https://youtu.be/iBIAIO4lUj0
Eric Dickmann is the CEO of the Five Echelon Group, a virtual CMO and strategic marketing advisory service provider for SMBs looking for growth and profitability. We talk about digital transformation, marketing automation, and how to remove friction in the buyer's journey.
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Digitize your Business with Eric Dickmann
Our guest is Eric Dickmann, who is the CEO of the Five Echelon Group. He's a seasoned marketing strategist and fractional CMO. He is an expert in digital transformation and marketing automation. He is the former senior director of marketing with Oracle for 18 years. And he's also the host of the virtual CMO podcast. Welcome to the show, Eric. Steve, thank you for having me on the show.
I'm really excited to be here today. It's great to have you here today.
So, Eric, tell me, I mean, we don't have too many Fortune500 experienced entrepreneurs here on this podcast. So after 18 years at Oracle, why do you decide to become an entrepreneur? Oh, that's a great question.
You know, Oracle was a tremendous experience for me. I actually started out working at this company called Siebel Systems and about seven years into that journey, they were acquired by Oracle. So all told it was about 18 years, but it was a fantastic experience. Got to travel the world, got to do some incredible things with marketing because, you know, they're a big company, big budgets. But I will tell you that one of the challenges working in a large enterprise company, it's a bit like being on a hamster wheel. Everything is very repetitive. It just keeps going around and around. Budget cycles happen. You tend to do similar things every year.
You know, we're going to cut back just a little bit, but do just as much. And, you know, there's the usual cutting of resources and staff. And after a while, I just got to thinking that there's got to be something else. There's got to be some challenges that are more exciting, more fulfilling. And, you know, Steve, I'm a big believer that small and medium-sized businesses are the lifeblood of this economy. They are really what are keeping the lights on for so many people. And those are the businesses that I really wanted to help. And so I thought, what better way to do that than to branch off on my own, take the skills and experience that I had and put that to work helping some of these small and mid-sized businesses.
That's great to hear. You know, I teach a lot about this idea of these management concepts. I talk about several management concepts in my book that they have all been implemented by the MBAs of fortune companies. And it's time for small to medium-sized companies to also implement these things. So what are some of the things that you have seen work for Oracle that could be somehow maybe simplified for small to medium-sized enterprises, and they could also apply those concepts or frameworks?
You know, when you are a big company, a big enterprise company, they have spent so much money over time developing their brand that they become fairly militant about it, about maintaining their brand profile, their brand image. And that's a positive and a negative, but what it has shown me is that there is real value in consistency. Some people may think it's a little bit picky if you specify to every designer that the red that you use in your logo is hex number, you know, F3, whatever it may be. But there is consistency because there are brands that are out there that you can literally look at the font that they use in their advertisement or the color of something and recognize that it's that brand without even seeing their name listed.
And so I think for a lot of small and mid-sized companies, one of the things that they can learn from these larger enterprise competitors is that there is value in being consistent, in putting your message out there in a consistent way so that people begin to recognize you. Look, you have a lot less dollars to spend usually, and so you want to make those dollars go as far as they can. And one way to do that is to make sure that people begin to recognize the messages that you're putting out there by being consistent.
That's very interesting. So how can small companies be consistent? Maybe that’s a stupid question. But what can we do as small businesses to pay more attention? What are we not doing? What are we missing? Maybe there are some low hanging fruits out there.
So look, you and I are both podcast hosts. One of the ways to be successful as a podcaster is to be consistent in your publishing, right? If you're gonna do a show and you wanna do a weekly show, then publish something on a weekly basis. If you are a small business and you are going to do social media marketing, run ads consistently. If you're going to post blogs, post blogs consistently. Pick the topics that you want to focus in on and regularly put new content out there that supports those topics that you want to be known for.
I think that's where they can do it. And some of these things don't cost any money. If you want to put something on Instagram, you know, you're a coffee shop, you want to do things on Instagram, post a picture of, you know, the latte of the day or whatever, just remind people that you're in business and what product or service you provide, stay top of mind. It doesn't have to cost a lot of money, but that consistency over time will begin to make a difference.
For small businesses, being consistent doesn't have to cost a lot. The key is regularity in content creation and marketing efforts.Share on X
It's easier said than done though, isn't it? Oh yeah. Because when you have limited resources as a small business, to be there every time with the routine things and plus put out the fires can be a really challenging thing sometimes. So what do you suggest the small businesses do? How do they create that consistency? Maybe that's a habit that they don't have. How can they acquire it?
I think that's a good point. I mean, everything, there's a trade-off, right? It might not cost dollars, but it costs time. And I think the way that you can do it is not try to do everything. So, if we take the world of online, right, you know, you've got your website, you've got all the various social media platforms. Where are you going to put your message out? It takes time and effort for each one that you want to invest in. Figure out what is the best channel to reach your target audience and put your effort there. Don't spend time, you know, creating social media posts in five different sizes to satisfy the needs of five different platforms if really there's one platform that's giving you the biggest benefit. Focus all your effort there.
That's a good advice. So, let's switch gears here a little bit. And, you know, I hear so much about this idea of digital transformation. It sounds very catchy. But what does it really mean? What are the major concepts behind digital transformation? If I want my business to be a digital business, where do I even begin?
You know, it's been such a hyped and overused term in many ways. You know, basically it's the digitalization of your business. It's taking your processes and sort of codifying them in a digital format. But I kind of take it to the next level. And what I really view digital transformation as is it's connecting your business digitally. It's making sure that everything that you're doing, you know, from your marketing process to your sales process to your service process is all connected digitally.
A consistent foundation of who your customers are, what their relationship is with your organization, and then making sure that everything that you do to grow from there is all growing from this solid digital foundation. It's moving away from disparate systems that might not have been connected, that may have been siloed, and it's really pulling everything together in an integrated digital way. That's how I kind of look at it.
So, can you give me an example? Let's say I run a professional service business. Let's say I'm a management consultant like you are. How do I digitize my business? What kind of systems do I implement and what does it look like?
I always like to start with a foundation of your customers are the core of your business, right? So where are you putting information about your customers? Hopefully it's not in a spreadsheet. Hopefully it's not in some manual process, but chances are, if you haven't really thought about this, it's located in a number of different places. And I think one of the first things to really undergoing a successful digital transformation initiative is to say, okay, this is going to be our repository. This is going to be the single source of truth for our customer information.
Digital transformation is not just about digitalizing processes; it's about connecting the entire business digitally. It involves creating a solid digital foundation that integrates marketing, sales, and service processes.Share on X
And then we're going to start to build out from there. So do we need a sales system? Okay, great. We can layer on top of that, a sales system. Do we need a marketing system? We can layer on top of that, but their hooks are always back into that core system. And I usually recommend that people are building off a CRM system, that that becomes sort of the core foundation of the knowledge about your customers. And then you start to layer on the sales and marketing and servicing capabilities on top of there. Because once you do that, then those hooks can provide you visibility into exactly what kind of a relationship your customer has with your organization and gives you real power in terms of data and analytics and being able to spot trends and understanding what are the levers you can pull in your business to grow.
That's a great analogy. So essentially the four basic system elements which I hear is a CRM, a sales system, or maybe a marketing is the next one,
