All Episodes

September 10, 2025 39 mins
Ronan McDonnell (Managing Director, CMO Mojo), who shares proven strategies on how to go from outbound to a 95% inbound marketing approach. Ronan explained how B2B companies can best leverage inbound strategies for reducing headcount in sales, improve the quality of leads, and attract potential investors.
Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Many B2B companies spend far toomuch time, budget and resources
on outbound initiatives thatyield little or mediocre
results. The reasons for theseoutcomes vary, but much of it
can be attributed to a lack ofunderstanding of how the
company's ideal customers makedecisions and buy.What if I told
you that there is a way for youto go from fully outbound to 95%

(00:22):
inbound. How would that changethe trajectory of your business?
Welcome to this episode of theB2B Marketers on a Mission
podcast, and I'm your host,Christian Klepp. Today, I'll be
talking to Ronan McDonnell, whowill be answering this question.
He's the founder of CMO Mojo,who helps B2B companies think
smarter about how they implementtheir marketing initiatives,

(00:42):
tune in to find out more aboutwhat this B2B marketers mission
is. All right, I'm gonna say Mr.Ronan McDonnell, welcome to the
show, sir.
Hey. How are you? Thanks forhaving me. Good to see you.
Pleasure to have you on theshow, Ronan, and I'm really
looking forward to thisconversation, and I'm not going

(01:03):
to give too much away at thispoint in time, but you know,
when we got on the pre interviewcall, you dropped this topic and
suggested that we talk about itin this interview. And I
thought, Hmm, that's a prettybold claim, but you know, let's,
let's give it a shot. So let's,uh, let's not keep the audience
in suspense too long here, butI'm gonna just dive right into

(01:27):
it, if you don't mind.
Sure, absolutely.
Fantastic. Okay, so, Ronan,you're on a mission to help B2B
companies to developtransformational marketing
strategies that will help themscale and grow their business.
But for this conversation, we'regoing to focus on the topic,
which I said is slightlycontroversial, but here we go,

(01:47):
and it is how to go from fullyoutbound to 95% inbound, in B2B.
So I'm going to kick off thisconversation with two questions,
and I'm happy to repeat them. Sothe first one is, provide us
with examples that helpsubstantiate this bold claim.
And the second part of thequestion is, why do you think

(02:08):
it's important for B2B companiesto make this strategic switch?
Yeah, I suppose it does comeacross like a bit of a bold
claim, really, doesn't it? Butto be honest with you, it's kind
of what I've come across most inmy marketing career to date, in
most places I've ended upworking, you know, it's always
been kind of outbound sales led,which makes sense, you know,

(02:30):
somebody starts a business andthey're, you know, it's founder
led sales, and then it'soutbound selling and things like
that. But ultimately, therecomes a point where, you know,
the company wants to get someinbound leads as well, and not
to rely specifically on justoutbound. So, yeah, it's kind of
what I've just become accustomedto. I suppose, to answer your
question, to substantiate theclaim, you know, I worked in a

(02:53):
B2B SaaS (Software as a Service)company, not most recently, but
just before that, and the entirecompany, you know, a seven
figure ARR (Annual RecurringRevenue) company was built 95%
outbound cold calling, you know.And that's a grind, not even
using ABM (Account-BasedMarketing) or tactics or
anything like that. So, youknow, there was some referral
clients from a good network thatthe leadership team had, of
But you know how first thing tosay really is, is kudos to a

(03:13):
course.
company to actually be able todo that, but we they wanted to
start a marketing function, andthey saw the value in actually
getting inbound leads. And, youknow, every sales person's dream
is really not to be doing coldcalling, at least have something
to reference on, on warmerexchanges, or have a steady
stream of leads coming intothem, you know, so they can come

(03:35):
into work on a Monday morningand they don't have to worry
about, oh, I just have to hopethis guy is within ICP (Ideal
Customer Profile) before I callhim. There's lots that marketing
have done before they're ever onthe phone. So within 12 months,
we were able to flip thataround. There's, I think there
was five or six sales people,and that was BD (Business
Development) or SDR (SalesDevelopment Representative) ,

(03:57):
cold calling lead generationpeople in the company. So we
were able to switch that aroundfrom 90, 95% of leads coming
from outbound sales, and flip itcompletely the other way, where
only about 5% were coming fromoutbound sales, the inbound
leads were taking over the salespeople. Sales people's time
enough. Yeah. So it was greatthat way. We were able to reduce
headcount in the sales team atthat level, but we were able to

(04:20):
promote some of the people toaccount executive roles, to work
deeper on into sales or deeperdown the sales funnel, which was
really positive. And then wereserved about, I say, two
maximum in the lead generationspace. So yeah, it was, it was
really positive. And yeah, ittook about 12 months to do,
which was good. But I think, youknow, most companies can achieve
it. Whether it takes a littlebit longer or not. It's really,

