Boost Profits Through Smart Marketing Tactics – Podcast.mp4

Summary

The interview discusses the role of a fractional CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) and how they can help companies improve their marketing strategies and bottom line. Josh Ramsey, the fractional CMO being interviewed, explains that a fractional CMO provides high-level marketing expertise without the full-time cost of hiring an executive-level CMO. He emphasizes the importance of understanding a company’s unique needs, developing strategic messaging, and integrating marketing efforts with sales to nurture leads through the buyer’s journey. The discussion also touches on the complexities of modern marketing, the need for specialized skills like SEO and design, and the potential impact of AI on marketing processes.

Q&A

Action Items

No specific action items or future plans were explicitly mentioned in the interview transcript.

Transcript

Host John Golden

Interview. My name is John Golden from SalesPop, online sales magazine and pipeline or CRM, joining you as usual from San Diego. And today, I’m delighted to be joined from the Dallas, Texas area by Josh Ramsey.

Host John Golden

How are you doing, Josh?

Josh Ramsey

I’m doing good, John. How are you today?

Host John Golden

Yeah, doing great. So, you have had your own agency since 2009. Never look back. You initially opened your own digital market agency with just a few dollars in your pocket and a car that broke down on the way to a conference. Since acquiring his first big agency client, Josh has been known for putting it all out there for himself and his clients. Fast forward today. I have to take a short hiatus to enjoy retirement life. You’re now an active speaker, author of the book How Some SEO Companies Disguise Laziness and High Poor Strategies.

Host John Golden

And you are back in the office each day helping others build their organization as a fractional chief marketing officer. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today is how you can use a fractional CMO to improve your bottom line.

Host John Golden

So first, Josh, let’s get straight into it. And for I mean, most people understand what a fractional resource is, but just for those who maybe aren’t 100% clear on it, give us a definition of what a fractional CMO is.

Host John Golden

Yeah, so.

Josh Ramsey

Yeah. The fractional CMO is going to be in-between needing a higher -level marketing expert and putting them full -time on staff, which is going to demand a higher salary, higher payment to that person, and a lot of added cost to a company.

Josh Ramsey

But to get there, a lot of times they don’t have that in -between point. They have a marketing director who doesn’t necessarily have a lot of the expertise that they need. And then you have the executive that you want to hire, but a lot of times they can carry a heavy six all the way to a seven -figure salary.

Josh Ramsey

So I’m that in-between section to kind of jump you to that next level or maybe manage and build a better structure for your company. And then sometimes it’s for startups, startups that are looking to polish their brand or put something better out there on the front end or what’s called a GTM go -to -market strategy.

Josh Ramsey

That’s what a fractional CMO can do in short.

Host John Golden

Yeah. And I guess in order for fractional resources to be successful, the company has to understand how best to utilize it, correct? And exactly what they’re getting and why. So when you work with organizations, what kind of process do you go through in assessing like, are you the right fit?

Host John Golden

Is this fractional CMO the right fit for this company?

Josh Ramsey

Yeah, that’s a great question. And everyone’s a little bit different. You know, it’s interesting, because back in my younger career, I’d have people come to me after a conference, and they’d say, My, my business is totally unique to anything you’ve ever known before.

Josh Ramsey

I said, Oh, okay, interesting. What is it? And they’d say, I’m a roofer. I’m a remodeler. And I would say, Oh, okay, well, that’s not very different. They never, they never could figure out what the unique selling position was.

Josh Ramsey

So we call that the USP. But there’s different methods to marketing and different approaches. And strategies. But a lot of times, what we’re trying to do is identify what it is that someone needs through a series of conversations, kind of like a business evaluation.

Josh Ramsey

A lot of times marketing reps or fractional CMOs will come in and have a 20 minute consultation. And then they want to start billing you. My approach is a lot more of, let me spend as much time as needed to really understand the depth of what is going on, what your history has been.

Josh Ramsey

And then I’m able to give education decisions and direction on what should be done and why. I think that’s a big difference for me anyway. And my unique selling position is to really spend the time to get to know somebody and know, am I the right personality?

Josh Ramsey

Do I have the right skill sets? And how do we move forward, you know, in the right direction? And then are we alive? And that’s what a business owner gets to make a decision of, at a glance, this is what I see and what I would want to do and why.

Josh Ramsey

And then the business owner can take their, their knowledge, along with that. And that’s for myself, that’s how I work and like to work

Host John Golden

I think one of the things is, let’s face it, business has gotten very complex, marketing has gotten very complex. It’s very easy to disappear down rabbit holes or to chase shiny objects versus to put all your marketing on the wrong platforms or in the wrong places.

