September 13, 2023 • 43 mins
Ever wondered how to select the perfect marketing partner for your business? This week we chat with fractional CMO Josh Ramsey, who brings his vast experience to the table as we navigate the complex world of marketing partnerships, with an emphasis on comprehending the value of your investment beyond just the price.
Our conversation takes a deep dive into working with ad agencies. Josh speaks of the importance of having a clear strategy and vision before you shake hands with an agency. In the same vein, we also look at the value of leads for your business. Josh even shares some priceless tips about the kind of questions businesses should be asking their vendors to set the right expectations.
We also throw light on the intricacies of hiring marketing managers. The conversation revolves around the critical need for both analytical and creative mindsets in your marketing strategy. We discuss the challenges that come with finding the right person for this role and circle back to the role of a fractional CMO in this regard. To wrap it up, we highlight the need for both a visionary and an executor in your team, which can be a game-changer in reducing the workload of the business owner. So, gear up for some strategizing, setting KPIs, and making swift decisions to seize opportunities.
Learn more about all the things he does by visiting www.jrcmo.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
This podcast is brought to you by Spotlight
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(00:22):
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Speaker 2 (00:53):
This is Center Stage putting your firm in the
spotlight by highlightingbusiness owners and other
industry experts to help takeyour firm to the next level.
Hey everyone, and welcome toCenter Stage.
I'm your host, john Henson, andthis week we are talking about
how to find the right partnerfor your marketing, and we're
(01:14):
going to talk about or we'vetalked a lot about before how
you, as the firm owner, shouldnot be doing it yourself.
You should be doing the thingthat you went to school for, or
that you are known for, orgetting paid for, not all of
this other stuff.
But how do you actually figureout who you're going to work
with and I promise this is notgoing to be like a 30 minute
sales pitch for why you shouldwork with spotlight branding or
(01:36):
anybody else.
I want to help you make themost informed decision that you
can and what makes the mostsense for you.
So that is why I am joined byJosh Ramsey.
He does a lot of fractional CMOwork.
He's helped all kinds ofbusinesses with their marketing
and I'm excited for him to behere.
So, josh, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
I appreciate it, lookingforward to the chat.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Absolutely.
So yeah, I gave the bare boneskind of intro there.
Tell us a little bit more aboutwhat you do and some of the
experience that you had.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yeah, so again, thanks for having me.
I really appreciate it.
I love sharing the messagebecause most people are not
understanding or even aware thata fractional CMO exists.
People understand the conceptof a marketing strategist and
they understand a marketingconsultant, but oftentimes a
marketing strategist orconsultant is someone that's
just going to say go do this orgo do that.
(02:33):
But a fractional CMO is reallymeant to get their hands dirty,
to not only get the vision, butto put their hands on it, put
their fingerprints on it onbehalf of the CEO.
So it's someone that sits atthe executive table, gives the
vision, but then gives thevision based on the CEO's dream
(02:56):
and then executes or makes surethat the execution is done.
Now, that doesn't mean this isalso clear to understand.
It doesn't mean that they'regoing to build your website.
The fractional CMO understandshow a website should be built
and the structure of themarketing system and gives the
vision, but doesn't do it.
Will you indulge me on onequick story on the explanation?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Absolutely so.
I literally just finished anemail this morning to one of my
clients and I have a marketingteam that reports to me and the
conversation I had this morningwith the client.
If I back out for just a secondand explain the client, they
have something good to say, butthey don't say it well, but they
(03:39):
try to say it often.
So it has something good to say.
Say it well and say it often.
The conundrum that they're inis the storytelling.
It's the explanation of whatthey do well and explaining it
to the audience that they wantto reach.
It's easy to say it often onceyou have a good strategic
(04:00):
message.
So this morning one of theinitiatives that I've started
was our operators came up with asolution on a problem.
I outlined the vision of howour marketing project managers
need to clearly communicate thatand then I'm training them and
teaching them.
This is how you leave a story.
(04:21):
So this is what the operatorsdid, here's how we define that,
here's how we engage that into astoryline, and then it's easy
to again communicate it.
There's all sorts of various asI call it tactical marketing
outlets to speak your message to.
But if you're not engagingenough and you don't have a good
(04:41):
storytelling of what yourinside reality is, that becomes
a problem.
So that's what a CMO does issay, ok, we have something good
and here's how we weave thatstory, give it to a team to
weave it, I approve it as theCMO and then we execute it.
So maybe that helps understandus a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah, yeah, I mean you.
It's essentially in the name.
You are the chief marketingperson.
You are handling everythingDoesn't mean that you're
literally doing it all yourself,but you're facilitating and
making the decisions that theowner would otherwise have to do
on their own.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Yeah, exactly that's it.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, so we're talking about marketing vendors
because I think that's where alot of people start, especially
smaller businesses and trying toget some of that marketing help
.
So, especially you maybe evenwork with some vendors or vet
some vendors as a CMO.
What are some of the biggestfrustrations that you've seen
business owners or even you havehad with marketing vendors and
(05:47):
I promise I won't get offendedby anything you say- Well,
thanks for not getting offended,but you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
I never mean to offend, but one thing about
myself at least, andunderstanding myself, because
psychology is a big part ofmarketing.
It's understanding the humannature, why we buy what we buy.
And ultimately, if I just brokethat down, no matter what you
sell, there are three levelsthat a business owner needs to
understand, and this kind ofleads into hiring the right
(06:18):
marketing person or agencyvendor.
And it starts with benefits ofownership, objections to that
ownership and then vendorselection and too often we sell
on price not quality ofovercoming the objections and
explaining the value, which isadvantage.
So everything that we buy, froma stick of gum, bottle of water
(06:40):
to a Ferrari, it it's allwrapped into those decision
making that we make.
So I think the first part isexpectations.
When we hire somebody, bothemployees in-house and also
vendors Oftentimes I see it thatthere's not a clear expectation
and what I often refer to asthe KPI, a key point indicator.
(07:03):
That way the benchmark is setand we all know what has to be
done.
Now a lot of people will hiremyself as a fractional CMO to
make sure we set the right KPIand that it's not dictated by
the agency alone.
Yes, so having the rightexpectations is very important,
(07:26):
as I work on the inside of acompany and look at the agency.
So I would look at you and say,ok, what do you see that needs
to be done?
I love and value people'sopinion.
Now I go off of my confirmationbias of is that opinion right
or wrong?
Now I love some conversationsthat we had of build the
foundation first.
So when you come to me and whowould be my CEO and you said
(07:51):
that to me, I would sayabsolutely like build that
foundation.
Now where we might disagree iswhat is the foundation.
But now that's a finer pointthat most CEOs don't know.
They just love the buzzword.
That's where I come in and say,look, let's set the KPI of what
is the foundation and what isthe right timeline to meet that
(08:12):
foundation.
And then that second leads intothe expectation of budget.
So now, when you are pouring abudget into it, when should your
expectation or your KPI be metand associated with your budget?
So I mean I can go down abudget strategy if you'd like,
(08:34):
but that again trying to keep ithigh level for a short podcast
here.
It's kind of the two top thingsthere.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yeah, and I love that you talked about making sure
that the vendor doesn't dictatethe expectation, right, because
I think something that I see alot and I think what frustrates
a lot of people is they go workwith like a PPC vendor, for
example, a Google ads vendor andthey'll say, yeah, we'll get
you 100 leads a month and youknow, you get started and maybe
(09:06):
you do get 100 leads a month,but 98 of them are junk and
they're not even relevant andthen you go to the thing and
you're like you're not producingwhat I said.
And they're like, yeah, we gotyou 100 leads per month.
We're doing exactly what wesaid we were gonna do, you know.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I'll give you two quick stories on that, because I
love that.
You say that and you're deadright.
You know, I've one guy thatjust hired me and I literally
have a call later today with hisad agency and what he already
told me is I went through thediscovery process is that his
vendor, the agency that he hired, he's paying over four grand a
(09:39):
month to Now for his smallbusiness relatively small
business.
That's a big chunk, but he'slooking at it as this, as an
investment.
So when we look at it, what I'mhere to do is get the maximum
potential out of that ad agency.
So, in discovery, he's gettingphone calls from people looking
(10:01):
for information on a projectthat's already started.
But he's showing up inpay-per-click for things like
Home Depot and he's a remodelerand he's going you've already
started this project, you're nota valid lead.
So he calls the agency and theagency casted such a wide net
that they burned through hisbudget in two weeks.
That was meant to be four weeksand he got nothing from it.
(10:21):
Well, I'll give you anotherquick story.
Well, so, on that one, to wrapthat up, we're having a
discussion today to fix that andto modify and manage his budget
better.
