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Fractional CMO: Reinventing Marketing Strategies written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch

John Jantsch, host of the Duct Tape Marketing podcastIn this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I’m doing a solo show, and I’m gonna talk about how Fractional CMOs are becoming increasingly popular among business owners and marketing agencies.

Key Takeaway:

Strategy is one of the most essential elements to running a successful business today. Whether you are a business owner or a consultant, who doesn’t understand why your marketing is not working the way it should, the Fractional CMO model could change your business. 

Fractional CMOs help companies and business owners develop strategic marketing plans in a more cost-effective solution as they are not full-time employees, but they have the expertise of a seasoned marketing executive. They will develop the marketing activities through strategic planning that could improve the relationship companies have with their clients, as they are able to understand better how to guide the perfect customer journey.

Topics I Cover:

  • [01:15] Introduction to the trend of Fractional CMOs
  • [04:34] Why hiring Fractional CMOs is an appealing idea?
  • [05:28] The role of a CMO in an organization
  • [05:50] Comparing the cost of hiring a full-time CMO and a fractional CMO
  • [08:55] How fractional CMOs focus on developing strategy
  • [10:41] The importance of the Customer Journey

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  • Learn more about the Agency Certification Intensive Training here

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John Jantsch (00:01): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Creative Elements hosted by Jay Klaus. It’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals creative elements goes behind the scenes with today’s top creators. Through narrative interviews, Jay Klaus explores how creators like Tim Urban, James Clear, Tori Dunlap and Cody Sanchez are building their audiences today. By learning how these creators make a living with their art and creativity, creative elements helps you gain the tools and confidence to do the same. In a recent episode, they talked with Kevin Perry about how he goes viral on every single platform. Listen to creative elements wherever you get your podcasts.

(00:53): Hello, welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and I’m going to do a solo show. It’s been a while since I’ve done one. So there’s a couple topics I want to get off my chest. So I might do a couple shows in a row. Who knows? This first topic I wanna talk about today is a trend, I guess definitely a trend that I’m seeing, and it applies to anybody in the marketing consulting agency world as well as frankly to anyone who owns a business in terms of how to get your marketing done, how to think about your marketing more strategically, and that’s the trend of what I will call the fractional CMO, Chief Marketing Officer. This idea of fractional whatever, titles, accountants, fractional management consultants, fractional hiring consultants. I think that this idea has really taken on a life of its own recently, probably like so many things here in the beginning of 2023, very influenced by the pandemic.

(02:01): But what I’ve seen is many, many business owners over the years really are looking for a marketing agency, a marketing consultant, somebody to get the tactical things done. They quite frankly, rarely hire unless they’re from a marketing background. They rarely hire strategic marketing folks internally because quite frankly, when you bring somebody in at a really high level to do marketing in your business as an employee, and you’re the owner of that business and don’t feel like you know that much about marketing or how to direct really a strategic marketing, dare I say, CMO type of role in your business, it can be a little intimidating. And I’ve experienced that over the years. A lot of times I’ve been hired, my firm’s been hired because, you know, there’s something easier about saying, Hey, this isn’t working out. You know, it’s not an employee, it’s, it’s a vendor almost.

(02:49): And so they can part ways, but I think what’s happened over the last few years is people have dramatically increased their understanding and and desire to really start with strategy. I mean, I’ve been my kind of my mantra for 20 years strategy before tactics. But I think a, I think people are finally getting it right, . And so this idea that they would hire a a a C-suite type of role where the implication is that that person’s going to be strategic, that person’s not gonna write copy necessarily or do social media posts. They’re going to really develop the grand plan for, you know, how you’re gonna go from where you’re today to where you want to be, certainly from a marketing standpoint, but they’re gonna get involved in the dollars and cents of it, the objectives overall for the organization, maybe a little deeper relationship then you would think of your traditional marketing agency.

(03:41): But we are finding that, uh, both business owners are, are really embracing this idea of hiring, you know, us or somebody as a fractional CMO. And certainly a lot of consultants, agencies, coach, implementers, you know, I’m finding are really drawn to this idea of maybe having a handful of clients that they are very deeply involved with and, you know, have a seat at the table , you know, for making or helping make big decisions. And obviously orchestrating the tactics to implementation. Maybe in some cases the team that’s already been assembled. So just the textbook definition, what is a fractional CMO? It’s a marketing strategist brought into an organization on a part-time basis to help set strategic direction and orchestrate marketing implementation using internal and external resources. So I spent the last 10 minutes just talking about what , what I just described there. But, but again, this role, this idea really has a lot of, I think a lot of appeal to business owners because it is a necessary piece that I think that, that you can acquire, or at least the idea you can acquire for much less.

