results of some of your activities.
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Yeah, exactly.
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And I think what's, you know, I have this conversation on a weekly basis of like, what's the one thing that we can do.
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And what's the one thing that we can measure for marketing.
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That's gonna, you know, show our ROI and I have to explain it.
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It's not one thing.
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You know, think about how you make purchases.
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You don't just see one thing and then go, go buy something.
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Especially in B2B.
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It's like you're interacting with 10 different pieces of content, you're doing your own research, you're talking to peers, you're posting the communities, you're you know, maybe DM-ing or calling old colleagues.
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You're scrolling through LinkedIn and social media, and there's so many different types of tactics and content that you interact with that it's really difficult to kind of pinpoint it all back to one thing that, you know, everybody wants a silver bullet and I'm like, there is no silver bullet.
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The magic is in the integrated plan.
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Attribution is so difficult in marketing, especially for complex sales cycles.
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And I love the way you sort of segwayed into this whole idea of a plan and strategy.
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As you work with these clients now that you're performing Fractional CMO duties, what do you look at in terms of planning strategy?
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What is the importance of building out that strategy first before you sort of move on to that executional phase?
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Yes.
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Well, this is my favorite part.
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So I actually have a framework that I call the B2B marketing blueprint.
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It's eight steps and the first step is an audit.
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So I typically start with an audit and I love to just kind of dive in, and I talk to the leadership team, beyond marketing.
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I talk to the key stakeholders, it's their product or sales or customer success, HR now is even becoming a big stakeholder for marketers because of employer branding.
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And that's now falling into the marketing realm.
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So I look at you know, a few things right off the bat, which is one, how often is research done?
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Does anybody own customer research or competitor research or market research?
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Is this informal or formal?
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Oftentimes I find, especially this is a big difference too, from B2C to B2B in B2C we had big budgets that we spent on customer research.
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So we were conducting our own research, we were doing focus groups, we were hiring research firms to call people, you know, to get their inside surveys.
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And then we also purchased a bunch of third party data that we could overlay onto our own findings.
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But then when I switched over to B2B, I realized a lot of marketing budgets don't have customer research at all, and in fact, they rely on the sales team.
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So you know, if you want to know about your customers, go ask the sales team or go ask a client facing organization.
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So I think marketing sometimes it's super far removed from the customer in B2B, so I always recommend research there because that's a way to kind of get them more educated and more knowledgeable about the customer base, but also kind of at the credibility goes way up once marketing can sit there and represent the customer.
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So I look at research, I look at targeting, you know, do they have a really clear view of the ideal customer profile?
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Do they know who their customer segments are?
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Do they have clear goals for each of those customer segments?
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Oftentimes there's a huge disconnect between what management says, what the sales team is doing, what the marketing team is doing, and it all comes back to the fact that we all have a different view of what the ideal customer profile is.
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Then I also look at goals.
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And so specifically to marketing, are there clear marketing goals?
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Do you have specific tactics aligned with those goals rather than, you know, the sprinkling effect that I call, like well, we got on Twitter and that was really, that didn't work.
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And then we got on Facebook and that didn't work.
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And then we dabbled in LinkedIn and then we tried some ads on Google, and then we did that.
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And so all of a sudden you're like sprinkled all over the place and nothing is working, one because there's no focus and there's no really integrated strategy, but two, they probably just didn't get along enough to actually build momentum, right?
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To build a foundation, build momentum, and have clear intentions and clear goals as to why you're doing it.
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The other thing I look at is value proposition.
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So I co-wrote a couple of books.
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One of them is Valueology.
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It's about how to write and compose and conduct research to figure out what your value proposition is.
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So I look at value proposition relative to competitors.
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Like a lot of times, I think companies believe that they know what makes them different and why customers chose them.
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And you know, from my experience doing customer research, like nine times out of ten though, there's a disconnect between that.
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So the company will say one thing and then the customer will say, actually with the value they give me is something typically that the customer doesn't think about, right?
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It's, it's something higher level.
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It's bigger picture it's tied to.
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Yeah, something a little bit more meaningful in the customer's world versus you know, what the client typically is saying.
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It's all about some random product feature or some small little differentiator.
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So it's about building that bridge for value proposition and then trying to think about the next thing is the content plan.
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So we go through some depth on content planning and that goes back to that sprinkling effect.
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You know, do you have the customer journey mapped out?
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Are you creating content for each stage of that journey and does it make sense?
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And then finally, the last two sort of steps, I look at execution plan, is it realistic?
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They have a realistic execution plan.
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Did they have the right resources, the right budget, the right internal.
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external sources to help get the work done.
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Do they have the right marketing technology?
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Kind of just a quick little outline of that, because I think sometimes again, people take on.
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It's really easy.
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I could go start a TikTok channel right now as we're sitting here on this, but it's very difficult to maintain that over time, right?
