Molly Ruland:

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Camp Content. Joining us today is Kari Franz, a standout marketing veteran with over 35 years of experience at fortune 100 firms, including Google Cloud, Adobe, and GoDaddy. As founder of Brigid Brigid Marketing Services, Kari excels in transforming robust ideas into dynamic omnichannel marketing campaigns that significantly boost brand recognition and generate a steady stream of quality leads. Known for her innovative and analytical mindset, Kari has been a catalyst for phenomenal growth across national and international markets, which I’m excited to dig into, especially being from Costa Rica right now. In today’s discussion, she’s gonna share her experts on being a fractional CMO, her strategies for global go to market plans, and how to craft unique marketing strategies that differentiate you from your competition. If you’d like to reach out to her, all of her links will be at the bottom of the show notes here, but let’s, let’s get right into it.

Molly Ruland:

So thank you for joining us today on the show, Kari.

Kari Franz:

Oh, it’s my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me, Molly.

Molly Ruland:

Of course. I’m excited. Hey. Listen, anybody with 35 years of marketing experience, I am definitely interested to talk to you because that’s the real deal.

Kari Franz:

Yeah. There’s, you know, quite a few marketing challenges that I have faced, and the landscape of marketing has changed dramatically, right, in my career. And there’s, you know, a lot more marketing problems I’ve solved successfully. So, yeah, I’ve honed my craft over the years.

Molly Ruland:

I mean, 35 years is no joke. I mean, there’s just, you can’t replace that with any AI model or anything like that. That’s, you know, boots on the ground experience and probably mostly problem solving. Right? I feel like you get your best experience from fixing things, not when they go well. And you can’t really make a lot of mistakes in a short period of time. You know, you need 35 years to figure all that out and figure the solutions to it, that makes you invaluable. Let let’s talk a little bit about Brigid Marketing Services. So tell me about the I, you know, I thought it was Brigid because I’m Irish, and so I was like, oh, this must be an Irish thing.

Molly Ruland:

But tell me about the origin story of the name and how that came about.

Kari Franz:

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Brigitte is actually the goddess of wisdom. I’m a very big yoga practitioner. We’re called yogis. You know, yoginis for the feminine term, and she’s the goddess of wisdom. So I think that’s really what marketing is about. Right? Through marketing research, through data, we gather a lot of information about our prospective customers and our existing customers.

Kari Franz:

Right? And we take those insights to develop wisdom and action items. You know? How are we going to create products and services that they want? How are we going to communicate to them in a way that is meaningful to them? So that really resonated with me. So hence the name of my company.

Molly Ruland:

I love it. So tell me a little bit about Rigid. How long has the company been around?

Kari Franz:

Yeah, it’s been around for a long time. I really started it because I have worked at some major corporations, which were, you know, kind enough to mention. I also have a strong background in financial services working for companies like, Charles Schwab and Discover Card. And, you know, honed a lot of great skills there and had access to some phenomenal tools, right, and research departments and big budgets where we could test things. And now I take all that knowledge, and I offer that to medium sized businesses because I know what works. Right? We tested it out, in the larger marketplace, and, therefore, there’s just a lot of learnings that I can bring to them and say, you know, we should rebuild really by following this because I’ve seen it happen. Right? I’ve seen success in this. And many times, you know, I’m used as a sounding board as well.

Kari Franz:

Like, well, this is what we’re thinking. And based on my experience in these companies, I can say, yeah. I don’t think that’s not the way I would spend your budget, you know, your marketing budget. So Brigid, I started it to kind of relay all of that knowledge to my clients, and I just love working with founders and CEOs more than those with the entrepreneurial spirit. Right? I just love people with that mindset and helping them grow gives me great satisfaction to see their companies grow at a much quicker pace than, if they’ve done it on their own.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. I mean, well, it’s very valid because you don’t know what you don’t know. And

Kari Franz:

Mhmm.

Molly Ruland:

You know, it’s like the Peter Pan principle or whatever where you grow to the level of your incompetence. So just because you’re good at yoga doesn’t mean you’d be a good yoga studio owner or just because you’re good, you know, at something doesn’t mean you’re a good leader or a good boss, right? And you’re just trying to manage all these things, and you don’t have access to a lot of time to the people that know all these things and can just step in and go, let me just save you a bunch of time and money here.

Kari Franz:

Right. Or or the quality of vendors, right, to really know if you can execute different tactics. Like, for instance, off the top of my head, social media. Sometimes companies think that they can hire a freelancer and develop a few social posts, and that’s going to help you. Well, you know, most likely not. You know, there’s a lot more to it. So finding the right type of agency or vendor to help you, can be done. And a lot of that I do globally.

Kari Franz:

I source freelancers globally because you get a great quality because I will not compromise on that, and yet it’s a fraction of US fees.