Now I'll give you another quickstory.
I have a client who I have anad agency and my agency was
generating leads for him and theproblem became he quickly
(10:42):
bounced back and said you know,hey, you generate all these
leads.
You got 15 in one week.
This is great, but they're allcracked.
And I said, okay, explain to mewhy.
Right, because now it's settingthe clear expectation of the
value of a lead, of why is itgarbage?
Right, I'm cool with saying,hey, I produce garbage, but if
(11:05):
there's no communication, nowthe expectation is unrealistic.
Not trying to rhyme there, butthe expectation is unrealistic
because there's no communication.
That's why, for myself again,every client's different, but we
use a CRM with agencies to getthat information sharing.
(11:29):
Where a business owner has tobounce back and say this
specifically is why it's bad.
And then any agency can work onthat.
Well, I say any.
If they're an agency of value,of good ethics, morals and
values, they can fix that right.
But that's some of thechallenges that I know other
(11:49):
business owners have faced.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
So yeah, Well, I mean , even we've faced it right,
Because we don't do anypay-per-click ads as a service,
but we wanted to marketourselves through that kind of
channel.
We worked with another agencyand their default was to
maximize impressions and get thelowest click rate that they
(12:10):
could, and that's kind of theirdefault.
That's how they help people.
And we started seeing thatpeople were reaching out to us
thinking that we were lawyers,Because obviously we do
marketing for lawyers.
But somehow people werereaching out to us thinking that
we were lawyers, and so we'relike no, okay.
And then we got to the pointwhere we were like, look, we
(12:31):
wanna get really focused on this.
We are totally okay with ahigher click rate and lower
impressions if those are justall being targeted right people,
and they could not wrap theirhead around it and so we just
don't work with them anymore.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
So can I speak to that just real quick?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, what peoplefall into that they're not
oftentimes aware of is what arecalled in ad words,
pay-per-click ad words is what'scalled search terms and a
search term.
When you put in a keyword, youhave three variables.
You have broad match, exactmatching, phrase match.
Now I'm not gonna go brain youright, for the sake of time here
(13:07):
.
But when you understand thatyou have a keyword and you have
these three variables of howthat search term has worked, and
then you can see what peopleare actually typing in, that's
where I would come in as afractional CMO to you and say
let's look at our search terms.
Look like I don't disagree thatwe're gonna pause and we need
to change strategy.
(13:27):
But this kind of goes into whenyou hire an agency, one of the
top questions.
So let me put a big exclamationpoint on this Huge, massive.
Everyone hear me Find out whotheir strategist is and what
their experience is, becauseagencies will hire pay-per-click
managers and executors anddesigners.
(13:49):
But when you comes to, let mesimplify in a quick explanation.
When you simplify this, itcomes down to three brains that
build a website or do marketing,you have design.
Think about the brain and thelifestyle of a designer.
Then think about the coder, whoactually has to create what's
gonna happen.
And too many times we stopthere.
(14:12):
The third brain is superimportant.
That's the strategist.
And the strategist looks at itand goes okay, logically, what
was the disconnect in betweenall parties?
And we go oh well, they weresearching for attorney law.
Well, you showed up asmarketing attorney law.
Your search term wasn't setright.
(14:32):
So then we go market as anegative and we market as a
negative keyword.
Boom, we keep running thecampaign.
It's just we took away thebiggest sore spot.
Rather than hurting the entirecampaign, we took away one
little sore spot that everyone'sgoing.
That's the pain point.
And we say don't kill thecampaign right, don't kill the
messenger, change themessenger's route right and get
(14:56):
there a different way.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, absolutely so.
You're talking about settingexpectations right, and so what
and we've mentioned a couple ofdifferent things already Are
there any other specificquestions that business owners
should be asking these vendorsto make sure that they're
getting on the same page andsetting the proper expectations?
Speaker 3 (15:18):
Yeah, that's a great question, but I'm gonna be a
little vague on this one.
So you first need to set yourstrategy and your vision
internally before you work withan agency.
So an agency is meant to sellwhat they're good at Right, I
mean anyone listen to this orwatching.
(15:38):
You are meant to sell whatyou're good at.
You're not gonna say To a level.
You're not gonna say oh yeah,you should go do that.
Instead of this, you're meantto sell what you're good at In
the marketing world.
What a CMO does is it sits withthe CEO and says what are we
good at?
What are we trying to do?
(15:59):
What?
How do we want this to come in?
And therefore I help businessowners dictate to the agency
this is what we should do.
I mean, one of my offshootcampaigns that I'm trying right
now is working with agencies tobe their strategist.
So I go under contract withthem that I'm not gonna go
resell to another agency, butI'm gonna work as the strategist
(16:22):
and not be a fractional CMO.
I'm gonna be the CMO of anagency to be the lead strategist
to say here's what we do.
And a lot of agencies areworking with me on that because
they don't have a strategist.
They understand the problemhere.
So, again, let's back out ofthat rabbit hole for a minute
and come back to your question,the question being you know
what's the expectation?
(16:42):
Well, you need to set thatproperly internally, with your
own KPIs, then interview and,just as a quick point of
reference, we haven't chattedabout it.
We could talk about it asneeded, but I published a book
back in 2019 and the firstchapter gives you five points on
how to hire the right agency,how to set the right KPIs, how
(17:03):
to interview an agency, and Ikind of kind of call it a manual
or a guide that you keep inyour back pocket, you've
reviewed.
Then you ask a list ofquestions to the agency and you
go back and see if they matchyour KPIs.
And and that's where, again, Itry to be a little bit vague,
because everyone has their ownproblems.
Everyone has their narrative,right, if you speak
(17:23):
psychologically, we all have ournarrative and burnt, burnt
times, hurt times, paying timesand they're all gonna be
different for everybody.
So that's why there is someambiguity to that.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Yeah, and you know you also probably think about,
like you know what, like yousaid, like what's important to
you, you know, and again, justmaking sure that you know you
both have the same workingdefinition of the results, that
that you expect to have.
One other thing that youmentioned and and I want to get
this because we get thisquestion a lot you mentioned
(17:58):
budget, you know, a few minutesago.
Is there, is there any sort ofset guideline or or
recommendation in terms of, like, what percentage of your budget
should be going to marketing oris it one of those it depends
sort of things?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
So I use a law called law of diminishing return and
Let me kind of give anotherquick story here.
Yeah, and the story is of agarage door company and they
came to me.
We were working together forseveral years.
You know the full life cycle ofmost agencies with companies is
about 18 months.
The average that I work with isover four years.
(18:40):
A lot of that I attribute tojust being very blunt and honest
, which some business ownersdon't like.
They want to be told and pat iton the back that they're right.
And I'm just not that guy.
I'm a very like.
What you really want is money.
We all do, right, like that'swhy we're in business is to make
money.
So I look at business ownersbefore we even get started and I
(19:01):
say, look, do you want to makemoney or do you want to feel
good about yourself?
Right, like you know, go feelgood about yourself once you've
made money.
But back to my story with thebusiness owner in the garage
door company.
They came to me, we wereworking for several years and
and they came to me one day andthey said look, you know, we
turn off paper, click and ourphones die.
(19:22):
And we have business, but ourphones die and we turn on paper
click and we're spending allthis money.
We should cancel you, josh, asSEO and we should just do paper
click be done.
And I said, okay, I don'tdisagree, but let's take some
confirmation bias and look atthe data right.
Let's be analytical about this.
(19:42):
So long story short.
After doing some quick research, it only took me about two or
three days to pull all thenumbers together and verify them
.
At the end of the day, theywere right.
Their volume of calls was wayup on paper click.
They were spending.
However very important to know,they were spending $180 for a
(20:04):
closed deal with paper click.
Now, that fit their marginsright, like when you, when we
ran their gross profit margin,their cost, we ran all the
numbers on the budgeting and,like I said, that's a whole
nother story that I could walkthrough it at another time.
But when we walk through this,this number 180 was still below
their threshold of Revenue thatthey could spend for a sale.
(20:27):
If I recall right, it was about250.
Was was their top line.
But when we looked at SEO, seowas 50 dollars.
Now they were getting a smallervolume, less calls, but they
were more qualified and and theywere selling at a better rate
at 50.
I could give this same storyagain and again in different
(20:48):
industries and different thingsthat we've done.
But here's the thing tounderstand law of diminishing
return.
They said, well, josh, can weget rid of the paper?
Click and spin it on SEO.
And I said law of diminishingreturn, no, because they were
already spending about $2,500 amonth on SEO.
And I said, if anything, we needto start scaling that back
because we've already reachedthe threshold, or we need to
(21:10):
change from what we were doingand use a different type of SEO
because, again, a lot of peopledon't understand there's
different types of SEO.
