Episode 3: Why Your Marketing Needs a Methodology, Not a Magic Bullet

Monica Spieles 00:06
I really was thinking that goals can bring misguided direction to what your focus is in marketing, but it's actually it's actually worse than that for marketers, there actually isn't usually even a goal. There's a thought or a chasing, like something that works, that their business owners are chasing because they know someone else is doing this. They know someone else is showing up on LinkedIn all the time, or someone else told them about a lead gen tool that is just the best, and we have to start using it. And so it's actually a lack of goals. First of all, that becomes a huge headache for marketers, and then it just becomes, you know, kind of just a meaningless Chase from there, and it's what's the next? The next flashy thing, the next silver bullet, felt request, whatever you call it, that, I think is becomes the the headache of all marketers, or could become the headache of all marketers?

Randi Beth Burton 01:08
Yeah, well, I think what we see on the client side of things is that the client comes to us knowing that they want a particular marketing tactic that they're they're saying, Okay, we've, we've got all of these other things in place. Typically, they've pieced together, if they don't have a marketing department internally, they've pieced together different things that have worked. And they know to your point like, Okay, we need to be doing email marketing. We're not doing that right now. So let me go and find an agency who can do email marketing for us, and that's where, that's where we tend to enter the picture, then with the client, and why goals is so important, because the clients telling us what they know they need, but what where, as an executive level marketer, and what we bring to the table in our training experience is to say, Okay, let's first, let's take a step back and find out what what your end goal is, and where you're trying to get so that we can then piece together the right strategy for you to accomplish that. Email Marketing may very well be that thing, but that their investment is even better spent in in areas that support that, or broader than that, or what have you, and that's, that's why we start with that question of, okay, what are your goals? That's the first method to the madness, if you will, in making wise decisions, right?

Branden O’Neil 02:30
I mean, we've been through in our 1314, 25 I always mess up on how many years we've been around Atlas Rose. As long as Atlas Rose has been around, we've been through every iteration of this, because we've, you have to try a lot of different things out in order to figure out what what is, what's the truth, what's the right way to begin a relationship, what's the right way to handle clients, especially in small business, you have to be, you have, there's a lot of discovery in that. And so, yeah, I'll never forget it was, what, five, six years ago, Monica, when we were and when we realized, or maybe, anyway, so when, when we realized, we were forcing everybody into a cookie cutter way, right? Is this where you were getting ready to go? Yeah, yeah. And so it's like

Monica Spieles 03:19
the pain to think about. I know,

Branden O’Neil 03:22
so, so I think, I think what our lesson was, and then marketers, I'd love for you to hear this is consultants. Consultants come in and they've got a bag of tricks, and then they and they say, you know, here's my they'll implement a couple of tricks up their sleeve, and then they'll say, good luck with that, right? And I don't think any, any of us really any good fractional marketers, fractional cmo out there. I don't think that anybody really wants to be a consultant. I kind of view consultant as being a bad word. Now, there's great consultants out there, and I get, at the end of the day, a fractional CMO is, probably is probably, is just a consultant, so it's kind of semantics. But the point is, is that there's something different that we all want to be we all want to be different. But what we've what we've had, what we've gone down the path of, is, you know, you need a whole you need a fractional CMO. You need a marketing manager. You need all these tools and martech in place. You need a 12 month strategy in place. We need brand standards in place, and all these things that we needed in place. And we were so convinced of it that everybody needed to go through the exact same thing every single time. Well, then we had a hard time selling that, you know. And sure, we sold some, because that's right for some, but it's not right for many. Everyone comes in. So going back to what you just said, Randy Beth, everyone comes in with a broken arm of some kind, right and and one of our one of our mentors, came to us and said, Hey, have you ever thought about just fixing the broken arm and down? Getting to the rest of it. And I was like, that feels so stupid, what

Monica Spieles 05:06
CT, and they need a full body scan, and they needed, like, right away, that was like, that's the equivalent of what we were doing,

Branden O’Neil 05:15
and that's exactly it. And so well, I fully, fully believe that that we need to come that every business deserves these few things, right? That the every business deserves a 12 month roadmap so that we can move through the year strategically. And there's no way that we could possibly know before we get into a client what needs to be done. I believe that wholeheartedly. There's the other side of it, and that is small business. Are real businesses that are just trying to survive and make payroll and that they've gotten then they're they're freaking brilliant as it is, smarter than we are at their business, right? And and so who are we to impose exactly what needs to be done? And so what we've had to do, our goal all along is to create a methodology that works for everybody, but the methodology can't be strict, 12345, right? It needs to be, it needs to be, this more of a web, yeah, of a fluid type of scenario, where, but, that everywhere, every starting point has a reason and a flow into the next things, right? And so that's, that's where we've come from and where we're at today.

