Marketing is one of the first roles that businesses consider cutting during hard times, according to research published by Business News Daily. However, shrinking marketing efforts weakens the connection of your organization with your customer base and can misalign with business objectives, causing you to fall behind the competition long-term.
When resources are tight, how can you strike a balance? Doubling down on your marketing budget can feel impossible, but you also can’t afford to lose customers. Fortunately, fractional CMO services make it possible to access impactful marketing leadership and strategic marketing expertise without breaking your budget. In this guide, we cover the what, why, and how of fractional CMO services.
What Is a Fractional CMO?
The fractional chief marketing officer (CMO) is a part-time marketing executive responsible for overseeing marketing initiatives to implement marketing strategies with the ultimate goal of increasing revenue. In other words, the CMO is at the top of the marketing food chain in an organization.
But what makes a fractional CMO unique from a typical CMO? Often, CMO is a full-time, internal role. But for certain organizations, like smaller businesses, startups, or companies with a tight budget, investing resources in a full-time CMO isn’t always an option. Fractional CMOs are a more flexible option because you can hire them:
- To complete a fraction of the overall tasks CMOs can perform,
- For a fraction of the time a full-time CMO would be on your payroll,
- For a fraction of the cost of a full-time CMO.
In other words, a fractional CMO allows your organization to pay for exactly what you need when you need it.
C-suite executives steer your organization toward success. If your C-suite is missing vital roles, like a CMO, it’s time for a change. Our fractional CMO services provide the results you need at a budget you can afford. Contact us to learn more.
What Does a Fractional CMO Do?
Working with a fractional CMO gives you access to all the essential roles a CMO can fill at a fraction of the cost. These roles include:
- Overseeing overall marketing, advertising, and sales strategies
- Increasing revenue through sales and marketing initiatives
- Creating the structure of your marketing department
- Negotiating contracts with advertising service providers
- Approving ideas for marketing initiatives and campaigns
- Coordinating marketing and branding efforts with your organization’s financial goals
A fractional CMO can also enhance marketing operations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your campaigns.
The key advantage of a fractional CMO is that you don’t always need to fill all of the above roles all of the time. For example, a fractional CMO could help develop a highly functional marketing department for your business. Moving forward, your fractional CMO could focus on high-level aspects of marketing campaigns while the members of your department create, develop, and implement marketing initiatives.
How Does a Fractional CMO Provide Strategic Marketing Leadership in Your C-Suite?
Fractional CMOs are as much a part of your team as in-house executives. Marketing forms the connection between your business and your customers, so your CMO should be a central member of your C-suite team, even when they work on a fractional basis.
A fractional CMO provides strategic marketing leadership to align marketing efforts with business goals, driving growth and achieving measurable results.
For example, fractional CMOs can (and should) work closely with your chief financial officer (CFO)—or fractional CFO—to optimize your revenue streams and how you invest them. At first glance, these roles can seem at odds. After all, you have to spend money to get your message out through marketing, and calculating the ROI on marketing isn’t an exact science. On the other hand, your financial department wants to keep tight records of how much money is coming in, how much is going out, and why your budget is being spent the way it is.
Fortunately, CMOs and CFOs can come together to ensure department goals are working for your business—not against it. Through consistent communication, these executives can align on where to allocate resources to support strategic goals. For a fractional CMO who knows how to work with your existing team, get in touch.
What Is the Difference between a CMO and a Fractional CMO?
The key difference between a CMO and a fractional CMO is that fractional services are tailored to exactly what your business needs at any given time. When you hire a full-time CMO, they’re either on your payroll or you have a vacant position in your C-suite. With fractional marketing executives, you take a project-based approach.
For example, if you have an organizational goal of leveraging social media to generate highly qualified leads, you can hire a fractional CMO, a marketing leader, to spearhead the initiative. This executive will work with your marketing department to determine KPIs, allocate budget, assign team members to specific roles, and design campaigns. The fractional CMO will then oversee the creation and implementation of these campaigns, stepping in as necessary to correct direction and put out fires.
So far, the above example looks pretty similar to what a traditional CMO does. However, the key difference comes in once the assigned project is completed. With a traditional CMO, they stay on your payroll, even if your marketing slows down. In other words, you’re paying the same amount for less return. With a fractional CMO, you can scale back services during slow periods and scale up services during busy cycles.