(04:53): I mean, look at Google trends if you ever do that. The term fractional CMO is definitely on the rise. And I think a lot of it has to do with, I think people are tired of the tactic of the week of no real direction. Um, you know, everybody says they want customers, but, but a lot of the CEO’s, business owners that I talk to, what they really need is some clarity first, and the confidence that they’re making the right decisions and some control over their marketing. And I think that that’s a, that’s a big part of what you get by at least taking this strategy approach and, and by bringing in somebody that is very strategic to help you get those customers. And you know, the, the role of a typical CMO in an organization is strategic planning, brand management, you know, obviously the marketing campaigns, analyzing data, helping develop and use a budget and, and maybe even managing team players.

(05:43): And frankly, what most people do is they hire somebody just to do marketing campaigns and all those other things are left by the, the wayside. The reason I think this model works and why business owners should be really addressing it, looking at it, understanding it better, and certainly agency folks or consultants ought to be positioning themselves this way because typical, or I should say the average salary for a chief marketing officer, according to salary.com, this last year was between 208,000-375,000. And that really doesn’t include any kind of implementation or, you know, other people that you might hire to, to actually supplement that typical, average fractional CMO probably costs somebody 60 to $75,000 a year, plus a lot of the implementation now is done kind of on demand. It doesn’t, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to hire those people as full-time people.

(06:38): You’re gonna, your CMO, fractional CMOs gonna bring them in as needed, you know, from a consultant or an agency standpoint, you know, if you do the math on, on what the average is, you know, you working with five or six clients that can be at the top, the absolute top of the CMO chain. So, you know, it really works for both parties as far as I’m concerned. Hey, marketing agency owners, you know, I can teach you the keys to doubling your business in just 90 days or your money back. Sound interesting. All you have to do is license our three step process that’s going to allow you to make your competitors irrelevant, charge a premium for your services and scale perhaps without adding overhead. And here’s the best part. You can license this entire system for your agency by simply participating in an upcoming agency certification intensive look, why create the wheel?

(07:33): Use a set of tools that took us over 20 years to create. And you can have ’em today. Check it out at dtm.world/certification. That’s dtm.world/certification. And now, word from our sponsor, are you ready to get out of spreadsheets? Look with HubSpot crm, get realtime data at your fingertips so your teams stay in sync across the customer journey, build better content, generate more conversions, and get the context you need to create amazing experiences for your teams and your customers at scale. All from one powerful platform. It’s why more than 150,000 companies already use HubSpot’s CRM to run their businesses better. Plus, HubSpot’s user-friendly interface sets you up for success from day one so you can spend less time managing software and more time on what matters your customers. There’s no better time to get organized. Get started for free @hubspot.com today.

(08:37): And so what the typical sort of agency project based path looks like. You know, you put out free content as a marketer, you get a sales meeting as a business owner, you, you then ask for a proposal project gets worked on, or maybe a handful of projects get worked on, and then, you know, everybody starts over again. And, you know, I think the fractional CMO approach is more that the very first thing you do for 30, 60 days is that you’re going to actually develop strategy first. And, and what that’s going to mean is you’re going to really drill into the ideal client. Who is the ideal client you should be attracting, you know, what is the core difference that your business makes out there in the market? And it’s not what you sell , it’s the problems that you solve for your ideal customers. You know, what is your customer journey look like? What should it look like?

(09:23): What could it look like? What’s a, what’s a content or editorial content approach going to look like? What are the near term priorities that you need to be looking at? I mean, those stopping and taking the time to develop that allows you to then month by month, look at, look, here’s what we’re doing this quarter, the next quarter, the next quarter. Because we’re, we’re going to evolve our marketing. It’s going to grow. We’re not going to simply just throw, you know, another tactic at everything and see if it works. Some of these concepts, the, the idea of developing strategy, in fact, we have a, we have a set, I’ve done th a strategy as I’ve described it here, probably in the neighborhood of a thousand times with businesses. I have taught hundreds of agencies and consultants how to do our product, if you will, called Strategy First.

(10:12): It’s really how we start every engagement. And as far as I’m concerned, if you are buying marketing services, you should actually be engaging somebody who is going to demand that you do strategy first. And as a consultant agency, that ought to be the way that in my mind, that you lead with every engagement strategy has become more important, quite frankly, than ever. It is the way that you not only differentiate your business, it is the way that you actually charge a premium for what you do, because you are able to understand how to guide the perfect customer journey. You’ve heard me talk about things like the marketing hourglass for, you know, years, our, our approach to the customer journey. That that has seven stages, no, like trust, try by repeat and refer. Just understanding what you need to move people through those stages that are essentially marketing, sales, and service or success is how you build long-term growth, focusing intentionally, focusing on those stages.

(11:14): This is a tool that I’ve seen it change dramatically change businesses in the way they view marketing. But then secondly, this approach to marketing, uh, hiring a fractional CMO who is going to become a senior. They, they’re not, you’re not gonna pay them as such. They’re not going to be there on-premise every day, but you can view them as a senior strategic hire in your organization. Even if you have people doing various marketing tasks, is an absolute game changer for most of the businesses that, that really can address or engage or embrace this idea. So that’s all I had for today. I wanted to introduce this idea of fractional CMO. Whether you are a business owner who doesn’t understand why marketing’s not working the way it should , or you are a coach or a consultant who doesn’t understand, you know, why you’re always getting beat up on price and getting tired of just doing, you know, the tactics that are demanded of you lead with strategy and that will change completely change the relationship you have with your clients.

