Simon Dell (00:01)
So welcome to the Fractional CMO podcast. My name is Simon Dell. I'm the CEO of CMO. are, we are the, I'm going to say we're the world's biggest fractional.

marketing network because I don't think anyone can argue with me on that one. And quite frankly, if they do more than happy to have that argument. We are here with Caroline Warns. before I before I do a few more sort of housekeeping, ⁓ Caroline, welcome to the podcast. How are you today?

Caroline (00:33)
I'm so good. How are you Simon? It's good?

Simon Dell (00:35)
I'm excellent. I'm excellent. So if

anyone enjoys listening to us today, and hopefully they do, then please go and rate us or review us either on wherever you're listening to your podcasts, Spotify, Apple podcasts, whatever other channels that you get your podcasts that we're listed on. Please give us a review and hopefully a five star rating. If you want to find out anything more about us at SEMO, it's SEMO.com that's spelled C-E-M-O-H.

⁓ We are based in Australia. There's a few people who do listen to us from overseas. So thank you. ⁓ And yeah, if you want to email me, Simon at CMO.com or find me Simon Dell on LinkedIn. Pretty much the same for Caroline Warns. I don't know whether there's that many Caroline Warns is out there. Warns is used.

Caroline (01:21)
There is

one in the UK who is a vet and writes children's books. I don't know if it's the same person, but there's at least one more. I'm not the vet, yeah.

Simon Dell (01:30)
I've said

this many times, there's a Simon Dell in the UK as well who takes photos of ⁓ small animals like mice in weird setting, weird setting. There's one in Southeast Asia who runs Hotel Chain. ⁓ He's doing very well for himself. I sometimes think I might pretend to be him one day. And there's another one who actually lives in Brisbane who bizarrely is the boyfriend.

Caroline (01:40)
It's not even about the animals.

⁓ Perfect scam, yeah, love it.

Simon Dell (01:59)
of an ex client of ours and I have met him a couple of times and he's a lovely guy. ⁓ I said to my ex client, don't send the wrong text message to me. So ⁓ Caroline, talk to us about a little bit about your background and what you're currently doing now. Just so ⁓ everyone understands why the hell you're here today.

Caroline (02:04)
Could get awkward though. ⁓

Yeah. Raquel Amow. Yep. Yep.

Good question. So I run a very small agency called Only Good Content. We're based in Sydney. ⁓ I started it way back in the heady days of the COVID pandemic when I had been working ⁓ in-house in marketing, comms, brand, media, tight roles for ⁓ a couple of decades at that point and ⁓ decided I needed, wanted more flexibility in my life. And there was also a gap in the market for at that

This was pre-Chap GPT, if you can remember those times. There was a real gap in the market for good content at the time. So I decided I can do good content, so I'm going to leave my secure in-house senior role in the federal government and start my own agency and help B2B agencies say better things more clearly, which is our tagline. And here we are nearly five years later and have survived the Chap GPT disruption, still helping B2B companies say

better things more clearly.

Simon Dell (03:24)
Awesome. So what sort of clients are you working on at the moment? What's the, you know.

Tell me who they are, but what sort of stuff do you do?

Caroline (03:31)
Name drop? Yep.

really diverse client book. So I started out ⁓ focusing more on sort of like ASX listed companies because they've always got a need for extra support. So I have a good solid base of ASX 100, ASX 200 clients, but I also diversified over the...

last couple of years in particular, more to working with sort of smaller companies, founders, startups, and even some, you know, leaders who are looking for help with their personal brand. So I do a big range of work and it keeps things pretty interesting for me.

Simon Dell (04:10)
Okay, what do you like the most? Like, I mean, it's great doing a range and I think we've all done a range in our time, but what's the stuff that when it comes across your desk you go, ⁓ I'm excited by this.

Caroline (04:26)
So I'm actually quite nerdy, I...

I was trained as a writer, I was originally a journalist, I've always loved writing, but now I love solving problems with writing, so I get really excited about stuff like, other people would just laugh at it, like supply chain logistics and digital infrastructure and stuff that's really quite complex. And I like being able to turn that for a customer into one of my clients for something that will land with their customers. So it's not about writing the technical specifications, it's about creating a

Simon Dell (04:35)
Okay.

Caroline (05:01)
journey and a story that will land with someone who is going to buy those very complicated products and solutions.

Simon Dell (05:10)
Okay, so look, we're gonna talk about content from two perspectives today. think the first one from, well dude, I think the first one would be the easiest one from the fractional CMO perspective.