Monica Spieles 06:30
Here's the beauty, though, of the the tension that is in the broken arm analogy. So if we have just a methodology, if we said this is just what you need to do and and this will fix all the problems. We do need to believe and understand that that business owners know their business, know their business better than anyone else, right? That's the That's the truth. But our job, they are. The methodology being wrapped in strong and foundational leadership is so important, because if you just, if a doctor just took your word for it, doctor, I looked it up. I've got this problem, you need to get you need to diagnose me right away. It's like he's not doing his job if he doesn't ask the questions. So sometimes it can feel redundant or feel unnecessary to say, okay, business owner, tell me why you want email marketing. You tell me that's what you need, but tell me why. Well, because I've got, I'm getting emails from all my competitors, and they're all doing this. I need to be doing this too. Okay. Well, tell me if that's things, if that's successful for them, and then you go just down that path of leading them to what the right what the solution is, what the real broken arm is, and maybe it's not the full body scan and the holistic way we want to go right off the bat, but it is, you're still leading them. You're asking the right questions. And I think that's a great tension to have in both being, you know, working through a methodology, but knowing how to lead with the mindset of of I guess, just understanding business, understanding what small business owners are going through, understanding what's at stake and knowing that there's a sweet tension to that. So I think, for one, the broken arm analogy is perfect, because sometimes you do need to just start there, but make sure it's really a broken arm. It's kind of the first is the leadership aspect that comes into place.

Randi Beth Burton 08:21
You said something key there. It's about questions. That's what a good doctor should be asking you questions to properly diagnose you. And I think you could, you could boil our methodology down to a series of questions that are asked at the right time in order for us to extract from that wise, brilliant business owner, the keys that we need to understand about their business in order to then apply what the best marketing strategy is to help them reach the goals that they're that they're looking for. And also, I think we fail our clients if we don't come in and aren't curious enough and don't ask the right questions, absolutely even take their word for what it is that they're wanting that I get myself into trouble when I'm just trying to please my client. These are people that are already bought into us, and they're they're bought into the methodology, and they're bought into my leadership, and they trust it, and they're taking my advice and but they tell me they need something, and I'm like, I need to please you, so I'm going to do that instead of pausing and asking the right questions.

Branden O’Neil 09:32
So, but here's the reason why we do I think here's, here's the reason why we do it, because we all come from something, right? We all, all of our careers progressed from an area. Some of us came up through content, some of us came up through creative, some of us came through SEO or whatever, right? So we've all come up through different bents. We all have different experiences and different. Things, and so what we have to guard ourselves against is just being that one trick pony. I know we talk about that a lot, but we have to make sure that we have to make sure that that our strategies and our guidance isn't just leading them down the path of what we're an expert in, because that's not good strategy. That's not a good way to lead a small business, not that's not a CMO, that's a tactician. If you want to be a tactician, then call yourself a tactician. Don't call yourself a CMO. If you want to be a CMO, then get rid of what you consider to be your expertise, and don't guide everybody down that path, because it's not right for everybody. It's just not and so and so that's that's the reason why we go down that path. And I think that's the reason why, that's the reason why a methodology, why a methodology is so crucial and valuable for us as marketers, as CMOS, as fractional leaders, is because we've got something to lean back on again. We all, you know, let's just say I'm a content guy. I came up through the content vein. I've got tons of content experience, and, and, and that's great contents King, right, of course, but there's a lot of other things. What about, you know? What about customer experience? What about building a great funnel? What about digital footprints, you know? What about product mapping and pricing strategies? What about all these other key strategic areas, KSAs, we call them. What about all those other things? If there's no methodology that I'm following that's that's beyond my experience, then I'm not really able to be a CMO. I'm only ever able to be a content expert that calls myself a leader right, that marches people down that path. So that's a danger that I think we get into in our in our industry, as fractional CMOS. I see it all the time, of not being, not being well rounded. And I think that's

