The marketing world is changing so fast it is nearly impossible for a business owner, CEO or founder to keep up. I’ve spoken to hundreds of small businesses who know they need to implement strategic marketing to be competitive, but have no idea how to go about it, and many are too small to hire a full time CMO employee.
What Is A Fractional CMO?
A fractional CMO is a Chief Marketing Officer for hire. Typically contract or retainer. Many businesses don’t need an in-house marketing expert, but if you want your business to grow, it requires up-to-date, strategic marketing campaigns and tracking ROI using data. This professional can be “on-demand” for you to implement effective marketing strategies to grow your revenues.
Choosing the Fractional CMO route, you can get a very experienced marketing professional at a fraction of the cost of hiring a full time, in-house employee. If you are a business with revenues between $3M up to $15M you are in the sweet spot of companies who would greatly benefit from a Fractional CMO.
What Is The Role Of A Fractional CMO?
In regards to a Fractional CMO specifically… their expertise goes beyond the services of what many marketing companies offer, more clearly managing a marketing team of specialty experts is the capabilities of Fractional CMO. When you hire on you are getting a professional with expertise in all channels of marketing.
A Fractional CMO brings a wealth of up-to-date, in-the-trenches knowledge of:
- Managing marketing budgets in an effectively and efficiently. This is a critical responsibility of a fractional CMO, as the goal of improving your marketing strategy is to grow your bottom line.
- Developing realistic short-term and long-term marketing goals based on industry trends, budget, and company-wide goals.
- Providing high-quality reporting on analytics and the success of campaigns, with specific data to explain ROI for each dollar in the marketing budget. Your fractional CMO should be able to explain clearly the key performance indicators for your day-to-day marketing as well as larger campaigns.
- Balancing communication between your in-house team and outside initiatives, including leading your vendors and organizations in company-wide campaigns that need to be clear and easy to understand.
When Should You Consider Bringing On A Fractional CMO?
- If you have an in-house marketing team or individual and they could use some support and guidance.
- Many of the small business founders, CEOs and owners we speak to have some great individuals in place for their social media, website, even paid advertising, but they are overseeing it themselves. Hiring an expert who can work with your team and give them the leadership they need to go to the next level is a good choice.
- You are coming out with a new product or service and you want to hit it fast and hard.
- Entering into a new marketing, or launching a new product or service can be challenging if you do not have an accurate pulse of the market and what your customers/clients really want and will pay for. This could be a fractional CMO hired on for just this project.
- You have marketing in place but you want a high-level marketing expert to review the strategies and increase efficiencies and effectiveness.
- You may have had high hopes for your current marketing plan and strategies but it hasn’t turned out the way you’d hoped. This is when hiring a fractional CMO can be your best investment to review strategy and come up with an improved plan moving forward.
Your Next Step
If, after reading this article you feel you are at this point in your business, let’s talk!
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