E.T. Mac:
Take it away. Hey everybody. Welcome. Thanks for joining our webinar. I think we’re gonna give it a couple more seconds, you know, for everybody to trickle in slowly and then we’ll get the show started.

Courtney Kehl:
Yeah, we’re excited. We’re are nearing the end of the week. I don’t know if everyone else has had a rather long week, but I found myself each day saying, is it not Friday yet?

Like, how is this not Friday? So anyways,

E.T. Mac:
Here we are. I was just finding myself looking excited for this day. You know, I was just like, can’t wait for webinar day.

Courtney Kehl:
Really? Not Valentine’s Day. Not, not,

E.T. Mac:
I mean, love is, love is every day of the year, especially when you’re in marketing. Right? Just love marketing.

Courtney Kehl:
It’s all webinar day, huh? ? Yeah. All righty. I do now, like I feel like we’re like baiting it. I have, I have to call out the shiner like I have to like after, but I really cannot see it too close. Like if you lean a little closer to the camera, then you can see it. There is a great, so

E.T. Mac:
We’re just gonna start this webinar off.

Hi everyone. I’m E.T. I like to do combat sports for fun. . I’m also, we’ll get into introductions later, but got a little bit of a shiner on my left eye from training and yeah. All right.

Cool. So I think we’ll get started on

Courtney Kehl:
alrighty. Let me, Open up the slides here. All right. Oh, let me put slideshow on. Bear with me.

E.T. Mac:
There we go. So, hi everybody. Welcome to our webinar, fractional Marketing Slice of Your Marketing Pie. I’m one of your hosts, E T Mac I run sales and strategy and operations here at Expert Marketing Advisors. And also want to introduce my co-host, Courtney Kehl.

She’s our president and co-founder and Basically Marketing Guru from start to finish.

Courtney Kehl:
Yeah, thanks for that, E.T. This is the second time around that the two of us have worked together, so it’s a pleasure to be co-hosting this webinar and talk and shop. The strength in ET brings to the table is also sales operations, which doesn’t show here.

And it’s strong background in business development. So it’s really great for the two of us to, to be here today with everybody else on this webinar. We’d love for folks to dive in, you know, use the q and a, use the chat, throw comments at us and, and feel free to participate. Great. Nope. Another repeat of us

So I think we kind of double clicked on this. Maybe a little background on my end. I, I, I do have a, a focus on demand. Jen, I kind of came up through marketing during the era of when tools were coming around and marketing could, wasn’t just fluff and you could start actually diving into what was working and what wasn’t.

And that really kind of leded toward more the demand gen side and the growth of marketing side of things, and then et your back.

E.T. Mac:
Yeah, I’ve been in, you know, sales for close to a decade now. You know, I’ve done everything from the first out to close business to post sales renewals and, you know, started digging into the strategy piece of how to scale teams up from zero to 10 million plus pipeline and a r r, and now we’re working together to kind of bridge the gap between marketing and sales and basically bringing a full, full go-to-market.

you know, to our, to our clients. But getting into our webinar today, what is fractional marketing, right? Fractional marketing, supplementing your marketing efforts with outside resources. It’s always been around fractional marketing. It’s always been around as an extension of your marketing team. However, we’re seeing with the current economic climate.

That fractional marketing’s starting to gain a little more traction, not, not only with execution and, you know, getting certain parts of your marketing running, but also with the strategic leadership roles as well. I’ll, I’ll pass it over to Courtney right now to share how the pieces of your marketing pie and, and how fractional marketing can help.

Courtney Kehl:
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for that. No, I mean, it, it is true. We’ve been seeing this kind of come across our desk and, and hit our table more than, more than, you know, past years and more than other months. A, it’s the beginning of the year, so folks are kind of getting their getting their teams organized.

There’s been some transitions and in teams, there’s been layoffs. There’s been different sort of moving parts than ever b, more more moving parts than ever before. I would say. . With that said, as folks look at the sort of what, what it takes to kind of bring together all parts of marketing yeah.

There’s so many. My passion came from when market, when I first dug my teeth into marketing, and there’s so many different branches and you can go so many different directions. So it was just kind of this, you know, thirst for learning it all. . But when you kind of break it into the categories and you know, the, the, the parts that kind of bring together the full pie, so to speak, you’ve got operational people and those are the people that really support your backend and really kind of bring things through from all your campaigns and website and everything else.

