The Virtual CMO
The Virtual CMO podcast discusses growth marketing strategies for SMBs and how new technologies are improving marketing effectiveness. Hosted by Eric Dickmann, founder of The Five Echelon Group and a fractional CMO, the podcast focuses on building strategic marketing plans and executing successful growth marketing programs. It includes interviews with industry thought leaders who share their experiences and insights. The show highlights new marketing automation platforms, AI-enabled tools, and other cutting-edge technologies that can enhance marketing campaigns.
The Virtual CMO
The Evolution of Agile Marketing with Greg Kihlström
In episode 101, host Eric Dickmann talks with Greg Kihlstrom. He is a best-selling author, speaker, and entrepreneur who is passionate about agile marketing. Greg hosts "The Agile Brand" podcast (formerly The Agile World).
The Agile Brand is a podcast that talks about topics such as customer and employee experience and digital transformation in this digital age. Greg’s show features leaders and industry experts who share their perspectives on the evolving dynamic between brands and customers.
He currently serves on the University of Richmond’s Customer Experience Advisory Board, is Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certified, and holds a certification in Business Agility from ICP-BAF.
For more information and access to the resources mentioned in this episode, visit:
https://fiveechelon.com/evolution-of-agile-marketing-s7ep1/
A fractional CMO can help build out a comprehensive marketing strategy and execute targeted campaigns designed to increase awareness and generate demand for your business...without the expense of a full-time hire.
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Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm your host, Eric Dickmann. In this podcast, we have conversations with marketing professionals who share the strategies, tactics, and mindset you can use to improve the effectiveness of your marketing activities and grow your business. Hey, Greg, welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. So glad you could join us today.
Greg Kihlström:Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Looking forward to talking with you.
Eric Dickmann:You know, I can't believe this. We're recording this at the end of July. You know, where has the summer gone? It feels like summer just started and we're already entering August. Has it been the same way for you as well?
Greg Kihlström:Yeah, I can't play on. It feels like the year's going to end anytime. Sometime soon here, yeah.
Eric Dickmann:I know last year was so crazy and I think everybody was so excited to get into the new year, you know? Start socializing again, it's been still a kind of a crazy year. It doesn't feel like we're back to any sort of normal yet.
Greg Kihlström:Yeah. Agreed. Agreed.
Eric Dickmann:Well, you know, what's going to be interesting today as we're going to get a chance to dive into a little bit of the subject of agile marketing, digital marketing, branding, all these good topics that we love to talk about on this show. I'm wondering just as a way of kicking things off. If you could just give the audience a little bit of a background in terms of what you do and and how you got to where you are today with The Agile World.
Greg Kihlström:Yeah, absolutely. So just a brief background, I started in the creative field. And then early in my career, I started a digital marketing agency back in the early 2000s.. I ran that for about 14 years and sold it about four years ago. I'm sure we'll talk about this in a bit. Saw a lot of things change from between 2003 and 2017. I stayed with the company that acquired the agency for a little while and then ever since then, I've been working as a consultant to a lot of different kinds of companies doing everything from some marketing and digital strategy, but also including customer experience, employee experience, digital transformation. So a lot of big organizational change type projects. But always, I think always relying on my marketing roots. So to speak, it comes in handy no matter what you're doing. So, yeah.
Eric Dickmann:Well, I'm curious. I mean that is a good place to start. You've been at this for a while. 14 years ago, you started this agency, you said. What was digital marketing like back then? I'm sure there were a lot more simplicity to it than what we've got today.
