Your business is taking off, and you’re starting to feel some growing pains. Maybe your sales and marketing teams are unorganized or out of step with each other. Maybe your marketing campaigns aren’t working as well as your in-house team thought they would, but they don’t understand why. Maybe your internal team just needs help and leadership to level up.
It can be hard for a CEO to unravel these problems on their own, and the time it takes will impact your executive team’s ability to run the business itself. Instead of tackling the issues on your own, here’s when and why it makes sense to tap a fractional CMO for support.
What’s a fractional CMO?
A fractional CMO can help you unravel marketing problems and strategically scale your marketing efforts to win more revenue. They provide high-level strategy without the cost of a full-time hire.
92% of companies wish they had hired a fractional CMO sooner. (digitalauthority.me)
A fractional CMO, or Chief Marketing Officer, is a marketing executive who works with a company on a part-time or contract basis rather than a full-time employee. This arrangement allows businesses, especially startups and small businesses, to access high-level marketing expertise without the financial burden of a full-time salary and benefits.
Fractional CMOs are typically seasoned professionals with years of experience across various industries. They help organizations develop strategic marketing plans, drive brand awareness, and enhance customer engagement. By leveraging their skills, companies can achieve significant marketing results while maintaining flexibility in their operational costs.
Why go with a fractional CMO?
Hiring a fractional CMO makes sense for many businesses, especially start-ups and small businesses. For B2B businesses, where sales cycles are longer and marketing campaigns need to be aligned with that long sales process, fractional CMO support can unlock enterprise-level strategies for a price tag that makes more sense for your current income.
With a fractional CMO, businesses essentially only pay for the services they need. As a result, companies can allocate their budgets to other important areas, like product development or customer service. For example, if a company needs help with a strategic approach to social media content, a fractional CMO can jump in and develop a strategic plan quickly without needing to go through the company’s personnel onboarding and training. This adaptability allows businesses to respond to changes in the market promptly. Therefore, choosing a fractional CMO can lead to smarter spending and better marketing solutions.
Expertise
The right fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) should bring a wealth and variety of experience to your company. These professionals have often worked with many different businesses. They understand various industries and marketing strategies. This diverse background allows them to offer valuable insights.
Having access to a fractional CMO also means having someone who knows the latest trends in buyer behavior, market conditions, and marketing channels. They keep up with changes in the market, and when they combine this awareness with their wide range of experience, fractional CMOs can help your business avoid common pitfalls like chasing trends that don’t align with your buyer persona or business goals.
Many fractional CMOs also have an execution team that can help support your internal marketing team. This execution team brings in specialists in various areas, from UX/UI design for websites to copywriters who specialize in various forms of content.
Cost
Fractional Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are usually the right choice for small businesses. Many small businesses can’t afford a full-time CMO, especially when they are just starting to grow. According to Payscale.com, most CMOs command salaries averaging north of $170k. (digitalauthority.me)
Fractional CMOs work part-time, allowing businesses to pay only for the hours they need. For example, hiring a full-time CMO might cost $170,000 or more per year. In contrast, a fractional CMO can cost $30,000 to $50,000. This savings is significant for small companies that have to watch their budgets.
Using a fractional CMO helps small businesses save money while still getting expert marketing support.
Self-management
Fractional CMOs are less emotionally expensive, too. They’re self-managing and don’t need a lot of oversight from the CEO. This differs from an in-house CMO, who usually needs more guidance and support.
Self-management means fractional CMOs know how to make decisions independently, based on the agreed-to plan and scope of their work. They set their own process, aligned with your goals, and know how to manage their time effectively. They can quickly adapt tactics and strategies within the overarching game plan when challenges arise – without delaying results by waiting for approval. For example, fractional CMOs can pivot your paid ad budget to an unexpectedly overperforming channel, doubling down on a tactic that works without having to reach back to the C-suite for approval. CMOs can move faster when market opportunities that align with your agreed-to budget and goals arise.
This self-management is a big benefit for small companies. It saves time and energy. Executive teams can focus on running the business instead of taking meetings and supporting an internal employee.
According to a study, businesses that use fractional executives report a 30% increase in efficiency. (Forester)
Six signs it’s time to consider a fractional CMO
Fractional CMOs sound great: increased efficiency, access to strategy and experience, and all at a lower price tag than hiring in-house. But how do you know if it’s time to consider one for your business?
Here are six signs it’s time to consider adding a fractional CMO to your leadership team:
1. Your existing marketing team is overwhelmed and needs direction.
Many in-house marketing teams feel overwhelmed. They work hard but often lack clear direction, and they can get so caught up in the day-to-day execution that it’s impossible to “zoom out” and create a strategy at the 10,000-foot view.
Without guidance from a Chief Marketing Officer, even skilled teams may struggle to prioritize tasks and balance competing priorities. This confusion can lead to missed deadlines and poor results.
A fractional CMO can help solve this problem. They can create a clear marketing strategy and set achievable goals using a strategic roadmap.
60% of in-house marketing teams report feeling overwhelmed without strong leadership. A fractional CMO can offer the guidance needed. They help teams understand their tasks and focus on what matters most. Working with a fractional CMO allows your in-house team to build their skills and confidence, work more efficiently, and deliver better results.