(12:16): So if you’re either one of those a business owner or somebody who is in marketing consulting world, and you want to see how this fractional CMO model could change your business, just visit duct tape marketing.com. You’ll see at the very top there, you’ll pick your flavor. I’m a business owner, or I’m an agency that wants to license this fractional CMO approach. We’d love to talk with either one of you. Have an amazing day, week, month, quarter whenever you’re listening to this, and thanks for tuning in to the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast.

(12:51): Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @marketingassessment.co not.com. Co check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketing assessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

This Duct Tape Marketing Podcast episode is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network.

HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals seeking the best education and inspiration to grow a business.

The Internet is chock-full of B2B lead generation resources crafted by marketing experts, business owners, and other specialists.

A quick Google search can bring you to several tips, infographics, case studies and presentations that can help you improve your current B2B lead generation campaigns.

Here’s a great one from Trustmary.com showing the differences between B2B and B2C lead generation strategies:

But not all of your online searches will yield helpful results. Sorting out the great advice from the just plain bad can end up being a pretty daunting task.

Here’s a quick video from Patrick Dang talking about B2B lead generation:

Quick Takeaways:

  1. Lead generation is the backbone of your sales numbers
  2. Deciding on what metrics to measure how your lead generation is performing is crucial to overall marketing efforts
  3. There are tons of online resources designed to make lead generation easier

We’ve got your back and have compiled some of the top online resources for you to check out:

Callbox

Callbox is an award-winning sales and marketing solutions provider. Don’t believe us? Check out their stunning credentials here. They provide quick, concise, and entertaining lead generation presentations that you can’t help but share.

They also have this really neat infographic about the role of content in B2B lead generation, as well as a SlideShare presentation on why businesses should outsource their lead generation initiatives.

Impact Plus

Are you looking for some quick courses to brush up on your B2B lead generation strategies? Look no further! Impact Plus has free courses designed to teach you the ins and outs of lead generation, SEO, content marketing trends, and more!

Canva

Source: Tech Radar

Canva is a user-friendly design tool meant to be easily accessed by anyone. You can design banner ads, graphics, and more to generate leads on your website. This website lets you skip the hassle of hiring someone else to use more complicated software to craft your website’s graphics.

You can also find videos online to step up your Canva game and design like the pros!

Lead Genius

Lead Genius’ SlideShare presentation on the best practices for lead generation walks you through the outbound and inbound sales funnel. Although it may be a bit heavy on stats for a 54-slide presentation, it’s still a great resource for those who want to understand the sales funnel journey.

Kissmetrics

A Cisco study found that by 2019, 80% of all consumer internet traffic will be from internet video traffic. Kissmetrics leveraged this stat in their blog article titled ‘Using Video Metrics to Collect Better Data for Lead Generation.’ If your company is big on video content, this resource is definitely a gold mine.

We’re not just talking about professionally made videos. If your company has blogger brand ambassadors, those quick Instagram videos can also be converted into big lead generation initiatives.

Formstack

Source: Formstack

When it comes to lead generation, the motto, “If you build it, they will come” is not always true. As you might have experienced, just because you have a website in place, that doesn’t always guarantee traffic and a successful sales conversion rate.

That’s where this SlideShare presentation from Formstack comes in handy. The presentation shows how three preferential customer behaviors come into play on every page of your site.

Demand Wave

If you feel like you’ve tried every lead generation tactic in the book, this SlideShare presentation from Demand Wave offers five more untapped areas for lead generation you might want to give a crack.

On their company blog, Demand Wave also has a great article about 2016’s top trends in B2B digital marketing and SEO. This post is definitely worth a read if you want to get updated on what’s going on in the digital world.

WordStream

In recent years, there has been a boom in the startup industry. Many of these startups have become quite popular through digital marketing.

In this blog article from WordStream, startup entrepreneurs share their top lead generation strategies. Whether you’re just starting off, or you’re a veteran entrepreneur, you can learn a thing or two from these newly minted business owners.

MarketingProfs

MarketingProfs has quite a collection of available lead generation materials for business owners. In one article, marketing blogger Matt Banner, talks about ways to optimize your social media conversation and enhance activities with lead generation tactics that will drive users through the sales funnel.

Podcasts

How To Cut Your Paid Advertising in Half and Boost Revenue: Michael Brenner on Quietlight [Podcast]

In this podcast, MIG’s leader Michael Brenner talks about using content marketing to draw users to your website, ultimately slashing your advertising costs. This podcast does an excellent job of telling you specific steps of just how to go about your content marketing strategy.

