Fractional CMOs With Lauri Christiansen on PR Patter!

Good morning, everyone. I’m Julie Livingston from Want Leverage Communications. I’m here for another episode of PR Patter, my semi-weekly show where I talk to the amazing people across my marketing and public relations network.

If you like what you see today, please go to my website at wantleverage.com and download my free tip sheet, How To Make Your C Suite Stand Out on LinkedIn. It’s got some great tips and takeaways for you so that you can leverage the power of your LinkedIn or the LinkedIn platform more effectively.

Today, I’m delighted to have Laurie Christansen on the show.

She’s an MBA and a project management professional, a B2B marketing leader with deep experience in demand generation, lead generation, sales enablement, and content development as both a corporate marketer and independent consultant. Great to see you, Laurie. Laurie is the founder and president of B2B Marketing Strategies, LLC, a fractional CMO services firm that focuses on developing and managing marketing and growth strategies to help companies reach their business goals. Her consulting practice specializes in serving SMBs in the technology and industrial sectors, including manufacturing, distribution, and industrial services, as well as the trade show, conference, and events sectors.

She has worked with digital agencies that serve B2B clients and created targeted content for enterprise technology companies like Red Hat and Google Cloud. Great to see you, Laurie. And thanks again for making the time to be with me today. Could you tell us a little bit more about your backstory and how you got to start your company and you know, how you got to where you are today?

Lauri:
I’ve been doing this for about eight to 12 years. I was a marketing director for a company called Interline Brands, and they had a change in executive leadership. And I was on the board of directors of the Security Hardware Distributors Association and had a lot of companies in the industry that I knew and had good relationships with. So when I was downsized from that organization, a lot of these companies that I was on the board with reached out to me, and they were midsize, small to midsize security hardware and security distributors and manufacturers, and they wanted me to do consulting work with them.

It’s fun, you know, and it’s also challenging. I’m helping people solve problems with marketing and sales. And that kind of launched my career. I decided to form my own LLC. And, there were a lot of organizations that had various challenges in marketing. And it could range from having a team and not knowing how to right-size it and get it to achieve the business growth goals. You’re looking for, or how to right-size an organization, and maybe outsource some of the services, or how to start a new marketing function. So that kind of launched my career in what I do today.

Julie:
That’s such a great story. What a feather in your cap that they approached you when there was a change happening.

Lauri:
Sometimes, if you’re open, good things just happen.

Julie:
I totally agree with you. Well, first of all, tell us what a fractional CMO does.

Lauri:
So a fractional CMO and, and, you know, I would say 10 to 12 years ago, the word fractional, um, was a kind of a…

Julie:
I was going to say, did it even exist?

Lauri:
It existed, but there weren’t that many of them. There were, you know, people mainly hired full-time marketing people or maybe outsourced something to an agency. But I would say in the last five to eight years, probably the last five years, fractionals have become a buzz term of this decade. So there are fractional CEOs, fractional CFOs, which have always been rather common, chief financial officers. There are fractional operations, people, and marketing people. It’s become a very popular function primarily because I think companies seek a new perspective on their business, and it depends on what stage the company’s at.

It could be, you know, a brand new organization, a startup, a mature organization, but you can get the industry expertise to solve business challenges without taking on a full-time executive, or maybe it’s a situation where they want to try before they buy. They don’t know if that executive will be a good fit with the organization.

Sometimes they’ve hired people in the past, and it hasn’t worked out. So they may be a little shy about, you know, what exactly do we need? And it gives them an opportunity to look at their business through a new lens.

Julie:
Yeah. I would imagine that in some cases also. Or if the fractional person has specialty expertise that they need within the marketing area, because marketing is so gigantic, right?

Lauri:
Such a huge spectrum of responsibilities and roles that it’s so valuable to bring in that person with a specialty expertise, perhaps in your industry or manufacturing, etcetera. We all have a limited amount of time, and sometimes it’s very hard to find those specialized people, and it’s difficult to attract them. And for a midsize organization that maybe doesn’t have the budget or the desire to invest a ton in marketing, they’re not quite sure what they need and want. A fractional contractor is a perfect solution.

They can look at the business through a new lens. They may have very specific expertise in some area of manufacturing, like semiconductors or any type of manufacturing or distribution, and it allows them to look and say, this is really what you need to get your business to where you want to be growing, and this is what you need to invest in.