(04:43):
it's really good for the futureof the company, outside the
first 12 months anyway, youknow. So sales is a numbers
game, optimized by performanceand talent and great and skill
and training, all of that kindof thing. But really, if you can
optimize, optimize those peoplethat are on the phone with. Your
Sales Team speaking to them, youcan, you can get a lot more done.
So yeah, to answer your secondpart of your question, why do I

(05:06):
think it's important for B2Bcompanies to make that switch
from outbound to inbound? Youknow, I have a few points on it,
but it comes down to a few keythings, obviously, head count,
the cost of that in sales teams,particularly, along with
turnover in sales teams. Youknow, relying on people to hit
the ground running every Mondaymorning to make call after call,

(05:27):
especially when they're cold, isforever. I think there's a limit
to the amount of sales calls youcan make in your life if you're
not either going into an accountexec role or deeper into the
sales funnel. So having apredictable inbound engine in

(05:48):
place really kind of makes sensethere. You know, sales people
need to have a pipeline of warmleads and warm engagements. Even
you know, just anything warm toreference on a call and to give
a purpose for a conversation totake place. It just tends to
convert better, of course, aswell.
You know, another big point,really. It might not be
important for everyone, butcertainly for someone listening

(06:10):
it is, funding and scaling. Soif you're looking to scale your
company or take on funding, orgo through funding round, Series
A, Series B, etc, there doesneed to be evidence of demand
and a pipeline there, andevidence that you're able to
fill that pipeline withoutrelying on, you know, cold
calling and just sales on itsown. It should be a combination

(06:32):
of sales and marketing. So in myexperience, investors always
like to see, or in some cases,they need to see, you know, not
just thewebinars or downloading your
reports and guides or signalingin some way that they view you

(06:52):
as an authority in the spacethey need to see that world
before, just, just, just beforethe funnel actually kicks in,
you know? So, yeah, I wouldnever say abandon outbound. That
skill needs to be alive and wellin your organization, especially
if you have it to begin with.You paid for it day one, and you
probably paid well for it. Soyou don't want it to die away.
But yeah, you do. You need astream of leads flowing into the

(07:15):
You know, another case for itwould be for to learn whether
company.
you know it's a PLG (Product-LedGrowth) approach that you need
to take with a particular typeof customer, a product led
growth approach, for anyonewho's not familiar with PLG, you

(07:38):
know, or if it's kind of alarger enterprise sale. So yeah,
it reduces the stakes a littlebit for your sales team, and
they can relax a little bit andexperiment with things a little
bit if they know that there'smore leads coming in behind the

(08:01):
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean,like yourself, I started out in
one that was just generated. So,yeah, all in all, it kind of
sales as well, and I was on twosides of the spectrum. So I was
tends to, it tends to help thecompany in multiple different
in one function with outbound,and then the other one was more
inbound. Of course, the inboundsituation was more, well, it's
ways, really. So there's,there's lots more reasons, I'm
always a more like, like, ahappier problem, I'm gonna say,
sure, why you would want to goinbound entirely. But even

(08:22):
look, or a good problem to have,because you're getting all these
myself as a business owner now,having leads come to me is, you
inquiries and orders, whereasthe outbound one is, like,
basically pounding the pavementand and just making all these
know, it's just so nice comparedto having to go out and guess
cold calls. And I don't knowabout you, but I did everything
that business, you know.
I could to avoid cold calling.
I did. I would sit silently inorder to avoid it. Sometimes it

(08:44):
just, yeah, you need somethingto reference on the phone. Maybe
it's a conversion or a download,or a colleague of theirs spoke
to you before, or something. Youknow, you just want warm
engagements. You know nobodylikes to, similar to door to
door sales or people knocking onyour door, fundraising or
something, you know, a few yearsago that was so so so normal.

(09:04):
And I think people regard theirhomes now as more sanctuary type
things. So it's wild to peoplenow that that would happen. And
I think it's very similar inthis world. It's for some people
to receive a cold sales call iswild for them, and they're taken
aback at the concept. So atleast having them make the first
move by downloading or engagingor something, attending a

(09:25):
webinar, or whatever it is, orshow some sort of intent, at
least there's something toreference on the phone call, and
it's less awkward for thesalesperson, and the salesperson
isn't on the back foot trying toprove that there's a real
purpose for the phone call. Soyeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
Absolutely, absolutely. I'mgonna move us on to the next

(09:45):
question, which is about keypitfalls. So again, on this
topic of switching, or makingthat shift from outbound to
inbound, what are some of thesekey pitfalls that you think B2B
marketers need to avoid, andwhat should they be doing
instead?
Yeah, so I'm. There's a numberof pitfalls, really. I think a
lot of marketers kind of onlycovered the basics. We're all