Randi Beth Burton 12:05
why Brandon have question for you, because we've so a little bit of history of Atlas rose. Brandon started this company out of he was working for Dave Ramsey in entree leadership, need a knee with other small business owners, talking to them about marketing and realizing that there's something missing in the industry in terms of everybody knows they should be doing marketing, but they don't know what they should be doing and where they go and look for it. And so that's the problem that Atlas Rose has set out to solve from the very beginning, is to provide that type of strategic guidance to small business owners. But Brandon, in the beginning, you were singles. Before Monica joined you, we were a solo guy trying to do this, and the Atlas rose methodology was formed out of this journey. So you were not a tech tactical expert in all areas of marketing. So how did you find the support? So I'm thinking about the solo cmo out there who is trying to do this and doesn't, doesn't want to be a one trick pony, wants to provide well rounded guidance and advice everything that you just said. How do you build that support around you and not fake it till you make it, or just really try to become an expert in all things. How can you do that the right way to ultimately serve your customers well, which is what you want to do? How did, how did that journey happen for you?

Branden O’Neil 13:34
I think, in a few different ways. One, I surrounded myself with with experts, right? I recognized where my weaknesses were, and I surrounded myself, and I learned as much as I could, at least at a high level, a strategic level, like I recognized, I recognized where my value was early on, and my value is not knowing all the nitty gritty details on how to do something, but understanding how it needs to be strategically employed, right? And so I started off. It was just me, and then I quickly realized I don't want to do project management. And so I brought on I'm also not good at it. That's why Monica laughs so hard. I quickly brought on project managers, marketing managers, and then I went to I went to work. I mean, I think I spent probably a year and a half of, like, not even bringing on a bunch of clients, but really focusing in on this network of we call them service providers, and these are experts at their particular field. So any agency that I talked to that was like, Oh yeah, Brandon, I build websites, I do video, I am, you know, I manage people's social media, and we're experts at this and that. I cut them out. I wasn't interested in them. The only people I was looking for are people that come to me and say. Brandon, I don't care. I don't give a shit about any of that other stuff. All I know is, all you need to do is SEO. SEO is where it's at, or video is going to change your client, your clients life, sure, do your other stuff. But this is what's going to be it. I wanted people that were experts and completely convinced of their craft. Sold out for it, solely, exactly. And so I we built, I mean, I think we had, I don't know, Monica, do you remember 100 150 of these? 150 plus, yeah, of these service providers, of just absolute experts. And by doing projects with them and consulting with them and sharing my strategies with them, and understanding that's, that's one way. So just understand that's, that's one way, and that that persistent to today. We've got that same, not the same service providers, but that same concept.

Monica Spieles 15:55
Another, I think, another path that ended up taking, that you took, that really helped build, build out where we are now in terms of having a methodology to follow, was exposing yourself to hundreds of businesses of different industries and size and and style and the way they operate, because that allowed us to experience the problems at their root in their root form, and that it really brought you to a place where you couldn't, you could not pull up the same card every time. It was a totally different industry. It was a totally different problem. It was and so it really challenged that, that mentality of, okay, how do I look at KSAs broad spectrum and and evaluate which of these Can I really turn the knob of and to help really get us to the next place that we need to be, from a marketing standpoint, from a business standpoint, and it was never the same combination. Like, if you're thinking about a hand, you know, hand of cards, like it was never the same hand. You were always dealt something very different. And so you had to think in that way. And I think that combination, like the exposure of people honing their craft and knowing, I love that, that term, like knowing how to strategically deploy tacticians versus and understanding where they, you know, where they were sold out for their craft because of what it could do. And then holding that up against the deck of cards that you've been the hand of cards you've been given and saying, okay, like, if I were to bring this over here, where would I? Where would I? What would I lay and where would I lay it? That combination was really I feel like that's what allowed us to continue honing in on the method and how to apply it to achieve the that final result,