The Most Effective Lead Follow-Up Strategies: Adam Bluemner on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]

In this podcast, Adam Bluemner from Find Accounting Software talks about the most effective follow-up strategies for web-based B2B lead generation from an analysis of 63,256 calls.

Based on the study, if a sales representative waits a day before calling, the contact rate goes down. Bluemner also wrote a case study on follow-up calls on the company website, which is another excellent resource for B2B companies trying to improve their sales strategies.

What Makes Buyers Tick: Dr. Carl Marci of Nielsen Consumer Neuroscience on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]

Nielsen Consumer Neuroscience’s chief neuroscientist, Dr. Carl Marci, shares insights into the customer’s decision-making process. The podcast can help you understand how your audience responds to a particular ad while they’re still watching it, or if a particular way that a product is packaged turns people away rather than inviting them in.

The biggest lesson here is that a customer’s emotions play a large role in deciding whether content is relevant or not. The secondary lesson is that B2B marketers are now capable of analyzing the effect of their marketing campaigns through a real-time collection of consumer reactions without disrupting the content consumption experience.

How B2B Brands Can Rock Social: B2B Marketing Forum Speaker Eric T. Tung on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]

BMC Software’s social media manager, Eric Tung, shares how brands can be rock stars on social media. Social media can become an efficient lead tool for brands, but it requires planning. It’s not just about posting when or what you want to.

A great piece of advice from this podcast is to empower a company’s employees to become social media ambassadors by rolling out policies within the enterprise. Getting senior executives to be active on social media, especially LinkedIn, is also a good way to generate brand awareness.

Why Millennials Ignore Your Marketing (and How to Fix That): Matt Britton on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]

Millennials are experts in tuning out marketing in conventional media, which is a big problem for brands. Marketing expert, Matt Britton, is the CEO of social media agency, MRY.

In this podcast, Britton shares tips to catch the attention of elusive but powerful Millennials. If Millennials account for a significant chunk of your target market, then this is the podcast for you.

As you can see from the listed podcasts, Marketingprofs has an incredible amount of quality audio content for lead generation professionals to learn from.

Case Studies

Xeikon

This case study is about Xeikon, an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) who used to focus on an annual trade show. The company decided to run a multi-month and multi-channel campaign to generate leads and create awareness.

The targeted marketing effort was able to achieve a 300% ROI and resulted in 140 qualified leads. That might not seem like much but for an OEM, that was an astonishing amount of new business.

ServiceMaster Solutions

This case study is about ServiceMaster Solutions, a commercial janitorial and cleaning services franchise based in Portland, Oregon. It’s one of the five biggest commercial franchises of its kind in the United States.

When the CEO realized they had exhausted their relationship-building initiatives, they decided to leverage an online direct response ‘marketing machine.’ The campaign resulted in a 9 percent conversion rate and a 150% surge in generated leads.

Maersk

Who would have thought that a shipping company could generate so many leads using social media? Danish shipping company, Maersk, turned to social media not just to increase its brand awareness but also to enhance employee satisfaction, gain market insight, and forge relationships with its customers.

They started sharing ‘inside stories’ that happen in their business such as where their staff comes from and how they are helping increase the sale of avocados from Kenya.

Since then, the shipping company has significantly increased brand awareness and grown a large social following all because of targeted content and social media marketing.

Source: Search Engine Journal

IBM

B2B marketing for software and hardware are harder than B2C. Conventional lead generation methods include email and telemarketing, but IBM decided to go a different route by launching the ‘intelligent listening’ program internally.

They ‘listened’ and investigated conversations about cloud computing on social media from users. Their sales people were given access to an RSS feed to find related content that they could then post on social media and to their internal IBM site profile pages. These efforts generated a boom in their B2B customers, showing how important it is to listen to your audience.

Inspired Marketing

Inspired Marketing is a B2B company that sells online training programs and digital materials about social networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

In 2010, the company released over 300 web seminars or webinars called GoToWebinars. The campaign resulted in more than $2.5 million in sales for 2011. In January alone, seven webinars resulted in sales of $250,000.

Wrap up

All of these online resources provide expert insights on lead generation. Success stories (case studies) can help show you particular tactics and strategies other companies have used successfully. This can direct your future efforts in a more strategic manner.

If you think you’ve exhausted your current relationship building capabilities, take a cue from some of the experts on the podcasts or leverage the cold, hard statistics available to help you craft a more effective lead generation campaign.

Better yet, your research and brainstorming might just lead you to discovering your own innovative way to generate leads. It may just be successful enough to land your business in a case study of your own!

Do you want to use some of the marketing strategies seen here on MIG’s site but need some help or advice? Marketing Insider Group has a team of 35+ experienced writers ready to produce content for YOUR business. Check out our weekly blog content service or schedule a free consultation. 

The post 20 Handy B2B Lead Generation Resources appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

sprouting tree representing growth marketing agencies

Most business owners agree that marketing is a great tool to help grow your business. Growth marketing is a subset of the many tools marketing provides that can be particularly effective in growing your business.

