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Marketing Podcast with JP Maroney
In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview JP Maroney. He is a seasoned business strategist and Fractional CMO with over three decades of entrepreneurial experience. He is known for his strategic prowess, serving powerhouse clients like Wells Fargo and Century21, as well as growing companies, often as a Fractional CMO, Chief Strategic Officer (CSO), or Chief Strategist to numerous ventures.
Key Takeaway:
A fractional CMO can be a cost-effective solution for businesses to access top-level marketing expertise without the burden of hiring a full-time executive. JP highlights the importance of framing services in terms of results and outcomes, focusing on the value delivered rather than just the hours worked. Additionally, it’s important to consider the power of strategic marketing alliances through this model and how this can have the potential to bring fresh ideas from other industries into a business to drive growth and success.
Questions I ask JP Maroney:
- [01:37] How would you describe what is a Fractional CMO in your own words?
- [04:31] Is there a way to scale a business model like a Fractional CMO or is it just a way to be highly paid for your time?
- [07:44] Is there a certain type of market that you target to get clients, or is it really more that you organically attract the clients and decide if the Fractional CMO model works for them?
- [13:51] Have you seen any change in the market for businesses being more interested in strategy?
- [16:51] Do you prefer long-term engagements or short-term engagements, or is it really different for every client?
- [18:50] There are different types of Fractional CMOs; some provide implementation, and others are just third parties to delegate or help you build or manage a team. Do you have instances where you’ve maybe done all of those and what maybe are the pitfalls or upside to those different approaches?
More About JP Maroney:
- Follow JP on social media: @jpmaroney
- JP’s website.
- Check out JP’s Youtube Channel.
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John Jantsch (00:00): Hey, marketing agency owners, you know, I can teach you the keys to doubling your business in just 90 days or your money back. Sound interesting? All you have to do is license our three step process that it's gonna allow you to make your competitors irrelevant, charge a premium for your services and scale perhaps without adding overhead. And here's the best part. You can license this entire system for your agency by simply participating in an upcoming agency certification intensive look, why create the wheel? Use a set of tools that took us over 20 years to create. And you can have 'em today. Check it out at DTM world slash certification. That's dtm.world/certification.
(00:55): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jans. My guest today is JP Moroney. He's a seasoned business strategist and fractional chief marketing officer, Fractional CMO, with over three decades of entrepreneurial experience. He's known for his strategic prowess serving clients like Wells Fargo in 20 Century 21, as well as growing companies, often as a Fractional CMO or Chief Strategic Officer, or CSO I guess we'd call that to numerous ventures. So jp, welcome to the show.
JP Maroney (01:30): Hey, thank you sir. Appreciate the invitation.
John Jantsch (01:33): So I've been talking about this topic of a Fractional CMO frankly, for 10 years, but I've really leaned into it the last couple years because I think the market's caught up. But I, I'd just love to hear from you, I'm gonna do a few shows on this topic. If somebody asked you what's a Fractional CMO, how, how would you describe that in, in your words?
JP Maroney (01:51): Well, I think that other business models or other business categories have paved the way with fractional ownership. So jet ownership fractional, all sorts of things, you know, so yachts and housing and everything else. So that kind of gives people the general idea, but it's essentially, in fact, I put a header on my LinkedIn sometime back that said, rent My Marketing Mind
John Jantsch (03:26): Yeah, I looked at recent survey on salary.com and a chief marketing officer somewhere in the range of two 50 to 360, um, thousand. So, so yeah, I mean, I think you're absolutely right. In some cases it's budget, so it's a way to get, you know, some strategic thinking at a fraction, uh, of the cost. But I think the bigger point, like you said, is, you know, what's a full-time CMO gonna do
JP Maroney (04:06): Either the Yeah, either have your own existing or that CMO needs to bring a team with them if they're not gonna get in the trenches and do, and they shouldn't, by the way, if you're paying a guy, you know, like I based my CMO rates on a half a million, roughly a half a million dollars, so like 40 grand a month kind of thing. Yeah. And so a quarter share, say $10,000 a month or whatever, but, um, you don't want a guy that you're spending that kind of money on doing work that could be hired out for 20, 50, a hundred, even $150 an hour.
