Feb. 2, 2023
Fractional CMO Insight: The Importance of Having a Marketing Strategy with Natalie Swan
In episode 124, host Eric Dickmann welcomes guest, Natalie Swan, a Fractional CMO at Swan & Associates. Natalie shares her unique perspective on the importance of marketing strategy. She shares insights on the necessity of having a clear marketing strategy and how important it is to implement tactics that align with a company's overarching goals.
Natalie tackles the confusion that often surrounds marketing, emphasizing the need to be resourceful when budgets are limited. She elaborates on the importance of understanding and refining an ideal customer profile to make informed decisions about the most effective marketing tactics. We talk about customer journey mapping and how it can be instrumental in crafting a successful marketing strategy.
This episode is jam-packed with insightful tips and strategies, so don't miss out on the opportunity to learn from one of the best in the industry. Tune in, and let's transform the way you think about marketing strategy!
For more information and access to the resources mentioned in this episode, visit: https://fiveechelon.com/importance-of-marketing-strategy-with-natalie-swan/
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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Today I'm excited to have guest Natalie Swan of the program.
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Natalie is a fractional CMO who enjoys helping her clients turn business objectives into strategic actionable marketing.
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She believes that trying to grow business without a good marketing strategy simply doesn't work.
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I couldn't agree more.
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Natalie, welcome to the program.
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Hi, Eric.
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Thank you so much.
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I'm very excited to be here and to have this conversation with you.
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I'm excited to have the conversation too, because I love to talk to other people who are doing fractional work as well as people who truly understand the value of strategy and, you know, to kick things off.
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That was just a real short introduction.
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Could you just give us a little bit of your background?
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How did you get into marketing?
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What has been your, uh, your experience in the field to date?
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Absolutely, yes.
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So I studied business administration in school.
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Um, I went to the University of Oregon, so go ducks.
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And four days after I graduated, I ended up taking an internship in Chicago, um, with a company there that was incredibly fast.
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Growing at the time.
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Um, it was a large scale event production company.
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And so we were hosting events for tens of thousands of people all across the United States and internationally.
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And this company was started by two, um, two young men in their late twenties and scaled to tens of millions of dollars very quickly.
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Um, this is when social media was just becoming a thing.
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So people are taking pictures at, you know, the mud runs and the music festivals.
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And as you can imagine, It was incredibly fun to be part of, of marketing, uh, at
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I can imagine.
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so fast growing.
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You know, we're getting a ton of attention and, and people are loving it, and so I just really found a knack for telling that story and for promoting those things and because of how fast the company was growing as well.
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You know, I was so new in my career and so I got to do everything.
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I was the one who was sending marketing emails, writing the copy, um, posting on Facebook.
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But then I also had the opportunity to really work my way up to work with the executive leadership team on annual strategic planning for our marketing on go to market for our new brands and helping being part of the brand development process, um, and just really seeing what it takes to be in marketing at a fast growing organization.
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Why you really need to have the strategy and the systems to support that in order to be effective.
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So it was an incredible way to start my career.
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Um, I was there for six years and then I ended up moving to Seattle where I, um, ended up getting my business license.
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And this was in 2017.
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And my former employer became my first paying client, which I know we'll talk about a little bit later.
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Um, and so that was the light bulb moment of, okay, I can do this virtually, I can do it remote, I can do it part-time and still be incredibly effective with.
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Being a marketing leader.
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Um, I did end up taking a job full-time at a marketing strategy firm, which was incredible because that was my first experience managing clients and really seeing what that was like.
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I got to work for several months at a Fortune 50 tech company.
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I got to work, um, with really large international brands, and so it was a completely different experience.
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Um, but a year into that I really realized you.
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Uh, I've gotta take a chance on myself.
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I've, I've got to, you know, I'm really feeling called to be around entrepreneurs and to support other business owners and so in 2018, I left, um, my full-time role and this is what I've been doing ever since.
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You know, one thing I really love about your journey is, let's face it, marketing can be a lot of fun.
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There are a lot of activities that take place in marketing.
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The tactical things that you do that can really be a lot of fun.