(10:05):
trying to get across everychannel, and we can rush that
sometimes. So, you know,sometimes you might, you know, a
key pitfall I do see, and itsounds kind of silly now to say
it, but very broad. For example,Ads-campaigns to very broad
pages, or home pages. Sure youcan go to your head of
marketing, or you can go to yourCEO and say, oh, yeah, ads are
running. Ads are running. Noproblem. But I myself, if I'm

(10:28):
searching something, and I clickon an ad for that particular
thing, and it takes me to ahomepage I'm out of there, you
know. So, you know, you need tonarrow these things a little
bit. So I'd avoid that pitfallof going very, very broad. You
need to get super, super, super,super, super niche with this
type of stuff so.
Yeah, I think rushing is a bigpitfall. To do things like that.
It's going to cause you pain.You need to get it right. SEO

(10:49):
(Search Engine Optimization) aswell. I think, you know, a big
Pitfall, and I've been, youknow, guilty of it myself, is
just running towards technicalSEO. I've done it. It does need
to be done, so don't abandon it.But the pitfall here is, it
stopping once your titles arelovely, your internal linking is
beautiful, your alt text is sodescriptive, it's amazing, but

(11:12):
there's more to it. You can'tstop there. Everyone is doing
that now, so it's what happensbeyond that. Is the cream that
gets the opportunity to rise tothe top. If you ignore technical
SEO on the flip side, you'll bereally, really penalized for
that, and there'll be problems,but you definitely need to do
it. But don't stop there. Ithink a lot of marketers just
tend to clean the website. Ifthe website's clean, then we're

(11:33):
going to get leads. But that's,that's, I don't think that's
necessarily true, to be honest,especially in the age of AI as
well.
So yeah, I would say those twoand definitely, definitely
ignoring digital PR (PublicRelations). Digital PR, I think,
was up to now, not a toppriority for businesses, let
alone marketing teams. But inthe age of AI, it has moved

(11:54):
from, you know, number four orfive on the priority list
straight up to number one, ifnot a close second, you know,
especially in the age of AI. Soit's the biggest needle mover
nowadays, is to have yourdigital PR in a really healthy
place. You do want healthybacklinks from high, high
performing websites. You do wantto be creating original content

(12:15):
and getting it out there, andhave journalists and other
brands pick it up for you. Andyou know, it might not help you
for technical SEO and thingslike that, but for AI or
grabbing the AI overview onGoogle Search backlinks and all
that, the pitfall there istreating PR as a nice to have,
rather than Now, in today's dayand age, it's an absolute need
to have, you know.

(12:36):
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Ilove it. I love it. I loved,
also what you said about SEO,because it's that whole bit
about, okay, let's just focus onthe technical aspect of it. But
hey, let's just, let's justignore the fact that the content
is not that great.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, if youhave a five page website, I bet

(12:57):
you it's pretty clean, you know.But that's not necessarily means
that it's good at all. So yeah,definitely getting past the
technical side of SEO, andthat's sometimes the most fun
thing to do for myself.Personally, I love that, but you
have to realize now that thingshave changed, and we all have to
kind of accept it. So yeah.
Absolutely, absolutely talk tous about the importance of the

(13:20):
following and how marketing canplay a strategic role in each
one. Again, we're zooming in onthe topic of switching from
outbound to inbound. So there'sthree aspects over this, all
right, so targeted marketresearch on developing the right
inbound strategy andcoordinating the inbound
approach with the sales team,because let's not forget about
those guys.

(13:41):
Okay, perfect. So I would sayfor targeted market outreach.
First of all, you know theimportance of it is, especially
going from outbound to inbound.It's non-negotiable now, and
this is really hard to do. I'm aperson who gets in the weeds and
likes to get deep into the workand do the work, but you gotta
stop, take time, take somespace, and understand what's

(14:01):
actually happening in yourmarketplace. You know, who are
you competing with? How they'recompeting with each other is
really important, why thewinners are winning and what
tactics they're deploying. Arethey advertising on each other's
brand name searches, forexample, things like that. Those
tactics are very important tounderstand. Do they have very
aggressive us versus themalternative pages? You know

(14:22):
they're important so wellthey're important to have the
aggressive nature of them is atyour own discretion.
But you know another thing Iwould you know this is not to be
controversial, but go on abuying journey with each of
those competitors as far downthe funnel as you can before you
know you need to exit and feelthat experience that you're

(14:43):
getting and feel where you wouldeither engage in purchase or
abandon the buying journeycompletely, and that will just,
that's just pushes a gap in yourface. Now you know what the gap
is. You can fill that gap so youcan capitalize on those
weaknesses. So there's tons ofmarket research you can do. You
can get into your Tams, yourtoms, your so. On all of that,
if you want to, but justsometimes placing yourself in
the buyer journey is really,really important, and a lot of

