Fractional CMO Show

Nothing you do will be easy at first, but that’s not a bad thing! Entrepreneur and Fractional CMO, Armen Mardirousi, joins host Casey Stanton to discuss the importance of setting clearly defined goals. Listen to learn about why and how to break them up into smaller pieces. Armen also shares his experience on how to face many of the problems that Fractional CMOs confront every day.   Takeaways: The importance of being resilient cannot be understated, especially when it comes to business. The first year of just about anything is difficult. Embrace the grind and grow from it! Make sure you know exactly what you want to do before you start doing it. If you don’t know the destination, how will you know when you get there? Determine what you want to do and then reverse engineer a way to do that and break it into doable pieces. It is a fact of life that there are some things that you just can’t prepare for. When things like this happen, it’s imperative to push past them. Recognize any mistakes made and learn from them, but don’t waste time and energy on things in the past. Everyone will try to give you advice about pretty much everything. It’s important to listen to everyone and be respectful, but ask yourself, “Are they where I want to be in relation to the topic they are talking about?” Unfortunately, a lot of people have had bad experiences with marketing agencies, consultants, etc. As a Fractional CMO, it’s on you to overcome a prospect’s opinion of marketers by understanding what they’ve dealt with and communicating your plan. A “blueprint” that you can adapt to each client you work with is a great way to clearly explain what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. You should say to the client, “I’m here to help, and here’s how I’m going to help.” An amazing benefit of being a Fractional CMO is that you can choose to work with clients that help people in ways that you can see. You can select clients who are helping others which can make the work very fulfilling!   Quote of the Show: “I don’t want to be a headache for you and I will not allow you to be a headache for me” - Armen Mardirousi   Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mardirousi/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mardirousi Twitter: https://twitter.com/mardirousi Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mardirousi/?hl=en Neolynx Website: https://neolynx.com/ Noah’s Children Website: https://noahschildrencharity.org/ Raven’s Rock Real Estate Website: https://www.r3es.com/ 3HO Foundation Website: https://www.3ho.org/   Ways to Tune In Amazon Music Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fractional-cmo-show/id1592740671 Spotify: https://fractionalcmo.libsyn.com/spotify Google Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZnJhY3Rpb25hbGNtb3Nob3cuY29tL2ZlZWQueG1s Stitcher YouTube: https://youtu.be/MG_kgGmoyqQ

You know content is important, but it seems so costly and complicated to create. Guess what, creating content can actually be easy and affordable and by putting it off, you’re missing out on all the benefits you already know of, but also the huge impact it has on your SEO. Thankfully, the sensei of SEO and content marketing, Ken Tucker, is here to show you the way! Learn how to create great content, how to get the most out of your content creation efforts, and how to differentiate your content and your company amongst the sea of competitors.   Takeaways  Google creates a “Canonical URL” which it attributes to the first website that publishes a piece of content. If two sites have duplicate content, Google will ignore the site without the Canonical URL when ranking for SEO. This is why it is imperative to create unique content for your company and your clients. Differentiation comes from how you describe the problems people have and provide content to guide people to the solution. When crafting your messaging, consider how people approach the problem both internally and externally. A great source for unique content is any emails with customers where you solve a problem they have. You can write problem-based content that speaks to FAQs and common problems. This kind of content is great for SEO. Video is very powerful from a content repurposing perspective, it creates a “Little Content Machine.” You can post the full video, put the transcript on your website, create a blog post based on video, post clips of video on social media, pull quotes from the transcript and blog for social media, and publish a press release for inbound links. Creating video content doesn’t have to be a very elaborate and expensive process, it can be very easy and low-budget while still being good quality and impactful. Even just using a cellphone camera can be enough to produce content your company can use. Google uses “Review Velocity” when ranking for local search results. Review Velocity refers to the frequency of new reviews your business gets on Google. Old reviews “degrade” after ~6-months and Google marks them as less important.  At present, customers have a huge amount of control over the Buyer’s Journey, so it is very important to be making the kind of content that your customers really respond to.   Quote of the Show:   “Most people are natural content creators. They just don't realize that they're creating content that they could easily put onto their website.” -Ken Tucker   Shout Outs: StoryBrand   Links LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kentuckerweb Company Facebook: facebook.com/changescape Company Twitter: Changescape Website: changescapeweb.com Blog Link: changescapeweb.com/blog Book: https://www.amazon.com/Content-Marketing-Local-Search-Prospects/dp/1076144713   Ways to Tune In Amazon Music Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fractional-cmo-show/id1592740671 Spotify: https://fractionalcmo.libsyn.com/spotify Google Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZnJhY3Rpb25hbGNtb3Nob3cuY29tL2ZlZWQueG1s Stitcher YouTube https://youtu.be/rTM9P3BiVqw

