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Uncover hidden gems and insights from the world's greatest marketers.
Today we are going to cover being a
fractional CMO, refining your audience,
and the big pendulum swings in marketing.
I spoke with Jon Levine about this
and much more in this episode.
Jon is a fractional CMO who's worked
with dozens of startups and even billion
dollar companies, and he's helped
them find their ideal growth strategy.
He's also been a marketing leader
internally at multiple companies.
Let's dive right into the episode.
For people that are not super familiar
with fractional CMO work I'm sure you
can guess what it is, but maybe if
you wouldn't mind walking through your
day-to-day or what an average kind
of agreement or deal looks like for
fractional Cmmo work where, I don't
know, just an idea of what you're doing
for companies, cuz there are definitely
people out there that have no clue.
Yeah.
And be honest, it's a term I struggle
with as well because I think some people
are always like, what's fractional?
Is it part-time?
Are you this, are you that?
And then so I try to simplify
and say, I am I'm part advisor
part strategist and part doer.
And I think a lot of that has to do
with the size of the company and then
eventually, the size of the engagement
or what the engagement's asking for.
But that's secondary thing.
And typically, when I say the size
of the company, is it a CEO or often
an entrepreneur that's looking.
Usually has either a very junior or maybe
not even a team around them and just
needs a thought leader or a partner,
someone to bounce ideas off of, someone
to help to figure out, some complex
things or just where they should be
going with their business or their brand.
And that's the advisor role.
I think it starts to blight into
the strategic role when I think the
team start to build and they're,
they need a little bit more.
Process or how are we building out a
team to a marketing strategy or how
are we approaching a certain digital
channel or non-digital channel?
And then and I think the tactical is, Hey,
we need someone really in there to lead
this team and be here and what can you do?
And I think, at least for me I like
to say I can do a lot of those things.
There's things I like to tell people.
Like I'm, I know very I know well enough
to be dangerous and there's things that.
I, that are probably tactical roles that
I'm willing to roll my sleeves and do.
Not that I want to do them all the
time, but depending on what you need,
I can go there and do it for you.
What is your background then that
you most, most clients come to you
and say, we want you to run with
this channel or this strategy.
What is that thing for you?
Yeah, my, my background
is channel agnostic.
I grew up and learned my kind of, trade.
Pre direct consumer.
I started out in the brand world.
I've been doing this almost 20 years
building and launching brands when,
pre meta and when meta launched so
we were along straight to retail.
We had to build community, we had to
build awareness around what we were
launching and what we were doing in
order to, to people walking down a shelf
knew exactly what this product was in.
In one case, I was started, I was part of
To, how do you start building community?
Cause that's what Facebook
was about in the beginning.
It was we, I remember sitting in meetings
where we had, on the wall like, how
are we getting to 10,000 likes and
20,000 likes and had nothing to do with
dollars being spent or anything else.
But how do we build that channel?
And then of course, over time, how
to build my expertise in, in all the
different digital channels there.
But I've been I've built my career across
all that, especially on the startup side.
And then I've consulted to a lot of
big brands as as and there it was just,
it was really figuring out like growth
strategies, like what is usually for
the bigger brands, it's what's going on?
What are the newer brands
doing that we don't know about?
Bigger brands are often, slower to
react to and take advantage of things.
So as channels started to develop, a lot
of the work was always around mobile.
How do we take advantage
of these for us as a.
Be any category financial services down
to an apparel brand that I've worked with.
So it sounds like you've really
morphed into you have to be the
ultimate growth person and that's
what people are looking for.
Is that kind of a fair assumption?
That growth is the main thing and
then it channels out from there?
Growth is the main thing.
For sure.
I think what I like to tell I guess
clients I work with now too is I wanna
help you, steer you in the right direction
of where you should be investing your
dollars and time and resources and money.
All for the goal of growth.
But I think a lot of times, especially
entrepreneurs they either want
to do so many different things
and stretch themselves too thin.
And how do we, how do we simplify
business a little bit more?
Or what are the type of
people that we need to hire?
And I think I helped do that as well as
like, how do we put the right people in
place, either as a freelancer, fractional
person, or full-time hire that can
get you to the next level of growth,
and then the next level and the next
level and the next level after that.
So when you're working with a new client,
let's say, what, do you have like a
checklist of green flags that you're
looking for in a company where you're
like, if they hit this, and this, you
pretty much know you can help them grow.
Is there a checklist of those things?
Yes, and I come back to again I
think the checklists are different
depending on the size of the company.
