How Can a Fractional CMO Transform Your Law Firm’s Marketing? with Angelo Ponzi

Angelo Ponzi (00:01.562)
Hi, my name is Angelo Ponzi and I’m a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer. My company’s called Craft. And where I focus is on strategy, on the strategic side of marketing. So what does that mean? I use market research to help companies better understand the market in which they’re competing in. Understanding their customers, their prospects, their competition, and using that information to build messaging and positioning strategies. And then ultimately,

Where do you want to be in three to five years? And I develop plans to help you get there. As you notice, I’ve only talked about strategy and planning and positioning. I’ve not mentioned tactics. Well, as a fractional chief marketing officer, yes, I do get involved in all of those. But I believe that you don’t deal with tactics until you have all the strategic work done. And thank you for having me today. I’m hoping we’re going to have a great conversation.

Karin Conroy (00:41.42)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (00:53.674)
Yeah. my gosh. I feel like that was a great introduction. Angelo, thank you for being here. Let’s start with that before I forget to say that. Because I feel like there was a lot of all the details that you said that we’re going to dig into and kind of explain in further detail. So that was a nice kind of overview of everything we’re going to talk about starting. Well, let me start first. The title for today’s show is, How Can a Fractional CMO

Angelo Ponzi (01:03.459)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (01:23.478)
transform your law firm’s marketing. So first, what I know you and I both get this question all the time. We have a fractional CMO program that’s called Marketing Co-Counsel. And the first question most people say is, what is that? What is a fractional CMO? And I know this fractional thing is all over the place. You see it in all the industries, CEO, CMO, CFO. I’ve seen CTOs, but basically every

version of a department within a company now has these fractional people like myself and yourself out there who are offering our expert level services on a fractional basis. I know in my background, I used to be a director of marketing at a major company and I know what that looks like from the inside. And then I began my business and I’ve had pieces of that throughout my

where I insert my expertise and my experience doing all of that with all my client engagement. But now this is very specifically driven to be that sort of role for these law firms. So Angela, let’s start first with explaining what is this? What is a fractional CMO?

Angelo Ponzi (02:43.972)
Yeah. So, so real simply, if you think about time, our time in a given week, we’re selling pieces or fractions of our time to companies, to law firms, for example. So a company will come in and say, I want eight hours of your time per week. And again, they don’t start off that way, right? We have to give them a plan, but basically they’re going to buy eight hours of our time per week. So 32 hours a month and, and.

Karin Conroy (03:04.524)
Right.

Angelo Ponzi (03:12.826)
you know, as a fractional, then we come in and we’ve used a lot of strategic work and planning and messaging and positioning, all the things I talked about. And that’s really simply it. You know, we used to call it outsourcing and contract work, but typically those engagements tended to be a little more interim in nature, which just means you’ve actually taken the rollover for a period of time versus I’m getting you a fraction of your time in a given week, month, whatever it happens to be.

Karin Conroy (03:40.928)
Yeah, we’re going to come back to the idea of the pay for time versus how the budgets are set up. And we’re going to get to that a little bit later, but first we want to, I want to cover more like what is it? How does it work? So let’s talk about how it relates to when someone hires you or I, I know you talked a lot about in your intro about strategies. So this is where we start. sounds like this is where you start and how

How does that work for you guys and why do you start with the strategy and how does that work?

Angelo Ponzi (04:17.828)
Yeah, ultimately when someone comes and said, Hey, you know, we need a new website, a social media program, PPC. And my answer is great. But who’s your customer? What motivates them? What are their behaviors? What, what do I need to do with all that tactical stuff?

Karin Conroy (04:29.185)
Yeah.

Angelo Ponzi (04:35.256)
And that translates to, well, we need to dig into the market, into your competition, understand looking for opportunities, looking for gaps in the market, in your messaging, your positioning, do you need to reposition? And by starting there, you have a really clear picture on what you need to accomplish when you get into the executional side. And that’s where we look at what is.

Karin Conroy (04:54.348)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo Ponzi (05:00.706)
that strategy standpoint and how are going to position you in the marketplace to differentiate yourself from the competition, to be relevant to your customers and without being relevant and we’re just throwing a lot of stuff at the wall and hoping that it sticks.

Karin Conroy (05:07.232)
Yeah. Yep.

Karin Conroy (05:16.318)
Exactly. I, while you were talking, was, I was thinking about kind of how our process works. And typically, we’re working with, you know, very, to very kind of, like narrow it down in an overly simple way. Usually it’s either a firm whose marketing’s not working or a firm who’s setting up a new firm, you know, and so they’re starting from scratch. And in the first case where they’re coming to us and it’s not working, it’s

almost always a problem of strategy. So they started from that, those tactics and the tactic driven idea. Usually it’s something along the lines of, and hopefully this rings true and sounds familiar to some of you who are listening. Somebody like a partner went to a conference and they’re sitting next to a guy and the guy says, Hey, have you heard of XYZ? And the partner’s like, we got to do XYZ, whatever it is, Twitter, TikTok.

Usually, it’s some like flash in the pan concept. Sometimes it’s like, my gosh, we’re not doing Google ads. But there’s no reason behind other than FOMO, like this fear of missing out. And the guy over there who seems like he’s got a big nice firm and looks like maybe he’s making some good money, he says, you know, and it’s like, this is not a strategy. FOMO is not your strategy.