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Into consistently show up over and over.
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And so I like to look at sort of the execution plan.
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And then finally the last thing, which I think is pretty really never talked about in marketing, but it's a huge skillset.
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And this is actually one of the main skills that we saw when we did some research for my other book was standout marketing five key competencies that it takes modern marketers to, to stand out.
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And it's the ability to get buy in.
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It's the internal alignment.
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How are they communicating internally?
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How is everybody informed of what marketing is doing, and on the same page with timelines and setting expectations, and not just saying yes to, Hey, let's go start a TikTok channel.
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Okay.
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I'll get right on it.
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No, pause.
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Why do you want to do that?
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What are the key objectives?
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How do we know if it's working.
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You know, with our timeline of like how much time are we going to give ourselves to experiment with this before we either go full force or kill it?
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And so I love looking kind of at the alignment piece, because it usually shows some type of you know, opportunity to build better relationships internally and socialize and communicate.
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Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to the podcast.
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But first, are you ready to grow, scale, and take your marketing to the next level?
00:15:16.625 --> 00:15:22.985
If so, The Five Echelon Group's Virtual CMO consulting service may be a great fit for you.
00:15:23.255 --> 00:15:29.165
We can help build a strategic marketing plan for your business and manage its execution, step-by-step.
00:15:29.405 --> 00:15:31.956
We'll focus on areas like how to attract more leads.
00:15:32.225 --> 00:15:36.365
How to create compelling messaging that resonates with your ideal customers.
00:15:36.725 --> 00:15:40.295
How to strategically package and position your products and services.
00:15:40.625 --> 00:15:45.035
How to increase lead conversion, improve your margins, and scale your business.
00:15:45.365 --> 00:15:53.135
To find out more about our consulting offerings and schedule a consultation, go to fiveechelon.com and click on Services.
00:15:53.586 --> 00:15:54.846
Now back to the podcast.
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First of all, having a data-driven approach, really understanding your target market, the ideal customer profile, you are so right that so many organizations, if you really dig into it, it's gut feel it's past experiences on some leads that have come in, but it's not really data-driven.
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They don't really understand they haven't done that market research.
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And so I love the fact that you put that at the front end of your process to really identify those things, because frankly you can't measure, unless you really understand what metrics you're going after, you can't really understand whether your marketing is effective.
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And I would also agree that so many organizations tie a bunch of disconnected activities together because they don't have that plan, that strategy in place.
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And so they're just randomly executing tactics and wondering why it's not successful.
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So I love the way you laid that out and articulated that process.
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For your own business, I'm always fascinated when you start out.
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What has been your experience sort of going from that corporate world to now being an independent business owner and generating your own leads?
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Have you been able to see the effects of these marketing strategies work for your own business?
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Are you like many other business owners who get those first couple of referrals from existing clients and then build from there?
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Yeah, I think that's interesting.
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So, yes and yes.
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I started off with getting referrals, mostly kind of tapping into my former employers.
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My first client actually was the employer I was working with.
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And so I said, I'm leaving.
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I don't exactly know what my whole business looks like, but I'd love for you to be my first client.
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Yeah.
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okay.
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Yeah, we love, you know what you're doing, so can we keep doing it.
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And so I did that for a while and then it forced me to, I think in frameworks.
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So I love like the process and steps and kind of productizing and packaging up.
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And I think that's been the hardest part when you're selling a marketing service.
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Like I'm not an agency, I'm not selling at the end of this engagement, you're going to get a brand new website, at the end of this engagement, you're going to have a brand new pitch deck.
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I'm selling like strategy and it feels very intangible for people.
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And so that's why I kind of go through that audit process, I have a visual that I created that shows sort of the steps that we go through.
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And I think people can then grasp that and understand it, and so ultimately I think what has happened is yes, a lot of, you know, I have a lot of my network that still is in the corporate world.
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So you know, I continue to get referrals and business from that, from my experience corporate and how people knew me.
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And so you know, one thing I would say is I neglected my own personal brand for awhile, because.
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I didn't really want to be a personal brand, I didn't really understand that.
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But then you know, I've co-authored a couple of books.
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It kind of forced me a little bit out of my comfort zone to build more of a profile rather than kind of hiding behind a brand.
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I mean, I was always used to building brands for other companies, not necessarily for myself.
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And so, but you know, when you're consulting or when you're doing Fractional CMO work, I mean, people are ultimately buying you, and not necessarily the company.
00:19:09.739 --> 00:19:23.658
And so that's been my transition over the past year is kind of moving away from my brand of you know, Shake Marketing Company into building more of that personal brand, you know, being more active on LinkedIn.
00:19:24.199 --> 00:19:40.173
And I would say, I'm trying all the tactics, you know, we've had really good luck with doing our own research and publishing white papers that helps, that's insightful, that gets people, you know, teaching them something that they might not be thinking about.
