When to Hire a Fractional CMO

Most business leaders I speak to today know what a fractional CMO is and does. That wasn’t always the case.

A fractional chief marketing officer is someone who is a marketing expert, has experience in being a marketing leader that comes into your business for a fraction of the time, giving you what you need from a marketing strategy, direction, and leadership standpoint. But for a fraction of the cost of hiring a full-time CMO. What I wanna share in today’s video is three different cases where a fractional CMO makes the most sense for a business.

No Marketing
So the first case is when you are not really doing marketing today. Or the marketing that you’re doing is all done through a vendor or agency. So in that case, the CMO plays a really key role of helping you understand what marketing can and can’t do for your business. There is no one size fits all marketing strategy. So, the fractional CMO can come into your business and help you craft the right activities in the right order, in the right place, for the right budget. All those things that, that are right for your company. So then when you do go to work with a vendor or an agency, or maybe even decide to hire a marketer, you have a plan and you’re working towards a goal that helps the business grow.

Junior Marketer
Another scenario that’s pretty common is the company has a marketer, but that marketer is fresh outta school or early in their career, and they’re really good at doing things in marketing, but they don’t know what the right things are to do. And in marketing more than most functions, there are so many different things you could do to market your business, and the biggest mistake you can make is to try to do too many of those things. So what a fractional CMO can do in this case is create that plan we discussed, and that plan helps to focus and prioritize the activities of that marketer and any other vendors, so that you’re focused on the most important and most productive marketing activities. The other advantage is, that fractional CMO can act as mentor to the marketer and grow them into their career, accelerate their ability to take on more of the marketing role. 

VP of Sales and Marketing
Another scenario that happens a lot is the business has a VP of sales and marketing or director of sales and marketing, but that person is actually a sales leader that has been given the marketing title because somebody felt that was important. This creates a gap because that leader first, they’re, they’re really good at the sales side, and so they tend to underinvest in the marketing side. And the other risk is they don’t wanna tell their boss. They don’t know how to do the marketing. So sometimes the marketing gap remains hidden just by that setup. A fractional CMO is great in this situation because with that strategic approach and plan, they can help mentor this leader to up their game on the marketing side so that, that can be a muscle that they can use as well.

So all three of these scenarios have something in common. The business doesn’t have a marketing leader on their team inside or outside the company. That’s the missing piece. That’s what the fractional CMO is there for because you could hire a CMO or a director of marketing, but we’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for that employee. And unless you’re a certain size, that’s overkill.

So think about your marketing today and see if a fractional CMO makes sense for you.