2. Your sales team has to make their own marketing/enablement materials
When sales teams have to create their own marketing and sales enablement materials, problems can arise. First, brand consistency suffers. Each team member might use different colors, logos, or messaging. This inconsistency can confuse customers and weaken the brand’s image.
Second, it wastes time. Sales teams should focus on selling, not on making materials. According to a Salesforce survey, 30% of sales reps say they spend too much time on non-sales tasks like creating and tweaking their own enablement. This wasted time means they have fewer hours to connect with customers and close deals, which ultimately means less revenue for your business.
A fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) can solve these issues. They can roadmap and create standard marketing materials that all sales reps can use, ensuring that every piece fits the brand perfectly. They can get customizable resources that allow them to personalize decks and slicks quickly and efficiently. CMOs are also adept at spotting opportunities for technology and automation to assist the sales process, taking manual work off of your sales team.
As a result, your sales team spends more time selling and less time fiddling with PowerPoint, finding blogs, or creating PDFs. In turn, this boosts sales and helps the company grow.
3. Your executive team isn’t getting the right insights & data from marketing
A fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) plays a crucial role in helping the executive team make data-driven business decisions. They analyze data from various marketing campaigns and channels, translating it through the lens of their experience and market knowledge into actionable insights for the C-suite.
Your fractional CMO will then prepare clear reporting for the executive team. This report includes key insights on your progress to pre-established goals and recommendations for improvements, next steps, and business strategy.
With this information, the executive team can make informed decisions about their marketing goals. They can adjust budgets or shift strategies based on what the data reveals. By delivering accurate data that’s easy to understand, a fractional CMO supports better business choices. In turn, this ensures the company’s marketing initiatives produce the results you need.
4. Your sales & marketing teams are out of alignment.
When sales and marketing teams don’t work well together, it can hurt everything from morale to revenue. A fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) can help improve this alignment.
Your fractional CMO should help by creating a shared vision for sales-focused marketing. They can work with both teams to set common goals and develop a strategy for maintaining open communication, requesting materials, and ensuring that marketing efforts align with the support that the sales team actually needs.
For example, if the sales team needs to nurture top-of-funnel leads into the next stage of the buyer’s journey, the marketing team can create campaigns targeting those leads and craft sales enablement assets like comparison guides and case studies. Both teams can work better together when they know what they need to do.
A fractional CMO can facilitate this alignment, and they should hold regular meetings to keep everyone updated. This can cut down on misunderstandings. When teams talk more, they learn from each other, share ideas, and build better strategies.
Companies with aligned sales and marketing teams unlock more growth, faster. Businesses see a 27% faster profit growth when both teams work in coordination. Organizations with robust alignment can grow by 20% annually. According to sales and marketing alignment stats, when both teams work together, company revenue can increase by up to 3x(lxaHub)
5. Your past marketing strategies or campaigns failed
If you’ve tried multiple marketing campaigns that should have worked but didn’t, you need someone with the depth of experience a CMO has to analyze what didn’t resonate and why. They’ll study the data to understand what went wrong. You could have had issues like:
- Offer-buyer misalignment
- Inconsistent messaging or visual identity
- Incorrect marketing channel choices
- Insufficient budget for the channel chosen
- Unrealistic expectations
- Incorrect strategy or persona targeting
For example, if a campaign had low engagement, the fractional CMO can identify which ads fell flat. They may find that the message didn’t resonate with the target audience. By learning from these mistakes, a fractional CMO can create a better plan and correct your messaging. They may adjust the channels chosen, improve targeting, and suggest an appropriate budget level based on your goals.
Businesses that analyze past campaigns have a 30% better chance of success in future efforts. With a fractional CMO, companies can turn past failures into valuable lessons. This leads to smarter marketing strategies. A fractional CMO can offer a fresh perspective that can make all the difference.
6. Your business needs to scale before you’re ready for a full-time Chief Marketing Officer.
Hiring a fractional CMO can help your business scale faster. They bring experience from various industries to quickly identify what works and what doesn’t for your business goals. For example, studies show startups with solid marketing leadership grow 3.5 times faster than those without. Sales and marketing alignment, fostered by your fractional CMO, can accelerate sales cycle times and earn more wins. An expert strategy can improve your conversion rates for digital marketing channels. All of this leads to more revenue won faster than before and helps your business scale to the next level.
A fractional CMO should develop a marketing plan that fits your budget and meets your growth goals on a defined timeline. For example, suppose you need to grow your business by ten new logos in the next year. In that case, a CMO knows how to reverse engineer your current win rates to identify how many new leads and opportunities you’ll need to generate in order to meet your goal.
Most importantly, with a CMO worrying about your marketing strategy and helping your sales team stay close to new leads, the rest of your executive team can focus on daily operations, securing investors, developing new revenue streams and products – essentially, growing the business,
A fractional CMO helps you grow smarter and faster. You get expert guidance now while you scale enough to hire a full-time executive later. This approach allows your business to thrive in a competitive market.
What if you don’t have a large marketing department?
A fractional CMO can provide the leadership your marketing department needs to grow, scale, and perform at a more advanced level. However, if your business doesn’t have a marketing team, or your business goals outstrip the capacity of your “marketing team of one,” you may need to hire additional internal resources — or choose a fractional CMO that comes with a full execution team.
A recent survey by HubSpot revealed that nearly two-thirds of B2B companies outsource at least a portion of their marketing. Why? Cost reduction. That was the primary reason given, regardless of industry.