(15:05):
that will help you to transitionfrom outbound to inbound in an
organization, you know, soyou'll know where those gaps
are.
As for developing the rightinbound strategy. I think the
researcher just kind ofmentioned will help to
understand, help you tounderstand the importance of
developing the right strategy.It's not just about getting
people to knock on the door orvisit the website. It's creating

(15:28):
a strategy far beyond that. It'show you open that door and
welcome them in, understandtheir situation and move things
in the right direction. This,and I kind of mentioned this
earlier as well, the sooner youcan identify someone might be a
PLG player, for example, orsomebody might be an enterprise
size client with multiplestakeholders and buyers. The
sooner you can actually identifythose things with the right

(15:50):
strategy, the sooner you canpush them down the correct
funnel and stages and thingslike that.
And then, I suppose, finally,for coordinating the inbound
approach with the sales team.You know, it's good that you
asked this piece last, becauseit is most important, really.
You know, the other things, ifyou don't do things will be

(16:10):
tough. If you don't do this witha sale, with it, with the sales
team, and get really tight withthem, you're just going to lose
you know, if you're not startingwith discovery calls internally
with your sales team. I thinkyou're going to lose out a lot.
They're way closer to thecustomer than you are, and that
goes for the customer successteam as well. Okay, now, because
you're in marketing, you mightbe doing a lot of, you know, new

(16:32):
business marketing, but don'tforget, there is customer
marketing. You know, there'sadoption and there's scaling
accounts as well, but it canhelp to separate things down. I
think when sales teams hear fromthe company internally that
there's, you know, hey, we wantmore inbound happening here,
they can sometimes feel, well,this is an attack on my identity
and what I do in anorganization, so I'm going to

(16:52):
resist, whereas it's actually ahuge positive, as it will
relieve that outbound pressure,you know, it'll create a flow of
leads and allow the warmerconversations we had mentioned.
So, yeah, it's having thatinternal communication is super,
super important as well. And,and, yeah, you know, it'll help
you, help them to stop coldcalling people they think are in

(17:14):
their ICP and actually callpeople warmly that they know
they can sell to. So yeah,there's, there's a huge
importance there of coordinatingthe inbound approach, you know,
with the sales team inparticular. So, yeah, it's
everything, really, to be honestwith you, you really need to be
fused. And I think only fromworking in sales myself for so
long, you know, I'm in a greatposition to understand what a

(17:34):
sales team needs from amarketing team.
Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely,absolutely. I mean, I was in a
previous role where we had towork closely with a sales team.
So I can attest to that, thatthat reality, that it would be
in everybody's interest tocollaborate, and for the

(17:54):
marketing people to treat thesales people, not necessarily as
friends, but to find this commonmiddle ground, right? And to get
them to get them to understandthat you know you're here to
like, help them hit their goals,right? Help them. Help them,
like, carve out this path,right? I don't want to use the
word support, because that's theold impression. That's the old

(18:16):
stereotype of, like, okay,marketing, a support sales.
That's not to say that we don'tdo that absolutely, but we need
to lead with strategy, becausethat's where they'll see the
value, versus just like, Okay,well, marketing is going to help
with sending me some leads, andthey may or may not be
qualified.
It also depends on therelationship you walk in on. You

(18:37):
know, as a marketer, I've workedin a place, one place in
particular, where, you know, thesales team would get one lead
per quarter, and it would be,you know, a gmail or a spam or
something there, just, it justwasn't firing. So their opinion
of marketing in general was, Oh,geez. Like, you know, what are
these guys doing, talking to,asking us questions about, say,
you know, our customers andstuff like that. But when you

(18:59):
actually start to push a fewdeals through the pipeline and
there. And you know what endedup happening is they're like, Oh
my God. Like, I got one leadthis week, two leads next week,
the next week, and keep onbuilding. Then you'd be
surprised. Like people open upand they realize that it's not
sales versus marketing, which itis in a lot of companies. I know
someone listening to this has asales versus marketing
situation. It's sales andmarketing. So, yeah, like

(19:21):
marketing, are there to servicesales, not not serve sales, but
you know, they have to work inconjunction. And I think what I
just said sounds very one waytraffic, but when you're
actually chasing up the salesteam to find out how things went
in order to inform your ownmarketing strategy, you close

(19:42):
that loop, and the actualfeedback goes full circle. So I
think, you know, that's a quickway to make it marketing and
sales, as opposed to marketingversus sales.
That's right. Okay, moving on tothe next question. So um, based
on your experience. How can aB2B marketer, or how can a B2B
company make that strategicswitch from fully outbound to

(20:06):
inbound? So walk us through thesteps. And you know from your
experience, what are the keycomponents that absolutely have
to be in that process?
Perfect. Yeah, okay, well, I'mglad you said steps, because it
is a series of steps. Don't sendan email internally to say, hey,
sales, stop doing your outboundcalls. We've got it from here.
Don't worry.
So here you go.