Host John Golden

As you said, if it’s a startup or a company that’s moving to another level or anything like that, it’s likely that they don’t have that level of expertise inside or somebody who can say, just push all that stuff aside, here’s where we need to focus.

Josh Ramsey

Yeah, I mean the noise in the marketplace in general is really overwhelming to consumers. I mean, today I took a little break and I personally on my personal side don’t spend a whole lot of time on social media for myself.

Josh Ramsey

It’s very noisy and today was the same thing where I took a little break to look up some of my family, my extended family’s birthdays and all I could see is the noise coming through and a lot of consumers like that and they need that.

Josh Ramsey

They want that. That is a connection point, but that’s what marketing is meant to be. The difference is all that noise, you have to know how to stand out from that noise. You have to be able to know what you want to say, why you want to say it.

Josh Ramsey

I work with a client right now and I use a methodology that some people know, but it’s the methodology of three steps and these three steps are: have something good to say, which is your inside reality and what makes you good.

Josh Ramsey

Then it’s say it well, which is your messaging and we call that strategic messaging and then it’s, say it often as that third step and saying it often is the tactical marketing, which is the placement of what you’re trying to communicate, but we can’t run around screaming from the top of our lungs.

Josh Ramsey

I’m the greatest out there. We have to be able to back it up and that’s where social proof comes in and then you kind of go down a long line of education of how you want to communicate that, but again, everyone is unique.

Josh Ramsey

It’s really the fact of how you pull that out of have something good to say. So it’s the origin of who you are and what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. That’s the key part there to understand.

Host John Golden

Yeah, because it’s very easy, I mean, to get for companies to fall into some of these traps, or a startup maybe get a bunch of money from a VC, and next time they’re just dumping it all into Google AdWords, or whatever, burning through cash like crazy, and then wondering why they’re not making the impact.

Josh Ramsey

Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, I think, you know, your podcast, a lot of times when I’ve heard it is talking about sales, and I think it’s important also to understand the impact of good marketing sales, right?

Josh Ramsey

I’ll use another quick, for instance, I’m working with someone right now, and they have a sales team, and they’re really heavily focused on sales and the relationship driven. But the problem is, and again, it’s not a massive problem, but it’s more of a long scale, long term, something to be aware of, and maybe start to resolve now so that you don’t have it into the future.

Josh Ramsey

And that is relationship building, right? That’s what a CRM is, right? Client Relationship Management, and using marketing the right way to keep that pipeline warm and keep those prospects aware of who you are, while your sales team can focus on what’s right there in front of them, because if they’re paid by commission, which a lot of people sales people are, right, then they want to close whatever’s right there.

Josh Ramsey

But if you lose track of all of the leads that came in, the sales people are just cherry picking, you know, on the best ones, but it can hurt the company in the long run. If you don’t have that cultivation, I like using the word maturation process that I am likely to use.

Host John Golden

Yeah, no, because nurturing was kind of a funny term I was thought to use for. But on the point that you just raised is the importance of the relationship with sales. So when you, as a fractional CMO, how do you optimize that relationship with sales from the get -go?

Host John Golden

Because hopefully that’s a legacy that you leave afterwards.

Josh Ramsey

Yeah, 100%. It is a legacy that you leave afterwards. And a lot of times companies don’t find the value in marketing. I think it’s because it hasn’t been done right. They haven’t been brought to the education level of what marketing really should be.

Josh Ramsey

Because it is a brand. It is an interest. It is making you stand out in the crowd and then how you go about doing that. The answer is there’s not just one way to do it. A lot of times it’s better to test multiple theories to be able to get there.

Josh Ramsey

But the marketing really should complement if they have a sales structure. Now again, we’re talking I believe right now in the vacuum of, you have a sales team or you are a salesperson. It’s about keeping that pipeline full but also warm.

Josh Ramsey

And that’s what a good marketing system should do is complement whatever the sales team or person is communicating, taking that message and then tailoring it so that way you get them on that buyer cycle.

Josh Ramsey

And no matter where they’re at from A to Z on that buyer’s line, we’re communicating the right message through the maturation process to get them to that next level of when it’s time they pop up and the salesperson has already primed them enough that they’re ready to go.

Josh Ramsey

And it feels seamless for the consumer, the buyer.

Host John Golden

Yeah, I think another part of this is too, is that I think sometimes, I mean, we know that age -old thing, sales don’t really understand what marketing does. And a lot of people don’t, to be perfectly honest.

Host John Golden

Yeah, A lot of people think marketing, oh, that’s the fun stuff. You get to paint pretty pictures and send out emails about websites and all of that. And they don’t realize how complex marketing has gotten.

Host John Golden

I mean, take something even like SEO, right? I mean, you need real expertise in SEO. And because they love to do this stuff, they’ll change an algorithm, and then you have to relearn or they’ll move analytics to Google Analytics.