Molly Ruland:

I like that you put the emphasis on you won’t, sacrifice on the quality because I agree. And I think the global market is a good one. I think it helps small businesses tremendously to be able to deliver a better product.

Kari Franz:

Absolutely.

Molly Ruland:

So, speaking of such, where does your client profile look like? Are they international? Are they, what’s your average client look like?

Kari Franz:

Yeah. Well, I really target midsize businesses between, like, $20,80,000,000 in revenue. Most often, but not always, they’re in software as a service or software, Fintech, or software, or SaaS, or wealth management firms too because I do have that background. But I’m open for business. You know? Some of my clients have been startup franchises. Some have been in the medical spa space. Some have been dermatologists. So it just depends on what their goals are and what they’re trying to achieve.

Kari Franz:

So I help a multitude of different size companies, but that’s kind of the sweet spot.

Molly Ruland:

I mean, you’ve definitely got the chops to back up being able to show up to the table with value there for those larger companies. What kind of advice are you advising your clients on content marketing in this current market, or are you advising your clients to do content marketing?

Kari Franz:

Yeah. I would say in the b to b space, absolutely. I think content marketing is really important. Even kind of a precursor to that is looking at your website and making sure that it is SEO optimized. It surprises me that so many are not still. And it’s table stakes at this point. If you are not, you know, using SEO to your advantage, you’re gonna fall behind, you know, very, very quickly. I kind of, you know, state this analogy to my clients.

Kari Franz:

It’s like it’s like being on the freeway and there’s, you know, billboards, but the lights are not. You can’t see anything. That’s what it’s like having a website if it’s not SEO optimized. People cannot find it and won’t know you exist unless you type in your company’s name. How are you gonna get new customers? You can’t. So I think, 1st and foremost, it’s doing that. It’s migrating it to, like, WordPress, which is more of the industry standard now, not some bespoke programmed website. And there’s still several out there. I mean, there’s many out there.

Kari Franz:

I find companies are still doing that. And then using SEO keywords to develop content. You know, if you do the analysis, you actually learn what people want to know about, you know, based on the keywords in your company. And then the art of it is to develop content that highlights your company and what you do, but not in a sales forward way, but more in a thought leadership way so that people are being educated. And it’s a way to build trust, you know, with your prospects so that, you know, they start to regard you as a company that knows what the heck they’re doing. You know, you’re giving them something of value, and they will consider you, right, when it’s time to start looking at purchases. I think it’s very important to be looking at that and using SEO to your advantage.

Molly Ruland:

I couldn’t agree more. You know, I did a bunch of cold outreach like a year ago, and I was doing all these, like, 15 I was working with this company and they were not great leads. So I was doing all these like 15 minute sales calls with people. And some of them ended up being interesting people, but it wasn’t the right lane. But I was talking with these, you know, people that were in these large companies doing 50 mil a year in business. And I’m like, your site has, like, 10 broken links. Every button leaves the I mean, I’m like, dude, do you wanna talk about having a podcast, or do you want me to give you a website audit? Because how successful are you? And your clients are like AT and T, Cisco, John Deere, and I’m like, your Instagram is linked to somebody else’s Instagram from your company.

Kari Franz:

Yeah. It’s embarrassing. Right? And I think it speaks poorly of your brand when you don’t have that together. You know, Google even has statistics. 90% of all purchases. It really doesn’t even matter what kind of product it is. People are gonna go to your website and check you out. Who are you? What do you represent? What does your brand, you know, communicate? What value do you add? And content is a big, big, big part of that.

Kari Franz:

And if those kinds of things are broken on your website, do you think that your sales team is going to be following up or your customer service is going to be following up with any kind of quality? It puts a doubt in your prospect’s mind. And you don’t need doubt when they’re starting to look at who to decide to purchase from. Right? And those are things that can be fixed, right, relatively easily.

Molly Ruland:

Very easily. I mean, maybe if you have a larger company, it’s harder to make things happen quickly. But, I mean, you know, understanding how pea I actually am, I’m a big sucker for AppSumo. I’m always buying stuff I don’t need from them, but they have a program called session rewind, and what it does is it records the screen anytime somebody goes to your website. So once a week, I go and I pour a glass of wine and I sit, and I feel like a stalker. It’s a little uncomfortable. Am I ethical? But I can see how people move around. I make real time changes, like right away.

Molly Ruland:

Like, oh, this is taking too long to load, get rid of that video. Oh, people are hovering around here and you see how frenetic people are. You can see how they don’t read anything. That’s the biggest takeaway. Nobody’s reading anything. The way people scroll through the written content on my website, not blogs, right? But like the written sales stuff, no one’s reading it, but it’s been wildly helpful. But I agree. And I think, you know, I always get in this conversation with people and they’re like, don’t worry about your website and logos, just go sell your services.

