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Welcome to The Contractor's Daughter, your go-to podcast for eliminating random acts of strategy and marketing in your highway construction business. Hello, friends. I'm your host, Jeani Ringkob. I'm a third-generation asphalt contractor and an absolute brand strategy and marketing geek.

Welcome to the Contractor's Daughter Podcast. I'm your host, Jeani Ringkob. We recently—not when you're hearing this—but we might even be moving into another speaking season as this is rolling out to you as I look at my calendar.

But one of the things I’ve had so many questions about when we were out visiting folks and it's come up a few times since then in conversations is we are growing inside of our business to a point where we know we need to get serious about marketing. But we also feel like marketing can be a huge waste of money.

Honestly, I'm one of those people that a big piece of my business is actually providing marketing strategy as part of the overall strategic plan. We even have components inside of our organization that help our clients implement marketing so that they can customize that for their businesses as they grow.

Having had a history in this business for so long, having been involved in the sales components, the ownership components, the marketing components, all different places, I feel like this is an area of our business where it needs to be able to be scalable and adjustable as we grow.

But another thing is I completely agree. It can be an absolutely terrible drain on resources and a waste of money unless it's done right. I'm going to tell you some of the more mainstream marketing companies that you probably come across, probably don't like a lot of the ways that I approach it.

I really think about the strategic plan first and every single part of your business, where does it need to contribute? Where does it need to move the needle? Let's design it specifically for that. Let's only use what we really need to get the results that we want.

That's what we're going to be talking about a little bit today. Maximizing your marketing, the role, and the benefits of a fractional chief marketing officer in your paving business, in your asphalt business, and in your infrastructure support business.

I believe that this is a great way to look at it as how can you do this in a fractional way inside of your business so that you can scale it and implement it so it fits for you and is very adaptable for your business.

That's what we're going to be talking about today. That's how I've designed it into my business because I am biased, but I believe that that's the best solution for the problems that people are facing, business owners are facing inside of our industry that have businesses that need to have that flexibility for elements like this as they grow and they move from one phase to the next phase.

First off, let's start by understanding what is a fractional CMO or a fractional chief marketing officer. Here's another example of how a fractional chief marketing officer could be used.

Let's say that a highway paving company hires a fractional CMO to help them really redefine its brand, maybe its brand overall and maybe even its employer brand in addition to that because they're growing and they're feeling some pain in recruiting.

They could look at both sides of their business at the same time. They can help them with marketing position after acquiring a smaller competitor. Also, aiming to help be cost-effective in that market consolidation. How do we bring them under the umbrella? How do we be cost-effective? Why we're also really repositioning ourselves inside of this new market?

At the same time, because they're fractional and they're on that strategic level, they could be looking at the challenges that are popping up to bring the workforce on to support that expansion as well from the employer brand strategy side of things.

I love the flexibility. How do you utilize this? I'm really just going through this in giving you lots of examples to think about what could this look like inside of your business. Maybe an asphalt manufacturer uses a fractional CMO to launch a new eco-friendly product line.

Maybe you're getting into a mill and field process, a train process on the road, and you want to target municipalities and private contractors with a really tailored digital marketing campaign that helps them understand the new benefits and nuances of your product to help bolster your sales team before they're even out there having that sales conversation. This can shorten the sales cycle for a sales team.

We know that consumers, even on an agency level, even on massive projects, they're used to being able to go out and find content and information and really get a feel for if they can learn about and learn to know, like, and trust a company and the products and services that they are putting out in the marketplace.

Another example could be a paving company that integrates a fractional CMO by involving them in strategic planning sessions and aligning their marketing initiatives with their sales objectives.

We actually talked about this at World of Asphalt. We had a whole presentation on how to eliminate random acts of sales and marketing. How do we focus on lead generation and conversion rates? Look at where sales teams actually need support and focus on those areas, and really find metrics that are going to be able to be evaluated in order to make those two efforts look and work more efficiently together.

You want to increase the effectiveness of your sales team, get more proposals accepted, shorten their sales cycle, help them have better conversations, prepare to really stand out and differentiate themselves at conferences, at trade shows to prepare for presentations.

All of those things are things that a marketing team has a certain skill set at being able to develop and put out there for your sales team so that everything works better.

How do you collaborate with internal teams? This is another question that I get a lot. They've hired somebody inside of their company. Maybe they've hired a recent graduate, somebody they knew that was local, who really is great at all the tactical things that we need on a marketing side.

If SEO is relevant to your business, maybe they're working on SEO. They're managing the posting and pulling metrics from your social media. They're managing the website. They've built a beautiful website, they're capturing great photos of projects and your employees and the processes and the systems that you're using that are getting great engagement.

How do you then integrate and get to that next level of, “How do we be more strategic about this? How do we think about the way in which our business is growing that somebody on an executive level, that's a strategic thinker that also has that marketing insight could actually bring to the table without having to bite the bullet and actually have that executive level person there and still utilizing the person that's doing so great inside of your team or a few people in a marketing team internally?”

