963: Find Your Audience: Solve Marketing Problems and Create Pipeline Growth with Fractional CMO Nathan Yeung

Robert Plank 00:04 Hey, welcome back to the podcast. We're here with Nathan Yeung from find your audience dot online. And we're going to be talking about this concept of having a bolt on fractional cmo team help you in your business. So we're gonna be speaking today about what you can do to have effective marketing for what you can do in your company, and so much more. So Nathan, glad to be speaking with you.

Nathan Yeung 00:26 Thank you so much for having me on today. Robert, it's been a, I know, we've been chasing one another for this up, I guess. So it's been great to finally get a hold of both of us.

Robert Plank 00:35 Yeah, we finally made our schedules work. And that's how it had happened sometimes. But luckily, we made it. And so now that you're here, we need to make the most important use of our time, and tell us what you're all about. Tell us what makes you unique, what makes you passionate, and how you can help businesses.

Nathan Yeung 00:50 So I'm passionate about marketing for all kinds of reasons I've really been marketing almost my entire life. But my professional career took me to other places. So I was actually a VP of Finance at the age of 21. And then I was a management consultant. So a very different background. And I think that's what kind of differentiates me, my my background isn't creative, heavy. And I think a majority of time, I think a lot of marketing firms are very creative focus. And I think creativity is a huge thing. But creativity is only one cog in the wheel. I think that cog is sometimes the most important, but it's not always the most important. So in our in our sales deck, we'll often say, you know, we don't necessarily believe the creative hammer is the hammer that fixes all marketing problems. Marketing is really a toolkit and you can do a bunch of things about that. So a great example of what we do well is operations. And, you know, the truth is, it's the unsexy part of marketing. It's the things that no one really wants to talk about, such as sales enablement, tools, case studies, how that how well that gets distributed within the organization, you know, our goal is less focused on and I know some people might cringe at this idea. It's less focused on this idea of like, MQL, inbounds, it's more focused on how do we amplify revenue? And what does that mean in the holistic perspective of that business, not just like this pigeonhole perspective of marketing.

Robert Plank 02:17 I love it. And so I imagine that there are all these businesses that have been around and kind of limping along to this point. And things are maybe sloppy, and things have been working just well enough. And with a team like yours, you can look at what's been working and make it work a lot better. So that way, things can run more smoothly, be more predictable and can scale. And so when you talk about these kind of boring unsexy parts of business, like how does that break down? Is there like a logical starting point or a low hanging fruit where just like, all these companies is senior, like, you know, this is one thing where like, anyone who isn't tapped into this can really implement this and make it a lot better?

Nathan Yeung 02:55 Yeah, it's actually it's so simple. And I'm surprised that a lot of organizations actually really overlook it, because they're so focused on chasing shiny objects. I go right back to sales enablement tools. Why? Because I go, Look, you gotta look at it in terms of like, what's working and what's working, as you probably already have meetings, you probably already have qualified sales, right? You have people who have already expressed interest are in that conversation and are in that actual conversation of, you know, potentially purchasing that service. So why not focus on all those things required to push them faster through that phase. And so I always tell companies to go back, look at the case studies, look at the category benefit that you excel at the ones that you have a ton of track record on. And really make sure that you have all these types of marketing materials that really emphasize those categories of work that you do better, and emphasize your wins and make those as tangible as possible, the more tangible you can make your results to a potential customer, the more likely they're probably going to close. So a lot of companies, when we go into their organization will find case studies, they're 15 years old, 10 years old, five years old, not accurate. Half the half the sales staff don't even know someone that exists. So there's like all these funny little problems about case studies. And I go look like if you really want to spend some money, we should be spending some money here because this is literally the tools that are helping or amplifying your sales teams and pushing those people through that funnel. So it makes no sense why you're cheeping out on it. So So that's like that's literally like the most common problem. We see this in every organization. I haven't seen an organization where I've come in and be like, Wow, your your case studies and testimonials and everything are just up to date. I've really never seen that.

