What Fractional CMOs Can Do for Small Businesses

Want to grow your business and set up your brand for success? One of the best ways to do this is by hiring a CMO or Chief Marketing Officer, an experienced, results-driven executive responsible for all of your marketing efforts.

But many small to medium-sized businesses simply cannot afford a CMO, with average annual salaries in excess of $330,000. Faced with tight budgets and strained resources, these companies must embrace the idea of ​​fractional CMOs and outsource their marketing efforts if they want to grow.

Today I want to discuss this. What is a Fractional CMO and what services do they provide for small to medium sized businesses.

what is a partial cmo

Let’s start by explaining a few simple things; What is CMO?

CMO stands for Chief Marketing Officer, and it is the job of the person who defines the strategic direction and marketing implementation in the business. The concept of a chief marketing officer comes from large enterprises, but it is a role that has grown exponentially over the past few years.

A partial CMO is basically a part-time version of this position. Like part accountant, part chief financial officer, or part chief technology officer, a part chief marketing officer is an executive who leads a company’s marketing strategy and execution on a part-time basis.

What is the difference between Marketing Agency, Marketing Coach, Consultant and Partial CMO?

The number of businesses to receive marketing assistance may be too high. But if we focus on strategy and implementation, the options you will face are hiring a marketing agency, a marketing coach, a marketing consultant, or a partial CMO.

marketing agency

A marketing agency is a company that provides service to a variety of clients in one or more areas of marketing. Agencies sometimes get involved in strategy, but they often focus on the implementation side of the business. They are useful for companies that already have a strategy in place and need some additional assistance in execution.

marketing coach

A marketing coach typically assists business owners or marketing teams with training materials, serves as an accountability partner, and recommends strategic actions, but is not involved in the implementation at all.

marketing consultant

Marketing consultants are experts in a specific field who help companies by advising them and developing their marketing strategies. However, they outsource the implementation to freelancers or an external marketing team.

Fractional CMOs are especially relevant today because they have the strategic perspective of a consultant, can execute as an agency, and act as a marketing coach for your team, while providing measurable value to your business. responsible for giving the result.

Partial CMO Responsibilities

A typical fractional CMO has a mix of responsibilities, all designed to meet the needs of the companies they serve.

These may include:

Defining goals and developing a marketing strategy

A fractional CMO needs to be able to develop and communicate clear goals to the marketing team. And align those goals across the organization.

The partial CMO is also responsible for developing the brand’s marketing strategy (budget, vision, team makeup, customer journey, systems and tactics). They should narrow marketing focus to important marketing channels and design a winning and repeatable plan for the business.

Effective fractional CMOs can guide strategy from a marketing perspective. For example, they can help define ideal customers, propose the best markets to target, and select the most appropriate marketing channels that lead to more business.

This is the most important part of the role as it helps the company stand out from its competition in the mind of its ideal customer.

In order to develop a winning marketing strategy, any CMO should start with these four concepts;

1. Identifying the brand’s ideal customer
2. Identifying the problem the brand is trying to solve and promising to solve it
3. Make content the voice of strategy and establish the brand as an authority online
4. Build a Complete Buyer Journey

Management of Marketing Department

A partial CMO may have his own team to implement strategy or be responsible for managing an internal department. Hiring, managing and sometimes promoting employees are some of the commonly known responsibilities of a partial CMO.

Part time CMO job is one of the most challenging. The average CMO lasts just 40 months, so they need to be ready to make an impact fast.

That’s why most Participant CMOs have their own implementation team, and based on our experience training successful marketing managers and consultants, have a network of professionals that can help you execute your plan, sustainably as an agency. necessary to achieve development.

The Duct Tape Marketing Agency Workshop certifies partial CMOs to license the complete Duct Tape Marketing System for their agency. The workshop concludes by inviting a community of like-minded business professionals to come together for strategic partnerships, ongoing training and programs.

Setting up Marketing Metrics and KPIs

A partial CMO is responsible for establishing clear marketing goals, metrics, milestones and key performance indicators (KPIs). These are used to measure progress and determine whether the marketing team is meeting the goals of their campaigns.

Some commonly known metrics for a marketing department are the number of qualified leads, sign-ups or appointments generated over a given period, lead conversion rate, lead-to-customer conversion, cost per lead, monthly recurring revenue, and others.

Metrics can help partial CMOs understand challenges, and therefore deliver consistent and long-term results.

Act as an advisor to the marketing team

Successful chief marketing officers, both full-time and part-time, often have a strong sense of purpose and can apply a set of values ​​within the organizations they serve. They are not just order takers, they are strategists, advisors and coaches.

Other responsibilities of a partial CMO are creating programs that support employees in a variety of ways. For example, they can create and run mentorship programs or training for their own team or their clients’ teams.

Fractional CMOs can also implement marketing strategy with their own team of experts. This can be much more effective than spreading these functions throughout your company, or creating a new department and trying to recruit.