Branden O’Neil 17:39
I would say one surround myself with absolute experts to 100% what, what Monica just said, and then, and then, the third one is, you just got to figure it out. You got to figure it out. And maybe, actually, as a, as a, as a to be on, on yours, Monica, yours, when we particularly learn a lot and we've innovated a lot around problem customers, problem clients. So instead of, like the common wisdom, as you're building an agency, as you're building a fractional cmo business or a practice, right? Yeah. So especially as you start to get into multiple CMOS, so your multi, multi cmo practice is just get rid of the of the problem clients. Now, that's, that's good wisdom, right? So that's, there's some truth to that. But if you always do that, you never actually learn, you never actually innovate. And so there's been, I mean, I can go through a lot of our tools and a lot of our processes, a lot of our methodology, and point back to a difficult situation, a way that we failed, a way that we just couldn't figure out how to communicate to a client, a way that, if you know whatever, I can almost point I can point back to almost all of that coming from a difficult situation. So that would be kind of the to be to Monica's. And then this, this, figure it out. This third one of just figure it out is you have to show up to a client, and you've got to figure out a way of of communicating. And then this is one that's often forgotten, is educating, I'm sorry, entertaining. So educating and entertaining, right? Yeah, at the end of the day, we actually are entertainers at the same time, and we don't think about it like that. We just want to be really smart people and have our clients get our get out of our way, so that we can go and lead their marketing efforts. And that's not, that's not the right way to think of it. There is an element of entertainment to this. And so there's this, like this mix of one, two and three that we just went through that creates, that has created for us tools. So we've got 40 something tools. At this point. And these are all tools that you pull off the shelf. They're big tools, like a 12 month strategy template, that's that you know that that you can use, or you know, smaller ones on how to run a persona exercise, or a key differentiator exercise. And so there's all of these tools that come out of the friction of experience, figuring it out and trying to communicate, educate and entertain, all at the same time, and and then. And then, the last thing I'll say, and maybe this is a nugget that everyone can grab on to, is fix it once, you know, like, create something that you can use over and over and over again instead of fixing a problem once, fix it, did I say fix it once, fix it, yeah, yeah. I did mean that, fix

Monica Spieles 20:48
it, fixing it over and over. Yeah,

Branden O’Neil 20:52
you get it

Monica Spieles 20:53
over and over and over. Never solve that problem, the problem

Branden O’Neil 20:59
just, just fix it, fix it once, and so when, over and over, exactly? Yeah, so when, when? That's the reason for a tool, right? That's the reason why a tool is so great. That's the reason why having a big library of Atlas rose tools that you can pull off the shelf and employ in all these different situation is so beautiful because we've already figured out we've used it 100 times or more, and, and, and you get to employ that well that all came out of just the desire to fix it once, right, to have something that we can use time and time again.

Randi Beth Burton 21:35
On your point three, that one of the biggest skill sets that a marketer must possess, and they don't tell you this in college, is the ability to sell your ideas. Whether you're internal and you're you're a marketing director for a company, or you're like us, and you're serving that role, and you've got many clients, you you have to not only be able to come in and say, Hey, this is what you should do, but you also have to be able to explain the why and educate around it and coach around it. And not everybody possesses that skill, and it's really important. Otherwise, you're going to you're going to be experiencing friction all the time within your clients and I have experienced that myself. I think all of you have as well. And that's where the tools and everything that you're talking about being in multiple industries, doing this over and over again, encountering a problem that we have already fixed, so that we can come in and we can say confidently. This is why, here's the tool to help us arrive at this subjectively or objectively, and not subjectively, because that's almost everything in marketing can be subjective, and yet these tools really help you take the subjectivity out of it so that you can be objective about the decision and put that into motion. And that's what speaks to a small business owner. That's what they need. They don't. They don't need the BS. They don't need the for you to constantly say over and over again, like, I promise this works, you're going to experience an ROI on it. And then they don't. They don't actually get to see the clean results. Because you have, now, we have tools that can back that up and help us make better decisions, and that's why you need a methodology, and not just your best idea that you had today,

Branden O’Neil 23:30
I'm gonna like, unsell you what you just sold. I don't care you. Well, I'm just gonna say I don't care if you use our tools, our methodology, or not. You just have to use a methodology. And I would and I would challenge each and every marketer out there that if you don't have these kind of three mindsets that we just talked about, if you're not creating, if you're not solving, you know, problems once and for all, if you're not creating your own tools or adopting somebody else's tools, then I'm going to ask you if you're really being a CMO, right, or if you're being a if you're being a consultant, or if you're being a tactician, or what are you being? Right? And I think that our clients deserve more than that, so don't whether you use ours or somebody else's or create your own, I don't care you. Just have, you have to come up with that. Yeah, has to be, has to be the basis. I want to go back to the