I think sub 5 million has a checklist.
I say sub 25 million and then probably
sub a hundred million has a different
checklist even though there's a
lot of commonalities across those.
I think, for a lot of the sub 5 million
brands Especially ones who may have
launched in the last three years.
Or, like everyone talks about, pre
iOS changes and all those things.
The focus on creative was
secondary to those brands.
And so they built a pro, they made
a product, they put up a website.
It was pretty good.
It functioned, it converted they were
able to put ads out there that drove
traffic that then bought their product
and their product at the end of the day.
There's a product market fit, as I
like to say, and those are the brands
I like to get involved with anyways.
And there's a proof of concept.
People like their product cause
they're coming back and buy it again.
Often then they, I more than often or not
in those brands, they come to me and say,
my, my growth seems to start to plateau.
And something's wrong with my,
my agency or something's wrong
over here with my, this digital
channel or that digital channel.
And I think one of the biggest things, the
checklist is creative in today's world.
Like they've started to lose
the communication of what
they're telling the customer.
And to me that's creative.
When you come on a website, you have
a couple seconds to convey a message.
And how do you say it?
What's it look like and how do
you, and how do you get there?
And so I think that's a common
thing that every brand I've seen
in, let's say, two and a half
years of being a fractional CMO.
And even when I my last full-time
in-house hire, which I spent three
years at, was the same story.
It's every time we hit a different
plateau in each of these clients,
it always came back to that.
And then we would rebuild creative
on top of okay, all the tactics we
were gonna do within that channel.
And then we'd have to start
over and then start over again.
I'm sure after all the people that
you've talked to, like prospects,
actual clients at this point, you also
know the flip side of this, which is
red flags, but maybe flipping that
in a more positive light, like if a
company comes to you, what are some of
the things that indicate maybe they're
not ready for a fractional CMO yet?
I'd say the first is willing
to invest, and it doesn't
have to be a lot of dollars.
But invest in either a channel or.
Rebuilding something internally
rebuilding a website or fixing a
website cuz of conversion rate.
Or like I said, investing deeper into a
channel cuz we're seeing something working
doesn't, clearly if it's working so well,
they probably would've done that already.
But often they're either not
getting the right information or
not looking at it correctly to
say, oh, if there is an opportunity
here to first up further invest.
If they're not willing
to invest, it's often.
That's a red flag because I'm here
to help lay out that roadmap and
say, here's the opportunities.
We don't have to do them all, but
I'm gonna lay them out and I'm gonna
even help prioritize where we should
be spending time and effort and time
and effort to me is investing also.
It's not just about dollars.
And if you can't do that then my work is
not gonna be really meaningful to you, and
I'm not gonna know if I can actually grow.
Because if you're really looking for
someone to take over a specific channel,
someone who is a, pure media buyer that
can help, optimize your meta platform,
then you know, I'm always very honest.
Say, okay, I can help you find that person
too, because maybe that's what you need.
You just want someone to be really
in depth in the weeds doing that.
But I can't help you overall then figure
out like, how do we take you from X to y?
You had mentioned how you used
to have more of a full-time
role doing the same thing.
But now you've gone off on your own.
Maybe would love to just know why
you made that decision and why the
freelancer, the fractional route was
for you and what were some of the key
indicators that's what you wanted to do.
Yeah.
I'd say it's a couple reasons.
There's there's always gonna be a
personal element to all these things.
I decided I, I took a business
from that was bootstrapped into
a few million dollars in sales.
To when I walked away
or I left the company.
It was gonna cross the 30 million
threshold and be venture backed.
And ding that all, especially as,
probably seems like decades ago now.
But as we all shoved to, rushed home and
were locked up in our houses it seemed
the hours got longer and everyone was
trying to figure out what was gonna
come next and knew no one knew was gonna
come around the corner of the pandemic.
And I think with all of that going
on and just quite honestly working
a lot and just seeing that growth I
first did it to just take a breath
and say, Hey, this was a great ride.
What do I want to do next?
What's the next business
I want to go build?
And I built a couple
businesses before this as well.
So it wasn't the first time I'd done this.
And, in order during that time, I.
I wanted to work still.
I didn't want just to, I couldn't go
anywhere, couldn't travel couldn't take
off because we were all sick at home.
So I started to do this consulting
Infractional work, which is actually
how I had gone to my last startup.
It became one of my it was one of my
clients and I ended up going full-time.
And so I said let's see if I can
repeat that and see where it goes.
