Beyond the Full-Time CMO: How Companies are Opting for a Fractional Future

0:07Hello and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jansen. My guest today is Nicole Bernard. She began her career with Microsoft over 17 years ago and since that time has owned and operated two successful businesses, as well as worked with other major brands, including Remax and Venus Williams. She also hosts a popular podcast called Bubbles and Biz and is a contributing writer to entrepreneur. We're going to talk about her fractional CMO experience. As you know, I'm doing a few shows specifically on that topic. So Nicole, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.

0:44I'm excited to connect and chat today. So the term fractional CMO, while it's become, I think, more mainstream, still has a lot of people confused. If somebody asked you, you know, you're at a party and you said, I'm a fractional CMO. And they said, what the heck is that? You know, how would you kind of briefly give a description of what that is? Yeah, I think it does. I think the word fractional just throws people off, whether it's like COO or CEO, any of that. But yeah, I explained that it is, you know, I help companies and businesses. I work with their teams, but for not full-time. So just a fraction of what they would need because they're not quite in the capacity to have a full-time CMO.

1:23So I come in and I'm able to support them in their teams with their budget and, you know, the time that they have. Like, I always like to ask, you know, who do you think, like, what's the perfect business that needs one of those? You talk about a company with a team, you know, theoretically they're getting marketing done. So what's missing, you know, in like the right perfect business for you to work with? Yeah. So yeah, a few that I have worked with and consulted with over the years that were just primed for the spot. They've been in business for a while. They're building their teams. A few were architectural design companies.

1:53One was a big staffing company and they had the team in place. Like they had actually like a social media director and marketing director, but they didn't have that one piece to tie them all together to start, you know, looking at the 20 ,000 foot level, as well as keep them on track to execute the day-to-day and week-to-week. So that's kind of where I've seen it. They've been in business for a while, they're doing well, but something's missing and they're looking for that one piece to take it to the next level. Do you find that the market is recognizing that term? I mean, I've essentially been doing fractional CMO model for probably 15, 20 years, but 15, 20 years ago, if I had a total business that they would have looked at me like I was crazy, right?

2:30But I think the whole fractional model itself is leaking into a lot of areas. So do you find that the market is starting to wake up to both the need for strategy and the concept of outside strategic help? I think so. I mean, I feel like I'm seeing the word fractional again in front of different executive level titles a lot more and more. And even when people hear it, it's still kind of that confused look, but they're able to grasp it a lot quicker than I think they would have, you know, not too long ago. And I don't know if that COVID helped with it either, or it was just kind of around the same time that a lot of, you know, these different kind of positions came available.

3:12Yeah, you know, I think COVID helped in two ways, frankly. I think a lot of businesses got caught off guard and realized, you know what, we don't have a strategy. So I think that was part of it. And I think there's a whole lot of CMOs out there that said, I'm going to go start my own thing. And so I think you had like this convergence of supply and demand increasing at the same time. Yeah, totally. Yeah. That's kind of where my experience of being a fractional CMO kind of took off. It was right before and then COVID kind of bumped it up and over. Yeah. So do you have like, here's what, you know, here's what a fractional CMO does.

3:46Here's what a fraction, here's what we don't do. I mean, do you kind of have this fine line of like, here's what you're going to get from me? Yeah, but I think, you know, every business is so different. So it still has to be so adaptable to that specific business and what their goals are and all of that. But you have a general kind of, you know, we start in the beginning with your foundation, what they're looking for, what they're missing. And then, you know, again, identify where their people are, their buyer personas, and then start to build out that strategy of what would work the best for them.

4:12And then, you know, depending if they do have a team or not or how big they are, just what those expectations are and what they're like, the reporting, all of those things. So I think in this model, in a perfect world, there's a whole lot of people that would like to come in and say, here's everything you need to do. See you later. Right. But most businesses, I mean, that I've worked with anyway, over the years, they've kind of said, wait, like, who's going to do all this now? Or, you know, will you stick around and may at very least help us orchestrate? Do you find that you are increasingly getting either drug into or having to push back on actual implementation?

4:47Yeah. So I think, you know, when they start to understand it and like those initial first, you know, meetings like, oh, this is amazing. But, yeah, they start to get a little overwhelmed, like, oh, we need to be doing all of this and we need to track all of this. And so that has, you know, ended up being longer term relationships than I probably thought that they would, but it's been great. But yeah, and I think also the accountability. So since they're not 100 percent sure they want someone to kind of guide them and or have their team answer to them. So, yeah, definitely a little bit longer probably than I thought.

