Molly Ruland:

Alright. Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Prepare yourself for this introduction because it’s loaded with all kinds of camping references, so buckle up. We are about to roast some marshmallows and s’more some knowledge about the wild world of content marketing. Today’s guest is the legend himself, Marc Fuentes, a master of marketing strategies. Think growth trajectories, data driven insights, and launching products like fireworks on the 4th July. Marc’s the real deal. This guy doesn’t just build relationships with the c suite, but he makes him sing kumbaya around the digital campfire.

Molly Ruland:

I’m not gonna lie. I have AI help me with these intros, but sometimes they’re too good to rewrite. With over 50,000,000 in revenue under his belt and more than 65 products launched, that’s 2 milestones I definitely wanna talk about. He’s basically the Bear Gryllis of marketing, surviving and thriving in the SMB and enterprise wilderness. When he’s not conquering marketing landscapes, Marc’s probably coaching, aspiring professionals, or cheering on his kiddos at the soccer field. Oh, and did we mention he eats frogs? I definitely wanna talk about that. That’s right. This man’s got taste for the curious and a hunger for lifelong learning.

Molly Ruland:

So grab your camping chair, buckle up. Let’s sit down and talk with Marc Fuentes about marketing in 2024. How are you doing, Marc?

Marc Fuentes:

I’m good, Molly. That’s quite the intro. I have to live after that now.

Molly Ruland:

No pressure. No pressure. Well, I’m it was very cheesy, but I was like, we’re just gonna lean into it because why not? It is camp counten after all, and we are camp counselors, so we gotta play the part. But, I’m super curious. You know? Thank you for coming on the show today. I know you’re a busy guy, so I kinda wanna chat with you a little bit about your background. So, you are a fractional guy. What is your main role right now?

Marc Fuentes:

Listen. Thanks for having me on the show. Certainly, I sort of play 2 roles. I live sometimes in the full time world, helping organizations, find their mojo, if you will. And in other parts of the world, I help start ups from a fractional perspective, find their product market fit and figure out how they go to market with most, focusing on how they raise capital to scale their skills and scale their business. Now how long have

Molly Ruland:

you been in this

Marc Fuentes:

go ahead.

Molly Ruland:

I was trying. How long have you been in this marketing world?

Marc Fuentes:

It is too long. It’s kind of around 24 years now. I was thinking about vectoring outside marketing, But what’s kept me in the marketing world is being, you know, focused on the customer, a real, you know, speaking with customers, understanding not just their need to solve a problem, what they’re ultimately trying to do. They’re trying to grow their careers. They’re trying to drive mobility into an organization. They want to make sure the solutions that they pick and the vendors that they pick align to that other side of what we call the buying motion. So it’s kept me around, and it’s fun to work with customers who, after time, really gets on a soapbox for you and start to say not just why I’ve worked with Moly, but it’s the it’s the it’s the individual elements around that that drives the conversation more and more with Molly.

Molly Ruland:

And, where are you located, and where are most of your clients located?

Marc Fuentes:

I’m located in Toronto, Canada. Most of my clients are located across North America, US, Canada, and a few into the UK.

Molly Ruland:

Right on. So I wanna talk a little bit about this, you know, 50,000,000 in revenue and 65 products launched. That’s a lot of products. Who are you launching these products for mainly? Let’s talk about that.

Marc Fuentes:

My background mainly has been around b to b markets, specifically tech and software. 65 products that came through a number of different organizations back in the logistics field and global trade intelligence markets. We launched a suite of new products going into the US, going international, under the Purolator brand and under Global Trade Intelligence, really migrating that organization from a client side server model into a sub into a subscription SaaS based model. So we looked at how we take these products. How do we move them into a new business model? The world was getting clouded by the cloud, if I can use that, and everything needed to move to the cloud. So it was my investigation research going back into these businesses saying, we need to transform our business. We need to start moving away from a client side server software model into a subscription based model. And that employed a number of different products that we had to change and update, and it got us into what I call, the wild wild world of SaaS.

Molly Ruland:

It is a wild wild world. It’s a, I’m glad to not be a SaaS company owner, to be honest. I have some friends with those companies, and it is a constant, juggle and struggle for them for sure with numbers and investors and, you know, software and everything else. It seems like a constant hustle. So let me ask you, in your bio and information that you sent over, you talk a lot about GTM. Could you explain what GTM is for those of us who don’t know?

Marc Fuentes:

Yeah. GTM in its simplest form is really your go to market. It means how do you look at your strategy and how do you build a go to market motion that aligns marketing, sales and this new sort of function that’s been growing over the last 8 years, customer success. So how do you align those 3 teams around the customer you’re solving? How do you wanna educate them? How do you wanna make them know you solve their problem best? How do you wanna make sure that when they’re thinking about a solution, they’re thinking about you in that category and they’re placing you as one of the vendors to speak to? How does sales now come into that motion and start adding more value? You’re you’re educating. Sales is trying to basically make sure that all the parties involved are getting the information they need and certainly looking at how they solve that problem. You know, removing the status quo, helping that organization prioritize your solution because it has such an impact on that particular enterprise, OSMB, and then bringing in your customer success because those are the people that really where the rubber hits the road. They make sure that the connection between what you’re saying upfront in marketing, what sales have said the ROI is going to be, and They’re helping deliver that ROI back to that customer and helping that customer maximize the use of that product. So they get what I call 1+1, note 3, but 1 +1 equals 11 in this case.

Marc Fuentes:

So that’s the GTM. It’s really bringing those 3 groups together, focused on the customer, the problem you solve, how you solve it, why you solve it, and really niching down. And I think we’re seeing more and more of that in the SaaS world. Focus on a niche. No longer, are we looking at these broad markets that have massive TAMs of 1,000,000,000 of dollars, and we’re gonna conquer 30% of that TAM, or we’re gonna be the biggest SaaS we can be in the world. No. We’re seeing a real change in the last 18 months, growth at all cost because capital was cheap to now efficient growth. How do I niche down? How do I have the right team? How do I really understand my customers? And how do I invest, you know, in customer research to build a good content strategy?

