Ep 19 - Why Every Fractional CMO Sounds Exactly the Same

The thing for me this week is I was trying to look at LinkedIn. And LinkedIn, we all know, is a great tool for business to business, marketing, lead generation, engaging with the right kind of audience that you want to grow your business if you’re a service provider in that sense.And as you start to talk about subjects on LinkedIn, as you start to talk about things, you will see more of those subjects and people who are interested and talk about and engage in those subjects. We’ll also see more of your content. It’s an interest based social media tool now. It’s not necessarily just going to serve you the content that you’re connected from people that you’re connected with and following. It’s interest based.And so what I see a lot of CMOs doing is talking about how the world of the CMO has changed and how things have changed and how they do things differently. But the reality is, if every single fractional CMO is saying the same thing, then they’re doing nothing differently. They’re just blending in like the crowd.Founders and CEOs, they’re my typical target customer. They’re the people I want to speak to. I want to speak to CFOs who are struggling to kind of balance the books with all the money they’re putting in marketing, and they want marketing to actually produce a decent ROI. They’re the people I want to speak to.So if all I was doing was I was talking about how fast the CMO world has changed and how the modern day CMO needs to be different... I do talk about that a little. But I don’t talk about it an awful lot. But I see every fractional CMO popping up on my feed saying the same thing day in day out. Why don’t we change the record?I think a fractional CMO today should be out there telling stories, talking about how they’ve transformed the businesses that they are working with. Even if you can’t talk about it because you’ve signed a non-disclosure or there’s commercial things there, you can still talk about: I worked with this client and we had this challenge and we worked through it, this is the result that we got. You know, it’s legitimately sharing how you’ve transformed things. It’s not about trying to defend the role that you’ve stepped into, because that’s what I feel like all this content does. It’s a real defense mechanism, to go, well, I’m different. Look at me. I’m not the same as everybody else, when actually it doesn’t work.If you are listening, because I know I have a lot of fractional CMOs who listen to the podcast as well, do something different. Start talking story. Demonstrate your expertise in different ways. Don’t just jump on the bandwagon that everybody else is on. Zig when everybody else is zagging.And if you’re a CEO and you’re a founder and you’re looking for a fractional CMO, those people that are in that defense mechanism mode, I know you’re not listening to them, because I’m talking to my clients and they’re saying, well, yeah, I’m seeing that all over the place, Ant. A conversation I literally had with a client this week was about this whole subject, and he said it just puts people off more than anything else, when somebody is in LinkedIn and they’re just trying to flog their services by saying how they are standing out and they are different from the world when everybody else is saying the same thing.And I guess that’s the thing with any marketing, within any niche, within any industry. We’ve got to stand out in a way that demonstrates our uniqueness as an individual, or our uniqueness as a brand, as a service, as a product, however we want to position ourselves or need to position ourselves in the marketplace. Being just you, being unique, zigging when everybody else is zagging, all of that kind of stuff, going against the grain helps you to stand out.My challenge to fractional CMOs that might be listening to this podcast: what are you doing that is just the same as everybody else? And can you stop it? Can you flip it on its head? Can you do something else differently? Can you be a little contrarian against the other peers that you have in your niche and in your industry? Can you actually start talking in a language that your customers are actually having in their own mind? Talk about their frustrations and how you can help them. Talk about their ambitions and how you can help them. Talk about the challenges within team, challenges within structure, the MarTech stack that is completely underutilized and wasting budget where the CFO wants to make savings. Talk about the things that matter to your clients, not just about building you and your brand. Because your marketing shouldn’t be about you, your marketing should be about your clients.And as a CEO and founder, if you’re listening to this message, it’s really important to understand for your brand, it’s about connecting your product to your customer through story. And I really do not believe that you need to do anything more than look at the marketing in your operations that does that one job. If you are not connecting your customer with your product through story, then actually the marketing is going to be missing a trick. There’s got to be a way that you can humanize the brand, make a stronger connection, and story is probably the best way to do it.I’m Ant Hodges, fractional CMO and host here at the CMO Field Notes podcast. Make sure that you’re subscribed over at www.cmofieldnotes.com or wherever you’re listening to this podcast, and I will see you again next time. Bye for now. This is a public episode. 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