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And I know many marketers that are entering the field get very excited about some of those things.
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Right.
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But then you sort of went from that excitement of a lot of the tactical execution to the strategy side and really seeing, okay, how do all those pieces come together and develop a strategy?
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What, what was your takeaway from that, you know, as you, as you worked on that strategy?
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Yeah.
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And it's, it's funny you say the tactics are fun because I, I agree with you certainly, and I've been part of some fun tactics, but for me, the, the strategy is the fun piece.
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And, and you know, maybe I'm the oddball with that, but I, I really find, um, It, it's just fun to see your stuff work, right?
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It's fun when you're getting traction with marketing, when you're building momentum, um, which we all know nothing works right away.
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And so that's sort of the expectation is that, you know, we're gonna implement something and then we're gonna optimize it.
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And so I found that, um, you know, it was so much more fun to be able to work cross-functionally, work among the brand marketing team, work with the leadership team when everyone was so crystal clear.
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What are we trying to do and why are we making these decisions and how do these, you know, fun tactics or, or tests or whatever we're doing still support the overall goal and the overall roadmap of what we're trying to accomplish.
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And I have a really hard time, um, When that piece doesn't exist, and I see other people have a hard time with it too, because a lot of companies do not prioritize this the way that they really should.
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And so they end up with, you know, the spaghetti at the wall marketing and, you know, oh, this didn't work, so we're gonna pop over here and spend tens of thousands more dollars on something else.
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And so, um, that's not fun, right?
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So we're not seeing our marketing work, um, and we just sort of keep jumping ship to the next thing.
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You're so right because when marketing isn't working, it's not being effective.
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There is that stress of spending all of this money, all this energy, and not seeing the results.
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And so strategy is so important and we're gonna dig into that a little bit more in this conversation.
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But I'm interested too, in your journey from going and working in a corporate environment to working on your own, you said that those first couple clients were clients that you had, uh, were previous employers, right?
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How have you found it since then?
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Sort of moving beyond those initial connections to actually having to generate business on your own?
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Yes.
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So, um, yeah, my first paying client was my former employer.
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And then after that, when I left my full-time role, I really told anyone and everyone about my business.
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And I think that this is a piece that, um, when people are new to starting out, they think, okay, I need to be on social media and I need to be creating content and doing all this stuff when.
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you really can just make it so much more simple than that.
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And, um, and it's so much more effective when it's simpler than that.
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And so I just told everyone, and because of the, um, work that I've done previously, the company and the network that I've been a part of, I knew a lot of very entrepreneurial people, people who joined other startups who had started their own businesses.
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And so I just reached out and said, You know, I'm, I'm thinking about doing this.
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I'm thinking about starting this marketing business.
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You know, what are some of the pitfalls you face?
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What are some of the challenges that you've gone through?
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What is your sort of ideal case for how this would be, um, what would be a good solution for you moving forward?
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And so that landed me some additional clients.
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And, you know, from there it really was just being open to opportunities.
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Um, I like to tell the story.
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One of my clients early on in my business as well, was my chiropractor, and we worked together for years because we had this very effective lead generation system that we did together.
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And that just came up because, you know, oh, what do you do?
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Oh, I'm a, you know, I'm a marketer and I help small business with their marketing.
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And, and so being open to, um, just those one-off circumstances can be incredibly effective.
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But also, you know of.
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Uh, evaluating that, right?
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And thinking through, okay, where have I gotten my best clients?
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Where have I gotten my favorite clients?
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What, what was their path to find me?
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And then how can I go ahead and, and optimize that, uh, moving forward too?
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So I, I don't want it to sound like it was just random, cuz it certainly wasn't.
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Um, and I had tools in place to help me, but, um, simplify is always a good way to go.
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Have you found that when you talk about marketing, uh, just in random conversations with people, that they tend to sort of put it in a.
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They think marketing is advertising or they think that marketing is email spam or marketing Are, you know, those, those social media posts, do you find that people are very sort of narrow in their thinking about what the true capabilities of marketing really might be?
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Yes.
