Unlocking Growth: Building a Marketing Ecosystem for Lasting Success

Brandi Starr [00:00:34]:
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Revenue Rehab. I am your host, Brandi star and we have another amazing episode for you today. I am joined by Angela Frank. Angela is a fractional CMO with a decade long track record of generating multi million dollar marketing revenue for clients. She is the founder of the Growth Directive, a marketing consultancy helping brands create, create sustainable marketing programs. Her new book, your marketing ecosystem, how brands can market less and sell more, helps business owners, founders and corporate leaders create straightforward and profitable marketing strategies. Angela also hosts the growth pod podcast where she shares actionable tips to help you build a profitable brand you love. Angela, welcome to Revenue rehab.

Brandi Starr [00:01:28]:
Your session begins now.

Angela Frank [00:01:32]:
Brandi, thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here.

Brandi Starr [00:01:35]:
Yes, I am excited to talk to you. I know you have done some amazing things in your career, but before we jump into our topic, I like to break the ice with a little Woosa moment that I call buzzword banishment. So tell me, what industry buzzword would you like to get rid of forever?

Angela Frank [00:01:57]:
Well, mine is actually a statement and it's incremental to the business. I think that if you are creating a marketing strategy that's growing your brand, you shouldn't be worried about incremental growth. You should be looking for those huge unlocks in your marketing that can take you to the next level. Nothing really should be incremental. Little tiny improvements.

Brandi Starr [00:02:21]:
I was going to say, yeah, being a consultant, I definitely have heard that quite often. And I think the spirit of it is kind of in the right place. It is that going back to the, you can't boil the ocean. Like, we gotta start somewhere and focus somewhere. But I do agree with your perspective that, you know, small changes can lead to big results. Like just cause the changes are incremental doesn't mean the growth has to be. So. I love that.

Brandi Starr [00:02:54]:
And I think that is a perfect segue into our topic. So now that we've gotten that off our chest, tell me, what brings you to revenue rehab today?

Angela Frank [00:03:04]:
Well, what brings me here is to share how brands can use a marketing ecosystem to grow from seven figures to eight figures and beyond.

Brandi Starr [00:03:13]:
Awesome. Yeah, I think there is, you know, you think about growth of businesses, there is that period of like those there's those different milestones of like, you know, there's the first getting to 1 million, then there's getting to the 10 million, and, you know, there's all these different levels. So going from that seven to eight figures is, you know, definitely a hurdle. And a lot of people, you know, do take it in very small increments to play on the buzzword. And I believe in setting intentions. It gives us focus, it gives us purpose, and it also lets our audience know what they should expect from our conversation today. And so what's your best hope for our talk today? What would you like people to take away from, you know, hearing our discussion?

Angela Frank [00:04:02]:
Yeah. If I could sum it up in one word, it would be ease and bringing that not only into your life, that's my personal mantra whenever I'm trying to find some quiet in my life. But I think you can bring it into your business and your marketing as well, and we'll dive a little bit deeper into that in our conversation today.

Brandi Starr [00:04:19]:
Awesome. I love that. Summarizing it in one word and ease, it definitely gives me that Zen feel, which we don't often feel in business. So I want to start by just setting the stage. I know that you've had a lot of wins in your career, one of which we had chatted about briefly in the past, and that was where I. You took a b two b company that was in the event space. You took control of their marketing strategy and you took them to that eight figures in new pipeline in just over twelve months. So not at all incremental.

Brandi Starr [00:04:58]:
So tell us the story. Tell us, you know, what was going on in the company when you were brought in. What were you brought in to do? What did you do? I'm going to give you the floor to kind of lay the foundation of what you accomplished and then we can dig into some of the specifics.

Angela Frank [00:05:14]:
Yeah. So you hit the knee on the head. The company is in the b two b event space. Specifically, they do virtual events. So if you're trying to host a corporate Christmas party, but you have a dispersed team, they offer a solution for everyone to come together and celebrate, not only during holidays, but for client engagement as well. So you have kind of two sides to that. They're not really a problem. Their opportunity was that they were really a sales driven organization when I came in, which was great because everything we did from the marketing side had really strong sales support, which is why we were really able to grow so much pipeline in twelve months.

