When Should You Hire a Fractional CMO?
Here are 4 scenarios in which a Fractional CMO could help your business.
Small businesses and early stage startups typically hire marketing generalists. These individuals know a little bit about different aspects of marketing, so they are incredibly useful to small teams where every player counts. It is not until businesses and teams grow that CEOs start to think about senior-level marketing hires. Until then, CEOs often provide strategic marketing guidance to their teams.
Until then, having a part-time, experienced marketing leader can be a gift to your business. A Fractional CMO works for your business for a few hours a week and owns the marketing strategy. A Fractional CMO ensures you get strategic marketing thinking at a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire.
How do you know if it’s time to hire a Fractional CMO? Here are four scenarios in which hiring a Fractional CMO could help.
Testing Go-to-Market Strategies
You have a multitude of ideas for how to bring your early-stage startup to market. You don’t have budget to test all of them at once, and you’re not sure which to start with. You’re simultaneously trying to refine your product, raise money, get on business development calls… and you don’t have enough time to devote to strategic marketing thinking.
A Fractional CMO can help you answer such questions as:
Which strategy should you test first?
What is the best way to execute the strategy?
How will you know if your approach is working?
2. Accelerating Your Business’s Growth
Your business is chugging along but you want to grow. Marketing could be a way to contribute to that growth, but you have used all of your skills to get your business to where it is today.
A Fractional CMO can help you optimize your marketing strategy to drive more growth.
3. Managing Your Marketing Team
You have an entry- or mid-level team of marketers with nobody to lead them except you. (And you have more pressing areas of the business to focus on.) As a result, marketing efforts are haphazard.
A Fractional CMO can provide your business with a marketing plan and can help manage your team, guiding them to implement the strategy.
4. Keeping Your Brand Consistent Across Marketing Agencies
You are managing a patchwork of marketing agencies, each with their own specialty. While this is helpful in some respects, it is challenging in others. Every time you make a strategic change, you need to communicate it to each agency representative. It is hard to manage the consistency of your brand across all of the agencies.
A Fractional CMO can bring a marketing perspective to your C-suite’s strategic conversations, communicate all decisions and changes to your agencies, and ensure that your brand remains consistent in all marketing and communications.
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If any of these scenarios sounds familiar, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Here are two ways I can help you:
Serve as your business’s Fractional CMO.
Analyze and optimize your marketing strategy.
Interested? Send me a note.