Growth marketing mainly relies on two strategies to help grow your business. First, growth marketing focuses on building customer relationships. Second, it fosters customer loyalty to ensure you keep customers coming back.

While it is a long-term strategy, growth marketing can pay dividends if you stick to it. But where do you start? While there are steps you can take on your own, typically the best results come from engaging experts. These top growth marketing agencies can help guide any business owner to maximize success in their business trajectory.

What makes a great growth marketing agency? How do you choose the right one?

Growth marketing is a complex subject, causing many who seek it out to become confused and frustrated when trying to navigate the process. A growth marketing agency is supposed to be your partner when trying to grow your business. You can allow them to do the heavy lifting in regards to executing your approach while you can focus on other aspects of your business.

But how do you know which agency is right for you? A good growth marketing agency should:

  • Be open and transparent with their approach and how they can become an asset to your team.
  • Understand that in growth marketing, the customer comes first.
  • Get to know you as a client and build a reliable customer relationship.
  • Line out their strategy with proven examples or data supporting their proposed methods

Here are the best growth marketing agencies out there:

  1. Relevance – One of the top choices for leading your industry through PR, SEO, and Thought Leadership – Best Overall Growth Marketing Agency
  2. PreApps – Known for strong results in mobile app marketing and adoption – Best Mobile App Agency
  3. Swidia – Offers personalized media strategies to support your business credibility as you scale quickly – Best Media Strategies Agency
  4. EmberTribe – From social media assistance to email marketing, EmberTribe offers services that can comprehensively build out your sales funnel – Best Paid Advertising Agency
  5. Tuff Marketing – From initial strategy to crafting original content, Tuff Marketing can help you achieve both fast results and long-term success – Best Data-Driven Agency
  6. Ladder.io – Offers strong expertise in global growth marketing endeavors – Best Global Agency
  7. Marketing Insider Group – Tied for highest-rated content marketing agency on G2 with more than 20 customer reviews and an average 4.9 rating, we hope you chose us for your SEO-driven blog writing needs – Best Content Marketing Agency

Methodology For Assessing An Incredible Growth Marketing Agency

There are a lot of components to consider when selecting the best agencies out there. Reviewing each agency’s website can give a lot of information about the services. You can also look at online reviews, but those are potentially subject to manipulation. There are numerous full service agencies. To make our list, we required the agency to focus on growth marketing; we also reviewed specific tactics they use.

We’ve identified three main ingredients that combine to make a highly rated growth marketing agency. These qualities are essential in driving the results and speed of business in 2022 and beyond.

Innovative Strategy

Innovation within growth advertising involves creating customized strategies based on a business’s individual needs. What’s important to your company? Significant organic growth or paid growth?

Once you lay out your goals, your growth marketing agency should be able to craft a comprehensive plan to get you there. Building long-term brand loyalty will have different processes and timelines as opposed to support of a product launch. Identify how you want to grow and seek an agency capable of using a savvy combination of techniques to get you there.

Range of Clients

You want your agency to have small growth companies and also larger companies. You also want them familiar with different industries as well. Specialization has its advantages, but there are major benefits to flexibility.

Agencies that service a range of clients tend to be more adaptable to changes in growth techniques. Something that works in one field can potentially be tweaked and applied to another industry. Specialists might be unaware of opportunities outside of their specific niche. The best growth marketing agencies will be well rounded and adaptable.

Ability To Execute

Do they have deliverables in their service fee or are retainers due regardless of corresponding content or placements? Make sure expectations are clear in this regard. If you are under the impression that your monthly fees guarantee deliverables, check that you are receiving them. And if so, are your deliverables arriving by expected deadlines?

Another component to ask about is what results they’re striving for. It’s important to know how to gauge the effectiveness of a growth marketing agency’s efforts. Are you looking to improve a certain number of places in keyword rankings? Alternatively, are they tying their results directly to increased revenue?

The bottom line regarding execution is whether or not they have the ability to deliver the results they promise. If an agency cannot meet deadlines or achieve results in line with price points, you should look elsewhere for service.

The Best Growth Marketing Agency Reviewed

Now that you understand the criteria and know how we’ve broken down the best agencies, here is a detailed list of why you will — or won’t — love these marketing agencies.

Relevance – Relevance helps clients achieve the goal of owning their respective industry. They position themselves as a premium growth marketing agency that focuses on earning industry ownership through aligning a content strategy, digital PR, and custom SEO. Growth marketing can be a confusing area and Relevance has strategists that can identify how to get realistic results. This is a great agency to check out if you want to work with partners who are honest and have proven results to help you own your industry.

PreApps – If you are looking for help to launch an app, PreApps is the agency for you. PreApps provides an avenue for clients to successfully launch an app. On their site, they have an app analysis report that they will offer clients. They provide both paid and organic ads, as well as app promo videos to maximize success. You can also find resources including a blog and podcast to inform you of everything you need to know about the App Industry.

