July 11, 2022 • 35 mins
In episode 120, host Eric Dickmann talks with Stacey Danheiser- Founder and CMO of Shake Marketing Group, a B2B focused marketing strategy group. Stacey has years of experience helping B2B companies to grow their revenue, build connections, and uncover customer value as a fractional CMO. As a community builder, she helps other marketers connect and grow through The Soar Marketing Society, a professional online marketing community.
Shake Marketing Group provides B2B marketing strategies that help business leaders drive more revenue and internal credibility through customer insights, a powerful value proposition, and a marketing strategy that the C-suite understands.
For more information and access to the resources mentioned in this episode, visit: https://fiveechelon.com/fractional-insight-building-community-s8ep5/
A fractional CMO can help build out a comprehensive marketing strategy and execute targeted campaigns designed to increase awareness and generate demand for your business...without the expense of a full-time hire.
The Five Echelon Group - Fractional CMO and strategic marketing advisory services designed for SMBs looking to grow. Learn more at:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Eric Dickmann (00:01):
Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.
I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
In this podcast, we haveconversations with marketing
professionals who share thestrategies, tactics, and mindset
you can use to improve theeffectiveness of your marketing
activities and grow yourbusiness.
Today, I'm excited to haveguest, Stacey Danheiser on the
(00:22):
program, Stacy is the Founder ofShake Marketing, a Fractional
CMO consultancy for Fortune 500B2B businesses in the technology
and telecommunications space.
She has also founded SoarMarketing Society, an exclusive
community for professional B2Bmarketers who are looking to
elevate their impact.
Stacy, welcome to the show.
Stacey Danheiser (00:43):
Thanks so much for having me.
It's great to be here.
Eric Dickmann (00:46):
Our podcast is really focused on the whole
Fractional CMO space and howfractional CMOs can help
businesses.
And I'm excited always to haveother Fractional CMO guests on
the program.
And I was hoping that, you know,you could give the audience a
little bit more of an expandedintroduction of yourself.
What was your career trajectoryin marketing before you became a
(01:07):
fractional CMO.
Stacey Danheiser (01:08):
Yes.
Yeah.
Well, let's see.
I don't go way back.
I always loved kind of themarketing and sales side, even
when I was in middle school andhigh school.
And so I knew I wanted to getinto business.
I wasn't exactly sure what Iwanted to do.
I took one marketing class, fellin love with it, and then ended
up getting a degree inmarketing.
And so my first job out ofcollege was in consumer
(01:32):
marketing actually.
So I started in the cableindustry and I spent probably
six years working at differentconsumer companies in the cable
and retail financial servicesspaces, mostly for big Fortune
500 companies.
And then I switched over to B2Balso for another Fortune 500
company.
And really got my feet wet, kindof between the marketing and
(01:55):
sales function, um, builtstrategies.
They'll execution plans spentsort of equal time in strategy
and execution.
So I got a really well-roundededucation and experience there.
Um, did one more stint at afinancial services company, just
to you know, figure out and see,you know, I think a lot of times
we start, especially inmarketing, you start within one
(02:17):
industry and it's reallydifficult to move into another
industry.
And so I wanted to see, um, youknow, work on the B2B side, but
in a different industry.
And so I did that for a coupleof years, and then I ended up
leaving and starting my ownconsulting firm and it started
off with mostly doing customerresearch, doing some marketing
(02:39):
strategy building for companies,including some of my past
employers.
And, and, and then, um, it hasexpanded since then to.
Kind of this Fractional CMOpart, where I have a big piece
of my businesses consulting,where I still come in and kind
of do projects, a lot ofcustomer research, a lot of
marketing strategy building, butthen some organizations,
(03:01):
especially in those kinds ofscaling organizations to stay on
and play with.
I have a heavy role inoverseeing the execution of the
strategies that I'm building.
And those have been reallyrewarding experiences because,
you know, they don't necessarilyknow what to do and they don't
know how to do it.
And so it's been great to buildthe plan and the strategy, and
(03:23):
then bring on the team andeducate the team, and mentor the
team.
And so that's kind of soremarketing society, as you
mentioned, kind of evolved outof that.
You know, is a place for B2Bmarketers to come and connect,
and really that we have a sharedsort of vision and goal which is
to help elevate the profession,help marketers think and act
(03:45):
more strategically so that theyget a seat at the leadership
table so that they can helpexplain what marketing is and
what it's not.
Because I think a lot of times,especially in smaller scaling
organizations, you have the CEOrunning marketing, they don't
really have a marketingbackground, and really that
function ends up becoming kindof a tactical executer, order
taker, unlike you have somebodykind of overseeing the strategy.
(04:09):
So
Eric Dickmann (04:09):
A lot to unpack there, which is great.
I'm curious, as you look backand your experience with all
these different companies, bothon the consumer side, the B2B
side, where was it that youthink you made the greatest
impact?
Where was it that light bulbswent off and said, you know,
this marketing stuff reallyworks.
Stacey Danheiser (04:25):
Yeah.
I mean, for sure on the consumerside, what's really different
for you know, working in B2Cversus B2B is we had really big
budgets.
I mean, I was managingmultimillion dollar budgets, you
know, pretty young and early inmy career and we didn't have to
fight for every single dollar.
It was very well known, sort ofin the organization, sales are
(04:48):
down, we need sales to be up,let's do a marketing campaign.
Here's some money let's go, youknow, and we were very deadline
driven, it was very fast paced,it was a lot of fun.
We were doing commercials andradio spots and sponsorships and
just really big things.
And then I went over to B2B andit was completely different,
majority of the budget isactually given to sales, to hire
(05:08):
salespeople.
But I loved working with thesales team.
And so I kind of figured figuredout early on to build a
relationship with the salesteam.
And so I think, you know, one ofthe most sort of rewarding parts
of my career was, was that firstjob that I had in B2B, where I
had to work with the sales teamand they were looking to me, you
(05:29):
know, to drive the strategy.
And they thought that they knewwhat they wanted.
It was a lot of events, youknow, event based marketing at
the time, and being able tochange their minds and, you
know, implement campaigns andimplement really great content
and insightful customerinteractions.
And we did a customer advisoryboard and, and just things that
they had never done before tokind of bring customers in a
(05:53):
completely different way.
So that was exciting and kind ofstarted my trajectory of
educating people on whatmarketing is.
Because I realized, you know,working in a consumer
organization, everybody kind ofknew because marketing was sales
in those organizations versus ina B2B, there is a very clear
(06:13):
sort of distinction andperception about what role does
marketing play versus what roledoes sales play.
And so I loved being the bridgeof that gap and building those
relationships with sales.
And in fact, I was one of theonly marketers always to go
attend sales training.
And so you know, I would show upand everybody's staring at me,
(06:34):
like, why is there a marketerhere in the room?
I'm like, you guys, we want thesame thing, we're both trying to
get customers.
We're just doing it in adifferent way.
I'm thinking longer term,bigger, you know, mass kind of
programs.
And you're thinking one-on-one,but I'm like, we ultimately want
the same thing.
So when you know, once Iunderstood the sales process, it
could speak their language, likemy credibility went way up with
(06:55):
the sales organization.
Eric Dickmann (06:56):
I think that's very insightful because I think
oftentimes when talking withother marketers, when you're on
the B2C side, you know, focusingon consumers, sometimes the
levers that you pull can havefaster results, right?
The things that you do, thepromotions that you run, you can
see the results fairly quickly.
When you're in a relationshipselling world when you're
selling larger dollar productsor services, sometimes it's a
(07:19):
slow grind, right?
You could have 12, 18 monthsales cycles for some of these
products where marketing plays abigger role in terms of that
customer journey.
And it's different.
It can be frustrating waiting tosee the results of some of your
activities.
Stacey Danheiser (07:34):
Yeah, exactly.
And I think what's, you know, Ihave this conversation on a
weekly basis of like, what's theone thing that we can do.
