When does it make sense to bring on a Fractional CMO, and what should you expect from one?

In this episode, Asia and Kim dig into the ins and outs of Fractional CMOs: what they do, when to hire one, how they’re different from heads of marketing or full-time CMOs, and the biggest risks and rewards founders should know.

Asia also reflects on her current work as a Fractional CMO and shares how she approaches structure, team-building, and strategy without getting stuck in the weeds.

Got a question you'd like Asia to unpack on the podcast? Record a voicemail here.

• (00:02:05) - Fractional vs. full-time: what’s the difference and when does each make sense?
• (00:03:30) - A CMO’s core responsibilities: budget, strategy, and team.
• (00:05:30) - You don’t need a team in place already to hire a CMO, but you do need budget and runway.
• (00:07:00) - Heads of marketing often get hired like CMOs, but they’re not the same.
• (00:11:45) - A head of marketing thinks in channels, whereas a CMO thinks in markets, products, and investment strategy.
• (00:13:45) - Product marketing, demand gen, hiring, retention, and outsourcing are important parts of a CMO's responsibilities.
• (00:16:15) - Attribution and analytics, even if it's messy, is something that a CMO should take ownership of.
• (00:21:30) - You might need a CMO if you’re making investments that aren’t paying off and no one’s connecting the dots.
• (00:23:15) - Trial periods are worthwhile when you're hiring for a CMO role since hiring the wrong person in a c-level role is costly.
• (00:26:50) - There are different types of CMOs, some are more visionary and others are more operational.
• (00:33:15) - The biggest thing to monitor with a fractional role is if marketing falls behind because there isn't a full-time leader.
• (00:36:00) - Less time can lead to more focus. A great fractional CMO will have a high level of clarity about priorities.

Growth isn’t just marketing. And if you’re stuck and growth isn’t happening, you’ll need to look beyond marketing and acquisition.

In this episode of the In Demand Podcast, Asia and Kim break down what it means to troubleshoot growth. They explain how growth work goes beyond campaigns and into retention, expansion, pricing, onboarding, and more.

Plus, they dive into how product marketing overlaps and differs from growth and why founders often under-invest in the real levers that move growth.

Got a question you'd like Asia to unpack on the podcast? Record a voicemail here.

• (00:01:44) - Growth marketing vs. head of growth: very different roles.
• (00:04:47) - A head of growth looks across the whole business, not just marketing.
• (00:05:40) - An early mistake founders often make is to focus only on marketing and acquisition when they are trying to solve growth problems.
• (00:08:07) - The moment Asia realized marketing wasn’t enough and how that led her into growth.
• (00:12:40) - Troubleshooting growth means identifying why growth is slow or stuck.
• (00:15:00) - Step by step on troubleshooting growth and benchmarks that matter.
• (00:22:45) - Troubleshooting = identifying root causes and giving you a clear plan to fix them.
• (00:30:30) - Product marketing overlaps with growth, but it's not the same job.
• (00:35:56) - Recap of what differences exist between a product marketer, a VP of growth, and a marketer.

Most SaaS companies hit growth plateaus, and too many founders assume the problem is either unsolvable or too complex to fix. In reality, that's rarely true.

In this episode of In Demand, Asia and Kim unpack how to shift your mindset from "This can't be solved" to "Who's already solved this, and how can I learn from them?"

They also introduce CUES, a prioritization framework that helps you focus on the right growth ideas instead of spinning your wheels.

Got a question you'd like Asia to unpack on the podcast? Record a voicemail here.

• (00:00:55) - Why founders often treat growth problems like they’re unsolvable.
• (00:05:22) - There are a lot of founders creating pain for themselves by trying to reinvent the wheel.
• (00:08:02) - Almost every single growth problem has been solved before, you just need to find the people who did it.
• (00:09:00) - Books, articles, and experts: where to actually look for answers.
• (00:14:10) - Learning enough to get started and putting your knowledge into practice.
• (00:19:15) - One of the things founders need to be able to do at a high level is understand trade offs.
• (00:24:00) - What does the process look like for troubleshooting growth?
• (00:25:00) - What net revenue retention tells you and how to find and use it in ProfitWell.
• (00:34:00) - Spotting the levers: activation, positioning, and pricing.
• (00:39:00) - Prioritization traps: why common frameworks like ICE often fail.
• (00:42:55) - Try CUES instead: Confidence, Understanding, Ease, and Speed.
• (00:55:05) - Recapping what was covered on this episode.

Hiring for marketing is hard, especially when you’re a technical founder. If you’ve never worked closely with marketers, how can you confidently hire one?

In this episode of the In Demand Podcast, Asia and Kim break down why marketing hires are so tricky for SaaS founders.

They walk through the differences between strategic leaders vs executors, how to define the role you really need, and why under-hiring is one of the biggest mistakes founders make.

Got a question you'd like Asia to unpack on the podcast? Record a voicemail here.

• (00:01:10) - Why is hiring for marketing so hard (especially when you're a technical founder)?
• (00:05:00) - Don’t base your hiring benchmark on celebrity marketers.
• (00:06:50) - Sometimes the people who are best at self-promotion aren't the best at marketing your business.
• (00:09:55) - Start by defining your fully loaded marketing budget and if it's possible for you to afford a quality full-time hire.
• (00:12:30) - Strategic vs. tactical hires: What kind of marketer do you need?
• (00:17:30) - Why experience with a similar company in a similar stage is critical.
• (00:20:33) - You can’t spot fit from a resume; you must dig in during interviews and think about how you will work with this person.
• (00:29:30) - VC vs. bootstrapped: know who your role will attract.
• (00:35:05) - Consider overseas talent as there are great marketers at much more competitive salaries
• (00:38:00) - Use the Rule of 40 to assess when you're ready to hire.
• (00:43:00) - Successful ROI on a marketing hire is not only about growth rate, it's also about creating a qualitative impact, like freeing up the founder to have a higher impact.