Greg Kihlström:Yeah. So we started in late 2003. So you know, going back to that time, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, all of these things were very new. I mean MySpace was like the big social media platform. Back in the day, taking over from like Friendster, I think was still even around. So you know, this idea of social media marketing was a brand new thing. And I wouldn't even say that social media marketing really came into being, um, for a few years. We were kind of dabbling around in that and playing around with it. We did a lot of website design, which back in the day, evolved Flash and involved. It wasn't a sophisticated process. There are sophisticated practices like information architecture and UX design, and all of these things. They existed in the software world, maybe, but not so much making websites that it was a much more simplified thing. And so you know, we saw all of that kind of rise, we saw the rise of personalization and AI. You know to make better experiences, programmatic advertising. You know, just all of these things. And so, you know, we weren't always the first to use these methods or technologies, but I'm happy to say we were early adopters of many of those things and you know, many of those trends, and even less technology trends, things like infographics being used in marketing and that was a new thing. That was like a hot thing at one point, and now it's just kind of taken for granted. So yeah, I've got to say a lot of things, but it taught me to think in this more agile mindset of you know, we're never going to only be able to do one thing and do it forever, and be able to make money doing that forever. I mean, social media marketing is a great example of that. We did very well between probably 2008 and 2011 or so. We did really, really well doing a lot of social media marketing. By the time 2011, 2012 rolled around, everybody was bringing those resources in house and social media marketing retainer looked a lot different for an agency, for instance. So you know, that's just one example, but. I've seen this time and time again of like a trend rises and then you know, clients will bring it in house, and then we have to find something new to bring and they bring it in house. You know, just kind of continues to repeat like that.
Eric Dickmann:I hear from a lot of clients, similar stories along the lines of we started using Google AdWords years ago, we could get some fairly predictable results out of it, and it's just gotten harder and harder. But it's just a tough channel to ignore because it's so prevalent out there. Have you seen the same?
Greg Kihlström:Yeah. I mean, I think the one phenomenon is the commoditization of the consulting aspect of it or the strategy part. So yeah, Google AdWords. I mean it's not going anywhere. It'll go somewhere when Google does and that's at least a few years off. So I think the challenge is consultants and companies used to make a lot more money in providing consulting services and strategy. You know, strategic direction around those things. And now because so many people are doing it. First of all, you know, the cost structure of placing ads, it's gotten more competitive. So the price per word has gone up. But Google has also made it incredibly easy for someone who doesn't know anything about advertising to go in and create a generic campaign and therefore the services of offering and there's still a need for strategic services around things like that. But in the client's mind, I think there isn't as much value there. And therefore they're not willing to pay as much for it. And so it kind of becomes commoditized. And then again, to same thing with that social media example, I gave it just, it's not that social media is an important, it's just the value of do I really need to pay an outside consultant versus can I bring some junior person in that used TikTok in college, and so they're going to help me with my marketing strategy. It's a perception thing I think in many cases,
Eric Dickmann:And the tools have gotten so much better. I mean, yeah, you mentioned you could launch a fairly simple campaign on Google without too much effort. I know Facebook has really beefed up some of their tools and offerings and you know, the level of personalization that you can do, uh, and, you know, narrowing down your audience has gotten so specific that a lot of people can really find value if they put together a good campaign.
Greg Kihlström:YeahYeah Yeah, I think Google and others have made it a lot easier to you know, back in the day we were whatever term you want to, we were hacking things to try to personalize and get the right ad to show to the right people. And now, which is a good thing. I mean Google took all of that stuff and built it into their platform and you know, any, any self-serve, pay-per-click platform has kind of done that. And so now, I think the buyers, the clients, the advertisers have gotten more sophisticated over time because they're putting more effort and energy into digital just in general. But also to your point, the tools just have gotten, they've simplified things that again, we were spending hours of like, how would we do this given very rudimentary tools? They've just kind of built that and baked it in. And so you know, again, I don't blame clients for not being as willing to pay top dollar for those things because they can self-serve and there's still value that agencies can bring. It just often in bringing new things and not in continuing to do the same things.