Angela Frank [00:05:54]:
But what I was able to do on the marketing side is create a marketing ecosystem, essentially creating a strategy that combines all of their marketing efforts. We also launched several new channels and we can get into that. But the TLDR on the growth is setting up a way where your email is laddering up to your website, is laddering up to your paid ads. Everything is creating this really cohesive experience with your brand where people are feeling supported that entire way through their journey. And then once somebody was a qualified lead, we were able to hand it off to that really strong sales team.

Brandi Starr [00:06:32]:
I love it. And I want you to elaborate first a little bit on ecosystem, because this is one of those words that I think has been banished probably a couple times on revenue rehab, and not because it's not a good word, but mainly because so many people use it so differently and it doesn't always resonate because it's like well, what do you mean by it? So my first question is tell, tell me a little bit more. I think you hinted at it, but tell me a bit more around what it means for you to create a marketing ecosystem.

Angela Frank [00:07:05]:
100% I think this term is widely misused, so I'll talk about that and then we'll move into what I'm meaning to kind of orient ourselves for the conversation. But I've heard a lot of people use ecosystem as oh, then they come into my ecosystem and we're able to nurture them this way and they use it as a broad term for any time somebody interacts with the brand. When I'm using the term marketing ecosystem, what I mean is we're thinking of our marketing almost like a living organism and we're trying to see how we can continue to grow and evolve what we're doing and connect everything together. So that experience is super seamless. One of the blind spots that I've seen with cmos that I've worked with previously is that they've come up through their very narrow lane of marketing. Maybe they're very used to demand generation running paid ads and so that's what they're most familiar with. Or maybe they came up through organic marketing and SEO, so that's what they're most familiar with. But they lack the understanding of how other channels interact with their own and they don't really get how to maximize the performance of a marketing department unless they've had this cohesive experience of creating a strategy like a marketing ecosystem.

Angela Frank [00:08:18]:
So when we're creating a marketing ecosystem, it really just means we're making sure that we have a cohesive goal for the brand and we're using consistent tone of voice through everything. So there's no surprise when somebody is interacting with the brand. When they're going from your instagram to your website, are you using the same colors and language? And is that a really cohesive experience? If someone's coming from a paid ad and signing up for your email list for a free download, and then they're doing more research on your YouTube channel, is everything really laddering up to providing the information that the prospect or the repeat customer needs to make that next purchase with you? Or are there gaps? And that's where I come in. I identify those gaps, show how we can create a stronger ecosystem, connect everything together, and make sure that everything's laddering up to creating that trust with a prospect and turning them into a customer.

Brandi Starr [00:09:16]:
Awesome. And you've got, you know, I think probably the hardest part of being a podcast host is my guests say such interesting things and my brain starts to really wander and I always gotta bring it back because I do agree wholeheartedly with what you're saying. And I think the thing that leads to a lot of this challenge is we have so many specialized marketers that everybody has their responsibility. If we think about the marketing manager level, it's usually a marketing manager of this thing. And so they all are operating in these, like they're a team, but they're operating in silos. And that, I think, is where you see a lot of those disconnects because, you know, there's not really anyone that is looking, you know, you think about like, a website you have, there's a ux person who, when you're redesigning a website, that there's someone whose role is to make sure that this user experience across the site is consistent and all these sorts of things, we don't really have that from a marketing perspective. In, I'd say, most organizations, where it's actually someone's responsibility to figure out how do all the pieces fit together. Have you seen the same things in the companies that you work with?

Angela Frank [00:10:36]:
100%. In fact, I've even seen very extreme situations where there's a front end website, your marketing website, and there's also this backend or logged in website where someone is now signed in and going through that purchase process. And those two situations are owned by different teams that do not communicate. And so if you're doing an onboarding flow change, that's going to heavily impact your conversion rates. And so if this team who's doing all this downfunnel testing is not working with the marketing team, then the marketing team isn't knowing why the conversion rates are dropping off. If they're running a test and, and you're not working together and communicating, it can become very extreme.

