How Can a Fractional CMO Improve Your Company’s Bottom Line?

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.

John Golden

How are you doing, Josh? I’m doing great, John. How are you today? Yeah, doing great. Um, and, uh, John, you, uh, you have had your own agency since 2009. Never look back. Uh, 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.

John Golden

Um, acquired 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. Uh, you’re now an active speaker, author of the book, how some C how some SEO companies disguise laziness and high, high poor strategies.

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, uh, how you can use a fractional CMO to, to improve your bottom line.

John Golden

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

John Golden

Yeah. So.

Josh Ramsey

The fractional CMO is going to be the in between needing a higher level marketing expert and putting them full time on staff, which is going to demand a higher salary, a higher payment to that person, 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 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, that’s what a fractional CMO can do in short.

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, 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?

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

And 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. Um, 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, what your history has been.

Josh Ramsey

And then I’m able to give educated 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? Uh, and, 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 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 knowledge along with that. And that’s for myself, that’s how I work, uh, in life.

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.

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

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 you 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 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.

John Golden

Yeah, because it’s very easy, I mean, to get for for companies to fall into some of these traps or a startup, maybe get a bunch of money from a from a VC and next minute, 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 in the future.

Josh Ramsey

And that is the 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.

Josh Ramsey

Because if they’re paid by commission, which a lot of salespeople are, then they want to close whatever’s right there. But if you lose track of all of the leads that came in, the salespeople are just cherry picking, you know, on the best ones, but it can hurt the company in the long run.

Josh Ramsey

If you don’t have that cultivation, I like using the word maturation process that I that I’ve likely

John Golden

Yeah, no, because nurturing is 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?

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 to the consumer, the buyer.

John Golden

I think another 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 a lot of people think marketing or 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 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 got to relearn or they’ll move analytics to Google Analytics 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 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, but when I break it down and I speak at conferences, one of the things that I spend quite a bit of time talking on is there are actually more than one mind when it comes to marketing.

Josh Ramsey

And like you said, when you use that, you kind of use two brains, you use one brain of pretty and fluffy. So we call that design, right? Designers. And if you think about the type of person that does design, how do they live?

Josh Ramsey

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. 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.

Josh Ramsey

These are two very different personalities, right? 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 to 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 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?

Josh Ramsey

Because marketing at times can just sell, right? 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.

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.

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 it’s impossible to have all those skills in the company. And it’s also the fact 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.

John Golden

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

Josh Ramsey

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.

Josh Ramsey

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. Someone has to drive the car, but someone has to give that roadmap of this is where we need to go and why.

Josh Ramsey

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.

Josh Ramsey

And 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.

Josh Ramsey

Are they a designer or are they a strategist or are they a coder and be wary 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?

Josh Ramsey

But then finding out that strategist part 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 testimonials to a degree to be able to say, have they done this industry or not?

Josh Ramsey

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.

Josh Ramsey

And I think that that’s another big miss that I was going to point out to people is, don’t be afraid to venture outside, but look at their clue from, right?

John Golden

Yeah, and I’m glad you really emphasize the strategic and 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 the art of war from Sun Tzu and strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.

John Golden

Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. And I love that because, you know, I mean, obviously strategists have to execute, but if you’re executing without the strategy, then you are.

John Golden

It’s the noise before defeat. Yeah.

Josh Ramsey

100% I mean that nailed it, right?

John Golden

And I guess that’s, and I think that’s interesting 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 that. And here’s, of course, we love wildcards, don’t we?

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, I don’t have to get anybody anymore. AI is going to do it all for me.

John Golden

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 a thank you for sunshine.

Josh Ramsey

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

Josh Ramsey

And off it goes. Well, if you look at AI, AI has actually been around more than just the last six to 12 months, like everyone thinks. And if you think about that and you want to kind of question that, if you’re whoever’s 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 quickly 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 thought to overuse it, but the maturation process is a maturity process.

Josh Ramsey

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, another five? And he’s, his response was it’s, it’s like the last 10 years has been like having a baby, but you still have to mature the baby.

Josh Ramsey

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. It’s going to be evolving and growing, but who’s going to take care of it?

Josh Ramsey

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.

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 them, even if nobody else posted that, they don’t like that you used AI anyway.

John Golden

So it’s going to be, it’s going to be extremely interesting. And I think it was, I think it was even Steve Jobs way back when he said like, AI, 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%.

John Golden

Well listen Josh this has been fantastic thank you so much all of just information is gonna 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 gonna wanna work with me. So that’s my goal.

John Golden

Hey, there you go. It’s a simple concept, but hey, simple isn’t always quite so easy. But great stuff, thanks Josh. Thank you for listening and watching and I will see you all again very soon. Thank you.