In this week's episode, Bill is joined by Carlos Hidalgo, co-founder and CEO of Digital Exhaust, a B2B growth partner that helps organizations make growth simple.

Together, Bill and Carlos explore the truth about the fractional CMO role, the difference between strategic leadership and tactical execution, and why so many manufacturers and B2B companies waste money on marketing that doesn’t connect with customers. They dig deep into voice-of-customer research, brand alignment, and the importance of marketing accountability in driving measurable business growth.

Carlos: A number of years ago, worked with a client who made software for contact centers, call centers, help desks. As I started to work with them, we were told that they had just done this incredible campaign and spent six figures on this social media strategy, which kind of raised a red flag of why are you building a strategy around a channel or a tactic, but a whole nother story. So started doing what we do. We started to talk to their customers. Well, when we started to talk to customers about where do they get their information? How do they network? Where do they connect? We never heard social media mentioned at all. So we started to ask the question, could you give us insights on how you use social media? And to a person who were their customers, they were like, we stay off social media because that's just another channel for people to complain to us about our product or solution. One guy actually got really emotional. He was like, I hate social media. And I was like, all right, calm down. I get it. So we had to go back to the organization and say, you guys rushed to tactics to build this whole campaign. I mean, like the whole adage, if a tree falls in the woods, does anybody hear it? And it was a gulp moment for them where they just were like, oh, and I'm like, this is why we're telling you, let's spend, and it doesn't have to be long. We can do this in a very short amount of time, but give us access to your customers. And I want to talk to your salespeople because they're seeing a side of your customers that marketing will never see. And that insight is invaluable. So do you want to go blow another six figures? Or do you want to spend the time to do this and do it right? And then keep this information loop going so it continues to feed and optimize your campaign and give you an indication of what content do I need to create and where do I need to put it?

Intro

Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Today, we're going to take a deep dive into the fractional CMO world with our very special guest, Carlos Hidalgo. Carlos is a co-founder and CEO of Digital Exhaust, a B2B growth partner that helps B2B organizations make growth simple. Carlos is also a two-time author, executive advisor, and a TEDx and international keynote speaker. Carlos, thank you for joining us today.

Carlos: Bill, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Bill: One of the things that there's a there's like a big movement. There's a lot of chatter. There's a lot of conversations online about this fractional CMO world. Could you maybe talk about it? Because I know you've been doing this a little bit longer than this has been a popular term and have seen a lot of the ups and downs and kind of seen this whole space evolve. So could you maybe talk about how you define it and what you're seeing in the market?

Carlos: Yeah, if I can, going to start with what I'm seeing in the market right now is really a flood of general folks who either lost their jobs or want to try their hand at entrepreneurship, which I applaud. What I'm also seeing is a lot of people labeling themselves as fractional CMOs, which is, as you well know, is a key position in any organization. Yet their experience doesn't really lend to the CMO type. And so what they really are, and I'm not trying to demean anybody, is fractional tacticians, where they can come in, they can string together a lot of marketing tactics. So the way I define a fractional CMO is bringing that leadership, that experience, that any kind of seasoned CMO would fill in an organization, truly a seat at the revenue table, who can see the bigger picture and align marketing with the business goals, both organizationally and from a strategy and a messaging and positioning perspective. So when I think fractional CMO it’s truly someone who's got the experience, has the battle scars that show the experience, probably a little gray hair, which I possess now, and can down with a CEO in the ELT, talk revenue, talk business and say, how do we make marketing that growth engine at a big scale and then help that team if they have a team or sometimes, you know, a fractional may be your first hire, bring the team to make that strategy come alive and really help move the needle towards growth. So that's what I think about when I talk to organizations about being a fractional CMO.

Bill: Well and I think to kind of piggyback on what you're saying there, there are a lot of fractional marketing roles and fractional roles that can be fulfilled in any area of an organization. However, in marketing, it feels like there's this flood towards everyone calling themselves a fractional CMO when, like you said, they're tacticians, very talented, maybe very skilled, knowledgeable, and experienced in their specific tactic-driven, executable or whatever they do, but they do not understand corporate strategy. They can't sit at the table with the board or the C-suite and execute at a high level. So when you think about the fractional CMO role, where do you see kind of like it starting and stopping like in an engagement? Like if someone says, okay, what do you do and what don't you do? And maybe you could give this as more of a prescription, not only for what you do and don't do, but also how you feel this should be defined in the marketplace.

Carlos: Yeah, in terms of starting or stopping, I think it really depends on the maturity of the organization. I've worked with, you know, I heard someone say the fractional is perfect for and should only be sought after in small business. I don't necessarily agree with that because I've worked with mid-market companies and I'm defining mid-market of north of hundred million dollars in revenue where they needed a CMO role, they had a marketing team, marketing managers, marketing directors, but they really needed that leadership to help shepherd that team, teach that team. And again, integrate with their ELT to make sure that marketing was supporting the growth goals of the organization. So I think it's more about the maturity of the organization from a marketing perspective. And if you are a listener to this podcast, if you're a founder or a CEO and you think your team is just they are doing a lot of tactics. None of those tactics are cohesive. There's no holistic approach. There's no alignment with marketing to the rest of the business, especially sales and finance. I think those are good indications that perhaps you need a seasoned leader who can come in and at least bring that team together, provide some strategy, provide some leadership, provide some direction. And I know for me, one of the things that I try to do is upscale that team, leave them in a better spot than when I found them, and then also help onboard that new leader because I don't know that fractional is something that is a long-term fix. I think it can help you get to a place and then eventually if that CMO is doing their job right fractionally, you should be ready for a full-time CMO and that handoff should be seamless. And what it kind of looks like is rather than being involved in a day to day or say 20 hours a week, you start to decrease, maybe provide some advisory services on the backend to make sure that new CMO, that full-time gets their footing. And then eventually I go away. And so to me, that's what that is versus somebody who's fractionally saying, hey, I can create your content. I can do your SEO. I can put together a demand gen strategy. You need somebody who understands how to tie all that together and then also all the different components of marketing, customer growth marketing, customer acquisition, brand marketing. So to me, when you're a tactician, you're really just a freelancer. And again, no problem with that. But to say you're a fractional CMO, I think demeans the role and also the demeans the importance of what marketing can mean for an organization to help drive growth.