And as As we got through the beginning
of the pandemic and we knew that there
was gonna be this I guess somewhere
say the covid bump in the d TOC
world and things were going well.
More and more opportunities came.
And I love the diversity of working in
different clients in different areas.
And so I think that's what kept me going.
I have in my career, these 20 years
bounced back and forth between
running startups in a very specific
product to being on the agency
side where I worked across multiple
categories at the same time.
And there's pros and cons in
both, and I love both of 'em.
But as I started doing this was fun
because I got to, On a call at one
point talking about a, lifestyle
brand, and the next time talking
about a food and beverage brand.
And then moving to a
service oriented company.
And while, sometimes it felt a little
schizophrenic jumping around, it was also
fun because I also was able to, I am able
to figure out, Where there are synergies,
maybe it's not the exact same thing that
each brand's doing, but there's a lot
of similarities that everyone's either
struggling with or seeing success in.
And how do we take that and then
morph it into different categories
and see if that same tactic or idea
could work in that other category.
I'm curious to know, like how you
thought about marketing yourself
as you've become the business.
Maybe a lot of it's been word of mouth,
but are there instances where you've
built a marketing strategy for how to get
yourself out there, how to attract more
prospects and meet the right clients?
Yeah I've taken more of the word
of mouth marketing approach.
So it's not it's not super
passive, but I wouldn't say.
I've tried to be the influencer
on LinkedIn or Twitter or
some of these other channels.
I think what I do I'm trying to attract
also the, I think, the right type of
client and work with the right business.
And I think I don't have personally
the time or the desire to weed
through a lot of other things.
And I've worked hard to execute with my
current clients and build a reputation.
And within the ecosystem, because so
many of these startups and people talk
with each other and and are always
looking for the next thing that I've
been, I think, pretty successful there.
And even on platforms such as market hire,
I think the same thing goes for that.
Is that being successful that.
With certain clients have allowed
me to continue with, more clients
coming in, do something like that.
So I think it's been a hybrid of those.
I may have done some nutritionally,
I've sat on panels, I've done
podcasts and interviews and
blog posts and things like that.
I just have found that for me the
better clients that I've been able
to to get and be successful with
I've come through a smaller network.
Yeah, that makes sense.
The better clients
usually are more hard one.
The ones that come easy are
not gonna pan out as much.
Usually.
Yeah that's definitely interesting.
I, I am curious flipping gears a little
bit to back to your startup experience.
You've worked with kind of a big range
of companies, like big ones, small ones,
all, all across the spectrum there.
When you start thinking
about marketing strategy from
scratch, like nothing exists.
You're coming in and you're the one
that has to basically start building it.
What are some of those questions that
you're asking yourself to help you
at least get to from zero to one?
To get myself more often than not, and
given the, what you said, the range
of clients that have there, there's.
The product market fit, like I talked
about, has already been established.
So people like the Rock and I do work
with startups that have not launched yet.
And it's a slightly different
approach that I'll take, but let's,
we can pause those for a second.
Those who've started to generate revenue,
started to build traffic to their sites
and have that opportunity I, I often like
to, the very first thing is take a step
back and just look, just audit, no better
where I'm at, everything that has gone
on and everything they're doing that they
may not even know that they're doing.
And this could be, this is everything
from, in a very traditional way.
I look across their paid,
earned, and own channels.
And everything that they're
doing, what channels are they in?
How are they doing it?
Where are they seeing success?
Not success, what things they're
talking about on their website,
what pages are people visiting?
What products are they buying?
Are they bundling this with
other products and other things?
How can we get some consumer data on this?
I also, as I mentioned, come
from a, I start, I learned my
trade in a brand marketing world.
And so much of that is about consumer
insights and understanding who your
customer is why they, what are their
needs and why, why would they come and
buy your product versus a competitive one.
And so I spent time really trying to
think that through and understand them.
And often a lot of smaller brands
haven't thought that through.
Again.
They launched a, they had a really
good idea and a really good product.
And we're able to put it out there and
people came and start buying it, but
they know, not necessarily they, they
think they knew who their customer
is, but how do we hone that in?
Because that's gonna help dictate,
specifically what channels, what
type of messaging do we use, what
type of creative how do we make
the buying experience easier?
And so that's I'll start with that.
And that can be a quick sprint or that
could take me, two months depending on.
The client doing desire and how much do
they really want to go in depth on that?
And I've done both of those where it's a
two week sprint and a two month sprint.
Once we have that, then it really, what
I like to do is prioritize, in my own
mind, here are the top things that I
think will help us, start to grow or
take us to the next level or whatever
that is, and put that up against, all the
opportunities and what's it gonna take.