I've always said that if you can't write, you shouldn't be in marketing. That doesn't necessarily mean you enjoy writing because some people enjoy it, some people find it incredibly laborious. But if you're starting out on that fractional CMO journey, are you suggesting or do you suggest that they're using

copywriting, telling stories to promote who they are, and how are they doing that? What's the, you know, I think a lot of people wanna do that, but they don't really know where to start.

Caroline (06:07)
It's ⁓

You've touched on something that I've been thinking about a lot recently, which is the whole question of personal brand. And that matters whether you're starting out as a fractional resource or whether you're more sort of developed in your leadership journey. You do need to have your personal brand that you're presenting to the market. written content is one way to do that, but it's not the only way to do it. Some people prefer video, some people prefer different ways of presenting to the market. And thankfully these days,

actually, if you're a marketer with some skills, you may not be an expert writer, but you've probably got enough to work with if you can tap into chat GPT and use that as a base to start developing some content to promote yourself. So, particularly in the fractional space, you've got to be on LinkedIn and you've got to be visible and providing something.

to your prospective clients, whether that be videos or written content or whatever feels comfortable for you, but you do have to be visible in some way for sure.

Simon Dell (07:12)
And where are you suggesting that? mean, obviously LinkedIn, know, everyone has this love hate relationship with LinkedIn. But you, where else? I mean, what are the other options sort of beyond LinkedIn?

Caroline (07:20)
Me don't they? Me too.

I mean, if you're pitching for work as a fractional and you're in the B2B space, LinkedIn is the platform to be on from a social perspective. I also strongly believe that you really need your own website as well. So I know some people skip this step and they just don't treat themselves as a brand. And that can make things a little bit difficult down the track because social platforms, the algorithm changes all the time. You have no control over what's going to happen. So you have to have a space for your own media.

I was quite clear when I started my journey that I was going to present as a brand from the start rather than just being a freelancer kicking around or know a resource for hire kind of thing so I think if you want to take yourself seriously in this space it's worth developing. It doesn't have to be a really complicated website with lots of bells and whistles it just needs to be something that expresses who you are and what you can do and the value that you present to the market for sure.

Simon Dell (08:28)
One of the other channels that I think is, is vastly under rated, maybe not underrated, underutilized, I think is, is probably the right word is writing for other people's channels as well. So, you know, you mentioned about having your own blog that if you're building up a network of contacts and friends and things like that in the business space, one, I think a powerful opportunity is to sort of say to your, you know, your good

Caroline (08:43)
sure, yeah.

Simon Dell (08:58)
⁓ you know, work contacts, Hey, can I, can I post a blog on your website? ⁓ as long as it's related to, you know, if you're in marketing, you're going to go, well, I'm not going to write a marketing blog about, ⁓ and put it on a law firm's website. Cause you know, but yeah, but unless you can write something where you go, how can I write about marketing on a law firm's website so that the people

Caroline (09:06)
100%, yep.

No. It's the right channel for the right content. Yeah. Yeah.

Simon Dell (09:28)
looking at the website will find it useful and validate its reason for being there. I think if you can, not just other people's websites, but third party media channels, anywhere you can sit there and go, hey, this is gonna give me some visibility beyond my normal visibility.

Caroline (09:35)
Yeah.

Breach. Yep, yep.

which is actually what we're doing now, right? So it's, yeah, and so it is, it's absolutely, it's credibility, it's reach. So when someone who has a credible presence in the space that you're operating in, such as yourself, when I come onto your show and talk to you, then the people that you're connected to go, okay, so if Simon thinks Caroline's credible, then she must be credible. It really is just, you know, of that kind of tapping into human psychology in that way. And...

Simon Dell (10:12)
Yeah.

Caroline (10:19)
You do have to be very careful, I think, and you sort of touched on it, making sure that the content is appropriate for what you're trying to do. So you don't want to be on every channel. That's like a fool's errand and you spend all your time pumping content out into a universe that's not even listening to you. You know, identify where you need to be and who needs to see it and then match the content to that. And if you're short on time and resources, be very targeted about it.

Simon Dell (10:44)
Yeah, there's a couple of good examples where ⁓ we've produced content for other channels and I think has...

has helped us massively. Well, certainly the first one, we were approached.

good, I think I was approached a good eight, nine years ago to write for Myob, the accounting software. And they said, Hey, we want some someone who's willing to submit some articles about marketing in our sort of they had an area for business owners that would, you know, advice and all that sort of stuff. So we did that. And of course, the knock on effect was obviously a lot of people got to see who I was and who we were at the time. But the other important thing was ⁓

It was fantastic from a search engine optimization perspective because we got a link back from their website to our website. ⁓ and then also around about the same time, I got approached by a magazine in the jewelry industry, ⁓ imaginatively title. Jewel, jewelry magazine. And they, they came to me and actually said, we really like your content. Would we be allowed to use some of your blogs and repurpose them for our print magazine? And I was like,

Caroline (11:46)
Man of many talents.