Bill: Yeah. I think when we look at the fractional CMO seat and like, if we looked at its nemesis or one of the biggest problems it could solve is what, and I didn't coin this phrase, but I've seen it used a lot, random acts of marketing. Right. And you know, the CEO reads a magazine article or sees something on their social feed and then he sends it off to the marketing manager. And now we're going to go do that for a week. Or our biggest competitor or somebody else in the industry who's a leader did this, so let's go chase that next week. And that can work, maybe, but is not predictable, scalable, and repeatable, certainly. And you could get lucky. Everybody can get lucky. Anybody can catch lightning in a bottle once or maybe twice in their career. But when we think about that strategic role and really figuring it out and… So the other thing I think when you think about random acts of marketing, it's not that any team wants to work on things that are not going to be successful. Like the internal marketing team isn't sitting there thinking, man, let's just do random acts of marketing because this is awesome. They would rather get focused, prioritize, execute at a high level and deliver. And so it's, bringing in that strategic and coaching and directional layer can have such an outsized impact on the organization. And I kind of liken it to like when I was a kid and this is gonna show how old I am. I can still remember before the microwave and after the microwave and and if there's any young people listening, it would be like before the iPhone and after the iPhone right? Because… anyway. I grew up with a rotary phone in the house. I mean, the times have changed. When you when you think about the difference between strategy and execution, what do you think is one of like, is this a big mistake or like a area where companies can really stumble if they try to bundle strategy and execution in one hire? Like looking for that Swiss army knife person.

Carlos: Yeah, I mean, there are a few of those out there. I know a couple. I think part of it is when we talk about execution of a strategy, there's so many different pieces to the execution. So I'm just going to take acquisition, for example. So from a demand gen perspective, if you're going to design that strategy, you have to know how to do a little research. You have to know how to interview customers to get their insights. You have to understand how to develop and architect a buyer journey to be able to do it effectively. You have to know numbers, right? Conversion rates, along that. So there's a lot there to be able to package that. Well, then from an execution, finding someone who knows marketing automation, knows how to talk to salespeople, knows how to write copy. Knows how to create content, knows how to do digital and paid ad, that's a lot. There's a lot of execution there, which is why we see that organizations or individuals try to niche down or specialize in a specific area. And so to find that, what I'll just call a unicorn, if you can find it, great. And I've seen that, right? We need a fractional, this isn't just a strategy role, this is roll up your sleeves and and get it done. And there should always be an element of that. So I don't I don't prefer being the CMO that's completely hands off. But I think what's most important is understanding that strategy and then developing the strategy from a buyer centric perspective. And I've seen more money wasted on tactics and technology with hope as the strategy versus saying, let's really understand who our customers are, what's important to them at every stage of their journey? Let's look at what do we do once they become our customer? How do we deliver that experience all the way through? And instead, it's this rush to, well we got to get something into market. We got to do this. And so it's a bunch of guesswork. And like you said, every once in a while, blind squirrel finds a nut. But how much money are you spending instead of saying, I'm going to bring somebody in who can develop that strategy and then guide my team to implement that in the most effective way, do it in an agile way so we can get to market quickly, but also start to see the benefits and then can read the tea leaves from that go to market motion and say, what optimizations do we need to apply? And then how am I tying those results to the business goals and reporting that back up to my CFO and my CEO? And I find that most tacticians can't do that.

Bill: Whenever you look at the fractional CMO role and you think about test, fail, optimize, rinse, repeat that cycle, because we got to, do you think that fractional CMOs are more apt to be aggressive in that approach as opposed to, on one side you're really strategic, you want to test, fail, figure it out really quick. And it seems to me if you're in that corporate world, you're a full-time CMO who's just brought in and there's not a lot of support, understanding, or resourcing around like bringing everything together. Do you think that the fractional can offer an edge in being more aggressive on that test fail model?

Carlos: I think they can because when you're brought in, it's not a, hey, get a lay of the land and take your time. You got 90 days. They want to see results fast. That expectation should be set up front or before you ever hire me, I'm going to tell you, this is how I work. I'm going to be data-driven, but I'm not going to be so data-driven that it paralyzes the team. And we keep analyzing. We're going to do some A-B testing. We're going to throw some things out into the market. However, we're not just going to do it based on guesswork. We need to take some time to lay the foundation of insights from our customers so we can understand what tests we need to launch. And what I say is an informed hypothesis. So rather than just throwing it out there and seeing what sticks, I'm pretty good at saying, you know, 20 to 40% of the data. And then based on my experience of whether it's this industry, you know, manufacturing, if we're selling to, say, plant managers or engineers or any of those, if you've done that before, you've got a pretty good understanding of how they operate, what they like, where their watering holes are. So I can take the data, marry that with the experience and then move quickly. The key is understanding are we getting the right data to make the best optimization decisions going forward?

