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It’s crazy to think that I’ve been solely responsible for marketing since I started my business in 2010. I’ve never had a marketing person on my team, never hired a contractor, and it’s always been me with the strategy. But that all changed in 2022 when I logged into LinkedIn for the first time in forever and saw a message from a fractional CMO.
What’s a CMO? What does fractional CMO mean? What can a CMO do for my business that I can’t do myself as someone who has built a career as a marketing expert? This episode covers it all, plus, what we’re working on in our marketing strategy right now.
Who Did I Hire?
First things first, what is a CMO? A chief marketing officer (CMO) is responsible for overseeing an organization’s marketing strategy. A CMO can help a company achieve its business goals by developing and implementing effective marketing plans, analyzing market trends, and identifying new opportunities for growth. Additionally, a CMO can help a company improve its brand recognition and customer relationships, which can ultimately lead to increased revenue and profitability. In short, a CMO can be a valuable asset to any organization that is looking to grow and succeed in today’s competitive marketplace.
Jessica Shirra had actually reached out and pitched ME on Linkedin, and it’s not a platform I log in to a ton and so by the time I saw her message a few months had already passed but I responded to her message anyway. Jess is a Fractional CMO, which means she works part time as a CMO for a handful of clients. She saw a need in the marketplace for companies that needed marketing leadership, but didn’t need it in a full time capacity. She works closely with CEOs or owners to create and develop marketing strategies around their core business goals, and oversees the marketing team and department. Ultimately, she allows business owners / CEOs to take a step back from their marketing strategy/team while still driving (and improving) results.
What I Want from a CMO
I remember our first conversation like it was yesterday! I was at the lake house, Quinn was napping and I was walking laps on the driveway with the baby monitor. What I was curious about when it came to Jess’s proposal was that I wanted to dive deeper into our marketing: what was working, what wasn’t, what was worth our effort and time, and what wasn’t. One of the big things that I wanted to analyze with the help of a CMO was just looking at all of our efforts and making sure that every effort was tied to a direct result.
My team is INCREDIBLE at following workflows and systems and over the past few years we just kind of created this rhythm whether it’s for our email marketing or how we show up in our Facebook group – every platform has a process which we follow to a T but we’ve never really dove deep into looking at which platforms perform the best for us or where our results truly come from.
For example, did you know that we blog multiple times a week? From me sharing behind-the-scenes life updates about motherhood or my favorite products or personal posts about things like our home build, we spend a lot of time creating blog content and it can sometimes be hard to track the results that effort gets us.
When I got on the phone with Jess it wasn’t at all, “I want to make more money,” it was more like, “How can we streamline what we’re doing, make a great impact, and be confident in what’s generating results so we can go deep and not wide? How can we do less but drive MORE impact (for my followers), and results for the business as a whole?
What We’re Focusing On Right Now
Of course, email marketing. With our CMO we are working on simplifying our welcome sequence/funnel for our new email subscribers. A little over four years ago, I built our current welcome sequence and it’s not short – in fact, it’s like 6 months worth of content.
We’re also looking at shortening our communication. It’s not shocking that I’m a bit long winded so we’re looking more at our copy and making sure the GOAL is super clear and the communication around that goal is concise.
Another big focus is segmentation and personalization. The previous funnel (while a fantastic tool for what we needed at the time) took everyone through the same journey. My NEW welcome series is designed first and foremost to SERVE, and to give my subscribers exactly what they need for their life or biz, at exactly the right time.
We’re working on deeper tracking and analytics. We are setting up better tracking across all of our digital channels (web, social, email, blog, etc.) so we can see what things we do within the business are driving results (dial those up more, scale back on what’s not working).
We’ve introduced chat funnels. If you’ve noticed on Instagram that I’ve been using different “key words” lately and leveraging DMs more, it’s thanks to a new strategy we’re trying! We’ve been working hard on this part of the process because it helps us meet people where they already are, learn what they need the most, and serve them well!
The Big Picture
One thing I love is that we didn’t need a full-time CMO to come on board and so we’re having Jess join us while we get all of these projects set up and tackled and then we’ll likely transition to more of an “office hours” type retainer that will allows us to still tap in, get her help, and have her still lead in the areas she’s helping create but without having to have another full-time salaried team member.
It’s easy when you’re the expert to never get help but I’m honestly so glad I did!