Nowadays, everyone thinks that to be successful their business has to have the best SERP and highest SEO score, but that’s only part of the equation. Fractional CMO and owner of CS Design Studios, Wyatt Chambers, joins Casey to compare the benefits and drawbacks of being a Fractional CMO versus owning a marketing agency. Wyatt gives some great advice about running a business, developing talent from within, and how to pitch companies on becoming their Fractional CMO.   Takeaways: For many business owners, their SEO rank is not as important to them as whether or not their phone is ringing. By becoming a Fractional CMO, you can help a business much more than if you were just their outside marketing agency. Allows closer connection to that business’ problems and their successes. In approaching a company to hire you as a Fractional CMO, emphasize how you want to help the company and be a part of it. One example of this would be explaining the role you want to play in the company and ease the workload of the owner, CEO, etc. When pitching a company on hiring you as Fractional CMO, ask, “If I took all of the marketing stuff off of your plate, how much easier would your life be?” This is a great way to frame the proposition in their mind. The CMOx Asset Audit questionnaire is a great tool to use when considering working with a company as their Fractional CMO. It allows you to get a fuller picture of the business and by being interested in the whole company, it shows you actually care about the business. Many corporations are “asleep” when it comes to understanding their brand and reputation. An easy way to get a snapshot of a company’s reputation is by checking reviews on Google, LinkedIn, Glass Door, etc. Some companies are moving towards using AI for repetitive marketing tasks, such as copywriting. In the future, marketing prices will likely be driven down by the emergence of AI and offshore labor both becoming cheaper and more viable options. It doesn’t take rocket science to revolutionize a business, you just have to really execute on the basics   Quote of the Show: “At the end of the day, I don't think business owners care about rank as much as they do about their phone ringing” - Wyatt Chambers   Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wyattchambers/  Company website: https://www.csdesignstudios.com  Twitter: @tucsonwebdesign   Ways to Tune In: Amazon Music Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fractional-cmo-show/id1592740671 Spotify: https://fractionalcmo.libsyn.com/spotify Google Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZnJhY3Rpb25hbGNtb3Nob3cuY29tL2ZlZWQueG1s Stitcher YouTube: https://youtu.be/QMc9nfyTA4Y

The way marketers interact and communicate with customers has shifted immensely with the advent of the internet and marketing automation. Today’s marketing is missing the actual dialogue between customer and marketer that has been so essential to successful marketing in the past. Podcasts offer a great way to reopen those communication channels allowing marketers to create better relationships with customers and understand the challenges they face. Casey Cheshire, CEO and Founder of Ringmaster Conversational Marketing joins the show to open marketers’ minds to the amazing benefits of having a podcast such as customer relationships, content creation, and a great forum for learning.   Takeaways: Marketers have moved away from actually talking to their customers and in a time when relationships are the new currency, this is harming brands and limiting the potential success of marketers. Podcasts, by nature, create relationships between the host and the guest. Having potential clients come on your podcast creates a relationship. Customers will be more comfortable discussing their business’ actual challenges on a podcast as opposed to a sales call.  Podcasts can be a great tool for marketers, each episode serves as a great source of content that can be repurposed many times in different media (eg. books, promo videos, clips, blogs, etc.) A conversational style podcast affords marketers much better access to how a customer or member of a group feels about a challenge, product, etc. compared to reading through online reviews or scrubbing social media posts.  Being the host of a podcast is a great way to learn from guests and the host can ask whatever questions they want to really learn a lot. By interviewing experts in a particular subject, you can learn the jargon that their field’s ingroup uses. This means that you can learn how to have a conversation in the ‘language’ that the expert understands best.  Podcasts offer a space where people can come and share a moment together reconnecting in contrast to how social media has a way of tearing society apart at the seams.  A fractional CMO’s job is to make those already at a company more effective, not to take their jobs and work. Fractional CMO’s should coach up the marketers around them to be ready to take over their position when they leave.   Quote of the Show: “I'm not here to create podcasts. I'm here to create human connection.” -Casey Cheshire   Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseycheshire/  Twitter: https://twitter.com/caseychesh?lang=en  Company website: https://ringmasterlive.com  Book: https://www.amazon.com/Marketing-Automation-Unleashed-Strategic-Growth/dp/1599327384    Ways to Tune In: Amazon Music Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fractional-cmo-show/id1592740671 Spotify: https://fractionalcmo.libsyn.com/spotify Google Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZnJhY3Rpb25hbGNtb3Nob3cuY29tL2ZlZWQueG1s dcast YouTube: https://youtu.be/ljHxCZPAy-o

In this engaging discussion, Russ Reynolds, a seasoned Fractional CMO with extensive copywriting and digital marketing expertise, shares invaluable insights. He emphasizes the importance of quality over quantity when building customer lists and advocates for clear pricing in ads. Russ dives into the effectiveness of paid funnels, the evolving role of copywriting in marketing, and the rise of decentralized finance. He also reflects on the challenges copywriters face in gaining consumer trust, especially in niche markets like cryptocurrency.

Explore the exciting world of fractional CMOs and the unique lifestyle they offer. Discover how this role allows marketing professionals to create meaningful change while enjoying flexibility and autonomy. Gain insights into transitioning from traditional marketing roles to becoming a fractional expert. Hear from experienced professionals about the strategic advantages and long-term engagements that come with being a fractional CMO. This is not just about work; it’s about building a career that aligns with your passions.