What Is A Fractional CMO?

At a certain point in your company’s journey, there are times when you step back and take stock of your company’s performance and prospects. 

If your small or medium-sized business is at the point where it needs top-quality, high-level marketing leadership, it’s time to contemplate an addition to your C-suite. 

A Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) can provide that concerted, focused, cost- and tech-driven efficient guidance to take your marketing strategy to the next level. 

An emerging trend in marketing is the position of the fractional CMO. This professional can help companies to achieve their customer retention and acquisition goals, plot new strategies for sales development and also fuel your firm’s growth, health and sustainability. 

Who Is A Fractional CMO?

If you’ve diagnosed, identified and located the issue with your marketing strategy, the next step is to decide whether to hire a full-time employee or opt for an outside resource or fractional executive. 

Fractional marketing execs are professionals who can provide services on a part-time, for-hire basis. They usually have wide-ranging, intensive and extensive experience at the higher echelons of marketing in a business environment.

Unlike consultants, they are required to immerse themselves in the organization, take an active leadership role, design and deploy changes and build/manage the team that can help you achieve your business goals. 

The demand for fractional CMO’s typically comes from smaller enterprises of less than $10 million. They are hired to study a firm’s marketing activities as they stand in the present moment, to analyze the marketing budget and tweak it if required. Fractional CMO’s would also need to look at the branding parameters, study the competition and your firm’s growth aspirations. Finally, they have to work out a clear and efficient road map to achieve the defined goals. 

For business owners, the biggest benefit is that you get the entire advantage of a top level CMO sans the commitment to a full-time, in-house exec. They’re speed-ready, experienced, and can judge the effort required, and the stage of growth you’re at currently and what your future goals are. You get someone who’s instantly capable of catching the ball, without having to go through a lengthy orientation process. Additionally, you are spared the expense, risk, time and effort of searching for, interviewing, and on-boarding a full-time candidate. 

Fractional CMO’s may have risen to their position organically or they undergo specific training for the post. They can also achieve certification in this field. Certification ensures that they are confident about the systems and processes they design and execute. It also assures clients about their level of commitment, and ability to function to best practices. When you hire a certified fractional CMO, it sets your firm apart from others that may have engaged the services of non-certified candidates. 

Typically the CMO’s responsibilities include:

• lead marketing teams and work with them to achieve their goals
• drive segmentation, messaging and positioning of your brand
• own and optimize product pricing and launch
• ensure optimal online presence
• establish more effective customer loyalty programs
• budget for new programs

Does Your Company Need A Fractional CMO?

You may have noticed certain signs already, that you do need the services of such a professional ASAP.

• You’re spending huge amounts on SEO, white papers, marketing initiatives, videos, events, conferences etc with no significant ROI
• Your website is getting low counts of organic visitors after several months of investment
• You’re in danger of being penalized by Google for certain tactics
• You’re wasting a lot of money on “Influencer Marketing” and other industry buzzwords
• Your company has been in existence for a while without a dedicated person to lead marketing
• Your marketing learnings don’t shape your executive decisions
• You’re finding it difficult to stretch your marketing dollar
• You want more organizational responsibilities to be separated and fixed
• Your in-house talent doesn’t quite make the grade
• Your marketing team is struggling because of setting up of erroneous KPI (key performance indicators)

In general, experts recommend certain guidelines to know whether you’re really in need of a fractional CMO or not.

If your firm is at the start-up stage, you may not require one immediately. At this point, your focus will be to build a product, research the market, test, launch and ensure funding. Defining and conceptualizing the marketing plan may not be top priority at this stage. It’s only when a firm marketing plan and budget across all the marketing channels that a CMO whether full-time or fractional can come into her or his own. 

Enterprises do need a CMO but not necessarily a fractional one. Fractional C-suite hires typically work between 10-30 hours per week and this could taper down to 5-10 hours. As a business owner, you may not have full control over their working hours. If your company is large or on the growth path, you will need to ensure that you negotiate with the potential candidate for more working hours. 

Ideally, the fractional CMO process works best with companies that are currently in the $2-30 million bracket. Anything less would not be economically viable and with anything above this bracket calls for hiring a full time CMO. In brief, if yours is a well-funded, secure and established firm that genuinely needs direction and leadership in marketing to take the elevator to the top, hiring a fractional CMO could be the best interim solution. 

They can provide you with instant insights and observations, because they have comprehensive experience in a diverse field of enterprises. They have worked across several industries and size of companies. Their experience gives them super insights that helps them to immediately spot trends, problems, bottlenecks and opportunities. 

They are tech-driven and data savvy and have the experience to leverage the huge volumes of data that are available today. They keep up with new learnings such as behavioral segmentation, digital marketing, Customer Experience (CX), mindful and shared consumption, social media, SEO, Machine Learning and AI, consumer DNA analysis, human-computer interaction, neuromarketing and more. Today, sensory marketing and emotional branding are other emerging areas that your CMO needs to be in tune with. 

Every client and business presents unique needs to the fractional CMO. The ability to manage change, adapt, blend in yet stand out are some of the advantages that come in the fractional CMO package.