Katie Smith and Steve Tate | Fractional CMOs & the 90-Day Win
This video is a podcast interview with Katie Smith and Steve Tate discussing the role and strategies of fractional Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) in achieving significant business wins within the first 90 days of engagement.
Conclusion
Fractional CMOs play a crucial role in assessing marketing capabilities, identifying gaps, and implementing early wins to build momentum. Their strategic insights and focus on alignment with business goals drive growth and enhance overall marketing efficiency.
Key points
🔍 Initial Assessment: Conducting a thorough assessment of the company’s marketing capabilities and understanding the challenges faced by the founder or CEO.
🗣️ Communication: Establishing clear communication with the leadership team and understanding their expectations are crucial for successful engagements.
📊 Marketing Strategy: Developing a cohesive marketing strategy and ensuring that all marketing efforts are aligned with the company’s goals.
📈 Early Wins: Identifying and implementing early wins, such as optimizing marketing processes and aligning with customer needs, to build credibility and momentum.
💡 Customer Insights: Conducting customer research to understand their needs and expectations, which often reveals misalignments with what the company delivers.
🤝 Collaboration with Sales: Ensuring strong collaboration between marketing and sales teams, with aligned metrics and open communication, to drive revenue.
📝 Stakeholder Engagement: Engaging key stakeholders early on and understanding their perspectives helps in aligning the company’s vision and strategy.
🚀 Execution and Resources: Ensuring that marketing plans are realistic and executable with the available resources.
👥 Education and Alignment: Educating non-marketing leaders on the strategic value of marketing and aligning the team on marketing goals.
🧠 Complexity of Marketing: Educating clients on the complexity of marketing and setting realistic expectations regarding timelines and outcomes.
Summary
- Introduction: The podcast introduces the topic of fractional CMOs and their impact within the first 90 days.
- Steve’s Background: Steve discusses his 20+ years of marketing experience and transition into the fractional CMO role, emphasizing the importance of aligning marketing vision with organizational goals.
- Initial Challenges: Steve highlights common problems such as lack of unified vision and inadequate operational documentation.
- Katie’s Background: Katie shares her experience working with post-startup organizations and the importance of understanding how companies view their customers.
- Early Wins: Katie emphasizes creating structure and clear communication to achieve early wins, while Steve focuses on identifying inefficiencies and optimizing the customer journey.
- Common Issues: Both guests discuss common issues such as website problems, misallocated budgets, and the need for better industry benchmarking.
- CEO Collaboration: The importance of trust and transparency between the CEO and fractional CMO, with the CMO being treated as part of the team.
- Passion and Alignment: Steve stresses the importance of finding a fractional CMO who cares deeply about the company’s mission to ensure alignment and motivation within the team.
- Signs of Readiness: Katie and Steve discuss signs that a company might not be ready for a fractional CMO, such as resistance to change and lack of a big vision.
- Hiring Heads of Sales: Katie provides insights on what to look for in a new head of sales, emphasizing the need for marketing and sales alignment.
Quotes
- 01:28: “The number one thing I think problem-wise that I tend to see is not everyone is on the same page in terms of the big vision of what marketing is to do within that organization.” – Steve Tate
- 01:40: “Oftentimes, it could be someone such as head of marketing or head of growth that kind of has a different view of how the brand should develop their marketing strategy.” – Steve Tate
- 02:03: “The first day, I’m just looking to be the curious one in the room, absorb as much information as I can, and try to understand the dynamics.” – Steve Tate
- 02:38: “For me, customers hold all the answers to our questions.” – Katie Smith
- 03:45: “I love how Steve talked about the dream. Is that dream that they’re going for big enough? Is it aligned? And then how can I come in and map out that plan that’s going to get us to the big dream that they’re going for?” – Katie Smith
- 04:50: “Those first wins that I can come in is start to create a structure and start to create a little bit of a plan for how we’re going to deal with marketing.” – Katie Smith
- 06:12: “I’m essentially trying to find either where we’re bleeding money or where there’s some sort of disconnect between what the customer is seeking and what we’re offering in terms of messaging.” – Steve Tate
- 07:00: “Typically, it’s problems with the website. It could be that the analytics are off. It could be that the attribution is off.” – Steve Tate
- 07:45: “A lot of people don’t have a good handle of their marketing. They’re afraid to look at it because they don’t really understand how it works.” – Katie Smith
- 08:37: “Tactics are tactics. You can throw in any tactic there, and I find that that’s where people are focusing, but they don’t understand that tactics need a strategy. They need a plan.” – Katie Smith
- 10:20: “A fractional CMO should be seen as part of the team, not so much an outside person like an agency.” – Katie Smith
- 10:58: “The CEO is the person who sets the tone for the rest of the company. If the CEO is welcoming and says, ‘This is our fractional CMO, I trust them, they’re part of our team,’ then that’s going to help all the way down the line.” – Katie Smith
- 12:47: “You have to find someone that cares deeply. If they don’t care, and if they’re not going to be able to engage in the long term, then whatever you accomplish in the 90 days could be trivial.” – Steve Tate
- 14:33: “You need to be ready for change. Especially if you’re bringing in a CMO, they’re going to make suggestions for change and an organization needs to be ready to follow those changes and to trust.” – Katie Smith
- 15:37: “A CMO is not your only marketing person. A CMO is the marketing leader, so they’re leading the team.” – Katie Smith
- 18:01: “You need to be willing to listen to The Yoda. You’re going to have to evolve, you’re going to have to change. This person is going to change you.” – Steve Tate
- 18:50: “I need a sales director who has some experience either working with marketing or has a marketing background. I need someone who’s solutions-oriented, agile, and open.” – Katie Smith