I'm just gonna say it. There's too much 'doing marketing' today, and not enough marketing-driven growth.
Doing marketing looks something like this:
Doing marketing is the norm. And...it's usually wasteful — in direct costs and opportunity costs, both.
Why?
Think of it this way:
Every time we enter a new marketing channel and/or activity, we essentially enter into one of these...
Yep, we enter a marathon.
A packed marathon.
A long, packed marathon.
A grueling, long, packed marathon.
Pick a marketing channel, virtually any marketing channel – TikToking, newslettering, podcasting...
Okay, so we want to enter the "podcasting marathon?" Nothing wrong with that on the face of it. The problem is: seemingly everyone and their cousin is doing podcasting today. Same can be said of many channels.
So, if we expect growth from simply doing a "good" podcast, we're probably fooling ourselves.
We're entering a grueling, long, packed marathon and thinking "good" will net us something more than a mere participation medal. That somehow we'll benefit from just showing up to a popular marketing channel.
TikToking, newslettering, podcasting, and many other channels are...
And, yet, we flock to such marathons — collecting our shiny participation medals. Thinking that simply showing up, thinking that simply doing TikToking, newslettering, and podcasting, will somehow magically grow our sales.
Might I suggest: Instead of entering channels and expecting a return, maybe it's time we race to win.
Marketing that "races to win" means:
The paradox of marketing is this: Doing marketing in all the "right" ways is usually the best way to do marketing the wrong way. I define right as what grows our company and wrong as what doesn't. Marketing should be judged by growth.
And all the books, articles, podcasts, conferences, and videos are full of advice about the right ways to market.
Unfortunately, if we're reading, hearing, watching these resources — other marketers are too. Which means we all converge on the same races, and we run those races mostly the same way.
In other words, we do marketing. We don't race to win.
And racing to win, as a marketer, means one or both of two things, usually:
Either way, marketing success comes from being different — not "same." Which is why doing all the right things according to books and podcasts, which have a homogenizing effect, are dangerously facile.
(BTW, I love books and podcasts! But best practices are also common practices, so we must be careful concluding that someone writing or talking about marketing generally will give us a recipe for real growth.)
As a fractional growth marketer, serving 2-3 B2B clients at once, racing to win is a core part of my marketing identity, philosophy, and approach.
I'm not satisfied with participation medals. I want to see...
...as a result of the marketing strategies and activities I ply on my clients' behalf.
But how? What methodology do I follow in attempting to "crack the code" on my client's growth challenges?
Some oversimplification will be necessary, but let me boil down my fractional, growth-driven marketing approach to the following five steps, one of which we've already discussed:
Let's unpack.
First the bad news, then the good news.
Bad news:
You can't make marketing work. (I wish more books and podcasts acknowledged this.)
There is a fortuitous element to marketing. The ball has to bounce in your favor, to a greater or lesser extent.
This is the reality of marketing.
In much the same way you can't make lightning strike, you can't make marketing work.
But once we accept that, we can move to the good news...
Good news:
While you can't make lightning strike, you can build a really, really, really tall lightning rod.
The tallest, most conductive lightning rod in your industry, that is.
And, so, as a fractional B2B marketer, it's my aim to build "tall, conductive lightning rods" for my clients.
This comes from, as seen, investing more and better effort, commitment, and/or patience than other organizations could or would. And, building these tall lightning rods at multiple levels:
It's not enough to build tall lightning rods at one level and ignore the others. A spirit of excellence — of building that really, really, really tall lightning rod — should permeate the marketing function from top to bottom.
Growth doesn't grow on trees; growth isn't neatly labeled.
As seen, the world is full of marketers — including myself on way too many occasions — simply doing marketing and thinking leads, sales, and growth will naturally follow.
They won't.
Because growth isn't easy. Growth, in fact, is hard to come by. There's no 1-2-3 step to getting there — or else everybody would be doing it.
Which means, in a sense, we have to come up with our own 1-2-3 formulas for growth.
And that takes two things at least:
This is why, as a fractional, growth marketer, I try to guard my biases and preferences carefully.
I need to be strategy-, channel-, and tactic-agnostic — so I can follow the growth. But that also means, since I work for small businesses with limited marketing budgets, that I need to be willing and able — i.e., versatile enough — to jump from one channel to another (e.g., SEO to events to display ads), from one format to another (e.g., copywriting to graphic design to video production), and from one platform to another (e.g., Google Ads to Reddit to Vibe CTV).
This ability/willingness to be versatile or "scrappy" then facilitates experimentation:
That simple? That neat? Of course not.
This simply captures the spirit of what I mean when I say versatility and experimentation.
It gets messy; it takes time. But versatility and experimentation can uncover pathways to growth.
When the will is there, the way will often reveal itself.
My work as a fractional marketer takes me to five different places, or prongs, on behalf of my B2B clients and their growth aspirations. I like to represent this multi-pronged approach as a fork, something like:
Notice:
And, thus, when I work with a client, all five domains receive my attention — as I consider on a client-by-client basis which domains and sub-domains carry the most potential and where to experiment with the possibilities.
So, as a fractional growth marketer, I've already proposed to...
You might be thinking: "Chris, that's a lot."
And, you're right. The approach I've outlined takes, among other things:
By time, I mean: growth doesn't happen overnight.
No two businesses are the same: some have modest growth goals; others have ambitious growth goals. Some are in highly competitive industries; others have a smoother ride.
And so it's impossible to say how long it takes to crack the code on growth — but it does take time.
By focus, I mean: I can't implement this fractional model across multiple clients at once.
For this reason, I limit my practice to preferably two clients at any time.
I need to embed myself in my client's business — and develop as thorough an understanding of their industry, market, product, etc. Because it takes an intimate understanding of the business to get to growth.
And herein — with this point about time and focus — lies the difference between my fractional model and other avenues for "getting marketing" available today. For example,
But what about a fractional CMO? Is that another name for what I'm proposing?
Yes and no. Mostly no.
I differ from a fractional CMO in that my purview is both strategy and execution. Yes, I help client businesses develop a broad strategy, but I also implement the various tactics in pursuit of the strategy — getting all the way down to the nitty-gritty of:
That I deliver both strategy and execution is intentional. I believe it ensures nothing is lost in translation between a part-time CMO and — often — part-time marketing practitioners. The best execution flows naturally from strategy, and so it's beneficial when barriers are removed between those who make strategies and those who do the work.
What better way to reduce barriers than to embody strategy and execution in the same individual?
Moreover, my clients are small to mid-sized businesses. Their budgets rarely allow them to splurge on a buffet of marketing resources and professionals. By taking responsibility for strategy and execution, I can ultimately save clients money — which can then be used to experiment in more channels/platforms across more domains.
Strategy and execution. Reunited — and it feels so good.
And...and...it all hinges on racing to win.
I have to be in it to win it; my client has to be in it to win it.
If one side doesn't pull its weight — it doesn't work.
Why "do marketing," when you can grow?
Why enter races and collect participation medals, when you can win races and take home real prizes?
Make it your mantra: race. to. win.
How Can I Help Your Business Grow?
If you're a small or mid-sized business in Arkansas, and you answered "yes" to even one of these questions...
...we should talk. We might be a good fit to work together. That is, to race together.