Host John Golden

And I think that’s part of the problem is people don’t understand that. A lot of marketing work is not the fun, pretty stuff that you see. It’s down in the weeds, tactical stuff, doing every day and needing the expertise and understanding to be able to do it well.

Host John Golden

Yeah.

Josh Ramsey

Well, I mean, you should bring up some good points there, and that’s when we go, how much time do we have to talk? But here, here’s what I would just carry forward with what you said is, you know, you could think algorithms, you can think fun and pretty.

Josh Ramsey

But when I break it down, and I speak at conferences, one of the things that I spend quite a bit of time talking about is, there is actually more than one mind when it comes to marketing. And like you said, when you use that you kind of use two brains, you use one brain of pretty and fluffy.

Josh Ramsey

So we call that design, right? Designers, and if you think about the type of person that does design, how do they live? How do they think? What do they enjoy doing for fun? But then you think about the code, the SEO, how to apply it, what a website does in the functionality.

Josh Ramsey

And if you think about that person as a coder, think about how they like to live, what they enjoy doing, and the environment that they like to live in. These are two very different personalities, right?

Josh Ramsey

They’re not the same. And the first part you have to understand in marketing is, what is it that you’re trying to achieve? And oftentimes, this is where people miss the bus, is that they hire just the designer or just a coder to achieve the greatest equation that they’re trying to solve, the biggest problem they’re trying to solve.

Josh Ramsey

And that is, get someone to communicate, get that first touch point. That’s where that third brain comes in. And I consider it the biggest part because that is the strategist. What is the strategist going to take and understand what the consumer wants and needs?

Josh Ramsey

How do we make it UI user interface, the visual, and the UX, the user experience? And how do we analyze both of those to bring it together to make the best process to, again, support the sales team? Because marketing at times can just sell, right?

Josh Ramsey

You go to Amazon, you don’t need a sales team. You just need a good UI, UX, right? A good description. And you’re pretty much done. But if you’re trying to sell something other than a gadget, so to speak, on Amazon, then you do need a little bit more marketing power behind that to get that name out there.

Josh Ramsey

So, again, I’m kind of trying to keep it short for this interview. But that’s one thing to really consider is all of that information on top of what you say.

Host John Golden

Yeah, and that’s why I love this idea of the marketing generalists, because I’m like, marketing generalists, who even is that? Because as you said, right now, somebody who’s going to be really good at SEO is probably not going to be a great designer, and vice versa.

Host John Golden

And so this, and I think things have become so, I think a lot of these roles have become so specific now that you, it’s impossible to have all those skills in the company. And it’s also, the fact is that sometimes you’re going to need that skill set, for a period of time, or for a project, or maybe just for a few hours every so often.

Host John Golden

So I think the use of fractional and variable resources, I think that’s the, to be honest, that’s the future, the present for some, but it’s a future too.

Josh Ramsey

but you know I mean even on that I listen and study a lot of information and one of the things that I’m seeing from even other top level speakers are they’re saying that agencies need to be focused more on even hiring fractional CMOs for an advertising agency because they have designers and they have coders and they have project managers who manage those but they don’t have the visionary and that’s what a fractional CMO really does bring is the leadership of what needs to happen not just the execution right someone has to lay that roadmap um someone has to drive the car but someone has to give that roadmap of this is where we need to go and why and then here are the KPIs those key point indicators to know this is why we’re going to go that direction so I think that that’s you know again it’s a lot of information to kind of take in even in this short interview but it is part of what the fractional CMO world is all about and there’s there’s really not that many fractional CMOs out there that know what they’re doing and the other thing that I’ll point to so I’ll give two little tips here to anyone watching this and one of them is when you interview an agency and you’re thinking about hiring a marketing agency find out from them who does what in the role like as in who would you work with and then identify and interview each of those people to know what their personality is are they a designer are they a strategist or they a coder and be be weary if you hire somebody or you’re looking to hire someone that’s both the designer and the coder because like we just talked about those two different skill sets right um but then finding out that strategist part is it is a really important part to really know what it is that that strategist is going to do and what their approach would be with your product I personally look at uh testimonials to a degree to be able to say have they done this industry or not but if you think about it the biggest companies when they go hire a new CMO they don’t hire from within their industry they hire from outside their industry because that new blood brings something fresh and a new perspective into it and I think that that’s another big myth that I was going to point out to people is you know don’t be afraid to venture outside but look at their skill sets not just where they came from right yeah

Host John Golden

Yeah, and I’m glad you really emphasize the strategic of the strategy piece because I think that’s so key and it’s actually my favorite quote because I was looking up again there from from the art of war from Sun Tzu and strategy without tactics is the slowest right to victory tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat

Host John Golden

And I love that because you know I mean obviously strategist have you have to execute but if you’re executing without the strategic without the strategy then you are it’s the noise before defeat. Yeah.