(20:29):
Exactly it's, you know, so whereare the leads guys? So, yeah,
it's definitely a series ofsteps. And, you know, sometimes
they're in order and sometimesthey're not. But really, what
you're trying to achieve therein terms of steps, is you're
creating a demand generationengine, right? So the good news
is that you probably alreadyhave a lot of the groundwork
done. If you've gotten a salesteam up and running, okay? You

(20:50):
have your market research to acertain point. Maybe it's a
little bit older, you know, it'sstill useful. You can refresh
it. You have your ICP, yourideal customer personas. You
might already have those wellknown all right, a useful step
is also to learn from sales whatspecific event is happening in
their buyers, you know,professional life, when they
manage to actually create a dealor close the sale. All of that

(21:13):
information is really, reallyimportant. So as a marketer, you
know, you should always be in,oh, this is a tough one to say,
but insisting or supporting thatthe sales team are doing last
deal diagnostic phone callsmonthly or quarterly, and that
you're either in them or you'regetting a report from the
manager afterwards, whatever isless abrasive at the time, and
indeed, as well as lost dealdiagnostic calls, calls on why

(21:35):
they won. So why they won deals,those co those review calls, are
just gold. If marketers can getthe information back from the
sales team why they're winningand why they're losing. Your
marketing will become, you know,better, faster and cheaper. You
know, you'll just get therequicker and more efficiently.
Basically, we need to know whywe win or we or we lose deals
basically.

(21:56):
Cool, other steps, I would say,include things you know, that
we've already discussed, but youhave to set about building more
authority in the space. Andthis, you know, I'm trying to
say AI less and less every day,but it really is happening at AI
across the board. You've got tobuild that authority in the
space, and you've got to be inmore places. You know if you're

(22:17):
not on the review sites, let'ssay, for example, you might be a
software product. You're not onG2, Capterra, you know, even
forums like Quora and Reddit,even if it's just for AI and
LLMs (Large Language Models) toconsider you in their surfaces
by definition. If yourcompetitors are somewhere
competing and you're not there,you're not competing. So get

(22:39):
wide as well as deep. Don't gotoo deep on one thing. Go wide
first, and then you canincrementally improve the depth
of those channels.
You got to build out relevantcontent. Okay, so that's a huge
step. You've got to start doingyour if you're not already, your
webinars, your round tables,you've got to actually be a
human being on front of peoplethese days as well. I think AI

(23:00):
is doing so much, butultimately, I think the tables
are going to turn again, andit's the human, the human touch,
that's going to close deals, youknow, and open deals. So I think
that will really move the needleon trust as well, testimonials,
reviews. I know I sound like avery this is very basic
marketing tactics, but it's Iwant to reinvigorate people to

(23:21):
go after this big time, becausethere's a big reason now,
especially with ChatGPT, Cloud,Perplexity, etc, testimonials,
reviews, video testimonials. Youknow, there's so many ways you
can repurpose all of those. Andas I said, it's not breaking
information, but it's doublingdown on everything that you need
to to trigger more inboundleads, okay, in the company I

(23:43):
mentioned earlier in theepisode. You know, when we did
that 12 month run and we changedthe company to 90 , 95% inbound,
30% of closed business that yearoriginated with a download. Now,
it didn't download the weekbefore it didn't download the
month before, or four months.But somewhere along the line, we

(24:05):
converted that person. We keptthem warm with relevant content,
invitations to webinars, thingsthat we knew they would like,
very specific based on what theydownloaded as well, by the way.
And once people, once you'rekind of top of mind, when the
buyers needs arise, that's whenyou actually capitalize
marketing. Can't force anyone tobuy anything, but all we can do

(24:26):
is be top of mind when that needcomes up.
So I've mentioned a lot ofthings there, that is a lot of
upfront work, and I thinkmarketing in general, there's a
lot of upfront work, and thenthe back end pays off in
marketing, you know, but yeah,ultimately, I'd entire I'd
sorry. I'd encourage brands toraise the entire ship, elevate

(24:47):
all of the marketing channels,and open new ones. If they don't
have them, they might not all goto plan, and that's fine, too,
if some of them fail, fail fastis really, really important. And
here's a quote that's, you know,I've had. Said to me a lot in
the past, learning and coming upis, don't let perfect get in the
way of really, really, reallygood. Improve your channels