Swidia – While growth marketing can be a slow and steady process, Swidia provides clients an accelerated avenue. They provide a user acquisition team, creative studio, and growth advisory to assist clients with generating new leads. With clients including Cameo and Hennessey, you are guaranteed to achieve success with this agency.

EmberTribe – EmberTribe provides everything a client needs in regards to paid advertising. They have a proprietary method that they lay out here on their site. This agency is ideal for ecommerce brands, especially those who need help growing their business. If you are in the market for paid search, paid social media, email, or conversion rate optimization, this is a great place to start.

Tuff Marketing – Tuff Marketing values data transparency and adjusts their strategies to adapt to tactic successes and failures. Rather than a “set it and forget it” attitude, you’ll be sure to get frequent updates on how your traffic and keywords are performing. For both quick bursts and sustainable improvement, Tuff Marketing can create and execute a customized plan for your business.

Ladder.io – Ladder.io is truly a global marketing agency with strategists located all over the world. They are well-rounded in their service lines and work with both startups and Fortune 500 companies. They take pride in staying up to date with the most current growth marketing trends and offer full-funnel support. If you’re looking for an agency that will adjust strategies throughout your business’s growth, Ladder.io is a good choice.

Marketing Insider Group – MIG works by utilizing three tools to achieve success for its clients. Technical SEO, content strategy, and weekly SEO blog writing that all work in sync to increase organic search rankings with the right audiences. MIG works with large companies, B2B SaaS leaders and startups where buyers are searching for information online. Our clients see an average of 138% YoY growth and 7x ROI. Check out a few of our case studies including a large technology brand, a SaaS business, a Services growth brand, and even a case study we did on ourselves.

best content marketing growth agency

Picking The Best Growth Marketing Agency

If you’re still not sure which growth marketing agency to go for, we understand. All these companies have unique skills, awesome clients, and tremendous growth themselves.

We have an idea to help you get started: reach out to us and we’ll objectively listen to what you need, explain the pros and cons of different approaches, and recommend the best partner for you. We only work with companies who get what we do. And happily refer clients to growth marketing agencies like Relevance when it makes sense. So give us a shout and we’ll set you on the right path to growth.

The post How To Pick The Best Growth Marketing Agency And The Ones You Should Check Out appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

7 Steps to Tame the Marketing Chaos written by Sara Nay read more at Duct Tape Marketing

How to Tame the Marketing Chaos…

What’s wrong with small business marketing today?

I’ve spent years in the business world, and these are some of the most common statements I hear from struggling business owners and entrepreneurs trying to build successful marketing and operations system for their business;


I’ve spent most of my marketing budget on a new website, and it looks great, but it’s not generating any leads.

I’m paying an SEO company thousands of dollars each month. And I have no idea what kind of results I’m getting.

I’m sending out direct mail, and I think some people are calling me from it, but I am not sure. 

I’ve started to invest in paid advertising, and people are going to my website, but no one is calling me.


Take the Free 5-Minute Business Assessment

Discover what’s holding you back

What do these examples have in common? First, they focus on single tactics and not the entire customer journey. Second, they are focused on one thing and not the entire system.

The opportunity in small business marketing today is to focus on your customers. And you focus on your customers in two main ways other than the product. First, see where your customers are trying to go and how you can better understand them. Second, you need to map out all of the systems that contribute to that journey. This will allow you to repeat the process that works and give every customer the same awesome experience every time. 

This post will cover;

  • How to get started understanding your ideal customer
  • Your ideal customer journey and how both the marketing and operations arms of your business play a role – the marketing hourglass
  • The 7 steps to small business success through systems mapping

This is a long blog post packed with tons of great information for your business. So feel free to bookmark and come back to it later, but whatever you do, make sure to take the time to digest all of this information. I promise it will help in the long run. 

everyone is not your customer - seth godin

“Everyone is not your customer.” – Seth Godin

Know Your Customers

Before we talk about the marketing hourglass, it is essential to take a step back and understand who your ideal clients are on a deep level. I am not just talking about demographic information either. You need to understand what motivates your target audience, their behaviors, and what solutions they are looking for? After all, how can you guide them if you don’t know what they’re looking for?

Obtaining that level of knowledge is really important before you start developing anything else from a marketing standpoint. First, you have to fully understand where your clients are trying to go to help them get there.

Once you understand who you are targeting, the second part of marketing is to understand your differentiators and how to communicate them to your ideal clients. Next, you need to answer the questions; How are you going to stand out? What’s your competitive differentiator? How are you going to build brand awareness?

After you have clearly defined those steps you can then dive into your marketing and operations systems.


The Marketing Hourglass

The Marketing Hourglass is a proven system that I have installed in thousands of businesses around the world. The marketing hourglass reverberates around a new kind of customer journey for your business.

the marketing hourglass steps are know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat, refer

There are two different types of systems that you need to have in place in order to effectively move people through this journey. They are your marketing systems and your operations systems.