Sure. Did they pay you for it? No, no.

Simon Dell (12:03)
Go for your life. No, well, they didn't. They

were just basically, you know, I get an email once a quarter. They say, can we use this? Can we use this? And I go, yeah, go for it. But my profile's on there. There's ⁓ you know, a little bit about the company and a link to the website. So I'm like, for the sake of, you know, for the sake of me saying yes or no, I'm just like, all of a sudden we've got ⁓ thousands of other people looking at our content that we didn't have before that.

Caroline (12:18)
Yeah.

Yeah, and it's an easy win.

Right, it's an easy win. It's not like you're producing new content. I mean, yeah, like not every outcome has to be a financial outcome. That was a different type of commercial outcome around visibility and reach. Yeah. Yep.

Simon Dell (12:34)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

If you're working in that fractional CMO space, what, you know, I guess the next question is like, you know, obviously there's all these channels and things like that. What are you, what are you writing about? Because the two part question slightly loaded the first part for the second part. Um, hasn't, we were having this discussion the other day. Hasn't everything already been written? it are we just regurgitating something someone else has already written?

Caroline (13:12)
you

you

Well, they say there's only like 12 original plots in the world in terms of fiction. So every fiction book that has been written is just a rehash of Romeo and Juliet or Othello or whatever. look, there is a lot of, and we are in absolutely because of AI, we're in the age of just content saturation. Like there is so much content out there on every single topic you can imagine. So what we try and do, like what my job is specifically in the space that I work in, it's often about, rather than it being about just producing content,

for

content sake, it's about supporting a process for buyers. when you're in a, have a complex buying process, which a lot of my type of clients do, like it takes a while to get from here to here, it can take 12 to 18 months. You can't just like make them aware of you up here and then do nothing for 18 months and expect them to buy your products and services down here. It could be like, you know, six or seven figure purchase. So you've got to support them for that 12 to 18 months on a, we call it the, you know, the customer.

journey and ⁓ the way that that works is with like rich.

content that is increasingly more targeted to them and more tailored to them, which we can do more of because we have the tools to personalise that content more. So these days we're able to produce insights that are, you know, really targeted to the different people on the buying committee. So there might be content that's specific for the CFO in the organisation, there might be content that's specific for the CIO, and then you can make that personalised across a range of organisations. So it's not just about having new ideas, it's about making, having ideas that are targeted towards different types

types of people at that point in time too. So it's a combination of timeliness, relevance, all those sorts of factors.

Minimum. Minimum. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

They often frequently are because marketing is a cost center and it's always the first one to be cut when times are lean. So even though it's arguably it shouldn't be because that's when you need to invest in a function that fuels the growth engine of the business. I mean, the way you mitigate that risk is exactly what you said. You have to be able to speak to them about the benefits that you can bring, but you only do that by speaking their language. Like CFOs don't want to hear things in really general terms. They want to hear things about things they care about, know, like cash conversion cycles.

and forecasts and all that sort of thing. So you don't have to give them an annual report but you do have to give them something that's relevant.

happening.

Yeah.

and it's not a profit centre, they see it as a cost centre but rather than being a cost centre, let's call it an investment centre and have clear metrics about what the activity is that you're doing and how it links to the commercial outcomes. You're never going to be out there generating direct sales but you are contributing to a pipeline. So you've got to find ways to be creative to demonstrate that for sure.

official.

For sure, yep.

Brand. Yep.

Yeah, it's a really good question. think there's a specific reason why this is happening at the moment. And again, it comes back to the discussion around AI and oversaturation of content. there's a big discussion happening in a lot of quarters at the moment about trust and what you can and can't trust in the world. And I think when people are picking up on content that is very obviously machine generated, it has no human touch points or fingerprints that raises questions around, it fundamentally trustworthy?

If your brand is pumping out just faceless content at scale and there's no human involved in it, you might get some initial, you will definitely get the initial results around like interactions at the top level. The other bots will like that content, like they will interact with that content, but the humans who are making buying decisions are gonna probably take a step back and say what's actually happening here. So I think you're right from a leadership perspective, and this includes all sizes of companies.

it includes small consultancies like me and it includes big companies as well. You need to be able to present your face in the world. It doesn't mean that you need to be showing everything that you're doing. You don't need to be showing what you have for breakfast on social media. That's not what this is. But you do need to be able to, you know, in some way show that you are able to authentically engage in the public space. So whether that's regular posting on LinkedIn, it might be some photos. If you're brave enough to do videos, please try videos.

