I started my consulting practice as a Fractional CMO ten years ago. After decades as a B2B tech Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), SVP Marketing, General Manager, VP of Marketing, and VP of Product Marketing, I’ve done it all—digital marketing, product marketing, marketing communications, content marketing, solutions marketing, partner marketing and sales training and enablment.
Today, my passion is sharing my experience and expertise with first-time CEOs, technical founders, and first-time marketing leaders so they can build and manage a best-practice marketing strategy and function to grow their business to the next level.
Getting marketing off to the right start is critical for seed-level startups, yet you rarely have the funds to hire a senior, full-time marketing leader with a strong track record. I can fill this role on a part-time basis as a Fractional CMO and guide you towards a winning strategy, best practice execution, and marketing performance management and measurement while avoiding common mistakes and pitfalls. Along the way, I can coach internal resources towards implementing marketing best-practice processes, content and programs that deliver.
A common mistake for first-time CEOs and technical founders with series A funding is to hire an expensive marketing leader before they can attract top talent and without knowing what kind of marketing leader they need—branding, demand generation, digital marketing, product marketing, channel marketing, partner marketing, or domain expertise—what to expect from them, or how to manage them. In the course of acting as your Fractional CMO we figure this out together so you make the right hire at the right time and have the momentum to attract them.
Many late-stage startups have had a revolving door of unsuccessful marketing leaders, each of whom leave a mess of disjointed programs, priorities, marketing data, and excessive spending which need to be cleaned up before shopping the company for an acquisition. I am very adept at cleaning up this mess, getting marketing on a solid path, and mining the CRM data to understand what works and what doesn’t so that we can build a repeatable, predictable, and scalable marketing model and machine to sell to potential acquirers.
I am guiding them from an expensive and non-producing sales-driven GTM model to a marketing-driven model that has quadrupled monthly new customer acquisition while reducing sales costs by 80%. I have implemented a “Crossing the Chasm” process of breaking the vast market into subsets based on various criteria which we are targeting one at a time to gain traction and credibility.
While coaching on marketing best-practices, I helped their first-time CEO define their GTM strategy and build their marketing machine, product messaging, digital presence, lead generation model and CRM implementation. After a year, we knew the mix of skills they needed in their marketing leader and they had the momentum and buzz to attract an excellent VP of Marketing with industry expertise.
Over 10 years, they had five marketing leaders none of whom developed messaging and content that accurately and compellingly articulated their product and its differentiators; a demand generation machine that effectively supported sales; or a CRM implementation with reliable attribution. I fixed all of this and developed a coherent marketing story that contributed to a successful acquisition.
As a Fractional CMO, I am equal parts strategy, execution, and performance management. I can help you develop a go-to-market strategy or marketing strategy, execute that strategy, and measure its performance.
Every engagement and where I focus is unique based on the client’s stage and needs. Below are strategic, execution, and performance measurement services I have experience performing.
Together, we will develop a go-to-market strategy to bring your product to market and generate awareness and demand within your target market. This includes developing an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), creating unique value propositions with competitive differentiation for each stakeholder, determining where and how to engage the target market, and designing programs to educate, engage, and convert the target market into customers.
I have experience using the Geoffrey Moore Crossing the Chasm process of identifying a subset of your target market where you have the greatest potential to succeed, focusing your limited resources to win that market subset, and using the resulting momentum and credibility to expand into adjacent market subsets. Years ago, I was lucky enough to execute three crossing the chasm strategy with the guidance of Geoffrey Moore’s Consulting Group.
I’ll get to know your product, analyze your competition, research where your ICP hangs out, and their trusted sources of information. As your Fractional CMO, I’ll review any data you have available such as website analytics, lead generation results by channel, conversion rates from lead to MQL, SQL, opportunity and deal. I’ll then develop a marketing plan including the leads, programs, resources, and spend you need to reach sales goals.
I’ve successfully launched new companies and products dozens of times, once for Steve Jobs. As a fractional CMO I’ll get you off to the right start with the messages, technical differentiation, business value, digital presence, sales and marketing materials, content marketing programs, and press and analytics relations that make a big initial splash and keep the drum beat going.
Over the years, I’ve developed some best-practices in assuring a company’s external messages, presence, and programs are fresh, active, buzz-worthy, and clearly articulate value to attract and engage strategic investment. This includes building a repeatable, predictable, and scalable marketing model to sell to potential acquirers. As a Fractional CMO I have helped several startups get acquired.
I have a reputation for building bridges between marketing and sales and marketing and engineering—relationships that are often fraught with tension, conflict, and finger pointing. I’ve been in each department during my career and understand each’s need to be heard. As your Fractional CMO I can build a culture of cooperation, collaboration and communication between the three departments. If necessary, I can also act as your sales enablement consultant.
I’ll leverage the knowledge of your executives, sales team, key engineers, and customers to collaboratively and organically build a multi-level messaging and positioning platform using a proven process that drives cross-functional buy-in. When I act as a messaging consultant, the result will be grounded in the reality of your product, highlight the business value of your competitive differentiation, be search engine optimization(SEO)-ready and drive content for all communication channels and levels.
