In this episode
Ant explains why CMO Field Notes exists - and what makes it different from most marketing content you’ll come across. Not advice from the outside. Observations from inside growing businesses, written down and shared clearly.
He covers the three areas the show returns to week after week: the decision-making that stalls marketing before it starts, the technology stacks that cost more than they deliver, and the conversion gaps that more leads will never fix.
And he explains exactly who the show is for - and who it isn’t.
Key takeaways
Most marketing problems in $1m-$50m businesses aren’t marketing problems. They’re decision problems. When the founder is still acting as Head of Marketing by default, direction is slow and the team fills the gap as best they can.
The average business at this stage is running twelve to eighteen marketing tools. Most of their team properly understands about half of them. The hidden cost isn’t the subscriptions - it’s the friction that slows everything down.
More leads is almost never the answer. The leads are usually already there. What’s missing is speed of follow-up, clarity of offer, and a handoff between marketing and sales that actually works.
CMO Field Notes is published a few times a week. Each piece is short, built around one observation, and written to be useful in three minutes.
Resources and links
Find out more about working with Ant: www.anthodges.com
Start with a Simplify Day - a full day working directly on your marketing: anthodges.com
Read the Substack and subscribe to CMO Field Notes: www.cmofieldnotes.com
Read Simplify the Funnel by Ant Hodges: www.simplifythefunnel.com
About Ant Hodges
Ant Hodges is a Fractional CMO and the author of Simplify the Funnel®. He works directly inside businesses doing $1m-$50m as their senior marketing leader - embedded in the decisions, the team, and the strategy. He has over twenty years of experience and has contributed to more than $76m in client revenue. He believes complexity is almost always the problem, and simplicity is almost always the answer.
Subscribe and follow
CMO Field Notes is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen. New episodes publish several times a week.
If something in an episode resonates, hit reply on the Substack or email cmo@anthodges.com directly.