Angelo Ponzi (06:42.542)
Yeah, exactly. I like to say hope is not a strategy nor is the, the field of dreams syndrome, which is build it and they will come. And I think that we’re, you know, that’s like the chasing shining objects, right? Somebody says, Hey, have you done this? I gotta go do that. And you gotta go do this, but it may not necessarily be right. mean, I deal with clients like, we want to be an Instagram tick tock. And it’s like,

Karin Conroy (06:45.972)
Yeah, crossing your fingers. Right. my gosh.

Karin Conroy (06:57.855)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (07:08.065)
Why?

Angelo Ponzi (07:08.206)
You’re manufacturing company. Nobody on TikTok is going to buy your services. So, you know, let’s, let’s look at where the best place to invest in the same thing. You know, I have dealt with a few law firms. can’t say that’s my specialty, but it’s the principles of marketing and, and, and strategy and execution and understanding apply everywhere. And

Karin Conroy (07:11.432)
Yes!

Karin Conroy (07:30.518)
Right.

Angelo Ponzi (07:32.218)
And it’s really understanding, you know, if you’re going to be in, if you’re an immigration law firm or if you’re a transactional, if you’re business or whatever it happens to be, you have to understand, you know, who your targets are, what motivates them, what changes their behaviors, why would they come to someone like you? And, and this might not be PC with your, your audience, but I mean, I can throw a rock and hit.

a whole bunch of lawyers at one time. Right? So how do you differentiate yourself from all the other packs? I belong to some networking groups that have a high concentration of lawyers. Sometimes they’re sitting in a meeting and there’s 15 lawyers, all slightly different and they’re really working hard to position themselves differently. They might all offer the same services, but at the end of the day, how do I position myself differently within that group? So someone says, I remember him because of…

Karin Conroy (07:59.787)
Absolutely.

Karin Conroy (08:10.443)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (08:25.92)
because he said this one unique thing. And so I was thinking about like the before and after of a firm who has come to us and they say, you know, our marketing doesn’t work. this guy, you know, one of the partners, he just doesn’t believe in marketing as though it’s some sort of a faith-based institution or something. And so the before typically how that looks,

Actually, I’m gonna have you explain, and I can step in and give some examples too, but where we usually start, what their messaging and positioning might look like versus what happens when we step in and kind of notice what might be missing and sort of resolve that and adjust that. What does that look like for you guys when you’re usually working with whoever your clients are?

Angelo Ponzi (09:17.048)
Well, I think that the biggest thing that where companies make a mistake and it’s hard for them to hear is they talk to themselves sitting in the boardroom or conference room with, you know, 10 lawyers, the senior lawyers sitting around talking about how they want to market.

Karin Conroy (09:25.43)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (09:36.096)
where they went to law school, know, nobody cares. Yeah.

Angelo Ponzi (09:37.338)
Yeah, who cares, right? They’re not buying their own services. And so that’s why I always say you got to get outside of that. I don’t care what the organization is. You got to get outside from talking to yourselves. You know, I tell clients sometimes in say in the manufacturing side, it’s like, how many of these million dollar wafer steppers are you going to buy this year? You’re not going to buy any. You sell them. So quit talking to yourselves about how to do that. A lot of case studies about mistakes that have been made. And I think once they do that and get out of

Karin Conroy (09:59.252)
Yes.

Angelo Ponzi (10:07.244)
of, again, just talking to us, get out there, talk to people that have hired them. Why did you hire us? What separated us? You didn’t just pick us out of a Google search, right? You talk to other companies or other firms. Why did you pick us? Just by understanding that can help create messaging and positioning and all that good stuff.

Karin Conroy (10:12.662)
Yeah, yeah.

Karin Conroy (10:30.59)
Yes. Yeah. Well, and like, like first take a look at your website and is it, who are you talking to? Like you were saying, and are you, what are you saying on your website? I can’t tell you the number of times. and it’s not just your website. It’s, know, all, but I’m just going to keep coming back to the website because it’s the easiest, most obvious, thing to start with. But I can’t tell you the number of times I’m talking to, you know, someone who’s contacted me and I pull up their site and I’m like, why does it say this?

Why does it say I do, you know, divorce lawyer in Pennsylvania? Like what, you know, who cares? That is not saying anything about you that I couldn’t already have probably figured out before I even clicked on your site. When I did a Google search for divorce lawyer in Pennsylvania, I already knew you were going to be a divorce lawyer in Pennsylvania. So, let’s, let’s say something better and more compelling. And here’s

The thing, and here’s the reason I believe most of them are saying kind of things that we’re laughing about right now, is that’s not easy. know, like it’s not the easy answer. The easy answer takes work and effort and you have to pare it down and you probably have a lot of things to say that you have to figure out how to simplify and make very compelling, it looks, once it clicks and it’s right, it does kind of look easy.

But it’s not.

Angelo Ponzi (11:59.162)
Right. Well, I think that it, and I’m glad you’re picking out a website. So I believe it’s like the calling card these days. People are going to go to Google. They’re going to search and number one, you better show up. And if you do, they’re going to go to your website. They’re not going to call you first. They’re not going to look at your business card, right? They’re going to go to see maybe who, clients you might have, or can they, they know somebody that can call and talk about you. Right. So referral partners are going to be extremely important.

Karin Conroy (12:12.491)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (12:24.15)
Yep. Even if they already have your name, even if someone has given you their name, they’re gonna Google you for sure to see just to get some kind of impression.

Angelo Ponzi (12:29.647)
Yep.