Bill: One of the things that I've found refreshing as I've pursued fractional CMO work with on top of the agency ownership is the fact that networking with colleagues such as yourself, we almost have this this group of people that if we're running into a problem, we can call and get support really quickly. So whenever someone hires yourself, they're not only getting you and your collective experience and the experience of your clients, you have a, and I have, and we have a group of people we can call with, Hey, Carlos, I've got this problem and I'm really struggling with it. I thought I had it pretty well figured out. What do you think? Maybe talk to what you've seen in that over your career in this fractional CMO space.

Carlos: Well, I think you nailed it is, you know, the community, the network I have. I I reached out to somebody the other day, we hadn't talked in a year and took my call. We had a great catch up and then it was, yeah, think about this, this, this and this. That's fantastic. One of the things I've done as a fractional is I have built out a team. And when I say a team, it's not like they work for me, but I have my technology experts. I have my data scientist. I have my deliverability team that I can call at any time, either for advice or say, I need to slot you in here. I have my content creators. I have my digital specialists. So kind of have my bases covered. The beauty of that is I can bring them in, but to your point, I can also go and seek their advice and hey, my customer's running HubSpot, they're running into this problem. Would you mind just looking at it real quick? It's a great relationship because they know at the same time I would do the same thing for them and I have. And so the fact that you have this, to your point, you're hiring an individual. But, you know, I would say to anybody, if you're talking fractionally, ask that person, what kind of network do you have that you can lean on that's going to help you become a better leader in our company? Because I don't want to have to keep going out and doing a hodgepodge of people and trying to knit together this fractional network. That's the CMO's job. And so having that network, having those go-to people in your back pocket really makes my job a whole lot easier. And it's better for my client because there's consistency in the fact that you only have one person to connect with, but I have the history with this team. So we all know how to work together to get a job done.

Bill: Well and I think when we look at the full-time CMO turnover rate that currently exists and whether that's justified or not, it's just a fact. Whether it should be that way or it shouldn't be that way, it's just a fact. I think the fractional CMO role really allows companies to de-risk this enterprise because they're not worried about such a long recruiting cycle. They're not worried about all of the overhead with training onboarding and then separation packages. And I almost feel like fractional CMOs were a different breed because we are built to run. We're built to get in there and get after it. Whereas instead of like, okay, take six months, evaluate, listen, figure it out, start to assemble your team, give us a plan for the next 18 to 24. Like we're ready to dive in ASAP, not on insane timelines. Like we can't fix things in a weekend, but we're built for speed and built to act quickly and strategically, but quickly. Do you see that kind of like a comparison or contrast with the, full-time CMO seat?

Carlos: I do. For all the reasons you just stated, I actually saw a post from a guy who just took over as a CMO. And he said, you know, I'm forget what he said, 120 days in or something like that. So, you know, what's that four months? He said the first 90 days I didn't change. I didn't change a thing, which is smart. I get I get his point. So I'm not I'm not bagging on his point. But he said, I wanted to get to know my team. He said, I wanted to see the effectiveness of our website. I met with sales, I met with our customers, so he's doing all the right things as a full-time CMO. A lot of times when you're coming in fractional, if you have a small marketing team and you need a leader or that fractional is supposed to kind of be that marketing team for you, I need to do all those things, but I need to do those quickly. I maybe not be able to go to the depths and spend 90 days doing that, but even as part of that. I want to know what have you done in the past that's worked? What have you done in the past that you know hasn't worked? Because the quickest way to change is to springboard off those bright spots and know what's working. So don't come in and recreate the wheel. If I can activate something that's working and do that at a higher level, I can do that faster, better, quicker with me and my team because I'm not bogged down by the corporate politics or, you know, I don't have to do the mandatory trainings or anything like that. I can just come in and get my work done and deliver tremendous value to you. So I think it's really important to understand what is it that my organization needs. And I have talked with companies where I said, I don't think a fractional is what you need. You actually need a full-time CMO and here's all the reasons why. But if you want to move quick and you want to lay that core foundation, I think hiring that fractional leader is a very viable alternative. And again, for all the reasons you stated and what we just talked about.

Bill: So Carlos, when you think about success and how it's measured, I think in the fractional CMO role, we are more attuned with the metrics that we need to look at. How do you personally measure success in a fractional engagement? Maybe including some of those metrics and excluding some of, you know, the quantitative and the qualitative.

Carlos: Yeah, it's always interesting to me when I hear, yeah, we launched a campaign and we increased web traffic by 80% and we booked 50% more appointments and my head always goes to, but did you close anything? Right? And I know marketing doesn't have the impact or necessarily the ability to really dictate how sales works, but enablement is the key piece. So I look at things like pipeline contribution, number of qualified accounts or leads that have been driven to sales. Qualitatively, I look at sales feedback. Is sales happy? Are the customers, you know, from an MPS score? Are we improving customer satisfaction? Are we improving customer experience? Retention rates are really important, because great, you're acquiring 100 customers a year but 75 are leaving out the back door, right? What is that net of 25? So I try to look at the metrics and again, it's something that I talk about with every CEO in a fractional engagement is saying, tell me about your business. Where are you trying to take this business? Sometimes a business is saying, look, I'm two years away from an exit. So I need you to help put this marketing together in a way that's going to be neat, tidy, profitable, and move the revenue needle so that whoever acquires this sees that, hey, this part of our house is in order. So sometimes that's the goal. Other times that's come in and fix our retention or we need to get, we need to expand our customer lifetime value. So that's why I think it's so important to connect what you're doing from a marketing perspective to the business outcomes that the CEO is driving to because that will help dictate what is my goal here? And if it's customer acquisition, okay, well then how many new customers are we adding quarter over quarter? What does that sales cycle look like? Are we contributing to pipeline? All of these are really important. And of course, as marketers, we'll always look at our vanity metrics to see if we're driving engagement, but that's nothing that I'm gonna put in front of my CEO client.