I mean, at the core, it's linkbuilding and it's content
building right and it, thosekind of go together, but they
are different.
So that's the law ofdiminishing return that we have
to be aware of is, at some pointyou got what you got and you
(21:32):
move on from it.
And then, as far as budget goes, I created something called the
crystal ball of marketing andit truly dictates Exactly what
you should spend and what you'regonna make, and it's it's a
beautiful mind type of tool thatWorks 100% of the time.
When you input the right data.
It will output for you exactlywhat you need.
(21:54):
But I think that answers atleast the beginning of your
question, right?
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And you know, I think so manypeople get focused on just the
hard line numbers that you knowI there it is.
It goes so much deeper thanthat because there's so many
other things to take intoconsideration in terms of the
different kinds of marketingthat you're doing like.
You can't just put a blanketnumber over it.
(22:19):
You know and expect that to go.
Well, you got to really lookdeeper into it.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Yeah, yeah, there's.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
there's so much to that, but you're right on with
it, yeah so on the other side ofthat, you know we talked a lot
about vendors and you knowsomething that we see, you know
is, you know, a solo or smallbusiness, they will work with a
vendor for a time, they willgrow and then they'll get to a
certain kind of revenue numberand At some point, you know,
(22:50):
they'll kind of think like, okay, well, I'm spending this much
on a vendor, which is more thanthe monthly cost of Having
someone in house, and thenthey'll bring that person in
house.
So you know, in your experience, you know, is there a right
time to bring marketing in house, to hire a full-time or a
(23:11):
part-time person To handle it,or what have you seen?
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yeah, you know that's such an absolute loaded
question, and one thing thatI've learned in my experience of
doing conferences is thatpeople sometimes take what I'm
about to say and they take it asthe holy grail.
At least when I teachconferences, they do this and
then they do it.
And then they call me sixmonths or a year later and then
yell at me and say you lie,you're full of it.
(23:37):
So I try to walk delicatelyabout this.
So if anyone comes to me laterand says or to you and says you
know your guest lied to me.
Let's take this as a grain ofsalt, right?
Oftentimes we'll use triggerwords where I'll say something
like you know red cup?
And that means like, rememberred cup?
(23:57):
I told you that this isn't theholy grail there's.
There's things around it, right?
But yeah, I mean when to bringsomeone in versus keeping
outsource, again, it's going tonumber one, go to your strategy,
right?
Because if, especially with ifyou've dedicated your time to
(24:18):
pay for click, let's just sayand that's all you're going to
do, then at some point to bringin a manager is going to be
important, but then set theexpectation is the manager going
to manage the agency, pay thema little less.
Is the manager going to take?
over what the agency does.
Make sure that they have theright qualifications.
(24:38):
Right, you need to look at casestudies, just like you would
hire the agency, you need tolook at what they've done.
And let me talk about casestudies real quick.
Start asking agencies for theworst case study.
Ask them who is your worstclient and why?
Right, I like to ask clients howdo I get fired?
And they're like what?
(24:59):
Like we, you're about to gethired.
Why?
Because then if the expectationmeets properly, where I know,
if I don't do this, I'm out thedoor, right, but I would even
reverse that when I hire people,how do you think you're going
to get fired?
Like, I'm hiring you so I don'twant to, right, but where is
(25:19):
that expectation met?
So, again, when you bringsomeone in setting the same
thing the KPI, what is theexpectation?
Tell them this is what gets youfired.
If you don't get this done,then I got to let you go because
it's not worth it.
So there's just a lot to thatand I know I'm not giving you
the real answer of this is whenyou do it, but I think it's
(25:42):
different when you go SEO orwebsite maintenance versus pay
per click, versus.
Can they do everything, but Ithink at some point, whenever
the business owner I'll leave iton this when a business owner
gets so overwhelmed that they'respending you know, I would call
it again this is a vague number35 to 45 or more percent of
(26:03):
their time in marketing.
They need to find some type ofmanager, some type of manager or
fractional CMO to step in andmanage that percentage for them
so that they can focus on higherlevel and then only spend 15 to
20% on the marketing side.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yeah, and I love that you bring that because I think
I know when I think about this,I think about it more on the
execution side of things,because that's just how I'm
wired.
My default is just I'm goingand I'm just getting things done
, and one thing that I've seenin marketing is that you really
need two very different kinds ofpeople.
You need the analytical mindedperson who understands data and
(26:44):
can really go through that andmake decisions, and really
informed decisions based on allthat data.
But then you also need acreative mind who can create
compelling copy, who can speakto your audience's needs, who
really understands thatemotional and creative side of
things, and finding one personwho does both of those things
(27:05):
very well is extremely difficult.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
It's almost impossible because you're almost
talking about left brain, rightbrain, but there are a small,
select amount of people that cando both and I would raise my
hand and say I can do both.
But I am definitely more of theanalytical side of here's the
data.
But I understand how tocommunicate that data right Now.
If you asked me to designsomething, I would be terrible.
(27:30):
I'm not great at that.
I'm going to go look atexamples and be like this is the
direction we should go, andthen I hand it to a designer and
say go, make this happen.
But I understand the strategyand what we're trying to do
within that.
So I mean we could talk so muchabout just what you said, right
, because I mean there's likeprobably 10 bullet points that I
could write down and go througha few on that, right?
(27:54):
Yeah, I mean you're talkingabout these different mindsets
and again that kind of goes backto the coder versus designer
versus strategist and whatyou're talking about.
I'll leave it on this and wecan move whatever direction you
like, but when you're talkingabout the person that gets it
done, now you're talking aboutthe visionary versus the
execution, right?
So as a fractional CMO, Iunderstand what the execution
(28:16):
should be and the process, thatif you are working, if we are
working together, I'm going tolook at you and say, go, execute
.
Here's the vision.
But I understand how it shouldbe executed and understand
because of my background andexperience and how long I've
been doing it, which is over 20years.
I know I'm relatively young, butover 20 years, being in my mid
(28:37):
40s there's something to say of.
I've seen how it's executed.
So I've seen what projectmanagers have done right and
what they've done wrong and thebest way to do it.
And it doesn't mean that I cangive or always dictate the best
way, because I'm always learning.
But I can say look, this is apitfall and I know you're going
to fall into that pit if you doit this way.
(28:58):
But you got to have thatexecutor.
And I'll tell you right now, asa fractional CMO, it's not my
job to be an executor and Idon't want to do it.
I want to stay in my lane.
This is what I'm good at.
And then I've hired peoplearound me that can do and
execute what I either don't wantto do or what I'm not good at.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yeah, and that's.
You know, the moreconversations like this I have,
the more that I see is justeverything is so layered and
interweaves so much together.
Because, again, as a businessowner, it goes the same way that
you're saying Business ownersis the, you know, a lot of times
(29:36):
has to be the visionary, is thevisionary, but so many,
especially smaller ones, they'realso trying to execute as well
and that's just not reallysustainable, Like you have to be
able to delegate a lot of thatstuff off.
And so the one question, onemore question I wanted to ask
you before we wrap up here.
You know, if anyone has beenfollowing us at Spotlight
(29:57):
Branding for any amount of time,you're aware that we have like
an anti SEO report.
We had like kind of this antiSEO stance for a while, and not
that we've tapered off of it,but you know our whole idea
around it was you know that'snot where you start.
You need a lot of supportingmarketing to help make that sort
(30:18):
of thing work better.
But I know in our industry,especially legal marketing
industry, the majority ofmarketing companies out there
that's the service that theypush first and that's what you
know.
Everyone says, oh, you got todo this.
You got to have SEO.
You got to make sure yourrankings are optimized.
Your ranking is okay.
So for people who are going totry to add that to their
(30:39):
marketing strategy, what is yourapproach to it when you're
working with someone new, RightLike, do you, you know, do you
go find a local company to do it?
Do you find a national companyto do it?
You know, is it something thatyou even handle yourself in
terms of you know, talking aboutthe execution side of things?
Like, where do you go with thatsort of thing?
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Yeah, so the first thing is understanding the core,
and the core has really changed, and not a lot of people are
aware of this, but if you thinkabout this, is always a fun
exercise, right?
So everyone close your eyes andreally process this, and I mean
that in seriousness, becausewhen you close your eyes, you
get rid of distractions and youclear your brain to take a deep
breath.
So if you close your eyes, youtake a deep breath.
(31:22):
Here's what you think about.
Think about how you did asearch in 2018.
How many words did you put intoGoogle when you did a search?
Now, today, when you've done asearch, or you do a search after
you listen to this or watchthis, how many words do you put
(31:43):
in?
And, on average, the words havemore than doubled and most of
the words have transformed intolanguage of how do I?