Fractional C-suite services give your organization the agility to optimize its resources without sacrificing quality. Get in touch to learn more about fractional CMOs.
What Is the Difference between a Fractional and an Interim CMO?
The major difference between interim CMO jobs and fractional CMO roles is the expected duration of the role. An interim CMO fills the position for a temporary period while your organization searches for a traditional, full-time CMO. In contrast, a fractional CMO replaces the need for a traditional CMO on a long-term basis.
A fractional CMO can develop a comprehensive marketing strategy that aligns with long-term business goals.
For example, you may have a traditional CMO who decides to leave your organization for an opportunity elsewhere. Now you have a vacancy in your C-suite that needs to be filled. You don’t want to rush to fill the role because finding the right fit takes time, but you also don’t want essential tasks to go undone. An interim CMO fills this gap temporarily but sets your organization up for another transition period down the road. A fractional CMO also fills this gap, but you can leverage these services long-term.
Should I Hire an Interim CMO or a Fractional CMO?
Fractional CMOs are often the ideal solution for businesses with limited resources that want high-quality results and minimum transition periods. One of the most significant benefits of a fractional CMO is that it could be a long-term option or a short-term option. In other words, fractional CMO services can be customized to fit exactly what your organization needs. Fractional CMOs bring valuable marketing talent to your organization, enhancing the effectiveness of your campaigns. You can also adjust these services as your needs change.
Contact us to learn more about the advantages of fractional CMO services.
How Much Does a Fractional CMO Cost?
Like all á la carte services, fractional CMO rates vary depending on the duration and scope of the role. That being said, LinkedIn reports that most high-quality fractional CMOs charge between $200 and $300 an hour. Compensation is a key component of negotiating any fractional CMO proposal, so let’s put these numbers into context. According to Salary.com, the average CMO salary is $356,786, with $311,549 on the lower end and $423,583 on the upper end. That’s an average monthly cost of $29,732 (before including benefits).
For that budget of nearly $30,000 per month, you could hire a fractional CMO for 100-150 hours during that month. This is typically more than enough time for a fractional CMO to make a meaningful impact on your organization. A fractional CMO can develop and execute a digital marketing strategy that aligns with your budget and goals. Remember, one of the key benefits of working with a fractional CMO is that you don’t pay for downtime. Each resource you invest will have a return.
Contact us to learn more about how much fractional CMO services would cost for your strategic goals.
Why Hire a Fractional CMO for Your Marketing Efforts?
Hiring a fractional CMO can yield many benefits, including:
- Expanding your C-suite at a fraction of the cost
- Saving resources without sacrificing quality
- Accessing experience from a variety of organizations, industries, and business stages
- Scaling services up or down as needed
- Placing expertise at the helm of your marketing initiatives
Fractional CMOs can create impactful marketing strategies that drive growth and deliver measurable results.
These benefits can be boiled down to giving your marketing initiatives what you need when you need it. Customer preferences can change on a whim, after all. With a fractional CMO, you can keep your pulse on market conditions, buyer behavior, and trends. With the right data, you’ll know when to react, and your fractional CMO can also guide your team on how to react.
Have you noticed that your competitors are drawing a lot of business from their social media accounts? Overseeing the optimization of your social content is just one of many crucial tasks that fractional CMOs can perform. Contact us to learn more.
Do I Need a Fractional CMO?
You need an expert in charge of your marketing, and in many cases, a fractional CMO could be your silver bullet. All too often, leadership members who aren’t specialized in marketing have to spend a lot of their time overseeing marketing initiatives. You wouldn’t want your CFO taking focus away from your accounting to analyze your social media performance, would you? Or worse yet, you don’t want your customers to drift to your competition because you’re no longer connecting with them—especially when you’re investing in marketing methods that aren’t delivering the return you’re hoping for.
Fractional CMOs solve the above problems by giving your business access to a high-level marketing expert. With a fractional CMO, you’ll have someone dedicated to developing and executing marketing strategies that optimize your business’s performance across marketing, sales, and advertising. Fractional CMOs also have the advantage of providing an as-needed service. If you don’t need a full-time CMO, or if your budget won’t allow for one, you can still benefit from fractional services. Get in touch to learn more.
When Should I Hire a Fractional CMO?