(25:08):
incrementally as time goes by.Don't open a new channel, like
PPC (Pay-Per-Click), forexample. Complete it as in, go
deep for weeks and months andthen move on to the next one.
You've got to open things up andimprove as you go and yeah, I
think what you'll see happen isthat leads in marketing, inbound
leads, will start to take alittle foothold, and then

(25:28):
they'll grow. And they'll growif you're learning as you go of
course in closing the loop withthe sales team learning why
they're closing, you know, saleswill end up having warmer
conversations with more and morepeople, and they'll have more
kind of feedback for you aswell. And slowly but surely, the
marketing leads will take afoothold, and your sales people

(25:48):
should be and hopefully will betoo busy with warmer leads to
resort to a cold list. Andthat's when the balance starts
to actually tip, you know. Soit's definitely a series steps,
rather than a very abrupt, youknow, next Monday, we're inbound
But, yeah, there's also plentyof components, as you asked, as
only kind of thing.

(26:11):
well. But, you know, I'm notgoing to start naming tech
stacks, really, but teamwork ishuge on it. Clarity around the
objectives, that's number one.Make sure everyone knows what
you're trying to do. Veryspecifically, very, very
specifically. And, yeah, just beuser centric with it. With
everything, make sure thatyou're getting feedback from
people who didn't buy off you,or you lost deals from as well,

(26:32):
you know. So there's nothing.And the main thing is, really to
get across to the team thatthere has to be a sense of fun
in it, and the players in thegame have to have a kind of
sense of hustle about them aswell. You know, it's a fun job.
I mean, if you go around thecompany and you shadow people,
you know, if you're a completeunknown or you're just finishing
school, and you go into like aany company, you go on all the

(26:54):
different roles, a lot of thetime, marketing will be named
as, oh, that looks like one ofthe most fun roles to do in a
company. And it is fun. So thereshould be, there should be a lot
of fun about it as well, youknow. So that's a major
component in the process.
Absolutely, absolutely, I thinkyou did a great job of laying
that out so beautifully. And Ifeel obliged now to play a

(27:17):
little bit of the devil'sadvocate, if you let me. It's
think you've probably been inthe game long enough that you've
perhaps come across this one ortwo times in your career, the
time factor, right? So earlierin the conversation, as you were
walking us through the steps andbreaking down all the

(27:39):
components, you were sayingthings like little by little and
slowly but surely. And in myexperience, that's the kind of
language that senior managementdoesn't particularly like to
hear, right? Yeah, especiallysomebody in the financial
finance department that'swatching what marketing is
spending. So Okay, so here comesthe question. I'm just trying to

(28:03):
set this up a little bit. How doyou deal with pushback from
people in a non marketingfunction that look at you and
say, Hey, listen, Ronan, this isall bright and beautiful, but we
don't have 12 months to deliverresults here. We need to show
something like in the next threeto six months, in the next 90

(28:24):
days, right?
I suppose the way I try to dealwith it is avoidance, but that's
impossible a lot of the time.And yeah, you're right.
Leadership teams don't generallylove that type of stuff, but I
think you'll find as well, it isthe leadership teams that do
take the risk and have the trustin you that actually end up

(28:44):
winning out. And the ones thatdon't do it, someone don't do so
well, I know, you know the oldsaying, you know, if someone
says, oh, how much is it to dothis particular thing? Well,
what's it going to cost you ifyou don't, basically, but yeah,
I do get asked that question byclients and a lot of the time,
and you just can't guarantee it,but you know there has to be a

(29:05):
bit of trust in the fact that ifyou do all of the right things,
the right things will willhappen in return. Now, when I
say we did it in 12 months, itdidn't happen at month 11. Every
single month, you could seeimprovement. You just could
there was organic was coming up,leads were coming in from PPC,

(29:25):
and provided you're hiringsomebody, or whether you're
outsourcing it, or you have theright marketer in house, those
things will happen because yourcompetitors are making it happen
for them. You know, you can doit. You just need to do it a
little bit better. But, yeah, Imean, if the time frame is three
months or six months, I mean,there's no, there's no reason
why you wouldn't have some sortof a sense of success happening,

(29:50):
you know, but after that initialperiod, it's a funny one,
really, because usually you joina company six months probation
for something that takes 12months to achieve. So that's a
tough one. But you know, thosewho can see the kind of the
movement under the sheets,really, I suppose, for lack of a
better term, they can actually,you know, once leadership teams

(30:10):
tend to see that change, thenit's just scaling from there.
You know, if absolutely nothingis happening, then fair enough.
You probably get your marchingorders, and that's absolutely
fair. But in my experience over,you know, the last number of
companies I've worked for overthe last number of years, and
the clients I have now is thatif you don't come in and make
impact by doing the right thing,it's extremely rare that you

