Charles: Hello and welcome to the CMO Series Podcast where we talk all things professional services, marketing and business development. Fractional marketing is on the rise in professional services offering firm's senior level experience without the full-time commitment. On this episode of the CMO Series podcast, I'm excited to be joined by Helen Cox, Marketing and Business Development Consultant from creating marketing plans and conducting audits to training teams and leveraging AI. Helen joins us to share her journey into the fractional space to discuss how firms can get the most value from this model, the common mistakes she sees in legal marketing and BD, and how to make fractional leadership a success. 

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Charles: Welcome to the podcast, Helen. 

Helen: Thank you. 

Charles: I think a good place to start as we start many of our podcasts is with our guests telling us a bit about their career journey to date in professional services, and how it led you to becoming a fractional marketer.

Helen: Sure. So I have been in professional services marketing now for around 18 years. My first nine years, they were in the corporate world. So I was working in firms like Liver Cha or Speechly Bircham, which is Charles Russell Speechlys. And I've also had a bit of experience in accountancy with RSM and consultancy with Mercer. So it has been nice to get a breadth of professional services experience across the board and within those roles, I was working in a number of different functions. So marketing, communications, campaigns, business development. So again, a nice mix of like that marketing and BD experience.

For the last nine years I have been working as a consultant. I decided to pack it all in and go on my own and set up my consultancy. And initially I was doing, while I was writing plans and reviews and I was working for smaller professional service firms and B2B businesses, and I was thinking about this question about what, you know, how did I become a fractional marketer? And I think I've always been a fractional marketer. I just think I called it something different a couple of years back. So I used to do outsource marketing, but a couple of years ago, I kept getting these inquiries saying, do you do fractional marketing? I was like, what is this? Like, I've never heard of it.

So I did a bit of research and immediately found out it was, um, a kind of almost a synonym for outsourcing. And I thought, do you know what? I'm gonna set myself up a webpage and start saying fractional because that's what the market seems to be asking for. And it's actually one of my best performing web pages now. So the fractional, I've always been doing it, but it's now kind of changed its term, I think. So, yeah, that's a little bit about me. 

Charles: Fantastic. So you mentioned that fractional is a term that you sort of discovered in the last decade, and it's a term we are hearing more and more often in professional services, but how do you define it and how has the landscape changed in the industry for roles like this?

Helen: Sure. So I think a good definition of a fractional marketer is someone who's senior in the marketing and BD leadership and who works part-time with multiple firms. So they tend to be strategic, but also flexible and happy to roll their sleeves up to get things done. So they are a little bit different from an interim. They're not just filling a gap, but it's really about embedding long-term expertise and without that full-time overhead. And I was having a think about, you know, what's changed and why these roles are coming up. And I think it's driven by a number of things. 

So firstly, it could be around the rising cost of senior full-time hires. That's something that's increasingly going up. Some firms just want flexibility and scalability and that's what fractional marketing can help with. There's also, from a perspective of someone who's doing the fractional marketing, there's that kind of growth of that portfolio careers in professional services, and I think that's something that people are interested in exploring, because it gives you a number of fingers in a number of pies, and it gives you that experience and challenge rather than just sticking to one role.

And I think the landscape shift has really been, I think, post pandemic. It wasn't, I think that people are more open to looking at flexible talent and there's less stigma about not being in the office or you know, working from home. I think people are much more open to that. So I think there's a number of different things there.

Charles: In your time, you've worked with firms of all sizes. So from your experience, when do firms tend to get the most value from a fractional marketer? 

Helen: I think there's a couple of situations where this can really kick in. So firstly, it could be when they need strategic input and it's - they don't have that budget or the need for a full-time hire.

Not everybody can bring in a CMO and pay for that on a permanent basis. So it gives that flexibility. Another situation could be around periods of change. So things like keen transitions or new practice launches or entering new markets. There could be a situation when there's a marketing team, but there's no senior guidance.

So the junior team is left on their own to implement tactics without the strategy. And another or lastly situation that comes to mind is with larger firms, sometimes they need someone to stabilize or drive a project forward, like a sector plan, or a large campaign or a BD plan, and it's bringing them in.

In that way to kind of help with those various different circumstances. It really depends on what the firm is going through at the time, but they tend to be the situations that are happening or that I see are happening. 

