Natalie Swan and Mary McKeown-Christie | Fractional CMOs & The 90-Day Win
This video is a podcast interview with Natalie Swan and Mary McKeown-Christie 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 critical in assessing marketing capabilities, identifying gaps, and implementing early wins to build momentum. Their role involves strategic planning, stakeholder engagement, and ensuring alignment with business goals to 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.
- Initial Challenges: Natalie discusses common initial problems, including the lack of previous marketing leadership and the need for a comprehensive audit.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Both guests emphasize the importance of conducting stakeholder interviews and competitor analysis.
- Customer Insights: Stacey highlights the importance of understanding customer needs and expectations, which often reveals misalignments with what the company delivers.
- Strategic Planning: Both guests stress the importance of strategic planning and not rushing into execution to ensure sustainable success.
- Early Wins: Identifying and implementing early wins, such as optimizing marketing processes and aligning with customer needs, helps build credibility and momentum.
- Marketing Complexity: Stacey explains that many clients do not understand the complexity of marketing and the importance of strategic foundations.
- Collaboration with Sales: Both guests provide insights on collaborating with sales teams and ensuring alignment between marketing and sales.
- Leadership Alignment: Ensuring that the leadership team understands the strategic value of marketing and is committed to supporting it.
- Finding Stacey and Maria: Information on how to connect with Stacey Danheiser and Maria Botta through LinkedIn and their respective websites.
Quotes
- 00:37: “I need to know if I’m going to be able to help them based on where they’re at, their expectations, the resources they have available, etc.” – Natalie Swan
- 01:08: “We have a couple people helping us here and there, or we’re working with an agency, but nothing is cohesive.” – Natalie Swan
- 01:38: “I hear so much of the time is we’re investing in marketing, but nothing is cohesive, and we aren’t getting traction.” – Natalie Swan
- 02:15: “There’s no strategy and there’s no marketing leadership in place to say, I love all the wonderful ideas, but those things don’t make sense for our company.” – Natalie Swan
- 03:15: “Are the founders open and coachable and willing to learn and go through that path and process with me?” – Natalie Swan
- 03:30: “Strategy is only as good as the implementation, the execution, how you are able to test and learn and iterate.” – Natalie Swan
- 04:05: “A huge part of this is the mindset that Natalie referred to, being open to realizing that we need leadership and we’re going to have to do a few things a little differently.” – Mary McKeown-Christie
- 05:00: “We need to set up systems to actually report and provide transparency and accountability, not just for marketing but with sales and the full organization together.” – Mary McKeown-Christie
- 05:35: “I hear a lot of complaints about marketing quite often, and it’s because they’ve never set up any systems to actually report and provide transparency and accountability.” – Mary McKeown-Christie
- 06:00: “A huge red flag comes up for me when they don’t have a CRM. I’ve been approached by several multi-million dollar companies that are not even open to using a CRM.” – Mary McKeown-Christie
- 07:00: “If sales and marketing aren’t structured as partners, they won’t succeed. It’s a marriage and they need to find out what each other needs and work together.” – Mary McKeown-Christie
- 08:30: “Early wins for me come down to parallel paths: working with what they have while setting up new systems, driving engagement, and getting more leads in the door.” – Mary McKeown-Christie
- 09:40: “How are we getting our best customers right now? Who are those people and how did they find out about us? That’s always going to be your fastest path to success.” – Natalie Swan
- 10:15: “We do a ton of customer interviews to understand not only the surface level but also the deeper drivers behind their decisions.” – Natalie Swan
- 11:20: “Getting organized and taking initiative is massively important when you’re fractional and trying to move quickly and build trust with new teams.” – Natalie Swan
- 12:40: “They don’t see how many resources they’re wasting—time and money—because they’re not focused on a strategy.” – Natalie Swan
- 13:45: “Everyone needs to be on the same page about what the marketing strategy is and how we’re going to collaborate on it.” – Natalie Swan
- 14:10: “They think they need more exposure and customers, but often that’s not the case. If they’re not willing to hear objective feedback, that’s a red flag.” – Natalie Swan
- 15:20: “I’ve been doing this for 14 years, so I can identify them quickly. If they’re not willing to accept that this is a game changer, they should hire a marketing manager.” – Mary McKeown-Christie
- 16:30: “If they think marketing is just executing tactics without strategy, they’re not ready for a fractional CMO. They need to see it as a long-term partnership.” – Natalie Swan