An example here is maybe a mid-sized paving company brings in a fractional CMO to mentor an internal team on how to use data analytics to track the success of regional ad campaigns or enhance ROI on the tactics that they're developing for the sales team.

This is something that we don't get taught in marketing school, is strategic thinking at a higher level of the company and how to really integrate that with the overall strategic plan.

They can provide mentorship or help you hire and train people inside of your company to move up into that role. They can help share strategies for ensuring productive cooperation between themselves and anybody else on the internal staff.

How do you guys integrate together and work together? How do you collect information from your sales team so that you can produce great collateral to support your sales team?

There are processes that can be put in place and a really great fractional CMO is going to be familiar with those and help you tailor those for your business and actually document them and put them into place while they're training your team.

Another example could be a national asphalt producer’s fractional CMO collaborating with the marketing team to overhaul a website and a digital content strategy, letting them increase their online inquiries and maybe even get up to a 30% improvement in engagement metrics.

If you're moving into that national market, people are searching for you and that stuff becomes really, really important. Maybe there's just too much for a small internal team to handle and they need somebody to be thinking at that level and helping them amplify and integrate analytics and metrics into tracking that.

What are some of the benefits of hiring a fractional CMO? It can be incredibly cost-effective. Imagine that you get somebody on that executive level without having to actually pay for a full-time executive-level role inside of your company, including all of the benefits that go with it.

If we go back to the examples here, a highway paving contractor could find a fractional CMO that leads to a 35% reduction in marketing spend while still achieving a 20% increase in qualified leads through targeting campaigns.

We've actually seen numbers like this. You would get more of the benefits. You would get some of the higher-level thinking. Sometimes they can pull from resources. I know in our company, we've designed it. We have a team of people that can handle very specific needs based on the strategy that's developed without them actually having to have a full team of staff, carrying that overhead all the time. They just get what they want when they need it.

You could even really benefit from the diverse experience of a fractional CMO. They can quickly adapt strategies to capitalize if something changes. What if there's a sudden surge in municipal paving projects? Or a bill passes and it completely is going to change the environment in what you're working in and you need to get leaner or more targeted or specialized in a certain area?

Somebody who's a real strategic thinker can actually have conversations about how you build a moat and differentiate your business to set you apart from the competition.

This is something that is hard to find and expensive to pay for full-time time that can be a make or break for a business that's growing and expanding. So, how do you find and work with a fractional CMO? I'm going to give you some tips on what to look for.

First off, they don't have to be local, especially if they have industry experience. In this day and age, we look at our teams and we have remote workers everywhere, I would prefer to find somebody who's a great fit for your business.

They have the high-level experience you need. They're willing and flexible enough to be fractional and meet you where you need them and they have industry experience. They can work from anywhere.

There is no need in this day and age to have even a local marketing company, unless you just really want somebody for the content capture for the video and image component of it.

That's really easy to hire somebody that really has that specific skill set on your team or even you can find folks locally that can learn your industry. A lot of fractional CMOs actually have agreements with folks that have very good specific eye for the industry that can come out and be contracted to do that on a needed basis, which can be really great.

Then another thing that you want to look for if you're looking for a fractional CMO to help really allow your business flexibility as it grows and adds these elements, is strategic vision.

You want somebody who is a professional, who can articulate and implement a long-term strategic plan that aligns with the overall mission and objectives of your business.

They can understand the business goals. Maybe they're even part of that team that's developing them and they can adapt to the changes in the industry landscape, and really be on that strategic level, thinking about the strategy, and then translating that into the tactics and only the tactics that you need.

Marketing expertise is very important too. You need to make sure they have a strong background in marketing principles at a high level. Specifically for your industry, brand management, lead generation, all those things are supercritical, but even more important than that, can they find the specific talent?

One thing about marketing, as it's evolved, is that there are such specific creative talent sets underneath. Do they have a broad high-level strategic knowledge and a really good network of folks that they can bring to the table if you have specific needs or tactics that need to get deployed?

Then they need to also be able to track success metrics. Ask for case studies. Ask for examples of clients that they've worked with in the past. How did they successfully increase market share and improve brand recognition?

If it was workforce-related, how are they able to reduce advertising costs for recruitment and retention inside of the company? Ask for those types of examples and have conversations with them to get familiar with how well they know and how comfortable are they with really tracking success metrics and/or training your team to track success metrics and finding the metrics that really matter for whatever your strategy is.

The next thing that you want to look for in a fractional CMO is communication skills. A fractional CMO should be an excellent communicator, capable and effective at conveying ideas, conveying a brand, at translating things internally to your team to get them on board, to help key stakeholders all be on the same page.

A lot of the communication that we need that can be developed by marketing is internal, inside of our company. As we grow, as we're making shifts, as we're getting everybody really committed to a company's mission and objectives, we have to create campaigns internally to communicate that.

All the communicating we're doing isn't necessarily to customers and partners. It's really important both internally and externally and both to partners and customers and our teams.