5:20So tell me a little bit about your particular business model organization wise. Are you are you doing this kind of on your own because you can? Do you have a team of implementers or how do you, if somebody does need more than say you personally can provide, do you bring in partners? What's kind of been your model? Yeah. So I started as a marketing agency back in 2016 after we closed our first business and just did strictly done for you services. And so, and then again, kind of branched out in 2019 with this. So I have a team, like a graphic designer, I have writers, I have a marketing assistant.

5:56so that's able to take that you know part of the business and then for fractional cmo that's just all me but if they do need help you know we're able to which is kind of nice to dual service them if they're not wanting to do all of the marketing tasks so kind of two different models but just parallel with each other so here's the big question that i run up against with a lot of people that that have either want to do this model or have actually jumped out and doing this model of fractional CMO, in some ways you're just kind of selling your time, right? I mean, it's like, I can divide myself in three ways.

6:32You know, you get this and you get that and you get that. Do you find that's a little bit of the challenge of this model is that, I mean, you may be well paid for your time, but you only have so much time. Right. Yes. There's definitely a cap on how much you can do, you know, as far as selling your time. And then, you know, too, like even not just being on the meetings or the calls, there's other, you know, admin and things to take care of. So that is definitely, you know, I think we all need more clones of each other or something to solve that. Do you work from a framework? The reason I asked that particular question is, you know, we've actually, I mean, we actually have a fractional CMO system that we license to people and what makes it work is it has scope.

7:13It's like, here's what we're going to do. You know, whereas I think a lot of times, you know, business owners don't really know what they need, but they're willing to tell you what they need. And so, you know, if you just kind of go, okay, yeah, we can do that. And we'll be in this meetings on Tuesdays. And, you know, next thing you know, you get sort of sucked in, you know, to the business. Do you find that, that it, have you found it hard to put a scope around what they're going to get from you as a fractional CMO? Yeah. And I think at the beginning I didn't as well, and I didn't set boundaries super, super well.

7:44So, you know, I'd be answering emails at like 11 o 'clock at night. So yeah, So there's definitely a framework. You're an employee, even though you're not. Definitely a framework and boundaries that clear on in our kickoff call. So everybody's just on the same page and understands what is expected and where we're going and things like that. But definitely I did not in the beginning, and that was a little hard to overcome. Hey, have you ever tried to hire freelancers and found that the quality of work was lacking, or you got all the outsourcing excuses as to why the work didn't get done on time?

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8:55Because, hey, your pal John always takes care of you. So that's it. Go to deskteam360.info and book your call today. I'm sure that every one of your engagements has been amazing. but tell me where you assume potentially, you know, where have been some real pitfalls, like you didn't do this. And so it turned into that, or, you know, you didn't identify something or the expectations were wrong. Like where are the, you know, where are the potential we've started to allude to a little bit, but where do you find some of the potential pitfalls with this model can be? Yeah. So I think it kind of ties in with that the first, or just the question a second ago of really setting those expectations because I don't think business owners realize how long marketing can take to kind of start really seeing results, especially if they're not doing, you know, paid media or anything like that.

9:46So, which a lot of them that I've worked with, they have a little bit of both, but you know, you're going to wait a little while for SEO to kick in, you know, and I think they're wanting results extremely fast and we're getting results, but not kind of what they have, I think, in their mind of what should be happening. Sure. So just setting again, those expectations of like this might just depending on the strategies that we're working on, this might take a little bit longer. And I didn't do the best job explaining that in the beginning as well. But so but now I definitely do. Yeah, I mean, I mean, you could make a case for saying you avoid those problems by choosing the right client, right?

10:21I mean, you know, which obviously, until you have a little experience doing this, that's kind of, you know, that sounds good, but it's sort of hard to figure out, right? Right. Yeah, definitely. So when you had your agency and, you know, in many cases, agency model is even though you're going to do some strategic work, a lot of it's thought of like, no, you're brought in to do this project and this project. Did you find that when you went to the fractional CMO positioning, at least that it changed or it created a different relationship with the client? Yeah, it definitely did. Because my agency clients, they're great.

10:56We've had them for years, but there's a little bit of a different kind of relationship that you have as the fractional CMO. It's a lot more hands-on, more meetings. We have meetings in the agency world, but we send reports. So it's a little bit more disconnected than getting really in there, rolling your sleeves up, and the fractional CMO with the business and their team, for sure. Here's what I've noticed, because we've done the same thing over the years, is that I think businesses tend to view their agency partners as more vendors. Whereas in the fractional, especially when somebody comes in, I mean, you get close to the business, you're probably getting into areas that they didn't think were even marketing, you know, with them eventually.