Molly Ruland:

Very interesting. Yeah. I think a lot of companies are probably afraid to talk to their customers and find out exactly how things went, but there’s so much information there when you really, find out what was valuable, what’s working, and then how to align that with everything else. How are you managing, aligning all of these things in this world where AI is just changing everything so quickly? I mean, I would imagine that you have to mess things up sometimes when you have a game plan for your go to market strategies. Right? And then AI comes in or other competitors come in. Everything is moving so fast. How are you mitigating all of that with your clients?

Marc Fuentes:

You know what? I would just say that, the actual speed of technologies, technology and the way they’re moving, no one is really keeping up with it. Beyond you just you just can’t. But I think what it is that you can do in a couple ways, you can look at where the technology is, who are some of the players in those areas, and that’s where your network plays a real big impact. If you’re really experienced in a certain area in AI, I wanna connect with you, Molly. And I wanna ask you a couple of questions. And I think the network plays a big role in that. I think your own personal lifelong learning DNA plays a role in that too. And I think every marketer, sales person, whoever you are, should be investing 3 hours a week to learn what’s new in AI, how it is changing, and how it could be changing.

Marc Fuentes:

I think the 3rd piece with AI is what I call something I wrote about on LinkedIn recently called the AI hype hack. I think because it’s such a nascent technology, we’re filling in the gaps a lot of times of what AI can do without the possibility today. So you have organizations that are being sold on what AI can do, you know, in years to come, and they’re buying that technology today. And when they’re asked about, well, Molly, didn’t you say this was supposed to do this? Yeah. But it needs more learning. It needs more data. It needs more information so it can become smarter. It can be predicted.

Marc Fuentes:

It can be able to deliver on that particular element we sold you on. So the AI hype gap is there. And I think we need to, as as business professionals, we need to understand that and ask deeper questions, but also understand that with any technology, it’s just not that ready to do some of the things that been, you know, procrastinate to to to to do right at right at this moment.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. I think AI could be great for a lot of things, but I think it just doesn’t hit the mark for a lot of other things. You know? It’s just, it’s not gonna replace people yet. And so, I like what you said about spending 3 hours a week on new technology or whatever’s changing. And I think if you’re in marketing, you have to do that. I mean, 15 years ago or whenever I started messing with Facebook, it was like I prided myself on understanding their changes faster than everybody else so that I could get ahead of it and, like, manipulate the system. You know? Especially 15 years ago, like, how you could add people, and it was very intrusive, honestly. They’ve changed a lot of that now.

Molly Ruland:

But you used to be able to search people and just add them and all this kind of stuff, but you had to change it every couple of months, and even that was, like, 10 years ago. But it’s still they constantly were changing their algorithm, changing the way they do things. So you have to really stay on top of all that to stay relevant and, you know, at least know how to use it. Right? It’s trimming some of the fat on the really tedious work that we’re doing every day that doesn’t need to be done by humans. But I think that authentic content, right, and relationships are where, you know, business is really happening. So I kinda wanna talk to you about that. In 2024, when you’re working with clients, are you working with them on creating original content or con doing content marketing, or are you leading more on paid advertising? Like, where are you seeing the most success with the clients you’re working with?

Marc Fuentes:

Yeah. I’ll come back to that in a second, Mitch. You made a good point just now about, you know, there’s a lot of things on the frills of what marketing or sales or customer success or IT or operations, you know, they’re engaged in. That AI can play a role today in automating those things. But I think it should do that today, because as humans, we wanna be able to really access that creative juices we have in us to whether we’re solving marketing problems, sales problems, operational problems. And I think when we create that space or that time, we can effectively do that. When I look at, you know, what are some of the areas that I’m spending time with, with my clients? I would call it probably 3 real pillars. You mentioned something recently.

Marc Fuentes:

Businesses don’t like speaking to customers, and I don’t know why. And it’s something that really marketers got away from for the last 10 years, really investing in customer research and what they’re saying and how they’re saying it and what and why they, why they buy a solution. We really got away from that. And we felt that we understood the customer based on signals we were seeing in the digital landscape. But I think now where I, where I get into is really what, what’s, what’s the last time you sat and spoke with a customer. And I really do in-depth customer research on probably about 8 to 10 customers, like in this space. And then I come back with those, with those businesses and with the founders and with the marketing team. And I outline what it is that is your unique positioning? What is your differentiator? Basically, we craft a differentiation positioning, and then we go to market based on that.

Marc Fuentes:

I look at the competitor sets in the marketplace. I do a bunch of research around there and I feel those with customers, competitors, as well as the product and those 3, I call it the blender. And that comes out to be here’s where I think you should be focused on. Here’s the ICP that’s basically driving a need for this problem. Here’s where those ICP hangs out so you can basically reach them. And here’s the type of content they want. In some cases, they want long form. Some cases, they want short forms.

Marc Fuentes:

It all depends on where they are in that buying cycle and what content is gonna hit them first to make sure it resonates and you create awareness. The other piece that’s really becoming more and more important because everyone has become a content creator because of chat chat GPT, the noise is at a Gary. I blame him first. Yeah.

Molly Ruland:

Do you

Marc Fuentes:

Blame him? Yeah. The noise is at a really high level. But, Gary v and, you know, Chad GPT is not gonna stop. And there was a recent research, like, a piece of research that came out that said that, I think it was upwards of 65% of folks are using chat gpt to actually, you know, either create their content or either, you know, stimulate it or whatever it is. But I took that as really 2 vectors. And since we’re talking about the content piece, I would say that original content is where businesses are going to win. How do you get that? You have to invest in researching your customers and doing really deep research about asking them how, why, when, if I take it away, what happens to the actual business? And use that as your way now to create different content formats. You can create videos, you can create your ebooks, you can create your playbooks, you can create your blogs, and it becomes your own content.

