Mollie Barnett and Tanya White | Fractional CMOs & The 90-Day Win

This video is a podcast interview with Mollie Barnett and Tanya White 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 are instrumental in evaluating a company’s marketing infrastructure, identifying key issues, and implementing strategic solutions to drive early wins. Their expertise in performance metrics, financial analysis, and organizational alignment helps companies achieve rapid and sustainable growth.

Key points
🔍 Performance Analysis: Tanya focuses on assessing current campaigns, programs, and activities to ensure they are driving results.
💰 Financial Assessment: Reviewing financials to ensure proper accounting principles are followed and ROI can be accurately calculated.
🤝 Organizational Alignment: Ensuring that all departments, especially sales and product development, are aligned and working towards the same goals.
🗣️ Communication: Establishing clear internal communication to ensure everyone in the organization is on the same page.
🎯 Early Wins: Identifying and implementing quick wins, such as optimizing existing campaigns and ensuring cohesive messaging across departments.
🌐 Digital Marketing: Tanya emphasizes the importance of digital marketing programs, focusing on website performance, ad spending, and lead generation.
📈 Demand Generation: Focusing on demand generation to improve lead quality and conversion rates.
💡 Strategic Planning: Developing a strategic plan that aligns with the company’s long-term goals and ensures sustainable growth.
📊 Metrics and KPIs: Establishing clear metrics and KPIs to measure success and make data-driven decisions.
👥 Stakeholder Engagement: Engaging key stakeholders to understand their perspectives and ensure alignment with the company’s vision and strategy.
Summary

  1. Introduction: The podcast introduces the topic of fractional CMOs and their impact within the first 90 days.
  2. Initial Assessment: Tanya discusses her approach to assessing performance, financials, and organizational alignment right from the start.
  3. Mollie’s Background: Mollie shares her experience in marketing and change management, focusing on goal alignment and internal communication.
  4. Early Wins: Mollie emphasizes the importance of identifying and capitalizing on early wins to build momentum.
  5. Demand Generation: Tanya explains her focus on demand generation and optimizing digital marketing efforts.
  6. Common Challenges: Both guests discuss common challenges such as misalignment in messaging and ineffective ad spending.
  7. Metrics and KPIs: Establishing clear metrics and KPIs to measure success and drive data-driven decisions.
  8. Stakeholder Engagement: Engaging stakeholders to understand their perspectives and align marketing strategies with business goals.
  9. CEO Collaboration: The importance of collaboration between the CEO and fractional CMO to ensure strategic alignment.
  10. Finding Mollie and Tanya: Information on how to connect with Mollie Barnett and Tanya White through LinkedIn and their respective websites.

Quotes

  1. 00:10: “My job is to jump in and impact results as quickly as possible.” – Tanya White
  2. 00:56: “I’m looking immediately at what’s running, campaigns, programs, activities, what’s happening there.” – Tanya White
  3. 01:29: “The second thing I look at is how are our finances, like how’s the money looking.” – Tanya White
  4. 02:10: “Is there alignment in the organization, not just sales but in product development?” – Tanya White
  5. 03:25: “When I jump in, obviously it’s a lot of discussion, a lot of discovery.” – Mollie Barnett
  6. 03:58: “Typically what I find is it’s goal alignment and communication across the board, internal communication.” – Mollie Barnett
  7. 05:00: “The early win is that typically everybody is saying the same thing.” – Mollie Barnett
  8. 06:15: “Early wins always are found in the digital marketing space.” – Tanya White
  9. 07:00: “Are we converting, are we getting leads, are we spending ad money?” – Tanya White
  10. 07:40: “You want to just get right in there. For me, early wins always are found in the digital marketing space.” – Tanya White
  11. 08:20: “Are we able to articulate our financial investments with the value they’re delivering to the business?” – Tanya White
  12. 09:10: “If they’re not aligned with the strategy and understand where to point it, any marketing leader could accidentally just burn through cash.” – Tanya White
  13. 10:00: “Goodman’s Law says that if you’ve got a goal and a metric or a way to measure it, people will inevitably begin to focus on the metric instead of the goal.” – Dean Waye
  14. 11:30: “I’m here to grow your business. I’m looking at how many customers you’re going to acquire, how much does that cost.” – Mollie Barnett
  15. 12:40: “I’m often impressed when businesses bring marketing in last.” – Tanya White
  16. 13:50: “I’m always a little worried if they haven’t brought sales in before marketing because if they haven’t actually validated that someone is going to write a check for the solution, then it’s like you’re maybe a little soon for me.” – Tanya White
  17. 14:30: “We are most effective when there is some team or middle management there because you do need that day-to-day person who’s actually executing the vision.” – Tanya White
  18. 15:10: “How do you work with a peer that isn’t there the 60-plus hours a week that the rest of the leadership team is working?” – Tanya White
  19. 16:00: “Cultural fit is probably the most important. I think a sales leader who shows they understand the difference between direct, enterprise, and transactional sales.” – Tanya White
  20. 17:00: “You really need to know the personas. It could be a completely different solution, but they need to be familiar with it so they can guide the sales team.” – Tanya White
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