So?
When you think about it that way, what I first of all suggest is
create phrases, and we createdinternally, I created what's
called a bubble map of keywords,and the bubble map of keywords
(32:06):
are built more around blogs ofphrases that we want to rank for
, and then we want to work onthat angle of these phrases we
want to rank for rather than akeyword, because a keyword can
still get a lot of search volumebut a phrase gets a lower
search volume.
It's a longer tail, but it's ahigher transactional keyword
(32:32):
rather than a navigational orinformative keyword, right,
which is the desired content ofthe searcher.
So you know, as a, for instance, if you Google fractional CMO,
I don't show up in the top 100of national ranking.
But if you type in fractionalCMO Dallas, austin, houston,
(32:55):
oklahoma City, salt Lake City,boise, denver, miami, hawaii and
I could go over 32 keywordsthat I rank in the top five.
Top five If you use that term.
And I know I've got CMOs outthere that are chasing me
because they want that word andI look at it and go.
You know what I want someonethat says local.
(33:16):
So when you ask local ornational, let me give you
another quick story and a quickfact yeah, most big brands, when
they hire a CMO, they hire fromoutside, not inside.
So two on that and everyone godo your research.
They hire big brands hire fromthe outside, not in their
industry, to bring them in theirindustry.
(33:36):
So there's a double edged swordto that and the answer is it's
more about the KPIs and therelationship that you can build
with the agency and can theymeet those KPIs more than is it?
Is it if they know your nicheor don't?
It's more about what is what dothey do?
Because I don't specialize inone thing, I specialize in a lot
(33:58):
, because I'm looking at what dowe want to achieve and what are
the KPIs, what are themeasurable KPIs, and when we all
agree on them, I don't missthat target.
That's one thing I'm veryconfident.
I don't miss targets and if Ido, it's not by much, because
I'm watching along the way asthe arrow goes towards the
target and I know how toredirect that arrow to get it to
land where we want it to land.
(34:21):
So I think that answers yourquestion in a little bit of a
roundabout way, but it alsogives a little bit more
education as the key words andwhere they've tailed off to
Right, yeah, I mean, for me, Ithink the biggest takeaway is
just take the time to vet andset the expectations and really
feel good about who it is you'reworking for.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Now I will say this people in our industry they take
a lot of time to make adecision.
Like, don't draw it out towhere you're starting to miss
opportunities.
Like, you know, do your duediligence, absolutely, talk to
different agencies and do allthat.
But you know, don't wait weeksand months at a time to where
you start to forget theseconversations that you had and
(35:02):
it becomes more of a recencybias sort of situation rather
than you know getting the rightsolution from the information
that you gathered.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Right.
But on that right we're sayingthe same thing Internally set
your KPIs, set your expectationsinternally first.
Then when you interview theagency, pull the trigger.
What today's market they sayhire fast, fire faster.
So I hope this doesn't goagainst your philosophy, but I
would say get those short termcontracts, get that three or
(35:31):
four months.
In my professional opinion Ilook and I even do a four month
engagement and then after thatit's a 45 day cancellation so
they can get rid of me veryquickly if they choose to.
If I'm not hitting the cusp andthere are clients that I'll tell
you right now that I willdisengage with because either
personality disagreement orvision disagreement or KPI being
(35:55):
unrealistic, I'll back out andsay look, I'll do respect.
I want you to go somewhere andspend your money where it's wise
.
So take off.
You know what I mean.
I'll make a smooth transition.
I'll hand everything over.
You know I'll make sure thateverything's there.
I'll answer your questions upto a point, but I'll say this is
what we got done, this is wherewe're at.
(36:15):
Here's the handoff, here's thebaton.
But, yeah, make, set your KPIsright.
I mean, know what you want toachieve and what's realistic,
interview the person and moveforward Right.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yeah, and more often than not, like you still make
progress, you still, you know,get forward a little bit and,
worst case scenario, you walkaway with the knowledge of hey,
ok, this isn't for me, thisdoesn't work, I can go try
something else now.
And so you know, definitely,you know, sitting around trying
to think of a decision to makeisn't helping.
(36:47):
You know.
You got to make those fastdecisions and learn something at
the very least along the way.
Before we wrap up here, telleveryone how they can get in
touch with you, learn more, andalso to check out the book that
you mentioned.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Yeah, so my book is on my website and I would
encourage everybody to firstGoogle fractional CMO and put in
your city that's near you Seeif I show up.
But my main website is jrcmocom, so that's Josh Ramsey, chief
marketing officercom.
So jrcmocom.
On there there's everythingthat's unique.
(37:23):
There's a book download,there's free information.
I have the world's largest SEOlibrary that I've compiled.
It has somewhere over 160different strategies that you
can implement or research.
I have just a ton of information.
And then my call to action is Iwork with people for free for
at least the first two hours.
(37:44):
I'll work with them for free toprove my knowledge, to prove
that I have the experience andto help them get the right
vision, because I do what Googlewants to do for everybody and
that is create the best userexperience.
Because what I've proven tomyself and a lot of people that
I know, if I come in and giveyou the best user experience and
(38:04):
show you my knowledge andeverything that I have to give
you and I can point you on theright track, people come back.
People will come back to me,learn from me, want to work with
me, and I've seen that time andtime again.
I picked up my biggest clientsover the years just from that
word of mouth of someone goingyep, that guy's good, yep, that
guy's got experience.
(38:24):
Yes, that guy is ethical andmoral and he's going to be
honest with you.
So again, jrcmocom is where thebook is at, where other
information is at.
You can also, I think on myhomepage it says, solve your
biggest marketing headache,although we do a lot of AB
testing, so you may show up andsee it, say two hour free
consultation or solve yourbiggest marketing headache, but
(38:47):
you can always contact any waythrough that website and we'll
get you set up with a meeting.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I mean just sitting hereand talking to you for the last
35 minutes or so, I can tell youknow your stuff, because
there's so many different rabbitholes we could have gone down.
I mean this could have been aseven hour conversation just
covering all the different areasof marketing strategy.
So you know, I'm lookingforward to coming back.
Oh, yeah, we can.
(39:14):
We can absolutely make thathappen.
So one final question herebefore we end the show if you
had one final piece of advicefor our audience, what would it
be?
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Man.
Again, that's so hard becauseeveryone is so different.
But I would say, start withyour narrative, identify in your
narrative what's worked welland what has failed you.
Then I tell employees and youcan even use this with the
employees I tell them, give meyour 30 day, your three months,
(39:44):
your six months and your oneyear goal and then go a little
bit step beyond and give me yourfive year.
But I think when you createthis goal path, both for
yourself, from your employees,from your agency, it starts to
paint a picture of where youshould go.
And a lot of times we live todayin a narrative of we make
(40:06):
choices based on our past andsometimes that's a fail point
for us.
So understanding the psychologyof why we make decisions is
really important.
I feel like I should write abook about it.
There's probably a book outthere that I haven't found yet
that's written about it, but itis psychologically based.
Where we make decisions, wehave arguments, we buy things
(40:27):
all based on our narrative.
So understanding where you'vebeen is just as important as
where you're going and whyyou're going to make those
decisions.
So I guess I would probably, atleast for this conversation,
leave that as a focal point ofreally drawing out your
narrative, and if you haven'tever looked this up, there's
something I think it's calledthe egg diagram or the egg chart
(40:49):
, and you draw an egg and inthat egg you write out the most
impactful moments of your lifeand you do it with a picture
rather than a word and you tellyour story to someone that's
close and confidential to you.
But when I did that for thefirst time back in 2018, I think
, or 2019, I mean it blew mymind of the things I kept
(41:12):
remembering and I left it on mywall for 30 days and it really
helped me understand why I makedecisions now, from my birth and
my first memory all the way upand I think that can help both
in business and in personal,because they all interweave and
then you start to make betterdecisions based on understanding
(41:32):
the hurts and the fail pointsboth in your personal life and
in your business life, andunderstanding again.
Trying to sum this up, you madea bad business decision.
Why?
Understand the why and thenarrative of why you made that
decision, back down to when yourbusiness started.
Therefore, you don't make thatdecision again and I'm going to
(41:54):
tell you right now I still makethose bad decisions.
Right, I look at it like Ishould not have done that, but
when you have that chart up infront of you, you can then
remember that narrative and tryto make better decisions.
So hopefully that's maybe agood stopping point for us.
Again, I mean, that's a wholenother conversation to
understand that as well.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Absolutely no.
All of that, just absolutelygreat.
A lot of great insight, and Iknow that you know I say this a
lot.
I know when I walk awaylearning things and with some
new ideas.