11:37And you become this trusted advisor for them, don't you? And I think that changes a great deal. And in fact, you talked a little bit about relation or client relationships going on maybe longer than you originally thought they would. Do you feel that there's any aspect of they just want you around? Yeah, maybe. Because, yeah, it's funny. You know, you really do develop like a deeper relationship than just business wise. You know, like you see, you know, they'll tell you about your fit, their family and things like that. And so, you know, it's just that trusted relationship and wanting that to keep going.

12:09plus I think the accountability factor has been huge too that has been one of the biggest things I've seen that people really do want and that also just sometimes I feel like you're okay you're ready you know everything you need to do like you're ready to graduate you don't need me anymore and some of them are well no I kind of still do you know so it's been just kind of figuring that out like you're ready to graduate you know I have a client that I've had since 2004 and they really literally just want a monthly check-in with me. I mean, they just want to like, here's what we're doing. Everything's going good.

12:43Do you see anything? And I think there is a bit of that. They've just gotten used to it. Definitely. So when you, when somebody first hires you in this role, do you have like, here's what we have to do first. I mean, we have to go analyze and we have to go talk to you. I mean, tell me what your like first 30 days looks like. Yeah. So I definitely start with a pretty good audit of, you know, what they're doing and then run some different tests on my own and kind of see where our baseline is at, you know, what they're struggling with, what their goals are, their positioning, you know, like B2C is way different than B2B marketing.

13:18So, you know, just kind of, yeah, starting at that baseline, getting all of these. And it's funny too, a lot of times when I start doing that, the business owners are like, oh, I don't even know where that's at, or I'm not sure. Like they start, you know, peeling all of these like layers of the onion that they didn't even really know that they had to, but then they're also like so relieved because they, now they're like looking at the broad picture, like, okay, this is everything. And they feel a little bit more in control because they're finally starting to take control of it. And then, yeah, I've got a whole workbook that we start with, again, their buyer persona, their, you know, dates, things like that, their smart goals.

13:52And then you have a kickoff call. And then, yeah, then we start kind of meeting and implementing. And then from there, reporting, you know, just kind of seeing what's working, what we need to fix, things like that. But that 30 days is, it's a lot quickly, but then yeah, kind of start that cadence of meeting expectations. How much training or teaching do you feel like this involves over say a traditional kind of agency model? Yeah, I think it's a good bit because they are wanting to understand, whereas like a vendor, they just want you to take care of it. You know, as a marketing agency, like I'm not really sure, I don't really care what's not that they don't care, but they just want it to be done.

14:32In this model, I find that they want to know what's happening and why it's happening so they can better understand, which has been great. It's been really fun. And I've learned that I actually really like teaching them, you know, as we're going along. And it's kind of neat, too, for them to be like, oh, that's why we're doing that. You know, so. So one of the accountabilities of a traditional CMO is to build the department or the team. do you find you end up working with folks that they don't have a strategic hire maybe they've hired a couple people like everybody they're young so they can do social media or you know whatever the kind of the typical structures do you find that you are do you come into roles ever and help people build a team yeah i've done that as well because yeah sometimes it's usually they'll hire a social media person and then kind of think that's all of marketing you know and we're like no there's other a bunch of other aspects but yes i and i really enjoyed that too you know kind of Because I think that's also sometimes, you know, it's a big step of hiring someone to bring onto your team.

15:31So, again, getting that feedback, they like to confide and figure out what their hire looks like. So, yeah, that's been really fun, too. Well, and in many cases, they don't have a strategic marketing hire because they really don't understand marketing that fully themselves. So I think having somebody who can help them define a role, you know, what that role would do, maybe even manage. I know in cases, we've really done a lot of the managing of some of the roles because they didn't have them because they didn't want to do that part. So I think there's a lot of growth that can happen. Yes, definitely.

16:04And I'm going to say in the beginning, too, a lot of times it's the owner or higher up, they're kind of on the calls and then they hire the right people and then they kind of fall off. They're still wanting to be in the mix a little bit here and there and they'll hop on. But then once they hire that person, what they actually need, not just like a social media marketer. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Nicole, I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast to share a little bit about this evolving role. You want to, is there any way you want to invite people to find more about your work or connect with you?

16:36Yeah. You can head to my website. It's just nb.marketing. So it does talk about the agency and also the fractional CMO services. and from there you'll find the link to the podcast too and articles that I write so that's a great place to go tell me a little about your podcast just are you doing solo shows or you do interviews or no I do interviews you'll have to come on yeah I ship champagne to my guests and we sit there and we pop open the bottle and we talk about our entrepreneurial journeys and you know different tools they like what marketing works for their business different things like that so that's and biz.

17:11Okay. I get it now. Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you stopping by. And the next time, hopefully I'm in Hood River, Oregon, we can connect in real life. Yes, that'd be great. Thanks for having me.