Ep #144: Niche Finding Strategy: How to Find the Clients Who Actually Need You

Transcript

[00:00:00] In this episode, I’m gonna walk you through a, I think, pretty interesting way to choose a niche that is gonna help you filter to find better clients so you can stick with them longer and deliver more value to them. Let’s go.

Marketers of the world, why do we work hard to solve small problems? Why do we reinvent ourselves and our clients over and over, and why are we giving away marketing strategy for free? With advancements in ai, we’re all seeing the marketing department shrink from the bottom up, and companies need you to serve them as their fractional chief marketing officer.

It’s time to solve bigger problems and bring home a bigger paycheck. It’s time to create the. Lifestyle we deserve and to make a greater impact. This is the fractional CMO Show, and I’m Casey Stanton. Join me as we explore this growing industry and learn to solve bigger problems as marketing leaders. The fractional CMO show is sponsored by CMOX, the number one company to teach you

[00:01:00] how to attract, convert, and serve high paying fractional CMO clients on your terms.

Hey, it’s Casey. Welcome back. And in this episode, I just wanna dive into this idea that I’m just seeing, , more and more with the CMOs inside the Accelerator.

And the big idea here is that obviously, , not every business is the right business for you, so how do you choose the business that’s right for you? How do you prospect to the one that has the potential of saying yes? , And I think about this, you want to have some kind of litmus to know that someone that you’re talking to has the financial ability to say yes to the rates that you want to charge, and then secondly, that they have a need in their business that you can fill.

Because what we hate is someone who just loves you as a person and wants to find a way to work together and has a marketing thing and it’s a project and they can’t afford your rates and it all sucks. And you take it on because it felt like a win, but really it’s just a waste of time. We’ve all been there.

We’ve all taken on that project before. And if you haven’t, you’re a full-time worker, at FTE and you’re thinking about becoming a fractional CMO, this is a risk. , That’s definitely a risk.

[00:02:00] So I think of , this feeling of, , belonging that you have, right? You want to belong.

You don’t want to be in a room where you’re unwelcomed. , , I want to be in a room where … Th- does this sound crazy? I want to be revered. , I want to be special. I want to go somewhere and I want people to come up and talk to me, And I want to be important. Now, it’s my choice if I want to show up in those rooms or not, if I want that attention or not, but I want to be someone who is wanted.

Don’t you? Don’t you want the optionality of showing up and people being , “Oh my God, she’s here. I got to go talk to her. I have to go talk to her today. I see other people talking to her. I need to talk to her today.” Don’t you want to be that person? Okay. So to be that person, two things are required.

The first thing that’s required is that their company has to need someone in the fractional CMO role. This is big. It sounds small, but man, it’s just it’s big. I think of a company that I worked with a few years ago. Before they had hired me, they were spending a bunch of money on their marketing department.

I bet their monthly

[00:03:00] spend in marketing was a hundred grand minimum with talent, yeah, probably close to a hundred grand, with talent and tools, and then ad spend on top of that. And then ad spend on top of it was, I don’t know, somewhere between $300,000 to $400,000. So we’re talking about four to $500,000 a month they were spending in marketing.

And they didn’t have a CMO. They didn’t have a leader that they trusted. The executive leadership team was growing. It was all guys and then we hired a woman, but at the start it was just, me and the guys. And the guys needed me in the role. They needed someone in the seat.

They needed someone to be responsible for marketing. They needed someone who they could choke if the ad budget went off the rails. And instead of spending 10 grand that day we spent 30 grand, they want to be able to have someone who’s accountable. Just in the same way, if you’ve ever used ChatGPT and it told you to do something and you did it and it was the wrong thing to do and you’re , “God damn it, dah, I’m frustrated with you ChatGPT or Claude or whatever.”

I want you to pay for this mistake and they’re just ,

[00:04:00] sorry, I’m sorry that happened, that’s it. There’s no repercussion , in your life when an AI lies to you. You want someone to be there to take accountability. Not because that person has to take financial accountability, but they have to be the human that takes the accountability.