00:19:40.824 --> 00:19:47.604
The books have been helpful because it kind of forces you to go through the process of just like doing the brain dump and getting everything on paper.
00:19:47.634 --> 00:19:51.203
And then plus at the end of this, you have a tangible thing that you could send to people.
00:19:52.144 --> 00:19:57.394
And then, yeah, a lot of right now what's working is LinkedIn.
00:19:58.104 --> 00:20:06.473
I'm pretty active on LinkedIn lately doing podcasts and trying to expand the community and just building relationships.
00:20:06.533 --> 00:20:08.824
We're constantly reminding myself to be patient.
00:20:09.243 --> 00:20:11.673
And the relationship building takes time.
00:20:11.673 --> 00:20:21.199
And it's not something that you know, I'm never a big fan of you know, copy paste, you know, email sending the same email to a thousand people.
00:20:21.918 --> 00:20:25.308
It's really more one-on-one, that's kinda my been my approach.
00:20:25.614 --> 00:20:28.403
We know you talked before about data and doing research.
00:20:28.433 --> 00:20:40.096
And I think one of the challenges that solopreneurs or very small businesses have is they tend not to have the volume to create anything that's statistically significant, right?
00:20:40.096 --> 00:20:43.547
When they're doing research on the types of leads that they're generating or whatnot.
00:20:44.057 --> 00:20:53.109
So many people in this line of work, they take their past industry experience and- say, Okay, I work for a telecom company, so my niche is now going to be telecom.
00:20:53.500 --> 00:21:01.513
Is that sort of how you approached it or did you really design your business to go after a certain market for a different reason?
00:21:01.513 --> 00:21:02.804
How did you pick your niche?
00:21:03.970 --> 00:21:05.049
Yeah, I think initially.
00:21:06.325 --> 00:21:10.944
You know, I'm probably not a good example of I'm like what people say not to do.
00:21:10.944 --> 00:21:14.394
Everybody's like start a side gig and build your whole business plan.
00:21:14.424 --> 00:21:15.264
I didn't have any of that.
00:21:15.414 --> 00:21:22.734
I had a logo and I did have like a shell of a website because I felt like that was important if I was going to be representing marketing.
00:21:22.825 --> 00:21:26.144
The bare minimum that I needed was to look like a real company.
00:21:26.914 --> 00:21:29.605
And so I did that first.
00:21:30.579 --> 00:21:34.089
But then really it was you're playing an active sales role.
00:21:34.210 --> 00:21:49.869
And so I think my years of going through the sales training and traveling with the sales team really came into play there because I got to then practice it for myself, and I loved it and I really love the sales side, probably more or equally to marketing.
00:21:49.869 --> 00:21:54.869
So I'm constantly going back and forth between the marketing and the sales hats.
00:21:55.460 --> 00:21:58.539
But I think I wanted to.
00:22:01.339 --> 00:22:04.279
I think two things, one, I was, I'm very careful.
00:22:04.279 --> 00:22:21.079
And I give this advice to people who are just starting off their marketing career, that be careful of the industry that you pick to start your first job in because people right or wrong will perceive that that's the only expertise you have., And you'll get kind of pigeonholed into that industry if you're not careful.
00:22:21.079 --> 00:22:28.585
So I'm like, if you don't like healthcare, like I would stay away or financial services, a highly regulated industries, like people don't leave.
00:22:28.974 --> 00:22:44.214
In fact, the two jobs that I had in financial services, it was very difficult for me to get into that industry because the perception was you don't understand our industry, you don't have any regulatory experience,, and I had to really sell them and convince them that marketing is marketing.
00:22:44.545 --> 00:22:51.305
The process is the same, the foundation, the steps are the same, regardless if I have to go through some regulatory hoops or not.
00:22:51.974 --> 00:22:55.210
And so I think that's one thing.
00:22:55.240 --> 00:22:58.059
The other thing is I really liked variety.
00:22:58.349 --> 00:23:00.940
I'm a person that thrives on change.
00:23:00.970 --> 00:23:07.029
And so I knew for a fact that I could not declare and choose like one industry only.
00:23:07.089 --> 00:23:17.049
So I actually love working in a variety of industries and really, cause it's just like a challenge to me because of my background and experience.
00:23:17.049 --> 00:23:18.700
I'm like, I want to teach these people marketing.
00:23:18.805 --> 00:23:18.984
Yeah.
00:23:19.779 --> 00:23:22.139
you know, show them how to do it, how to do it right.
00:23:22.779 --> 00:23:27.250
So I started with telecom of course, cause that's where my, my background was.
00:23:28.180 --> 00:23:35.799
But because I had some networking contacts in FinTech and then software.
00:23:35.889 --> 00:23:47.119
And then I do a lot of professional services as well, like helping people turn their service, their process, like into IP and into something that they can go package up and sell.
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