I’ve managed and mentored many marketing talents into star-level players with great future careers. I’ve been engaged as a Fractional CMO to build the marketing team, mentor first-time marketing leaders and junior marketing teams, and up the performance of marketing teams ready to get to the next level.
If you need marketing but aren’t ready to hire a full-time team I have a network of freelance specialists I trust that can act as your virtual marketing team and get you going. We’ll build your marketing automation infrastructure, digital presence, best practices, content, and programs you can take and build on.
Prospects often need to be exposed to a brand a dozen or more times before they engage. They need to see you appear in organic search results and in paid ads, they want to see you supporting the events and communities they are a part of, and they want to see your content on 3rd-party web properties they already trust such as industry media. Even with tight budgets, I have success with my Fractional CMO clients implementing multi-channel demand generation programs that perform.
Recent studies show that 65% of the sales cycle is done online before a potential customer engages with sales. I can implement a strategy that will educate, engage, and develop trust in your target market with webinars, whitepapers, videos, scripted demos, blogs, newsletters, infographics, and datasheets containing thought leadership and product content that match their stage in the lead maturation lifecycle and nurtures them into Marketing Qualified Leads that turn into Sales Qualified Leads and opportunities. Read about how I can be your content marketing consultant and digital marketing consultant as your Fractional CMO.
As an employee and Fractional CMO, I have led the building of dozens of websites from scratch and improved the performance of dozens of websites. After years of frustration hiring “black box” SEO agencies that did not deliver results, I learned how to do SEO myself and have doubled and tripled qualified website traffic for my clients. I can increase the search engine rankings of your website for relevant keywords and the qualified prospects opting into your marketing database by putting compelling content in front of them as they visit the site. So with me, you will get a website consultant and a Fractional CMO.
I’ll align sales and marketing and ensure your sales teams is a consistent voice with marketing by including them early in the process of developing go-to-marketing strategies, messaging platforms, and marketing programs. Acting as your Fractional CMO, I will put on my sales enablement consultant hat and provide sales training, sales presentations, and digital sales tools that advance sales prospects through the sales cycle and make your sales team more effective at selling.
I’ve been working with sales and marketing automation systems for over 20 years. I know how they need to be set up to effectively collect and nurture leads, as well as report on attribution, marketing program effectiveness, and answer the questions the Board asks. I have led implementations from scratch and cleaned up and reimplemented ten-year-old implementations with 100,000s of junk records. I’ll leave you with a lead funnel model, goals, and metrics. I have direct experience with Hubspot, Marketo, Salesforce, and Insightly, but I can apply the same best practices and principles to any system.
Over the years, I have developed a variety of best practices through trial and error, attending Marketing Growth and Product Marketing conferences, and working with the marketing analysts at Sirius Decisions, Forrestor, and Gartner. These best practices include website development, marketing automation, messaging, demand generation programs, and lead conversion metrics. I will bring all this experience and expertise to bear as your Fractional CMO.
The level of detail Board of Directors want in their reports vary, but I have some basics I make sure I always have at the ready. These include the number of new leads, Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), and Sales Qualified Leads generated in any timeframe. Sometimes marketing reports on Opportunities and Deals generated. In addition, I report on the marketing program and channel that generated the leads (attribution) and the cost per lead, MQL, and SQL by both program cost and fully loaded marketing cost. Some boards also like to see activity metrics such as the number of press releases, events, webinars, email campaigns and other programs.
I always develop a lead conversion model that tracks a lead from generation, to conversion to a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL), Sales Qualified Lead (SQL), and Opportunity. Depending on the client, there are sometimes additional stages. Using the client’s historical data and some industry benchmarks, I develop goal conversion rates for each stage and track actual lead progression against the model to evaluate marketing performance and validate the model’s accuracy over time. You will end up with a strong set of marketing metrics
When companies have a revenue goal that needs to be met, I put on my marketing metrics consultant hat and develop a reverse waterfall model. This starts with average deal size, monthly or annual recurring revenue, or total contract value. From there, we determine how many deals need to be closed in a timeframe and work backward to determine the number of Opportunities, Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs), Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), and new leads that need to be generated. From there, we determine the budget needed to generate those leads or how to generate the required leads given the available budget. Then track accordingly.
Regardless of your domain or target audience, I will become an expert by the end of our engagement.
My clients represent a wide range of stages from seed-level to late stage to public companies that acquired clients.
Guth Marketing Group provides Fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) services to seed-level, series A, and late-stage startups outside the four major US tech centers. Rich Guth had a successful career spanning decades, holding executive marketing positions at Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay area startups founded by technological leaders such as Steve Jobs, the father of internet email Eric Allman, the father of DSL Dr. John Cioffi, a pioneer in enterprise AI solutions Chuck Williams, among many others, Rich—now based out of Indianapolis—is sharing his experience and expertise with first-time CEOs and technology founders without access to the resources of the four major tech centers.