Brandi Starr [00:11:19]:
Yeah, it's funny you bring that up. I literally just gave feedback to a client. They had me review a campaign for them and provide input. And it was like, the website looks like one company and that was like their freshest version of their brand. When you downloaded, you know, whatever the thing was, you got emails. The emails used a completely different design. And then there was this free trial. And when you log into the trial system, it didn't even look like the same company.

Brandi Starr [00:11:50]:
I mean, it was literally. And I was like, okay, somebody's got to start talking to each other because I feel like I'm interacting with three different companies and that's just downloading a white paper, getting some emails and signing up for a trial. Like, I haven't even seen what happens when I actually log into the product. And so I do agree that that is like taking that ecosystem approach. You start to really make sure that you are thinking about the whole more than thinking about the pieces 100%.

Angela Frank [00:12:24]:
And I actually love that you bring that up because something that I like to share a lot about is this concept of creating psychological safety with your marketing, which is a term I've borrowed from behavior psychology, making sure that you're fostering a strong team environment. So if you're trying to foster a strong team environment and someone comes to you and says, I messed up, and you say, well, you're on probation, you have a lot of trouble coming, you're going to have to clean this up. They're not going to come to you. Next time they make a mistake, they're going to hide it and it's going to become this big problem later on. Whereas if you say, okay, you know, I thank you for sharing this, let's figure out how to work through it together, that's a lot more of a positive experience. And so just like you were saying, Brandi, when you have this disjointed experience from downloading a white paper and receiving emails that look different and the logged in experience looks different, then you're creating this moment of doubt in somebody's mind where they're not feeling secure in this transaction that they're making with your brand, something feels off and so you're not rewarded their experience interacting with your brand and so they don't really have a reason to continue interacting with your brand. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't all work together in their brain.

Brandi Starr [00:13:38]:
I love that as well. We talk a lot about psychological safety just internally, and making sure that we create a culture that does foster that so that everyone feels like they belong and they can have the freedom to know. Not freedom's not the right word, but they can make a mistake and don't, you know, feel like they're going to get their hand slapped or whatever. I do want to shift gears just a little bit because I just had a thought as I was, as you were talking. So I mentioned how on the website there's usually a person who's accountable for, you know, ui ux. Where do you think this role of looking at the whole ecosystem, where does that sit? Like, whose job is that? Is that something the CMO should be leaning into? Is that too high up? Is this like a manager level position that should exist that we don't have? Like, how do we make sure? Because I feel like a lot of people where it is kind of like not my job, like I don't have the visibility, I don't have the authority, whatever it is. And I'm sitting here thinking about how you solve this. Where do you feel like that lives?

Angela Frank [00:14:49]:
I think it lives at every level of the marketing or revenue organization, including the SDR or sales development representative function. Really giving everybody, make sure that what they're doing in their role is working with.

Brandi Starr [00:15:17]:
Yep, I can hear you.

Angela Frank [00:15:18]:
Well connected there. Can you hear me? All right, great. So making sure that everything that everyone is doing in your is working within the broader context of the ecosystem. Of course there needs to be ownership at the manager, director, VP, CMO level, whatever you have in your organization, somebody who is holding the team accountable. But when I come in and work with an organization, my role is to empower everyone and say, you know, I know that you own email and that has been your silo, but what you are able to do in this position when you are working with paid ads, making sure that the campaigns make sense given the context of where they're coming through, making sure that it gives, it makes sense given the context of how somebody is interacting with the user experience on the site, you're going to be so much more successful in your role and what you're doing. And so I really try to give everyone the tools that they need and empower them to use them to create this ecosystem at every level of the organization.

Brandi Starr [00:16:19]:
I like that. And I do think, yeah, there is, I think where it starts at the top in setting the stage of what this ecosystem should look like and how the pieces should fit together and then everybody takes that accountability to make sure that they're component of it is aligned. So I want to jump back because we went down a different direction of some really important things, but I want to get to this billion dollars. So I know you talked about that. There were some new channels that you implemented. Talk to me about what you did when you came in. How did you move with such. Because I would consider getting to a billion in pipeline in a twelve month period.

Brandi Starr [00:17:09]:
Rapid growth and not incremental. So tell me more about what you did, what you rolled out new. Give us a deep dive.