Robert Plank 04:43 And you know, you're bringing something like that. I probably think about every couple of months. This idea that no one likes to think about is the decay, right like you think about well, you make a brand new website design you find these case studies you find these testimonials you make a webinar with like all these real like four or five real great success stories, and then you think, okay, I thought it was a one time thing when I made it, I got myself so excited, so amped up. And then I got so busy in the day to day of acquiring customers dealing with employees traffic, putting out all the fires. Next thing, you know, five years flies by just like that. And you realize, all these case studies, like you said, they're out of date, people don't know they exist, it just, it looks very dated. And then when you're inside the business, it can be like, I got so tired out five years ago, I'm getting myself adds up and ramped up to do it. And so this is interesting, because I imagine that your company, since you, this is like your bread and butter, or at least this is what you do on a regular basis, you already have the muscle built up, right? So you can already say, we've seen this thing with the case studies all the time. And we can just go in and go through and spruce this up. And so to give us a better idea of this sort of thing, what you do, do you have any fun success stories of your own to share, like when you went to one of these companies, and they kind of had things sort of in tatters or disorganized, and you went and worked your secret sauce, because that's the most exciting right that the before and after pictures.

Nathan Yeung 06:10 So I'm actually going to give some wild KPIs because I think this is like counterintuitive to most people who are listening. So we went into an organization, and they're a sales lead organization. So you hear this term a lot, right? Sales, lead versus marketing, lead, blah, blah, blah. And so it's a sales lead organization. And we went in, and it was not coming in with a perspective of making them into a marketing lead organization, actually came into that organization with the perspective of amplifying the sales lead part of that organization, which is again, something that I think a lot of people don't need to really think marketing can do. So we actually, literally cut down the MQL is because, for the for reasons unbeknownst to me, they were creating assets across every single asset class possible. So think ebooks, think white papers, think webinars, they blog posts, think LinkedIn posts, think about, you know, partnerships, and all these things. They had, like 11 Different things they were trying to produce. And they were just doing a piss poor job. So they had a ton of MQL. So unlike a pigeon holed MQL perspective, they were crushing it. They weren't getting any damn sales, though. They weren't getting anything. And so we literally cut that entire program, we went back to the basics, we went into really focusing on the sales teams and exactly the tools that you're they're using, we cut the MQLs by half, we brought top line revenue up by a million dollars in a year. So So you go, well, neat, you know, your MQLs weren't very good. I'm like, yeah, no, I know, it was because you had shitty MQLs. And we've brought up the general conversion quality of each of those MQLs. And not only that, we've amplified sales, we've made sales more productive, we've got them working better, so they're closing better, or they're closing faster. And I think that's sort of like a perfect example where the KPIs are, are literally off, you know, what contextually like people expect, they expect it to be more MQLs and a million dollars, no, this is the opposite. I cut MQLs by half, that I've increased revenue by a million dollars, that means I've doubled or tripled the quality of those conversions that have likely increased, obviously, the conversion amongst the different phases of the funnel.

Robert Plank 08:26 It seems like just from these first few minutes of speaking with you that I think a big it seems like a big secret of your success is, is on kind of stripping away the excess. Because a lot of people say, well, I need to be in all these new markets, I need to do ebooks, I need to, you know, be in all these different niches, and you say, one set of spreading yourself so thin, why not double down or triple down on what's already working with you want instead of building this huge prospect list of all these people that might who knows what you're doing? Or who knows if they convert you say, you know, the list you have, you can really focus that in and there was something you said when we began speaking was of shortening the time to get to that sale. And so that I think that that's really important to think about is people always have this, I think, picture in their minds of like a map, right? And they're like Genghis Khan just like spreading throughout the world. And they say, you know, I want to just like, have world domination. And you say, Well, what you think is World Domination is just kind of spinning your wheels and spreading yourself thin and what the world domination should be, is on saying, Well, what are what are my my numbers, right? And instead of just saying, like, I'm going to do all this activity, you say, well, here's, here's my assets, and here's what I want to do to increase my customer value and make convert more of my prospects and the customers and convert it more money instead of just all that these sort of feel good goals and feel good metrics.