Through to, you know, your C R M and your marketing automation. And, and these are the people that are really much more focused on putting the pieces of the puzzle together and really you know, focusing on the attribution and the MQs and, and bringing this through to your sales folks. They’re, they’re much more I don’t wanna say technical, but really, you know, looking at those workflows and looking, looking at, you know, what is needed behind the scenes.

The other side of that coin is the creative folks, which is drastically different than your operational folks. The creative folks and I, for lack of a better way, making things pretty. I mean, that’s oversimplifying it. The creative folks are really the ones that can take your company and, and give you a, a brand, a look and feel and, you know, kind of really make you recognizable in the market and pull that cohesively across all things, whether it’s your website or whether it’s a physical.

Booth or a physical asset of sorts, or, you know, the social media or even, you know something like co something that, you know, wearable. I mean, it’s a really a, a whole entire understanding of, of your company and how you wanna be represented in, in the world. Totally different from those operational folks, as I said.

And then the other side of that is, you know, the growth people the, these are the people that take the creative, take the operational, you know, and then bring that with a campaign’s plan, with something specific around, you know, let’s focus on March Madness and make that, tie that into our industry.

Or let’s focus on specific verticals, or let’s get that, that foundation of programs running and then, you know, scale that engine. And, and pull that together around the working with the operational folks around analytics and conversions and what’s working and what’s not. Work with the creative folks and around what do they need for, you know, as they go out into the world for both outbound and of course inbound as well.

Digital is it’s the world we live in now. So, you know, there is a phy, a physical presence for companies. But the digital side is, you know, first and foremost especially with B2B tech companies. That’s our wheelhouse. We speak that language for your website is your storefront and then all the other channel.

For whether it’s social or whether you’ve got, you know, some paid ads going on Google, of course, and where you’re ranking. All of those components really come together to make sure that you have a presence online. , sorry. The dogs have decided to contribute to the webinar. Apologies, . The joy of working from home.

So then the leadership side is the really, the role that’s kind of your head of marketing. The person that’s has an understanding of what are the needs from the other executive teams. Where’s the product roadmap? What are the sales goals?

How can marketing contribute to those sales goals? And, you know, those, those KPIs, the revenue pipeline and really bringing that all together and kind of that overall cohesive strategy for, for the folks in the other areas of marketing to bring that together.

Great. I hope, I hope that covered it. Was there something there as well, E.T.

E.T. Mac:
I mean, putting all the pieces together, summing it up, is that fractional marketing, the the slices of marketing have a lot of different facets and fractional marketing allows you to gain a little touchpoints and get traction on each of those without breaking the bank.

Right? That’s one of the things we can do. And actually moving forward on that, you know, let’s cover some pros and cons of fractional marketing

Courtney Kehl:
sure. Yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of different ways to look at this. And it, it’s great to kind of have that conversation and go through, okay, for your company specifically, look at the company.

Of course, that’s the asset. I always say bring it back to what’s most important for the business. Make it around a business decision. So, you know, do you want a full-time C m O? Do you want a full-time SFDC admin? Do you want a full-time creative What does that cost? What’s the, what are you going to, you know, what’s the return on this?

All of the above. And really there’s a lot of, it comes back to what stage is your company at and is there enough work? Are you gonna be scaling fast enough? Most folks don’t need a 40 hour a week Marketo or HubSpot person, but they do need to make sure that, that their backend is being touched on a regular basis, weekly daily, but just maybe not eight or nine hours a day.

So that’s, that does lend to the fractional side part of that argument. Reasons to maybe not have the fractional part is folks do have concerns. So maybe these, the fractional teams don’t have as much skin in the game. They’re not as attuned to what’s going on within the company. And, and so there’s concerns around, oh, well, they don’t have equity and they’re not, you know, as focused on the goals as perhaps somebody that’s in-house.

So there’s a little bit of, of sort of the things to weigh on both ends. The budget friendly piece, you know, I, I do feel, you know, it’s kind of. You know, splitting hairs when you really lay it out the cost of the, the C M O versus the cost of the, you know, the, the fractional team and you kind of, you put that on paper and I’m happy to walk anybody through that and kind of have that discussion.

It’s, it really kind of ends up being the same in the end. From the fractional team point of view as well. It’s easy enough to kind of scale up and scale down as opposed to doing layoffs or, you know, finding the specific talent. So those, those are some, some of that I know I’m not covering everything here.

I hate reading off of slides. I don’t know. Et I’m gonna throw, throw the ball over to you and see if there’s some more of this kind of round off the conversation.