Isn’t that a thing? If you just had robots and they started screwing up, who are you mad at? You’re not mad at this ephemeral AI or robot, you’re mad at the developer of it. You say, “I really hate those programmers who made this UI terrible or whatever.” You’re blaming a human, right?

Maybe you just blame Sam Altman. I don’t know. But there needs to be someone who is in the position of responsibility for the department that is responsible to the shareholders, to the business owners, to the franchise partners, to the whatever. You wanna find the business that needs you there.

It’s a requirement to have you. Let me tell you one that doesn’t require a dental practice with one dentist. You know what that dentist needs? Leads. That’s it.

[00:05:00] Leads. They don’t need a CMO. No way. Think of any other business, the business that you’re thinking of. Is it too small? Do they need a CMO or do they just need an agency that cranks out leads?

Do they really need someone who’s accountable or can they just bitch at the salesperson or account manager at the agency? Do they really need the CMO seat filled? If the answer’s yes, that person already wants someone like you.

When they need to blame someone, when they also want to just offload the responsibility in totality to someone and go from having one-on-one conversations with the whole marketing team to having a 30 minute call once a week with you, isn’t that better for them?

That’s gonna free them up. They know that you’re handling it. That’s how things should work in a executive leadership team and, their life’s better, they have more freedom, they can do more CEO stuff or just not work as much, which is cool too. So you wanna find organizations where you’re needed because the structure requires someone in the seat of CMO or marketing leader.

I wouldn’t say the seat of the fractional CMO,

[00:06:00] it’s the seat of the CMO. Fractional is a relationship I have with the person who I have an agreement with, a contract with. I have a house cleaner, she’s my house cleaner. If you would ask me, is she full-time? No, she’s fractional.

She cleans two other houses every day. And, it doesn’t matter that she’s fractional. she has all their rights and privileges of a cleaner. It’s not like I say to her, “Okay, you’re the cleaner, but you’re not allowed to do these things.” It’s no, she’s, she does it all. It’s just, we don’t need someone full-time.

I’m not embarrassed to disclose. I’m a fractional CMO, but it’s just not anyone’s business. It’s just an unnecessary word to say, “Hey, yeah, I’m Casey, and I’m the fractional CMO for this company. I’m just the CMO for it. ” Does Cheryl Sandberg say that she was the fractional COO when she went on a book tour and you know she wasn’t putting in the long hours at Facebook or Meta?

No, she was still the COO. She had all the rights and privileges. Maybe her work dropped from 60 hours a week to 40 or 30 or 20. I don’t know, but it didn’t change her status as being the leader. Okay, so the first thing here, you gotta go somewhere where you’re needed. Maybe it’s

[00:07:00] this, you gotta go somewhere where not having you as unacceptable.

Let that land. Not having someone in this seat is unacceptable. That’s where you wanna be. They have to have someone. Now the second piece, why would they choose you? I told you there are two parts of this. One is they have to want someone, the second one, or it has to be unacceptable to not have someone, and the other one is that they need to want you.

You want to be desired. So first they need to know that they, want a marketing leader, and then they need to know about you. The problem with y’all is you’re not taking it seriously. You’re just not saying, ” I’m number one. I’m gonna be the leader of this. People are gonna know me for this. I’m gonna write the book on this.

I’m gonna go to conferences and talk on this. ” You’re just saying, “I’m gonna take the client that I get. I’m gonna take the deal that’s in front of me and I’m gonna close it and I’m gonna work hard and oh, it’s a little out of scope and I’m doing a lot more implementation than I want, but I guess it’s better than nothing.”

And I wanna remind you that you will get whatever you set your mind out to. It might take you longer than you want it to. That’s a different conversation. But ,

[00:08:00] if you refuse to give up until you get what you’re after, you’re gonna win or you’re gonna die trying. It’s a law of nature.

Most of you listening don’t take the work seriously to be the person that others look at as being the number one person. That’s it. You gotta be the number one person. What do you have to do to be the number one person? And I’m not gonna give you the prescription because it’s different for everyone based on their experience and how they like to communicate and also their industry.