Marc Fuentes:

It’s not something that you’re referencing to an external market. So businesses now are going to be much more focused, I think, on building their customer owned content. It takes time. It takes longer. But if you’re trying to get through the clutter of what Chat GPT and Gary has created, you need to step above it. And that’s the only way you’re gonna step above it. It’s like executing those original customer research projects.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. I mean, that says a lot because there’s so many companies laying people off and laying people off because of AI, and they’re like, oh, we don’t need you anymore. But even when you’re hiring, like, a ghostwriter or copywriter that doesn’t work for your organization, how can they truly speak to the pain points of your customers if they’re not, like, working with them every day, or they don’t at least have a very detailed report. Like, yeah, I could be an excellent copywriter, but, like, my clients are very specific. You know what I mean? Like, I know exactly the pain points of my coaching clients, and I know the pain points of my, like, public information clients. You know? And so those are very different messages that I’m talking to them about. 1 is tech overwhelm. 1 is you know what I mean? 1 is business development.

Molly Ruland:

Mhmm. But I don’t think AI or these copywriters can do that, but it feels like a lot of these companies are really leaning away from the people and the relationships, whether it’s in their own staff or with their own with their clients. And so I feel like there’s gonna be a real gap there because there’s gonna be people, companies who have been nurturing those relationships and will have authentic content that will speak to their ideal client base. And then I think a lot of these companies are just gonna be, like, out in left field completely because they’ve gotten rid of all the humans on their team. They got rid of all the people that actually know, you know, their customers if they’ve even done that research in the first place.

Marc Fuentes:

Yeah. You’re absolutely right. I mean, I think think companies that invest in their own research, invest in their own customers, you’re going to see a real distinct difference in their content versus the one that have some knowledge of their customers and believe that’s the way their customers wanna buy or that’s the way their customers, you know, ex you know, express their their pain points. But at the same time, you know, these organizations, you know, there’s space for organizations to exist in this ecosystem. And Mhmm. Either you wanna be a differentiated brand and you invest in, you know, in in customer research, you invest in that type of research to build content, or you want to be a me too brand and you’re okay with capturing a certain essence of the marketplace that’s probably price sensitive, that probably, you know, doesn’t want to go through, doesn’t want to be nurtured in a way that they want to educate. They just want to kinda get the solution. What’s your price? Your price is excellent.

Marc Fuentes:

Let’s move on. So I think there’s room in this big ecosystem for differentiated brands, for brands who wanna be slightly differentiated, but they don’t, they don’t compete that way and brands who would just need 2 brands. Alright. I’ve been hearing founders say the TAM is really big. So why should I go spend my unit economics and try to be different at the top rather than I can just, you know, spend a different unit economics and capture a small slice of the pie. And I’m good with that. I’m not trying to get to a valuation of, you know, 5,000,000,000 or 18,000,000,000 or one of these companies. I’m trying to do what I can do within the unit economics and still be profitable.

Marc Fuentes:

So I think within that space, you know, content and how you build your organization is gonna be key. Because if you wanna be a differentiated brand, you have to do things to, you know, portray that particular brand in the marketplace. And it’s not, you know, using, you know, a bunch of AI generated content. It’s really going out and speaking to your customers and digging deep into how you can translate that customer research into content.

Molly Ruland:

What platforms do you recommend? What are you seeing the most success with? I’ve been writing a lot of blogs lately, and I’ve really been enjoying it. And I’m using AI a little bit just to kinda help me write an outline, and then I go in and replace most of it, but it just helps speed things up a little bit. But I’m seeing a lot of results with that because I’m talking about things that I know my customers are struggling with, And so I’m getting a lot of discovery calls. You know, I’ll put out a blogs and newsletter on LinkedIn and a newsletter on email, and then I’ll get some discovery calls saying, you know, oh, I I’m on your email list, or I’m on your, you know, LinkedIn newsletter. So I definitely can personally vouch that that really works. But I also write like I talk. I, you know, I’m stand up comedy is, like, planned for me. You know? I talk a little shit whenever I can, and that’s how I write my blogs.

Molly Ruland:

And so I’m getting people unsubscribing, but my list is growing more than people are unsubscribing. Right? And so I’m cool with that. I’m not for everybody. But what are you suggesting? You know, we’re a smaller operation. You know, I actually just did some testimonial videos with my customers, which is not really research, but it kind of is because I ran the sessions. It was really helpful to know what stood out to them and the services we offer because, of course, it’s not what I thought it was. It was, like, other things that we were doing that they really appreciated. And so, yeah, I can’t say enough about doing more of that.

Molly Ruland:

But, you know, what are you telling your bigger corporations versus smaller organizations for that content creation? How do you determine what’s best for who?

Marc Fuentes:

I think, you know, 2 things. You said something that’s really interesting that, when I did research with founders and, you know, brought back the results, they’re like, you know, I never thought that’s what the customer really was interested in. I never thought they would buy it because of that. I never thought they would buy it because of this. There’s a light bulb moment that goes and says, you know what? You know, we can now attach that to our, you know, to our positioning, to our messaging, because it’s something that, you know, I’ve heard not just once or twice, but I’ve heard, you know, through a couple of conversations. When I look at content, I mean, I think there’s a couple of ways. I myself, you know, play around with the, you know, with the ChatGPT. There’s Jasper.

Marc Fuentes:

There’s Bleach Now. There’s a few of those that I sort of play with. And when I play with it, I go to it and I ask it a question. I kind of see what comes up. But in my mind, before I even start writing an outline for a blog or playbook or an ebook, I already have a notion in my mind, based on the customer research I’ve done. And here’s the angle I want to go with. So I really have a, what some folks might call an outline. And I then go to these platforms to kind of see what it might say to my outline.

