Simon Dell (00:01)
So welcome to the ⁓ CMO Fractional CMO Marketing podcast. There's lots of words there and I've just thrown them all in randomly. ⁓ This is a new one and I've scared everybody who's on this broadcast ⁓ about 10 minutes ago by saying I'm gonna give you something completely different than what we'd originally planned to do. It isn't actually totally different, but my name is Simon Dell. I'm the CEO of CMO. I have with me Kristy, Kelly and Joshua.

Kristy and Kelly are both in Brisbane, Joshua is in Sydney. If you want to find out more about them, and I stress, definitely go and find out more about them because they're all super interesting and wonderful people. All their notes and their links and their emails and everything, all that will be in the notes for the show. But suffice to say, they've all been in the marketing industry for quite a while, and they all know a lot about marketing. Now,

The premise of these group ones is that we are going to have a discussion about one thing in particular. And that thing is a statement that I am about to make that I am hoping they all have some opinions on. Probably Kelly won't be first because Kelly's quietly panicking in the background there. ⁓ But I'm interested.

Joshua Cilento (01:17)
Yeah.

Kristy (01:18)
Ha ha ha.

Kelly Dimkovska (01:18)
I am, so I pay personal and

you must be prepared.

Simon Dell (01:22)
Yeah, if Kelly's

if Kelly's screen goes blank, we know she's just like passed out and collapsed at the side of the chair. So that's fine. ⁓ But the statement I'm going to make is this is that ⁓ reporting doing doing detailed sorry, here you go. As you can see, I've practiced this. ⁓ Doing detailed and in depth reporting on marketing for clients is a waste of time because they never bloody read it. That is my statement.

Kristy (01:27)
She's dumb.

Kelly Dimkovska (01:27)
Quite

possibly.

Hmm.

Simon Dell (01:51)
And I'm interested. I can see Christie sitting there going, I want to, she's going, I want to agree with that. She goes, well, I think there's two parts of this question. Number one, is that the case? And number two is if it is the case, what's the solution? Christie, do you want to go first?

Joshua Cilento (01:58)
I just want to know what the argument is this.

Kristy (01:58)
You

Sure, ⁓ I think it is important. I think it's in how it's And, and, ⁓ you know, I think you've got a good relationship with the business owner or the CEO or whoever you're reporting to, that you're aligned on the business goals and the marketing goals. That's the starting point. And so

Simon Dell (02:20)
Okay, right.

Kristy (02:40)
My, you know, how I get in there and get things kind of kicked off is, you know, setting KPIs that you agree on firstly. Sorry, I don't want to talk too much. I'm sure other people have got other things to say, but.

Simon Dell (02:52)
No, no, no, no,

no, no, that's fine. Well, let's just, let's just go through everyone and see what their initial conversation is. Cause I, their initial opinion is because I've got some questions on, on that. Right. So Josh, what do you reckon? Is it a waste of time? Is it, what's the solution?

Kristy (03:04)
Yeah, yeah.

Joshua Cilento (03:10)
⁓ It's both. is ⁓ absolutely critical and an absolute waste of time unless you are directing it to ⁓ the CFO in the CFO's language and communication and need state concisely. You still need to put all that data together and get an overall understanding, but presenting it to everyone as everything. ⁓

Simon Dell (03:15)
you

Joshua Cilento (03:33)
never lost more time and trying to get people to understand what they don't care about. Even the bits that they, do need to know about the amount of unopened things that I've seen, you know, 30 page documents, a dashboard that is suited for that person, that team, that department. Excellent. We review that. Let's not waste an hour. Me reading the things off of, off of PowerPoint that you can see as well. Cause you've also been in the same room looking at the same PowerPoint. Yeah.

Simon Dell (04:02)
Okay, Kelly, palms, what sweaty palms mean?

Kelly Dimkovska (04:04)
Yeah, that's right.

I actually agree with both Kristy and Josh. So for me, what I like to do generally with clients is have just snapshot reporting every month, which doesn't go into a lot of detail, but I really like to go into a lot of detail on the metrics that matter to the business most, in 90 day snapshots. And that's just so that there is enough data to actually make some real actionable

insights I suppose ⁓ into what's working, what's not, what do we need to change. So that's generally how I like to do it but it definitely needs to be broken down into a language that they understand and also on a video call in person so the questions can be asked and answered.