Eric Dickmann:Well, you mentioned something that we've talked about a lot on this show is that there are a lot of people, obviously, especially younger people who are very familiar with the social media platform. They're users of Snapchat and TikTok, and Facebook, and Instagram, and all that. But just because you're familiar with the platform, doesn't mean you understand strategically how to use it to attract new customers, to drive lead flow. And this is what I see over and over again is that people have the capability of doing something, but they don't necessarily have the strategy behind it. And I think with more and more digital channels coming on board, there are so many places where you can spend your money. And therefore you can spend money very quickly if you don't really have a good strategy in place.
Greg Kihlström:Yeah, agreed. And I think this is where just at the end of the day, you can be on a million different social media platforms. You can be on a million different marketing and advertising platforms, but you've got to define what are the metrics of success. Because to your point, if the metric of success is being on Snapchat, then yes, you should just get an intern and let them help you be on Snapchat. If that, like, if the bar is really that low, then sure, you don't have to spend that much to get there. But if the real goal is to make more sales and drive it, drive awareness through social media and track that and track attribution, it's not always an easy thing to do that. But if you're really trying to drive towards real business calls, then you can't just pluck somebody out of college and hope that they're going to understand the stress. They may be very sophisticated in their usage of the features of a platform, and I think to a fault, a lot of colleges and universities are getting a little too platform specific and not strategic enough. That's all probably a topic of a whole other podcast. But strategy always matters. It's just when companies choose not to focus on the end results, then again, bare minimum of we're there and we use the right colors in the logo, you know I guess that's success. But long-term, they're going to look back and say, wow, we spent all this money on this stuff. And it gave us no return. Well, of course it didn't because you didn't set the goals in the first place.
Eric Dickmann:Yeah, and I certainly don't want to throw anybody under the bus. I think some of the creativity that's out there right now is phenomenal. What some people have done with their channels and the unique content that they create. I mean, obviously the proof is in the pudding, as they say. They've got thousands of subscribers or viewers to their videos, but a liker of you is very different than a conversion. A conversion is sort of a multi-step process, right? A like or a review is a one-click. And I think that's where things get broken a little bit is that when businesses are trying to get conversions, they're trying to build that lead flow, that's much harder than just getting a like.
Greg Kihlström:Yeah. I absolutely agree with you there. And I think that's where again, I have no doubt that any great brand or company, big or small can put time and effort into something and do it really well. And to your point, get likes and get you followers, and all those kinds of things. But, I mean I often say that like, just because you can doesn't mean you should, right? So is being on that platform, the absolute best way to drive business at the end of the day? If it's not driving business, it doesn't make longterm sense. Otherwise, it's a badge of honor and I'm too pragmatic a person to believe that just having a lot of followers on a platform really matters. It used to be a gauge by which I at my own agency was judged and it was super difficult to, you know, attribution models and everything like that. It's still not simple, but it's gotten a lot easier. But yeah, I just think again, youcan focus all the time and energy you want. But I mean, focus on the things that are actually moving the needle. And then if you really have time and budget leftover, cool. Good for you, I guess, But I'd rather be moving the needle on and focusing where it's going to really drive some, some activity.
Eric Dickmann:Yeah. And to drive that activity, you know, we're talking about sort of the history of the last 10, 15 years. I mean you look at a MarTech chart today and the number of tools is just unbelievable. Which is great as a marketer, we've got all of these choices, but it's also overwhelming. And then you look at the channels that used to be that you needed a web presence, you need a digital home on the internet, and maybe you did some social media or some PPC campaigns or something. But now there are so many different digital channels that you have to or you could be part of. You've got automation technologies, you've still got events and other activities. Marketing is becoming increasingly complicated, and that sort of leads me to this discussion of agile. Because. Agile is not a term that originated really in marketing, but it's something that has come up over the last couple of years and I'm hoping that you can tell the audience a little bit about what you mean by agile and how you think it really applies to marketing and digital transformation?