Marc Fuentes:

So I’m kind of stress testing my outline a little bit. And then based on that, I go back and I write the entire piece of content. And then knowing that this is what the LLM models are saying based on Chad and Bleach and Jasper and knowing that I’m gonna be different because if that’s what they’re saying, that’s what that’s what the market is going to be expecting. I’m going to go deeper with what I believe the customer really wants to hear and how I resonate with them. And most importantly, as you just said there, is the emotion. You know, you just, you just said, you know, Molly talks this, Molly talks that way. That’s important. And when you’re writing content, it’s really important to you as if, as if you’re speaking 1 to 1 to that customer, not I’m speaking, I’m going to write this blog and it has to go to 700 people.

Marc Fuentes:

No, I think if you, if you can write it as I want to speak to Molly and Molly’s ICP, the level and quality of your content, if you start writing that way, it starts to 5X every time you do it and you start to see your content really connecting with people. And I think that’s why we’re having this chat today. Some of the stuff I’ve seen you written, I was like, you know, there’s you can tell it is not a generative AI or AI platform. You can tell there’s some real emotion in it and someone’s taken the time to truly figure out how I can connect with this person? And I think that is what every business should be thinking about their customer. How can I connect with that person differently with what problems they’re experiencing and the emotional piece of it, which so far there’s no AI platform that has that emotion?

Molly Ruland:

No. And there’s emotion at the base of everything. Right? Like, whether you’re talking to a coach who doesn’t feel they’re good enough, you know, or a CEO who’s like, I’m not meeting my, you know, fundraising requirements. Like, everybody’s got this monkey on their back, right, and this thing that they’re dealing with. And your goal is to help solve it, right, and come in and help them with that problem. But, I like what you said about, you know, who are you speaking to. I have a friend here in Costa Rica who’s a life coach, and you know, her assistant was writing these AI posts. And I was like, girl, you sound like a preacher.

Molly Ruland:

I was like, who is writing these things? It was like, let us be. I was like, first of all, like, no. And she’s like, I don’t know how to talk on social media. I said, who’s your favorite client or patient or whatever you wanna call it? You know, who’s your you know, what is her avatar? Oh, she’s in her fifties, just went through a divorce, you know, changed jobs. I like, talk to her. That’s who you’re talking to. You’re not talking, it’s not social media. Like, take those words out of your vocabulary.

Molly Ruland:

You’re talking to Susan or Tammy or whatever her name is. That’s who you’re talking to. She was like, oh, okay. I get it. But I think there’s so much pressure to speak to everybody. It’s like volume, volume, volume, and the TikTok effect. Like, I don’t know if that’s a thing, but it should be where it’s like, oh, I didn’t get 10,000,000 views on this, so it must be a failure. It’s like, hold on.

Molly Ruland:

I don’t need 10,000,000 people to read my newsletter. I couldn’t handle 10,000,000 people trying to hire me. You know what I mean? I couldn’t handle 1% of 10,000,000 people trying to hire me. I don’t need to speak to the masses. I just need to speak to the person whose problem I know that I can solve because I’ve solved it before. You know?

Marc Fuentes:

You know what? That’s what I love. I really am the person you spoke to before because you can because you solved that problem before. And I think if it’s one thing marketers could really take from the last 18 months, It’s helping founders and helping whether you’re a small business startup scale up or a mature enterprise organization, helping those like understand how to niche that, how to speak to that customer. You solved their problem before. So how do you go and speak to them? And you’re right. Social media has come in with this sort of definition that I have to speak to everybody every time. Everything I send needs to speak to everybody. And if I don’t forget 10,000,000, if I don’t get a 100 likes or a 100 this post, this whole blog is no good.

Marc Fuentes:

And we’ve conditioned businesses outside marketing and functions to rate social media that way. So I saw you put a post, you only got 5 likes. Well, that was garbage. Oh, no. Hold on a second. In that 5 like, one customer is an enterprise customer turned out to be a pipeline customer that’s driving $1,000,000 in our pipeline. Exactly.

Molly Ruland:

Hold on. And then

Marc Fuentes:

I found this post that has 100 likes. I got not nothing nothing in the pipeline. So I’m even experiencing that myself on LinkedIn. Some posts are, you know, getting a lot, and the post that gets, you know, let’s say 103 likes. A business in there is reaching out to me, Mark, can you help me with this? I’m like, okay, interesting. So that one to one speaks to that person because you’ve done it before and you know, you can do it. It’s probably one of the biggest things I think marketers still need to learn, but they also still need to coach the rest of the organization, especially founders, especially outside the marketing walls, that it’s not about likes. It’s not about shares.

Marc Fuentes:

It’s not about followers. It’s about, are you speaking to that customer in a way that they understand understand what you do and you can help them not just solve the problem,

Molly Ruland:

but you can help them even build their

Marc Fuentes:

own career in that enterprise. Because if they’re bringing a solution that is really good, you can bet dollars that person is gonna be making upward mobility in that enterprise.

Molly Ruland:

Exactly. You know, we teach the same thing with our clients with podcasting because we sell podcasting as business development. So if you’re worried about downloads, like, we’re not the right company because downloads don’t close deals. Relationships do. And so I constantly have to talk. I’m like, stop looking at your downloads. It does not matter. Like, focus on who you are interviewing.

Molly Ruland:

Why are you interviewing them? Do you wanna do business with them? Are they gonna move the needle somehow? If not, you’re completely wasting your time. And those they’re just vanity metrics. Right? It’s like, you know, I’m a little jaded, but I think I think there’s people who just sit around on LinkedIn all day who are unemployed and have nothing better to do than to comment. So when I see posts with 100 likes on them, I’m like, all those people don’t have a job. You know? All those people are sitting at home. Like, that’s not gonna make my phone ring. Right? Like, I’m dating myself with that one, but, like, a well written blog or a certain post. Like, I posted a couple like, a month ago, I said websites are like haircuts.