(30:30):
wouldn't.
Well, that's fair. That's anabsolutely fair point. Okay, my
friend, we get to the point inthe conversation, we're talking
about actionable tips and,goodness gracious me, you've
given us plenty already. Butlet's just, let's assume there's
somebody out there who is inthis particular situation, or is

(30:52):
facing this predicament that weare talking about in this
conversation today. And of allthe things you've said,what are
like? Maybe three to five thingsyou would advise them to take
action upon right now if theywant to make that strategic
shift from outbound to inbound.
Right now. Number one. Okay,number one is a realization,

(31:13):
more so than you know anactionable tip. But I'll get to
the actionable tip you've got torealize first of all, is that,
you know, buyers are selfeducators. Now, okay, they might
not have been back in the day,but maybe they were, but a lot,
a lot more now, so buyers areself educators. So you have to
give them impartial informationthat informs a buying decision,

(31:35):
and that's all a sales team istrying to do in this day and age
as well. All they're trying todo is inform a buying decision.
Now, if they carve it outcorrectly, the correct buying
decision is you. But you know,if it's not, you know you got to
exit as well, but you got torealize that buyers are self
educators. So the firstactionable tip, based on that,
get out to your customers nowwith your CS team, or get the

(31:59):
approval from your CS team to goafter them. Obviously, time it,
time it well with what's goingon in that customer's life
cycle. Okay, you know, get outthere, get those reviews, get
those testimonials, get thosevideos. You can incentivize
them. No problem whatsoever withthat. Social proof is absolutely
everything now and going intothe future. People need while

(32:20):
they're self educating, theyneed evidence that you've done
it. They need those case studiesas well. Okay? They need to see
those customer journeys, youknow.
Another one then, is to learnwhat your learn where your
competitors are and be there. Wekind of spoke about that a
little bit earlier as well. Ifyou're not there, you're just
not competing. By definition, itcould be, as I said, Reddit is

(32:41):
actually, you know, Reddit,Quora, platforms, marketplaces,
yours might be trust pilot, forexample, you know, be there and
compete if there's, you know,there's value there in it.
The next actionable tip wasthis, number three, it's a
little bit kind of day onemarketing, but make sure all of
your marketing channels areopen, you know, and open new
ones if they're not, you know,and improve the ones that you do

(33:05):
have. So do this yourself. Ifyou're not fully comfortable and
competent with it, get someonein just to have a quick chat
with your marketing team, oroutsource it if you don't have
one. But definitely you want toopen them all, and some of them
will close themselves based onperformance. That's fine, but
you need to find out, because,you know, I've come across a lot
of business owners who say, myfriend's a business owner, and

(33:26):
they just put 50 euros a day onthis one particular keyword.
Sure we can do that. You know,that's not like, you know,
sometimes you might do it tohumor the person, because
there's no way around it. Butyou realize very quickly that,
you know, you have to find outwhat channel and and what
tactics work for you. Otherwise,you know, you could click one
button and your entire marketingfunction would just be working.

(33:47):
And another actionable tip aswell is, and this is something I
struggle with a lot. I don'tthink I'm old, but when I was
younger, is to plan. So ifyou're a small team, plan like
crazy, with timings,deliverables. And you know, some
common sense. You know the oldsaying, fail to prepare. Prepare
to fail, I guess so I personallywork off marketing roadmaps. So

(34:11):
you can build one on GoogleSheets. If you don't, don't have
any budget whatsoever, you coulduse Asana base camp Monday
teamwork, whatever tool isdoable. Map out your weeks, your
months and your quarters, andteam them based on industry
needs and what's happening inthe industry at the time. When
you have that, that sounds verycookie cutter to people, but
here's the thing, once you havethose road maps all mapped out,

(34:32):
and it's really, reallyaccurate, that gives you the
flexibility to react tosomething brand new in the news.
Okay, so you won't get boggeddown in trying to get the next
thing out and get confused.
I would say another actionabletip. And this is all this takes
a bit of leadership and a bit ofguts is to own and champion the
internal communication piecesales most likely won't pick up

(34:52):
the phone and say, Hey, I justclosed the deal. And this is why
you know you have to get that,because you need that as the
marketer. So. You need to learnfrom other teams and teach other
teams also take the bestinsights that others have
internally and use them. Theyare usually closer to the
customer than you, whether it'syour customer success team or
your customer service team andyour sales team as well, but you

(35:15):
have to actually grab and ownthat process. We spoke about it
earlier, the apprehension somesales team might have when
you're starting up this kind ofprocess internally, get those
people on calls, get familiarwith them, trust will open up.
You know, there's nothing thatbeats authenticity. So they'll
know who you are and what you'reabout, and it will work really
well. Set up monthly calls andthings like that.