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And I, I wouldn't even necessarily say it narrow, but more confused
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Hmm.
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marketers are the loudest people and we all have different opinions and we all have different experiences and things that have worked for us.
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And so as you're sort of navigating the, the online landscape and the new developments and the newest tactic or tool or platform, The marketers who are championing those things are gonna be the ones telling you how great it is, right?
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They're probably not gonna give you the full context.
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They're probably not gonna tell you about, okay, well I tried this a hundred other things that didn't work really well for me, Um, and so yes, people are confused by what to pursue.
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Um, they're skeptical and rightfully so, and especially because a lot of times, You know, people will pay money for something that they think is going to be the solution to their problem.
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That ends up really not being that.
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And, and one example I'll give you is, um, I spoke to a business owner who spent thousands of dollars.
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She's a brand new business owner to do like a full brand strategy package, which I'm a brand marketer, like I under.
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I completely value brand.
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It's something that I've placed a ton of importance in my own business, but you've gotta.
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Scrappy when you're, when you don't have a ton of resources and you really need to understand why am I investing this money this time right now?
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Versus is this something that I could, you know, do some experimentation and talk to more people and learn a bit more about what my brand is and what my product or service is, and why that resonates with people, um, not just, you know, and this is something they're willing to pay for versus.
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I wanna think of a fun logo and company name, which a lot of people think is, is, is the brand and the marketing, but it's so much more extensive than that, as you said.
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There's always this fight against, you know, rushing to the low-hanging fruit, right?
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And doing those things that look good, but don't necessarily.
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Provide all that much effectiveness towards what the company's goals or objectives are.
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Yeah, I see that all the time.
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I'm curious too, as you've worked on your own, have you refined your own ideal, uh, customer profile, uh, the types of businesses that you're targeting?
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very much so.
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Yes.
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Um, and, and I think.
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As a business owner, you, you should be constantly doing that and not in a way.
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You know, it's impossible to move forward or it's impossible to really like, make decisions and stick with them, but in a way that we're part of a world that is changing so quickly and there's always new opportunities and, and absolutely.
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I mean, I've changed my service offerings.
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I've changed my l.
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You know, written copy.
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I've changed the platforms that I've used, but I've always done it from a place of understanding why am I making this decision?
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Like, why is this important right now?
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To sort of check myself that, no, I'm not chasing a new shiny thing.
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This is either gonna help me involve, evolve what I've been doing some way, or continue to build momentum in a similar way, um, rather than just say, oh, it's not working.
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Like I better go try something else.
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Always taking away the learning.
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From before to, you know, whatever next initiative it is that you're going to pursue.
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Hmm.
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I agree with that.
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Yeah.
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You're constantly gotta be looking at it, right?
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And refining it, seeing what's.
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So aub, you narrowed it down.
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Do you focus mostly on b2b, b2c, any target industries?
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What's a sweet spot for you?
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The sweet spot for me.
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Um, I, I talk about it a little bit differently, but I, I say 3 million, um, dollar companies and up, so I.
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I am not most effective as marketing resource number one.
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I have worked with micro business owners and solopreneurs before, but as you know, Eric it, it takes a lot to.
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Get the marketing systems up and running.
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And so I tend to work best when I come into a situation with a company that either has a growing marketing team, you know, perhaps they have, um, a, a more junior person in place who's doing a lot of the execution.
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Um, maybe they're working with an agency or they have some, um, contractors or freelancers that are supporting their marketing and what they lack.
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How are all these disparate activities really coming together to support the business goals?
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Because that's what's so often missed.
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And I've had, you know, client projects that I come into and, and ask, you know, okay, well from leadership, like what is the direction of, of company priorities?
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What do we need to be focused on with the marketing in order to support those things?
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Cause marketing is a service function, right?
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Like, like we, we don't exist without the company.
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You know, roadmap or, or North Star in order to, to execute towards.
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And so, um, so that's just such an important piece of it is understanding why are we doing these things?
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Um, and as based on that, what, um, what's gonna make the most sense?