Charles: Yeah. That, that makes sense. Any sort of change or to bring in, stabilize. And I guess one of the unique things that you have from your experience that differs from maybe you've, you've been in the, industry for 18 years, that differs from maybe someone who's been in, the same firm or, or just maybe two or three firms for the last 18 years, is you probably have a good oversight about what's happening in all these different firms.

So I imagine that's quite a unique position because you kind of have got a feel for what's going on across the different firms, which I imagine is quite a useful thing to have when you're going into these firms to try and help make change? 

Helen: Yeah, I think so. And I get my brain picked a lot when I'm going into different firms.

They're like, oh, I'll be interested to know how you do this, or, I'll be interested to see how other firms do that. And I think there's lots of different things that I'm seeing that are, that are working and that may be some things that are, are not going so well as well. So I thought I'd share some of those points with you if that works. 

Charles: Yeah, and I think that's when we caught up just before recording this, you mentioned that you sometimes get called into a firm when something's gone wrong or isn't working. 

Helen: Yeah. 

Charles: So maybe we can jump into that now. What are the common mistakes or things you see time and time again in legal marketing and BD?

Helen: Yeah, no, I see a lot of things and I made a very, very long list, and then I tried to bring it, bring it back, because I think I could be here for a while. And I'm sure your listeners have come across this all the time. But some of the things that I see, so I'm just gonna reel off a couple, is confusing marketing activity with strategy. So there's lots of doing, but no joined up plan. I see that quite a lot. It's that busyness, people want to be seen to be doing things, but not necessarily understanding how it all plays back into the bigger picture. So that's one of the things that I'm seeing. And then off the back of that, there's this lack of alignment with goals, so firm goals, marketing is very disconnected sometimes from what the firm leaders and BD are doing.

So you end up having all this activity, this busy work that has no goals or objectives assigned to it and it's quite frustrating to see, because I'm very much, I'm, I'm very much kind of pushed the point of its better to do a few things well than loads of things really, really badly. And it's trying to reign that in a little bit to say, you don't have to go crazy. Let's just do the things that work or what we know work and let's try and test things rather than doing 18 different pieces of marketing activity and hoping something sticks. So those two are kind of closely related. The other thing that I see in terms of common mistakes is this kind of poor measurement.

We all love KPI, we all love ROI. And as marketing and BD teams, we're definitely focused on that a lot more, but it's really, really hard to measure some things and I think partners get very frustrated by it. So, in the marketing team, they might be looking at things like vanity metrics, like website impressions or LinkedIn posts where maybe we should be looking at trying to figure out what our pipeline metrics are. So it's maybe measuring the wrong things or not measuring anything at all. It definitely crops up quite a lot when I'm working with different firms. Got a couple more of this kind of over reliance on the usual suspects like directories, brochures, just generic content and without any sort of differentiation. It's like some law firms have lost the will to try and differentiate themselves. So it's very hard for a client to understand what makes them, you know, position them in a better way than a competitor. So it is all this kind of saying the same thing in the same way, like, what makes us stand out and how can we, how can we make sure clients pick us rather than somebody else?

But there's also this common mistake I see around lack of follow up on leads and opportunities. So you could go to a really good networking event or you might, you might go to a conference and do some sponsorship, but you don't, you don't follow up. And I think, I think hopefully the people on the call -  that this podcast listening now will be like, that is such a, such a key thing is if every piece of activity that we do, we really want to make sure that there is that follow up in place and that partners know that they need to follow up or fee earners know that they need to do that.

But it just happens again and again and again. And it's, it's very frustrating as a marketing and BD team to understand where the, where the growth's coming from, if it's not being tracked properly. Then I had a couple of other ones, but I just put them down as a kind of a quick fire, like not using a CRM, treating the BD team and the admin team campaigns that are focused on what they want to talk about, not what clients are interested in. I mean, the list goes on, Charles, the list goes on and on and on. 

Charles: It sounds like that. Yeah. The listeners of this podcast can relate to some of those sorts of themes. And I imagine if you are in a law firm, in a marketing and BD team and you do have a lack of alignment or there's no clear strategy or poor measurements or any of those problems, you've listed it, it's probably quite a demotivating sort of system to be in. 