Greg Kihlström:Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know I've written a few books and my podcast is called The Agile World. And so you could call me biased a bit. But I guess just the, the briefest way I can talk about it is you know, there's what I call like Big A agile and then Small A agile. And so you know, Big A agile, there's a methodology and it started in manufacturing and software development. And you know, it's really about creating processes that are repeatable, continual optimization, and things like that. And so you know, starting in those worlds, people in software development, it happens that you don't use it sometimes, but most software teams are using some kind of agile approach. And. Um, I think where it. Where it makes a lot of sense for marketers. I think a lot of marketers have become agile and they were thinking in a more agile way. Long before even this term of agile marketing really started being used. And you know, it's been used for a little while. But I think with more real-time analytics and even Google analytics being so ubiquitous and free and, you know, back in the day, I mean, we were using what, like web trends. You know, just these like antiquated. I mean at the time they were cutting edge, but you know, And you look back and you're like, oh my God, did I actually have to look through server logs to see page hits and things like this. Now, Google Analytics tells me pretty much whatever I want to know. Big data kind of brought us this whole concept and idea of it was surely a buzzword, but it did bring us this idea of we've got to store this massive amount of data and then like, okay, what do we do with all that data? Smart companies started figuring out very quickly how to give real time insights or near real time at the very least. When marketers started having more access to this, they started being able to make better decisions more quickly. And so you stopped saying, okay, our marketing plan for the year 2015 is going to be this and in December, you know, it's January and December. We'll take a look at all the numbers and get back to you on what we want to do differently for 2016. The world doesn't work that way anymore. And it doesn't need gore that way anymore. I mean there's still, we're going to sell X amount of widgets this year and you know, there's still organizational objectives, but the way marketing is run, doesn't need to be beholden to some big, long, you know, at least 9 to 11 month exercise of like, kind of tracing back the numbers. It's like, okay, how did the campaign do yesterday? I can see that in almost real time, if not real time. So to me, the big agile is like you get certified as a scrum master and all that good stuff, that's still, mostly in the software and some other realms like that. What I refer to as small agile is thinking scientifically and methodically about change and iteration over time. And so the caveat there is just because we can see near real-time data doesn't mean we should say- Oh my God, we launched this campaign yesterday and it's not doing everything I wanted it to do. Let's scrap everything and start over. Instead it's, we're going to take this. We're going to run this for x amount of time. It's not going to be 12 months, but it's also not going to be 12 hours. We're going to take this and run it for a certain amount of time, then we are going to scientifically look back, see what worked, analyze it, and then adjust. And we can do that in one or two weeks sprints as opposed to one or two quarter sprints, which by the time, you know, three to six months pass your competitors might be way ahead of you. I mean the world moves way too fast these days. So that's what I think about is as agile marketing is just thinking again, not changing like Willy Nilly, like all of a sudden, not being reactive. But being scientific, but doing it quickly and having the data to be able to back you up and your decisions.
Eric Dickmann:Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to the podcast. But first, are you ready to grow, scale, and take your marketing to the next level? If so, The Five Echelon Group's Virtual CMO consulting service may be a great fit for you. We can help build a strategic marketing plan for your business and manage its execution, step-by-step. We'll focus on areas like how to attract more leads. How to create compelling messaging that resonates with your ideal customers. How to strategically package and position your products and services. How to increase lead conversion, improve your margins, and scale your business. To find out more about our consulting offerings and schedule a consultation, go to fiveechelon.com and click on Services. Now back to the podcast. What's so interesting there is I think we all from our own personal experiences can see kind of who's being agile and who isn't. You know, there are some companies that you may interact with that they have probably sent you a form of the same email for years, right? You know, they haven't changed the headline, they haven't changed the content, it's just the same thing over and over. Maybe you get it in your post office box or whatnot. It's just the same thing over and over. And then you see companies who are always trying something different. They're playing with headlines, they're playing with copy, they're playing with the offers and promotions. And if this one doesn't work, then they're going to try something else. They may ultimately result in the same thing, right? Whether you know, are you buy two and get one free or one 50% off, or something right? You know, it's all just trying different things. And that sounds like agile to me.