Bill: So I think you hit the nail on the head there where you're talking about life cycle. Like where are they in their life cycle? because there are different approaches for different companies at different stages. And I think that's one of the ways that senior CMOs can really bring a lot of wisdom to the approach because anybody can come in and advise on adding a ton of tactics just to have things to do, add more to do's to the already overworked, over-tasked, frazzled, random act of kindness, random act of marketing type of approach to life, right? And they may look interesting, they may get you press, they may have nothing to do with moving the needle for the organization where they are in that life cycle. And I think you hit a very important point there, especially when we're looking at companies who are ready for a significant transition, whether that's M&A, whether they're presenting to private equity, whether they're, whatever a big transition could be that takes a level of care and consideration that we're not going to like type into ChatGPT and say, how do I do this? Right. So because they're they're not gonna listen to the board. They're not gonna know all the players, understand the politics, which are real, and then understand market conditions and the players that are gonna be involved in those situations. So I think that's great feedback on that topic. When you think about an engagement model for like the life cycle of a fractional CMO, what do you see is kind of like what you've observed in the past, what you think is ideal? Maybe talk through that life cycle a little bit.

Carlos: Yeah, I think it's getting you’re… as quickly as possible. And again, this is something I try to do in the sales process or in the I should say in the buying process, being more customer centric. What's plaguing you? You know, I talked to a customer or a prospect the other day, potential client who says, we've been launching all these campaigns. We're getting a lot of demo requests, but everything's stalling after that. OK, why is that? So if that's the issue, well come to find out even if they're on the call, there's really no nurture program that they've set up after their demo request. Most of their sales are coming through partners. So if you've got partners doing the demo, you have to start to ask the question, do they own the account now or does the company own the account? So I think having that diagnostic, and again, we don't have 90 days to do this. We've got to do it quickly. But I think that life cycle is, the way I approach it is, let's go after your top three to five biggest challenges and we're gonna go tackle these over the next six months. And I've seen people say, well, I signed a fractional for three months. I don't think a whole lot gets done in three months because there's so much foundation building. And there's a big difference between doing it right and doing it right now. But if I can identify three to five things that are, limiting your growth. And that may be sales enablement, that may mean acquisition, and may just be customer communication, customer retention, customer growth. It may be brand, nobody knows about you, right? So you built it and they're still not coming. So identifying those three to five things and then putting together the plan and then bringing the team together to say, sequentially, here's how we're going after this. Because so many of these things, it's like a supply chain. The supply chain of marketing. You can't do this until you do this. Sometimes it's, hey, we can start to design the strategy, but we really need to optimize your technology. I work with a client right now who's got at least seven different systems and data is scattered all over the place. So to try to have a digital conversation or a digital dialogue with one of their customers is very, very challenging. Now we're addressing the technology side, but at the same time, we're doing the insights, we're building the plans, we've created the personas, right now, we're creating content. So we're actually in the process, their team now under my leadership is under the process of putting together all the pieces for that. So the strategy is there, the tactics are there, and that the technology will meet us there so we can launch this and get into market very quickly. But that's how I try to do it is let's find the top three to five business challenges you're facing and which ones can marketing help with. And then if you need that help, let's come in and bring that leadership and bring that team along. Solve those issues and don't leave them hanging out there because you know, we know for every issue we solve, there's another one right around the corner.

Bill: I think that's such an important approach because we've run into folks before who've said to us like, we really want to use like HubSpot. We want to get a tool like HubSpot and we want to start to nurture our clients. We want to do a newsletter and an email to our current clients to harvest low-hanging fruit. I'm like, Oh, that's fantastic. This is good stuff. These are smart moves. And then you start asking questions like, well, what kind of content do you have? Oh, well, yeah, we don't really have any content. Or it's limited. Okay, so what are we going to, so let's buy HubSpot. Let's spend all kinds of money, get on board and get trained, get everybody. And then when we got to hit and build out a plan, what are we going to send them? Hey, buy from us. Like, you know, we're here to like we matter. We're number one, mom. And so I because I had a conversation with someone and they said, it was one of our HubSpot partners and they said, this new client you're talking about, do they have the content or do you have to build it? I said, we have to build it. That's why we're not going to bring you in for six months because I'm going to sign this client and get some momentum on content before we start like trying to plummet into the HubSpot marketing automation engine and start distributing it. Because if you, and this is where I think corporate strategy gets misaligned. If you're sitting in budgeting for the year end and you're like, this year we're finally gonna do monthly emails to all of our existing clients or a newsletter. And you set that as an objective and then your team sits there and they're working like crazy to come up with anything to put in that email. Or on the flip side, you could work ahead six months, build a ton of content out. And then when you go in January to send that first newsletter, you select from the best pieces of content from. Right. And I think, but I think that's where you can get misaligned in the strategy. And then the team is doing random acts of marketing. They haven't picked the top three to five things, like you said, that could really move the needle and get organized and do the right foundational steps. So I think that makes like just so much sense. And I appreciate that perspective.

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Let's pivot a little bit here, Carlos, and talk about branding and identity. How often do you find that branding is a problem whenever you start an engagement?