And you talked about just being busy. And I think we're all guilty of that at times of, of just focusing on the grind, when actually sometimes it is good to take a step back and think what's the strategy here? Where are we actually trying to get to? And I guess that's where you come in and you can offer that sort of vision. So when you do step into a firm, what does your support typically look like? Can you share some real world examples? You don't need to mention any names, but just what your support looks like and, and how you sort of driven success.

Helen: Yeah, sure. So I think it, it. Always depends on what the client needs, but it typically falls into a number of different camps. So the first one is usually around, I hate using the word 'discovery 'cause it sounds really cheesy, but I do do discoveries and audits. So I'm trying to get under the skin of the firm.I understand what's going on. See where the opportunities are, see where the challenges are, and make those kinds of recommendations to make sure that they are aligning themselves properly and that they're doing the right things in the right way. And I quite like that. It's very headache-inducing doing a big audit because you have to speak to a lot of people and you get a lot of information in a very short period of time. And it's how you disseminate the information and put it into a structure that the client can then use and take forward. So I'll come in and do that as a piece of work. 

I might also be asked to come in and create a strategy. So this is what we were talking about earlier, about aligning a strategy to business goals, understanding what that looks like from the leadership team or the board or whatever you want to call it in your particular firm, and then creating that strategy that is aligned to that, and then the actionable marketing plan off the back of it. So that could be sectors, it could be BD, BD plans. It just depends on the firm. And sometimes I'm just asked to get involved with the implementation oversight. So I'll be working with teams or partners just to make things happen. So, that's a number of the different camps and the types of things that I would do. In terms of some real world examples. I've got two examples that I kind of noted down here. So, the first one was I was brought in by a large law firm to support their financial services sector.

So it was a time where leadership was changing and there was a bit of staff absence. So they had some really great fee earners, but they didn't have any real marketing direction. So I was brought in to really help the partners to create a clear sector marketing plan. I will also help to introduce a proper budget tracking system because that wasn't there and I was able to help clarify some roles using something called a RASI framework, which was quite helpful for partners to understand where their responsibilities lied in terms of what as a BD person, we needed them to do. And the success was really about giving that team some structure and accountability. I was only there for six months and I really wanted to make sure that the person who was coming back into the role was kind of set up for some long-term success rather than that short-term fix.

So my roles don't typically tend to have like KPIs or or ROIs attached to them. It's about just getting that momentum going, fixing problems and then leaving it in a better state than it was when I was - before I was there. And the other example, it's not a law firm as such, it was an IT consultancy, but again, they approached me to help them prepare for their next five years of growth. So they recognized that they needed some help.They had a sales director there. Who openly admitted to me that he didn't really understand marketing and the head of marketing that then reported into the sales director. So they were, you know, they weren't confident that their efforts were aligned for any sort of impact or for the growth period they were going into.So I spent a long time conducting a deep dive marketing review, and I was looking at everything from the analytics to the messaging to how they were reaching their audience. And the result of that was helping them to refocus and sharpen their message and restructure their priorities. And I was really, I also was there to kind of help them understand what their resourcing and their team should look like now and in the future.

So that was quite a nice piece of work. So that shift and being able to go through that with them in detail, give them a little bit more clarity about where they should have focused and help them to scale smarter as they went through their next five years of growth. 

Charles: Yeah, that's two, two wonderful examples. And I like the way that you put it is you're not there for a, for a long time, you're just there to come in sort it - 

Helen: Yes. 

Charles: And leave the place better than, than when you found it. And I think that's a nice sort of approach and it's probably quite rewarding for you to do that and to sort of take a firm hand, and sort of advance them on a little bit and then say you're goodbyes and then move on to the next one.

Helen: Well, that's an exciting thing. It's like, because you're not employed, it's like you can just get in there and do what you need to do and you don't have to get involved in politics. You don't have to worry about any of that. And it's like, yeah, you kind of give them, you give 'em all the tools that they need to do what they need to do, and then it's like, what's the next exciting thing that's coming on? How do I help somebody else? And really, it just does come down to that helping initiative. It's just like getting them in a good place. 

Charles: Fantastic. Well, we're gonna take a quick pause from the main. Questions to jump into our quick fire round where this is a chance for us to find out a bit more about who Helen Cox is. So I've got a few questions noted down and we'll just jump right into 'em. Sure. So the first one is, what's your go-to way to unwind after a busy day? 