You should hire a fractional CMO if there’s a gap in leadership in your marketing department. This gap can become especially visible during periods of transition or when time-sensitive opportunities arise. If you don’t have capable leaders, opportunities can slip by, and transitions can shake up your business. Fractional CMOs ensure that marketing efforts are aligned with your business objectives during these critical times.
Examples of times when you should consider hiring a fractional CMO include:
- When you want to scale your business. Taking on new projects can yield exciting results for your organization. However, managing new projects—like exciting campaigns—requires extra personnel. Fractional CMOs can quickly get to work with your team and deliver impactful leadership.
- When you want to carve out space in a new market. Breaking into a new market is risky but can often be rewarding. When each step of the process—from research to campaign design to conversions—is done properly, your business can scale effectively. Fractional CMOs can oversee this process from start to finish, so your marketing team members can shine in their specialized roles.
- When your current marketing strategy just isn’t cutting it anymore. Marketing is both an art and a science. Technology and customer preferences are constantly changing, too. Sometimes, what worked in the past doesn’t work as well as it used to. Fractional CMOs can provide a new perspective and draw from their experiences with other organizations to benefit yours.
- When your marketing department has gone through significant changes. Identifying and pursuing opportunities takes a unified vision. Without strong leadership, conflicting ideas and perspectives can stall action. Fractional CMOs oversee marketing initiatives to ensure buy-in from all stakeholders.
If any of the above scenarios resonate with your organization, it’s time to consider hiring a fractional CMO. Contact us to learn more.
What Is the Hourly Rate for a Fractional CEO?
Hourly rates for a fractional CEO can reach up to $500 an hour (according to LinkedIn). Fortunately, fractional CMOs tend to have lower rates that range between $200 and $300 an hour.
Depending on your organization’s needs for marketing leadership, hiring a fractional CMO can often be more cost-effective than hiring a traditional, full-time CMO. Small businesses and startups tend to need help when it comes to specific initiatives, such as revamping methods for moving SQLs down the pipeline. Fractional CMOs can step in for these projects and step out once they’re completed. This gives your budget a break while also providing your team with consistency, as you can often work with the same fractional CMO during your next marketing initiative.
Is a Fractional CMO Worth It?
A fractional CMO is typically worth it for the following key reasons:
- Financial Agility
- Seasoned Expertise
- Scalability
Financial Agility
Money makes the world go around, and that’s especially true in the business world. Hiring a fractional CMO ties up fewer of your organization’s resources, so you can invest in additional exciting ventures.
Seasoned Expertise
Fractional CMOs work with a wide variety of organizations. This experience can benefit your business because if you’re facing a challenge, there’s a good chance your fractional CMO has encountered it before. In a field that moves as fast as marketing, experience, and confidence can make all the difference.
Scalability
Fractional CMO services are as needed. Think of the differences between a pay-as-you-go phone plan and a contract-based phone plan. Just like a pay-as-you-go-phone plan, it’s easy to increase or decrease services to best suit your needs.
The best fractional CMO companies get to know your business as if they were part of your in-house team.
How Do You Become a Fractional CMO?
While there is no exact path for how to become a fractional CMO, you will often need years of management experience in marketing to make your fractional CMO resume appealing to organizations. To get started on this path, you’ll usually need at least a bachelor’s degree in marketing. From there, you can gain relevant skills as you work your way up within a company. Once you have a few years as a director of marketing or a similar management role, it’s worth considering a career as a fractional CMO.
Working as a fractional CMO can be a rewarding experience because you’ll be working with a wide variety of businesses on challenging projects. The skills you learn in one situation will translate into others as you help businesses reach their goals without throwing their budget out the window.
What Are Fractional CMO Services?
Fractional CMO services can encompass marketing, advertising, and sales-related responsibilities. A fractional CMO is capable of performing the same services as a traditional CMO, such as overseeing:
- Branding
- Marketing Department Leadership
- Campaign Design, Implementation, and Evaluation
- Market Research
- Setting and Tracking KPIs
The key difference is that fractional CMOs aren’t typically responsible for all of the above roles all of the time. This allows your organization to be flexible with your budget while focusing on the objectives that matter most for your goals.
Contact Us Today To Learn More About Fractional CMO Services
Start your search for a “fractional CMO near me” with Bohu Digital.