Angela Frank [00:17:17]:
Yeah. So when I came in, there was one person really sitting in a marketing chair as a graphic designer, who also owned the email function. And so my first order of business was to chat with her, see how things were going and get up to speed as far as everything that was going in marketing, as well as working hand in hand with the founder to get the same information. Sort of a fact finding mission, if you will. The next thing is that I needed to identify people on the team who we could move into marketing chairs and have them more solidly own a marketing function, as well as creating a new SDR function to support the lead volume that we were getting. After that we had the team, we had the way to nurture the leads and move them over to the robust sales team that already existed. We needed to sit down and figure out where our next lowest hanging fruit is. So for us, it was a complete website rebuild.

Angela Frank [00:18:18]:
The website was really quite old, it was built in Wix and the user experience was really lackluster. And so we built a whole new website. We added a bit of an e commerce function where repeat customers wouldn't necessarily need to go through an AE, they could just reserve their dates online and go through because they already understood the flow. And so that was really instrumental. First starting with that website rebuild, then we built out paid or we built out email to support that. At the same time really reworked the email strategy. The graphic designer had so many projects on her plate, she really needed that partner and strategy for what emails made sense to send out. When were we really needing to send two emails a week? Or could we send one super high value email per week? And we played around a lot with that to improve the email function that already existed.

Angela Frank [00:19:13]:
Then we built out paid ads and organic social as two entirely new channels. And the organic social piece, one of course was to bring in some organic traffic, but two to create a more, to create an improved community experience. So when people were doing their virtual events. It was really fun for them to share on social and we could share back and it really created this improved community experience which led to repeat customers ordering at a higher frequency than they were before. And then that paid ads, of course, was prospecting. We were trying to find new people and bring them in and qualify them with the SDR and then hand them off to the sales team. And all of that together was really how we were able to create that eight figure pipeline in less than twelve months.

Brandi Starr [00:20:08]:
I love that our approach in general sounds very aligned in starting with that public facing the website is always what people interact with most. It's the home of the business, so to speak. And so I do agree that you've got to get that right. And yeah, like we're getting to eight figures and you're still using wix. Like it's great when you're a startup and you need to get something done fast and you don't have a web team and those sorts of things. But yeah, there is a point there. And I also love the fact that in redoing the website, you implemented that thought process that you talked about around the ecosystem and the customer experience and being able to add that self service component because that just, you know, it's sort of like how PlG is a big motion. Like that's just, you know, allowing people to just hand you money there.

Brandi Starr [00:21:06]:
Yeah, so, so that's a good one. And then the fact that email was your next step before paid in organic is definitely speaking to my heart because that is what we are constantly preaching from the rooftops. You know, middle of the funnel is our focus and being able to figure out that once we get people to us, how do we get them qualified and ready to talk to sales? So I'd love to hear you dig in more around your strategy there and why you chose to focus there first before trying to drive more people to you through that paid and organic.

Angela Frank [00:21:46]:
Yeah, I love email, especially if a brand is already utilizing it like this b two b business was. I've had amazing wins, like launching just a three email abandoned cart sequence that started generating an extra six figures for a brand. And so it's always that next thing that I look to great, we have the website set up. How are we going to nurture people during the sales process? Keep them warm, and that's always email from me. And so this brand was already utilizing email and what we were able to do is create a new welcome sequence. There was no welcome sequence previously. They just went right into the flow, the newsletter, regular newsletter cadence. And so by welcoming people, warming them up to the offerings, and encouraging people to get with our SDR right away, we were able to turn people who were lurkers into people who are now actively taking that next step.

Angela Frank [00:22:43]:
In addition to that, we created a booking flow. Once somebody has become a customer, there's a lot of questions that they have that still may need to be answered. And so we went through the whole process, like, thank you for reserving. We appreciate your business, of course. And then here's what's going to happen next. Within the next seven days, your account rep will reach out and they will confirm these details. Seven days before your event, you need to confirm the guest list, and this is how you're going to do that and really just create clarity around that process. And then finally, we created a like, off boarding, thank you, welcome sequence that actually was disguised as like a reengagement sequence.

