Three Questions For a Fractional CMO

Fractional CMOs, Fractional Chief Marketing Officers are a very popular option these days for businesses trying to solve their marketing challenges, because they’re a great middle ground for a lot of companies. Between the very high expense and difficulty in hiring a full-time CMO or marketing leader and dealing with a leaderless group, you know, having vendors or agencies, maybe some lower level, less experienced, team members trying to figure out what the right thing to do and the right combination of things to do are to make your marketing work. A fractional CMO sits in the middle of that and provides you that very high level experience and strategic perspective without the full cost of a full-time employee. But, it’s not trivial to find the right one for your business. So, I wanna share three areas of questioning. Three lines of questions that you can ask that will help you determine if a fractional CMO is a good fit for your business. 

1. What is your framework?
Marketing is not a one size fits all solution. Every company needs a unique combination of all the many different things that marketing can do for your business, the different tactics you could choose, the different platforms you could use, the different approaches, strategies….there’s so many different variables that you need, or you might consider making sure that that fractional CMO has a perspective and a model that will work in your industry, and not even just your industry, but your industry today and tomorrow, right? This size and another size. Things will change and it’s really valuable that your fractional CMO has a perspective that is malleable and can adapt to the realities of your world.

2. Do you charge hourly or by outcome?
Another important topic is how will you compensate them? There is a model, I’ll call it maybe the traditional fractional CMO model where there’s a retainer fee, a monthly fee, and for that fee, you get a certain amount of that fractional CMOs time. In essence, it’s a billable hours kind of an approach for a set number of hours. That is one option, and there are a lot of people that will do that for you. I have found that challenge with that is, it sounds really good when you start, because you’ve got a couple of fires and you’ve got problems that are very clear to you that you want solved, and that happens as you get started. But over time, things can drift. I found that charging by outcome, and defining together what it is that needs to be created and built and achieved, for this to work, allows for a longer term productive relationship. I do think both of these models work, but, the charging by the outcome, means that you have an agreed result that you are targeting. The other advantage of this approach is the process of coming up with what that outcome is, allows you and the fractional CMO to have a really deep understanding of what marketing can and can’t do for your business, before you sign up.

3. What do you do vs. other? Who and how?
And then the third area is: how does the work get done? It’s very rare that a single CMO is the only marketer for a business. And I would say it’s a danger sign for you cost-wise, if that’s the case, because by definition, Chief Marketing Officers are not inexpensive, and there are some pretty tactical things that need to get done in marketing that an ideal plan is somebody that isn’t that expensive, is doing the more tactical work. The bigger view of this is there needs to be a model, a plan, a process where the right team, some inside the company, maybe some outside the company, some, the CMO gets the work done and works together. Another aspect of this to understand is how open and how independent the fractional CMO is with different people they work with. If they have a set of people that they always work with, and any additional web design or SEO work or any different categories of expertise, always go to that group. It can work because they’re proven, but it is closer to the agency model where you’re actually not signing up with just a fractional CMO, in essence, you’re signing up with the CMO and their team. So you wanna understand how independent the options are for you, because you don’t know at the beginning all the things you’ll need, all the skills that you’ll need over time. It isn’t bad to have a a group of fixed people, but it’s something you want to understand upfront and possibly meet them as well as the fractional CMO.

So, fractional CMOs are a powerful way for you to up your game with marketing for a very affordable investment. You just wanna put some thought into it and make sure you’re asking the right questions.