Simon Dell (04:54)
So what numbers

are you reporting? if, mean, we're all in marketing, we've all worked with different industries and different clients and things like that. What do you think are the, you know, if you were asked, just give us five numbers, what would you be looking at?

Kelly Dimkovska (05:13)
So for me, the main things are from the analytics, it's sort of broken down into a few different things. So if you're looking at it from the analytics side of it, so I'd definitely be really honing in on those conversions and that conversion tracking is really important. So really identifying what those true conversions or events on a website for a business is. So I'm not talking about page visits, I'm not talking about clicks on buttons, I'm talking about,

bookings, I'm talking about phone calls that actually terminate to a phone call, sort of that last over 30 seconds. that's the side of it that I'd look from an analytics point of view. And then I'd be drawing that back and really having a look at the customer acquisition cost, the return on marketing investment, and all of those sorts of pieces of data points which really matter to the business.

Simon Dell (06:08)
Okay, Josh?

Joshua Cilento (06:11)
All right, look, I absolutely agree with Kelly on there. I think that you get into that conversation where it's ⁓ the return on marketing investment ⁓ and the relationship between that data that you get back so that you can put that together. But I think that my biggest question in that area there is,

how that is viewed again, that that marketing investment becomes a ⁓ the relationship between those values is confused. And again, we're back to language who we're speaking to and why we're speaking about that. So the specificity of that data, but the actual real hard conversion tracking data and the relationship between the real hard spend, regardless of what you call it.

Simon Dell (07:00)
Okay, I'm gonna assume Christie's gonna agree with that, So my next question is, there's so much that we do with, the two part question here, there's so much that we do with marketing that is intangible. So, know, brand advertising, brand marketing, right? So much of that can be quite intangible. You can't sit there and draw a straight line from saying doing this to achieving that, right? So that's one thing. And then the second thing, you've got this challenge of attribution is,

Kristy (07:04)
Thank

Simon Dell (07:30)
You know as well as I do, if you answer the phone to someone and say, hey, where did you find out about us? They say, your website. And you're like, that gives you no help whatsoever and no insights whatsoever. So in a world or in an industry that we're dealing with so many ambiguous things, how do you kind of present that as value to the client? Kristy?

Kristy (07:56)
Yeah, yeah

Simon Dell (07:57)
There we go. There we go. Now I've got you all. That was my intention. Lull you into a

Kelly Dimkovska (08:03)
Thanks.

Simon Dell (08:05)
full sense of security with easy questions to start with.

Kristy (08:07)
Yeah.

It's things that I talk about with my clients all of the time. I think that, you know, the clients that I work with understand that there's a bit of ambiguity there. So I'm tracking the attribution of marketing activities and I'm showing what I can track and go, right, this is you've gotten a lead, you've got a sale from this particular activity. ⁓ But you're right, I'm working with set closely with sales teams as well and going, hey, can you ask that question that you just asked?

Simon Dell (08:29)
Mm.

Kelly Dimkovska (08:39)
Mm.

Kristy (08:39)
How

did you hear about us and let's report on that and so it's changing some business practices there If the bill if the business is willing to do that, there's some businesses just go, you know, well, we're too busy for that Yep, but there are some of my clients currently A particular CEO that I'm thinking of he wants to know that data. He's very data focused So he's all up for me trying to you know, help the sales teams or the customer service

teams ask those questions and get that reporting happening.

Simon Dell (09:13)
Josh, the ambiguity of some of what we do, how do you really add value? How do you present that value? How do you show that value?

Joshua Cilento (09:21)
Well, I mean, you talk about an ROI, you've got, say you've got a five to one and you're presenting that with what your data is. It's a good benchmark. Say it's 10 to one, say it's exceptional. And then you're still just talking about numbers and what value are you placing against, that campaign finishes and you're going 60 % up, 60 % up again, just on the brand equity that is occurring.

from various other campaigns, whether they are successful or not, and you're attributing that data to that campaign or that value, you really need to do, ⁓ you've got those data dashboards, but a balance between that and a brand equity scorecard showing that, yes, we are doing these things like short whip meetings and campaigns, we're doing one of those a month, or we're doing one of those per week, depending on the stage of the business.