Carlos: Boy, it's hard to put a percentage on it, but I would say often. And I think the reason for that is many people don't understand brand. When I talk to people, you know, it's just happened a couple of months ago, talking to a prospective client and it's, we're all good on our brand. We just did a brand refresh. I was like, oh great. So tell me about that. Well, you know, our colors used to be this. Now they're this. We changed our logo and we have a new tagline. Like, okay, so yeah, you did some brand, you did some brand treatment. So for me, when I get into, and this is also very interesting because when you run into a CEO who doesn't know brand, I worked with a client several months back where looking at their mission and vision statement and the CEO said, I think that vision, you know, we don't need a vision statement. And I said, okay, tell me about that. He's like, well, I was just in a meeting and you know, they were talking about this vision statement about we envision a world where, he's like, I think that's stupid. And he said, you know, what, that world never exists. And I said, well, that's the whole point of a vision statement is it's big, it's broad, it's aspirational and you may never realize it. I said, but your purpose, mission and vision are the foundational elements to your brand. Well, we already have a good brand. Now what’s interesting is as they expand, he says, well, you know, we expanded into a new city. Nobody knows who we are. I said, but I thought you guys had a solid brand. I said, he said, said, do they know what you stand for? Do you know? No, no, no. So from a client perspective, they may not think they have a brand problem, but when you really understand brand is what you stand for, the bold, the bold promise you are making to your customer. You know, I think of a company like Apple. The word that I always associate with Apple is innovation. And they live it, they breathe it, you walk into their stores, you want to buy something, or at least I do, when you go in there, right? Because it's infused in every part of what they do, even down to product development. And so when I hear a CEO say to me, well, we don't have to do any brand work, I say, okay. Does everybody in the company know what you do and what you stand for and what you deliver to your customers? If you can't say yes to that, you have a branding problem. Now it may be an internal issue and it may be able to be done without a new logo or any of these things, but you have a branding problem. And so I would say most companies do, they just don't realize it because of their misunderstanding of what a brand really is and how it impacts your interaction with a customer and everything you do, even customer acquisition. That's why I hate the discussion, oh is it brand or demand. To me, it's yes.

Bill: Sure. No, I love that. And I think that when we think about branding and you hit on a really important point there, the logo, the colors, the font, whatever. The treatments, that's just one or 2% of the brand. The experience that your end customer is going to have with you whenever they see the marketing, talk to sales, have delivery or however they get it, right. The experience over the long life cycle of that product or service. And if they have aftermarket or customer care or whatever, I mean, that's your brand. That's the brand promise. And if we don't have consistency across all the touch points in the life cycle of that product or service with that customer, we have a brand problem. And I'm dealing with a company right now. We’re doing a huge brand lift for them. And one of the objectives we developed was that every one of their remote sales persons would be able to communicate consistently the brand promise through every interaction with their current customers and prospects. And that seems like fundamental, right? Like, I mean, I didn't, they're not going to have me on Diary of a CEO podcast for coming up with that. But we had identified that there was so much variability across their distributed sales team that it was not only a brand problem, it may have been a brand crisis because everybody was out there saying their own thing. Everybody had a different version of what was going on and they were developing new products and services and making up their own brand story to their constituency. And I mean, that's a problem, right? I mean, that's, that's detrimental. So I love what you said about, you know, making sure that's consistent throughout the organization.

Carlos: Well, and think you just hit on something too is it's all those customer touchpoints because, your, my brand interaction. So let's go back to Apple. You could probably tell I'm a Macophile. They could they could sell the iBrick and I'd go buy it. My first ever interaction with them, I was a PC guy. But when they came out with the iPod, I bought one and talk about dating yourselves. Remember the little skinny. What do they call them? The Nanos or something like that? I bought it and I loved it. Now, it didn't endear me to the Apple brand immediately, but man, I was a fan of that iPod, that I could put all my music on there. I could slip it in my pocket when I went for a run and all those things. And I stayed in that product allegiance probably for three years until one day I showed up at a new job and they were like, hey, here's a laptop for you. And it was a Mac. Okay, well now that expanded my interaction with the products. Well, then I started to really be like, oh this is, and I started to convert all my stuff over to the Apple operating system, where now I would say I'm a brand defender. And so because what you just said is that consistency at every touch point, whether it's product, whether it's sales, whether it's customer support, onboarding, if it's a consumer, if you have a brick and mortar, when I walk in your store, all of that matters, but it all springboards off the brand. What do you stand for and what are you going to deliver to your clients? Because we are, as consumers, very picky. And when we have the slightest bit of disconnect and experience, that's a brand issue. Now, companies are going to experience that. But if you pay attention to brand, that's what I, to your point, I call it the golden thread of consistency. And that's why it's so vitally important.

Bill: That's great. I like that golden thread of consistency. I'm probably going to borrow that. Yeah, that's, that's great.

Carlos: Please do. You don't even have to give me credit.

Bill: No, but I will, I will cite you. And, I love that. So let's jump into, so this is the Missing Half podcast and we try to discover what's missing and, or we love to throw this type of question out there, because let's be honest, we all were making mistakes and we're all winning and losing every day in this game called marketing. What are some of the biggest mistakes you've seen made or like this was a campaign or an engagement that just tanked, or this is one that went real well, we can celebrate or commiserate, whichever it would be. But anything you'd be willing to share that may be valuable for a listener as far as like the biggest mistake you saw made, or something that didn't go well or that went really well.