Josh Ramsey

100% I mean that nailed it, right?

Host John Golden

And I think that what you say now is when you’re looking at agencies and stuff to assess the skill sets of the people who are going to be behind and that. And here’s, of course, we love wildcards, don’t we?

Host John Golden

So now we have AI coming in here, and of course, people are suddenly, there’s all these tools flying around like, oh, yeah, you don’t have to get anybody anymore, AI is going to do it all for me. And so I think there again, it’s going to be very critical that you’re working with the right people strategically to understand how to apply these and people who can cut through the again, cut through the noise and the hype and everything and get down to the reality.

Josh Ramsey

You know, I’ll speak to AI, but I’ll take you through a quick little journey. I don’t know if you’ve ever paid attention because here we are right now in 2023. And if you remember earlier in 2023, a video went viral and it was a it was a younger child that was singing a song about thank you for sunshine.

Josh Ramsey

Thank you for rain. And it turned out while it went viral in 2023, it was actually courted seven years previous and now all of a sudden it goes viral because one or two people had never heard it before they start posting it and off it goes.

Josh Ramsey

Well, if you look at AI, AI has actually been around more than just the last six to twelve months, like everyone thinks. And if you think about that and you want to kind of question that if you’re whoever is watching this, you just go look at what auto correct is, auto spell, spell check in your word document, right?

Josh Ramsey

Your phones. There’s just so many things of what AI has been and it’s just been brought to an easier level. But I loved a speaker that I heard a couple of months ago, about a year ago, I guess. And they said, AI is not here to replace anybody, but if you don’t know how to use it properly, then it is going to replace you.

Josh Ramsey

So it’s one of these things that I tell people, they ask me, hey, I can have AI write me a blog. I said, yeah, you can. But now here’s the next question you have to really think about. Number one, if you plagiarize a blog because you and your closest competitor both had the same idea on the same topic and went to the same bot, you’ve now plagiarized each other.

Josh Ramsey

Google scores you negative for that. So now the next part is, and I’m going to move pretty quick through this. Did it really SEO friendly your website? Did it use the right keywords, the right terminology?

Josh Ramsey

Then the next part is, so this is level three, who’s going to put it on your website? Now that’s not AI. Now you have to actually have a person that knows how to do some type of code to take that script and put it on the website.

Josh Ramsey

Then they have to index it, then they have to submit it to Google to get it indexed by Google or whatever other search engine you want to use. So there’s multiple steps. The easy part would be to get the ideas and I use AI to get ideas, but then that I keep going back to the term, not to overuse it.

Josh Ramsey

But the maturation process is a maturity process. You know, I watched something the other day and this guy interviewed and they said, you’ve had this job for 10 years. Why should you keep it for another five?

Josh Ramsey

And his response was, it’s like the last 10 years has been like having a baby, but you still have to mature the baby. You still have to protect the baby. You still have to teach the baby and you still have to help the baby grow up and that’s the same thing with AI.

Josh Ramsey

It’s going to be evolving and grow, but who’s going to take care of it? Who’s going to feed it? Who’s going to nurture it? And how are you going to guide it to make your life better? That part is still going to be human based and psychology based.

Host John Golden

Yeah, no, I understand, I agree with you. And I think, unfortunately, a lot of people are going to get caught out because like you said, Google doesn’t like that. Google doesn’t even like it doesn’t like the even if nobody else posted that they don’t like you that you used AI anyway.

Host John Golden

So it’s it’s it’s going to be it’s going to be extremely interesting. And I think it was even Steve Jobs way back when he said like, he likened AI in the future to a bicycle. He said it’ll help you get to where you’re going quicker, but it won’t go there on its own.

Josh Ramsey

Yeah, 100%.

Host John Golden

Well, listen, Josh, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much. All of Josh’s information is going to be below this video. But before we go, please do tell people a little bit more about you and what you do.

Josh Ramsey

Yeah, so again, I’m a fractional CMO. And I really specialize in helping people is the way I focus my world. I believe, just like Google does, that the best thing we can do is we can actually go out and help people.

Josh Ramsey

And if we help them, then we create a good environment around us, and more people want to be involved with us. So that’s really my focus, is just doing the best I can to help each person that I run across and help them solve their problems and get them to that next level.

Josh Ramsey

And if I do a good job doing that, I feel like more and more people are going to want to work with me. So that’s my goal.

Host John Golden

Hey there you go it’s a simple concept but hey simple doesn’t always equate to easy but great stuff. Thank you for listening and watching and I will see you all again very soon thank you.

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