John Jantsch (04:38): Yeah. So, so one of the things that, um, I think is a challenge for, I think a lot of people jump, you know, they've got CMO experience, they jump out, say, oh, I can be a Fractional CMO. Um, one of the challenges is how do you, how do you keep it from literally selling your time? Or maybe that's it for you. I mean, if, is there a way to scale a business model like that? Or is it just a way to be high, highly paid for your time?
JP Maroney (05:04): Yeah, it's, it's not my preferred. This kind of came about as demand people were asking about it. And I said, Hmm. And I, the, before I actually offered this, my oldest daughter who is in her early twenties, well now mid twenties I guess, she'd graduated from college and a business degree and was very marketing minded, had actually started her own social media marketing company before getting out of college. But I recommended that she do this and she offered herself as a fractional marketing director Right. For some companies. And I got, I got a chance to see it work, and I also got a chance to see some of the holes in it. 'cause there are some pitfalls with the model. But yeah, I, like you, I've coached and, and advised a lot of other consultants and coaches and stuff over the years, and I've always said to them, I, I never want the meter running.
(05:56): Like, I don't want to correlate my time to dollars per hour. And so there is a little bit of a trap of doing that with, with CMO work or fractional, uh, C X O. So any fractional executive, there's a little bit of a trap of doing that. I always tell people, I say, look, you're buying approximately a quarter or a half or whatever of my time, but we're not gonna have a clock running. And that's both in your favor and in my favor. There're gonna be times when the demand might be higher and there's no way that you could get me for a half a day for that amount of money a month. So you're gonna win. And then there's other times when maybe that week I have less hours in it mm-hmm.
John Jantsch (07:19): Yeah. I, I tell you, the trap I've seen a lot of people fall into is it's totally undefined. Yeah. You get a fourth of my time, but what does that mean,
JP Maroney (08:06): Yeah, it, it's weird. Uh, I have not proactively marketed my CMM Fractional CMO services and, and I'm booked solid. So I, it's more of an attraction thing. I'm a big believer in providing content upfront. There's a guy out there, you probably know Frank, but Frank Kern, I, maybe he did or didn't coin the phrase, coin the phrase results in advance. But I love that phrase. Yeah. I've used it. And I believe in that. I believe that in business and in life, the more you give, the more you get. But you gotta give before you get, get that's law. And so, um, I've always just given value in advance and it never fails to come back to me.
(08:54): I tell people all the time, it's funny, I don't wanna answer your question about certain types of businesses, but I find that a lot of consultants, or even fractional CMOs, let's say people that were in the employment space and now they've gone out and hung out a shingle as a Fractional CMO, they're afraid of giving away the goods, right? Like there's some sort of secret deal or whatever. And I have told many coaches, consultants, CMOs, you know, people that are in advisory positions that all you have to sell and give is your knowledge. So that's your currency to buy your way into a relationship. It's not the secret sauce, so to speak. So I'm a big believer that you give. And so because of that, I have a lot of people that send people to me and they'll say, Hey, can you hop on a call and help this guy?
(09:46): And I'll hop on. And I've generally the, you know, the old strategy call thing, it's like a way mm-hmm.
John Jantsch (10:59):
JP Maroney (11:24): No, I got you. I just, poor Dennis
John Jantsch (12:23): Yeah. So, so that idea of strategic marketing alliances, same thing. I've, you know, I try to look at that for everybody that we work with, particularly professional services. I think people really underestimate the leverage
JP Maroney (12:48): Yeah. I've done a couple of training programs on that and I've got a book coming out on that whole alliance idea because it's so powerful. And in fact, we're building a business model. I just got off the phone with my partner and we're building a business model across the country doing that in the home services industry. But it's, it is so powerful and it's definitely overlooked and it's not used in very many industries. So huge big believer in it.
John Jantsch (13:12): Hey, marketing agency owners, you know, I can teach you the keys to doubling your business in just 90 days or your money back. Sound interesting. All you have to do is license our three step process that it's gonna allow you to make your competitors irrelevant, charge a premium for your services and scale perhaps without adding overhead. And here's the best part. You can license this entire system for your agency by simply participating in an upcoming agency certification intensive look, why create the wheel? Use a set of tools that took us over 20 years to create. And you can have 'em today, check it out at DTM world slash certification. That's dtm.world/certification.
(13:59): So theoretically, somebody who wants a fractional CMO is, is interested in strategy
JP Maroney (14:36): Maybe
John Jantsch (14:39): Watching the video. It took JP a long time to think about that one.