Carlos: Yeah, I'll speak in broad terms and then I'll bring it down to a practical example. I think again, the biggest mistake that I see is a rush to technology and tactics because it's this, you know, pipeline's low or, you know, we're in Q4 now, we got to get it out the door and just a lack of true understanding of marketing, which I also think fractionals can really help educate an ELT team that on what true marketing is and the value it brings. So I think that so often the cart is put before the horse where they don't want to spend the time or the money to do the strategy based on customer insights. So they're throwing stuff against the wall. So here's how that comes to be. A number of years ago, worked with a client who made software for contact centers, call centers, help desks. As I started to work with them, we were told that they had just done this incredible campaign and spent six figures on this social media strategy, which kind of raised a red flag of why are you building a strategy around a channel or a tactic, but a whole nother story. So started doing what we do. We started to talk to their customers. Well, when we started to talk to customers about where do they get their information? How do they network? Where do they connect? We never heard social media mentioned at all. So we started to ask the question, could you give us insights on how you use social media? And to a person who were their customers, they were like, we stay off social media because that's just another channel for people to complain to us about our product or solution. One guy actually got really emotional. He was like, I hate social media. And I was like, all right, calm down. I get it. So we had to go back to the organization and say, you guys rushed to tactics to build this whole campaign. I mean, like the whole adage, if a tree falls in the woods, does anybody hear it? And it was a gulp moment for them where they just were like, oh, and I'm like, this is why we're telling you, let's spend, and it doesn't have to be long. We can do this in a very short amount of time, but give us access to your customers. And I want to talk to your salespeople because they're seeing a side of your customers that marketing will never see. And that insight is invaluable. So do you want to go blow another six figures? Or do you want to spend the time to do this and do it right? And then keep this information loop going so it continues to feed and optimize your campaign and give you an indication of what content do I need to create and where do I need to put it? So my customers can engage with it. So that is the number one thing I see. And then to your point, I'm going to go buy HubSpot, Marketo, whatever it is. I'm going to implement it. We're going to start emailing our customer base and it's going to be great. And the only thing they can email is to your point, hey mom, I'm number one, come buy us. And we know that customers aren't doing that anymore. Most of it is that dark funnel where I'm not gonna identify myself until I know I'm gonna get value from the investment I make in your company.

Bill: So is the biggest hot take that, and I don't care whether you're in B2B, D2C, I don't care what industry you're in, SaaS, PE, M&A, whatever. Is it not, instead of thinking about AI, instead of thinking about Meta or TikTok or social selling, AEO, LLMO, GEO. Any other three letters we want to pick in the alphabet, jam them together and have them moving around. Is not the number one thing we need to do just go out and talk to our customers? And voice the customer research. I've been preaching this and trying to get our clients to spend more time and energy on it. Listen to those customers because when you think about waste, and that six figure social, like I'm sitting here going like breaking into a cold sweat, thinking about being the one who has to go to the C-suite or the board or whoever and say, oh by the way, we spent six figures and then we did the voice of customer research. And oh by the way, our customers don't hang out there. Like I'm having a physical reaction. I think my blood pressure’s spiking. I don't know. That just is making me weird, but voice of customer research will 100% impact everything you're doing, whether it's marketing, customer success, operations, everything.

Carlos: Yeah, let me give a quick example of how that plays out. Working with a client right now where before I came in, was literally their plans were month one, we do this, month two, we do this, month three. And they were having a modicum of success. I'll give it to them. Started working and said, okay, let's start to really understand our customers. We're going to do research and this and that. And somebody said, okay, well, what content are we going to send them? I said, trust the process. And so we kept going at, well, do we have the content, I said trust the process. We did all the research. We identified the core pains, needs and challenges. So we talked to customers. We did some research on our own about in that market, what's going on. We then laid out the customer journey using our framework. The person, the key person I was working with, as we laid that all out and built it, she looked at the slide at one point, we were in a conference room and she went, I think I know what content we need to create. I was like, bingo. And she said this was so valuable because it tells me exactly what I need to create to respond to what they need. And I was like, there you go, gold star. And it's such a roadmap for organizations rather than, oh my word, what are we going to blog about to this month or this week? You know exactly what you're gonna say, because you know what your customers are feeling. And that's why voice of customer and industry research is not a one and done. Creating personas isn't a one-time event. At a minimum, you should be revisiting those on a quarterly basis, saying what has shifted, what has changed, looking at your data. Are we seeing shifts in buying patterns? And then going back and updating that, because again, that's all your indication into what kind of content I need to create and where I need to put it.

Bill: So Carlos, I’m going to get your take on this. AI is making everybody faster in some way, shape or form. And let's assume for a second that the promise of AI will allow a lot of the tactical work to move much more quickly, whether it's using some type of video tool to clip videos or make a post or create those things. So let's assume that is true, whether that will be or not, but let's just work with the model. Does that not allow for us in the marketing departments and the marketing space to do the work that really needs to be done, which is this strategic listening to customers, updating personas, and making sure that while we can do things really quickly with AI or we can accelerate and be more efficient on production tactics and distribution, that we can invest more time, money, energy, and resources in the work that will double down and make all of those things more efficient because we're doing, we're answering the right questions. We're solving the right problems as opposed to this is our best guess, six figures. Oh nuts. It didn't work because our people weren't there. Right. Like that's nightmare scenario.