Angelo Ponzi (12:35.674)
Correct. And the other thing too is a lot of companies and law firms, they talk about the firm in a sense, You know, went to school, many years we’ve been in business, but at the end of the day, what are you gonna do for me? And so that gets back to that.

Karin Conroy (12:50.731)
Yes.

Angelo Ponzi (12:53.602)
relevancy and kind of a customer centric, you will, client centric conversation. If I come to you and I need a divorce lawyer or I need an immigration lawyer or business transaction or contracts, I want to know why it’s going to be important to me and be relevant to me, not necessarily that, you know, that you do it.

but explain it in a little different format to hook me in. Because ultimately that becomes very rational in conversation versus making an emotional connection. If you’re talking about a divorce lawyer, there’s already emotion connected. How can you relate to me emotionally to say, they get me, they get me before I even make a phone call versus, okay, I got 15 lawyers and they’re all saying the same thing. How do I pick one?

Karin Conroy (13:28.139)
Right.

Karin Conroy (13:34.165)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (13:40.61)
Okay, so this is a very tiny nutshell of an idea of how strategy sort of works. Obviously, it’s much more complex. There’s a lot more time and effort that’s gonna go into the details, and it’s clearly gonna be customized and specific to your firm. So this example may not apply, but this is just an example. So let’s talk about, okay, we’ve put this strategy together. We put a bunch of time and effort into figuring out who that client is, who the…

Angelo Ponzi (13:49.047)
Mm-hmm.

Karin Conroy (14:09.666)
what the rough idea of the message is and like how we’re going to approach all of the marketing and that’s strategy. So then how do you apply that to the, first of all, how do you choose the various elements that are going to be done next? So we’re assuming there’s going to probably be some website, either creation or updates. And then, and then what else? How do you figure that what else part?

Angelo Ponzi (14:36.922)
Well, part of it is looking at who I’m competing against by understanding what are they doing? Looking at, you yeah, what, you know, if, you’ve got five firms you’re competing against and every one of them is blogging, you know, I’m going to say, think blogging is probably something we need to do. We’re going to, you know, analyze what their, what their messages and stories are, break those down. But

Karin Conroy (14:41.653)
Yeah.

Yep. What’s the market?

Karin Conroy (15:02.21)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo Ponzi (15:04.566)
And then really kind of benchmarking that set. then, you know, I frankly just go on and type in, you know, jokingly divorce lawyers near me, right? And see who pops up and what are they saying? And what are those keywords?

And so really deep dive into what your competitive firms are doing and analyzing that. And that’s going to lead you to, do I need to be on TikTok? No, nobody else is. Is that really an opportunity? Maybe, maybe, but would I invest my money there first? Probably not. And I think part of it is about, is about being ever present, you know, getting out into the, you know, we, we’re,

Karin Conroy (15:37.142)
Yeah. Yeah.

Angelo Ponzi (15:50.01)
to your point way earlier, I can’t remember if we were talking pre-show or not, but it’s about being in the community and having people know who you are.

Karin Conroy (15:56.342)
Yeah.

Angelo Ponzi (16:00.271)
And every time you walk out that door, mean, you’re not only dealing with your personal brand, but your personal brand is being reflective of your company, of your firm. And you need to make sure you’re out there and that’s, whether it’s networking groups or giving presentations and speaking, you’re doing webinars and seminars. mean, you’re really putting yourself up there as a, know, thought leader, if you will. And that translates back.

Karin Conroy (16:22.164)
Yeah. Well, let’s, we did talk about this a little bit before we started recording, just this definition of like, what is marketing in general? Because what you’re talking about, I think a lot of firms initially talked to me about not thinking that that’s really marketing. So one of the big things that people say to me in our first calls is, well, we don’t ever do marketing because all of our leads come through referrals.

And we were talking about this ahead of time. It’s either that or something along the lines of our marketing plan is to hire a bunch of attorneys and have them bring in a book of business. And that’s, and they don’t even really see that as marketing, which it is. So let’s just start by saying referrals and the way that you’ve got your firm set up to receive referrals, you’ve done something there that would qualify under the textbook definition of marketing. So let’s

Add that into your plan and then let’s work accordingly around that to either support it, encourage it, make it better, have systems or something along those lines. let’s talk about what other pieces, like you were just talking about actually physically going out and networking. Yes, that’s marketing. Absolutely. What other pieces do people not think about in terms of them being marketing that you should consider when you’re thinking of your whole plan?

Ahem.

Angelo Ponzi (17:51.258)
Yeah, I mean, think part of it is, is looking at some of the big believer in integrated marketing. And so there, you know, there’s, there isn’t a silver bullet in our business.

Karin Conroy (18:02.188)
Right.

Angelo Ponzi (18:03.847)
And so you have to look at that. What’s that integration? Where are people turning to? You know, they’re, turning to referral to who are some of your referral partners could be CPAs, those kinds of things. So from a marketing standpoint, you want to really build that referral network and making sure they understand, you know, what your firm offers. And so that in itself is, a, is a big effort.

Karin Conroy (18:22.754)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo Ponzi (18:27.092)
not only deal with the people that you do know, but how do you, you know, if you will, drop that rock in the pond and watch the ripples go out, because ultimately you want to continue to expand that network. And so for me, that’s, that’s a huge one again, depending on the, industry segment, but that, that generates lots of opportunities. And again, at end of the day, if, if, if, you know, someone comes to you and says, Hey, I, met this Ponzi guy. Yeah. Yeah. I even know him.

Karin Conroy (18:37.303)
Yes.