Hey founders! Asia here Got a burning marketing or growth question you'd like us to unpack on the podcast? Well now you can slide into our voicemail and drop an audio message covering your exact question. Just pop on over to our voicemail app by clicking here and leave us a message or if you'd prefer to write us something, email us at podcast@demandmaven.io

Here are a few ideas you can ask us to get the wheels turning:

- Should I require a credit card on signup or not?
- I've been struggling with activation of my product. What should I do?
- I'm torn between these two customer segments. Help!
- How should I be thinking about using (insert marketing channel here)?
- What are some ways I can manage my marketing team?
- What are some KPIs / OKRs we should be tracking for growth or marketing?
- How do I know if this feature is ready to be launched?
- What are some clever ways we can use case studies?
- I can't tell if we should kill this plan we're offering or not. How should we decide?

As so much more! Make sure to give us context you feel comfortable sharing and let us know if you'd prefer to be anonymous! Thank you as always for being a listener!

Welcome to the new season of In Demand! For this season, Asia is joined by her new co-host Kim Talarczyk the Client Services Manager at DemandMaven!

In this first episode of the season, Asia and Kim discuss recent conferences like MicroConf and Indie Founders, highlighting the value of founder communities and the insights from conversations with founders. They cover how DemandMaven is changing and new projects, like Asia’s work as a fractional CMO, and how the changing tech paradigm is changing businesses in 2025.

Got a question you'd like Asia to unpack on the podcast? Record a voicemail here.

• (00:02:07) - Meet the New Co-Host: Kim Talarczyk
• (00:08:39) - What Asia learned from her experience at Indie Founders
• (00:14:00) - Reflections from initial experiences as a fractional CMO
• (00:16:00) - The tension that often exists within founder CEOs
• (00:19:00) - What makes a good CEO (and why founders often aren't best at CEO work)
• (00:27:00) - Planning in unpredictable times
• (00:30:00) - Why acquisitions are an important signal of industry changes
• (00:34:25) - Delta's 100 year anniversary and decade long trends
• (00:41:15) - The power of podcasts and the challenge of creating when it can feel like you're talking into a vacuum
• (00:48:30) - Future plans for In Demand

When you're in the early stages of building a business, you need to move quickly. But when you're testing growth channels, there is a difference between moving quickly and freaking out.

In this episode of the InDemand podcast, host Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, uncovers the pitfalls that teams can fall into when reacting to quantitative results.

She covers the mistakes that founders make when reacting to experiments and how to set yourself up for success when running tests and reacting to the results.

TL;DL

0:22 - Don't freak out about bad numbers. Early technical founders have a tendency to overreact to test data from marketing and growth campaigns. But in growth you're working with humans, not code, and you can't always trust immediate results.

4:35 - A one to two week experiment with low spend on a growth channel likely won't show you a clear result. If you react to it you might be missing a big opportunity.

8:00 - A company Asia worked with was testing out a video demo option. After one week and getting two requests for the video the team was resigned to the fact that it wasn't working, but after waiting it turned out that having the video was actually increasing the number of prospects entering the pipeline.

12:45 - You always have to remember that quantitative outputs can tell you 'what', but can't tell you 'why'. Before you react, you have to pause and dig deeper to understand what is driving the numbers.

20:07 - When you're running a test, the sample size matters. You need a large enough volume of results to be able to trust the results. There is a natural variance in the results you get and if you end an experiment early you might just be seeing variance.

Customer research is a critical part of growth. However many teams and founders make big mistakes when they do their research. What are the mistakes you need to avoid?

In this episode of the InDemand podcast, Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, highlights the most common mistakes in conducting customer research and gives examples of how to avoid them.

If you haven’t already, sign up for The Work, a weekly newsletter: https://demandmaven.substack.com/

TL;DL

1:03 - Mistake one, not setting clear goals for research. You'll always have a trigger that makes you decide to do the research, but you should also have a clear goal. For example, "I want to understand who churns and why"

6:03 - Mistake two, not interviewing the right people. When you conduct your research, make sure that it's very clear who the target audiences are going to be and that it aligns with your ultimate goals and hypothesis of the research.

10:58 - Mistake three, over-talking in interviews. Too much talking makes your research subjects want to agree. You might end up with a lot of camaraderie, but you'll probably not get the most valuable information.

14:05 - Mistake four, asking leading questions. Giving a hint of the answers you want to hear makes it more likely you'll hear that answer and not an answer that may surprise you and point to an issue you're not aware of.

21:48 - Mistake five, accepting vague answers. This is the one that founders are most susceptible to. For example, "What I liked about the product was that it was easy to use". An answer like that should be followed up on to find out specifically what they mean. Terms like: it was easier, it was faster, it was better, it was stressful, it was annoying, it was confusing, it was flexible, it was seamless are triggers where you should dig deeper.

33:58 Mistake six, if you don't need to, don't incentivize people for your interviews. In some situations, you will need to have an incentive to get people. But if you're talking to your customers, don't give an incentive. It makes it more likely that you'll get people who don't really want to talk to you and just want the incentive.

34:20 - Mistake seven, not having a feedback process after interviews. After you do your research, it's key to not only have bullet point results for the founders and executives but also a detailed review of the process and learnings for the entire team.