When Should You Hire a Fractional CMO?
Hiring a fractional CMO is an ideal way to save money and obtain valuable feedback about your organisation’s marketing. Additionally, it is often a sensible option for organisations with fewer than 50 employees.
What is a fractional CMO?
A fractional CMO is an outsourced marketing professional, who is hired (when required) and carries out the functions of a conventional chief marketing officer. They spend a fraction of their time with your organisation at a fraction of the cost, of a full time CMO.
Excluding the cost and time responsibility, fractional CMOs perform every task a “real” CMO would do for your organisation. They set your marketing strategy, deal with your marketing budget, execute marketing campaigns, and analyse results.
Who should use a fractional CMO?
Any company that does not have a permanent CMO can benefit from a fractional CMO. Regardless, of whether you are a B2B or a B2C business. In fact, any business that employs 50 or less people should hire a fractional CMO, opposed to hiring one full time.
The reason being is that with fewer than 50 employees you are probably not in a position to provide a permanent CMO. This is due to all the resources they need to create a substantial impact on your company.
If your organisation is of a certain size and you assume you will need a permanent CMO, then a fractional CMO gives you time to prepare for that.
A fractional CMO can assist your marketing practises, show you the correct processes, the correct resources you need, and provide you with the correct metrics. This will lead you to a place where (in the future) a full time CMO will be able to make a real difference, all at the fraction of the cost.
What are the benefits of a fractional CMO?
It costs less.
This is a recurring concern, preserving money on large salaries is very important. A CMO demands a large salary and fractional CMOs are less expensive.
For instance, in London, the average chief marketing officer’s salary is £100,851 per year. This is before factoring in other costs such as benefits and PAYE etc. All this before spending a pound on your actual marketing.
They will tell the truth.
The other large advantage of a fractional CMO is that a conventional CMO may not be 100% honest about a business when they first turn up.
I am not proposing that all permanent CMOs essentially lie to you, but the truth is, that fractional CMOs are not weighed down or are at least less sensitive to the regular internal dynamics of a business.
Problems like internal politics, interpersonal dynamics, and adjusting to a new role, do not phase a fractional CMO.
Fractional CMOs normally divide their time between two to four clients at any one time. This type of schedule means we will take a no-nonsense approach to your business, inform you of what you need to do and the resources you will need to reach your goals. And we want results FAST!
What are the first 3 things a fractional CMO should do for you?
When you hire a fractional CMO, time is money, so you need to get right down to business. There are three primary tasks a fractional CMO should be given to assist in improving your business marketing.
1. Review and audit your internal processes
This should be a complete review of everything you have up to this point. On completion of the review and analysis of all the marketing, they should be able to give you a good evaluation of what has been working and what has not. The evaluation will outline what you can and should do in order to generate better results.
2. Devise a plan
Secondly, you want your fractional CMO to devise a game plan about what your business can do moving forward to maximise the ROI of your marketing strategy. This plan should essentially be scalable to meet your business goals in the short, medium and long term.
3. Track your marketing ROI
The marketing analysis and plan put in place by the fractional CMO is only as good as the ROI. The fractional CMO should put metrics in place. This will track how well the strategy is doing, what type of brand awareness it is driving, the number of sales it is creating and what type of return you are actually getting for your money.
Conclusion
Even if you know you don’t have the money or resources for a permanent CMO, you may want to test the waters.
Maybe you just want to save some money and get some feedback from an outside source.
Hiring a fractional CMO can be a beneficial move for your business. We add real value to your organisation without permanent commitment.
Interested in learning more about hiring a fractional CMO? If so, get in touch today and we will be happy to help.