Helen: So, yeah, I was thinking about this and this is really geeky and please don't judge me, but I actually quite like playing computer games. 

Charles: Oh, really?

Helen: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I like going on a PlayStation five and putting on a computer game, and I was thinking about why I do this because I feel like I need to explain myself, but I think sometimes I've always liked 'em as a child, but the reason I do this is because it helps me just escape. Sometimes when you've got lots of clients and you're doing lots of different things, you just need to kind of have a, like an hour or two just completely forgetting about it. And also you've got your handheld, you know, controller, so you can't look at your phone. So it's, it's one of these things where you, it just takes you away for a little bit of time and you can just completely forget. And I think it's so important when you do fractional roles like this to have that space. So please don't judge me. 

Charles: No, not at all. That, that sounds, sounds good. 

Helen: You're like, what? 

Charles: Is there a book, a podcast, or a resource that you'd recommend to anyone working in the professional services marketing space? 

Helen: Yes. So I really like an author called April Dunford, and she is a positioning expert and she's written some books called, “Obviously Awesome” and “Sales Pitch”. So she's all about positioning and making it really practical and I really like her example. So they're all from the tech world and SaaS world, but it fits quite nicely with professional services because firms often sound the same, a bit like tech products and SaaS products. And her framework really helps to kind of cut through that. It's especially powerful for things like pictures and proposals and showing clients why they should choose you. So it's not a professional services book, but I definitely would recommend reading it because it just gives you a completely different angle on how to approach these things. 

Charles: Fantastic. What's your favorite place to visit and what makes it special to you?

Helen: So I really like going -  this is boring. I like going to Majorca and I like going to little thinkers in Majorca, which are small farmhouse hotels because it's just very relaxing for me. It's not too far away from London. It's two hours and it's just when I'm there, I can completely chill out and enjoy myself, and that's where I've had my nicest holiday. So not going around Costa Rica and doing a 10 day active adventure. Sometimes it's just about the chilling. That's what makes those holidays really special for me is just having a break. 

Charles: Lovely. And what's the best piece of advice you've ever received? 

Helen:  So it is two things. Well, two things. Sorry. I know you've also one, but one is, don't confuse being busy with being effective. And the second time, the second piece of advice is there's always time for networking. Someone said that to me when I first started on my business journey and I have always remembered that. 

Charles: I like that. And that's probably, uh, yeah, trying to define being busy and being productive. 

Helen: Yeah exactly. 

Charles: Exactly. And always time for networking. That's how we met at one of the LMA Events. Shout out to LMA Europe region. 

Helen: Yes. No, it was good. It was a good conference. 

Charles: Yeah. That's brilliant. Do you have a favorite way you've used AI recently? 

Helen: Uh, yes, and I was trying to explain this to you on our pre prep call, but I really like an AI tool called ‘HeyGen’. It's a bit creepy because basically it creates videos once it's recorded you, so you'll do a three minute recording talking into the microphone and the camera, and then you can then feed it scripts and it can do multiple different videos of you doing those scripts. I think it could be like a game changer. For campaigns in professional services firms when you can't get partners to a video room or they're busy.

It's like you can just record them a couple of times in different outfits and then you can then just feed them scripts. I'm not sure how much they'd like that, but from a marketing and BD point of view, you could just be, you could be churning out videos on that basis. I thought that was a clever tool that I've come across. 

Charles: Yeah. ‘HeyGen’. We'll have to check that one out. So jumping back to our main questions now, I just have one question to - 

Helen: Yes. 

Charles: Finish off. Well, actually it's a two part question. The first part is how can firms looking to bring a fractional leader do that successfully? And then the second part is more for the sort of marketers that are listening to this and thinking, oh, actually that fractional sounds like a good gig. Do you have any advice for them? 

Helen: Sure. So from a firm's point of view, it's about being really clear on what you need. I come across a lot of clients who are like, I think we need that, but I don't know. And really sit down and take the time to figure out what it is. Do you need the marketing? Do you need the BD? Do you need someone to lead a team? Do you need someone to change the culture? Do you need someone to, you know, be implementing the managing partner? Like, what is it that you, that you need from that fractional? Because having a really clear brief is important for both sides. 