And what's the one thing that wecan measure for marketing.
That's gonna, you know, show ourROI and I have to explain it.
It's not one thing.
You know, think about how youmake purchases.
You don't just see one thing andthen go, go buy something.
Especially in B2B.
(07:55):
It's like you're interactingwith 10 different pieces of
content, you're doing your ownresearch, you're talking to
peers, you're posting thecommunities, you're you know,
maybe DM-ing or calling oldcolleagues.
You're scrolling throughLinkedIn and social media, and
there's so many different typesof tactics and content that you
interact with that it's reallydifficult to kind of pinpoint it
(08:16):
all back to one thing that, youknow, everybody wants a silver
bullet and I'm like, there is nosilver bullet.
The magic is in the integratedplan.
Eric Dickmann (08:23):
Attribution is so difficult in marketing,
especially for complex salescycles.
And I love the way you sort ofsegwayed into this whole idea of
a plan and strategy.
As you work with these clientsnow that you're performing
Fractional CMO duties, what doyou look at in terms of planning
strategy?
What is the importance ofbuilding out that strategy first
(08:44):
before you sort of move on tothat executional phase?
Stacey Danheiser (08:47):
Yes.
Well, this is my favorite part.
So I actually have a frameworkthat I call the B2B marketing
blueprint.
It's eight steps and the firststep is an audit.
So I typically start with anaudit and I love to just kind of
dive in, and I talk to theleadership team, beyond
marketing.
I talk to the key stakeholders,it's their product or sales or
(09:11):
customer success, HR now is evenbecoming a big stakeholder for
marketers because of employerbranding.
And that's now falling into themarketing realm.
So I look at you know, a fewthings right off the bat, which
is one, how often is researchdone?
Does anybody own customerresearch or competitor research
or market research?
(09:32):
Is this informal or formal?
Oftentimes I find, especiallythis is a big difference too,
from B2C to B2B in B2C we hadbig budgets that we spent on
customer research.
So we were conducting our ownresearch, we were doing focus
groups, we were hiring researchfirms to call people, you know,
to get their inside surveys.
(09:53):
And then we also purchased abunch of third party data that
we could overlay onto our ownfindings.
But then when I switched over toB2B, I realized a lot of
marketing budgets don't havecustomer research at all, and in
fact, they rely on the salesteam.
So you know, if you want to knowabout your customers, go ask the
sales team or go ask a clientfacing organization.
(10:15):
So I think marketing sometimesit's super far removed from the
customer in B2B, so I alwaysrecommend research there because
that's a way to kind of get themmore educated and more
knowledgeable about the customerbase, but also kind of at the
credibility goes way up oncemarketing can sit there and
represent the customer.
So I look at research, I look attargeting, you know, do they
(10:37):
have a really clear view of theideal customer profile?
Do they know who their customersegments are?
Do they have clear goals foreach of those customer segments?
Oftentimes there's a hugedisconnect between what
management says, what the salesteam is doing, what the
marketing team is doing, and itall comes back to the fact that
we all have a different view ofwhat the ideal customer profile
is.
(10:57):
Then I also look at goals.
And so specifically tomarketing, are there clear
marketing goals?
Do you have specific tacticsaligned with those goals rather
than, you know, the sprinklingeffect that I call, like well,
we got on Twitter and that wasreally, that didn't work.
And then we got on Facebook andthat didn't work.
And then we dabbled in LinkedInand then we tried some ads on
(11:18):
Google, and then we did that.
And so all of a sudden you'relike sprinkled all over the
place and nothing is working,one because there's no focus and
there's no really integratedstrategy, but two, they probably
just didn't get along enough toactually build momentum, right?
To build a foundation, buildmomentum, and have clear
intentions and clear goals as towhy you're doing it.
(11:38):
The other thing I look at isvalue proposition.
So I co-wrote a couple of books.
One of them is Valueology.
It's about how to write andcompose and conduct research to
figure out what your valueproposition is.
So I look at value propositionrelative to competitors.
Like a lot of times, I thinkcompanies believe that they know
(12:01):
what makes them different andwhy customers chose them.
And you know, from my experiencedoing customer research, like
nine times out of ten though,there's a disconnect between
that.
So the company will say onething and then the customer will
say, actually with the valuethey give me is something
typically that the customerdoesn't think about, right?
(12:21):
It's, it's something higherlevel.
It's bigger picture it's tiedto.
Yeah, something a little bitmore meaningful in the
customer's world versus youknow, what the client typically
is saying.
It's all about some randomproduct feature or some small
little differentiator.
So it's about building thatbridge for value proposition and
(12:42):
then trying to think about thenext thing is the content plan.
So we go through some depth oncontent planning and that goes
back to that sprinkling effect.
You know, do you have thecustomer journey mapped out?
Are you creating content foreach stage of that journey and
does it make sense?
And then finally, the last twosort of steps, I look at
(13:03):
execution plan, is it realistic?
They have a realistic executionplan.
Did they have the rightresources, the right budget, the
right internal.
external sources to help get thework done.
Do they have the right marketingtechnology?
Kind of just a quick littleoutline of that, because I think
sometimes again, people take on.
It's really easy.
(13:23):
I could go start a TikTokchannel right now as we're
sitting here on this, but it'svery difficult to maintain that
over time, right?
Into consistently show up overand over.
And so I like to look at sort ofthe execution plan.
And then finally the last thing,which I think is pretty really
never talked about in marketing,but it's a huge skillset.
(13:44):
And this is actually one of themain skills that we saw when we
did some research for my otherbook was standout marketing five
key competencies that it takesmodern marketers to, to stand
out.
And it's the ability to get buyin.
It's the internal alignment.
How are they communicatinginternally?
How is everybody informed ofwhat marketing is doing, and on
(14:06):
the same page with timelines andsetting expectations, and not
just saying yes to, Hey, let'sgo start a TikTok channel.
Okay.
I'll get right on it.
No, pause.
Why do you want to do that?
What are the key objectives?
How do we know if it's working.
You know, with our timeline oflike how much time are we going
to give ourselves to experimentwith this before we either go
full force or kill it?
(14:27):
And so I love looking kind of atthe alignment piece, because it
usually shows some type of youknow, opportunity to build
better relationships internallyand socialize and communicate.
Eric Dickmann (14:39):
Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to
the podcast.
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marketing to the next level?
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Services.
Now back to the podcast.
First of all, having adata-driven approach, really
understanding your targetmarket, the ideal customer
profile, you are so right thatso many organizations, if you
really dig into it, it's gutfeel it's past experiences on
some leads that have come in,but it's not really data-driven.
(15:44):
They don't really understandthey haven't done that market
research.
And so I love the fact that youput that at the front end of
your process to really identifythose things, because frankly
you can't measure, unless youreally understand what metrics
you're going after, you can'treally understand whether your
marketing is effective.
And I would also agree that somany organizations tie a bunch
of disconnected activitiestogether because they don't have
(16:06):
that plan, that strategy inplace.
And so they're just randomlyexecuting tactics and wondering
why it's not successful.
So I love the way you laid thatout and articulated that
process.
For your own business, I'malways fascinated when you start
out.
What has been your experiencesort of going from that
corporate world to now being anindependent business owner and
(16:27):
generating your own leads?
Have you been able to see theeffects of these marketing
strategies work for your ownbusiness?
Are you like many other businessowners who get those first
couple of referrals fromexisting clients and then build
from there?
Stacey Danheiser (16:42):
Yeah, I think that's interesting.
So, yes and yes.
I started off with gettingreferrals, mostly kind of
tapping into my formeremployers.
My first client actually was theemployer I was working with.
And so I said, I'm leaving.
I don't exactly know what mywhole business looks like, but
(17:03):
I'd love for you to be my firstclient.
Yeah.
okay.
Yeah, we love, you know whatyou're doing, so can we keep
doing it.
And so I did that for a whileand then it forced me to, I
think in frameworks.