Angelo Ponzi (18:53.454)
The first thing they’re to do, they’re going to go to my website or my LinkedIn. I mean, that’s where they’re going. So you have to look at all these various tools. in my case, LinkedIn is, the number one I do. do have Facebook and we have all those other channels, but at end of the day, it’s LinkedIn that is the, where we really do the driving. And so you have to get where people are to turn to. And I think that’s an area that from the referral network standpoint and just getting out and there’s gazillion networking groups out there.

and be out there and participate.

Karin Conroy (19:27.872)
Yeah, this is always part of our initial strategy discussion and it feels sort of, I’m not sure what the word is I’m looking for, but it doesn’t, it’s basically a conversation where it’s like, okay, what do you guys do? What works? And we kind of go back and forth about, okay, do you do networking? Are you active on LinkedIn? And we kind of talk through all of the things that you’re talking about because some of these things are sort of embedded in their heads.

And they’re not really thinking about it because it’s become so natural over however many years they’ve been working on. But it’s so important to sit down and really spend some time thinking this through in terms of what is really working. And that’s where the gold of your plan is. So let’s figure out like, where are those people? Where are your clients? And what do they listen to and care about? And then how do we build around that?

not just show up in TikTok and like, know, hey, we’re here. Let’s show up intentionally based on the fact that we know that your potential clients really watch a lot of a certain kind of thing, you know, but for a reason. So then we’ve got this idea, let’s say we’ve kind of sat down, figured out, okay, we’ve got these places that we know are working. It’s our referral networks, it’s maybe LinkedIn, and it’s maybe some other, you know,

networking thing or something like that. How do you then take that information and build a plan? And then how do you prioritize which things you do first and kind of, you know, how do you make that plan out of it?

Angelo Ponzi (21:09.466)
Sure. Well, part of it is, is what’s the budget. And, and so there are, there are kind of industry.

Karin Conroy (21:13.526)
Yeah.

Angelo Ponzi (21:20.834)
guidelines that are all over the place to kind of at least look at some benchmarks of where you should be from an investment standpoint. And then ultimately, once you have that is, you know, do you build a plan, a zero base budget plan and just put a bunch of stuff against it and then put a price tag and then, you know, have the firms say, it’s too expensive and now you’re juggling or do you budget by objectives and what you’re trying to accomplish? And so there’s lots of different ways

to approach kind of the budgetary aspect and what that cost and then ultimately looking at kind of your key tactical elements and then based on that budget I look at and then how do we allocate those dollars and what we need to do right if you’re blogging twice a month or blogging once a month or blogging five times a month you know is that giving you a return on investment and and the one thing we haven’t talked about is really tracking

Karin Conroy (21:53.984)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (22:18.166)
Yeah.

Angelo Ponzi (22:18.75)
The access to data, a lot of my background is in research and analysis and the data is there and to spend the time analyzing. of the law firms, most firms that I deal with, when they get a lead, they’re all excited. And my question is, where’d you get it from? And they go, I don’t know. We didn’t ask. Well, can we ask?

Karin Conroy (22:37.472)
Right. Yeah. That I feel like is critical failure if you are not tracking, you know, and even if it doesn’t have to be this super complicated thing, this should just absolutely be one of the first questions. Like, you who can I thank? How did you find us? Some basic, basic thing. And usually, like, especially if you have like an intake person and, you know, then a lawyer who may be talking to them.

Angelo Ponzi (22:57.562)
Mm-hmm.

Karin Conroy (23:05.684)
it’s okay to ask that question more than once so that you know that you have it covered because you want to just have even just this gut feeling about what’s working so that when I ask you that question, you don’t look so like deer in the headlights. Like you should have some sense without even really needing to look at the reports. Like, my gosh, everybody’s talking about the certain blog posts I wrote and that just went crazy. And they all, when the first thing they say when I get on the call is,

you I read this thing that you wrote and maybe it was, I wrote it on some other site. I saw this thing that you wrote or I saw this podcast you were on or whatever. And oftentimes they’ll mention it, but if they don’t, you have to be tracking that. You just have to.

Angelo Ponzi (23:49.882)
It’s really critical because, you know, if you look at and not to go all geeky bit, if you talk about, you know, attribution models, mean, you know, what’s, what’s, what’s the first touch, what’s the last touch. And there’s all, be a whole lot of stuff in between. you never really ultimately know, but they can say, well, I found you on the internet. So did you just go Google, you know, lawyers near me? Well, and then you find out, well, you know,

Karin Conroy (24:13.172)
Which part of the internet? Can we narrow that down a little?

Angelo Ponzi (24:18.848)
Actually, Bob told me about you guys and I wanted the internet. Well, they’re only thinking internet, yeah. So, so if I just trying to track that down and understand, I think over time, you can start to get a pattern on, you know, where your time and it’s money, but time is, is well spent in, being out there and, and, know, building the brand.

Karin Conroy (24:20.768)
Yeah. And then I went to the internet.

Karin Conroy (24:36.62)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (24:40.352)
Yeah, no, think that’s, and it’s important because don’t get distracted. You you mentioned these shiny objects, but I think a lot of people come in with that shiny object thinking this is top of my mind, so this must be the first thing that we address. Even though it’s very often the least likely thing to have any level of return or success or anything, because it’s just sort of a trendy,

whatever that everybody’s talking about. And speaking of that, so two things that I want to talk about, you mentioned budgets and I want to get back to that and talk about kind of how that works in a minute. But first, because we’re talking about sort of trendy topics, I want to talk about AI for a moment. I know it’s what everybody’s talking about. So just for a minute, let’s talk about how you can kind of use the data that you have and

The ideas that you have about your firm and your marketing and how can AI be a part of this or be integrated with this and where does AI fit into this whole idea?