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So I really like to come into client situations where they have some type of marketing in place and they maybe are gonna have a new launch or a new initiative or a, a go to market that they need to scale.
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And I can come in and, and work with leadership on how are we communicating our goals, what are we actually trying to do?
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And then with marketing on great.
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Now we need a system and an implementation plan to actually make it happen.
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I love that and I think it's so important.
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I'm curious as you engage with clients, Pushback.
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Do you get, well, strategy is important, but we just need a new website right now.
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We can look at the strategy after that.
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Do you or, or some similar kind of conversation.
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Do you hear that a lot?
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So I hear that and that is a, um, I'm not gonna say a red flag, but that is a signal to me that maybe I'm not a great fit for that project.
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Um, I've definitely taken on projects in the past where, you know, especially getting started, started out like, yeah, I'll, I'll help you out with a smaller project and, and, you know, I'll talk to the business owner about, okay, well we can start here, but we really need to, in order to truly be effective, we actually have to do these things over here as well.
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And so I've just kind of learned that, um, I really enjoy partnering with clients who see the value in having a strategy.
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You know, it, it takes a lot to come into an organization and.
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Have to then convince everyone why you're valuable and, and why you should be there and what you can do for them.
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But I've really been so fortunate and I think it is.
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Part of how I built my business, you know, starting with people who, who have seen what I can do and who've worked with me before and who know sort of how I operate and can vouch for that.
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Um, that when I come into a client project, they, they're ready and they're excited and they say awesome, like, great.
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And I'm able to really step in and start leading meetings and start asking for what I know I need, um, and not feel, um, like bad about that or not feel like, you know, any hesitation there.
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We're coming in on the same page, but Eric, I, it is so common, and I'm sure you hear this too, that there's a, a whole lot of people out there who.
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You know, strategy is for later.
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We don't have time, we don't have resources.
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You know, it's, it's, we've gotta get out this press release, we've gotta send out this marketing email.
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But that ends up wasting so much more money and time than if you just took a little bit of time to ensure everyone's on the same page.
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And yes, in fact, everything that we're doing really is prioritized to align with what we're trying to do as a business.
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I completely agree with that.
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It does pay to take the time to really develop out a strategy.
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One of the other things that I see a lot, and I'm curious as to what your thoughts are here, is come into a business and we start talking about strategy.
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And they say, oh yeah, we have a strategy.
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Here's our Excel sheet.
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That is basically the budget and these are all the things that we're doing and how much money we've assigned, and maybe there's a column for how many leads we've generated from each one of these things.
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Ta-da.
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We have a strategy, but that's not really a strategy, that's a budget.
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Yeah, that's a budget.
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And, and, and in addition to that, a list of tactics.
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It'll be like, oh yeah, we're, you know, we're working with an influencer team or we're, you know, doing all these partnerships or, you know, whatever.
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And, and, um, great.
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Like, cool, let's, you know, let's keep the ball running on those things.
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If they are generating sales, if, you know, if we know that they're working and there's some type of, of system behind them, but you still need that strategy piece because what, what happens in those situations a lot of times that I see and, and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts as well.
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maybe one of the things is working really well, but then there's all of this, these resources being spent spread so thin across all these other initiatives that aren't producing.
00:17:18.803 --> 00:17:29.603
And without a strategy, you're not able to say, Hey, we've been spending a lot of hours and thousands of dollars on this channel and it's not really getting us anywhere.
00:17:29.603 --> 00:17:34.853
Like maybe we should reallocate that elsewhere into what is working or into a new test or something.
00:17:35.437 --> 00:17:56.917
And that strategy is, is sort of a checks and balances that helps you make those decisions effectively and also keeps everyone on the same page because a lot of what I hear as well, and and c is, you know, the leadership team and, and other cross-functional executives wanna know what is marketing doing and, and what is your plan of coming and how is it gonna affect us?
00:17:56.917 --> 00:17:59.677
And the strategy is what?
00:18:01.123 --> 00:18:05.762
everyone understand that story and set expectations for what's to come.