So I love like the process andsteps and kind of productizing
and packaging up.
And I think that's been thehardest part when you're selling
(17:24):
a marketing service.
Like I'm not an agency, I'm notselling at the end of this
engagement, you're going to geta brand new website, at the end
of this engagement, you're goingto have a brand new pitch deck.
I'm selling like strategy and itfeels very intangible for
people.
And so that's why I kind of gothrough that audit process, I
have a visual that I createdthat shows sort of the steps
(17:45):
that we go through.
And I think people can thengrasp that and understand it,
and so ultimately I think whathas happened is yes, a lot of,
you know, I have a lot of mynetwork that still is in the
corporate world.
So you know, I continue to getreferrals and business from
that, from my experiencecorporate and how people knew
(18:06):
me.
And so you know, one thing Iwould say is I neglected my own
personal brand for awhile,because.
I didn't really want to be apersonal brand, I didn't really
understand that.
But then you know, I'veco-authored a couple of books.
It kind of forced me a littlebit out of my comfort zone to
build more of a profile ratherthan kind of hiding behind a
(18:27):
brand.
I mean, I was always used tobuilding brands for other
companies, not necessarily formyself.
And so, but you know, whenyou're consulting or when you're
doing Fractional CMO work, Imean, people are ultimately
buying you, and not necessarilythe company.
And so that's been my transitionover the past year is kind of
moving away from my brand of youknow, Shake Marketing Company
(18:48):
into building more of thatpersonal brand, you know, being
more active on LinkedIn.
And I would say, I'm trying allthe tactics, you know, we've had
really good luck with doing ourown research and publishing
white papers that helps, that'sinsightful, that gets people,
you know, teaching themsomething that they might not be
(19:10):
thinking about.
The books have been helpfulbecause it kind of forces you to
go through the process of justlike doing the brain dump and
getting everything on paper.
And then plus at the end ofthis, you have a tangible thing
that you could send to people.
And then, yeah, a lot of rightnow what's working is LinkedIn.
I'm pretty active on LinkedInlately doing podcasts and trying
(19:34):
to expand the community and justbuilding relationships.
We're constantly remindingmyself to be patient.
And the relationship buildingtakes time.
And it's not something that youknow, I'm never a big fan of you
know, copy paste, you know,email sending the same email to
a thousand people.
It's really more one-on-one,that's kinda my been my
(19:55):
approach.
Eric Dickmann (19:56):
We know you talked before about data and
doing research.
And I think one of thechallenges that solopreneurs or
very small businesses have isthey tend not to have the volume
to create anything that'sstatistically significant,
right?
When they're doing research onthe types of leads that they're
generating or whatnot.
So many people in this line ofwork, they take their past
(20:18):
industry experience and- say,Okay, I work for a telecom
company, so my niche is nowgoing to be telecom.
Is that sort of how youapproached it or did you really
design your business to go aftera certain market for a different
reason?
How did you pick your niche?
Stacey Danheiser (20:34):
Yeah, I think initially.
You know, I'm probably not agood example of I'm like what
people say not to do.
Everybody's like start a sidegig and build your whole
business plan.
I didn't have any of that.
I had a logo and I did have likea shell of a website because I
felt like that was important ifI was going to be representing
marketing.
The bare minimum that I neededwas to look like a real company.
(20:57):
And so I did that first.
But then really it was you'replaying an active sales role.
And so I think my years of goingthrough the sales training and
traveling with the sales teamreally came into play there
because I got to then practiceit for myself, and I loved it
and I really love the salesside, probably more or equally
(21:20):
to marketing.
So I'm constantly going back andforth between the marketing and
the sales hats.
But I think I wanted to.
I think two things, one, I was,I'm very careful.
And I give this advice to peoplewho are just starting off their
marketing career, that becareful of the industry that you
(21:40):
pick to start your first job inbecause people right or wrong
will perceive that that's theonly expertise you have., And
you'll get kind of pigeonholedinto that industry if you're not
careful.
So I'm like, if you don't likehealthcare, like I would stay
away or financial services, ahighly regulated industries,
like people don't leave.
In fact, the two jobs that I hadin financial services, it was
(22:02):
very difficult for me to getinto that industry because the
perception was you don'tunderstand our industry, you
don't have any regulatoryexperience,, and I had to really
sell them and convince them thatmarketing is marketing.
The process is the same, thefoundation, the steps are the
same, regardless if I have to gothrough some regulatory hoops or
not.
(22:22):
And so I think that's one thing.
The other thing is I reallyliked variety.
I'm a person that thrives onchange.
And so I knew for a fact that Icould not declare and choose
like one industry only.
So I actually love working in avariety of industries and
(22:43):
really, cause it's just like achallenge to me because of my
background and experience.
I'm like, I want to teach thesepeople marketing.
Eric Dickmann (22:49):
Yeah.
Stacey Danheiser (22:50):
you know, show them how to do it, how to do it
right.
So I started with telecom ofcourse, cause that's where my,
my background was.
But because I had somenetworking contacts in FinTech
and then software.
And then I do a lot ofprofessional services as well,
like helping people turn theirservice, their process, like
(23:13):
into IP and into something thatthey can go package up and sell.
That's kinda my niche right now.
But I would say like the thingthat I love doing, and I work
with startup companies and thenI have even like a couple of
Fortune 500, Fortune 100 companythat I'm working with.
And I'm like, what in the worlddid these things have in common?
(23:33):
And I realized it's the thingthey had in common is that I'm
working within a business unitat some of these larger
companies where marketing isneglected.
They typically have, so theylook very similar to a startup
where the process, you know, ora scaling organization that the
first hire is always sales.
And then marketing comes laterand is seen as like an executer.
(23:56):
Hey, all of a sudden we needcollateral or we need a website
or we need something andtherefore we hired a marketer.
And so that's the thing thatthese, they're not really a
niche, but it's more of like acharacteristic.
What do these things have incommon?
It's that they don't have amarketing foundation, they don't
have marketing people orexpertise, marketing is
(24:16):
typically if they have marketingresources, they're typically
reporting to a non marketer andthat non marketer is like a self
declared.
Like I have no idea what we'redoing for marketing, like please
come in, we need help..
And there's always sales teams.
You have a sales team yellingand you know, demanding things.
And then you have this otherside where they can't really
(24:37):
fulfill it and they don'tunderstand how to build the
bridge between the twofunctions.
Eric Dickmann (24:41):
I think you said something very interesting and
I've heard this from a lot ofother marketers, certainly
experienced it myself is thatthere is this perception when
you go and hire a marketer thatthey have to have detailed
experience within yourparticular industry.
As marketers, we're sort ofalways fighting against that a
bit.
I do believe that there aresignificant differences between
B2B and B2C marketing.
You could probably argue that ifyou're marketing to the
(25:04):
government or the public sector,that that's a fairly unique
space.
E-commerce, if you're trying toset up online shops and things
like that, that's a prettyunique skill set as well.
But by and large, it doesn'treally matter if you've got
experience in telecom orfinancial services or whatever
the industry may be, by andlarge marketing skills translate
(25:24):
across a very broad spectrum ofindustries.
And it's part of our job asmarketers to explain why that
experience that we may have hadin a different industry is very
appropriate for the industrythat the client comes from.
I'm interested to hear too, doyou feel that the concept of a
Fractional CMO is wellunderstood or at least is
(25:45):
catching on more than it was,and to sort of piggyback on that
when you have a new client cometo you, what is generally the
problem that they're expressing?
Why are they coming, looking forservices?
Because chances are, they're notsaying I need a Fractional CMO,
right?
They've got some other problemthat they need solved.
How do you view that?
Stacey Danheiser (26:05):
Yes.
So a couple of things, one, Ijust need to go back to.
Something you said about theindustry experience.
We did this research for ourbook, Stand Out Marketing, that
was all about, we called it thesea of sameness, how to stand
out in the sea of sameness.