The top of the hourglass holds the first 4 phases – know, like, trust, and try – and they make up the ‘marketing system.’ This part is about getting in front of your target audience, and it flows until they are ready to become an actual client. 

The bottom of the hourglass holds the last 3 phases – buy, repeat, and refer –  also known as the ‘operations system.’ When someone becomes a client they’re in the buy phase, how can you absolutely blow them away and exceed their expectations so that they become repeat customers and refer you to everyone they know? That is your operations side. 

Every business needs both marketing systems and operations systems. You need marketing systems and sales systems in order to grow and generate demand. Then, once you create that demand, you have to be able to deliver the promised value to keep them coming back.  

The Marketing Systems: Know, Like, Trust, Try

They can also be thought of as the marketing and sales system. This system is defined by a clear path to help you convert your target audience based on the customer journey.  

Ask yourself, how can you get someone to know your business all the way to their ready-to-purchase moment? Some examples of this would be conducting a free webinar with a client consultation as the end goal or launching some paid ads in order to sell a product or service. 

First and foremost you need them to know about your business. You can do this in several ways. One recommendation would be to use the P.E.P system.

A lot of marketers put marketing media into 3 buckets; paid, earned, and owned. At Duct Tape  we took a new approach and relabeled those buckets Paid, Earned, and Person or P.E.P. 

Paid is stuff that you will always continue to pay towards. Examples are; advertising, direct mail, and sponsorships. 

Earned is the work you put in, it takes time and patience, but long term, it can pay off big. These are things like; search engine optimization (SEO), social media, and referrals.

The last category is Person and it means that an actual person has to do something. That is networking, speaking, and outbound outreach. 

For best results, your journey should focus on at least a couple of these mediums so you do not have all of your eggs in one basket, so to speak.

customer-journey-marketing-operations-systems
The Operations System: Buy, Repeat, Refer

Your marketing systems are how you generate demand which then leads into your operations systems. The operations half of the customer journey defines a clear path to deliver the value promised to your clients. Therefore, every marketing system should have an operations system to go with it.

Once someone purchases, how do you move them along as a customer and generate repeat revenue? And if you’re focusing on referrals, what does that process look like?

Onboarding a new client is an example of an operations system. The client went through your marketing system, they signed up, and now you need to onboard them. What are those steps?

Your operating systems do not necessarily relate to a sale, but they are processes that need to be documented in order to keep your business moving forward. 

Now that we have the basics covered let’s get into how to build a successful system


7 Steps to Build A Successful Business System

  • Map out core marketing and operations systems

  • Determine what you can automate

  • Document your critical stages and processes

  • Identify key metrics and systems

  • Assign key stages and metrics to team members

  • Schedule weekly review meetings

  • Hold quarterly strategic planning sessions

Map Your Core Marketing and Operations Systems

This first step is vital for many reasons. First, mapping out your systems allows you to be efficient and effective. It also allows you to consistently deliver the same level of experience to every single one of your new clients.

Step 1: 
Is to get started. Don’t let the unknown paralyze you. Identify your most important (or most profitable) product or service and start with that. You will not go wrong by focusing on the most profitable part of your business.
Step 2: 

You need to define the start and stop of your marketing system for that product or service. Ask yourself, “At what stage is the process beginning, and at what stage does it end?

Step 3:

Brainstorm tasks and activities between the start and the finish of each system.

Once you understand your system, you need to document the steps. Start by brainstorming all the steps that need to happen between the stop and the finish of each system. Note; It is important to identify which steps are the most critical to the process and be sure you nail those every time.

Someone attends a webinar, and then what happens? They get an email nurture campaign, and then what happens? You are mapping out the journey to land on your desired end result.

Step 4:

Make this process repeatable. The system needs to be identifiable and easy to follow. Write it out in plain English or better yet have a visible outline. Also, make sure everyone on your team has access to the steps and follows the process. Next, physically go through the plan you have mapped. This exercise will help you identify any holes or areas of opportunity. 

Get started mapping our your first system

Step 1

Identify your most profitable business system

Step 2

Define the start and stopping points in this system

Step 3

Brainstorm tasks and activities between the start and finish of the system

Step 4

Clearly label all stages and make the process easily repeatable

System Mapping Tool

We use a product called Whimsical. It’s a free tool to help you mind map and brainstorm in a clear and visual way. 

Below are a few tips for organizing your visual system map;

  • Use a terminus shaped symbol to define your start and endpoints
  • Use a rectangle to identify your tasks, activities, and processes 
  • Use a diamond shape to identify important decision points 
  • And use arrows to indicate the flow and direction of each event

Remember to start from the beginning and keep asking yourself, “What needs to happen next?”

