Do Startups Need CMOs?

You are the founder of a great new startup. Revenue has started to come in, prospects look great, it’s time to staff up your team. Question, when’s the right time to bring in a CMO in the business? I want to make the case for having the CMO being one of your earliest hires.

Strategy before tactics
Marketing more than maybe any other function in your business is one of infinite choice. There are literally thousands of tactics you could choose from to help market your business. Without a strategy in place, understanding what marketing can and can’t do for your business, in your particular market, for your particular client, means that you are more than likely to be wasting your time and money without a plan like that first. You need a CMO, a strategic Chief Marketing Officer to be able to figure out that strategy so that you can choose, especially at the beginning when you’re small, the right tactics to start with and what will follow to grow and scale as the business grows.

Scalable marketing engine
I like to talk about marketing as an engine because for it to be effective, it’s a combination of, of many moving parts that together make for a coherent and impactful experience targeted at your prospects that gets them to have a relationship with you. That doesn’t happen with a single tactic or a single website or a single logo. So you need a CMO as part of your early team to create, to construct, that engine, and have the right moving parts at the right time. 

Growth partner
I like to think of your Chief Marketing Officer as your growth partner. The role is really about understanding what needs to happen from the very beginning, and then as the company grows to expand and grow the business, extend the reach and build the brand.

The good news is CMOs don’t have to be full-time, multi-year permanent employees. Fractional CMOs are now an option for you. So you can get that strategic important value at the beginning of your journey and have that person provide the direction and the leadership and the training for building that engine and continuing to grow your business.