Greg Kihlström:Yeah. Yeah, it does. I mean, an example I often use is, um, in the, in the web design space, at least is Amazon. So, you know, when's the last time Amazon redesigned their homepage, you know? So one way of answering that is I think it was like 2011 or you know, some at least 8 to 10 years ago was the last like big, major redesign that they did all of a sudden overnight it changes or whatever. That's one way of looking at that. The other way of looking at that is that they're constantly redesigning every page on their site every minute of every day. They're running, you know, thousands of concurrent experiments all the time. So you know, to your point, it may change and then change back to the thing that they used to have, but they have the data to be able to say, you know what, saying buy now instead of purchase now makes more sales. And we tested that, we tested that in 30 different countries around the world. We know that that works. And so it's that way of thinking and you know, just continual testing and continually being open to change. And I think you know, that's the other part of this, probably the subject of a whole other podcast, as well is the culture change that's required to really continually adapt. You know, from the inside. Cause I mean, in the marketing and creative world, it's like you know, we grew up kind of from the mad men days of like this big creative reveal of, wow, we spent all this time on this great marketing campaign and it's going to turn heads or whatever, and that totally worked you know, back in the day. It doesn't work anymore. There's too much variation, there's too many options and there's too many ways to collect data. So we can't have egos about this stuff anymore. It's like we've got to let the data kind of help us make better decisions.
Eric Dickmann:So it sounds like the way you described little A agile is one of the key aspects of it is you need data. You need to be able to track things and be able to report on things. And there's so much great marketing technology to help you do that. But it's very hard to make good decisions without having some data to back it up.
Greg Kihlström:Yeah, absolutely. I think first it's, what are the goals that we want to achieve? Second is exactly what you're saying. Is like, how do we measure that? In addition to the agile stuff, I got my Lean six Sigma. That's very much based on error correction and everything like that. You're basically creating statistical analysis for solving problems and not just saying- Again, we want to sell more widgets. But there is a problem here at this stage in the buying process. For instance, if we're talking about marketing, What are we going to do to fix it? And how will we know when it, when it's achieved? And I think that's, that's really not everybody has to be a mathematician. I certainly am not. But you have to think methodically and analytically about this stuff. Cause it's simply just not enough to have good creative or just a good idea. You've got to have the data to back it up and you've got to know what you want the data to be able to show you.
Eric Dickmann:I think one of the things that I find with a lot of marketing is it can be very kind of rinse and repeat, right? It can be very cyclical. You know, if you're a B2C brand, there are holidays. So you tend to do certain promotions and whatnot around the holidays. If you're B2B, maybe there are certain trade events or things that are happening or quarterly results that you have to work around. But that can lead to a lot of sameness, right? You look at the calendar and you say,- Okay, now we've got to do this. We've got a quarterly newsletter, it's got to go out. And what happens is, is people stop focusing on, is this even worthwhile? Is it successful? Or do we have something that has an audience, but we're not really taking advantage of?
Greg Kihlström:Yeah, it's interesting. And this is where it can almost be a trap when you're thinking in this iterative approach is you start thinking about, yeah, what's our holiday promotion going to be this year, and is it going to be better than last year? What you're talking about is who's actually, like evaluating, should we even have a holiday promotion on the first place.? You know it not even make sense. And I mean, trust me, it's the metta strategy. I mean I call that kind of thing strategy opposites. Like who's measuring that the strategy was even right to begin with? And I mean, to your point, I don't think enough people are looking at that. I do think again, this can be a trap in the agile approach is like it's very important to iterate. And if the holiday campaign makes tons of sense, by all means iterate and improve it. You don't have to start from scratch every year. It's nice to have a baseline to move from, but you do need to take a step back sometimes and say, are we even doing the right thing? Are we allocating the right resources to the right thing? So yeah, it's a tough one. And, you know, ideally, a CMO is looking at that kind of thing, but I don't think enough are.