Molly Ruland:

And like all these business coaches are telling people, don’t worry about your website. And I think that’s terribly flawed advice. I think people, it’s like a dating app. They make snap judgments. Yes or no? Within seconds. Right? We know within seconds whether we’re willing to listen to somebody or not. It’s the same thing I think with your website. And I think your people’s website is actively working against them and they honestly have no idea.

Kari Franz:

Yeah. I I agree. I mean, should you be spending all the time on your website? No. Of course not. It’s a mix. There’s a marketing mix. Right? But it is incredibly important. This is the way of the world, and it’s not going away.

Kari Franz:

And especially if you have any kind of brick and mortar, they’re gonna go to your website and check you out before they’re ever gonna come to your brick and mortar. They won’t even bother. So it’s very important. Right? It’s also important because I think it educates your prospect so that by the time you ‘re ready to speak to a sales team, that conversation is elevated. The conversation is more sophisticated, and it’s gonna be quicker, and they’re gonna make a decision with the sales team even faster of whether to continue or not. So I think it’s very important. It’s very important.

Molly Ruland:

I love that we’re having this conversation. I didn’t know that this would be the conversation we would have, but I’m here for it because I’m big on web sites and yeah, how is that working? And do you have CTA buttons that actually go someplace? Are you responding to those things? Because you know, we actually get a lot of business called inbound business from Google because our SEO is optimized. And it’s not like we paid some company 50 grand to do it. We just did, you know, make sense of SEO work on the website so that the right tags are there and that content can come in. Because I think I think it does make a difference and all of our rates are very transparent because I don’t want to get on the call with a life coach who has $100 to spend, because then it’s uncomfortable for both of us for me to say, well, it’s 10 grand and then, oh, shit. Now it’s really bad for both of us. Right? We’re both feeling uncomfortable. So I think you can eliminate that short, that sales cycle, eliminate a lot of uncomfortable feelings and let people decide if they’re ready to work with you or not.

Molly Ruland:

You know? And then they show up ready. You know? Mhmm. They show up ready.

Kari Franz:

I think similarly, you know, your content, if it’s crafted really well, SEOs are your SEO keywords are indicators. Right? It tells you what people are interested in learning about. At least it’s part of it. But the other part of it is that your writer is going to bring you the most cutting edge, you know, things that are happening. They’re going to be crafting stories beyond just back finding, you know, in that content. So it’s really important. And then how do you amplify it? Or the best place to amplify it is on your own website. Right?

Molly Ruland:

Right.

Kari Franz:

So and then it brings you back. It becomes that lead loop. Right? That they’re you know, people are coming back and continue to come back, or they’re coming back to learn more, coming back to finally raise their hand and say, okay. I think I really am ready to ask questions on the sales team, because the basic questions have been answered on the website or in the blog. Right? So that your sales team isn’t answering the basic stuff. They wanna be answering the questions funnel. You know? So that’s Exactly. These people are ready to really be talking to a person in person and doing a lot more in terms of unpacking what the problem is and then how your company can be the solution.

Molly Ruland:

Exactly. Because that’s what the discovery call should be. It should be asking questions of the person not talking about your rates. Right? Like, not talking, but asking questions. I love that we’re having this like, it’s like the analog versus digital. Like these are such, one of my favorite books is the 1 Page Marketing Plan by Alan Dibb. And it’s just like, it’s old, but it’s still so relevant. It’s like, I think every business owner should read that book once a year.

Molly Ruland:

It’s like just core elements of customer service and business development, right, and marketing. And I think that we’re getting so far down the track with AI and all these technological advancements, but if people can’t go back to your website and fill out a form, if the links are broken, then none of that matters at all. So how are you navigating, coming from such a tried and true arsenal of experience with your clients who are saying, we wanna use AI for everything, or know, how are you navigating this landscape between, you know, old school, new school, analog, digital?

Kari Franz:

Yeah.

Molly Ruland:

How are you weathering that?

Kari Franz:

It’s a great question. And I think that it’s well, nobody knows what the heck really is gonna happen with AI. I mean, even today, there was a press release that said, I believe it was to check GDP. The 2 executives that were in charge of looking at, like, the ethics of AI and how it’s gonna essentially affect humanity reside. You know? And around the world, you know, chat GDP and other creators, Google, you know, they’re saying this is going to be kind of a just unbelievable change in humanity and at a very, very fast pace. So I bought it but I think it’s a great tool just like any other tool. Right? It’s a great tool. It will raise the bar and educate people so much quicker, and you can rely on it as an information source. Right? That that information is going to be available to all of us.

Kari Franz:

The trick, I think, is to have a mind, a critical mind, for one to ask the right questions just like when you’re talking to another human being. Right? Sometimes the trick or the skill, I should say, is to ask the right questions so you’ll get more meaningful conversations. And that’s even kind of the model if you really boil it down to AI is that you have to have the right prompts in order to get this wealth of all human knowledge to come back to you in a digestible way or a really valuable way. I think the other thing that we have to be really concerned about is that well, so much. I’ll get to that thought in a second. But not to lose humanity. Mhmm. You can get all these facts.