00:18:05.853 --> 00:18:06.202
So
00:18:07.462 --> 00:18:14.903
Well, I, one of my favorite examples, cause I think it's easy to understand is a lot of companies, if they haven't already, they want to get more into social media.
00:18:15.022 --> 00:18:21.353
It's very common for them to have maybe a junior level person on their team who's doing social media posts.
00:18:21.442 --> 00:18:24.712
And you go in and look at them and there's a post that says Happy New Year.
00:18:25.012 --> 00:18:28.373
And one that says, happy Martin Luther King Day and Happy Valentine's Day.
00:18:28.373 --> 00:18:29.722
And the list goes on and on.
00:18:29.722 --> 00:18:30.083
And that's.
00:18:30.768 --> 00:18:33.377
Those are nice, feel good posts, but what's the strategy?
00:18:33.383 --> 00:18:35.117
What's, what are you trying to accomplish?
00:18:35.357 --> 00:18:40.847
You've spent man hours and effort to put together a post, maybe create some graphics, put some things out.
00:18:41.057 --> 00:18:41.927
What is the point?
00:18:41.927 --> 00:18:43.728
What are you trying to accomplish by doing that?
00:18:44.347 --> 00:18:50.077
Is that just part of a broader social media strategy where you're actually just trying to keep your audience engaged?
00:18:50.198 --> 00:18:56.528
Or is that the strategy just to put little platitudes out on, on social media hoping that people care?
00:18:56.738 --> 00:19:03.187
That's a basic example, but that's one of the things that I think people see is why are you doing something?
00:19:03.307 --> 00:19:06.127
You can do a lot of things, but what's the purpose?
00:19:06.127 --> 00:19:06.788
What are you trying to get?
00:19:07.958 --> 00:19:14.768
Oh my gosh, I'm, I'm, for anyone listening, I'm like smiling really big as Eric is talking cuz I just I see this all the time.
00:19:14.772 --> 00:19:18.127
And that is, that is a check the box marketing activity.
00:19:18.127 --> 00:19:24.687
And, and, and people think, oh, I need to be visible on social media cuz people are on social media and so I need to have a presence.
00:19:25.432 --> 00:19:29.962
This is a really good time to ask yourself, what is my actual client or customer journey?
00:19:30.323 --> 00:19:32.812
Are people truly going to Instagram?
00:19:32.812 --> 00:19:45.383
Scrolling through the billions of other highly engaged and you know, highly thought through pieces of content landing on your Happy New Year post on your company page, clicking through and then buying something.
00:19:46.387 --> 00:19:48.427
No, that's not happening.
00:19:48.728 --> 00:20:02.317
And, and this is very common, whether they have a junior person, you know, internally do it, or they maybe hire a marketing intern or they, you know, are working with a freelancer who's, you know, the, the deal is, okay, we'll post for you three times a week on X number of channels.
00:20:03.157 --> 00:20:08.137
That's not really doing anything from a business perspective in most cases.
00:20:08.137 --> 00:20:15.022
And a lot of times what I see too, You know, there'll be five likes on the post and, and it's employees of the company.
00:20:15.022 --> 00:20:19.343
Like, you know, so, so why, why are you doing that?
00:20:19.343 --> 00:20:26.182
And there may be a case, there may be a strategy where someone's listening and saying, well, we know exactly how that impacts our business and that's why we keep doing it.
00:20:26.187 --> 00:20:36.562
But I would say the, the vast majority of people who are executing in that way, you know, it is probably wasting resources to do it.
00:20:36.562 --> 00:20:38.752
And it's probably not getting anywhere meaningful.
00:20:39.952 --> 00:20:43.462
Yeah, and I see this a lot with things like SEO as well.
00:20:43.673 --> 00:20:50.782
You know, companies can come in and say, we're gonna help you out with your seo and you know, you sell network routers and now you rank for being a pastry chef.
00:20:51.232 --> 00:20:52.972
Okay, that's great, but.
00:20:53.353 --> 00:20:54.673
Does that help your business?
00:20:54.673 --> 00:20:57.942
Is anybody searching for pastry chefs that sell network routers?
00:20:57.942 --> 00:20:58.123
Right?
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