Nathan Yeung 09:56 You want 100% And I think it's because marketers do such a great job promoting these feel good metrics that every other executive feels good about them. For those that are listening, there's something called the Dunning Kruger effect. And the Dunning Kruger effect basically talks about psychology of how we are far more optimistic of our capabilities than we actually really are, regardless of the rational explanation behind it. So it's this beautiful chart, we're basically at the beginning, it says I'm extremely confident that followed by a steep curve, saying, I really don't know anything. Oh, God, this is a lot harder. Oh, wow, this is this is actually pretty difficult. And it's basically this example of appreciation. And and you going back to the Genghis Khan, you know, rather than than world domination, why not world domination by owning all the ports would be, I guess the analogy. You know, instead of looking at trying to own all the land, why don't we focus on its strategic points. And that's really the perspective that I come from. And that's really driven from my management consulting background where I go, this makes no sense. You, you don't even have a maximum capture or reach within a channel. So why are you worried so much about going across channels? Right? It's no different than going. It's no different when you're like an E commerce company, and you're selling into a specific category? Um, you know, great example, is Lululemon. Can you imagine if Lululemon first started? And then you know, rather than capturing more than 25% of leggings for yoga, they went straight to shoes, like they're not going to do well. Right? There's no possible way they're really going to do well in that market, they're not going to penetrate well, they don't have critical mass pIanet. They don't have great marketing behind it. So why would someone want to buy Lululemon shoes over Nike shoes or Under Armour shoes, they're going to shoes now why? Because they've more or less reached a level of saturation inside of their their category, so it makes sense for them to go into adjacent categories. The same thing is true just the channel management media spends. If you're not reaching 90% of your channel or maximizing your spends on Facebook, why are you looking to do LinkedIn? If you're not maximizing 100% of UGC? user generated content on Tik Tok? Why are you trying to go into LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat, you barely can do one channel well, and now you want to do other channels, the likelihood of you operationally executing well is low. The the likelihood of you having the money to do it well is low. So this idea this this hopefulness, this overconfidence that we have is literally in every organization, and I really go in there and I'm a little blind, and I just don't lock, you're doing a piss poor job. Just got to own that. And you just got to move away from this perspective that you need all these things. The reality is you have things that were that are working, you're not maximizing that method, let's maximize that method. And then let's look about spreading ourselves into different markets or different channels, and then trying to get more reach and exposure there.

Robert Plank 12:56 I love it. So the problem is that most of these businesses are spread thin, and maybe even a little bored, right? They say, Oh, we're bored with Facebook ads, let's go to these other channels. And you say, you've done so many things, right? But you're not even paying attention to the successes that you should repeat. So that's why it takes this outside person such as yourself to look at that data and figure out that strategy. And so when dealing with these companies and fixing up the problem, has anything surprised you? Do you have anything fun to share about how you went into solve a problem, and it ended up taking an unexpected turn?

Nathan Yeung 13:31 Oh, that's a great question. ended up solving a problem. And yeah, so we ended up solving a problem. This is actually probably an earlier days, and then we ended up selling into a brand new market. So it wasn't actually something that we so we changed up the messaging. And we ended up expanding the market. And that was an unintended consequence, which was obviously a very positive one. But it was not intended. It was not, you know, the whole point was, let's clean up messaging. Let's make it a bit more tight. And then let's relaunch based on the channels that we're currently on. So we relaunched and then what we ended up doing is we ended up entering into a different community based on that messaging, and then they ended up liking it. So this goes back to this perspective where a lot of people were like, well, it's already working. So why do I need to do more? Well, the whole point is, is that well, you don't know what you're actually missing. Right? So this is a great example. The messaging of the company was fine. They were they were making sales. They're like why are we doing a messaging like exercise? Again, this makes no says, We completed the messaging exercise. We've relaunched sales, we're good. But then we started noticing a brand new market come in based on demographics. That was the moment we're like, oh, this is interesting. And then it started getting more and then so essentially, that messaging attracted a brand new market that that customer didn't really like know that they were interested in their product and I can't disclose exactly what it were. So I think this is again that perfect example that Dunning Kruger effect. It's like, well, I'm confident, I know marketing, we're doing fine. We don't need any more of this. And then we do something as simple as just a messaging like exercise to really tighten up everything and relaunch and then you find out there's this whole new market that's really interested in your product that you never knew existed, never knew that they cared, and they're buying from you right from the get go. So now we've increased revenues by 20 30%. Plus, you've got a brand new market, you can now saturate. So it's, you know, I think that's, that was surprising because it was not intended, we knew that we were going to increase sales in the current market, we didn't know that by relaunching, we were going to end up going into essentially a new demographic and a different ICP, that that was not planned.

