Maureen Edwards and Brad Schlachter | Fractional CMOs & The 90-Day Win
This video is a podcast interview with Maureen Edwards and Brad Schlachter 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 help companies by assessing marketing capabilities, identifying gaps, and implementing strategic solutions. They emphasize the importance of understanding the company’s metrics, establishing clear communication, and focusing on both quick wins and long-term strategic planning.
Key points
🔍 Initial Assessment: Conducting a thorough evaluation of the company’s marketing efforts, including analyzing all available metrics.
🗣️ 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 align 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.
- Maureen’s Background: Maureen shares her experience as a serial entrepreneur and her multifaceted background in branding, marketing, and sales.
- Initial Challenges: Maureen discusses common initial problems, such as companies not understanding the role of marketing and lacking proper metrics.
- Understanding Metrics: Maureen emphasizes the importance of analyzing all available metrics to identify data gaps and develop a clear roadmap for marketing strategies.
- Target Audience and Messaging: Maureen highlights the need to understand the target audience, value proposition, and messaging to differentiate the company and resonate with customers.
- Brad’s Background: Brad shares his experience in the entertainment, technology, and media space, working with companies like Disney and Microsoft.
- Common Problems: Brad discusses common problems such as companies focusing on features rather than benefits and having misaligned call-to-actions.
- Early Wins and Strategy: Brad emphasizes the importance of aligning on goals, conducting audits, and building trust and relationships within the organization.
- Trust and Collaboration: Maureen discusses the importance of building trust and collaboration within the team, setting clear expectations, and demonstrating results through initial campaigns.
- Marketing Process: Maureen explains that clients often do not understand the marketing process and the multifaceted nature of marketing efforts.
- Organic Growth and SEO: Brad highlights the importance of organic growth and SEO, which require time and patience to show positive results.
- Managing Expectations: Brad emphasizes the need to manage client expectations and ensure they understand the long-term nature of certain marketing efforts.
- Maximizing Value: Both guests discuss the importance of leveraging the strategic expertise of fractional CMOs and ensuring they have the necessary budget and resources to succeed.
- Red Flags: Maureen and Brad identify red flags, such as clients not understanding marketing or expecting immediate results without investing in necessary resources.
- Hiring Heads of Sales: Maureen explains the importance of finding sales leaders who understand the value of collaboration with marketing and are confident in their roles.
- Full-Time CMO Transition: Brad discusses the transition from a fractional to a full-time CMO, emphasizing the need for strategic alignment and cultural fit.
- Entrepreneurial Fit: The discussion highlights the entrepreneurial nature of hiring fractional CMOs, who understand the challenges and dynamics of startups.
- Contact Information: Maureen and Brad share their contact information for viewers to connect with them.
Quotes
- 00:37: “The first issue is they don’t know what marketing does. Marketing is something that is very foreign to them, and they think it’s more overhead than it is revenue generating.” – Maureen Edwards
- 02:17: “I want to see all of their metrics, 100% of their metrics, and I work with a lot of startups. Sometimes they have nothing to go by, but the metrics drive the creative.” – Maureen Edwards
- 02:56: “If somebody has been doing a lot of marketing and they’re not scaling or getting traction, I want to look at who is your target audience, is it niched enough, what is your value prop, and how are you messaging this?” – Maureen Edwards
- 03:25: “You don’t necessarily have a marketing problem; you have a messaging problem.” – Maureen Edwards
- 04:10: “They think when you send out the first email, they are going to go ahead and convert a million people. They have to understand there are many moving parts.” – Maureen Edwards
- 05:10: “The metrics drive the creative, and if I can identify the data gaps, it’ll give me a much clearer road map of where the strategy is going to go and the specific tactics we have to have.” – Maureen Edwards
- 06:30: “You have to orchestrate that, and it takes time. SEO is important for building a strong foundation for organic growth, but it takes time for results to show.” – Brad Schlachter
- 08:25: “The other thing that I think is really important during the first 90 days is you really need to build relationships, build trust, and get allies.” – Brad Schlachter
- 09:20: “One red flag for me is when different departments are not aligned on goals. If the legacy side of the business feels threatened by the digital side, it makes your job harder.” – Brad Schlachter
- 10:40: “I think one of the things they have to understand too is you may not be able to afford somebody full-time, but you still have to afford them the opportunity to work with a budget.” – Maureen Edwards
- 12:20: “A big red flag is when they don’t know anything about marketing. They don’t know what they don’t know, and when you explain it, they are still not quite getting it.” – Maureen Edwards
- 13:45: “I think the first thing I look at is how do they see the partnership with marketing because in my experience, there’s been a lot of silos.” – Maureen Edwards
- 15:20: “I’ve worked with a number of legacy media companies and one red flag is when people are not aligned on goals, and the legacy side feels threatened by the digital side.” – Brad Schlachter
- 17:00: “If I’m going to a company that has both a legacy and digital component, I want to make sure that everyone is clear on what we’re doing and there’s support within the organization.” – Brad Schlachter
- 18:10: “You may not be able to afford somebody full-time, but you still have to afford them the opportunity to work with a budget and have money available to them.” – Maureen Edwards