I know our audience gets a tonof value out of it as well, and
so really do appreciate it and Iappreciate all of you for
continuing to listen.
Please leave a rating andreview wherever you're listening
(42:36):
, if you have not done so yet.
It helps the show grow andreally is a valuable to get that
feedback from all of you outthere.
But that's going to do it.
Thanks so much for joining us,josh.
Thanks again, thanks forlistening.
To learn more, go tospotlightbrandingcom slash
center stage.
This podcast is brought to you by Spotlight
Branding.
Whether your firm only gets afew referrals or it's 100% of
your business, you have theopportunity to double your
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The pros at Spotlight Brandingcan help you create that content
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(00:22):
designed to help you increaseyour referrals and attract the
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Visit spotlightbrandingcomslash pod to learn more.
That's spotlightbrandingcomslash pod.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
This is Center Stage putting your firm in the
spotlight by highlightingbusiness owners and other
industry experts to help takeyour firm to the next level.
Hey everyone, and welcome toCenter Stage.
I'm your host, john Henson, andthis week we are talking about
how to find the right partnerfor your marketing, and we're
(01:14):
going to talk about or we'vetalked a lot about before how
you, as the firm owner, shouldnot be doing it yourself.
You should be doing the thingthat you went to school for, or
that you are known for, orgetting paid for, not all of
this other stuff.
But how do you actually figureout who you're going to work
with and I promise this is notgoing to be like a 30 minute
sales pitch for why you shouldwork with spotlight branding or
(01:36):
anybody else.
I want to help you make themost informed decision that you
can and what makes the mostsense for you.
So that is why I am joined byJosh Ramsey.
He does a lot of fractional CMOwork.
He's helped all kinds ofbusinesses with their marketing
and I'm excited for him to behere.
So, josh, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
I appreciate it, lookingforward to the chat.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Absolutely.
So yeah, I gave the bare boneskind of intro there.
Tell us a little bit more aboutwhat you do and some of the
experience that you had.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yeah, so again, thanks for having me.
I really appreciate it.
I love sharing the messagebecause most people are not
understanding or even aware thata fractional CMO exists.
People understand the conceptof a marketing strategist and
they understand a marketingconsultant, but oftentimes a
marketing strategist orconsultant is someone that's
just going to say go do this orgo do that.
(02:33):
But a fractional CMO is reallymeant to get their hands dirty,
to not only get the vision, butto put their hands on it, put
their fingerprints on it onbehalf of the CEO.
So it's someone that sits atthe executive table, gives the
vision, but then gives thevision based on the CEO's dream
(02:56):
and then executes or makes surethat the execution is done.
Now, that doesn't mean this isalso clear to understand.
It doesn't mean that they'regoing to build your website.
The fractional CMO understandshow a website should be built
and the structure of themarketing system and gives the
vision, but doesn't do it.
Will you indulge me on onequick story on the explanation?
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Absolutely so.
I literally just finished anemail this morning to one of my
clients and I have a marketingteam that reports to me and the
conversation I had this morningwith the client.
If I back out for just a secondand explain the client, they
have something good to say, butthey don't say it well, but they
(03:39):
try to say it often.
So it has something good to say.
Say it well and say it often.
The conundrum that they're inis the storytelling.
It's the explanation of whatthey do well and explaining it
to the audience that they wantto reach.
It's easy to say it often onceyou have a good strategic
(04:00):
message.
So this morning one of theinitiatives that I've started
was our operators came up with asolution on a problem.
I outlined the vision of howour marketing project managers
need to clearly communicate thatand then I'm training them and
teaching them.
This is how you leave a story.
(04:21):
So this is what the operatorsdid, here's how we define that,
here's how we engage that into astoryline, and then it's easy
to again communicate it.
There's all sorts of various asI call it tactical marketing
outlets to speak your message to.
But if you're not engagingenough and you don't have a good
(04:41):
storytelling of what yourinside reality is, that becomes
a problem.
So that's what a CMO does issay, ok, we have something good
and here's how we weave thatstory, give it to a team to
weave it, I approve it as theCMO and then we execute it.
So maybe that helps understandus a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah, yeah, I mean you.
It's essentially in the name.
You are the chief marketingperson.
You are handling everythingDoesn't mean that you're
literally doing it all yourself,but you're facilitating and
making the decisions that theowner would otherwise have to do
on their own.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Yeah, exactly that's it.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, so we're talking about marketing vendors
because I think that's where alot of people start, especially
smaller businesses and trying toget some of that marketing help
.
So, especially you maybe evenwork with some vendors or vet
some vendors as a CMO.
What are some of the biggestfrustrations that you've seen
business owners or even you havehad with marketing vendors and
(05:47):
I promise I won't get offendedby anything you say- Well,
thanks for not getting offended,but you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
I never mean to offend, but one thing about
myself at least, andunderstanding myself, because
psychology is a big part ofmarketing.
It's understanding the humannature, why we buy what we buy.
And ultimately, if I just brokethat down, no matter what you
sell, there are three levelsthat a business owner needs to
understand, and this kind ofleads into hiring the right
(06:18):
marketing person or agencyvendor.
And it starts with benefits ofownership, objections to that
ownership and then vendorselection and too often we sell
on price not quality ofovercoming the objections and
explaining the value, which isadvantage.
So everything that we buy, froma stick of gum, bottle of water
(06:40):
to a Ferrari, it it's allwrapped into those decision
making that we make.
So I think the first part isexpectations.
When we hire somebody, bothemployees in-house and also
vendors Oftentimes I see it thatthere's not a clear expectation
and what I often refer to asthe KPI, a key point indicator.
(07:03):
That way the benchmark is setand we all know what has to be
done.
Now a lot of people will hiremyself as a fractional CMO to
make sure we set the right KPIand that it's not dictated by
the agency alone.
Yes, so having the rightexpectations is very important,
(07:26):
as I work on the inside of acompany and look at the agency.
So I would look at you and say,ok, what do you see that needs
to be done?
I love and value people'sopinion.
Now I go off of my confirmationbias of is that opinion right
or wrong?
Now I love some conversationsthat we had of build the
foundation first.
So when you come to me and whowould be my CEO and you said
(07:51):
that to me, I would sayabsolutely like build that
foundation.
Now where we might disagree iswhat is the foundation.
But now that's a finer pointthat most CEOs don't know.
They just love the buzzword.
That's where I come in and say,look, let's set the KPI of what
is the foundation and what isthe right timeline to meet that
(08:12):
foundation.
And then that second leads intothe expectation of budget.
So now, when you are pouring abudget into it, when should your
expectation or your KPI be metand associated with your budget?
So I mean I can go down abudget strategy if you'd like,
(08:34):
but that again trying to keep ithigh level for a short podcast
here.
It's kind of the two top thingsthere.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yeah, and I love that you talked about making sure
that the vendor doesn't dictatethe expectation, right, because
I think something that I see alot and I think what frustrates
a lot of people is they go workwith like a PPC vendor, for
example, a Google ads vendor andthey'll say, yeah, we'll get
you 100 leads a month and youknow, you get started and maybe
(09:06):
you do get 100 leads a month,but 98 of them are junk and
they're not even relevant andthen you go to the thing and
you're like you're not producingwhat I said.
And they're like, yeah, we gotyou 100 leads per month.
We're doing exactly what wesaid we were gonna do, you know.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I'll give you two quick stories on that, because I
love that.
You say that and you're deadright.
You know, I've one guy thatjust hired me and I literally
have a call later today with hisad agency and what he already
told me is I went through thediscovery process is that his
vendor, the agency that he hired, he's paying over four grand a
(09:39):
month to Now for his smallbusiness relatively small
business.
That's a big chunk, but he'slooking at it as this, as an
investment.
So when we look at it, what I'mhere to do is get the maximum
potential out of that ad agency.
So, in discovery, he's gettingphone calls from people looking
(10:01):
for information on a projectthat's already started.
But he's showing up inpay-per-click for things like
Home Depot and he's a remodelerand he's going you've already
started this project, you're nota valid lead.
So he calls the agency and theagency casted such a wide net
that they burned through hisbudget in two weeks.
That was meant to be four weeksand he got nothing from it.
(10:21):
Well, I'll give you anotherquick story.
Well, so, on that one, to wrapthat up, we're having a
discussion today to fix that andto modify and manage his budget
better.
Now I'll give you another quickstory.
I have a client who I have anad agency and my agency was
generating leads for him and theproblem became he quickly
(10:42):
bounced back and said you know,hey, you generate all these
leads.
You got 15 in one week.
This is great, but they're allcracked.
And I said, okay, explain to mewhy.
Right, because now it's settingthe clear expectation of the
value of a lead, of why is itgarbage?