And then it starts becoming industry
conversations around trade offs.
Right time versus money versus, this
is not gonna have a huge return.
But it's really easy for us to do.
So we should do it now because over
the long run it can have huge benefits.
This is gonna take a lot
of time, a lot of money.
But if we actually don't start it
now we're never gonna see it at all.
So it's, there are certain
tactics that will take six months
to ever even see any success.
So every day you wait, it's
another six months out.
So how important, how big do we
think this is gonna be for us?
And if we think it's gonna be a
big opportunity, we should start
now versus it's still not gonna
be the big, we can start later.
And so we start having those conversations
and that, to me, that's how we get
from zero to one pretty quickly.
And then cuz from there, then
we're off to, starting to execute.
I wanna, I want to cover the audience
side but really quickly on the
success side there's obviously so
many metrics and every client's gonna
have different goals, but just as
like holistically as you possibly can.
What, how do you really gauge
success with your clients?
How do you try to come to terms
and come into full alignment with
them on what success looks like?
So how I see success to my clients.
I as there's the, in the
personal, internal way of
success, which is I guess tenure.
You're right, the longer I stay
around with the client, as long as
they need what I'm doing, and I've
had those honest conversations where
at this point they need to be, using
other resources and I'm, there's, you
shouldn't be using me and I've had
those where it's not worth paying me.
That'd be the first, I think,
level of success for me.
Now why are they keeping around us?
Because we're seeing growth.
I think at the end of the day is
we are seeing very, basically sales
go up and we're seeing that because
we're getting more efficient on
our advertising, our conversion
rates going up or a is going up.
There's no one metric
I would say that it is.
Most often we have those metrics,
but again, it's dependent on what
are the client overall goals.
We might have a very health healthy
conversion rate, so it's really
about how do we get more eyeballs to
the site and get them through that
funnel because we can convert them.
I have had plenty of clients where,
getting people to the site's not a
problem, and our advertising's not a
problem, and even our organic efforts
aren't really that much of a problem.
We can always do better, but right now the
biggest problem is, our conversion rate.
Is, so small that if we move that
up by, a quarter of a point your
sales have, quadrupled overnight.
There's a and while that might take
some work to do, it's not so simple.
It's smarter and better work often
than trying to sit there and throw more
dollars at advertising or other things,
because once we figure that out, it's
just gonna pay dividends and spades.
And so if we can identify those things
and the client agrees that those
are the main pain points and that,
and the things hampering growth, and
we can start to solve that I think
that's where success definitely
comes in.
Yeah.
And the foundation you had mentioned
earlier with with really understanding the
audience and that being something that.
More people than you would think, don't
actually understand their audience.
I've definitely seen that too.
But if we're drilling down a bit further
in like an example, if you were working
with a client that kind of knew who their
audience was, but really needed to hone in
on it and get more specific, what are some
questions that you would start asking to
get them from very general understanding
of audience to much more specific?
What I like to do is really figure
out just not who the audience is
that, that's a specific demographic.
It's a 35 year old female that makes
a hundred thousand dollars a year.
What are the products that this
person buys, not just in the
category, but outside the category?
Where do they shop?
How do they shop?
How often do they do it?
What are all the different buying
behaviors and like we say, like
psychographic things that they're doing,
what magazines are they reading online?
What influencers do they follow on
social media that are well known?
Like celebrities and things like that.
And again, this comes down to
how in depth does the client
wanna say this, but also.
As someone who spent time in agencies
and did a ton of consumer insight work
for, billion dollar brands there's
benefits and there's cons to it.
Sometimes it's just research and
it's a bunch of charts on a slide.
And big companies love that because
it allows 'em to, point that and,
move it up the food chain internally.
For startups and first in, in
this world what are we gonna
do with this information?
How are we gonna use it?
There is a client of mine if an example
helps, one of my first clients, I became
a factory CMO in the food space was in 15.
That is found in 15,000 retail doors
from whole, from Walmart to Whole Foods.
And I have a small but growing,
omnichannel D to TOC business as well.
The challenge is it was a category.
It's in barbecue sauces and rubs but
it doesn't get purchased that often.
Because I'm sure most people
look at the refrigerator.
We all discuss that they probably sit
in the refrigerator for a long time our
biggest thing for consumer we did a pretty
in-depth consumer insight study, both
qualitative and quantitative, was like,
why are people even buying our product and
how do we get them to buy it more often?