Kari Franz:

Right? But facts are facts. It’s about digesting them and giving insight and relating to people, other human beings? How do you still do that? Right? And not just be overwhelmed by all the data and the facts. It’s really about storytelling and how do you still, preserve your humanity, right, of compassion, of trustworthiness, of perspective, and not to lose that in this really tremendous time of AI and the tool. The other thing I said I would come back to is that I really do worry about education. How are we gonna educate the world’s children in the time of AI when this tool is smarter than every human being? Not every human being. I should say that’s a misstatement. I mean, it’s smarter than where a child is, right, in their development. And how do you motivate children to become experts and want to keep learning and do something with significance in their lives when this tool has all that knowledge? How do you gain your own knowledge and the motivation to continue to gain that same knowledge? I think that is very concerning to me.

Kari Franz:

That is very concerning to me.

Molly Ruland:

That’s a good point. I mean, it’s like being in high school and people are like, why do we need to learn math? I have a calculator.

Kari Franz:

Exactly. That’s kind of what it is, but on a much larger scale. And yet, these tools are only as smart as the human beings that have created all of this amazing information and all this information

Molly Ruland:

Right.

Kari Franz:

Insight to train the tools. Right? So what’s left for humans to learn? And it is about motivation. And, you know, if you wanna be a great engineer, you still need to learn calculus. Even though you could probably, you know, you could program it into your, you know, the latest computer or the latest models, it’s all there. Right? But you need to know how it works in order to push the boundaries of our knowledge.

Molly Ruland:

You know, it’s interesting when you were talking, and it kinda gave me a little spark of hope for humanity because it’s not really active listening, but active asking. And I don’t think we do enough of that. We just scroll, we just input in, you know, it’s like even when you go on dates or you’re at a party or whatever, and it’s like people don’t ask a lot of questions, right? And so maybe one of the benefits of AI is it’s making people really think about what I am asking. You know? I have to be really intentional about how I’m presenting myself and the information that I’m asking for. Maybe there’s something good there. But, yeah, I agree. It’s an interesting time. It is a very interesting time.

Kari Franz:

I think it’s critical thinking. Right? I think even more so part of our educational process is going to have to be even more sophisticated critical thinking skills because you can’t. I don’t think you can. You can’t actually you cannot accept everything that these AIs give back to you because they actually hallucinate even today’s news. They were saying, oh, Google’s AI tool is hallucinating even more, and they don’t know why, and they don’t know how to stop it. Well, think about that. What if it starts disseminating information that’s not even true and human beings start to accept it without that critical reasoning to be like, yeah. Well Yeah. I don’t know if that’s right.

Molly Ruland:

To America.

Kari Franz:

Yes. Well, it’s just a very interesting time to be alive.

Molly Ruland:

It really is. So are you finding that these mids for midsize companies doing 20,000,000 plus, are they anxious to get into the AI game, or are they or are they a little hesitant on it?

Kari Franz:

I think everyone is looking at how to use AI, but it’s a matter of where it is appropriate, right, and the speed at which you adopt it. And nobody can tell you what that is. I mean, even at one of the you know, the Next conference, it was last fall for Google, the advice really from this conference was that, well, just begin. It’s you just have to begin because it’s kind of the wild frontier. So I think that the trick is to figure out what tools are appropriate for your company to adopt, and there’s just so many of them, and they’re evolving so quickly. But at this point, it’s really about productivity. How do you use these tools to increase productivity of your staff? Right? So I think that the challenge right now is to decipher as these tools are being built and as they’re getting more sophisticated, what’s really appropriate for your company to adopt and then to retrain your staff because nobody’s had this before. You know? They’re just everyone’s learning it now, at least the people in the workforce.

Kari Franz:

Our university students, it will be part of their curriculum. It has to be too in or in order to prepare them for it, the world, the work

Molly Ruland:

Well, yeah, because they’re gonna have to recognize what’s real, what’s fake, what’s I mean, we all learn pretty quickly with the extra fingers on hands with the AI pictures. You know? You can, like, spot the fake ones right away. Although there’s certainly lots of accounts on Facebook with, like, clearly AI generated Yeah. Tiny homes, whatever. So, you know, we gotta get rid of all that, but it’ll be really interesting to see. From a productivity standpoint, I think AI can be really great because it can disseminate information that you’re giving it and just, you know, do that much faster than a human could. But I think looking for information from it is a tricky game because, you know, I was using Jasper for a few years, they’re like a copywriting AI tool, they’re like $180 a month, not cheap. And I asked it to rewrite my bio, and it had me graduating from Harvard.

Molly Ruland:

And I was like, I wish that was true. Working for Nike, I was like, well, you’re just lying in your whole face off over here. Like, you know?