And one of the practices that wefound that the reason the sea of
sameness is persisting inindustries is because they tend
(26:28):
to, you know, people move aroundin the industry.
So it's like, I work at onecompany then I go work with
another company, and I implementthe exact same playbook.
So I think there is a for surevalue proposition that
Fractional CMOs bring to thoseorganizations to say, I can give
you perspective of how otherindustries are doing things that
(26:49):
may give you a competitiveadvantage, because whenever
anybody in the industry looksthe same, the one that looks
different or does somethingdifferent is the one that stands
out.
So just wanted to say that.
Eric Dickmann (26:59):
Do people understand what a Fractional CMO
is and what do companiestypically come to you asking
for?
Stacey Danheiser (27:06):
Yeah.
So I think there's two things,two sides of the equation.
I think number one, It's allabout growth.
So a lot of the companies that Iwork with are they have growth
goals, they have aggressivetargets, revenue targets, sales
targets.
They don't necessarily know howto achieve them, they typically
(27:27):
have a sales function, which islike that one-on-one combat, but
they don't have any air cover.
And so they recognize- We needsome air cover, and maybe
there's a problem within thesales organization that either
they're transactional salesfolks or there's a lot of
turnover in the salesorganization because they can't
(27:48):
hit the quota.
Like something's wrong,something's missing.
And really, I go back to thatstrategic framework.
It's because nobody, everybodyskipped all the steps.
There's no targeting, there's noresearch, there's no value
proposition, there's no content.
It's like all of that wasskipped in favor of like, just
start calling, just startposting random stuff on social
media and try to find somepeople.
(28:08):
So that's really the problemthat I solve is to give them
kind of that foundation andframework and that air cover.
And I think so that's kind ofone side there, they're either
growing or two, they want tolaunch into a new market or
launch a new product, but theydon't necessarily know where to
start.
How do we choose the market wewant to launch into, or how do
(28:29):
we demonstrate that we'resuccessful.
All of our contacts and all ofour experiences in this one
segment, but now we want to workin another segment, what should
we do?
And so that's again, sort of allthat strategic, foundational
work of like segmentation,targeting, positioning, you
know, value prop, all of thatcomes into play and they
typically don't have internalresources to do it.
Eric Dickmann (28:50):
Yeah.
Stacey Danheiser (28:50):
And so you know, I love working with the
organizations.
In fact, like this is how Ichoose people.
I spent 14 years in corporateAmerica, okay?
I did my fair share of battlinginternally, right?
And all of the buy-in and thecollaboration and education that
is required.
Now being on the other side, Iget to choose the type of
(29:11):
clients I work with.
So if they don't understandmarketing and they have no value
for marketing and they're goingto fight, you know, be defensive
and overly opinionated, like,we're not gonna be, right?
Because I'm like, you have to beopen to feedback and open to
suggestions, and you have toadmit and be humble enough to
know like that you don't have aplan or that you don't know what
(29:33):
you're doing, and then we canwork together because, you know,
on the other side, it's like, ifyou're kind of like a know it
all, then you just, you keepdoing what you're doing.
And call me in a year or twoafter you've wasted$500,000.
You know, and then I'll come in.
And that does typically happen.
Companies get really frustratedwith wasting a lot of money on
(29:54):
marketing.
So they're a little gun shy,right?
Because they've hired a lot ofthem hire an agency.
I saw an ad for this agency, orI saw so-and-so and they
promised me all these leads andthey promised me, and now it's
the agency's fault.
And I'm like, well, let's goback to the strategic steps
here.
Did you do any of this stuff?
No.
Okay.
(30:14):
Then why in the world would youexpect your agency to work
miracles when you skipped sixsteps?
Like it doesn't make any sense.
So that's what I'm seeing now.
I think there's an angle of likegrowth.
And I think the other piece, theFractional CMO, I have not been
challenged with explaining that,or setting it up.
(30:36):
I actually, you know, becauseagain, I came from consulting,
so I actually kind of present itin a couple of different ways to
say it could be a consultingproject with a start and an end,
and we have very specificdeliverables and then I'm out,
or it could be a Fractional CMOgig where I'm going to help you
build the strategy and then I'mgoing to oversee the execution.
(30:57):
I'm not doing the execution, butI will help either your people
or we will bring in resources,but I will oversee it and
orchestrate it for you.
So I'm very selective, I thinkon those, you know what I
propose, but that's kind of howI explain it
Eric Dickmann (31:11):
No, I think that's important, because it's
not an agency engagement, right?
It's a strategy engagement andthen managing the resources and
you know, Stacy, as we're kindof coming to the end of our show
here, I'd love it if you couldalso just talk briefly about,
Soar the Marketing Society, talkabout, what that is, and is that
something that people are opento join.
Stacey Danheiser (31:32):
Yes, absolutely.
So everybody is invited.
Please, please, please join us.
We'll send out the link, butit's sore.club-soar.
S O A R and what it is is it's aprivate B2B marketing community
where our whole entire goal isto help provide a forum for
(31:53):
people to connect.
And I wanted to make sure thatit was not just for like, I know
there's a couple of communitiesthat are only for B2B marketers
who work in the corporate,right?
Or only B2B marketers who are inan agency.
And I actually wanted to bringboth together because I think we
all have so much to learn fromeach other.
So we have a really diversegroup of you know, marketing
executives in there, marketingconsultants and agency folks,
(32:19):
Fractional, CMOs, I mean kind ofthe whole gamut there.
And so we do monthly bi-monthly,events and topics all aimed at
helping marketers think and actmore strategically.
So it's not, we don't get intolike super tactical things.
But these are more like bigpicture, how do we get a CEO to
(32:42):
understand what marketing is?
How do we have a relationshipwith the CFO, right?
How do we build relations withthe sales team?
So there's a lot of you know,behind the scenes, I guess
steps.
It's not really typically talkedabout when it comes to, what
does it take to be successful ina B2B marketing role?
So that's what we're trying totackle.
Eric Dickmann (32:59):
No, I think that's great.
I think that's the mission ofthis podcast as well, to really
bring a community of peopletogether, help share our
knowledge, help educate peoplein the process.
So, yeah congratulations onthat.
I joined that a few weeks backand going to enjoy being a
participant in that goingforward.
One last question here, beforewe wrap up the interview, I
would love it if you could justshare with the audience a little
(33:20):
bit more about your idealclients.
So if they're looking forFractional CMO services, what is
the ideal client that shouldcome to you and then share with
us where they can find you onthe web.
Stacey Danheiser (33:31):
My ideal client is really either like
somebody on an Inc5000 fastestgrowing company list.
Somebody who wants to grow andget to the next level, but is
confused about how to do it.
And so they need some help withbuilding that foundation and
they may have one or twomarketers on their staff that
(33:52):
are smart and eager andmotivated, but they just don't
have the right guidance.
They report io a non marketerand they're not getting that
strategic guidance that'snecessary.
Cause I love sort of thatmentoring part, and I actually
have a mentoring program thatjust launched for B2B marketers,
kind of in that marketingmanager space who want to get to
(34:13):
the next level of their career.
Eric Dickmann (34:15):
That's excellent.
And where can they find you onthe web?
Stacey Danheiser (34:18):
Yeah, so connect with me on LinkedIn,
that's the best place.
And then you can reach out fromthere, it's Stacey Danheiser on
LinkedIn and my company ia ShakeMarketing.
It's shakemktg.com.
Eric Dickmann (34:32):
That's excellent.
We will make sure to have all ofthat linked up in the show notes
so that people can find you,they can find out more about the
Soar Marketing Society as well.
Stacey, I've really enjoyed ourconversation today.
I really appreciate you takingthe time to be on the program.
I love talking about FractionalCMOs and how they can help
businesses.
So thank you so much again foryour time today.
Stacey Danheiser (34:50):
Thank you, Eric.
Eric Dickmann (34:54):
Thank you for joining us on this episode of
The Virtual CMO podcast.