And, from there, the leadership and the CEO can determine how much they want to invest, plan, and either start up a marketing function or continue to retain the CFO for an extended period of time so that the fractional CMO can help build that function. So those are some of the reasons why these companies were going to hire.

Julie:
So what might the progress, the process be for assessing your organization’s needs based on, you know, what stage of business you’re in and what your goals are?

Lauri:
Well, I think the first thing is, they would want to find a reputable resource. They would want to hire a fractional CMO, but they also want to look at the current stage of their business. So if they’re a startup, maybe they want to focus on developing a product or service or building the customer base. If they’re in the growth stage, they may want to scale their operations and increase their market share. That could be a mature organization. Manufacturing companies may want to optimize or be more competitive. Maybe they’re looking at certain competitors within the market that they want to emulate in some way, and also differentiating themselves in the market.

Or maybe they want to innovate or start a new product line, right? So, looking at their goals first – short-term goals, long-term goals. Maybe they want to get more new business leads or have marketing work more closely with the sales division, and then long-term goals could be market expansion or brand development. Maybe they want to relaunch a brand or get more online presence. But doing a SWOT analysis is always a good start to be honest about your strengths and weaknesses, and the opportunities and threats. And then, evaluating key functional areas. You know, is the sales organization in a position to support marketing? That’s a key part. Prioritizing needs, making sure you develop a plan, and then, you know, regularly reassess. But those are some of the factors that they would want to consider based on their stage.

Julie:
What about internal communication? Because a lot of organizations, including SMBs have a community, have silos within their organization. And oftentimes, I have found in leading marketing teams myself that there could be a lack of communication between those individual departments or teams.

What should be in place to optimize the opportunity to have a fractional CMO come in?

Lauri:
I find one of the biggest challenges is having sales and marketing work together. I think sometimes CEOs make the mistake of thinking that they are tied more closely together.

Julie:
Or are they naturally synergistic, right?

Lauri:
But they’re not always, and sales have a tendency to blame marketing for a lack of sales, such as they’re not doing enough emails or are not doing enough communications, right? And then marketing saying, Oh, they’re not following up on the leads, or they’re not, you know, the messaging isn’t right.

So I think the key is having accountability for marketing qualified leads, for instance, and sales qualified leads. Marketing’s job in the communications area is to get the messaging and the brand right to make it easier for sales to sell, because many times, sales have too many messages. An inconsistent brand that looks for sales is unprofessional. I’ve worked with organizations where marketing has a tool called RFP Force that is an add-on to Salesforce so that they can get professionally done proposals that have consistent branding, well-written, well put together, and the salespeople can choose the right projects to populate it with.

So there’s so many communication tools that the sales team can use with the help of marketing. That’s great to know.

Julie:
What are some of the other benefits between having a fractional CMO or a full-time hire?

Lauri:
Well, the benefits of a fractional are that it’s more cost-effective. You don’t have benefits. You don’t have the cost of a full-time CEO or fractional CMO. A lot of times, it’s good for startups or businesses that aren’t quite sure what they want.

Sometimes I’ve found companies that have retained me have been a little trigger-shy with marketing. And I’ll say this because many times they’ll hire agencies that aren’t delivering what they’re supposed to be delivering, or the CEO is too busy to manage these agencies. It could be a social media agency, a digital agency, and they’re not fully leveraging it. No one’s managing it. So they may say, Oh, we’ve spent a ton on marketing, but haven’t gotten anything.

So many times you need, you need somebody to manage that. If you don’t have full-time marketing staff, you need somebody within the C suite, such as a fractional CMO, who can report on that and manage these agencies and make sure they’re delivering what they’re supposed to or changing agencies.

So that would be another reason. Access to expertise. It could be within the industry or a very specific type of skill set. They’re looking for flexibility to scale up and down.

They may say, Oh, we, we need somebody 3 days a week to start on retainer. But we’d like to change that once we get to a particular point. Um, reduced risk. You don’t. There’s so much flexibility, right? Well, you could say you could sort of three days a week, then you could bump it up or scale it back, whatever, whatever you need. It’s flexible, and you make sure they’re the right cultural fit.