Carlos: In theory, yes. The problem what I'm seeing is people go, well, we created personas. We just put it all into Claude and it spit out personas. And I'm like, okay. And I think I shared with you off air the example of watching a Green Bay Packer game. And I punched in because I wanted to tell my wife the exact figures of his insane contract, which makes me wish I tried harder in high school sports. But that's beside the point. And Gemini comes back with, as I'm watching Micah Parsons play for Green Bay in the game, comes back with, he didn't sign a contract. It was part of a larger misinformation campaign. He still plays with the Cowboys. And I'm going, okay, but that's the same AI you're using to create your personas. So I'm okay with using AI for research and for, I use it to look at large data sets and do some segmentation, but to just say, I'm gonna throw my persona and my voice of customer research and ask for Claude or ChatGPT or perplexity or whatever your platform is to produce that. And then I'm going to use that as a way to go to market. That's a big, that's a big, big risk. Use that and then layer in voice of the customer through the customers themselves, your data, and by talking with sales and customer support. Now I have something that's pretty well rounded. That's a little bit more than just, so to your point, yes, we could use AI as best you can to help do some of the administrative things that you have to do or to edit a podcast or some photos or things like that to get a first draft of content. But you've got to humanize it. You've got to put some eyeballs on it. And when it comes to talking to your customers, like I even have companies who say, well, we did a survey. That's fine and good. But sometimes there's a thread that I want to pull on when I'm in front of a customer that I know is going to lead me to some really, really good insight, I can't get that through AI or a survey.

Bill: Well, and there's no excuse anymore for not doing voice of customer research. You can schedule a Zoom. Like it's not like you have to drive there and it blows the whole day and it's lunch and it's like, there's no reason in the world that a marketing department can't schedule in a two or three week period, 20, 30 interviews that they stack back to back and they can make sure they don't have bias and that the questions are right. And they can do some of those like fundamental things we need to do in voice of customer. But also, like you're saying, that's the science, scientific side of it. There's also the art when you're in that conversation. So like in the pre-show, you and I went over, hey, this is some areas we're going to talk about. There are things we've talked about in this call or in this podcast that have nothing to do with anything we talked about in the pre-show, but have been great conversation points. And that's the art. So, and what I've found when we're doing voice of customer, is it's often in the art. It's often in pulling on that golden thread or finding that, that unique perspective that then you're launching a whole different set of questions for the next set of voice of customer research, because you've found something that has been ignored, misunderstood, uh, overlooked by the organization. And that's where you find the real nuggets that can really have outsized impact on the entire strategy.

Carlos: Yes, and to circle back to the beginning of our conversation, this is one of the reasons why you need somebody who's had that experience. You need someone who can be in that room, hear that answer and go, hmm, I want to pursue that even though it's not on the script. Somebody with three to six years’ experience probably doesn't have the expertise to say, you know, they're going to look at their questions and follow those questions. So again, not, I'm not demeaning anybody with experience. We were all there at some point in time where we just didn't have it. But it's somebody who's seasoned, been there, seen different movies, different scenarios that I can come into and go, seen that before, I know how to solve that problem for you. Or hear that answer, I know I need to dig deeper because there's more there.

Bill: Carlos, if you had some advice, maybe like three tactical recommendations or like next steps for a CEO or a founder or someone who's in PE, who's like an operating partner or someone who's making decisions about their marketing. Do you have like three recommendations about how to approach dealing with their strategy problems?

Carlos: Yeah, I would say first of all, to diagnose if you have a strategy problem is, is your marketing team helping you grow as an organization? And that may be new customer acquisition, customer lifetime value, customer retention. If the answer is no, there's a pretty good chance they're just stringing together a bunch of tactics and hoping it works. So ask yourself that question and be honest. Number two, go to your customers. And say, hey, how is our marketing impacting your decisions to partner with us as a vendor? If they go, yeah, it's not, or I've opted out of all your emails, or yeah, when I go to your website, you may be me with the iPod. I really like your product. I don't care about your brand. So there's a huge opportunity there for customer lifetime value. And then I think, go talk to your marketing team and say, hey, what do we stand for? What are you doing that's going to endear us and get us closer to our customer and expand that share of wallet? If your marketing team can't answer that question, it's probably time for leadership. And even if you have a CMO or a VP of marketing, if they can't answer that question, you may just have the wrong person in the wrong seat or the right person who just needs some more guidance and leadership and experience. That may be a good indication to also bring in a… a strategic CMO or experienced CMO to lead that team and foster and upskill that team so that when they go away, they know exactly what they need to do. The other question I would ask, I know you asked for three, I'm going to give you four, is how is your marketing aligning to our business goals? And I find when I ask that question of marketers, I get deer in the headlights. We don't know our business goals. How do you not know your business goals? Because that's what you're there for is to help the business. So if you don't know the goals, there's a complete decoupling over what you're doing and this is activity. It doesn't mean it's gonna lead to anything. So understanding that is crucial and I find a lot of marketers, even senior marketers have a hard time answering that question.

Bill: So Carlos, you had a Freudian slip, I think, when you started to answer that, because you said, hoping that the marketing is going to work. But you said first, hoping the marketing is work. And I think a lot of marketing departments, they just want work and want to get paid. They don't know that it, right? And hey, we get it. They need a job and all that. But they don't know the goals of the organization. They just need work. They don't know how to deliver, but they just need work. And they're afraid to ask those hard questions because they need work to keep moving forward. And when you bring in a fractional, it's not about work. It's about impact. And it's about change and making something happen. it's having a job and getting paid for it as opposed to having an impact and moving things forward. So I think that, I love that. And I didn't mean to call out that Freudian, but I thought it was just so, it so illustrated the point I had to point.