They need to have great communication skills and probably have some training in story because story is the best communication skill. Then another thing that you want to look for is flexibility and adaptability.

I've mentioned a few times that one of the reasons, I think this is the best approach for growing business, is because it is great for growing businesses. If you're at $10 million and you're looking to get to $20 million, you need that flexibility so you're not having to re-change this piece of your business every two years. You want somebody who can grow with you and can help you grow a team that you meet.

Maybe the plan is for you to eventually have this all internally and you're looking for somebody who can bridge the gap and help you bring in, develop, identify, and train that team.

Maybe you want to just have this piece there all the time and you know that they can grow and stretch with you. So, are they flexible and adaptable and can they integrate with your existing teams and processes without disrupting your ongoing operations?

We know that we need everything to keep running smoothly. Can they elevate and grow things while still letting things operate? Then you need leadership and mentorship if you're going to look for a role like this.

Look for someone who can lead a marketing team. Maybe you don't have anybody inside that team yet, but you might eventually as you grow. Can they provide mentorship? Can they foster a culture of continuous improvement and innovation?

If your company is growing, these are essential things to have. They also need to be able to collaborate and cross-collaborate with operations, sales, with accounting so that they understand the analytics of the business, all of these things.

They need to have great leadership and team skills. Analytical skills, this goes back to that tracking metrics. An ideal fractional CMO should be able to adapt to using data and analytics that drive decision-making and not just decision-making, but effective strategic decision-making.

Can they measure the effectiveness of the tactics that you're deploying and do they have the ability to analyze that in case adjustments need to be made? We're always making adjustments and are they always looking for optimization?

Then, of course, as the business owner, we know what we're looking for is cost-effectiveness. Consider the financial aspect. Ensure that hiring a fractional CMO provides a cost-effective solution. Compare it to a full-time executive. What would that cost? What are all the different skills that this person can bring to the table?

Also, look at their network and who they can bring to the table to deploy for you on an as-needed basis without actually compromising the quality of that strategic input. Compare your options. I know that you've already heard me say it, I am a little biased about this because of the flexibility, but as a business owner, do your due diligence. Really look at what it would cost you to have this full-time time and determine, do you actually need a full-time executive in this role.

Then availability and commitment. You want to ensure that a fractional CMO is available as much as you need them and they have a process for working with you that's going to have great continuity and get consistent commitment to the duration and the terms that you really need to have stability and consistency.

Marketing efforts and strategic deployment, all take some time. You want to make sure that they're able to commit to you for a long enough period that you can actually execute and deploy those things. But also you want to look for one that knows their limits.

I know for us, we only take so many clients on a strategy ongoing partnership level at a time because we become an integral part of their business and it's really important that we know we have the bandwidth to give them what they want. Then we also have the support team to give them the flexibility to add tactics, only use what they need when they need it, but yet still be able to grow.

These are factors that you want to consider as a business owner so you can select, first of, is a fractional CMO something that would fit your business? Where it's at, how it's growing, the opportunities in front of it?

Make sure that you have somebody who can really work with those top-level stakeholders and help them make those critical decisions, but then also move down and work and integrate within the team that you have to make sure that you're getting great tactics deployed that are getting new measurable results.

I want to make sure that you have marching orders from this. I want you to look at your business. What's in front of you in the next three years and five years? Do you have a strategic plan that is going to entail growing your sales base, creating a bigger brand, and launching new products? These are all red flags that you probably need to be having a conversation about.

How do we get some of the benefits of having a strategic executive-level person with some marketing skills on the team? What is the best route and approach for your business?

If you have questions about this, make sure that you get on my calendar. You can grab some time with me and we can talk about it. We can also recommend other resources if we’re not a fit for your company and somebody else is a fit. We can figure that out during this call.

Maybe you need to move directly into hiring somebody full-time for your company and that's what makes the most sense for you, we're happy to help you flush that out inside of your business or answer questions about what would it look like to work with StoryBuilt and get all those components that would just be right for you in a fractional CMO capacity, and whether or not we are the best fit if we have the time and capacity for your company, the size of your company, and your growth prospects at this time.

I'm always available for a call though. I love talking to my listeners. I love talking to everybody in the industry. Grab some time on my calendar. You can get on my calendar by visiting storybuilt.marketing/schedule, grab a spot, and also you know I hang out on LinkedIn.

Always on LinkedIn, drop in my DM, start a conversation, and we have resources around helping you make this decision inside of your company and helping you understand better how you can utilize marketing services, both fractional and outsourced and agency services inside of your business so that you get the best fit for you.

Until next time, make sure that you hit subscribe. I want you to get every single podcast episode that we drop. We try to drop good stuff. Oftentimes, we build customized resources for you guys here. You're going to want to make sure that you are subscribed and you're getting the latest episodes.

Until next time, make sure that you are taking action and thinking about how are you going to grow your business.

Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of The Contractor's Daughter. If you liked what you heard, be sure to subscribe and review. But most of all, share this with all of your friends, partners, and customers in the highway construction business. Thank you for building the infrastructure that we all rely on.