And to enable that delivery to, to happen smoothly. The other thing is you need to have realistic expectations because a fractional person coming in is not full time. They're working with other businesses as well, so you need to set times when they're coming in and what they're doing for you. Prioritize what do you want them to do? Because they've only got a certain amount of time to do it. So rather than giving them a list of 25 million things like what are the top three priorities that we need you to do in the next three months, it just really, really to help focus, focus everybody. And I think another one to think about is how you measure the impact of a fractional. So it's about tracking what's changed, not just what's being done. So I think it's all about really, if you're gonna engage with somebody, have a real, really clear picture about what it looks like, what you're gonna prioritize, and how you're gonna know that you know, they've achieved success in the time that they've been there.

So that's the fractional side of things. And then you mentioned, I think, was it marketers considering going fractional. Is that right? 

Charles: Yeah. Yeah, 

Helen: Yeah, yeah. Okay. So a couple of things. I mean, there's so many things because I do get asked quite a lot for advice and guidance and tips. I was trying to think about this, but I think it's really important to try and build some credibility before you go fractional. So gain that senior experience first. Because if you say, come out of a -  come out of your employed life into a fractional marketing manager because you've not had that head of experience or director experience it, it may kind of limit you to what you can and can't do when you move into the fractional role. So think about getting that senior experience. 

The other thing, and this is what I was just saying earlier, is network heavily. Work comes through relationships and referrals and people that you used to work with. So make sure that you are networking and doing that before you start your fractional life, because that's just really important to keep that momentum going and to remind people that you're there. One of the things that I’ve not struggled with, but what had to think about when I started was what am I actually offering people? So you, you need to be clear on your value proposition. So I always try to say, think of three things that you want to offer. If you just say, I can do marketing and BD for anybody in a law firm, for instance, then that's really vague and people don't necessarily clock onto it.

But if you say something like, well, I'm very focused on BD sector plans or BD team culture, or I'll write your marketing strategies and plans, then having three areas that you're focused on will just help you have better conversations with people, but you need to figure out who they are. Definitely wanted to flag this up, it's about embracing flexibility as a fractional marketer, but also putting some boundaries down as well with your clients because you'll have multiple clients and you might burn out. I have to-do lists about to-do lists for everybody because I could have three or four clients at the same time.

So it's really important that you say, I work this time for you and this is when I'm available. I say this because once I had a client message me on WhatsApp at 10 o'clock at night, and I thought something had gone wrong with my family, I was like, who's, who's doing this? And it's like, sometimes people don't understand what the boundaries are. So definitely put down some guardrails and boundaries around your time to make sure that you can manage all your clients effectively. And the last one that I wanted to flag and something that I've talked to other consultants about in the past is make sure you either have a contract that you give to a client to sign or if the client is giving you their contract, you review that contract thoroughly. I mean, I got a Chat GPT to have a look at one of my contracts because there were a couple of clauses in there I wasn't sure about, and things like IP clauses. As a fractional, you'll be bringing things, you'll be bringing your own templates in, and that's your IP.

And if you've got a client contract that's talking about things like that, you know, whatever you develop on with the client, it's their IP, then that's not necessarily fair. So definitely make sure that the terms are favorable for you and that you have a contract in place. And I know that's very boring, but that is so, so important. So to make sure that everybody knows what everybody's doing. And I think that's it for now. I think there's, I mean, there's other bits and pieces, but I just wanted to get the contract point across because I've come across so many people that don't have it, and I'm like, no, don't do that. 

Charles: Yeah, there actually was something that I didn't really, I hadn't even thought about. So yeah. Thanks for sharing that. And then obviously from the firm's point of view, making it a success, a clear brief, knowing what's important, tracking changes. Yeah, all it, all, all sort of makes sense and I think there's some really good takeaways as well there for anyone considering going fractional. Get your experience first because that's gonna help you sort of land those roles and find your niche, what your expertise are and coming back to it, networking, like as you mentioned, some of these jobs will come from people that you've worked with before or people you've met through your network. So yeah, some really good takeaways there. 

Helen: Thank you.

Charles: Well, I think that's all we've got time for today, Helen. I know we could probably talk for a couple of hours longer, but, we'll wrap things up there. So the only thing left for me to say is a massive, massive thank you for coming on the podcast and hope to see you in person soon.

Helen: Thanks very much Charles.

Charlie: You can follow the Passle CMO Series podcast on your preferred podcast platform. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.