What could we do to encourage,
use and therefore purchase?
And so while I identified who the
audience was demographically and things
like that, what we really dug into is
like, why do they even use the category?
Why do they use your product
and what could we do?
From an organization that would then
translate into marketing or other
initiatives that would encourage 'em to
use the product more often and therefore
come back and buy the product more often.
I love it.
Yeah.
No I love the idea of going well beyond,
not just deeper in terms of the who,
but the buying behavior I've worked
with clients and internally as well.
And that's not a question
that comes up very often.
So that's a huge takeaway.
Now that you've been doing this for
a while now, not just the fractional
CMO stuff, but marketing in general.
You've been around this
for a long time now.
I'm curious how you've, how you perceive
the evolution of marketing from the
time that you've started to now.
There's obviously been a huge digital
shift, but just in, in terms of what's
important or what you like to do
since the beginning of your career
until now, how has that evolved?
Yeah.
Something I mentioned a little earlier,
but I think the pendulum's been fun
to watch it swing back and forth.
And there's been some online debates
that I've followed and participated
in around the competition between
brand and performance marketing.
And I think that all.
Encapsulates what marketing is.
I've always tried to build my career
of the intersection between the two.
I like to call it creativity and
commerce, where there's great
storytelling, creative and how,
but how to use data to inform that.
I think where Mar it's where things have
evolved and shifted is, you go back only
10 years ago, 15 years ago for sure.
And when, as I mentioned, when I
launched, an early startup there was
performance marketing in some channels.
We had to do some direct mail, we had
to do some couponing, things like that.
But really it was about brand marketing.
We had to, get people to be aware of
our brand, understand what we did,
and then go find it into retail.
And then as the rise of direct consumer.
And then of course, with Meta and Google
and all these other channels it became
very performance marketing driven and
people gave up on brand for a while.
And I, aging me, but I laughed a lot of
people who are now talking about, oh, you
gotta bring back brand marketing because
they only, they grew up, they graduated
college four years ago, five years ago.
They only knew performance marketing.
It worked for a couple years, and now
they said, Oh, it's getting harder.
You gotta build a brand,
you gotta build a community.
You gotta do these things.
And this is what I've been
parting this whole, pendulum
for 15 plus years in marketing.
And so I've enjoyed watching that
because I think at the end of the day, I
don't think there's one right or wrong.
I think it's how do you find
the intersection immediate the
middle between those two things?
Because you're always gonna want to.
The more data you have at any time
in this kind of marketing lifecycle
the smarter and the better you are.
But if you only rely on data,
you're gonna hit a plateau.
And again, on this flip side, and
I've worked at agencies or worked with
them, if you're only making the most
beautiful website in the world, these
great ads that are so beautiful and
there's no performance metrics tied
to them, you're gonna look great.
Everyone's gonna talk to you for, or
talk about you for a very short time.
And then sales are gonna drop off.
But if you can do both of those things
really well, at a certain level is
where you start to seek success.
And you see the best brands.
That's how they grow.
It's interesting, the principles
always stay the same, but the way that
we do the marketing changes a ton.
And right now we're in this AI thing.
So this'll, this'll be my last little.
Nugget here and we can sign off,
but AI is the next pendulum swing.
We've come back on some of those
principles, like you've mentioned, but
that's the next thing where everybody's
wondering, how do I use AI for marketing?
I'm just, I just wanna get your
2 cents on it, like how you
perceive AI for marketing, if you
use it, what you honestly think.
Yeah definitely using it,
definitely trying to educate
myself and get smarter on it.
I'm by no means an expert yet on it.
I don't know if anyone really is, but.
Trying to follow those who all say they
are, because I'm learning from them.
I think it's going to make everyone
potentially I said more smarter
and more efficient for sure.
The way I use it is to
make myself more efficient.
It helps me get 80% to what I need.
I have not been able to get it
to a hundred percent and I don't
know if it ever will, depending.
And I think it depends on what you do
and what category and stuff, but, It
gets me to a place that allows me then
to say, Hey, I didn't have to waste the
last hour or two hours trying to come
up with these ideas or think through
this thing, but now the ideas are there.
Let's, if that was an example,
how does this really work
with my brand or my business?
How do I tweak this?
How do I make it stronger
or take things out?
And I've.
I think I've had the most success there
where it's helped me be a lot more
efficient in certain areas of what I do.
I've yet to see it answer the
questions I need to answer, but that's
where I'm trying to see who's doing
that and how are they doing that.
But I think it's just making everyone
that much smarter and more efficient.