E.T. Mac:
Yeah. A couple of the pros, you know, going back to the previous slides about marketing slices, you know, there’s, when you’re a smaller shop, for example, it’s hard to, you know, every single facet of the marketing efforts are competing for your attention.

But it’s hard to give them all that they need, right? So using a fractional team as an extension of your team kind of gives you ability to, you know, gain traction, put her expertise on specific skillsets. But some of those concerns might be, yeah. If they’re an outside resource, they might not be growing with your company if we look at it from a cultural standpoint, but they’re still there.

Right, right. Yep.

Courtney Kehl:
Absolutely. I’m a little biased, obviously, we’re, we are the outside team and I’d like not being, Within, embedded in the politics of, of some companies. But it is great to also you know, be able to kind of call it like it is and, and, and, you know, contribute to the results in, at the end of the day.

E.T. Mac:
Great. Yeah. So we’ve covered fractional marketing, what it is, and some pros and cons to having an outside resource. How do you figure out what’s the best choice for your organization?

Courtney Kehl:
Yeah, I mean, so, you know, we kind of, when it, it’s a little repetitive on the pros and cons, but specific for your org as you lay out what’s in front of you over the next three months, six months, one year looking at what, what those goals are that you need to hit and bring it back to numbers and just data, you know, , these are the, the goals that you need to hit.

Break that down across your budget and, you know, where, what do you have on in front of you as far as team and skillset and strengths and when, what are those gaps? And I, and, and be candid about it. And do you really need to bring somebody in to, to fill that gap or do you wanna just kind of plug and play?

And, and tying that back again to actual spend. and outcome and results. So it, it, it can actually be kind of knocked down in a simple spreadsheet at the end of the day just to really be as basic about it as, as as as you need to be. And then I think all of us, if any given time in our marketing careers have always hired specialists for specific things.

Cuz it’s just, you know, you’re just, again, not at that point where you wanna bring in-house for, for spec. Niche areas, you know, your Q1 is gonna be drastically different than your q4. So it may make more sense to kind of just have these resources at your disposal when needed, but not necessarily, you know, have to manage them throughout an entire year.

Yeah. It’s, it’s an individual decision within the co, within your company, and again, aligns to your revenue and your your forecast and your, and the budget that you’ve been, that you’re asking for, or.

E.T. Mac:
Yeah, totally agree on our website. Even. We have a marketing funnel available on expert marketing advisors.com and it helps a lot of organizations before, whether they talk to us or not, kind of figure out where they’re gonna get to and work backwards from there on their, you know, their marketing set.

Having said that, let’s switch over to some case studies, some real world examples of how fractional marketing has helped companies small and.

Courtney Kehl:
Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, there’s many different examples that we can think of. Over the years are all, again, specific to. An individual company unique for those orgs.

I mean, these are human beings. We’re talking about . So, you know, some folks needed just, you know sales enablement. Some folks needed to, the nd the end-to-end team. Some folks just need the strategy hat. But this one in particular it was a six month really just dive in across the board pieces, o of all the marketing team, diving being able to kind of pick everything.

Rebrand, go through a whole new site whole new look and feel and launch as if they were launching a whole new company company even though they had been around for quite some time. Basically taking the company from an on-prem solution to a cloud multi-cloud solution. As a result whole new go-to market.

Strategy refresh on their tech stack, cleaning everything out. You know, introducing a couple newer integrations. They’re really diving in across their buyer journey and what gaps there were. If there was a new buyer new buyer to introduced to the, to the table. And then of course, really amplifying things across their multiple channels, partners, social media they’re, they’re inbound, really.

And again, the social, the, the sales folks the, the sales and enablement piece really trying to do an overhaul with their sales team. So I was thrilled. I seen the conversions just skyrocket in the course of six months was really phenomenal and, and, and, and resulted in 8 million over, over the course of, of those six months.

So just a really good example there. This one is similar in the sense that there was rebranding and really kind of launching this company as if they were, you know, coming to the market as fresh and new. They’d only been in previously in the market for a very short amount of time, so it wasn’t as if they had much recognition to begin with.

So it was almost as if they were coming outta stealth mode. and this one, as opposed to doing the full end-to-end sales enablement and buyer journey. And, you know, the tech, the backend tech stack and all of the above. This was really much more focused on their website asset creation and just growing their footprint across the digital front very quickly, over again, a short amount of time.