But we're also looking at 90 days and that can be six months in a brand cycle. It can be 12 months in that brand cycle. We're still doing that campaign for the brand as well. Both have attributions and one of them doesn't have a number that whether you ask for the number and you like numbers or not, is going to give you anything that you want. We just need to know that we're working on that and that it is evolving.

Simon Dell (10:41)
Kelly.

Kelly Dimkovska (10:42)
Yeah, I agree with all of that. But I would also like to add like there's some other things that I like to look at sort of in the background. And what I like to do is really create those GA4 reports in the back end so we can look at that funnel exploration. So going from landing page to perhaps product page and whether that results in a form submission or a booking. ⁓ The other things are looking at path explorations. the user's path right the way through to conversion.

And then also using things like Microsoft Clarity, which is awesome and free, with amazing dashboards where we can really have a look at how users are interacting with the website and whether those ⁓ tweaks from an SEO point of view are really paying off. So, are we reducing the number of rage clicks we're having? Everybody hates those rage clicks. Right the way to how far are they scrolling down the page? Do we need to reduce the banner size?

where are the drop-offs occurring? So if we can show improvements in that, in that kind of visual data, that's pretty awesome too.

Simon Dell (11:49)
I'm gonna,

this is probably a little bit more out of your comfort zone, Kelly, because I think one of my first loves in marketing has been beer and alcohol. And I've worked with a number of beer and alcohol brands in the past. It's one of those ones where it's so hard to show what marketing dollars do because there is simply no...

Joshua Cilento (11:53)
Yeah.

Kelly Dimkovska (12:02)
Yeah.

Mm.

Simon Dell (12:19)
There's no straight line from anything you do, almost anything you do, to the point when you start seeing volumes of beer increasing or sales of beer increasing. And the other challenge I think you have with something like beer or any FMCG good is that it's passing through so many people's hands before it gets to the actual consumer at the end. Kelly, this is not a criticism, Kelly, but you might be looking at someone that's running an advertising.

campaign online, they're going to a website and they're making a purchase. That's really a to a degree it's a nice simple linear step by step. Whereas beer, you're sitting there going, well it's gotta go out through a distributor and then it's gotta be sold in. And then it depends which shelf it goes into in the bottle shop or whether it's on tap in a pub or, and that's even before we've worried about whether the right clients are walking into the pub to actually buy the product or the bottle shop.

There's so much, there's so many challenges around a product like that that you sit there and go, at the end of the month, what fucking five numbers am I going to show the boss? Because you know, you're just drawing on, on personally, I think a lot of random, random numbers in order to go, all they want to see is how much beer they've sold, you know? So

How do you solve challenges like that where it's such a complex sales process or such a distribution process? Josh, throw that one at you.

Joshua Cilento (13:51)
That's something I would have thrown at our friend Josh Gordry. ⁓ But I think you put it under ⁓ the auspice of from cheers to beers. How do we find data between the marketing and the sales? ⁓ There isn't. ⁓ That's where the dark arts becomes part of it. That's where the ⁓ science meets the art. it's knowing what

Simon Dell (13:55)
Yeah, that would have been a yes. Yeah, absolutely.

Joshua Cilento (14:20)
those levers do, you might be pulling them behind the velvet curtain, but you know that they do have those effects in that environment on those products. And these are the outcomes that do occur. It might not be a linear path and it might be a, ⁓ you know, a manufacturer or an unusual path, depending on what your beer product is or your, or your actual just your booze product. But you know what happens underneath that curtain, but you, it's not something that you can demonstrate.

You can say what you're going to do and how you're going to do it, but it doesn't translate into a live dashboard between dollars in and dollars out.

Simon Dell (14:59)
Yeah, Christie.

Kristy (15:02)
Yeah, no, I'd have to agree with that. Yeah, it's complex. And that's why I'm not in that space.

Simon Dell (15:10)
No, no, And

Kelly Dimkovska (15:10)
Yeah.

Simon Dell (15:12)
again, I completely understand that. But I guess my thought is with all the brains, the brains trust of you three and me here is that if someone's listening to this and someone's going, yeah, I do have that problem. I'm trying to draw a line from one to the other is that, you know, if you're thrown that sort of curve ball, what do you, you know, what can you do? I think for me, of the... Sorry, go on.