For more episodes, go tofiveechelon.com/podcast to
subscribe through your podcastplayer of choice.
And if you'd like to developconsistent lead flow and a
highly effective marketingstrategy, visit fiveechelon.com
to learn more about our VirtualCMO consulting services.
Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.
I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
In this podcast, we haveconversations with marketing
professionals who share thestrategies, tactics, and mindset
you can use to improve theeffectiveness of your marketing
activities and grow yourbusiness.
Today, I'm excited to haveguest, Stacey Danheiser on the
(00:22):
program, Stacy is the Founder ofShake Marketing, a Fractional
CMO consultancy for Fortune 500B2B businesses in the technology
and telecommunications space.
She has also founded SoarMarketing Society, an exclusive
community for professional B2Bmarketers who are looking to
elevate their impact.
Stacy, welcome to the show.
Stacey Danheiser (00:43):
Thanks so much for having me.
It's great to be here.
Eric Dickmann (00:46):
Our podcast is really focused on the whole
Fractional CMO space and howfractional CMOs can help
businesses.
And I'm excited always to haveother Fractional CMO guests on
the program.
And I was hoping that, you know,you could give the audience a
little bit more of an expandedintroduction of yourself.
What was your career trajectoryin marketing before you became a
(01:07):
fractional CMO.
Stacey Danheiser (01:08):
Yes.
Yeah.
Well, let's see.
I don't go way back.
I always loved kind of themarketing and sales side, even
when I was in middle school andhigh school.
And so I knew I wanted to getinto business.
I wasn't exactly sure what Iwanted to do.
I took one marketing class, fellin love with it, and then ended
up getting a degree inmarketing.
And so my first job out ofcollege was in consumer
(01:32):
marketing actually.
So I started in the cableindustry and I spent probably
six years working at differentconsumer companies in the cable
and retail financial servicesspaces, mostly for big Fortune
500 companies.
And then I switched over to B2Balso for another Fortune 500
company.
And really got my feet wet, kindof between the marketing and
(01:55):
sales function, um, builtstrategies.
They'll execution plans spentsort of equal time in strategy
and execution.
So I got a really well-roundededucation and experience there.
Um, did one more stint at afinancial services company, just
to you know, figure out and see,you know, I think a lot of times
we start, especially inmarketing, you start within one
(02:17):
industry and it's reallydifficult to move into another
industry.
And so I wanted to see, um, youknow, work on the B2B side, but
in a different industry.
And so I did that for a coupleof years, and then I ended up
leaving and starting my ownconsulting firm and it started
off with mostly doing customerresearch, doing some marketing
(02:39):
strategy building for companies,including some of my past
employers.
And, and, and then, um, it hasexpanded since then to.
Kind of this Fractional CMOpart, where I have a big piece
of my businesses consulting,where I still come in and kind
of do projects, a lot ofcustomer research, a lot of
marketing strategy building, butthen some organizations,
(03:01):
especially in those kinds ofscaling organizations to stay on
and play with.
I have a heavy role inoverseeing the execution of the
strategies that I'm building.
And those have been reallyrewarding experiences because,
you know, they don't necessarilyknow what to do and they don't
know how to do it.
And so it's been great to buildthe plan and the strategy, and
(03:23):
then bring on the team andeducate the team, and mentor the
team.
And so that's kind of soremarketing society, as you
mentioned, kind of evolved outof that.
You know, is a place for B2Bmarketers to come and connect,
and really that we have a sharedsort of vision and goal which is
to help elevate the profession,help marketers think and act
(03:45):
more strategically so that theyget a seat at the leadership
table so that they can helpexplain what marketing is and
what it's not.
Because I think a lot of times,especially in smaller scaling
organizations, you have the CEOrunning marketing, they don't
really have a marketingbackground, and really that
function ends up becoming kindof a tactical executer, order
taker, unlike you have somebodykind of overseeing the strategy.
(04:09):
So
Eric Dickmann (04:09):
A lot to unpack there, which is great.
I'm curious, as you look backand your experience with all
these different companies, bothon the consumer side, the B2B
side, where was it that youthink you made the greatest
impact?
Where was it that light bulbswent off and said, you know,
this marketing stuff reallyworks.
Stacey Danheiser (04:25):
Yeah.
I mean, for sure on the consumerside, what's really different
for you know, working in B2Cversus B2B is we had really big
budgets.
I mean, I was managingmultimillion dollar budgets, you
know, pretty young and early inmy career and we didn't have to
fight for every single dollar.
It was very well known, sort ofin the organization, sales are
(04:48):
down, we need sales to be up,let's do a marketing campaign.
Here's some money let's go, youknow, and we were very deadline
driven, it was very fast paced,it was a lot of fun.
We were doing commercials andradio spots and sponsorships and
just really big things.
And then I went over to B2B andit was completely different,
majority of the budget isactually given to sales, to hire
(05:08):
salespeople.
But I loved working with thesales team.
And so I kind of figured figuredout early on to build a
relationship with the salesteam.
And so I think, you know, one ofthe most sort of rewarding parts
of my career was, was that firstjob that I had in B2B, where I
had to work with the sales teamand they were looking to me, you
(05:29):
know, to drive the strategy.
And they thought that they knewwhat they wanted.
It was a lot of events, youknow, event based marketing at
the time, and being able tochange their minds and, you
know, implement campaigns andimplement really great content
and insightful customerinteractions.
And we did a customer advisoryboard and, and just things that
they had never done before tokind of bring customers in a
(05:53):
completely different way.
So that was exciting and kind ofstarted my trajectory of
educating people on whatmarketing is.
Because I realized, you know,working in a consumer
organization, everybody kind ofknew because marketing was sales
in those organizations versus ina B2B, there is a very clear
(06:13):
sort of distinction andperception about what role does
marketing play versus what roledoes sales play.
And so I loved being the bridgeof that gap and building those
relationships with sales.
And in fact, I was one of theonly marketers always to go
attend sales training.
And so you know, I would show upand everybody's staring at me,
(06:34):
like, why is there a marketerhere in the room?
I'm like, you guys, we want thesame thing, we're both trying to
get customers.
We're just doing it in adifferent way.
I'm thinking longer term,bigger, you know, mass kind of
programs.
And you're thinking one-on-one,but I'm like, we ultimately want
the same thing.
So when you know, once Iunderstood the sales process, it
could speak their language, likemy credibility went way up with
(06:55):
the sales organization.
Eric Dickmann (06:56):
I think that's very insightful because I think
oftentimes when talking withother marketers, when you're on
the B2C side, you know, focusingon consumers, sometimes the
levers that you pull can havefaster results, right?
The things that you do, thepromotions that you run, you can
see the results fairly quickly.
When you're in a relationshipselling world when you're
selling larger dollar productsor services, sometimes it's a
(07:19):
slow grind, right?
You could have 12, 18 monthsales cycles for some of these
products where marketing plays abigger role in terms of that
customer journey.
And it's different.
It can be frustrating waiting tosee the results of some of your
activities.
Stacey Danheiser (07:34):
Yeah, exactly.
And I think what's, you know, Ihave this conversation on a
weekly basis of like, what's theone thing that we can do.
And what's the one thing that wecan measure for marketing.
That's gonna, you know, show ourROI and I have to explain it.
It's not one thing.
You know, think about how youmake purchases.
You don't just see one thing andthen go, go buy something.
Especially in B2B.
(07:55):
It's like you're interactingwith 10 different pieces of
content, you're doing your ownresearch, you're talking to
peers, you're posting thecommunities, you're you know,
maybe DM-ing or calling oldcolleagues.
You're scrolling throughLinkedIn and social media, and
there's so many different typesof tactics and content that you
interact with that it's reallydifficult to kind of pinpoint it
(08:16):
all back to one thing that, youknow, everybody wants a silver
bullet and I'm like, there is nosilver bullet.
The magic is in the integratedplan.
Eric Dickmann (08:23):
Attribution is so difficult in marketing,
especially for complex salescycles.