Yeah, sometimes that’s very important. Somebody’s in. Right. That’s great. And how do you assess that, though? That’s kind of tough if they’re the right cultural fit. Well, it’s kind of like trying before you buy. They may want to hire somebody full-time, but the cultural fit is somebody who needs to work well with the sales directors, is collaborative, and is a good cultural fit in terms of maybe they have existing staff, right? Maybe they don’t want somebody who’s coming in and saying, oh, we, we need to get rid of this one and that one, because maybe they’ve been employees for 30 years.

But they don’t know how to utilize them well. Maybe they belong in marketing. Maybe they belong somewhere else within the organization. I have found that many times organizations want to take a square peg and put it in a round hole. Oh, well, this person was a secretary. Let’s put them in marketing and have them do this. Maybe that’s not always the right fit. Maybe there’s another place in the organization where they’d be a better fit. So those are some considerations.

Julie:
So, how do you find the right fractional CMO for an organization? Like, what is the best place to look on LinkedIn? How do you find that person?

Lauri:
Well, I think there are several tools that I would recommend. The first one would be using the industry network. So if you’re going to an industry trade show, you can ask around. These fractional folks will go to trade shows and be more visible in the industry where they have expertise. Other consultants may know sales leaders whose employers are looking for a fractional. So it’s generally by referral using your network. You can go on LinkedIn and I have seen ads there for fractional C.M.O.s If you’re a fractional, make sure your profile is optimized, you should have all the key words. There’s also other platforms like Fractional United that people will go in and look within the industry; they have a dedicated Slack channel with thousands of people on it.

Julie:
How do you know when you’ve hired a fractional CMO, let’s say, how do you know that it’s working? What are some of the signs that organizations could look for to know that it’s a good fit? We’re getting what we need.

Lauri:
Well, I think, first of all, to have a very clear vision of what you need. Is the short-term deliverable around getting more leads in? Or is it something such as more long-term brand recognition in the marketplace? I would say having a very specific idea of what you want delivered and then being able to measure the deliverables, seeing if it’s working.

So, for instance, if it’s lead generation and the fractional CMO is managing an agency.

• Are the leads qualified?
• Is the sales team held accountable to close on more leads?
• And is it leading to more business, so that it has to be measurable?

And if it’s a long-term goal, such as PR, branding, and social media.

• Is there more brand recognition in the marketplace?
• Are customers providing more feedback?
• Are there surveys that you’re issuing that show there’s more positive brand recognition and perceptions in the marketplace, including KPI tracking and performance reporting?

Julie:
How do you stay realistic about these deliverables, too? I mean, should you have 30, 60, 90-day goals, 120-day goals? What do you think about that?

Lauri:
I think having those goals is really important. So a good, a good 30-day goal is to develop a marketing plan for the organization based on what the CEO is looking to achieve, with costs to implement those, as well as related tools and investments. Then, based on that, they determine their priorities going forward.

So, you know, 60 and 90 days, you know, a budget for the plan or, um, you know, start to enact the plan within 90 days. But some of these goals are long-term goals. Like branding content and all of that.

So if you want quick results, hiring a branding agency, I mean, all these things take time. When I’ve implemented branding, for example, for an industrial firm, and you have trucks on the road, those trucks have to be rebranded. Signage has to be done. The website has to be done. Um, so it’s, these aren’t things that happen overnight. So, how do you set up those expectations with the client up front?

The first thing I usually do within the first engagement is to develop a plan of where they are today and where they need to go. And then, based on CEO leadership, they have to determine where they want to invest. Because, as you know, it takes the CFO to be involved. It takes all buy-in from all parts of the C suite because all take investment. They have to be willing to invest in marketing.

Julie:
Yeah, that’s great. Laurie, this has been so informative. I feel like I have a checklist in my mind now. I know what I need to look at if I were to hire a fractional CMO. So thank you so much. How could people get in touch with you? Is the best way on LinkedIn?

Lauri:
Yes, they can look up Laurie Christensen Wegener, that’s my married name, on LinkedIn. Or they can reach me at [email protected]. Or they can contact me on my website.

Julie:
That’s great. Everyone else. Thank you so much for joining us for another episode of PR Patter. If you like what you saw, go to my website at wantleverage.com and download my free tip sheet, How To Make Your C Suite Stand Out on LinkedIn. It’s got great tips and takeaways for you that you can enact immediately.

We’ll see you next time on PR Patter. Thank you so much.