Example Marketing System – made with Whimsical
example-webinar-process-map

The start of this marketing system is a webinar and this is made clear by the terminus shape. The arrows are pointing to the right so you can see which way the process flows and the next step. A rectangle indicates that the next step is a task where the client enters an email campaign. Then there is a pivotal call to action for a consultation booking.

Here you see a branch in the system. Do they book the consultation? If not, they are put into the down-sell campaign because we can see that they are not quite ready to get on the phone.   

However if they booked the consultation, they continue through the system to the next task or CTA. And so on and so forth until they are either onboarded as a new client or put into a future email automation bucket. 

This systems mapping process is the first step towards transitioning from tactic to strategy and from hacks to systems. It’s getting all of these pieces in place by answering the question and then what happens next?

Determine What You Can Automate

The next step is setting yourself up for success and avoiding burnout by asking yourself, “What can I automate in order to be more efficient?”

I recently went through this exercise with a client. She was spending hours making custom agreements for her clients. Mapping her systems allowed her to see this and we got her a proposal software. Now, she changes a few key terms and is done in seconds. She uses the time that used to be spent creating, editing, and sending the document to acquire clients. 

Now see what you can automate. If there is a task that ties you down, ask yourself, “How can I automate this?” Call reminders and email follow-ups are great examples of processes that you can easily automate.

Document Critical Stages and Processes

Next, take a look at the most important processes in your systems. The areas where things fall apart if they’re not handled correctly. 

Create these stages so that someone else could conduct a consultation call just by accessing your documents and jumping into a checklist. These steps should be very detailed, so that if you are not there someone else will know exactly what to do and how to do it, from start to finish.

Identify Key Metrics 

Identify the specific areas in your business where you want to track metrics. A good rule of thumb is to track metrics for all of the critical steps in your system. 

Using the example above, you would want to know how many people got on a consultation call or how many new clients were onboarded. This would help you to see the performance of each stage. By tracking key metrics, you can see if there are gaps and where you need to focus to improve your system moving forward.

spark-lab-scalable-factors
Team Member Accountability

If you have a team, you need to assign key stages and metrics to them depending on their role. This way they have more accountability and you can see the results they are driving. 

If you have a marketing team, you might assign digital ads performance tracking and reporting to them. And if you have a sales team you would assign a different stage to them. Then you would look at all of your systems, and you and your team would divide and conquer. 

This is also an important stage for solopreneurs. For example, we started Duct Tape Marketing with just two team members. So we would say, “Okay, this stage I’m in the marketing role, this stage I’m in the sales role, this stage I’m in the customer service role.”

You need accountability and metrics for each of these stages, and you need a person behind those metrics. Completing this step will also make it easier when you do decide to expand or hire because you will have clearly identified roles and responsibilities.

Schedule Weekly Review Meetings

From there, schedule weekly review meetings with your teams based on your systems. In these meetings, you should go over their systems, metrics, and accountability chart. 

These meetings also allow you to lead, congratulate your team on their successes, and see where you need to step in. 

Hold Quarterly Strategic Planning Sessions

Next, you need to start holding quarterly, strategic planning sessions for your business. If you are not sure where to start, know that your systems should direct these meetings.

Once you install this process, you will be able to quickly identify what your growth opportunities are for both halves of the hourglass. For example, you could see what steps are holding you back from converting more clients in your marketing system. And on the operation side, you can start to understand why clients aren’t becoming repeat clients. 

When you build these systems, you are taking out the guesswork and creating essential strategies that can scale—resulting in a business that scales. 

Why go through all of this process mapping?

Predictable lead generation and growth are two main benefits that come from documenting new systems. In addition, you can make quicker and better business decisions based on metrics and evidence. 

Following a system allows you to develop processes to help you avoid errors and  significantly reduce the number of mistakes. In addition, you will build an accountability culture for yourself and your team. I know from experience that employees work better with a clear direction and a culture they support.

The clarity in these systems allows you to have hyper-focus and to get the most out of weekly meetings. Resulting in strategic planning that is not crowded with excess and focused on your most important goals.

Predictable lead generation and growth are two main benefits that come from documenting new systems. In addition, you can make quicker and better business decisions based on metrics and evidence.    Following a system allows you to develop processes that help you avoid errors or significantly reduce the number of mistakes. In addition, you will build an accountability culture for yourself and your team. I know from experience that employees work better with a clear direction and a culture they support.   The clarity in these systems allows you to have hyperfocus and to get the most out of weekly meetings. Resulting in strategic planning that is not crowded with excess and trimmed down to zero in on your most important goals.

The Value in Systems – Spark Lab Consulting

The goal of identifying and mapping your marketing and operations system is to increase demand for your business.

And along the way, it also helps you have more clarity and control in what you’re doing. This clarity and control will allow you to grow and scale in a smart and sustainable way. Not only leading to more profit but more peace of mind. 

This post was written in partnership with Spark Lab Consulting – a new initiative from the founders and team that brought you Duct Tape Marketing – designed to help you operationalize your marketing AND fulfillment systems. 

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