And I love the way you sort ofsegwayed into this whole idea of
a plan and strategy.
As you work with these clientsnow that you're performing
Fractional CMO duties, what doyou look at in terms of planning
strategy?
What is the importance ofbuilding out that strategy first
(08:44):
before you sort of move on tothat executional phase?
Stacey Danheiser (08:47):
Yes.
Well, this is my favorite part.
So I actually have a frameworkthat I call the B2B marketing
blueprint.
It's eight steps and the firststep is an audit.
So I typically start with anaudit and I love to just kind of
dive in, and I talk to theleadership team, beyond
marketing.
I talk to the key stakeholders,it's their product or sales or
(09:11):
customer success, HR now is evenbecoming a big stakeholder for
marketers because of employerbranding.
And that's now falling into themarketing realm.
So I look at you know, a fewthings right off the bat, which
is one, how often is researchdone?
Does anybody own customerresearch or competitor research
or market research?
(09:32):
Is this informal or formal?
Oftentimes I find, especiallythis is a big difference too,
from B2C to B2B in B2C we hadbig budgets that we spent on
customer research.
So we were conducting our ownresearch, we were doing focus
groups, we were hiring researchfirms to call people, you know,
to get their inside surveys.
(09:53):
And then we also purchased abunch of third party data that
we could overlay onto our ownfindings.
But then when I switched over toB2B, I realized a lot of
marketing budgets don't havecustomer research at all, and in
fact, they rely on the salesteam.
So you know, if you want to knowabout your customers, go ask the
sales team or go ask a clientfacing organization.
(10:15):
So I think marketing sometimesit's super far removed from the
customer in B2B, so I alwaysrecommend research there because
that's a way to kind of get themmore educated and more
knowledgeable about the customerbase, but also kind of at the
credibility goes way up oncemarketing can sit there and
represent the customer.
So I look at research, I look attargeting, you know, do they
(10:37):
have a really clear view of theideal customer profile?
Do they know who their customersegments are?
Do they have clear goals foreach of those customer segments?
Oftentimes there's a hugedisconnect between what
management says, what the salesteam is doing, what the
marketing team is doing, and itall comes back to the fact that
we all have a different view ofwhat the ideal customer profile
is.
(10:57):
Then I also look at goals.
And so specifically tomarketing, are there clear
marketing goals?
Do you have specific tacticsaligned with those goals rather
than, you know, the sprinklingeffect that I call, like well,
we got on Twitter and that wasreally, that didn't work.
And then we got on Facebook andthat didn't work.
And then we dabbled in LinkedInand then we tried some ads on
(11:18):
Google, and then we did that.
And so all of a sudden you'relike sprinkled all over the
place and nothing is working,one because there's no focus and
there's no really integratedstrategy, but two, they probably
just didn't get along enough toactually build momentum, right?
To build a foundation, buildmomentum, and have clear
intentions and clear goals as towhy you're doing it.
(11:38):
The other thing I look at isvalue proposition.
So I co-wrote a couple of books.
One of them is Valueology.
It's about how to write andcompose and conduct research to
figure out what your valueproposition is.
So I look at value propositionrelative to competitors.
Like a lot of times, I thinkcompanies believe that they know
(12:01):
what makes them different andwhy customers chose them.
And you know, from my experiencedoing customer research, like
nine times out of ten though,there's a disconnect between
that.
So the company will say onething and then the customer will
say, actually with the valuethey give me is something
typically that the customerdoesn't think about, right?
(12:21):
It's, it's something higherlevel.
It's bigger picture it's tiedto.
Yeah, something a little bitmore meaningful in the
customer's world versus youknow, what the client typically
is saying.
It's all about some randomproduct feature or some small
little differentiator.
So it's about building thatbridge for value proposition and
(12:42):
then trying to think about thenext thing is the content plan.
So we go through some depth oncontent planning and that goes
back to that sprinkling effect.
You know, do you have thecustomer journey mapped out?
Are you creating content foreach stage of that journey and
does it make sense?
And then finally, the last twosort of steps, I look at
(13:03):
execution plan, is it realistic?
They have a realistic executionplan.
Did they have the rightresources, the right budget, the
right internal.
external sources to help get thework done.
Do they have the right marketingtechnology?
Kind of just a quick littleoutline of that, because I think
sometimes again, people take on.
It's really easy.
(13:23):
I could go start a TikTokchannel right now as we're
sitting here on this, but it'svery difficult to maintain that
over time, right?
Into consistently show up overand over.
And so I like to look at sort ofthe execution plan.
And then finally the last thing,which I think is pretty really
never talked about in marketing,but it's a huge skillset.
(13:44):
And this is actually one of themain skills that we saw when we
did some research for my otherbook was standout marketing five
key competencies that it takesmodern marketers to, to stand
out.
And it's the ability to get buyin.
It's the internal alignment.
How are they communicatinginternally?
How is everybody informed ofwhat marketing is doing, and on
(14:06):
the same page with timelines andsetting expectations, and not
just saying yes to, Hey, let'sgo start a TikTok channel.
Okay.
I'll get right on it.
No, pause.
Why do you want to do that?
What are the key objectives?
How do we know if it's working.
You know, with our timeline oflike how much time are we going
to give ourselves to experimentwith this before we either go
full force or kill it?
(14:27):
And so I love looking kind of atthe alignment piece, because it
usually shows some type of youknow, opportunity to build
better relationships internallyand socialize and communicate.
Eric Dickmann (14:39):
Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to
the podcast.
But first, are you ready togrow, scale, and take your
marketing to the next level?
If so, The Five Echelon Group'sVirtual CMO consulting service
may be a great fit for you.
We can help build a strategicmarketing plan for your business
and manage its execution,step-by-step.
(15:00):
We'll focus on areas like how toattract more leads.
How to create compellingmessaging that resonates with
your ideal customers.
How to strategically package andposition your products and
services.
How to increase lead conversion,improve your margins, and scale
your business.
To find out more about ourconsulting offerings and
schedule a consultation, go tofiveechelon.com and click on
(15:23):
Services.
Now back to the podcast.
First of all, having adata-driven approach, really
understanding your targetmarket, the ideal customer
profile, you are so right thatso many organizations, if you
really dig into it, it's gutfeel it's past experiences on
some leads that have come in,but it's not really data-driven.
(15:44):
They don't really understandthey haven't done that market
research.
And so I love the fact that youput that at the front end of
your process to really identifythose things, because frankly
you can't measure, unless youreally understand what metrics
you're going after, you can'treally understand whether your
marketing is effective.
And I would also agree that somany organizations tie a bunch
of disconnected activitiestogether because they don't have
(16:06):
that plan, that strategy inplace.
And so they're just randomlyexecuting tactics and wondering
why it's not successful.
So I love the way you laid thatout and articulated that
process.
For your own business, I'malways fascinated when you start
out.
What has been your experiencesort of going from that
corporate world to now being anindependent business owner and
(16:27):
generating your own leads?
Have you been able to see theeffects of these marketing
strategies work for your ownbusiness?
Are you like many other businessowners who get those first
couple of referrals fromexisting clients and then build
from there?
Stacey Danheiser (16:42):
Yeah, I think that's interesting.
So, yes and yes.
I started off with gettingreferrals, mostly kind of
tapping into my formeremployers.
My first client actually was theemployer I was working with.
And so I said, I'm leaving.
I don't exactly know what mywhole business looks like, but
(17:03):
I'd love for you to be my firstclient.
Yeah.
okay.
Yeah, we love, you know whatyou're doing, so can we keep
doing it.
And so I did that for a whileand then it forced me to, I
think in frameworks.
So I love like the process andsteps and kind of productizing
and packaging up.
And I think that's been thehardest part when you're selling
(17:24):
a marketing service.
Like I'm not an agency, I'm notselling at the end of this
engagement, you're going to geta brand new website, at the end
of this engagement, you're goingto have a brand new pitch deck.