Kristy (15:14)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Joshua Cilento (15:37)
Specifically, specifically

specifically to ask whether there is scotch brand or not. An excellent spot for it.

Simon Dell (15:43)
⁓

Kelly Dimkovska (15:43)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Dell (15:47)
But I think for me, one of the questions would be, ⁓ which I don't think we've discussed here is we've talked about KPIs and reporting and things like that. But potentially for me, it's the length of that report. It's about ⁓ what's the lag time between, hey, we did this and we expect to see a result in six months time or we, you know.

Because again, from a beer perspective, and that's the challenge, is some of these things you have to predict the results from a manufacturing perspective. So you have to go back to the company and say, hey, you need to brew this amount of beer, or you need to make this amount of widgets, because the marketing department are gonna do this, and then we think that's going to sell that. So there's all these complex moving parts here, but I think sometimes you have to go, we've gotta stop looking at this.

month by month and start looking at it quarterly or even six months and go, let's judge our figures on that rather than the month. And I think that's a real challenge to have conversation to have with clients.

Kelly Dimkovska (16:53)
And I think it also comes down to what the objective of the campaign is. So I've worked with some clients who are absolutely at capacity, but they really want to make sure they don't get into this feast and famine kind of situation. So they just really, really are about that brand awareness and keeping in touch with their audience. Whereas then you have other campaigns where the objective is conversions.

And so that's kind of where that different discussion happens. know, click costs increase when you're looking at conversion campaigns, but the output is instead of traffic, you're actually getting those conversions that you're wanting to build on the business. So I think it does come down to the objective of the client as well.

Simon Dell (17:36)
Yeah, Josh?

Kelly Dimkovska (17:36)
Thank you.

Joshua Cilento (17:39)
I became a, a scrum master and agile manager purely from listening to people talk the wrong language, the same words to each other, ⁓ from tech building a SaaS product. and then when you provide that data, you've got an exponential on the wrong communication and what you're trying to do. So I think that there is definitely the data needs to be provided. It needs to be provided to the right people, ⁓ in the right.

language or the right mode of communication, which they understand want and can utilize. The next part about in a fractional CMO role definitely is you are running that campaign, you've created that you're implementing that you're doing that you are demonstrating the data that goes back to the client and the client says, you know what I'd like to do? I'd like to do this.

Kelly Dimkovska (18:24)
you

Joshua Cilento (18:27)
And it's like, hang on a second, this is going to blow the whole thing out of the water. We need to talk about how that fits into you selling beers, because I know that you really want to sell beers, but this idea is not amazing. And it doesn't have anything to do with everything else that we are working on that won't reflect in this data, but will reflect in brand value and sales in two, three, six months.

Simon Dell (18:53)
Yeah, look, I use this example because I've faced that challenge recently and the conversation that I'd have with the client is they, hey, we wanna create a national beer. And I'm like, in Australia, that itself is a massive challenge because you've got such regional compartmentalization when it comes to breweries and beers and brands and all that kind of stuff. And I'd sort of said, well,

You know, what we need to do is build this goodwill from, we need to start at the other end and build this goodwill from the, from the consumer so that when they walk into the pubs, they're looking for a particular product or when they see a rack of products on a shelf or a tap, they're looking for a particular one. The, the client kind of had the opposite idea to start with, which was like, let's go and get some taps. Let's get some distribution. Let's not worry too much about the marketing. And I kind of felt that was the wrong thing to do. I think there was a bit of.

push and pull from both sides of things. But inevitably I'm almost quite glad we never sort of went any further with it. Cause I was like, it's one of those ones where I felt I could have possibly spent a year investing in brand building activity and consumer building activity. And even if I had done, there was no, there was no guarantee that the consumer would walk in and actually ask for the product. It felt like it was, it's, there was such a challenge there that I was almost.

I was almost glad I didn't go any further with it. ⁓ I understand that's a very challenging one, but I want to go back right to that initial question. We've all had those clients where you're showing them the numbers, but there seems to be not necessarily feigning interest, but maybe they are feigning interest.