Angela Frank [00:23:27]:
Right after somebody was done with their event, they're at peak excitement. They had an excellent time. And so why not capitalize that on that and encourage somebody to book again at that point? So again, we shared some assets from their event that we were able to auto populate into the email and then thank them and then give them the next step for repeat purchase, which was real. All of those steps added incremental, incremental business for this brand, which was great. And so really, just by maximizing all of these automations, these things all ran on autopilot. We were able to create more pipeline for the brand with really minimal effort. There was no, you know, repeat elbow grease that needed to go into it after these things were set up. Of course, you can tweak and improve over time, but really that automated part of it is one of the reasons why I love utilizing email as that next best opportunity after the website.

Brandi Starr [00:24:28]:
Yeah, and I agree completely. And I think one of the things that you hit on that is so, so critical to getting email, right? Or really the two things was you talked about a lot of personalization and not just who they are, you know, or what company they're with, but personalization in that I know that you are at this phase of your relationship with us, whether it's, you know, they've scheduled and hasn't happened or, you know, potential repeat. So it's like using their journey as a personalization method and also taking the time to really think through that journey. You know, some people call them moments of truth or critical moments. There's all sorts of buzzwords around, you know, those different moments in the process. But what do they need at that moment? How do we make this a more seamless and enjoyable experience? In a way that is keeping them engaged. And from what it sounds like that the push for additional purchase and revenue was subtle in a way that it wasn't a buy my stuff, buy more stuff, buy some more stuff again, but more like just really being helpful and valuable. Is that a correct assessment?

Angela Frank [00:25:45]:
Absolutely. Everything that I do for marketing is trying to come from this really genuine standpoint. Like for repeat purchases, for example, you might be loving your experience, you had a great time, and you can actually save a little bit if you book your next amazing experience. And you can actually reserve for the holidays now in July because our holiday dates book up really fast. So wouldn't you want to book now and really creating that two way dialogue that, you know, we're here to help you, that trust with the brand, it almost goes back to that psychological safety. If people are feeling like you're trying to jam sales down their throat, you're just trying to make that next buck, they're not going to like that. And so why not come from this genuine place of we genuinely want to help you. We know that you have business objectives and this event was helping you accomplish that.

Angela Frank [00:26:38]:
And so let's keep this momentum going. Let's get your next one on the books. Let's keep growing your brand and always coming from this place of we want to help you achieve whatever your brand is actually created to help somebody achieve is going to be really great in your marketing.

Brandi Starr [00:26:58]:
Awesome. Well, the last topic I want to touch on is jumping back to something you said close to the beginning, and that's where you talked about some of the CMO blind spots. And you know, most of our audience is cmos vps of marketing, you know, folks who have been in their roles for quite some time. And we do all come up through the ranks generally in a particular, you know, area of marketing that we focused on. Many of us, like myself, have had the benefit of of working in different sort of specialties. But I want to hear you talk more about that blind spot and how not necessarily just this case study, but I know you work with lots of companies in what you're seeing and how that blind spot plays out that hinders cmos from achieving the kind of results you just described.

Angela Frank [00:27:52]:
I think the blind spot is operating from this siloed perspective. I think that working in different specialties and getting more of this generalist approach can help eliminate that blind spot as can like owning a business or being an entrepreneur, because you're forced to think on every level and really understand how things connect together. So if you are realizing that you came up through your individual silo in marketing and you don't necessarily have exposure to all of these other specialties, I always encourage people to just spend a day shadowing someone in their role, really learning the ins and outs of, you know, the email marketer. If you've always done paid or demand gen and you've come up through that silo and then shadow the Ux person and shadow all of these people, don't just speak to them in your one on ones, because they're, you know, trying to make sure that they're presenting themselves in the best light and making sure that whatever they're doing is laddering up to the growth goals of the organization. But when you shadow, you can see this is how somebody is actually queuing up the email and sending it out. And these are some of the processes that they have to work through. And you're really understanding at a fundamental level what they do each day. And this is going to help you understand the opportunities now for creating that ecosystem.