Molly Ruland:

No matter how good it is, you’re gonna need another one before you know it. And it’s so true. Right? It’s like 2 years is the lifespan of a discovery called out of that. It got, like, 8 likes. It was the fact that that really resonated with somebody in that moment. And so I didn’t need to write this 18 long paragraph diatribe on LinkedIn about my childhood and my business. Do you know what I mean? Like, come on, man. I think less is more, really speaking to people makes a difference, but that’s hard to convince. Like, don’t worry about those numbers.

Molly Ruland:

Don’t worry about the likes.

Marc Fuentes:

It is really hard to convince because we have built the marketing function on an attribution model that just doesn’t work in what that model is supposed to do. So when we talk about top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel, we expect top of funnel to have, like, you know, 10,000,000 people. And we expect the middle of the funnel to have, you know, 20% of that and bottom to have 5% of that. And that’s not the way, you know, it basically works. And we’ve conditioned people outside the marketing wall and say, well, your top of funnel only has 20 people. Yeah. Because those 20 people have the highest propensity to convert and move to the funnel and actually put a quality number in your pipeline. Okay.

Marc Fuentes:

So, okay. So I see a point now. I think we as marketers, I think we need to continue to educate the organization and we need to be the voice of the customer at the executive level all the time. And I think that at times really challenges marketers. It challenges them because they feel stuck to running every day, creating demand gen campaigns, creating content, creating all these pieces. And I think all that, you need to do that, but I challenge the marketers of tomorrow to ensure every given month, your spending will speak to at least 2 or 3 customers or 2 or 3 prospects so that you become the pulse in that C level. And when people say, well, no, our customers are doing this. No, I just had 2 conversations with our ideal customer and here’s what they’re saying.

Marc Fuentes:

So we don’t need to go and change the whole marketing program or the whole, the whole content engine or the whole brand. I heard this. No, I’ve had conversations with my customers this month in this vertical, in this area. And this is what they said. And when marketers invest the time in doing that, they not only create a seat at the table, they become even more trusted, even much more valuable, not just to their own team, but across the organization. So when they say, the CFO says, hey, let’s cut that and go this. No, here’s the information. Here’s what our customers are saying.

Marc Fuentes:

Here’s why we should continue doing this. And here’s the reason why we should continue doing this. And sometimes we don’t, we don’t put the time there. You know, we get bogged down with brand and content and I, I challenge myself in any new role, carve out that time every month, whether that be 5 hours, 10 hours, 20 hours, 25 hours a month, get it done. Something needs to fall off your plate to get that done.

Molly Ruland:

I agree. I love that. It makes me wanna do more research with my customers, like, more actively. Right? Like, do it again next month and the next month. Recently I’ve been a big AppSumo addict. Like, I keep buying stuff I don’t need from those guys, but whatever. I love a lifetime deal. I’m a sucker for it.

Molly Ruland:

But I bought this thing called session rewind, and it records people when they’re on your website so that you can see. Oh my god. I can’t tell you how much I’ve changed my website in the last couple months just because on Friday, at the end of the day, I’ll sit and just watch, you know, 20 of them or something. There was a video on my website that had a sound that was auto playing. Oh my god. That’s, like, the biggest defense in the whole world. I had to get like, I didn’t even realize. And then my home page was loading too slow, so I was able to, like, change some things.

Molly Ruland:

So even just watching, even spending 20 minutes watching how people actually interact on my website made me change so many things. And that’s, like, such a surface level observation that’s not even talking to anybody. And so I think, yeah, investing in that research, investing in knowing what they’re, what they want, what they’re doing, how they want it, I think is so much more valuable because I’m even seeing more discovery calls come in. I’m seeing people are staying on my website for 4 minutes on average. That’s insane. That’s a lifetime on a website. You know what I mean? So It is. I think, you know, I’m very proud of that.

Molly Ruland:

I almost posted that on LinkedIn. That’s like a website thing. I’m like, 4 minutes. You know? It’s like the Olympics in website time, you know? Like Yeah. You know, super low bounce rate too. I’m like, yes. I finally got it. But, you know, it’s all about education and research and understanding, putting effort into it.

Molly Ruland:

You know?

Marc Fuentes:

Yeah. I mean, I know, one of the things that people always say is that marketing needs to be, you know, kind of breaking ground all the time, or could it be incremental? You know, and I say it’s not an and or, you know, and what you’re just saying is that incremental piece, you know, spending the time buying the apps. What are what, what are customers doing? And you can make these quick changes quickly and you can see a result. Great. But then always asking the team, how do we, you know, how do we stop, you know, looking at things like, you know, the step step function? How do we actually take a step? You know, we’re trying to get to the 2nd floor and there’s probably 18 steps to the 2nd floor and we’re incrementally going up. How do we take one leap and get to the 2nd floor and get marketers thinking that way? Because most of the time we’ve been so confined with budgets. We don’t think we think incremental because we know the organization is only going to give us that much. Like, one of the things I’ve done with my teams over the years is I’ve carved a budget to go experiment and just do little things, experiment a little bit and see which one of these that we should scale.

Marc Fuentes:

And, you know, we found a few things over the years that have really transformed some of the go to market strategies we have. I mean, we’ve experimented with things on YouTube that we’ve scaled. We didn’t think at first. No one would, you know, would experiment there. And we found really good opportunities there. We found opportunities with the way we actually do retargeting on LinkedIn. Everybody thinks it’s just a retarget this way, but we’ve built a whole complete model around retargeting for certain organizations. So, you know, this experimental, incremental, you know, continuing to stay close to the customer, making sure you are the voice of the table, making sure you invest that time in your customers, making sure that if you’re doing it, task your team to say, hey, go speak to 1, 2 customers a month.