Kristy (20:23)
you

Simon Dell (20:47)
But really all they're just interested in is how many times the phone's rung or how many products they're sold. How do you get them really engaged in that? Or, as I said right at the start, is it just a waste of time? And let's let them just look at the top line numbers and let that be the end of it.

Kelly Dimkovska (21:05)
think it's both. think you show them like you have to have those top line numbers. You absolutely must to get their buy-in and for them to feel like you're listening to them. And you're also working towards the commercial outcomes that they're after. But then also equally important to show how marketing is actually contributing to that. Because the moment you don't have that buy-in from top level, that's when marketing budgets get cut.

And that's when things can really start going south. So really, really important that we balance that. ⁓ That's how I feel about it anyway.

Simon Dell (21:37)
Mm.

Yeah.

Christie?

Kristy (21:41)
Yeah,

I think that it just has to be that level of education, you know, for I mean, there's so many.

leaders out there that are not qualified marketers. And so it's our job to educate them on what is important and what are the numbers that they should be looking at. ⁓ And then, you know, once they understand it, it's, as I said earlier, it's sitting down and agreeing on, you know, what are those numbers that they want to be seeing on a regular basis and making sure that they can see improvement and optimization along that journey.

Simon Dell (22:13)
Yeah, Josh.

Joshua Cilento (22:15)
I absolutely agree. ⁓ is about there will be a person that has a certain ⁓ focus on a few key numbers and they'll understand them or know the relationship between what they do in those numbers. But if you can use, as Christy said, that education process, these are the other numbers in that ecosystem that create that number.

This is what happens when you adjust this, when you do that. Kelly, you were you doing talking about the GA4, you know, ⁓ enormous reports that no one that just it's like, but these are instrumental. These give you that one number that you're looking for.

or how this works is an explanation of how this is occurring and what we're doing to get that. So yeah, it's as much education of the ecosystem of numbers to give you the one number means that you can't just disregard the other numbers, but at least know them, you don't have to ask for them again. When we when we meet, we can meet after lunch again, if you want to ask the numbers again, but know why those numbers are there.

Simon Dell (23:25)
Two final questions then. I think everyone has mentioned or at least ⁓ Josh definitely mentioned the word dashboard. How are you presenting this? And this is probably a tactical thing. How are you presenting those numbers? Are you just going, hey, here is a single piece of paper, bang, here's five numbers. Or are you actually showing them the full report with a cover page with perhaps, you know, the key things on there. What's your preference when doing that, Christie?

Kristy (23:54)
Yeah, look, I've got my own way to present data depends on what the client needs. So it's a little bit different every client, but I present it usually on a PowerPoint presentation in a monthly meeting with management for one, but we also have a look at studio. So again, it's that dashboard where we've got that set up just for the data that they want to see.

Simon Dell (24:16)
Yeah. And Kelly?

Kelly Dimkovska (24:19)
Yeah, I also use a reporting dashboard where I have two sets of reports. So normally I'll have the sort of the 30 day snapshot and I'll have the 90 day full report with all the key points and annotations. And also allows me to add any additional pieces of information, which I might not be able to pull from digital channels.

That's how I like to present it. And then also it allows them to toggle on and off their date ranges as well. For things like the 30-day snapshot, they can look at any period of time. So I find that is normally quite good, but it does still require me taking them through it every 90 days.

Simon Dell (25:03)
Okay.

Yeah.

Kelly Dimkovska (25:05)
It is quite complex marketing and we can't expect them to go through one report meeting and then fully get it. It takes years.

Simon Dell (25:14)
Josh?

Joshua Cilento (25:15)
Again, I think it's client specific. have one that wants to see it in the driest single block PowerPoint presentation, one key value, one key value, one key value, and with little underneath slightly just, you know, reduced opacity, what it was last month. have other clients that want to see it real time with their login on their dashboard on their phone to show what that data is and what's streaming out of look what's coming out of J4.

Kristy (25:26)
yet.

Simon Dell (25:40)
Right.

Joshua Cilento (25:45)
what that's going, but know, specifically again, the one or two numbers they want. If you overwhelm them, overwhelm or provide them with too much, they take on nothing. And then usually come back to you with their own numbers. And it's like, well, that's not it.

Kelly Dimkovska (25:55)
Mm.

Yeah.