Angelo Ponzi (25:49.508)
Sure. Well, AI is that’s another whole podcast because yeah, I actually have a new client that’s developing agents, but, so they were using a platform. we’re training the brain, we’re testing the brain, we’re getting it certified and, then it just starts to morph. So that’s a whole different thing. But if we’re talking about, you know, chat GPT and things like that, you know, it’s understanding that.

Karin Conroy (25:53.418)
Yeah, we could totally do a separate episode on that.

Karin Conroy (26:01.314)
cool.

Karin Conroy (26:08.758)
Amazing.

Angelo Ponzi (26:18.638)
there’s, four or five or six that, kind of bubble to the top. And it’s understanding how they deal with data. And some of these, can actually go in and say, don’t share my data, my questions with the rest of the world, like chat GPT. mean, it’s open. So anything you go in and you search now becomes part of their database. But I think it’s a good tool for ideation and

Karin Conroy (26:32.181)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (26:43.852)
Yes.

Angelo Ponzi (26:45.594)
And to give you certain ideas and directions, I don’t encourage people to, to write, you know, all their blogs with, with, with, chat GPT as funny story. I, I, about a year ago, I’m sitting in a meeting and a digital agency actually out of San Diego says, I just fired all my copywriters. We’re doing everything on, on, on chat GPT. it was like, seriously? And,

Karin Conroy (26:54.576)
No. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (27:05.346)
Karin Conroy (27:12.746)
and they think they’re being really like forward thinking, but it’s like, I mentioned this a few times and if anybody’s listening to any of the last few episodes, the best explanation of how to sort of think of it that I got from Gert Melich a few episodes ago is to think of it as an intern. So we’re not gonna have this, use chat GPT.

at like the partner level. We’re not gonna do this in high value, high stakes work. It’s an intern. And as an intern, it’s not even like the full time employee. It’s an intern that’s gonna be there for. So as an intern, I explain everything in very specific, clear detail. And then I would never take an intern’s work and make it public with my name on it.

So I am going to take everything, review it, put my own spin on it, but it’s going to do intern level work for you. It’s going to do, and it can do it so fast and so, you know, very good if you do it right and you keep it all within scope. So I just, I love that explanation.

Angelo Ponzi (28:25.624)
Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s really about the prompts. You know, I mean, there’s a whole new world of prompt engineering and, so it’s really about what you’re asking and how you frame it is, you know, garbage in garbage out. And I, and I won’t get this exactly right, but you know, the story of the lawyers that use it to write their case, their cases, and then took it to the judge and they got in a lot of trouble. And, that’s just, you know, if you don’t double check it, I was working on a

Karin Conroy (28:28.587)
Yes.

Yeah.

Karin Conroy (28:35.019)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (28:43.507)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (28:50.582)
That’s just dumb.

Angelo Ponzi (28:51.926)
a project and I said, I need a case study that supports this point. And so I asked chat GPT to find me a case study and it did. It was incredible. And then, and when I was reading, I’ve gone, this is BS. This doesn’t exist. So I can’t use this. you know, fortunately I didn’t do anything with it, but yeah. it’s under stick. yeah.

Karin Conroy (29:05.344)
Yeah, right. right. Yeah, because it will create fake stuff like that. so you, once again, you have to be super careful, but how can you take all of those? So you were talking about how you use it for ideation. How can you apply that to this kind of fractional CMO work? Obviously we’re talking, we started out talking about like very high level strategy and putting very detailed customized strategy.

Angelo Ponzi (29:20.866)
huh.

Karin Conroy (29:32.31)
you’re not gonna ask chat GPT to be your fractional CMO. Like this is not in line with what it’s functioning for.

Angelo Ponzi (29:39.498)
No. But you can use it for things like, you know, I’ll go on and say, you know, what are current trends that are going on in a particular industry or a particular XYZ? And I’ll get a list and I can sit there and say, OK, now let me go cross-reference these with some of the maybe industry publications or industry websites that are going on. And I can validate. But I might not have thought about that if I hadn’t.

Karin Conroy (29:46.219)
Yes.

Angelo Ponzi (30:03.138)
first step. So that’s kind of how I see it being used and being effective. Now, is it changing? Yes. I mean, I’m like I said, I’m dealing with a company that actually buildings eight people. I mean, it’s crazy and it’s scary. But it has its place, but it also has to be like, you know, done with caution.

Karin Conroy (30:17.356)
Yeah.

Angelo Ponzi (30:25.87)
that you just don’t believe everything, you know, do you believe everything you read on the internet? No. Same thing with chat GPT.

Karin Conroy (30:30.154)
Right. Well, and here’s another example. like every time I’m recording an episode, I use it to help me think of questions. So once again, it’s sort of this open-ended thing that I’m gonna obviously step in and adjust the questions, but I have a list over to the side of my screen of just ideas if we start talking about these things. And then I ask it like, be a little bit surprising. Give me something unique. Give me something that’s based on current trends.

And it’s just like, it just, you know, throws it all out there. And I’m like, that’s a good one. I hadn’t thought about that. So kind of along the lines of what you’re describing, but I’m not asking it to write a script for this show. I’m asking it to give me some things and angles that I might not have otherwise considered. Yeah.

