- Experienced marketing leader
- Flexibility to choose number of hours or days worked per month and for how long
- Focus on specific agreed objectives and projects
- Avoid the overheads of payroll, pensions, equity, bonus, taxes or other benefits
- Eliminate costs associated with end of employment
- Easier succession planning as you grow
Fractional CMO
Many fast-growing companies reach the point where they realise that they need to improve their marketing but aren’t sure where to begin.
Some may have junior marketing staff but are starting to see that they need someone more senior to get them to the next level. Others have been relying on agencies to “do the marketing” but are not seeing the returns they want. Still others have an experienced team who maybe don’t have the bandwidth to take on an important project or who lack strategic insight.
What these firms have in common is that either they don’t have the senior-level in-house skills they need or they don’t have the operating capital available to hire them in.
My role as a fractional CMO is to step into your company on a part-time basis to lead either the marketing department or a specific project, provide strategic marketing insight to your senior managers, bring clarity to your marketing department and help you to drive growth and profit.
Fractional CMO services
As well as providing strategic services I can work with you on a part-time basis as:
- A part-time member of your management team bringing a marketing perspective to your strategy and your growth plans
- An interim team member who covers when your senior marketer is on leave and keeps the marketing engine running
- Strategic support for a critical marketing project where your marketing team lacks bandwidth or expertise
- A coach and mentor for your marketing team or for your next or new marketing director
- An advisor for CEOs who want to develop their marketing and customer orientation
- Facilitator for a strategic growth workshop
- Part of a merger or acquisition team providing marketing audits and post-merger integration and support
When to consider a fractional CMO
If you recognise one of the following scenarios, I may be able to help:
You aren’t yet big enough to employ a full-time senior marketer
Start-up and small businesses often can’t justify hiring a full-time CMO either because of the cost or because there isn’t enough work to keep them fully occupied. In this case a fractional CMO allows you to gain the competitive advantages that an experienced marketer can bring.
You’re an established business but have no-one on board to provide marketing leadership.
Many companies grow a marketing department under the leadership of the CEO or sales director but reach a point where they need to radically improve their marketing or where the person in charge needs to concentrate on other issues. A fractional CMO can take over the leadership and development of the marketing team, improving both their skills and your results.
You feel that you’ve outgrown your marketing agency.
Many firms form a relationship with an agency that they eventually outgrow. Maybe the agency is great at executing but lacks strategic insight, or it doesn’t have the skills to allow you to work with new channels and tactics. A fractional CMO will be able to look at your challenges with a fresh perspective and introduce new ways of working, new or additional agencies and new marketing channels and tactics.
Your leadership team needs better marketing insights to support their decision making.
Marketing decisions affect many parts of a business; sales, customer services, operations, manufacturing, finance and so on. The insights and skills of a fractional CMO can help you with making key decisions such as new product developments, changing sales channels or pricing, entering new markets and many more. Equally they can improve your marketing reporting allowing you to see where changes and investments should be made to improve growth and profits.
You need someone in post as absence cover or while you search for a permanent CMO
Bringing a fractional CMO on to your team allows you time to carry out a thorough recruitment process, including the time people may need to work their notice. Equally, you may have a colleague on leave of absence and need to ensure that both the marketing and senior leadership teams are supported. In both cases a fractional CMO will be able to provide a thorough handover at the end of the assignment, reducing onboarding or return to work timescales.
What you can expect from a fractional CMO
The areas that a fractional CMO can bring insight, expertise and experience to include:
- Developing strategic marketing plans that support business objectives
- Providing marketing guidance and counselling to your leadership team
- Overseeing the execution of your promotional plan
- Building, hiring and mentoring as well as managing your in house marketing team, giving them the opportunity to grow and develop.
- Identifying and hiring agencies and freelancers, keeping them on-task and managing their performance
- Developing, allocating and managing marketing budgets and resource plans
- Building and updating your segmentation, target market, persona, value propositions and messaging
- Developing relevant KPIs and reporting systems that inform your business decisions
- Building collateral, testimonials, case studies and sales enablement resources
- Setting scalable procedures and processes for managing marketing actions
- Testing and introducing new channels and tactics to your marketing mix
- Identifying and implementing appropriate CRM and marketing automation tools