Robert Plank 15:42 Fantastic, and a lot of fun. And so it definitely drives the point home how important it is to have someone like you to look at the data and to the blend the art and the science, because we're mentioning a lot of here, this Dunning Kruger effect where that that concept, it helps you at first, right, it helps you kind of go forward because without that, you might have not have had enough confidence to take some of these risks and build the company and grow to the point where you've now kind of slowed down. But then now it's time to transition to shift to a different mindset and have someone like yourself and look at this, and kind of study and make these decisions. And notice these things that kind of come out of the data that you've been mentioning that have happened here. And so I checked out your website a few minutes ago, and I was really impressed with this idea of sort of the bolt on CML because a lot of these companies I'm sure the with is Dunning Kruger, they're probably a little bit arrogant, right? They're like, why should I hand my marketing over to someone else and replace it, and it seems really scary. But this idea of someone like it like you coming in, in different tears in different degrees, and then working your magic and then someone can say like, look at what you've done, look at the results. I'm so thrilled I want to continue. It's it's less of a commitment, right? It's less throwing your company into the hands of someone else. So can you explain your company and your solution and what you do and why it's, it's better than these other possibilities companies may have considered?

Nathan Yeung 17:13 Yeah, so So I think it's really interesting, because I, you know, and other CMOS that are listening might hate me for saying this. But I think frankly speaking, unless you're a massive organization, like an absolutely monster, we're talking $50 million or more, you know, with easily marketing budgets of more than two to 3% of your top line revenues. Having a full time cmo doesn't necessarily really make sense a full time CMO is really looking at incrementality, looking at brand new markets, looking how to enter those markets, really looking at the vision generally created to a certain extent, depending on the archetype you hire, so realistically, like a workload of a CMO, you know, is just more management than it is actually creative and strategy direction driven. So the idea that a smaller organization needs that full time, that's really kind of not require, realistically, it comes in kind of phases. So you know, if I were to just simplify this, it could almost come on a quarterly phase, where every quarter the CMO comes reassesses the tactics, and then essentially rearranges the priorities or brings new suggestions to the table, and then kind of executes on that, after they've done, obviously, a foundational exercise to build out, you know, the marketing foundations, the marketing plan, the strategy, the positioning, and all that lovely stuff. So so the concept of having a full time CMO, I think, is a wasted effort. A majority companies need tactical execution, you need me or you need someone similar to me for a fractional period of time, again, unless you're a $50 million company, and you're just like, aggressively growing, and you're constantly needing to iterate. So that was kind of the whole model between with with find your audience where I was getting frustrated, you know, essentially giving strategy and then seeing execution fall off the earth, because it would be given to a company that may not be fully capable to execute. So it was this whole idea is like, why can't I be a fractional cmo and also have the team and be accountable so that we're fully aligned, so that not only when I deliver the strategy, I'm also accountable on the execution of that strategy. So therefore, I can't just like Escape Goat this and be like, well, your executors are terrible. You know, this is my strategy. This is my team. This is my execution. I'm fully accountable and fully aligned. And I just felt like a lot of companies never a lot of marketing companies don't follow that. And it bothers me because I think, you know, how can you how can you be tactical and not know whether or not it's a good idea so a great example is we need a website might be a good idea, but might not be the highest priority. So if you're doing that, that's not necessarily going to bring them what they need. And then the strategy person just saying, here's the strategy See you later. So it both sides if you're only doing one end I find is not aligned, because either you're an order taker, you're an order giver, but then you're an order giver, not accountable order taker Not knowing the situation. And so therefore, neither parts of that, that, that that service seemed good to me. So I wanted to combine them. And that's essentially what find your audience is. So we provide the fractional cmo strategy. And then we're, we're held accountable to execute. And I think that's the best way for marketing to be allied with any organization

Robert Plank 20:21 seems like a lot of fun, you're bridging the gap. And you're bringing this much needed service of the thinking that's required. Because I think we've all been there, we've all gotten, like consulting or critiques about our website, or this marketing plan, and we've got all these plans. And then I look at it, I'm like, Okay, so now I need to think this through and, and kind of translate it. And there's that disconnect, versus the kind of going through the motions going through the day to day. And so this is a really interesting and cool approach and service that you provide here to get these companies on track. And to kind of, you know, point the company in the right direction, and, and keep it more or less on track versus trying to play catch up or just giving advice it is then not followed upon. And so this is very excellent. And if someone says, I want to look more into this fractional cmo concept from Nathan, and find your audience online, how does someone know if their company is the right fit for you. And if they do, what's the next step to take?