Angelo Ponzi (31:16.698)
Well, and the interesting part of writing a script for this show is you don’t know me, right? And so no matter what it comes up with, unless you fed it lots of information about me, yeah.

Karin Conroy (31:21.662)
Right!

Unless I sent it to you also at a time and like, okay, here we go. This is what we’re going to say. That would be so weird.

Angelo Ponzi (31:34.119)
Yeah, and those shows are boring. Again, I don’t do it anymore. I took a three month break. It’s now two years later, but I ran a podcast for almost five years. And I remember the very first time, a couple of shows I did, I wrote all the questions and I gave it to the guest and they showed up basically with a complete script.

Karin Conroy (31:54.826)
Yeah, it’s so boring. Yep. Yeah.

Angelo Ponzi (31:55.13)
And I was like, okay, that’s not gonna work. And that was the end of that. And so then when people say, I have questions? And my answer was no. If you can’t answer these questions, you shouldn’t be on my show.

Karin Conroy (32:01.514)
Yeah. Yes. Right. Well, also, first of all, like you’re kind of goes to my skills as a host. but also it’s so boring to listen to that stuff. And I’ve learned the same thing. People will ask me for, like a pre-show meeting. And I’m like, no, no, because we’re going to say all the good stuff in that meeting. And then I’m not going to remember it. And I’m going to be jumping all over myself, trying to get back to that thing that you said that one time a week ago, when we talked.

It’s just not, it’s not, doesn’t feel natural and it doesn’t make for a good show. So same thing with AI. Like there’s a point when you overdo it and it doesn’t feel natural. It feels like robotic. Like obviously it is a robot. So, all right, so let’s get back over to the budget question. Cause this is like, it’s basically, those are the two big questions. What is that? And then how much does this cost? So you started to talk about how you can,

One method, and I mean, the short answer is it depends. And then there’s variations on how different fractional and CMOs do this. And one method you mentioned in the beginning is they just sign up for a chunk of hours. The way we do it, because I learned a long, long, long, long time ago not to do hourly work because it punishes people who are fast. And so I don’t do hourly work.

do it based more like a project type work. But what we do is we have a big long meeting, we evaluate what that firm needs. And then we talk about how many of those things, you know, we set it up kind of a year at a time, because most of these things take way longer than most people think. And one of our main goals and my main roles in my perspective is to stay focused. And so we set up quarterly goals and then

things always come up and it’s like, no, we can put that on the list. We will do that later, but right now we are doing this and this is what we talked about. And it’s that shiny objects syndrome. So that’s kind of how we set up our process. It’s set up on a year based on sort of quarterly goals. And then we take a look at what all those things are that we’re going to accomplish in the year, figure out the costs and then make it into a nice flat monthly fee. But.

Karin Conroy (34:21.783)
What are the other ways? How do you do that and what are some other ways?

Angelo Ponzi (34:26.34)
Well, yeah, I talked about ours, let’s not be misleading, right? Everything is based on need. So it’s same thing. We have a conversation. We understand ultimately what their concerns are, what their issues are, what are they trying to accomplish. In a lot of cases, we start with projects.

Karin Conroy (34:32.609)
Yeah.

Angelo Ponzi (34:46.296)
because they don’t, number one, totally understand fractional and do I need a fractional? So we start with some project work and in a lot of times we’ll outline all the project work and say, you know, here it is by project by project or.

you know, for a little bit more, let’s say you get me as a fractional, we’ll accomplish all the same things. The difference is for me, and I come from the agency world for many years, the difference is if I’m only doing projects, I’m focused on the projects.

Karin Conroy (35:17.398)
And that’s it.

Angelo Ponzi (35:17.582)
I’m not necessarily consulting and doing the things I might do as a fractional. We add that in. Now you get me as, your senior level marketing person on your team versus me just working on projects. And, and sometimes that’s hard to get, you know, somebody will call me, I’m saying, I need you to do X, Y, and Z. And it’s okay. That’ll be another project. they go, well, I just need you to do it and say, but it’s not part of our agreement. And of course I always get yelled at because I tend to do it anyway. And my partner says, why are you doing that for free?

Karin Conroy (35:26.314)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (35:46.582)
But this is, feel like this is kind of how this whole, for me for sure, is how this whole idea was sort of born, is because of what you just described. Like the understanding of hiring someone, hiring a contractor for a specific project, and then feeling like that doesn’t really cover it. And then I’m gonna email them and ask them about XYZ, and then I’m gonna get this pushback and I’m gonna be kind of irritated because I feel like,

that project didn’t really cover everything I needed. And my biggest example that I talked to a lot of firms about is the website is not a complete marketing strategy. That is a very small sliver of it. And what are you gonna do after that website is launched? Have you thought about it? Do you have a plan for that? Because if you don’t, this is the difference. So it’s not just the website. It’s the website plan, it’s the launch, it’s…

How do we announce the launch? How do we get that out there? How are we gonna promote and bring traffic to the website once we’ve launched? All of those parts that I just described are not part of a typical website build. And a lot of people think, wait a minute, when they get to the end of a website launch, it’s like, wait a minute, now what? And this is where it sort of all started, where it’s like, okay, yes, we can help you with that, but that’s a different thing.

And, you know, so then now it’s like, okay, let me come with a whole comprehensive plan because I get it. I can see what’s missing. And so that’s the difference from, you know, how we do stuff.