Right, I'm cool with saying,hey, I produce garbage, but if
(11:05):
there's no communication, nowthe expectation is unrealistic.
Not trying to rhyme there, butthe expectation is unrealistic
because there's no communication.
That's why, for myself again,every client's different, but we
use a CRM with agencies to getthat information sharing.
(11:29):
Where a business owner has tobounce back and say this
specifically is why it's bad.
And then any agency can work onthat.
Well, I say any.
If they're an agency of value,of good ethics, morals and
values, they can fix that right.
But that's some of thechallenges that I know other
(11:49):
business owners have faced.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
So yeah, Well, I mean , even we've faced it right,
Because we don't do anypay-per-click ads as a service,
but we wanted to marketourselves through that kind of
channel.
We worked with another agencyand their default was to
maximize impressions and get thelowest click rate that they
(12:10):
could, and that's kind of theirdefault.
That's how they help people.
And we started seeing thatpeople were reaching out to us
thinking that we were lawyers,Because obviously we do
marketing for lawyers.
But somehow people werereaching out to us thinking that
we were lawyers, and so we'relike no, okay.
And then we got to the pointwhere we were like, look, we
(12:31):
wanna get really focused on this.
We are totally okay with ahigher click rate and lower
impressions if those are justall being targeted right people,
and they could not wrap theirhead around it and so we just
don't work with them anymore.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
So can I speak to that just real quick?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, what peoplefall into that they're not
oftentimes aware of is what arecalled in ad words,
pay-per-click ad words is what'scalled search terms and a
search term.
When you put in a keyword, youhave three variables.
You have broad match, exactmatching, phrase match.
Now I'm not gonna go brain youright, for the sake of time here
(13:07):
.
But when you understand thatyou have a keyword and you have
these three variables of howthat search term has worked, and
then you can see what peopleare actually typing in, that's
where I would come in as afractional CMO to you and say
let's look at our search terms.
Look like I don't disagree thatwe're gonna pause and we need
to change strategy.
(13:27):
But this kind of goes into whenyou hire an agency, one of the
top questions.
So let me put a big exclamationpoint on this Huge, massive.
Everyone hear me Find out whotheir strategist is and what
their experience is, becauseagencies will hire pay-per-click
managers and executors anddesigners.
(13:49):
But when you comes to, let mesimplify in a quick explanation.
When you simplify this, itcomes down to three brains that
build a website or do marketing,you have design.
Think about the brain and thelifestyle of a designer.
Then think about the coder, whoactually has to create what's
gonna happen.
And too many times we stopthere.
(14:12):
The third brain is superimportant.
That's the strategist.
And the strategist looks at itand goes okay, logically, what
was the disconnect in betweenall parties?
And we go oh well, they weresearching for attorney law.
Well, you showed up asmarketing attorney law.
Your search term wasn't setright.
(14:32):
So then we go market as anegative and we market as a
negative keyword.
Boom, we keep running thecampaign.
It's just we took away thebiggest sore spot.
Rather than hurting the entirecampaign, we took away one
little sore spot that everyone'sgoing.
That's the pain point.
And we say don't kill thecampaign right, don't kill the
messenger, change themessenger's route right and get
(14:56):
there a different way.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, absolutely so.
You're talking about settingexpectations right, and so what
and we've mentioned a couple ofdifferent things already Are
there any other specificquestions that business owners
should be asking these vendorsto make sure that they're
getting on the same page andsetting the proper expectations?
Speaker 3 (15:18):
Yeah, that's a great question, but I'm gonna be a
little vague on this one.
So you first need to set yourstrategy and your vision
internally before you work withan agency.
So an agency is meant to sellwhat they're good at Right, I
mean anyone listen to this orwatching.
(15:38):
You are meant to sell whatyou're good at.
You're not gonna say To a level.
You're not gonna say oh yeah,you should go do that.
Instead of this, you're meantto sell what you're good at In
the marketing world.
What a CMO does is it sits withthe CEO and says what are we
good at?
What are we trying to do?
(15:59):
What?
How do we want this to come in?
And therefore I help businessowners dictate to the agency
this is what we should do.
I mean, one of my offshootcampaigns that I'm trying right
now is working with agencies tobe their strategist.
So I go under contract withthem that I'm not gonna go
resell to another agency, butI'm gonna work as the strategist
(16:22):
and not be a fractional CMO.
I'm gonna be the CMO of anagency to be the lead strategist
to say here's what we do.
And a lot of agencies areworking with me on that because
they don't have a strategist.
They understand the problemhere.
So, again, let's back out ofthat rabbit hole for a minute
and come back to your question,the question being you know
what's the expectation?
(16:42):
Well, you need to set thatproperly internally, with your
own KPIs, then interview and,just as a quick point of
reference, we haven't chattedabout it.
We could talk about it asneeded, but I published a book
back in 2019 and the firstchapter gives you five points on
how to hire the right agency,how to set the right KPIs, how
(17:03):
to interview an agency, and Ikind of kind of call it a manual
or a guide that you keep inyour back pocket, you've
reviewed.
Then you ask a list ofquestions to the agency and you
go back and see if they matchyour KPIs.
And and that's where, again, Itry to be a little bit vague,
because everyone has their ownproblems.
Everyone has their narrative,right, if you speak
(17:23):
psychologically, we all have ournarrative and burnt, burnt
times, hurt times, paying timesand they're all gonna be
different for everybody.
So that's why there is someambiguity to that.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Yeah, and you know you also probably think about,
like you know what, like yousaid, like what's important to
you, you know, and again, justmaking sure that you know you
both have the same workingdefinition of the results, that
that you expect to have.
One other thing that youmentioned and and I want to get
this because we get thisquestion a lot you mentioned
(17:58):
budget, you know, a few minutesago.
Is there, is there any sort ofset guideline or or
recommendation in terms of, like, what percentage of your budget
should be going to marketing oris it one of those it depends
sort of things?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
So I use a law called law of diminishing return and
Let me kind of give anotherquick story here.
Yeah, and the story is of agarage door company and they
came to me.
We were working together forseveral years.
You know the full life cycle ofmost agencies with companies is
about 18 months.
The average that I work with isover four years.
(18:40):
A lot of that I attribute tojust being very blunt and honest
, which some business ownersdon't like.
They want to be told and pat iton the back that they're right.
And I'm just not that guy.
I'm a very like.
What you really want is money.
We all do, right, like that'swhy we're in business is to make
money.
So I look at business ownersbefore we even get started and I
(19:01):
say, look, do you want to makemoney or do you want to feel
good about yourself?
Right, like you know, go feelgood about yourself once you've
made money.
But back to my story with thebusiness owner in the garage
door company.
They came to me, we wereworking for several years and
and they came to me one day andthey said look, you know, we
turn off paper, click and ourphones die.
(19:22):
And we have business, but ourphones die and we turn on paper
click and we're spending allthis money.
We should cancel you, josh, asSEO and we should just do paper
click be done.
And I said, okay, I don'tdisagree, but let's take some
confirmation bias and look atthe data right.
Let's be analytical about this.
(19:42):
So long story short.
After doing some quick research, it only took me about two or
three days to pull all thenumbers together and verify them
.
At the end of the day, theywere right.
Their volume of calls was wayup on paper click.
They were spending.
However very important to know,they were spending $180 for a
(20:04):
closed deal with paper click.
Now, that fit their marginsright, like when you, when we
ran their gross profit margin,their cost, we ran all the
numbers on the budgeting and,like I said, that's a whole
nother story that I could walkthrough it at another time.
But when we walk through this,this number 180 was still below
their threshold of Revenue thatthey could spend for a sale.
(20:27):
If I recall right, it was about250.
Was was their top line.
But when we looked at SEO, seowas 50 dollars.
Now they were getting a smallervolume, less calls, but they
were more qualified and and theywere selling at a better rate
at 50.
I could give this same storyagain and again in different
(20:48):
industries and different thingsthat we've done.
But here's the thing tounderstand law of diminishing
return.
They said, well, josh, can weget rid of the paper?
Click and spin it on SEO.
And I said law of diminishingreturn, no, because they were
already spending about $2,500 amonth on SEO.
And I said, if anything, we needto start scaling that back
because we've already reachedthe threshold, or we need to
(21:10):
change from what we were doingand use a different type of SEO
because, again, a lot of peopledon't understand there's
different types of SEO.
I mean, at the core, it's linkbuilding and it's content
building right and it, thosekind of go together, but they
are different.
So that's the law ofdiminishing return that we have
to be aware of is, at some pointyou got what you got and you
(21:32):
move on from it.
And then, as far as budget goes, I created something called the
crystal ball of marketing andit truly dictates Exactly what
you should spend and what you'regonna make, and it's it's a
beautiful mind type of tool thatWorks 100% of the time.