Kari Franz:

Wow. So it

Molly Ruland:

yeah. I mean, I was like, this isn’t even a summary. This is a bold face lie. Maybe there’s another Molly Rolon in the world that did all those things, but it wasn’t me. And I just had it rewrite my content. So you yeah. It’ll be, but I guess we’re dealing with this fake news and everything anyway. Right? Like, so it’s gonna be the age of investigation.

Molly Ruland:

Right?

Kari Franz:

Yeah. Yeah. And I think validation. Validating whether facts are really true. That that’s, I think,

Molly Ruland:

the best

Kari Franz:

way to do that. K.

Molly Ruland:

Crazy. Great. What a time to be alive.

Kari Franz:

What a time

Molly Ruland:

to be alive. We are cranking through this interview. So I’m gonna ask you a few speed round questions before we finish this thing. So, can you give our listeners a quick tip for improving their SEO on their website?

Kari Franz:

Yeah. I would say, invest in some tools that can help you learn what SEO keywords you should be going after. There’s also some great tools that you can do an audit. It’s pretty amazing that you just put in your URL, and you can get an audit of your website, and it gives you very specific grades on different parts of your website so that you know where to start to improve. I would say that, you know, there’s a lot of companies out there that can help you improve your SEO at a really pretty low cost. You know, we’re talking anywhere from $200 a month to $2,000 a month, which is very reasonable even if you’re a solopreneur, that $200 a month. Right? Let alone a company that has a few million in revenue. So I would say invest in some basic tools to help you along your way.

Kari Franz:

I think it also helps you as you’re dealing with the folks that are actually gonna be doing the improvements that you know what you want. And that you can actually discern and tell them what is a higher priority over a lower priority. You’ll educate yourself. I think that’s important.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. I think that is important because you can hire somebody on Fiverr who can do more damage to your SEO than good. So you should Yeah. Have some knowledge. You don’t need to be an SEO expert because, even SEO experts aren’t SEO experts because Google keeps changing everything.

Kari Franz:

Yeah.

Molly Ruland:

I’m in some SEO groups and they’re all like, oh, Jesus Christ, once again, you know, all the work we just did is irrelevant now. It’s a constantly changing game, but there are some great tools. So I think that’s really good advice for sure. Alright. Favorite content from a format, blog, video, or podcast?

Kari Franz:

That’s a hard one. I think I would still say video because that’s how people wanna consume things. I think you can learn a lot about a person by their expression, how they deliver things, and whether you will be able to relate to them. Right? If especially in my case, if you’re a fractional CMO, would you be able to relate to me? And I think that you can get a much better idea of that through video. Right? You can pick up on a personal personality. And, you know, of the candidates that you might be considering, who are you gonna be able to communicate best with? Right? Who do you wanna work with? People wanna work with pleasant people. Right? There’s so many of us with a lot of knowledge, but do you have similar personalities so it really facilitates the collaboration.

Molly Ruland:

Okay. Yeah. Good. It’s like that snap judgment. You know right away if you wanna learn more and hang out more with that person. And I think, even through doing the show, it’s nice for me to be able to talk to people like you because I’m sure somebody is listening, man, this is exactly who we need to hire. Listen to this experience she’s had. She’s saying all the things that we just brought up in our last meeting.

Molly Ruland:

And so

Molly Ruland:

what a great way to really learn about what you’ve done and what you’re doing and

Molly Ruland:

listening to an episode is a great way to really learn about what you’ve done and what you’re doing and listen to an episode of this podcast even, for people to really learn. You know, it says so much more than just like a LinkedIn picture or even a LinkedIn post. Yeah. It’s so much more, right, the nuance of it all. I I come from a pretty large Irish Catholic family. So if you’re a little bit sarcastic, I’m in there. You know what I mean? I need I need we we can’t take ourselves so seriously that we can’t laugh because Exactly. Good lord.

Molly Ruland:

You know, life is hard, so we gotta Yeah. Laugh our way through it sometimes.

Kari Franz:

Yeah. I think the other thing with video is that it’s a very small leap to actually then having an online meeting. Right? Because

Molly Ruland:

For sure.

Kari Franz:

I work with companies all over the world. Some of my best clients are in the UK. I’ve never met them in person. We talk like this, and we get phenomenal results. And even my agencies that I select globally. Right? They’re in Australia. They’re in Canada. They’re in India.

Kari Franz:

They’re in Pakistan. Dubai. They’re in the UK, wherever the case may be. And with this is how we’re doing business. So if we could communicate, virtually, right, it’s just a small leap from a video that you see to a video meeting.

Molly Ruland:

I agree. I, recently, was at a podcast convention and met a couple of guys that I have only worked with online. And I was, like, I was like, wow. You guys are so much taller than I thought. Because you should have no concept of, like, you know, what someone, you know, you just see from their shoulders the whole time. So it was

Kari Franz:

It’s true.