Marc Fuentes:

Let that be part of your monthly report you had to send to your leader, to your CMO. Here’s who I spoke to. And here’s the 2 or 3 things I found out. You know, I have to communicate with our content team, with our brand team, with our demand gen team, this stuff so that they can factor it into their thinking. That’s how marketing goes from incremental to step changing in the marketplace. And I’ve always always pushed my team to think that way. And I think, you know, we’re gonna have to do more and more of that in this new Wild Wild world of marketing.

Molly Ruland:

Well, I love it. I love everything you said about the funnel too. I kinda hate the word funnel, especially for small businesses because it’s so unrealistic. Right? It’s like you said, they expect there to be 10,000,000 people. I’m like, you’re not like, you gotta spend a lot of money to know? Just focus on the customer journey and not so much the funnel. Right? Like, focus on, like, 20 really good leads are better than 10,000 cold emails or whatever. Like, I think for most companies, the funnel is kind of a setup. You know what I mean? Because then you feel like, I don’t have 10,000 people in my funnel.

Molly Ruland:

I must be doing it wrong. It’s like, no. No. No. No. No. That’s not the measure for success. I think less is more quality, really leaning in, all these things that you’re saying.

Molly Ruland:

This is really good information for sure. I hope people are listening and, you know, taking some notes. I know I definitely have. I think, relationships. I’m big on relationships. And so whether it’s the relationship with, like, understanding your client, talking to them more, finding out what their pain points are, the relationship with the people on your website, you know, the relationship with your vendors, all of those things really matter. Because I think for most of us, if you’re not Colgate and you don’t need to sell 10,000,000 tubes of toothpaste every month and and 2 new clients a month could really make a difference in the quality of your life, then it seems to me like really leaning in on relationships with your team and your clients seems like the most effective way.

Marc Fuentes:

I think so. I absolutely think so. I’ll use a phrase. I was speaking with someone recently. And if you look across most b to b websites today, what’s the one thing that’s the hardest thing to find on those b to b websites? It’s the phone number. It’s the hardest thing to find on b to b websites these days. And I was speaking to a founder, and I said, why don’t you put your phone number at the top of your website? Just put it for, you know, run, run that experimental, that, that that mindset I have with them. And within a matter of basically 5 weeks of doing that, he said, Mark, you know what? We’ve got 3 phone calls on our website of which one of them turned into a customer.

Marc Fuentes:

It turned into a customer because I answered that phone at 7 o’clock that night. And he said, you know what? You’ve I was conditioned to look at all these b two b websites, and I didn’t I didn’t find their number. So I thought they knew something about removing their number. So I just kept my number. You know, it was somewhere way below. We want customers to fill out forms. Why? Because there is an attribution model to forms. If they do that, we know they want this and, you know, Marc and I said, this is where things change and relationships happen when a customer can call you at 6 o’clock at night and say, Molly, can you help me with this? And Molly answers, yeah, absolutely.

Marc Fuentes:

You’ve just converted that customer because you’re real. There’s a relationship. And in a relationship, I can carry you. It’s probably gonna become even more important as, you know, as we as we factor further in this into this AI world where, at the end of the day, customers can do their own research, but if you’re paying for a piece of software that’s over a 100,000 US, I wanna look in Molly’s eyes when I’m making that decision, and I wanna trust Molly and say, you know what? I know if stuff goes wrong, Molly is gonna make sure it is gonna be rectified and it’s not gonna fall off the rails because I see her and I believe in that relationship. I don’t believe in the product, the pricing. I believe in the relationship that she’s built with me.

Molly Ruland:

Well, and I gotta tell you, that’s what all the clients were doing testimonials for saying. It’s like, you know, I’m asking them how’s it like what’s it like to work with Hardcast Media? And they’re all saying Molly. Molly had my back the whole time. Molly made it so easy. Molly made me feel I could do anything. You know? So of course that’s an ego boost for me. That makes me feel good. But it just shows you.

Molly Ruland:

It’s like, yeah, because I want my customers to win. Like, I like my clients. I want to see them win. I will go above and beyond for them because I like them. You know? And I wanna see them win, and I feel like isn’t that how we should all be? You know? I mean, in a perfect world, you like all your clients. Sometimes there’s a few you’re not super crazy about, but you should still wanna see them win. I mean, you know, isn’t isn’t that the goal? So, Mark, you know, I usually do like a speed round and a real or fake thing, but I feel like we had such a good conversation that we really didn’t need to do any of that stuff. So we’re just gonna skip it all.

Molly Ruland:

I’m gonna ask you, for what is your ideal client? Who would you like to work with this year? Because I know you understand the value of content marketing. You’ve come on this podcast today. So you’re out in the world. You’re getting yourself out there. So who would you really like to work with? You know?

Marc Fuentes:

I typically work with pre-seed startup companies in the tech B2B sector. I would say between 2,000,000 and probably just under 10,000,000 ARR. That’s where they typically are looking for their 1st marketing hire. They’re looking with someone to guide them on how to go to market, how to drive focus, how to drive discipline. And that’s where I’m coming in to help them with, you know, really what is your positioning in the marketplace? What’s your messaging? And how do you build a pragmatic plan around that? You don’t have 10 BDRs. You don’t have 20 AEs. You don’t really have market recognition yet. So how do you niche down onto that ICP and really figure out where they are and how you create the go to market strategy with content, with digital, with ads, with all those different pieces that come together to educate that buyer.

Marc Fuentes:

So that’s where I spend my time. When I’m not being fractional and I’m looking for full time sort of marketing opportunities, I’m also looking in those areas. Certainly, startup is a little bit different for full time opportunities where you’re kind of the jack of all trades. I like that fractionally, but I look for companies that are just around, I would say, 50, 75,000,000 ARR that are looking to really drive some more process in their marketing, mature their marketing, their teams, their people, and begin to start thinking, you know, the next wave of what they’re gonna be doing. Are they gonna be extending the product line? Are they gonna be, you know, attaching more partnerships into building a better ecosystem? That’s what I look for in my full time roles, bigger, I won’t say bigger, but at least more developed teams and or to help develop those teams into, you know, more mature processes and marketing go to market.