I'm all about doing videos in different formats at the moment. But if it's just endless reams of faceless content, ⁓ trust me on this, your buyers will be turned off during a very long process. Yeah.

you were!

Yes, it is so important. Yep.

Consistent doesn't have to mean that you're... ⁓

spamming people or being overwhelming you just have to have a regular cadence and once you start showing up don't suddenly stop showing up because that's just as weird like you know I'm gonna post every day for three weeks and then suddenly I'm not there anymore it looks really suspicious so ⁓ I think it's best to start with something that you know you can manage so you know potentially you know you go I can manage once a week on LinkedIn do that start with that see how that goes and then you can scale up rather than starting out big bang and having to pull it back and looking like you've completed

failed on something. Yeah.

Mm. Yeah.

And it depends again on the channel and the purpose as well. So I do a bit of video for LinkedIn and that is not super polished at all. Like it's just me, I have a tripod, I just sit down and I talk like we're talking now. No production values going into it or whatever. But if I was making a...

you know, if I was working for a client, needed to make something that was really important going out to investors, then we'd probably need to invest in something with a little bit more polish. So it's just thinking about what's appropriate for the channel and for what you're trying to do. If I had to produce polish LinkedIn videos every couple of weeks, which I'm doing at the moment, it wouldn't happen. I just do not have the time or the budget for it. So, and like on something like LinkedIn, which is a social channel, people don't want polish. They want just to hear what you have to say.

Just start and you don't have to have a huge amount of planning. you know, just post once a week on LinkedIn, commit to a day. And then the actually important thing on LinkedIn as well is that you're engaging with other people on LinkedIn. So connect with people you need to be connected with.

like their post, comment on their post, give a little to get a little. That's all pretty straightforward. And it takes a little bit of time to get traction on social platforms in particular. So you might not see results on LinkedIn for three weeks, but don't stop because you're not getting results. Like a lot of people stop just before they hit that critical mass. Keep going. Even if it feels like you're shouting into the void, keep going. Yep.

It takes a while to train any algorithm, it's a machine. So whether you're on Instagram or LinkedIn or you know, whatever, takes, it can take weeks or months to train the algorithm. That requires consistency and it requires relevance and all those good things that we know about.

I can't touch TikTok. Yeah, I can't touch TikTok.

So.

It is, yes.

You

Yeah.

Yes, I think as marketers and as human beings, we're trained to sort of chase the dopamine effect. So you see a like on your content, you're like, my God, job done, I've been successful. But the thing that you come to learn is that likes on social media posts don't actually get you paid at the end of the day. What gets you paid is the business opportunity at the end of it. So yes, it's nice and gratifying to see all the likes, but what you really actually want is that...

of consistency that leads to conversations and business opportunities because I'm all about getting paid at the end of the day it's not just about having likes and shares on Instagram or TikTok. So you know and what you talked about is a perfect example of you you build an audience then you nurture the audience then eventually you monetize the audience as well it's a classic three-step process so you know once you've done that you're laughing.

It is. Yep.

Nurture them, nurture them and then you monetise them. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah.

All right.

Yeah, well I think like you gotta then take it.

Take it back from the activity. So the activity is posting once a week. The steps before that is working out what you're trying to do. So why are you posting once a week? Like who are you trying to reach? Like there's no point posting on LinkedIn once a week if you're not connected to the people on LinkedIn that you want to reach. So to get started, like I'm not the biggest write a 20 page plan type person. I actually hate that kind of stuff, but just give yourself a simple one page of like who you need to reach, what you want them to do, what's the action you want them to do.

and how realistically you can get there. Maybe the first step is not to start posting on LinkedIn, maybe it's actually to connect with people on LinkedIn that you need to be connected with and then just start posting a little bit of valuable content once a week. You don't have to do it all at once, just do it in steps that are gonna be manageable for you. But it always helps to know first what you're trying to do and why, rather than just jumping into activity for the sake of it.

Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

You could record a conversation of yourself with a colleague or a peer, just like what we're doing now, and have a conversation about something you're both interested in, and then go and transcribe the conversation and get six months worth of content out of that. LinkedIn posts aren't essays, they're insights, short, sharp insights.

Ha ha ha. ⁓

For sure, OnlyGoodContent.com, it's a of a mouthful, that's my website. And ⁓ if you look up Caroline Warren's on LinkedIn, I'm there, I'm not the vet, I'm not the children's book author, I'm the marketing content person in Australia.

There is, yes. There definitely is. Don't do that to me. ⁓ Thanks for having me.

Absolutely.

Just get started, don't overthink it. Just get out there and do it because you have to. You have to be visible if you want to be successful.

Thank you so much, Simon. I appreciate it. Thank you.