Eric Dickmann:I've seen this recently. You know, we're still on the back end of COVID. There are still some supply chain problems. Not everything is functioning as it should. And there are certain segments where they're just real shortages, this summer they've had real problems with things like patio furniture. It's very hard to find it's out of stock. But then I've seen unserved websites that they're running a sale on patio furniture. Well, it seems to me it's kind of dumb to run a sale on something that you don't have in stock, right? Because I think it falls into that cyclical nature. It's summer, so we run a sale on patio furniture, even though we don't have any to sell yet. And that's where I think people get caught up in these cycles without even really fully thinking them through.
Greg Kihlström:Yeah, I agree. And I think you know that might also speak to a disconnect between. Just groups within an organization. And I think that can also go into where is the data being consumed, as well as pulled from. So in other words, if marketing is really just looking at marketing numbers and okay, let's get more sales, but they're not talking to, you know, to your point, to the suppliers and saying, we either have too many, too much patio furniture or not enough. To me, that signals a disconnect in a very critical, you know, businesses should be smarter. I mean this is why so many organizations are doing these digital transformation projects because they might not even know that they have such a glaring issue. Hopefully somebody can identify that quickly enough, but they might not even know some of these problems that they have. But once these systems and these teams and these, all of these things are able to talk with one another, yeah, marketing can be so much smarter. They don't need to push that. They should be pushing other stuff that they do have too much in stock of, but they might never know because to your point, they're like, Okay, yeah. It's this time of the year. Let's do better than the last patio furniture campaign last year.
Eric Dickmann:Right, right, yeah. They just fall into that trap. And so with your podcast, you talk about a lot of these topics with your guests, right?
Greg Kihlström:Yeah. So The Agile World. I'm really just trying to look at just how businesses manage change in a number of different ways. And so, you know, I talked to some marketing and branding leaders. I talked to people in customer and patient experience in the healthcare space, and employee experience as well. And quite often what ends up being talked about is what I was just referring to as the digital transformation piece of if only I could talk more easily to this other part of the org and understand a little better than you know, employee and customer experience are so closely related. I believe customer experience and marketing are so closely related. I think sometimes organizations make them too closely related to the detriment of both. But they are still very closely tied to one another, but you know, if the data's not talking and the people aren't talking, and everyone isn't aligned around the customer, then it becomes really challenging. And so, yeah, I talk with people about those kinds of topics and written a few books on similar topics as well.
Eric Dickmann:Yeah, that's really interesting. And, you know, as we kind of bring our podcast interview to a close here today, I'd love it if you could just share with people where they could find not only the podcast, but more information about what you're doing in a, in your consulting business and the books.
Greg Kihlström:Yeah, absolutely. So my podcast is available on the major channels, Apple, Spotify, Google, Amazon, just look for The Agile World with Greg Kihlstrom. And you can find my website where I do consulting work and have a blog, and some other things as well at theagile.world. I would love to connect with people. I'm on LinkedIn and very active, so just search for Greg Kihlstrom on LinkedIn.
Eric Dickmann:Hey, that's great. And I'll make sure that we have all of that linked up in the show notes so that people can easily find you. This is really a fascinating discussion to me. I love this conversation because I think it's really next level marketing kinds of things, but, you know given that we tend to focus on small and mid-sized businesses on this show, I think it's something that people should really consider because being agile, just as the name implies allows you to more quickly make changes and optimize what you're doing from a marketing perspective. So I hope people will check out your show as well.
Greg Kihlström:Oh thanks so much. Thanks so much for having me.
Eric Dickmann:It's been great having you on the show today. Take care. Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Virtual CMO podcast. For more episodes, go to fiveechelon.com/podcast to subscribe through your podcast player of choice. And if you'd like to develop consistent lead flow and a highly effective marketing strategy, visit fiveechelon.com to learn more about our Virtual CMO consulting services.