Angela Frank [00:29:15]:
Oh, I noticed that, like in your email flows, we don't necessarily have a follow up flow for somebody who downloads this white paper. What are your thoughts around that? And opening that dialogue and creating those opportunities for your team to collaborate on a more fundamental basis, I think is the key way to eliminate the blind spot. And we already talked a little bit about how blind spots can negatively impact the organization. Really, just creating that lackluster customer experience which is harming your conversion rates ultimately is the too long. Didn't read the TLDR on that. So by connecting everything together, you're going to create that revenue growth for your brand. And by shadowing people in your department at every level, you're going to really understand those opportunities that you didn't see before.

Brandi Starr [00:30:02]:
Yeah, and I agree completely. And I know, as you know, since I've been in consulting, as I've worked with different heads of marketing, I have strongly encouraged them to lean in and kind of dip their toe into the weeds here and there so that they understand what's possible. I can remember way back when, when I was doing eloqua implementations, there was portion of the training that I always, you know, strongly recommended that the CMO attend where we were going over the high level, what's possible. And it's like, you know, I know you don't need to devote two days to learning the ins and outs of where to click where to drag. But it is really important in having those conversations and even being able to communicate to other teams because understanding what's possible in email should help inform what's being collected and how things are being passed from the demand gen perspective and, you know, what gets passed down to sales. And so there's a lot that can be learned there. So I love your advice of whether it's shadowing or, you know, really just getting your hands in there. But I agree, it is so important for those, you know, to really understand what the people on your team actually do so that you're driving the strategy in an effective way.

Brandi Starr [00:31:27]:
And so, Angela, talking about our challenges is just the first step and nothing changes if nothing changes. And so in traditional therapy, the therapist will give the client some homework. But here at revenue rehab, we like to flip that on its head and ask you to give us some homework. So for those that are listening, if, you know, they are chomping at the bit to get that eight figures and pipeline and to really figure out how to create this marketing ecosystem that's going to pull together all the channels and their team, where do they start? What's the one thing where, what's the first step that you feel they should take?

Angela Frank [00:32:04]:
The first step is always creating a goal for your brand. And I don't mean, you know, we want to be making eight figures by next year. That's great and very important. But youre brand exists for a reason. It may be to improve somebody's health, improve their mental well being. And you need to create one sentence that communicates this to your entire team. And when you do this now your team knows what type of information we're trying to share in our marketing. So if you sell a toothbrush, your goal might be to improve the teeth of everyone in the world or something like that.

Angela Frank [00:32:42]:
One sentence, improve, let's say, oral care for the world. Now your marketing team knows. Okay, great. So we can send out teeth brushing tips. We can send out tips for just improving your, maybe if you have smelly breath, how to work through that. And all of this stuff really ladders up to that one sentence. That is where you start. And now you bring that into your entire ecosystem.

Angela Frank [00:33:06]:
Make sure it's on your website, make sure it's in all of your marketing. But you start there.

Brandi Starr [00:33:11]:
Awesome. I love that. And you know, sometimes it is the simplest things. Like most brands, they have a brand guide and it has messaging and you know, and this and that and the other thing. But being able to boil that down to one sentence, I do think is so important, and I think it's a good exercise to revisit periodically as well because it can evolve over time in terms of who you're trying to be, what you're trying to solve.

Angela Frank [00:33:40]:
Absolutely.

Brandi Starr [00:33:42]:
Well, Angela, I have enjoyed our discussion, but that's our time for today. But before we go, tell our audience how they can connect with you. Do the shameless plug for the growth directive. Tell us about the podcast. This is your opportunity to share.

Angela Frank [00:33:58]:
Yeah, if you enjoyed this conversation, then you'll enjoy the conversations that I have. Just like it on my podcast, the growth pod, where we share actionable tips for you to create that next growth unlock in your business.

Brandi Starr [00:34:13]:
Awesome. I absolutely love it. Well, thanks so much for joining me. We will make sure to link to both your company and the podcast in the show notes. So wherever you are listening or watching this podcast, check the show notes so that you can connect with Angela. So, Angela, thanks again for joining me.

Angela Frank [00:34:33]:
Thank you, Brandy. I really enjoyed our conversation today and thanks, everyone.

Brandi Starr [00:34:38]:
I hope you have enjoyed my conversation. I can't believe we're at the end. Until next time, bye bye.