When you input the right data.
It will output for you exactlywhat you need.
(21:54):
But I think that answers atleast the beginning of your
question, right?
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And you know, I think so manypeople get focused on just the
hard line numbers that you knowI there it is.
It goes so much deeper thanthat because there's so many
other things to take intoconsideration in terms of the
different kinds of marketingthat you're doing like.
You can't just put a blanketnumber over it.
(22:19):
You know and expect that to go.
Well, you got to really lookdeeper into it.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Yeah, yeah, there's.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
there's so much to that, but you're right on with
it, yeah so on the other side ofthat, you know we talked a lot
about vendors and you knowsomething that we see, you know
is, you know, a solo or smallbusiness, they will work with a
vendor for a time, they willgrow and then they'll get to a
certain kind of revenue numberand At some point, you know,
(22:50):
they'll kind of think like, okay, well, I'm spending this much
on a vendor, which is more thanthe monthly cost of Having
someone in house, and thenthey'll bring that person in
house.
So you know, in your experience, you know, is there a right
time to bring marketing in house, to hire a full-time or a
(23:11):
part-time person To handle it,or what have you seen?
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yeah, you know that's such an absolute loaded
question, and one thing thatI've learned in my experience of
doing conferences is thatpeople sometimes take what I'm
about to say and they take it asthe holy grail.
At least when I teachconferences, they do this and
then they do it.
And then they call me sixmonths or a year later and then
yell at me and say you lie,you're full of it.
(23:37):
So I try to walk delicatelyabout this.
So if anyone comes to me laterand says or to you and says you
know your guest lied to me.
Let's take this as a grain ofsalt, right?
Oftentimes we'll use triggerwords where I'll say something
like you know red cup?
And that means like, rememberred cup?
(23:57):
I told you that this isn't theholy grail there's.
There's things around it, right?
But yeah, I mean when to bringsomeone in versus keeping
outsource, again, it's going tonumber one, go to your strategy,
right?
Because if, especially with ifyou've dedicated your time to
(24:18):
pay for click, let's just sayand that's all you're going to
do, then at some point to bringin a manager is going to be
important, but then set theexpectation is the manager going
to manage the agency, pay thema little less.
Is the manager going to take?
over what the agency does.
Make sure that they have theright qualifications.
(24:38):
Right, you need to look at casestudies, just like you would
hire the agency, you need tolook at what they've done.
And let me talk about casestudies real quick.
Start asking agencies for theworst case study.
Ask them who is your worstclient and why?
Right, I like to ask clients howdo I get fired?
And they're like what?
(24:59):
Like we, you're about to gethired.
Why?
Because then if the expectationmeets properly, where I know,
if I don't do this, I'm out thedoor, right, but I would even
reverse that when I hire people,how do you think you're going
to get fired?
Like, I'm hiring you so I don'twant to, right, but where is
(25:19):
that expectation met?
So, again, when you bringsomeone in setting the same
thing the KPI, what is theexpectation?
Tell them this is what gets youfired.
If you don't get this done,then I got to let you go because
it's not worth it.
So there's just a lot to thatand I know I'm not giving you
the real answer of this is whenyou do it, but I think it's
(25:42):
different when you go SEO orwebsite maintenance versus pay
per click, versus.
Can they do everything, but Ithink at some point, whenever
the business owner I'll leave iton this when a business owner
gets so overwhelmed that they'respending you know, I would call
it again this is a vague number35 to 45 or more percent of
(26:03):
their time in marketing.
They need to find some type ofmanager, some type of manager or
fractional CMO to step in andmanage that percentage for them
so that they can focus on higherlevel and then only spend 15 to
20% on the marketing side.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yeah, and I love that you bring that because I think
I know when I think about this,I think about it more on the
execution side of things,because that's just how I'm
wired.
My default is just I'm goingand I'm just getting things done
, and one thing that I've seenin marketing is that you really
need two very different kinds ofpeople.
You need the analytical mindedperson who understands data and
(26:44):
can really go through that andmake decisions, and really
informed decisions based on allthat data.
But then you also need acreative mind who can create
compelling copy, who can speakto your audience's needs, who
really understands thatemotional and creative side of
things, and finding one personwho does both of those things
(27:05):
very well is extremely difficult.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
It's almost impossible because you're almost
talking about left brain, rightbrain, but there are a small,
select amount of people that cando both and I would raise my
hand and say I can do both.
But I am definitely more of theanalytical side of here's the
data.
But I understand how tocommunicate that data right Now.
If you asked me to designsomething, I would be terrible.
(27:30):
I'm not great at that.
I'm going to go look atexamples and be like this is the
direction we should go, andthen I hand it to a designer and
say go, make this happen.
But I understand the strategyand what we're trying to do
within that.
So I mean we could talk so muchabout just what you said, right
, because I mean there's likeprobably 10 bullet points that I
could write down and go througha few on that, right?
(27:54):
Yeah, I mean you're talkingabout these different mindsets
and again that kind of goes backto the coder versus designer
versus strategist and whatyou're talking about.
I'll leave it on this and wecan move whatever direction you
like, but when you're talkingabout the person that gets it
done, now you're talking aboutthe visionary versus the
execution, right?
So as a fractional CMO, Iunderstand what the execution
(28:16):
should be and the process, thatif you are working, if we are
working together, I'm going tolook at you and say, go, execute
.
Here's the vision.
But I understand how it shouldbe executed and understand
because of my background andexperience and how long I've
been doing it, which is over 20years.
I know I'm relatively young, butover 20 years, being in my mid
(28:37):
40s there's something to say of.
I've seen how it's executed.
So I've seen what projectmanagers have done right and
what they've done wrong and thebest way to do it.
And it doesn't mean that I cangive or always dictate the best
way, because I'm always learning.
But I can say look, this is apitfall and I know you're going
to fall into that pit if you doit this way.
(28:58):
But you got to have thatexecutor.
And I'll tell you right now, asa fractional CMO, it's not my
job to be an executor and Idon't want to do it.
I want to stay in my lane.
This is what I'm good at.
And then I've hired peoplearound me that can do and
execute what I either don't wantto do or what I'm not good at.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yeah, and that's.
You know, the moreconversations like this I have,
the more that I see is justeverything is so layered and
interweaves so much together.
Because, again, as a businessowner, it goes the same way that
you're saying Business ownersis the, you know, a lot of times
(29:36):
has to be the visionary, is thevisionary, but so many,
especially smaller ones, they'realso trying to execute as well
and that's just not reallysustainable, Like you have to be
able to delegate a lot of thatstuff off.
And so the one question, onemore question I wanted to ask
you before we wrap up here.
You know, if anyone has beenfollowing us at Spotlight
(29:57):
Branding for any amount of time,you're aware that we have like
an anti SEO report.
We had like kind of this antiSEO stance for a while, and not
that we've tapered off of it,but you know our whole idea
around it was you know that'snot where you start.
You need a lot of supportingmarketing to help make that sort
(30:18):
of thing work better.
But I know in our industry,especially legal marketing
industry, the majority ofmarketing companies out there
that's the service that theypush first and that's what you
know.
Everyone says, oh, you got todo this.
You got to have SEO.
You got to make sure yourrankings are optimized.
Your ranking is okay.
So for people who are going totry to add that to their
(30:39):
marketing strategy, what is yourapproach to it when you're
working with someone new, RightLike, do you, you know, do you
go find a local company to do it?
Do you find a national companyto do it?
You know, is it something thatyou even handle yourself in
terms of you know, talking aboutthe execution side of things?
Like, where do you go with thatsort of thing?
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Yeah, so the first thing is understanding the core,
and the core has really changed, and not a lot of people are
aware of this, but if you thinkabout this, is always a fun
exercise, right?
So everyone close your eyes andreally process this, and I mean
that in seriousness, becausewhen you close your eyes, you
get rid of distractions and youclear your brain to take a deep
breath.
So if you close your eyes, youtake a deep breath.
(31:22):
Here's what you think about.
Think about how you did asearch in 2018.
How many words did you put intoGoogle when you did a search?
Now, today, when you've done asearch, or you do a search after
you listen to this or watchthis, how many words do you put
(31:43):
in?
And, on average, the words havemore than doubled and most of
the words have transformed intolanguage of how do I?
So?
When you think about it that way, what I first of all suggest is
create phrases, and we createdinternally, I created what's
called a bubble map of keywords,and the bubble map of keywords
(32:06):
are built more around blogs ofphrases that we want to rank for
, and then we want to work onthat angle of these phrases we
want to rank for rather than akeyword, because a keyword can
still get a lot of search volumebut a phrase gets a lower
search volume.