Molly Ruland:

It’s kinda wild. Like, I’ve known you for 2 years, but I’ve never been in the same physical space as you.

Kari Franz:

It’s true. I’ve had that same experience. I’ve had that same experience where I’ve been working with people for 2 years, and we you know, then finally, we meet at a convention or something. But I’d rather talk. I’m almost 59, barefoot. Right? So if you’re going to a convention, I’m gonna wear heels. Right? Well, I’m, like, 6 foot. They’re like, wow.

Kari Franz:

Yeah. They grow big in the Midwest, don’t they?

Molly Ruland:

Me too. Me too. I’m 5-10. I don’t wear heels though because I’m more of a sneakers kind of a gal personally, but that’s too funny. Well, we’ll have to hang out at the next convention that would call us both there. We could be tall girls.

Kari Franz:

The tall girls at the back. I’ve always been in the back of the pictures too growing up.

Molly Ruland:

Same. I prefer it

Kari Franz:

that way, though. I’m good with that.

Molly Ruland:

I’m good with that. Fun fact, when I was born, I I had like Benjamin Button, but in reverse, so I grew super fast. So they said I would look like a 5 year old by the time I was 2.

Kari Franz:

Yeah.

Molly Ruland:

And then I wouldn’t stop growing or I would stop growing and then I would be dead in 20 years, but I didn’t stop growing. So I’ve been 5, 10 since 3rd grade. So Wow. Yeah. I know. Okay. Very tall. Yeah.

Molly Ruland:

Very tall. Yeah. I was always at the beginning or the end of every line my whole life. You know what I mean? That was me too. I knew the fact

Kari Franz:

that I had the same experience. Absolutely.

Molly Ruland:

Hey. You know, it works though. It helps, it helps with presentations, right? That’s right. In this room, you gotta use it to your advantage. So, okay. One last question. If you could work with any company you wanted, if you could craft any kind of a marketing campaign, who would you work

Kari Franz:

with? Oh my god. That’s a hard question. There’s just so many out there that would be interesting. I don’t think I could name someone in particular or name a company in particular, but I find that the companies that have had some success, right, and let’s say they’re a $10,000,000 company, they’re doing something right. You know? They’re doing some they’re doing great, really. But I find that they usually need someone like me, a fractional CMO, when they need to get to the next level of growth. Right? Mhmm. And they may have a few marketing

Molly Ruland:

practitioners inside the company full time, but they’re wearing so many hats. Mhmm. And they may have a few marketing

Kari Franz:

practitioners inside the company full time, but they’re wearing so many hats, or they don’t have the correct mix of people based on a new strategy that I would put together to help them get to their growth goals. Right? So it’s really those companies that are like, you know what? In 2 years, I wanna go from 10,000,000 to 25, you know, 1,000,000. And the other component is that they are ready and willing to make some changes and to invest in marketing. It’s an investment. There is no doubt about it that you have to spend money to make money. But, you know, the market has become so digitally focused and so analytically focused that we can track, with great granularity, what’s successful and what’s not. And very quickly, determine that definitely ahead of time. You know? What are we gonna go after? How many leads are we gonna get based on the investment? And then and track against that and and shift things, to do more while we’re doing great, and maybe dial down some things that maybe we tested and didn’t work so great. But you can learn that very quickly.

Kari Franz:

So I would say companies that are ready to get to their next level of revenue and are truly ready, to bring someone in to make suggestions. And, hopefully, they will listen to that, right, based on my experience, based on what has worked at other companies as well. Because I find sometimes

Molly Ruland:

companies say, oh, yes. We know we have

Kari Franz:

to do marketing. We have to get, you know, get to this next level of revenue. But when we actually start digging in and start making suggestions, they’re like, oh, no. No. No. No. You’re trying to make this

Molly Ruland:

We’ve always done it this way. Yeah.

Kari Franz:

We’re always on it this way. Oh, no. No. No. No. You’re trying to make us too big of a company and, you know, make us, you know, function like Google. No. That’s not even possible.

Kari Franz:

You know? It’s not even possible because there’s thousands of marketers that have pulled off that kind of growth and innovation at Google or other companies. It’s and I only suggest things that companies at their stage of growth are ready for. So it’s really about being ready to make change. Right? And investment and investment.

Molly Ruland:

I’d love it. It’s like podcasting too. I don’t I don’t try to sell our services to people who are not ready. If I’m trying to convince you of the value of a podcast, just go join a group on Facebook or something. I’ll see you when you’re ready. I only work with the people who are like us, we see the value. We understand how it can work. We just don’t know how it could work with us, and we need you to help us.