Molly Ruland:

That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. And if people who are listening wanna connect with you, what is the best way? We’ll have all your links and everything in the show notes so people have access to that. But what’s the best way for people to connect with you?

Marc Fuentes:

I think LinkedIn is the best way. LinkedIn, it starts and, let’s connect, let’s chat, and I’m always open for a chat, and certainly happy to certainly give more than I take at the moment. So if you just want to have a chat with me and basically say, here’s what I’m doing, Mark, you know, in my business, what can you offer? I am happy to offer my insights then. I believe in giving value before you get value.

Molly Ruland:

I agree. I love that. I love shooting Loom videos to people with all kinds of information. It’s like, hey, even if we never work together, I know this was helpful for you. So there you go. I’ve earned my seat at the table even if it was only temporary. So I’m with you on that. Well, Mark, this has been an awesome conversation.

Molly Ruland:

I am going to put my phone number on my website today because what am I doing? And I even have 1 833 pod lines. I even have, like, a podcast centric phone number, and I don’t have it on my website. So, I’m going to take that action item today and fix that and see what happens, so I’ll keep you posted. But, thank you for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. You guys don’t know this, but Marc is actually the patron saint of podcasts. This is the third time we tried to record. So Marc is a very patient man.

Molly Ruland:

He’s very knowledgeable, and he is very skilled and experienced in marketing. So if you’re looking for somebody to help steer your company in the right direction, it makes a lot of sense, for me, for small organizations and larger. So on that note, thank you for, thanks for coming in, Mark, and hanging out with me this morning. And, thanks everybody for listening. If you found this content valuable, please connect with Marc on LinkedIn. Leave a comment on the episode. You know, let’s connect. Let’s talk some shit about people on LinkedIn together.

Molly Ruland:

It’d be great. Until then, be excellent to each other, and we will see you on the Internet.

Marc Fuentes:

Molly, thank you so much.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. No problem. No problem at all. That went a little longer, but I felt like it was a good conversation, so I didn’t wanna It

Marc Fuentes:

was. It was. I learned a lot from you. I think, you know, every website needs a new haircut. I love that. I love that phrase. I think you should. I think you should push that out and, you know, I think a lot of what again, a lot of what you’re talking is emotion, and I really, really connected with that. I thought just the way you said it, it’s just you wanna work with you because you know what? You believe you’re gonna bring out an emotional side of the person on the other side that the market hasn’t seen yet is yet to be seen.

Marc Fuentes:

And I think if I can offer you a secret sauce, I haven’t spoken to anyone in the podcast yet that’s able to really pull that out. So that is something I think you should really hammer into, really hammer into it.

Molly Ruland:

Nice. Well, I appreciate that. I was like, man, this guy probably thinks I’m a complete Yahoo with all the reschedules and stuff. And I was like, we’ll have a good converse. I’ll redeem myself with Marc and we’ll have a great conversation. But I appreciate it because I tell my clients all the time, I’m like, interview people you wanna do business with, reach out to that market, don’t interview popular people on LinkedIn, focus on that, but then I’m not doing it myself. So it’s like, let me do some cold outreach on LinkedIn to CMOs. You know? And then that way, at least I’m building relationships with people in the same space.

Molly Ruland:

But what’s happened is I’m having really great conversations with people, and I’m like, this is really fun. Like marketing people, we’re a little different. You know what I mean? We’re not the same as, like, a CFO. It’s, you know, boring. You know what I mean? Like marketing people, we’re just cut from a different cloth. So I’ve been really enjoying these conversations, honestly. I’ve had a really good time with them. So, for some reason, my things won’t stop, but I’ll deal with that later.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. I don’t know what’s going on and what I keep hitting, but it’s not stopping. But we will edit this audio and yeah. I know. It’s like, keep going. This is good. We’ll do audio and video. We’ll broadcast it on LinkedIn as if it was live once it’s all edited, so I’ll tag you in that.

Molly Ruland:

And then you already got the automated email, but you’ll get it again saying, you know, thanks for coming on the show. And then in a couple of days, you’ll get another one saying, here’s a link to the Google folder with, like, we’re gonna make 10 video clips from this, like, in vertical form, of only you. Like, when we put it on, we use AI for that. So we’ll only put your video input in, not me at all. So all those clips will be of you dropping all those gems throughout the episode. And then we’ll make an episode graphic, a quote graphic, and a guest graphic all with you on them. So that’ll all be in the Google Drive folder. So you can share them if you want, tag us if you want, but it should be good content for you to use for your own marketing purposes.

Molly Ruland:

And that’ll all happen probably in the next week or so. We have kind of a lot of episodes, but we’re just, you know, we’re typically on a 5 business day turnaround, so we’re just knocking them out.

Marc Fuentes:

No. That’s cool. The one thing and if you can share with me, how do I expose you to my fractional clients who really wanna get into some because I think some people are afraid of podcasts. Some people are, they want to do it. They don’t want to do it. And I tell the people I’ve been talking to about it, who want to kind of get into it. I said, just think of it as a conversation. The people on the other side of podcasts, they don’t know you.

Marc Fuentes:

You don’t know them. They’re asking some questions, you know, some of it, you know, some of it, you know, some of it, you don’t know, But it’s about the conversation and trying to get that going. So if you can shoot me, like, whether that’s a paragraph of who you guys are, what you guys do quickly, or I can grab that off the website. I can do that. But there is probably there’s probably 2 or 3 in my mind right now that I’m thinking that I probably can not do this, but probably be podcast clients for you.