Carlos: I just teed you up. But to that point, real quick, if I can, this happened 20 years ago and clearly made an impact, because I'm telling the story now. When I was at BMC Software, we had an onsite in Houston, and it was all about marketing reporting. So the events team was there, demand was there, everybody. Day two of this engagement or this meeting, our CEO walks in and says, so this is the Metric Summit. He said, here's an answer I want by tomorrow. We just spent quarter of a million dollars on a trade show. I want to know what we're going to get from it. And he walked out. You want to talk about an oh my word moment. I mean, everybody's looking at each other. Thankfully, I had nothing to do with that trade show. And the events team was like, well, that was a brand show. Like we weren’t. And I mean, it was panic. But what I took away from that is that's what my CEO cares about. He doesn't care about how many people heard the speech that we gave at the trade show or how many people came back from the booth. He wants to know, we spent a quarter of a million dollars to be there. What can I expect in terms of revenue and pipeline from it? And it's a legitimate question. So to your point, Freudian slip, whatever you do in the editing, I'll leave that to you guys. Hope isn't a strategy. And the goal of marketing is growth. And if we can't, and however we measure that growth, but if we can't demonstrate that to our CEOs, we're not going to have jobs much longer, or we do figure out where to hide within the marketing department and just do busy work. But that's not really fulfilling either. So to your point, how are we impacting that organization? And we should be tied to the growth goals that the CEO and the board set for us.

Bill: Well and the metrics that that event team probably had going into that seminar was, we did work. We went to the trade show. The booth was there. The Chachkis were available. Everybody had on their shirts or whatever, branded coffee mugs, check. Right. And the CEO doesn't care. The board. And why does the CEO not care? Because the board really doesn't care. Whoever the CEO is reporting to, whether it's themselves as the owner or to a board or investors, they really don't care. They just want to see performance. I love that. Carlos, I'd like to take a moment here. Go ahead.

Carlos: No, I just said it was quite a moment.

Bill: Yep. No, and we all have those in our career where we like it's a seminal moment where we learn something, where we pick up like a new philosophy on our lives because we see something, whether we get clipped by it or we watch somebody else get clipped by it. It's it's very impactful. Carlos, I'd like you to take some time here. Tell us more about yourself, maybe about your career and how you got to where you are today. And then we always want a shameless plug about you, your practice, and how people can reach you, which all of those pieces of information will be shared with all of the show notes, where we post on YouTube, on LinkedIn, your availability so that any listener who wants to engage with you or to learn more can get ahold of you. So maybe start with a little bit of your history and then into your practice.

Carlos: Yeah, first and foremost, you know this because we graduated from the same university, a follower of Jesus Christ. I make that very evident in all of my engagements because I think it's really important if you hire a fractional, you know what their operating system is. So that's mine. Actually got into marketing by mistake. My dad was in advertising and marketing. So, of course, I never wanted to be a marketer. Always wanted to go into law enforcement. And obviously that didn't work out. So my first job was with a nonprofit and lo and behold, I was put into the Office of Advancement and Development for donors. And that's really where I learned and started to cut my teeth on writing for your audience, speaking for your audience. It was content marketing long before Joe Paluzzi started Content Marketing Institute. And so that just led into here I am 30 plus years later. I've been on the client side. I was with McAfee and BMC Software. And then 2005, scratched the entrepreneurial Itch. Started my first agency, co-founded that with my brother. And I've done a couple of, since then I've been in a CRO role. So I've kind of seen both the marketing and the sales side, predominantly B2B. But really have been, had the opportunity and the privilege to work in all facets of marketing from brand to demand. One of my books is about demand generation. And then in 2023, after a short tenure as a CRO, a good friend of mine and I started Digital Exhaust where we are now. So we've been, I guess this coming April 26 will be four years, three years, I think four years. So we started in 2022.

Bill: Congratulations.

Carlos: Thank you. And like we said, we try to work with our clients to make growth simple. I think sometimes we can so overcomplicate marketing and I think sophisticated and complex are not the same. So we can be simple and still be sophisticated, connect with our customers and create revenue. And that's really what we try to do with our clients. And we do that through strategy, advisory and fractional work. And then we also, as I mentioned earlier, we have an implementation team. So we can be that full service agency if that's what organizations need us to do. But for me, the biggest joy is watching the light bulb moments with our clients, seeing the impact we're making, and then just making their lives better. And fractionally, you get to do that because you get to work with people. And ultimately, that's what fires me up is when I see people stepping in, reaching their potential and succeeding, then I know I've done my job.

Bill: That's great. And Carlos, in your origin story, and this is a common thread that I've been noticing about people in marketing, is that very few of us set out to be in marketing. I had a guest the other day for the podcast and she said, I think it was law that her parents wanted her to go into. And then she ended up in marketing. So of course that was a huge disappointment. It's just like one of those things, right? You're going into law, you're going into medicine. Oh marketing. I see. But yeah, it's one of those. But certainly this industry and this profession has grown immensely, even during my career. And there is a spot for it. It is a reasonable and honorable profession because when you have those light bulb moments and when you help people achieve their goals. Whether you call that coaching, whether you call that marketing, whether you call that fractional CMO, it's always a win and feels really, really good. Um, and we connected, we, you know, we both graduated from Cedarville with different eras, a couple of different years apart, but, um, Jeff Beste, was kind of our connection point. So we can always blame Jeff and anytime I can blame Jeff for anything, I make sure I bring that up and we'll make sure this is like a clip on Instagram so that he gets a bunch of guff for it. Anyway, so thank you, Jeff, for all that you do and it's your fault. Well, Carlos, has just been a wonderful conversation. The pre-show conversations, just amazing perspective. And I think we all who are doing Fractional CMO work need to continue to beat the drum about the differences in the folks who are participating in this space and making sure that we're delivering value and that our clients and potential clients find value. So I think we're aligned in those aspects. Just a great conversation, some really good golden nuggets. We pulled on some of those golden threads that we found that were exciting throughout the conversation and a couple of Freudian slips we focused on. So it was just a wonderful time. So thank you for joining the show.

Carlos: Thanks for having me. This was great. Really enjoyed the conversation and well, walking away with some things that I need to continue to think about. So I appreciate it.

Bill: Excellent.