Molly Ruland:

But I’m not dragging anybody along. They got it. They got it. Or they

Kari Franz:

I just don’t know how to make it happen. Right? They’re like, we know that this podcast would be really valuable, but, you know Right. My company produces widgets. I I don’t know how to produce a podcast, you know, let alone hire the people to come in on the technical side to actually produce it. Right? It’s just so outside of their scope of experience. So that’s why they bring me in that way, but, no. Exactly. We just don’t know how to get there.

Kari Franz:

Right?

Molly Ruland:

We just don’t know how to get there. Exactly. Well, I’ll tell you what, Kari. I wish that my company was doing 20,000,000 a year so I could hire you because you’re awesome. And I mean, 35 years experience, there’s just no there’s just no way of getting around that. That’s just so much value, and I think in such a rapidly moving world everything is changing so fast, but there’s certain tenements. Right? There’s certain things that will always hold true. Right? Customer service, brand building, all of that.

Molly Ruland:

And with AI, all that, that’s fine, but, like, the basics are still there. And working with somebody like you, I am positive would bring tremendous growth to any company that brings you on. And I’m sure anybody who is of that size company listening to this recognizes that

Kari Franz:

Well, thank you.

Molly Ruland:

In you right away.

Kari Franz:

Yeah. And I will say, I mean, that’s kind of the sweet spot. But believe me, I’ve worked with start up companies where, you know, maybe they’ve finally gotten some seed money to invest in marketing. And the beautiful thing about a fractional CMO like myself is I don’t cost as much money as hiring a full time, you know, CMO.

Molly Ruland:

Agency.

Kari Franz:

I’m working for you, you know, let’s say 10 hours a week, but solely focused on strategy and implementation. So I’m laser focused on these things, and we make progress very quickly. Because, dare I say, I’m not distracted by other things that a CMO internally needs to do, like building their team and, you know, whatever, performance reviews and those kinds of things. I’m coming and focusing on growth, and figuring out that strategy and the plan of implementation within 90 days, and then we start to implement. And, you know, it’s been successful many times over. So I definitely work with startups as well. Give me a call.

Molly Ruland:

Well, that’s good to know. I’ve heard it here, folks? You can hit her up and she can come give you 10 hours a week, which I feel would be a great investment in anybody’s company, with all the experience and knowledge that you’re bringing. And you’re definitely, you’re not you’re not the old guy in the room either. You’re very up on the new technology. You have really great opinions on that, and that really matters because there are some dinosaurs in the industry. Right? But, as women, we have to work harder. We have to be better, faster, smarter, stronger, you know, all the things to stay on top, and you are clearly doing that. So thank you for taking time to hang out with me today.

Molly Ruland:

I’ve really enjoyed our conversation.

Kari Franz:

Thank you, Molly. I enjoyed it too. I feel really honored that you would have me on your podcast, so thank you.

Molly Ruland:

Of course. Hey. Anytime you wanna talk smack about websites, I’m into it. I’m way too into it. I was even thinking about starting a podcast called it’s not you, it’s your website and, like, ripping people’s websites apart.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah.

Molly Ruland:

But then I was like, that might not be good marketing, but, I mean, there’s endless material out there to choose from.

Kari Franz:

There really is.

Molly Ruland:

Oh my god.

Kari Franz:

Yeah. And then kind of along those lines too is that what I find too are smaller companies. They know they need a website, so they’re like, okay. I will hire a graphic designer to build a website, and the graphic designer does. And it looks very nice. Nose SEO. Zippo. Nada.

Kari Franz:

So once again, it’s beautiful, but it’s not working very hard for you. So with that same amount of money, you know, we could have hired an offshore web designer, and all of my strategy and knowledge, you know, in my mind of what I’ve done time and time again and developed something that is a lead magnet, right, versus just being a pretty picture. And that’s really the

Molly Ruland:

difference. Exactly. Yeah. It works well and, you know, We build websites. And I was guilty of that too, because I didn’t understand. And then as I learned more from my own website, I realized, how many other smaller shops are building websites for people that are, that is exactly it, it’s like a fake front. You know what I mean? It looks really pretty. The contact forms aren’t linked.

Molly Ruland:

There’s no follow on half the pages. I mean, there’s real problems there. And I think a lot of well intended people like myself, you know, I was building people nice websites. I thought I was doing a great job, but now, I mean, our checklist for completion is, like, 27 items long because just okay. It’s done. It’s pretty. Now we gotta test every link, test every form, connect all the analytics, connect to Google Tag Manager. You know, there’s a lot more work that has to happen once you’ve said, okay.

Molly Ruland:

Everything looks good. Absolutely. You know, then the team has 4 more days worth of work before we hand over that website. And, and I’d only know that because I care, and I don’t wanna give my clients a crappy website that doesn’t work. But I know that I think probably 90% of the smaller operations out there are doing exactly that.