I'm selling like strategy and itfeels very intangible for
people.
And so that's why I kind of gothrough that audit process, I
have a visual that I createdthat shows sort of the steps
(17:45):
that we go through.
And I think people can thengrasp that and understand it,
and so ultimately I think whathas happened is yes, a lot of,
you know, I have a lot of mynetwork that still is in the
corporate world.
So you know, I continue to getreferrals and business from
that, from my experiencecorporate and how people knew
(18:06):
me.
And so you know, one thing Iwould say is I neglected my own
personal brand for awhile,because.
I didn't really want to be apersonal brand, I didn't really
understand that.
But then you know, I'veco-authored a couple of books.
It kind of forced me a littlebit out of my comfort zone to
build more of a profile ratherthan kind of hiding behind a
(18:27):
brand.
I mean, I was always used tobuilding brands for other
companies, not necessarily formyself.
And so, but you know, whenyou're consulting or when you're
doing Fractional CMO work, Imean, people are ultimately
buying you, and not necessarilythe company.
And so that's been my transitionover the past year is kind of
moving away from my brand of youknow, Shake Marketing Company
(18:48):
into building more of thatpersonal brand, you know, being
more active on LinkedIn.
And I would say, I'm trying allthe tactics, you know, we've had
really good luck with doing ourown research and publishing
white papers that helps, that'sinsightful, that gets people,
you know, teaching themsomething that they might not be
(19:10):
thinking about.
The books have been helpfulbecause it kind of forces you to
go through the process of justlike doing the brain dump and
getting everything on paper.
And then plus at the end ofthis, you have a tangible thing
that you could send to people.
And then, yeah, a lot of rightnow what's working is LinkedIn.
I'm pretty active on LinkedInlately doing podcasts and trying
(19:34):
to expand the community and justbuilding relationships.
We're constantly remindingmyself to be patient.
And the relationship buildingtakes time.
And it's not something that youknow, I'm never a big fan of you
know, copy paste, you know,email sending the same email to
a thousand people.
It's really more one-on-one,that's kinda my been my
(19:55):
approach.
Eric Dickmann (19:56):
We know you talked before about data and
doing research.
And I think one of thechallenges that solopreneurs or
very small businesses have isthey tend not to have the volume
to create anything that'sstatistically significant,
right?
When they're doing research onthe types of leads that they're
generating or whatnot.
So many people in this line ofwork, they take their past
(20:18):
industry experience and- say,Okay, I work for a telecom
company, so my niche is nowgoing to be telecom.
Is that sort of how youapproached it or did you really
design your business to go aftera certain market for a different
reason?
How did you pick your niche?
Stacey Danheiser (20:34):
Yeah, I think initially.
You know, I'm probably not agood example of I'm like what
people say not to do.
Everybody's like start a sidegig and build your whole
business plan.
I didn't have any of that.
I had a logo and I did have likea shell of a website because I
felt like that was important ifI was going to be representing
marketing.
The bare minimum that I neededwas to look like a real company.
(20:57):
And so I did that first.
But then really it was you'replaying an active sales role.
And so I think my years of goingthrough the sales training and
traveling with the sales teamreally came into play there
because I got to then practiceit for myself, and I loved it
and I really love the salesside, probably more or equally
(21:20):
to marketing.
So I'm constantly going back andforth between the marketing and
the sales hats.
But I think I wanted to.
I think two things, one, I was,I'm very careful.
And I give this advice to peoplewho are just starting off their
marketing career, that becareful of the industry that you
(21:40):
pick to start your first job inbecause people right or wrong
will perceive that that's theonly expertise you have., And
you'll get kind of pigeonholedinto that industry if you're not
careful.
So I'm like, if you don't likehealthcare, like I would stay
away or financial services, ahighly regulated industries,
like people don't leave.
In fact, the two jobs that I hadin financial services, it was
(22:02):
very difficult for me to getinto that industry because the
perception was you don'tunderstand our industry, you
don't have any regulatoryexperience,, and I had to really
sell them and convince them thatmarketing is marketing.
The process is the same, thefoundation, the steps are the
same, regardless if I have to gothrough some regulatory hoops or
not.
(22:22):
And so I think that's one thing.
The other thing is I reallyliked variety.
I'm a person that thrives onchange.
And so I knew for a fact that Icould not declare and choose
like one industry only.
So I actually love working in avariety of industries and
(22:43):
really, cause it's just like achallenge to me because of my
background and experience.
I'm like, I want to teach thesepeople marketing.
Eric Dickmann (22:49):
Yeah.
Stacey Danheiser (22:50):
you know, show them how to do it, how to do it
right.
So I started with telecom ofcourse, cause that's where my,
my background was.
But because I had somenetworking contacts in FinTech
and then software.
And then I do a lot ofprofessional services as well,
like helping people turn theirservice, their process, like
(23:13):
into IP and into something thatthey can go package up and sell.
That's kinda my niche right now.
But I would say like the thingthat I love doing, and I work
with startup companies and thenI have even like a couple of
Fortune 500, Fortune 100 companythat I'm working with.
And I'm like, what in the worlddid these things have in common?
(23:33):
And I realized it's the thingthey had in common is that I'm
working within a business unitat some of these larger
companies where marketing isneglected.
They typically have, so theylook very similar to a startup
where the process, you know, ora scaling organization that the
first hire is always sales.
And then marketing comes laterand is seen as like an executer.
(23:56):
Hey, all of a sudden we needcollateral or we need a website
or we need something andtherefore we hired a marketer.
And so that's the thing thatthese, they're not really a
niche, but it's more of like acharacteristic.
What do these things have incommon?
It's that they don't have amarketing foundation, they don't
have marketing people orexpertise, marketing is
(24:16):
typically if they have marketingresources, they're typically
reporting to a non marketer andthat non marketer is like a self
declared.
Like I have no idea what we'redoing for marketing, like please
come in, we need help..
And there's always sales teams.
You have a sales team yellingand you know, demanding things.
And then you have this otherside where they can't really
(24:37):
fulfill it and they don'tunderstand how to build the
bridge between the twofunctions.
Eric Dickmann (24:41):
I think you said something very interesting and
I've heard this from a lot ofother marketers, certainly
experienced it myself is thatthere is this perception when
you go and hire a marketer thatthey have to have detailed
experience within yourparticular industry.
As marketers, we're sort ofalways fighting against that a
bit.
I do believe that there aresignificant differences between
B2B and B2C marketing.
You could probably argue that ifyou're marketing to the
(25:04):
government or the public sector,that that's a fairly unique
space.
E-commerce, if you're trying toset up online shops and things
like that, that's a prettyunique skill set as well.
But by and large, it doesn'treally matter if you've got
experience in telecom orfinancial services or whatever
the industry may be, by andlarge marketing skills translate
(25:24):
across a very broad spectrum ofindustries.
And it's part of our job asmarketers to explain why that
experience that we may have hadin a different industry is very
appropriate for the industrythat the client comes from.
I'm interested to hear too, doyou feel that the concept of a
Fractional CMO is wellunderstood or at least is
(25:45):
catching on more than it was,and to sort of piggyback on that
when you have a new client cometo you, what is generally the
problem that they're expressing?
Why are they coming, looking forservices?
Because chances are, they're notsaying I need a Fractional CMO,
right?
They've got some other problemthat they need solved.
How do you view that?
Stacey Danheiser (26:05):
Yes.
So a couple of things, one, Ijust need to go back to.
Something you said about theindustry experience.
We did this research for ourbook, Stand Out Marketing, that
was all about, we called it thesea of sameness, how to stand
out in the sea of sameness.
And one of the practices that wefound that the reason the sea of
sameness is persisting inindustries is because they tend
(26:28):
to, you know, people move aroundin the industry.
So it's like, I work at onecompany then I go work with
another company, and I implementthe exact same playbook.