It's a longer tail, but it's ahigher transactional keyword
(32:32):
rather than a navigational orinformative keyword, right,
which is the desired content ofthe searcher.
So you know, as a, for instance, if you Google fractional CMO,
I don't show up in the top 100of national ranking.
But if you type in fractionalCMO Dallas, austin, houston,
(32:55):
oklahoma City, salt Lake City,boise, denver, miami, hawaii and
I could go over 32 keywordsthat I rank in the top five.
Top five If you use that term.
And I know I've got CMOs outthere that are chasing me
because they want that word andI look at it and go.
You know what I want someonethat says local.
(33:16):
So when you ask local ornational, let me give you
another quick story and a quickfact yeah, most big brands, when
they hire a CMO, they hire fromoutside, not inside.
So two on that and everyone godo your research.
They hire big brands hire fromthe outside, not in their
industry, to bring them in theirindustry.
(33:36):
So there's a double edged swordto that and the answer is it's
more about the KPIs and therelationship that you can build
with the agency and can theymeet those KPIs more than is it?
Is it if they know your nicheor don't?
It's more about what is what dothey do?
Because I don't specialize inone thing, I specialize in a lot
(33:58):
, because I'm looking at what dowe want to achieve and what are
the KPIs, what are themeasurable KPIs, and when we all
agree on them, I don't missthat target.
That's one thing I'm veryconfident.
I don't miss targets and if Ido, it's not by much, because
I'm watching along the way asthe arrow goes towards the
target and I know how toredirect that arrow to get it to
land where we want it to land.
(34:21):
So I think that answers yourquestion in a little bit of a
roundabout way, but it alsogives a little bit more
education as the key words andwhere they've tailed off to
Right, yeah, I mean, for me, Ithink the biggest takeaway is
just take the time to vet andset the expectations and really
feel good about who it is you'reworking for.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Now I will say this people in our industry they take
a lot of time to make adecision.
Like, don't draw it out towhere you're starting to miss
opportunities.
Like, you know, do your duediligence, absolutely, talk to
different agencies and do allthat.
But you know, don't wait weeksand months at a time to where
you start to forget theseconversations that you had and
(35:02):
it becomes more of a recencybias sort of situation rather
than you know getting the rightsolution from the information
that you gathered.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Right.
But on that right we're sayingthe same thing Internally set
your KPIs, set your expectationsinternally first.
Then when you interview theagency, pull the trigger.
What today's market they sayhire fast, fire faster.
So I hope this doesn't goagainst your philosophy, but I
would say get those short termcontracts, get that three or
(35:31):
four months.
In my professional opinion Ilook and I even do a four month
engagement and then after thatit's a 45 day cancellation so
they can get rid of me veryquickly if they choose to.
If I'm not hitting the cusp andthere are clients that I'll tell
you right now that I willdisengage with because either
personality disagreement orvision disagreement or KPI being
(35:55):
unrealistic, I'll back out andsay look, I'll do respect.
I want you to go somewhere andspend your money where it's wise
.
So take off.
You know what I mean.
I'll make a smooth transition.
I'll hand everything over.
You know I'll make sure thateverything's there.
I'll answer your questions upto a point, but I'll say this is
what we got done, this is wherewe're at.
(36:15):
Here's the handoff, here's thebaton.
But, yeah, make, set your KPIsright.
I mean, know what you want toachieve and what's realistic,
interview the person and moveforward Right.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yeah, and more often than not, like you still make
progress, you still, you know,get forward a little bit and,
worst case scenario, you walkaway with the knowledge of hey,
ok, this isn't for me, thisdoesn't work, I can go try
something else now.
And so you know, definitely,you know, sitting around trying
to think of a decision to makeisn't helping.
(36:47):
You know.
You got to make those fastdecisions and learn something at
the very least along the way.
Before we wrap up here, telleveryone how they can get in
touch with you, learn more, andalso to check out the book that
you mentioned.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Yeah, so my book is on my website and I would
encourage everybody to firstGoogle fractional CMO and put in
your city that's near you Seeif I show up.
But my main website is jrcmocom, so that's Josh Ramsey, chief
marketing officercom.
So jrcmocom.
On there there's everythingthat's unique.
(37:23):
There's a book download,there's free information.
I have the world's largest SEOlibrary that I've compiled.
It has somewhere over 160different strategies that you
can implement or research.
I have just a ton of information.
And then my call to action is Iwork with people for free for
at least the first two hours.
(37:44):
I'll work with them for free toprove my knowledge, to prove
that I have the experience andto help them get the right
vision, because I do what Googlewants to do for everybody and
that is create the best userexperience.
Because what I've proven tomyself and a lot of people that
I know, if I come in and giveyou the best user experience and
(38:04):
show you my knowledge andeverything that I have to give
you and I can point you on theright track, people come back.
People will come back to me,learn from me, want to work with
me, and I've seen that time andtime again.
I picked up my biggest clientsover the years just from that
word of mouth of someone goingyep, that guy's good, yep, that
guy's got experience.
(38:24):
Yes, that guy is ethical andmoral and he's going to be
honest with you.
So again, jrcmocom is where thebook is at, where other
information is at.
You can also, I think on myhomepage it says, solve your
biggest marketing headache,although we do a lot of AB
testing, so you may show up andsee it, say two hour free
consultation or solve yourbiggest marketing headache, but
(38:47):
you can always contact any waythrough that website and we'll
get you set up with a meeting.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I mean just sitting hereand talking to you for the last
35 minutes or so, I can tell youknow your stuff, because
there's so many different rabbitholes we could have gone down.
I mean this could have been aseven hour conversation just
covering all the different areasof marketing strategy.
So you know, I'm lookingforward to coming back.
Oh, yeah, we can.
(39:14):
We can absolutely make thathappen.
So one final question herebefore we end the show if you
had one final piece of advicefor our audience, what would it
be?
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Man.
Again, that's so hard becauseeveryone is so different.
But I would say, start withyour narrative, identify in your
narrative what's worked welland what has failed you.
Then I tell employees and youcan even use this with the
employees I tell them, give meyour 30 day, your three months,
(39:44):
your six months and your oneyear goal and then go a little
bit step beyond and give me yourfive year.
But I think when you createthis goal path, both for
yourself, from your employees,from your agency, it starts to
paint a picture of where youshould go.
And a lot of times we live todayin a narrative of we make
(40:06):
choices based on our past andsometimes that's a fail point
for us.
So understanding the psychologyof why we make decisions is
really important.
I feel like I should write abook about it.
There's probably a book outthere that I haven't found yet
that's written about it, but itis psychologically based.
Where we make decisions, wehave arguments, we buy things
(40:27):
all based on our narrative.
So understanding where you'vebeen is just as important as
where you're going and whyyou're going to make those
decisions.
So I guess I would probably, atleast for this conversation,
leave that as a focal point ofreally drawing out your
narrative, and if you haven'tever looked this up, there's
something I think it's calledthe egg diagram or the egg chart
(40:49):
, and you draw an egg and inthat egg you write out the most
impactful moments of your lifeand you do it with a picture
rather than a word and you tellyour story to someone that's
close and confidential to you.
But when I did that for thefirst time back in 2018, I think
, or 2019, I mean it blew mymind of the things I kept
(41:12):
remembering and I left it on mywall for 30 days and it really
helped me understand why I makedecisions now, from my birth and
my first memory all the way upand I think that can help both
in business and in personal,because they all interweave and
then you start to make betterdecisions based on understanding
(41:32):
the hurts and the fail pointsboth in your personal life and
in your business life, andunderstanding again.
Trying to sum this up, you madea bad business decision.
Why?
Understand the why and thenarrative of why you made that
decision, back down to when yourbusiness started.
Therefore, you don't make thatdecision again and I'm going to
(41:54):
tell you right now I still makethose bad decisions.
Right, I look at it like Ishould not have done that, but
when you have that chart up infront of you, you can then
remember that narrative and tryto make better decisions.
So hopefully that's maybe agood stopping point for us.
Again, I mean, that's a wholenother conversation to
understand that as well.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Absolutely no.
All of that, just absolutelygreat.
A lot of great insight, and Iknow that you know I say this a
lot.
I know when I walk awaylearning things and with some
new ideas.
I know our audience gets a tonof value out of it as well, and
so really do appreciate it and Iappreciate all of you for
continuing to listen.
Please leave a rating andreview wherever you're listening
(42:36):
, if you have not done so yet.
It helps the show grow andreally is a valuable to get that
feedback from all of you outthere.
But that's going to do it.
Thanks so much for joining us,josh.
Thanks again, thanks forlistening.
To learn more, go tospotlightbrandingcom slash
center stage.
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