Simon Dell (26:01)
So I think that the learning out of this is that, you know, as ⁓ a CMO, as a fractional CMO, getting your head around the capacity to produce a dashboard or, you know, understanding those numbers is an absolutely key part of the job. can't be too, you know, we can't be approaching everything with this sort of creative ideas and big ideas. need to sort of, there needs to be, there needs to be a lot of understanding behind the numbers. And I think that's probably something that

Good CMOs understand, I think bad CMOs shun away from the numbers. They all wanna pick up big ideas and campaigns and where are gonna spend the money and all this kind of thing. I think there needs to be a lot more awareness of the numbers, which leads me to the last question, is a very leading question, is then when you are presenting to the leadership team, who is the most important person to get buy-in from in that room?

Kristy (27:00)
depends on the business, depends on the business. ⁓ it's a larger organization with a finance team, they need to be involved. ⁓ If it's a slightly less sophisticated business, then it's the CEO ⁓ and sometimes like the head of sales as well.

Simon Dell (27:00)
interesting.

Yeah, I mean, look, my question is,

my question is, we all, do we all need to cozy up to the CFO? Is that really, yes. ⁓

Kelly Dimkovska (27:27)
Yes. Yeah.

Kristy (27:28)
Yeah, yeah,

but you should be building relationships with everyone on the C-suite, you know, so.

Kelly Dimkovska (27:30)
Agreed. Yeah. And equally, the CEO as well. I think just, and the director of growth is another huge one. That's their job to ensure growth for the business. So you absolutely have to be in alignment and have buy-in with them.

Simon Dell (27:33)
Yeah. Yeah.

Josh, who... Yeah.

Yeah, I think there's too many battles done in ballrooms between CMOs and CFOs because it's, know, everyone sits there and CFOs trying to save money and CMOs trying to spend the money. You know, so I think it's really important to try and build that, build that bridge. are you, what's your opinion on that Josh?

Joshua Cilento (28:11)
are the times where you sit down and there's you on one side of the table and the 10 of them, think the longer that you, ⁓ again, excellent mentor advice that I've received, the longer that you're quiet, the...

faster the key people will identify themselves as to who needs to be addressed and what it is they need to be addressed with. They will present who is who in the zoo ⁓ and it may not be under the title that they're there and especially yet like you know, Kelly says the ⁓ you know that that brand growth ⁓ person will ⁓

will not want but they want to adopt you they want to they want to they want to literally leverage you into their own campaigns that they have created that don't fit with anything else. So you can have a relationship with them, but it just needs to be aligned.

with the person again on the other side of table who's making the actual decision. getting those that balance I think is again, we're back to dark arts. You've got to do it for a long time and you've got to read the room and you got to see what's going on and you need to know what ⁓ tools and weapons you can pull out of your bag to get those jobs done for that particular business.

Simon Dell (29:21)
Yeah, I think we often forget that a lot of CEOs used to be CFOs. That seems to be quite, you know, they will tell you. Yeah, they will. Yeah. Yeah. That's like people do CrossFit. They'll tell you that they do CrossFit. That's fine.

Kelly Dimkovska (29:21)
Mm.

Hmm.

Joshua Cilento (29:27)
They'll tell you, it's like CrossFit.

Kristy (29:34)
They'll also

tell you how much marketing knowledge they have too. ⁓

Simon Dell (29:37)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Kelly Dimkovska (29:39)
Well I've got a confession,

Simon Dell (29:39)
All but that.

Kelly Dimkovska (29:40)
I am both a marketer and a cross-fitter, so you've busted me.

Joshua Cilento (29:43)
Thank

Simon Dell (29:43)
There you go Kelly, there you

go. I see Crossfitters, Crossfitters that are doing MBAs, that's the ones, they just never keep quiet, they're just like, all right, yeah, we get it, you're doing an MBA and you're into Crossfit. Are you not doing an MBA as well Kelly, are you?

Kristy (29:50)
hahahaha

Kelly Dimkovska (29:58)
I actually did consider it a year ago. yeah, so there we go. I'm the one you're talking about.

Simon Dell (29:59)
There we go.

Joshua Cilento (30:04)
I'm doing mine now, I'm doing mine now and I've not even mentioned it once. I have not told you about it.