Angelo Ponzi (37:26.638)
Yeah, well, I think you said something important and I’m going to reemphasize it is, just building a website doesn’t really mean a whole lot of people can’t find it. I finished a project last year. We spent all this time doing all this strategic work, the first out of the shoot was now we get to redo all your website work. And so when the website was done, they were saying, okay.

Karin Conroy (37:37.547)
Yeah.

Angelo Ponzi (37:50.938)
Thank you. You know, basically, thank you very much. It’s a whoa, you don’t get it. People aren’t going to come find this matter of fact, the long story short, the project that we work on, the client that we work on was a division that had basically almost non existent over 20 years. And we’re trying to bring it back to life just because a website got built doesn’t mean people are going to find it.

Karin Conroy (38:12.532)
No.

Angelo Ponzi (38:12.876)
And so we had to show them, here’s all the plans, everything you just talked about. And I think people make mistakes. think once the website’s done, they’re done. And that’s just the beginning.

Karin Conroy (38:20.692)
It’s magic. Yeah, exactly. comes, go back to your field of dreams. If you build it, they will come. No, that is not how marketing works.

Angelo Ponzi (38:27.011)
Exactly.

Angelo Ponzi (38:31.674)
I worked with a client in the luxury watch space a couple of years ago, actually about a year and a half ago. And when the owner came in, when I met him the first time, he said, who do you think my number one customer is? I said, well, it’s got to be somebody with a lot of discretionary money because I could either buy a car or I could buy a watch, right? He goes, no, it’s Google. He’s like, Google? And over the course of the next eight, nine months that I worked with them,

Karin Conroy (38:38.208)
Yeah.

Angelo Ponzi (38:59.202)
I drank the Kool-Aid. I mean, I started writing articles and giving presentations about it because ultimately, if you’re not, it’s not about building the site and it’s not just showing up in Google, it’s showing up on page one. Cause people don’t go to page, very seldom go to page two and they certainly don’t go to three, four, five and six. So if you’re showing up as number 97 on the list, you’re not being seen, right? So it’s.

Karin Conroy (39:11.979)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (39:23.5)
So he was sort of saying that he has to play Google’s game and kind of do the Google dance in order for to be found basically. So he’s not actually selling watches to like Google employees. He was just like, yeah, got it. Okay. Yeah, got it. Okay.

Angelo Ponzi (39:27.055)
Yep.

Angelo Ponzi (39:32.705)
Exactly.

No, no, no, no. He’s using Google to be found. Yeah, no, absolutely. And it’s understanding that importance. I think that’s, you know, this part of the conversation is it isn’t just about building the site. It’s about how do you drive traffic there? How do you get people to come there? How do you know? And that’s, you know, extremely important that that’s going to be your key area for messaging.

Karin Conroy (39:49.195)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (39:56.758)
Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. It is time for the book review. As you know, we have a thought leaders library where all of our guests offer a recommendation for a book review that they think that you should definitely pay attention to. So Angelo, what is the book you think all these lawyers should have on their shelves?

Angelo Ponzi (40:17.178)
You know, I thought about this and I certainly have a lot of choices, the one I don’t know if you can even see it here. There we go. There it is right there. It’s called the Revenue Growth Habit by Alex Goldfine. G-O-L-D-F-A-Y-N.

Karin Conroy (40:23.799)
perfect. yeah, you even have it. Yes.

Angelo Ponzi (40:34.298)
And the book is really interesting. It’s about creating these daily habits to grow your business. His position is the simple art of growing your business by 15 % in 15 minutes a day. And so it’s really a very structured, here’s what you need to do. Here’s how you go out and actually ask for a testimonial. Here’s what you do every morning, those kinds of things. And I’ve used it, I saw him speak about four years ago, I think.

Karin Conroy (40:40.461)
I like that.

Karin Conroy (40:53.227)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo Ponzi (41:01.336)
And I’ve actually incorporated for a couple of clients his process because it just simplifies it. Cause ultimately you can build the whole structure. mean, I’ve got a client that I’m working with and it’s like, we’re, we’re, you know, doing it. on the tactical side and we’re doing social posts and all this kind of stuff. And like, I’m the only one liking and reposting. It’s like,

Karin Conroy (41:07.619)
I like that.

Karin Conroy (41:22.932)
Angelo Ponzi (41:23.316)
No, your guys in your company, they need to do it, not just me, right? And to get people to understand it isn’t just about that you did it, you need to do something with it and keep it action. But this is a really good book. It’s an easy read, but it’s very instructional.

Karin Conroy (41:25.812)
Yeah, right.

Karin Conroy (41:33.77)
Yeah, that sounds amazing. I say all the time, the two most underrated really kind of tactics that I believe in for marketing are patience and consistency. Patience, number one. Number one, like, you know, some of these firms have been out there for decades working on their Google ranking and you can’t just come along and like next week overtake them. Like, it’s just not, that’s not realistic.

So let’s have some patience with what is a realistic expectation and then consistency. like, is a genius idea to think about what you can do in a realistic 15 minutes a day. Was it 15 minutes a day or 15 minutes a week? Okay, perfect. Yeah, and getting out there and just like being consistent because as soon as you fall off, you know you’ve seen a million different accounts where all of a sudden you look at the account and they haven’t posted in four years and it’s like,

Angelo Ponzi (42:16.346)
15 minutes a day.

Karin Conroy (42:30.828)
They must have either gone bankrupt or whatever, but I’m going to move on because I’m assuming they’re no longer in business. And that’s the worst thing you can do.