(35:35):
Measurement is a big one as amarketing executive trying to
avoid measuring everything, andthen, as a marketing leader,
trying to measure everything,but it is important to do so
measure your successes, and aswe said earlier, fail as fast as
you can at everything thatyou're going to fail at. So
yeah, something's going to fail.Just get there quickly and apply

(35:56):
the learnings to everythingelse. Every company is
different, you know. So whatworks for one company might not
necessarily work for you? Soyeah, there's what's that four
or five or six pieces? I mean,there's so much you could do,
and we can get really, really,really specific on things, but
ultimately, it's just kind of,yeah, get into the hustle of it
and do those quick things. Youhave so much in your business

(36:19):
already that you can use,repurpose and create from it
I love it. I love it. No, thisis a great place to start. So
believable.
yeah, you had six here that Itook note off, so it's pretty
good. Okay, here comes the bonusquestion. So if the audience
hasn't guessed it already,you're from Ireland, and if I
read your LinkedIn profilecorrectly. You're from a place

(36:43):
called County Clare. So is thereany thing like, perhaps a fun
fact, if you will, about thatregion of Ireland where you're
from that not many people wouldknow about?
Oh, my God, is there a fun factabout.
Like, one of these, like, didyou know it's like, on a cereal
box or something.
I don't know. Did you know TheCliffs of Moher are here?

(37:05):
Everyone kind of knows theCliffs of Moher when they come
over. Okay, is there somethinginteresting about County Clare?
I bet you there is. But I'm justnot here. Well, here's one. So
every county in Ireland has,like a kind of a nickname. I
would say cork would be therebel County. For example,
County Clare is known as thebanner County, and they were

(37:27):
known, if I can get it rightnow, there is lads, lads, men
from Clare during variousbattles with the English
occupation. Over time, they ranin and stole the banners, the
English banners, and they werefrom county Clare. So, yeah. So,
yeah, that's, that's what Isuppose I could come up with,
with a few more, I'm sure, butmy head is too deep in marketing

(37:48):
right now.
I think that one will do. That'sa really good one. That's a
really good one, but no.Fantastic, fantastic. Ronan,
this has been a greatconversation, and I think you
inadvertently gave us the titleof this episode already. What
was it that I wrote down theworld above the funnel?
Okay, I like Harry Potter.

(38:09):
No, but, but no. Thanks for youknow, coming on the show and for
sharing your expertise andexperience with the listeners.
Please, quick introduce yourselfand how people out there can get
in touch with you.
Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I keepmy answers quite long winded, so
I'll try to get to the point onthis. Ronan McDonnell is my
name. I own and run CMO Mojo. Sowe're a fractional marketing

(38:29):
service. Basically, we're anoutsourced marketing team.
There's two reasons why youwould why people hire us or we
get hired. One is really for ourconsultancy or opinions and our
guidance to business owners andpeople who have marketing teams
already as well. And then theother reason is really to carry
out the actual doing of themarketing function. So not just
tell you what you need to do,but actually do it and report on

(38:51):
how that's going with you. Soyeah, some clients are
whatsapping me and WhatsApp onthem all day long, and others
just want to an email at the endof the week or a month. So we're
completely flexible and normal.I hope you've picked that up
during the call and yeah, I justthink as a business owner, it
can be risky enough to hire afull time marketer right out of
the gate when you don't reallyknow what channels are going to

(39:13):
carry the business long term. Sostarting with an outsourced team
is definitely the way to go.Yeah, that's it.
My own route into marketing isnot a one of academia. It's very
much on purpose. I startedbuilding my own niche websites
back in the day and trying tomake money off AdSense and stuff
like that, and content creation.And, you know, I started to

(39:34):
YouTube channels and got themboth monetized and earning so
all of the things it took for meto learn throughout that that
journey has kind of reallyinformed me, and I needed to
break out of the insuranceindustry into the tech sector,
and the common denominator therewas sales. So I jumped across,
and then from sales, I got myopportunity in marketing, then I

(39:56):
did go to school and get thepiece of paper in marketing to
prove that everything I. Justlearned. I actually do know and
yeah, so I think that's a hugeadvantage to CMO Mojo is that of
a number of years of salesexperiences as well. So if sales
is my genesis, you know, itgives us an understanding of
what a sales team needs from amarketing team. And you can

(40:18):
email hello@cmomojo.io orcmomojo.io is the website
domain. You can go there andclick contact us, or, you know,
pop my name into LinkedIn andyou'll see my cheesy grin
looking at you. You can send mea demon DM and connect anytime.
Fantastic, fantastic. Ronan,once again, thanks for coming on
the show. Take care. Stay safeand talk to you soon.

(40:39):
No worries. Christian, thankshave me, that was fun. Thank
All right. Bye for now.
you.
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know
Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.