Simon Dell (30:05)
Josh you've not told us about it. that's that seems unusual for anyone doing an MBA

Kelly Dimkovska (30:11)
But are

you doing crossfit?

Joshua Cilento (30:14)
No, no, I do

Kristy (30:15)
Ha ha ha!

Joshua Cilento (30:16)
vegan CrossFit. It's a very special, you probably wouldn't be able to do it.

Simon Dell (30:19)
If you think

just drink drinking beer, he's not doing CrossFit. look last comments on this, just reporting in general, any sort of last moments of comments of wisdom for anybody out there that's that's, you know, stepping into a CMO CMO role or feels that they could be doing their fractional CMO role better. You know, what's the your final tips, Christie, when it comes to reporting?

Joshua Cilento (30:22)
Ha ha ha.

Kristy (30:42)
think find, well obviously align those goals firstly, ⁓ you know with the business goals ⁓ and just set some KPIs up and get some kind of agreement there firstly and then use some really basic tools. If you haven't been in that space before of you know looking at the analytics and ⁓ you know tracking and reporting I would just start really simple and then just you can evolve over time.

Simon Dell (31:09)
Yeah. Kelly.

Kelly Dimkovska (31:12)
And so probably two things for me is just to absolutely make sure that the technical setup for all the tracking on website is accurate because it is so it can be so complex and you can end up with sort of multiple conversions reporting when you've only had one. So it can really throw data. So just really making sure that that's all perfect and tested.

And the other thing was about, suppose, you walk in, sometimes you do feel like you're on the other side of the table, but I always like to try to get on their side of the table, sit with them and just let them understand that, hey, we're all working towards the same goal. And I think once that alignment happens, that trust is there, then it's less of a battle. Yeah.

Simon Dell (32:02)
Awesome. Josh, final

words from you?

Joshua Cilento (32:04)
No, I think that you need to absolutely understand deeply and intensely all of this and very clearly and concisely deliver this.

Kristy (32:15)
Ha!

Kelly Dimkovska (32:15)
You

Joshua Cilento (32:17)
And when they ask where that comes from, be it know that entire ecosystem, how that works, what that does, why that is what happens when you pull that lever, when you twist that dial, it does that to that number, which affects knock on cause and effect causality, and how those things tie together. And that's where your dollar went. And that's how it's coming back 5x 10x.

Simon Dell (32:37)
Okay, well look, my final point would be, ⁓ there's a very famous statistical thing that was done. It was a book I read and I really should go back and find out which book it was in about bookies, about bookies at race courses and asked how much data they wanted in order to be able to predict the next winning horse. And it's a very long story, but the short answer, the short version of it is that, ⁓

the more the data doesn't necessarily mean the better the prediction or the better the decision. What they found was that most bookies managed to make a fairly decent guess at which horses were going to win just by five data points. And they kept giving them more and more 10, 20 more data points, but the guesses didn't get any better. And I think to that, my point, my final point would be.

I think most businesses could be run on the success of just following and analyzing five data points. I don't think they need reams and reams of data and numbers and things like that. But the big challenge is which five data points that you look at. And I think that's the trick of being a fractional CMO. And that's the trick when it comes to success is knowing which numbers are the...

the levers that you can pull and the ones that are important for the business. So look, thank you very much for that. Kelly, that wasn't so bad, was it?

There you go. So next time, yeah, next time I'm going to have a much more contentious point for us all to argue, So because I think that was a nice easy one to start you off with. So next time it's going to get much more argumentative and, you know, go really controversial next time. So if anyone is listening or anyone here has some idea about some controversial marketing topics.

Kelly Dimkovska (34:20)
Thanks, I appreciate it.

Kristy (34:24)
Let's go controversial.

Simon Dell (34:36)
Maybe we'll talk about, it's a bit late now, but Jaguar rebrands and things like that. That's the sort of thing we wanna get in and have a good argument about. But thank you all for that. ⁓ I think there is absolutely some super important ⁓ things that you guys have said today, some suggestions, some tips, and I think they're all very, very helpful. So really appreciate that.

putting you on the spot and delivering that for us today. thank you very much guys.

Kristy (35:09)
Thank you. See you later.

Kelly Dimkovska (35:10)
Thanks, see ya.

Joshua Cilento (35:11)
Brian,

thank you.