Angelo Ponzi (42:38.392)
Yeah, that’s a great point. know, you’ll talk to somebody and I’m sure you’ve been in this situation. They go, yeah, we blog. Last time you blogged was like two years ago. That’s not blogging.

Karin Conroy (42:44.386)
it’s so bad that and then, that’s number one super red flag. I look at a website number two, kind of unrelated, but is your copyright date on the bottom of your footer on the bottom of your site. Just check those two things. If they are outdated, change that today because it’s a really bad first impression and we all see it. It’s really, it’s just like having your fly open or something. It’s just, it’s bad. It’s bad.

Angelo Ponzi (43:12.397)
It is bad.

Karin Conroy (43:13.89)
All right, Angela, what do you think is one thing that everybody gets wrong about this? And there’s a lot because this is sort of a newer, newish concept, but what does everybody get wrong about fractional CMOs?

Angelo Ponzi (43:27.162)
I think, I think it’s partially expectations and not truly understanding what the role is. and in working, so for, know, again, for me working with the client to really kind of outline what we need, I’ve just presented a proposal, for example, to a prospect, after a first, literally.

Karin Conroy (43:35.327)
Yes.

Angelo Ponzi (43:50.828)
less than this podcast in time. He was like, okay, give me a proposal. And I said, I don’t know anything really about you guys. I need to dig in. Right. So it, and then, you know, it’s like, well, you know, we need this, you know, the tactical stuff. And it’s like, no, here’s what you really need. So I think there’s an expectation, but, but the other side is, is understanding that the role that we play as, a strategic leader and not the tactician.

Karin Conroy (43:57.152)
Right.

Karin Conroy (44:04.491)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (44:15.201)
Yes.

Angelo Ponzi (44:17.658)
And I think that’s the biggest it’s ultimately, it always evolves to, so who’s going to implement the, are you going to implement the stuff? No, I have some people I can use, but no, I’m physically not going to do this. I’m, I’m the guy up here creating, you know, the vision and helping you paint that roadmap, if you will. But, but we need it executed. And I think that’s probably the other thing it also after a while, it starts to morph into that tactical aspect and they start to see us a little bit differently.

Karin Conroy (44:24.278)
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Karin Conroy (44:46.858)
Yeah, I think that’s really true. Like thinking, taking that step back and thinking of it big picture where, you know, we are going to keep, and I feel like most marketing decisions need that step back too. when, you know, for example, even when, you know, this podcast, I put it on YouTube and I had to take a step back at a certain point and say, what is my point? Why am I on YouTube? And it’s really not to go viral.

I do not want to do that. I do not want to have millions of hits because that just means a lot of garbage, to be honest. A lot of people that are definitely not my potential clients and then having to filter through all of that. for me, it’s really important to have a realistic reason for doing these things and then remind yourself of that. When you start to get a lot of traffic or something at that place, it’s like, that’s nice, but that’s not what I’m there for.

What I’m there for is cross-links and being able to have a visual thing and a lot of other branding type strategy reasons. But once again, when I start to look at the traffic and I have to remind myself, okay, no, stop, that’s not it. That’s not the thing. I don’t care about that. Remember, I don’t care about that. But it’s a really important thing to remind yourself because everybody else, especially in social media, there’s a big push for this whole other thing.

for you to care about. And so if that’s not your goal, you probably do need to kind of remind yourself from time to time, like, okay, we’re just there to really target this pretty small group and it’s okay if we don’t have tens of thousands of likes if it is hitting the right target. So, you know, that’s the sort of sub part of that statement is let’s make sure it is doing what we want it to do.

Angelo Ponzi (46:40.088)
Well, especially if you’re dealing with a national firm, a local firm, right? If you’re dealing with a firm here in Orange County and that’s their trading area, if you will. Well, that kind of puts a fence around things that you might do versus if you’re trying to build a brand across the country or in multiple States. And I think the other thing you kind of said it and I want to reiterate it.

Karin Conroy (46:43.329)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (46:47.573)
Yeah.

Karin Conroy (46:57.089)
right.

Angelo Ponzi (47:03.566)
You didn’t say it this way, but you can’t set it and forget it, right? You have to revisit. It’s a plan. You know, it’s, it’s operational. have to make our Yuan plan or you’re hitting your goals. Do we need to refresh? And it’s a living breathing entity, if you will. and so, that becomes extremely important, for any organization.

Karin Conroy (47:06.718)
Yes.

Karin Conroy (47:23.52)
And we didn’t spend a whole, I did write down to talk about this, but we kind of ran out of time about the data and the numbers, but it’s really important to, when you revisit it, we’re not just going on hunches, we’re looking at the numbers. What is really working? And oftentimes you’ll be surprised. I am often surprised by like which blog posts do well and I have this thought, this one’s gonna do great. No, it’s this other one. And you need to go in and actually see the reality of what’s happening.

Angelo Ponzi (47:37.7)
you

Karin Conroy (47:51.942)
and then put your efforts towards that based on the numbers and the data, not based on what you wish it would be. Yeah, awesome. Exactly, exactly. Angelo Ponzi is a fractional CMO and we will link to the book, obviously, but also all of your links, your LinkedIn and website and your blog posts and all that good stuff on the show page. But thank you so much for being here. I love this conversation.

Angelo Ponzi (48:00.411)
Exactly. Yeah, the market’s telling you what they want.

Angelo Ponzi (48:19.298)
Yeah, thank you so much. It’s been fun. I love it when they’re fun.

Karin Conroy (48:22.986)
I know exactly.