Molly Ruland:

Well, exactly. And I mean, it’s a great business development tool, and I’ve got case studies for it from big organizations to small. It’s like, you’re not Joe Rogan. Don’t worry about downloads. You don’t even need to do it for a year. Let’s identify, let’s do 12 episodes. Do one with your cofounder. Now you have a brand video that we can cut up into a bunch of little clips.

Molly Ruland:

Do 2 with customers that love you or your investors and success stories. Now you’ve got clips. And then use the other 8 or 9 episodes to interview people you wanna do business with or aggregators. And then stop and look at them as warm leads and not as podcast episodes. You know? They’re like, oh, I’ll do 1 a month. I don’t have time. You don’t want 1 warm lead a month. You want 10 right now.

Molly Ruland:

And so you fill your pipeline. Right? So it’s a mindset shift, and it’s like, do a great job at the interview, and then and then you get all the SEO content. You get the blog post. You get the newsletters. And then the 3rd wave is social media validation and stuff. But so many people are focused on the 3rd wave, and I’m like, no, man. So the media is shit. You’re not getting any sales from that.

Molly Ruland:

You’re gonna close deals by sitting across the table from somebody and, you know, doing a good intro. Right? The intro is the secret sauce to everything. You do a minute long intro. I mean, that one was silly with you, but this is kind of a silly show. But, you know, I did an interview with a guy named Michael Aiken. This is a great case study. Michael Aiken 5 years ago when I opened my business. He owns a company called Linked Strategic Partners.

Molly Ruland:

They do the work of nonprofits, but they’re a for profit company. He’s like, we’re senior citizens. It’s to foster kids. I mean, the guy is just like the best person I’ve ever met. And so I did this intro, it was like 3 minutes long. Like Sonny the clown, he was the school mascot in high school. I mean, I went deep and he was like, how did you find this? I was like, I Googled you for an hour. It wasn’t even that serious, but I wanted to know.

Molly Ruland:

I did this introduction and I asked him questions about himself because I was interested. I didn’t talk about podcasting. I didn’t talk about any of that. That man is now one of my good friends. He sent me a 130,000 dollars worth of business over the last 5 years. I was just invited to go back to DC for the district of conversation, which is a 100 person, the biggest networking event of the year in the Ronald Reagan building, right, with, like, the Department of Transportation. You know what I mean? I’m like, I can’t I’m like, I gotta buy some new clothes for this one. Right? And then I was chatting with him last night, and he said, hey.

Molly Ruland:

We need a media person. We’re doing the BVI cup on 16th May. Can we enlist your services and fly you out for that? I’m like, absolutely. That was from a podcast interview 5 years ago. So, like, I know I like, it works, you know, but you have to be really intentional about who you’re interviewing. And then you get all the content. You get 12 newsletters, you get 12 months of content. You get all that, but, like, give that to your marketing team, focus on the relationship, and then nurture that relationship, follow-up with them.

Molly Ruland:

Because if you do an interview like that, an introduction like that, and 2 days later, you say, hey, man, would you mind making that intro? Or can I get 30 minutes of your time? Or can I take you to lunch? Of course, they’re gonna say yes. If they’re gonna, they like you now. They wanna help you. It’s a whole different relationship now. And that’s what I sell. You know?

Marc Fuentes:

It is. And something you said there, I think, again, it’s another secret sauce. I think you should probably figure out how you do it because it’s it’s buzzing in my mind right now is even if you even if you buy 12 episodes and and you use 4 or 5 on yourself, you know, founder, what problems do you solve, 2 customers, something else, I think it’s really important for you to pick probably 3, 4 prospects and the title of that prospect and get that prospect on an interview And basically let that prospect talk about the challenges they have. And now you take that and you flip that into your marketing strategy and your content. These are the titles of the people that we go after. And here’s the problem. And if you are also a founder like Molly or VP of Sales or CSO, whatever, those now you can actually have a very fluid one to one with them using the video. So most people don’t think of podcasts that way.

Marc Fuentes:

So you really speak something there because I didn’t think of it that way either. But now it’s just saying when you buy 12 episodes in the past, it was sold to me, let’s say 3 years ago, you’re thinking, okay, well, I can’t find 12 customers. But now actually bringing your prospects on validates what problems you solve. And if it was coming from their model, here’s a problem. I have Another person with the exact same cloud who is gonna say, you know, he’s right. I’m experiencing that too. And all of a sudden you now create a complete ecosystem around the problems you solve and who you solve it for with the ICP. So there’s something there. I think that’s probably gonna really be a way marketers can change the way they think about how they go to market you as well as using podcasts.

Molly Ruland:

I agree. And it’s like especially for founders, it’s like, you know, I have a one offer that’s like a 10 k package where it’s 12 episodes of a podcast and 3 months of booking. So it’s like, if you’re a founder and you’re really busy, like, give me 90 days. We’re gonna do all 12 episodes, and then I’m gonna boop you on a podcast for 3 months. So then you can stop. And now you’ve filled your content calendar for the year. You filled your pipeline. And now every month, you’re popping up on somebody else’s LinkedIn.

Molly Ruland:

Oh, Molly was here. Molly was there. Molly was here. 10 k one time. To me, that’s very doable for a founder as opposed to these agencies that are like 25,000 a month, and we’re gonna say no to you constantly. Like,

Marc Fuentes:

The one person I think will really benefit Molly, is the CEO and founder of Ready for Social. I’m on their advisory committee. And behind the scenes, they’re looking at really re vectoring the business. I’ll have more information as we enter May, but he will be someone I think will be really good for one of your packages just because he’s good. He’s good. He’s good on the camera. He’s really good. So it even becomes easier.

Marc Fuentes:

And I think with myself supporting him and yourself and bringing in that emotion of that market knowledge, I think he can have some really good fun and really good ROI with something like this. So that’s one. The other one is, is the CEO of BlueMine App who I’m working with too as well. And the reason why that’s important is because he’s trying to change the mindset of insurance CRM. Most people think they can just buy Salesforce and customize it for insurance.