Ari Mason and Sue Mysko | Fractional CMOs & The 90-Day Win
This video is a podcast interview with Ari Mason and Sue Mysko 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 focus on aligning marketing strategies with business goals, addressing foundational issues, and leveraging data to drive growth. They emphasize the importance of communication, consistency, and integrating effectively into the team to ensure success.
Key points
🔍 Organizational Synergy: Ensuring marketing, sales, and customer support are aligned and communicating effectively.
📊 Data Utilization: Leveraging data to understand the current state of the business and make informed decisions.
🗣️ Consistent Messaging: Maintaining clear and consistent messaging across all channels to build a strong brand presence and avoid confusion.
📈 Early Wins: Focusing on quick, impactful wins to demonstrate value and build trust with clients.
💡 Customer Insights: Conducting thorough customer research to understand their needs and how they perceive the brand.
🤝 Team Collaboration: Working closely with internal stakeholders to align strategies and improve overall effectiveness.
🚀 Execution and Resources: Developing realistic and executable marketing plans with measurable goals and ensuring the necessary resources are in place.
👥 Stakeholder Engagement: Engaging key stakeholders early on to ensure alignment with the company’s vision and strategy.
🧠 Marketing Education: Educating clients on the importance of strategic marketing and the iterative nature of positioning.
📋 Long-term Objectives: Establishing both short-term and long-term goals to guide marketing efforts and ensure accountability.
Summary
- Introduction: The podcast introduces the topic of fractional CMOs and their impact within the first 90 days.
- Ari’s Background: Ari Mason discusses her experience as a fractional CMO and brand and marketing consultant for early and growth-stage startups.
- Organizational Synergy: Ari emphasizes the importance of aligning marketing, sales, and customer support teams to ensure effective communication and consistent messaging.
- Addressing Disconnects: Ari highlights the need to address disconnects between different functional areas to create a cohesive marketing strategy.
- Sue’s Background: Sue Mysko shares her experience as the founder of Hire Fractional and former marketing head at Dell and Accenture.
- Business and Marketing Alignment: Sue discusses the common issue of marketing operating in silos and the need to align marketing goals with business objectives.
- Foundational Issues: Sue highlights the importance of addressing foundational issues such as team roles, responsibilities, budget, and strategy to build a strong marketing function.
- Communication and Interaction: Both guests emphasize the importance of communication and interaction with various stakeholders, including customers and partners, to gain insights and make informed decisions.
- Marketing Team Dynamics: Ari and Sue discuss the importance of understanding the existing marketing team’s dynamics and working collaboratively to support and empower them.
- Sprint vs. Marathon: The guests debate whether fractional CMO engagements should be approached as short-term sprints or long-term marathons, ultimately concluding that it depends on the organization’s goals and needs.
Quotes - 00:32: “My name is Ari Mason. I’m a fractional CMO and a brand and marketing consultant. I work with early and growth-stage startups.” – Ari Mason
- 01:07: “Marketing is the last domino when you think about the ecosystem of the organization.” – Ari Mason
- 01:23: “Sales and marketing are age-old rivals, and when I come in and work with a sales team and I’m excited to work with them, it blows their mind.” – Ari Mason
- 01:45: “What I’ll do is evaluate that baseline. Where is there transparency? What is the foundation? What is your mission statement?” – Ari Mason
- 02:14: “Brand and culture are not inherently different; they are the same. Embodying it within your organization and projecting it to the customer is what creates this really lock-tight buyer journey.” – Ari Mason
- 03:19: “Marketing is disconnected from the business. Marketing is operating in a silo and they’re not looking at the goals and objectives of what the business is trying to achieve.” – Sue Mysko
- 04:15: “Who is your team? Do they have clear roles and responsibilities? What is the budget? What is the strategy?” – Sue Mysko
- 04:42: “Taking the roadmap, taking the team, building those foundations, but ensuring that it is linked to the business strategy.” – Sue Mysko
- 05:35: “It’s about facilitating those cross-departmental meetings, getting the people, getting marketing connected across the business so that they understand the business.” – Sue Mysko
- 06:21: “Not only do I want to talk to people in the organization, I want to talk to customers. I want to know what customers are saying about the business.” – Sue Mysko
- 07:15: “It’s more than just looking at marketing. It really is an embedded partnership. When you’re coming in as a fractional CMO, you are a partner who’s integrated into the organization.” – Ari Mason
- 08:10: “Help me support you. We’re in this together. So help me understand, what’s your role? Where can I support you? How can we do this together?” – Ari Mason
- 08:58: “Don’t come in like you know everything. It doesn’t matter if you’re fractional, full-time, coming into a new role in an organization, your primary role is to listen and to ask questions.” – Sue Mysko
- 10:15: “People just want to be heard and they want to feel supported. So how can I support you in your career? If this role isn’t exactly the right role for you, let’s find you the right one.” – Sue Mysko
- 11:05: “I would be very much expecting more structure, a clear list of activities, a clear set of OKRs that we are working against, metrics tracking, and reporting.” – Sue Mysko
- 11:55: “Assuming the fractional CMO coming in knows what they’re doing, what I would expect as a member of the marketing team is somebody to come in and diagnose and understand.” – Ari Mason
- 12:49: “Your role as a leader is to make your team so loyal to the organization and so inspired to get out of bed and do what they’re doing every day and help them get there.” – Ari Mason
- 13:35: “It starts with looking at what’s currently happening, where is the organization trying to go, where’s the marketing team trying to go, does the marketing team even know where they’re trying to go.” – Ari Mason
- 14:18: “Everything around a fractional CMO needs to be metrics-driven. What are our OKRs for this quarter? What do we need to achieve for this quarter? And are we hitting our OKRs?” – Sue Mysko
- 14:55: “The only difference between a sprint and a marathon is the long-term goal of the company. Do they want to sell? Are they looking for aggressive growth but not looking for sale anytime soon?” – Sue Mysko