So I think there is a for surevalue proposition that
Fractional CMOs bring to thoseorganizations to say, I can give
you perspective of how otherindustries are doing things that
(26:49):
may give you a competitiveadvantage, because whenever
anybody in the industry looksthe same, the one that looks
different or does somethingdifferent is the one that stands
out.
So just wanted to say that.
Eric Dickmann (26:59):
Do people understand what a Fractional CMO
is and what do companiestypically come to you asking
for?
Stacey Danheiser (27:06):
Yeah.
So I think there's two things,two sides of the equation.
I think number one, It's allabout growth.
So a lot of the companies that Iwork with are they have growth
goals, they have aggressivetargets, revenue targets, sales
targets.
They don't necessarily know howto achieve them, they typically
(27:27):
have a sales function, which islike that one-on-one combat, but
they don't have any air cover.
And so they recognize- We needsome air cover, and maybe
there's a problem within thesales organization that either
they're transactional salesfolks or there's a lot of
turnover in the salesorganization because they can't
(27:48):
hit the quota.
Like something's wrong,something's missing.
And really, I go back to thatstrategic framework.
It's because nobody, everybodyskipped all the steps.
There's no targeting, there's noresearch, there's no value
proposition, there's no content.
It's like all of that wasskipped in favor of like, just
start calling, just startposting random stuff on social
media and try to find somepeople.
(28:08):
So that's really the problemthat I solve is to give them
kind of that foundation andframework and that air cover.
And I think so that's kind ofone side there, they're either
growing or two, they want tolaunch into a new market or
launch a new product, but theydon't necessarily know where to
start.
How do we choose the market wewant to launch into, or how do
(28:29):
we demonstrate that we'resuccessful.
All of our contacts and all ofour experiences in this one
segment, but now we want to workin another segment, what should
we do?
And so that's again, sort of allthat strategic, foundational
work of like segmentation,targeting, positioning, you
know, value prop, all of thatcomes into play and they
typically don't have internalresources to do it.
Eric Dickmann (28:50):
Yeah.
Stacey Danheiser (28:50):
And so you know, I love working with the
organizations.
In fact, like this is how Ichoose people.
I spent 14 years in corporateAmerica, okay?
I did my fair share of battlinginternally, right?
And all of the buy-in and thecollaboration and education that
is required.
Now being on the other side, Iget to choose the type of
(29:11):
clients I work with.
So if they don't understandmarketing and they have no value
for marketing and they're goingto fight, you know, be defensive
and overly opinionated, like,we're not gonna be, right?
Because I'm like, you have to beopen to feedback and open to
suggestions, and you have toadmit and be humble enough to
know like that you don't have aplan or that you don't know what
(29:33):
you're doing, and then we canwork together because, you know,
on the other side, it's like, ifyou're kind of like a know it
all, then you just, you keepdoing what you're doing.
And call me in a year or twoafter you've wasted$500,000.
You know, and then I'll come in.
And that does typically happen.
Companies get really frustratedwith wasting a lot of money on
(29:54):
marketing.
So they're a little gun shy,right?
Because they've hired a lot ofthem hire an agency.
I saw an ad for this agency, orI saw so-and-so and they
promised me all these leads andthey promised me, and now it's
the agency's fault.
And I'm like, well, let's goback to the strategic steps
here.
Did you do any of this stuff?
No.
Okay.
(30:14):
Then why in the world would youexpect your agency to work
miracles when you skipped sixsteps?
Like it doesn't make any sense.
So that's what I'm seeing now.
I think there's an angle of likegrowth.
And I think the other piece, theFractional CMO, I have not been
challenged with explaining that,or setting it up.
(30:36):
I actually, you know, becauseagain, I came from consulting,
so I actually kind of present itin a couple of different ways to
say it could be a consultingproject with a start and an end,
and we have very specificdeliverables and then I'm out,
or it could be a Fractional CMOgig where I'm going to help you
build the strategy and then I'mgoing to oversee the execution.
(30:57):
I'm not doing the execution, butI will help either your people
or we will bring in resources,but I will oversee it and
orchestrate it for you.
So I'm very selective, I thinkon those, you know what I
propose, but that's kind of howI explain it
Eric Dickmann (31:11):
No, I think that's important, because it's
not an agency engagement, right?
It's a strategy engagement andthen managing the resources and
you know, Stacy, as we're kindof coming to the end of our show
here, I'd love it if you couldalso just talk briefly about,
Soar the Marketing Society, talkabout, what that is, and is that
something that people are opento join.
Stacey Danheiser (31:32):
Yes, absolutely.
So everybody is invited.
Please, please, please join us.
We'll send out the link, butit's sore.club-soar.
S O A R and what it is is it's aprivate B2B marketing community
where our whole entire goal isto help provide a forum for
(31:53):
people to connect.
And I wanted to make sure thatit was not just for like, I know
there's a couple of communitiesthat are only for B2B marketers
who work in the corporate,right?
Or only B2B marketers who are inan agency.
And I actually wanted to bringboth together because I think we
all have so much to learn fromeach other.
So we have a really diversegroup of you know, marketing
executives in there, marketingconsultants and agency folks,
(32:19):
Fractional, CMOs, I mean kind ofthe whole gamut there.
And so we do monthly bi-monthly,events and topics all aimed at
helping marketers think and actmore strategically.
So it's not, we don't get intolike super tactical things.
But these are more like bigpicture, how do we get a CEO to
(32:42):
understand what marketing is?
How do we have a relationshipwith the CFO, right?
How do we build relations withthe sales team?
So there's a lot of you know,behind the scenes, I guess
steps.
It's not really typically talkedabout when it comes to, what
does it take to be successful ina B2B marketing role?
So that's what we're trying totackle.
Eric Dickmann (32:59):
No, I think that's great.
I think that's the mission ofthis podcast as well, to really
bring a community of peopletogether, help share our
knowledge, help educate peoplein the process.
So, yeah congratulations onthat.
I joined that a few weeks backand going to enjoy being a
participant in that goingforward.
One last question here, beforewe wrap up the interview, I
would love it if you could justshare with the audience a little
(33:20):
bit more about your idealclients.
So if they're looking forFractional CMO services, what is
the ideal client that shouldcome to you and then share with
us where they can find you onthe web.
Stacey Danheiser (33:31):
My ideal client is really either like
somebody on an Inc5000 fastestgrowing company list.
Somebody who wants to grow andget to the next level, but is
confused about how to do it.
And so they need some help withbuilding that foundation and
they may have one or twomarketers on their staff that
(33:52):
are smart and eager andmotivated, but they just don't
have the right guidance.
They report io a non marketerand they're not getting that
strategic guidance that'snecessary.
Cause I love sort of thatmentoring part, and I actually
have a mentoring program thatjust launched for B2B marketers,
kind of in that marketingmanager space who want to get to
(34:13):
the next level of their career.
Eric Dickmann (34:15):
That's excellent.
And where can they find you onthe web?
Stacey Danheiser (34:18):
Yeah, so connect with me on LinkedIn,
that's the best place.
And then you can reach out fromthere, it's Stacey Danheiser on
LinkedIn and my company ia ShakeMarketing.
It's shakemktg.com.
Eric Dickmann (34:32):
That's excellent.
We will make sure to have all ofthat linked up in the show notes
so that people can find you,they can find out more about the
Soar Marketing Society as well.
Stacey, I've really enjoyed ourconversation today.
I really appreciate you takingthe time to be on the program.
I love talking about FractionalCMOs and how they can help
businesses.
So thank you so much again foryour time today.
Stacey Danheiser (34:50):
Thank you, Eric.
Eric Dickmann (34:54):
Thank you for joining us on this episode of
The Virtual CMO podcast.
For more episodes, go tofiveechelon.com/podcast to
subscribe through your podcastplayer of choice.
And if you'd like to developconsistent lead flow and a
highly effective marketingstrategy, visit fiveechelon.com
to learn more about our VirtualCMO consulting services.
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