I think this was also six months. So the, the the website. Leaps and bounds. The traffic just, you know, came from all sides. A fair amount put across ppp, C and s E m Ads, ads and such. And then as the SEO and assets grew, you know, we could kind of taper back some of that spend. So it was, there was a little bit of strategy to that as well.

So fast forward three years after th. This, this point in time, they are now a unicorn. So thrilled that we were able to contribute to that success.

E.T. Mac:
Yeah, those are, those are great examples of how fractional marketing and especially E M A helps support these companies. You know, some all and large we’ve got some questions come in court.

I wanna run by you real quick. So the first one looks like it’s, how do I know if I have some gaps in my market?

Courtney Kehl:
Yeah, I, I mean, so as you’ve kind of, I, I like to think of the year as a 90,000 foot view. Look at your milestones. For us, I’m finding more and more that, especially after 2020, the three year and five year plans are not as relevant.

People are, are looking at the one year. They’re not set in stone, I should say, the three year and five year plan. The one year plan is, is you wanna have that mapped out with your 90,000 foot view with those milestones. And then at the six month mark, you of course wanna take stock and, and assess what, how close you are to those goals.

Have you, have you knocked these down? What’s outstanding? Do you need to. Right size or can you push even further and scale even more so it just, I think we’ve just learned to just be really fluid just from 2020 alone and us all surviving. And it’s, it’s a good thing ultimately, but, so finding those gaps along the way, when you look at it from that sort of that 90,000 foot view and your, your milestones within each month and quarter, you can pretty much from there realize what, what skills you’re gonna need to execute across those and get to those and and be able to knock those down.

Realize, okay, this, this, I’ve got an event coming up. I have a trade show coming up. Do I have anyone that can help me successfully execute an event if I’ve got a product launched? Do I, do I have the media support? Do I, do I know which media outlets? You know, there’s just components that are, again, mapped to specific experiences and backgrounds that people have that they can dive in and, and ensure that you’re really being able to drive toward those miles.

Does that make sense? I know that was like kind of long-winded .

E.T. Mac:
Yeah. You just, you know, make sure like getting work backwards, understand the gaps. Also realize the, have your milestones in place to do a quick heat check and also know how to set yourself up ahead of time to ask the right questions so they aren’t reactionary.

Right. We can, there’s always gonna be short term impulses, but we gotta, you know, have a long term thinking to, to get through that. Second question that’s come through is, how do I know how to budget for each area of market? You know, it can be fractional, stuff like that. Yeah,

Courtney Kehl:
that’s a good question. I mean, it’s, it’s a very, so that’s a candid question.

And, and I’m always gonna be direct, open, honest, the, the way I’ve kind of. Placeholder, you know, plus or minus 10 K here or whatever. But entry level marketing 60 to 80 K per position mid-level upwards of 120 K senior level, now you’re getting to into 180 k. C M O levels can even be up upwards to a quarter million.

But when you, again, when you break through, like if you’ve got a mid-level marketer, they’re going to be good in some areas, but not good in, in all areas. It’s just part of human beings. We just, we can’t do it all. We’re not truly jack a jack of all traits. We’re just, you know, there’s, you’ve gotta let folks really excel and, and, and Succeed in the areas that they’re, they’re best at.

So the other part of that is, again, the fractional piece to augment that or just, you know, and when you do the math and you kind of say, okay, I need these areas to, going back to the beginning of our presentation here, is these are the core areas that I’m gonna need to be able to have a team stretch across.

You know, who fills these areas? Then you can look at a, a team like ours to augment. And it really kind of, it honestly all comes out the same. It, it kind of consider it just kind of a wash. You know, whether you’ve spent 120 K on a fractional team and you basically have a marketing department at your disposal and, and folks get pulled in at the right time at the right place, or whether you try to, you know, piece together FTEs at different, different levels of their career.

E.T. Mac:
Yeah. So it all comes out to you now how, how, what your strategy is for your overall business, right? And how we can work backwards for your revenue goals. Mm-hmm. . And so that’s kind of our questions for today, but if you guys have more and actually want to dig deeper into some of the areas we talked about, we’re expert marketing advisors, we’re readily available.

And feel free to

Courtney Kehl:
reach out. Yeah, absolutely. We we’re thrilled at the talk shop. I love I love diving in with the companies that are in their various stages of high growth and have things in front of ’em to knock down. Great. Well, thanks so much, ETI. This was a pleasure chatting with you.

E.T. Mac: Nice having meet you too.

Court. Great.

Courtney Kehl:
Catch up soon. Bye.