Nathan Yeung 21:21 It's pretty easy to the right fit is if you if this is how you're feeling, you don't know where your marketing is, you don't know where to start, you don't even know how to reassess, that's probably the perfect time just to pick up a call or find me on LinkedIn and shoot us a message to have a discovery call we'll help create a basis for that doesn't necessarily mean we have to be engaged. And then depending on the level of service, you're either going to get the advisory, which is just high level, which means we're helping or be where you're gonna get the full service where we're actually, you know, providing the strategy and executing, typically our companies, our Series A and above, or typically a million dollars of revenue or more. And then on an on a headcount perspective, I would say, ideally, we work with at least one person internally who is accountable full time for marketing, that's kind of best case scenario. In often cases, in larger organizations, we will be the entire marketing department. So if you have no marketing department, and you're a $10 million company, and you want one, we're kind of a great example of that. So for Constellation software, that's often the model that we move forward with for some of their portfolio companies. So yeah, and then if you want to just learn more, you can just find me on Instagram and like, listen to my talking head all day, because I literally post videos every single day on marketing and consumer psychology.

Robert Plank 22:35 Very excellent. Well, I noticed just the other day that I have a lot of respect for people that are consistent. There's so many people out there where you see them, and they have advice. And then they they're not consistently on social media and with their messaging, and they don't know what they want, they don't stand for something. So everything that you said there about your posting, and you're doing the discovery call, all of that is very impressive. And so find your audience Start Online is the website. And then to look you up on LinkedIn or Instagram, that's Nathan young last name is spelled y e, u n g, and check it out. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose by knowing that you have this problem that should be solved. And starting this conversation with Nathan and his team at Find your audience to online. And I know you have to leave in just a minute here, Nathan, and go and take that baby to where he needs to go. But before I let you go, can you tell me? Do you have like a number one favorite lesson? Or is there advice that you wish you'd gotten 20 years ago, anything come to mind?

Nathan Yeung 23:34 It's I do. And it's actually it's actually a model that I'm putting in a new course I'm making, which is actually just this idea where it's so simple, it's so awesome. And then applies to so many different things. The reality is, is that when you're constrained with resources, whether this is like the organizations we working with, it always comes down to a couple of things, you have one shot, if you you gotta almost think about everything you do, you got one shot. And when you think about it, that way, it makes a lot more sense. Because you have to perform. So a good example is, you know, that company that was doing 11 different assets. And now let's just say imagine one of those assets after they got to their ICP got in front of their ideal customer, but was just so poorly executed that ideal customer looked at that and was like, What the hell is this and just discarded it, you have lost that customer and you've gave them a negative impression. So this idea of focus, this idea of specialization, this idea of also being quirky, bizarre, different on your first attempt at anything, marketing, I think is really, really important. Because if you think about it, you got one chance you got maybe two impressions at that person to make it to make yourself mentally convenient to them. You gotta you gotta get out of your comfort zone and you gotta be highly specialized because it's you got to be able to sell in such a small period of time. For that one person. So specialization focus, and really being different, is not necessarily just like a different way, but like it's like a bizarre way, maybe another podcast, I talked about how we did billboards that were upside down intentionally. People were like, what? So I think that I like I would, I don't do it enough for my organization. And after my last six months, I've been reading consumer research articles and research a lot. I'm gonna be really reinforcing that all my organizations and all our clients just because there's a lot of research that backs up this. So that's what I would say, I would do everything a little bit different and put a little bit more effort and think you only got one shot. Everything's got one shot, one ad one shot, one email one shot. If you think about it that way, I think you everyone do better.

Robert Plank 25:51 I love it. One shot, focus, specialize and be dear friend. And with that head on over to find your audience online. We will see you there. And thank you very much Nick, for giving us all these harsh but necessary lessons things for us to think about. I appreciate it very much.

Nathan Yeung 26:06 Thanks, Robert.

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