Why Hire a Fractional CMO
Why hire a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)? There are many reasons.
If your startup needs some strategic marketing management but is not at the point where it makes sense to hire a full-time Chief Marketing Officer, a fractional CMO can be retained for a few hours or days a week to serve as your Chief Marketing Officer. Maybe your revenues don’t justify the expense of a full-time head of marketing, or you’re in between marketing leadership. Or maybe you’re just not sure what skill set you need in your CMO yet.
Regardless, a Fractional CMO can take the reigns and help you get your marketing to the next level. A Fractional CMO can build your marketing function, keep an existing marketing machine running while you look for the right CMO, guide your company through pivots, or increase your curb appeal for an acquisition.
Why Hiring a Fractional CMO is a Good Idea
Benefits of Hiring a Fractional CMO
There are many benefits that answer the question “why hire a Fractional CMO?”. A Fractional CMO can build your marketing machine and launch your company, products, and marketing programs while you confirm your product and market, gain traction, and achieve momentum. Or they can keep your existing marketing machine running while you take time to find the right full-time head of marketing. Hiring a Fractional CMO offers you:
- Flexibility — A Fractional CMO works on a part-time basis, virtually, in your offices or a combination. Hours can be ramped up and down depending on the needs, stage, strategy and budget. Most just ask for a minimum weekly hour commitment.
- Financial Savings — A Fractional CMO can manage and mentor junior marketing resources to keep the marketing machine running on a day to day basis, while you only pay for a CMO part-time. If you need to hire, a Fractional CMO can help you do that.
- Best Practices — A senior Fractional Chief Marketing officer has been around the block a few times and has seen what works and doesn’t in different situations, first hand. They can set up best-practice processes for you and keep you from making common mistakes.
- Headache Savings — Instead of you managing and coordinating the work of multiple marketing agencies, a Fractional CMO will manage any marketing vendors you have or bring in less-expensive freelancers they have experience with.
- Focus— An experienced Fractional CMO can give your go-to-market strategy focus so you as a founder, CEO, COO or CRO don’t waste time and effort trying to learn marketing while building or running the business.
Savings from Hiring a Fractional CMO
There are savings to be had that answer the question “why hire a Fractional CMO?”. A common mistake for startups is to hire their CMO before they validate their product and market, and know what kind of skill set they need in a CMO. When a full-time marketing leader or CMO gets hired too early—before the right go-to-market strategy is known—they often turn out not to have the skill set you need which then requires an expensive severance package and new recruiting fees. Here are some more savings: :
- Brand fatigue and damage — If you hire a full-time CMO too early, they can generate broad interest and awareness, but if you don’t have a minimally viable product that can be sold at scale, you’ll burn bridges with prospects that might have bought a year or two down the road, but have moved on.
- Unnecessary expenses — If you commit to an expensive, full-time marketing leader they will expect to have budget to spend. But if sales don’t take off, then you have to reduce marketing budget and are stuck with a CMO doing operational work that could be done less expensively.
- Company culture disruption — A CMO is key contributor to company culture, particularly at a startup. If you hire a full-time CMO too early, and have to lay them off, it can be a blow to the company culture. Many employees will see it as a sign they should be looking elsewhere.
- Wasted go-to-market effort — If your minimal viable product is not yet validated in the market, bringing on a full-time CMO can burn through a lot of budget and company cycles executing a go-to-market strategy that you have to abandon and pivot away from.
Sample Fractional CMO Services
A Launch
A Fractional CMO can develop messaging and marketing materials, get your profile on industry websites, publish press releases, launch social media, and create buzz by making sure you are represented wherever your target audience goes for education and trusted information.
Navigate a Pivot
Sometimes the go-to-market strategy you are executing leads to a better opportunity and a pivot. The new direction may require different marketing skills. A Fractional CMO can guide you through the pivot until you are ready for your next full-time marketing leader.
Validate a Market
Before spending significant budget pursuing an untested market, a Fractional CMO, can run test-content marketing programs to validate the market, messages, and product fit so you don’t spend your hard-won funding on the wrong programs or market.
Gain Credibility
Instead of blasting big out of the gate and risking public mistakes, a Fractional CMO can execute very focused, targeted digital marketing programs at specific constituencies with tailored messages that give you traction, credibility, and momentum before you go big.
Build the
Foundation
Having the right foundation of best practices and systems to build your marketing function on will improve your success. A Fractional CMO can take the lead in building a website, marketing automation, standard messaging, and programs, leaving you with a foundation on which to build a marketing machine.
Marketing
Automation
An experienced Fractional CMO can guide the creation, refinement, or retooling of a marketing automation program to support lead generation and nurturing programs. A good Fractional CMO has built and repaired several lead databases and can leave you with a lead funnel model, goals, and marketing performance metrics.
Strategic
Marketing Plan
A Fractional CMO can analyze your website analytics, lead generation results, conversion to opportunity and sales rates, and which channels produce your best leads and customers. They can then determine the leads, programs, and spend you need to reach sales goals.
Go-to-Market Strategies
A Fractional CMO can create or redirect a marketing machine to support a new go-to-market strategy. For example, a move from selling technology to selling products or solutions, targeting verticals, or focusing on specific use cases that best fit your offering.
Manage and
Mentor Teams
After a head of marketing takes a new job and leaves behind an eager but junior marketing team needing leadership, a Fractional CMO can keep the engine running. A good one has managed and mentored many marketing talents into star-level players with great future careers.
Content / Digital Marketing
A Fractional CMO, can develop the plans and content to drive a year or more of lead generation and nurturing programs, then hand over the execution to an in-house marketing operations person to run the programs for the next 18-24 months on their own.
Communication Strategies
A Fractional CMO can develop a multi-level messaging and positioning platform using a proven process that drives cross-functional buy-in. Then all the related company and product digital content and programs should naturally fall out of the messaging platform.
Increase Value for Acquisition
A good Fractional CMO has developed best practices to make a company look bigger and more appealing and active in preparation for an acquisition. As a Fractional CMO, my efforts have increased valuations and resulted in more than one successful acquisition.