But there’s something you can do to make you set yourself apart. We talk about this in the accelerator. There’s a woman in the accelerator who is in an industry that has a big conference coming up next week and she’s doing a lot of stuff to be the person. It’s the way she reaches out to people.

It’s in her neighborhood, the events in her town. The way that she shares information with them, the way that she talks online. She is the person. And if someone catches a wind of her, they’re gonna say, “I want her, specifically her.” All these other people I’ll meet

[00:09:00] maybe because they’re vendors or whatever, but as far as a team member’s concerned, I didn’t even know it, but I want her.

Again, the problem is no one knows about you. You’re a nobody and you have to become a somebody. You gotta be known as a person who does a thing. I could tell you about all the stuff I love doing and I refrain from it, not because I wouldn’t love to share all these great things in my life with my kids or my hobbies or whatever.

It’s because I wanna be the fractional CMO guy to you. I try to keep it really focused on this topic. You gotta keep your stuff focused on your topic. You gotta be the person that people look at and they say, “You’re the one.” There’s a marketer, Perry Belcher, he posted on Facebook yesterday. He said, “Who do I know? That’s a killer in the funeral marketing space. And everyone tagged a guy. There must have been, I don’t know, 85 comments and 30 of them tagged the guy, the same guy, because that’s what he’s known for. He’s the funeral marketing guy. Cool. And that’s, he’s not a CMO. I don’t know who he is.

I don’t know much about him. But he’s known for it. What are you known for? How do people know you? Is it

[00:10:00] because you had a win once and you secluded that win just between you and your teammates inside of a cubicle? Maybe you told your partner, no one else knows. The world doesn’t know all the value that you can provide and you’re just quiet about it?

So that’s that’s a focus for you. If you wanna be the best, you gotta do the things that the best does. That’s where you gotta be. That’s how you gotta play the game because after all, it is a game. No doubt you’re good at it, but when you do the things that look like the things that the person that’s the best does, you inadvertently become the best.

I said to myself, “I should write a book,” this I said this years ago, “I should write a book on , this fractional CMO method that I’ve got. I think other people would like it. ” That was a cool idea, but I’ll tell you, I didn’t know what I thought I knew when I started writing the book.

And as I wrote the book, I realized all the gaps. And that book took me a lot longer, 12 months longer than I wanted it to, because I realized just the amount of gaps in my knowledge and experience. And I had to go close those gaps. So writing a book is what someone does if they’re an expert. I was a non-expert and I started writing a book and by the end of it, I closed a lot of those gaps.

[00:11:00] I learned it was a major shift in my learning. Now there’s a big difference between writing something like that and going on movable type AI or, Claude or whatever and just ripping a book that way with a couple ideas and a, three sentence prompt. Don’t do that.

That’s not you. I’m talking about really crafting and creating a depth of thought leadership thoughts that when people consume, they say, ” He’s the guy. She’s the woman that we want. ” That’s where you wanna be. So it’s a two piece puzzle. Puzzle one is, it’s magnets, right? They’ve gotta want someone in this role and then you’ve gotta become the person that is the only one that they really want.

Everyone else is just a discounted version of you. That’s where you wanna be. If you want my help becoming this person so that you can win clients and serve them and have a lot of fun and feel challenged and stretch your brain and honestly work hard sometimes, right? Dig in, find that meaning and helping people and get paid handsomely for it, then just book it a

[00:12:00] call with my team.

We’ll see if you have the experience. Specifically the questions we will ask is around your experience with marketing and leadership. And if we think you’ve got what it takes based on me training over 400 and, I don’t know, 80 some marketers to be fractional CMOs I know a thing or two and we just wanna see if you’re the right person.

And if you are, we’ll share how we might be able to help you do it. That’s it. Super simple. CMOX.co/call and book it in. All right. I hope to hear from you soon. Take care.

Thank you for sticking around for the full episode. As you know, learners are earners, but you’ve gotta take action on what you heard today. For more information in show notes, visit fractional CMO show.com. If you’d like me to answer your questions on an upcoming episode, you can share your question@fractionalcmoshow.com.

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