JP Maroney (14:43): Yeah. Well I wanted to give you an authentic answer. So yes, maybe. But here's the deal. I don't know very many entrepreneurs or founders that wake up in the morning and say, what I really need is more strategy in my life.
John Jantsch (15:00): Zero
JP Maroney (15:01): Any more than they wake up and say, what I really need is some tactics like Facebook ads or whatever. Yeah. That's not what they're looking for. They're looking for an outcome. So they're looking for, how can I make enough money to be able to ultimately get off the treadmill and sell this business or get off the treadmill and let somebody else manage my people or whatever. So they, their version of it is so different. I find ironically, and I imagine you have to, ironically that marketers, and that includes fractional CMOs, really suck at marketing and selling their own services,
John Jantsch (15:39): So how is business going is lead generation for agencies.
JP Maroney (15:44): Yeah, exactly right.
John Jantsch (16:54): Yep. Absolutely. Nobody wants what we sell. They want the problem solved. Do you, do you prefer long-term engagements, short-term engagements? Or is there, is it really every, everyone's different? Or do you have a type that you really try to go after?
JP Maroney (17:09): Well, I say this a lot, so it's kind of ingrained and wake up at three in the morning probably and say it, I'll say to a client, look, I like 90 day minimum, 90 day engagement. Mm-hmm.
(18:04):
John Jantsch (18:52): A growing model.
JP Maroney (18:53): Yeah. Yeah. I like the upside
John Jantsch (18:56): Do there, again, thinking about the fractional CMOs I've spoken with, in some cases they also will provide implementation, even if it's just third party, you know, delegation. But another model is we'll help you build a team
JP Maroney (19:22): This doesn't just go to the Fractional CMO work. This also goes to being a business advisor or advisory board member, or even a consultant. So over the years, historically I've probably done all of that, right? The most challenging to me is coming in where there's an existing team because I gotta try to re indoctrinate people to my way of thinking. And that's
John Jantsch (19:53): Not to mention there might be some initial sort of resistance period, right? Because it's like, wait, we got this, why are they bringing this?
JP Maroney (20:00): Absolutely. A hundred percent. There's definitely, you know, I was on a call with a prospective client about 60 days ago, and you could tell that the person who's responsible, not for all the marketing but for the social media, was in a very defensive posture. Right. And she was really worried about her job because I mean, when I come in, I ask the hard questions. Yeah. You know, in some cases, as I said, I'm taking a piece of the business, but in all cases I act as if I own that company. And so I asked really hard questions that I would ask if I was the one writing the checks every day. So when I do, it makes a, you know, it's like shining a flashlight in an abandoned house. You know, you never know what you're gonna find
John Jantsch (20:56): Course. It's like, you know, what's our R o I on that? Right? It's
JP Maroney (21:00): Like, right. Like, like in that example, they were doing nothing for attribution. They were doing nothing to track links. They were doing nothing to measure results. And I told them, I said, you know, this old, I forget who it was that said, half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. I just can't figure out which half, you know, I said, the day the internet popped up and you had links, those days are over. Even phone calls are trackable with track, with phone tracking numbers for a dollar a month, you can get another number on Twilio and track every call that comes from every source, every flyer, every postcard, every ad or whatever. So I don't buy this. Well, we believe it's working, we think it's working, we hope it's working. And that makes a lot of people nervous.
John Jantsch (21:45): Yeah. So JP, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the show and talk about, uh, this interesting and growing topic. Uh, you want to invite people where they might find out more about your work or connect with you in some way?
JP Maroney (21:56): Yeah, they can connect with me on LinkedIn. That's where you and I were talking most recently. Yeah. Um, JP Moroney, JP m a r o n e y, everywhere. And I'm @JPMoroney on almost every platform where it has that kind of a handle. So YouTube, it's at JP Moroney. I have a lot of content there. And, uh, then go to jp moroney.com and it has like a little link tree type of jumping off platform.
John Jantsch (22:18): Gotcha. Gotcha. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you taking a few moments. I know you told me you're in an Airbnb, so, uh, hopefully you're doing something fun, but, and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.
JP Maroney (22:28): Fantastic, John, look forward to meeting you in person someday. Take care.
John Jantsch (22:32): Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It's called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @marketingassessment.co, not.com, dot co. Check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That's just marketing assessment.co. I'd love to chat with you about the results that you get.
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