Monica Spieles 24:26
point you made around the entertainment factor, because it's so interesting. And I think just to bring more clarity to that, because a lot of people could take that as more tricks, and it's not, you know, it's not to just be super influential and make them buy into something they don't believe in. But if you think about, you know, your your worst class in high school, college, whatever it may be, and then your favorite and the best, it all came down to the teacher, right? It came down to, yeah, what you're learning. But, I mean, I was not, I was not big on on one going. Class to being in there for a long time. And so when I had someone who could make what we were learning extremely interesting and really sell me on why I needed to learn about geology, it was like, why? Don't even know why I'm taking this class. But I was there, and you know what? It was interesting. I can't tell you anything that I learned at that time, but it was interesting, because the professor made it that way right there was like they were sold out for it, and that's the whole point of tacticians that are sold out for their craft, even even marketing generalists that are sold out for doing it the right way. It's it is your job to convince them to learn, because if they don't learn and educate themselves along the way, then it doesn't matter. You know, what approval they gave over what? And this is the budget. I don't care what direction you take. It like it doesn't matter unless they're being educated throughout the process of this is why we're going this route. This is why you're part of this strategic building. This is why you know, this is why we're doing it otherwise, or just another resource that's just putting a list in front of them and saying approve, and going through the effort of asking them to know and letting it trying to make it sticky, is because it matters for for the continued integration of marketing within the business, and not just marketing and The Business happening side by side. And so that entertainment factor is important. From that standpoint, it's you cannot just be the be the most boring. You know, whatever person on the world I could try to think of like, what's a comparison of a class I had that was you just died because you couldn't even pay attention to anything beyond their monotone, you know, presence. So that's that's the important reason for entertainment factor. It's just not to do a song and dance.

Randi Beth Burton 26:51
My favorite, one of my favorite classes in college was entomology, the study of bugs, is because the professor made it so fun. This is the class that I stood up in front of the whole class and wrapped my rendition of, I like big bugs and I cannot lie. Are you

Monica Spieles 27:07
saying you're going to end this today podcast with, I like big bugs and I cannot

Randi Beth Burton 27:14
lie. Maybe if you tune in next

Monica Spieles 27:21
there's, there's something too that I think it's worth exploring and but being really for us to be so clear around, like, what does that mean to to the customer? Like, what does it mean for you to be someone that can teach and coach and influence in the right way? What it is that they need to adopt, because if they're not, they're not bought in, then it's going to be really difficult to actually make traction, you know, get traction in the business.

Branden O’Neil 27:50
I'd like to, I'd like to make that another subject for another another show. Yeah, um, how you show up, how you show up. Ah, I think that that's so that's so important. I've learned so many lessons, and a lot of those lessons

Monica Spieles 28:05
stories on that actually are

Branden O’Neil 28:08
from good stories would be fun to share, or not fun because they're painful. Oh gosh, yeah, how to show up. And we've, man, we've well, and

Monica Spieles 28:17
especially in the fractional and the fractional space, that was my last point. I forgot was sometimes you get the, you have the great, you know, pleasure of getting to work with your customers face to face. That's just, I mean, honestly, that's so special when you get to really be in the room with them on a regular basis. But when you're not, and there's so many of us, fractional, you know, remote workers, now that there's it's it makes it even more challenging to be you just let your natural presence be the thing that can help influence like it takes another step above and so that that's something we'll talk about. I think it just applies specifically to the fractional or is even more challenging to the fractional practitioners. What's your summary thought of our conversation today, my learning was,

Branden O’Neil 29:06
oh, go ahead, thanks. Don't just

Randi Beth Burton 29:11
fix it once. It

Monica Spieles 29:12
once. Fix it more than once. Essentially, my favorite, you know, what do they say? Measure once, cut twice. It's essentially what it'd be if you said it the backwards way. Measure twice, cut once.

Branden O’Neil 29:27
Think for me, um, anytime we talk about just methodology, I'm just really thankful that we get to that we get to live within having a methodology, you know, like it's as we're all serving. We all serve clients. In case anybody's wondering, we all have clients and and our other CMOs are obviously, they're serving clients, but we have a common language. We've got a common methodology. We've got a common framework for for doing all this. And I'm just really thankful of that, because I'm. Um, without that, man, you just have to figure it out every day, or we wouldn't be serving our clients well. And I think for me, I just, I just get all jazzed up about just being able to work with a group of folks like you all under a common a common language, a common way.

Randi Beth Burton 30:23
That's awesome. The same way I was that solo cmo person before I joined Atlas rose, just to figure it out that that piece that you said was number three, you just have to figure it out. But it's exhausting. And then there is a lot of this feeling of like, okay, I know you need this. I'm gonna figure out how to do it well. But when you, when you meet like minded people who have been doing it a lot longer and have that common language and the the way to attack something like, I said, more objectively than subjectively. It makes it fun. Makes it fun makes you, makes you feel like you're contributing something to the world. All right. All right, next time you.