Kari Franz:

Yeah. And it’s not a one it’s not a one time execution on SEO. Day 1 is launch. But then you there’s many things that if you do on a continual basis to outsmart your competition and get those Google spiders, that’s really the leader, not Bing, to serve your website up on page 1. That’s the name of the day, because 90 some odd percent of readers don’t go to page 2. So you really Yeah. Have to work on continuing to make sure that you are ranking on page 1 because those are the people that are gonna visit your website. And once they’re there, they’re gonna get information they need.

Molly Ruland:

Exactly. Exactly well, I said this recently, and I I think it might be the most quotable thing I’ve ever said. I said, websites are like haircuts. No matter how good it is and how much you love it, you’re gonna need another one soon as it

Kari Franz:

Very true. Good analogy.

Molly Ruland:

It’s a living and breathing thing. You know? It constantly needs updates and changes and more SEO and more content and new design. And at this point, if your website is more than 2 years old, it looks archaic, you know, sadly.

Kari Franz:

Yeah. It’s true. And SEO, it is a black box. Google is tweaking their algorithm. It doesn’t tell anybody what it is.

Molly Ruland:

Constantly.

Kari Franz:

And we have to kind of figure it out as you go and what to do and how to do it, really by miss not mistakes, but by hints of what they’ve, you know, what they’ve changed, and then you adjust. But it’s hugely powerful for your company to do it well. Absolutely.

Molly Ruland:

I agree. I agree. And for anybody, you know, even on our own website, we just did really basic SEO for podcast booking, and I get 2 or 3 discovery calls a week inbound, cold calls from people googling podcast booking, sifting through the ads, and then I’m like the second or third option. And then they go to my website, it makes sense, and there’s a clear CTA. And we’re not spending a ton of money on SEO. So for anybody who’s wondering, does it really make a difference? Well, let me tell you. It does. It does.

Molly Ruland:

It really does, especially if you have your keywords dialed in the right way, because there’s only so many options. Right? And it’s not just a podcast. Yeah. Absolutely. Podcast. It’s podcast

Kari Franz:

booking. Right.

Molly Ruland:

You know, very specific.

Kari Franz:

And there’s also things that you can do with local SEO too if you’re a brick and mortar store.

Molly Ruland:

Exactly.

Kari Franz:

Brick and mortar business. Right?

Molly Ruland:

Exactly.

Kari Franz:

I mean, one of my clients was a small company. He’s family owned, and they had a catering business. It was the 2nd generation, and they pivoted the company with the 2nd generation to produce beautiful organic lunches, school lunches for local schools here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Well, one of these was a classic example. They had just spent quite a bit of money on getting their website redesigned. It was beautiful. No SEO. And they’re like, what? We just spent, like, 1,000 of dollars.

Kari Franz:

I’m like, oh, I’m so sorry. I’m like, but we’ve gotta tweak these things, and this is why you’re not finding clients because you don’t have any local SEO. So when somebody’s typing in school lunches, your website’s not coming up. So we, you know, we did that SEO. We changed some things around. And within 6 months, they had to move to a bigger pitching facility because we doubled the business. Right? I mean, so it does work. It does.

Kari Franz:

It does work. It does work.

Molly Ruland:

I I love that an industry giant like you has worked with so many people, and sometimes it really is the simplest little things that can really move the needle in your business. So even working with huge companies, like these small things

Kari Franz:

can make

Molly Ruland:

a big impact in a small Yeah.

Kari Franz:

And in that case, we’re talking a budget that was a few $1,000. I mean, it was less than 10. You know? It’s maybe 6 5, $6,000 to, you know, bring in the SEO experts and do this, that, and the other, and it made a huge impact. Not everything, you know, is Right. Massive amount of money. It depends on what you’re trying to do. Right?

Molly Ruland:

Well, it depends on who you’re asking to do it too. That is very true.

Kari Franz:

That is very true.

Molly Ruland:

There’s a big pendulum swing in, current market rates for different services these days. Yeah. You know? And they are either here, anywhere there. Well, Kari, we ‘ve taken so much of your time, but I really enjoy hanging out and talking with you. You have so much knowledge. So thank you for taking time out of your day to hang out with me and and with the camp content, audience of the podcast. We appreciate it.

Kari Franz:

My pleasure. Let’s do it again. Thank you.

Molly Ruland:

Yes. Anytime. We’ll talk smack about people’s websites. Okay. So on that note, thank you for tuning in to Cam Content. I appreciate your time and that you chose to spend it with us today, me and Kari. And if you can’t tell that she’s bringing a whole lot of knowledge and you were not paying attention, 35 years. Listen, I love all the newfangled tech and everything else.

Molly Ruland:

I’m a big tech nerd myself, but there’s nothing that experience can replace. So, if you’re interested, hit carry up in the links below. Everything is there. You can even get a marketing assessment that you will do for free, and all of that information is in the links below. So on that note, thank you for tuning into camp content. And until next time, be excellent to each other, and I will see you on the Internet. Alright.