What is a Fractional CMO?

Information you should consider before hiring a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer for your business

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When you're a startup or small business, it's not an easy fete to understand the type and amount of effort you need to make sure that your goals are being met. Marketing and sales efforts are essential activities for any company to be able to thrive and grow in their industry - but where should you start and what happens when the sales and marketing teams that you do have are struggling? Should you work with a marketing agency? How do you truly understand where to start and how to get your business moving in the right direction?

Enter the idea: Hiring C-level management figureheads.

Hiring executive leadership is an effective way to answer the problems presented by questions above, however, they do typically come with a hefty price tag - something that many companies at the startup or small business level can't always justify. Business.org gives an overview of what some executive salaries can cost and shows where the primary gap is for many businesses in receiving the expertise required to help them grow into enterprise companies.

Positions like Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs), Chief Revenue Officers (CROs)s and even Chief Operations Officers (COOs) can be extremely helpful for growing and struggling small businesses and startups, however, due to the high likelihood of not only having to justify their salaries, but also the cost of their individual benefits, makes the idea of hiring them as full-time employees for these businesses nearly impossible.

To summarize, a Fractional C-Level Executive is a professional who works in a part-time (hourly or retainer) manner OR in a full-time but specifically focused manner to support the specific needs of a business. They work with existing leadership as contractors or employees to help businesses define, construct and implement solutions that are specific to their area of expertise.

What is a Fractional CMO?

Fractional CMOs are tenured (10+ years of experience in people management, marketing and sales) who work primarily with a company in a part-time manner to provide strategic guidance that supports go-to-market plans that existing team members or partner agencies would then implement. They can also help businesses interview and hire the appropriate team members to build an internal team, vet existing vendors that may be lacking transparency and hold them accountable for results, or even work directly on marketing activities to add an advanced level of expertise and polish to an existing go-to-market plan. A Fractional CMO is not someone who is a "yes-man" or "yes-woman". They should be a dependable, transparent and data-driven professional who helps drive change and revenue within an organization while providing professionalism and honesty about how to improve your business.

How Fractional CMOs help start-ups and small businesses

A Fractional CMO is someone who has a lot of concentrated experience with how marketing works at an executive level. They work with executive team members and existing marketing teams and agencies to:

help define marketing strategy for the company
take that strategy and outline KPIs (key performance indicators) to make sure that it's effective and working
works directly with an existing marketing department or helps hire a new team to make sure they understand their role in the strategy and are performing in unison with it
supports the sales team at the executive level to help drive revenue and growth

It's not a novel idea for companies to demand and hire part-time executive leaders like CMOs. This can seriously help organizations, especially VC-backed start-ups that need to move quickly, go to market in an effective manner and not waste money along the way.

Working with Krohn Marketing to provide Fractional CMO services means that you have a dedicated CMO that works with you to help you develop a plan to enter new markets, expand in existing ones and identify other areas of growth.

Fractional CMOs work with start-ups and small businesses to accomplish:

Brand Guidelines and Strategies
Content Marketing Plans and Strategies
Email Marketing Strategies
Lead Generation Optimization and Tactics
Marketing Tech Stack Structure
Channel and Partner Programs
Optimizing Your Existing Investment in Marketing Software
Evaluate Partner or Agency Performance
And more!

So, what are other benefits of hiring a Fractional CMO?

Benefits of hiring a Fractional CMO

When your business is facing the challenge of requiring a more tenured professional's assistance with their marketing efforts, it can be challenging to play roulette on freelance or contractor websites - hoping you find someone who really can do what they say they can.

The benefits of hiring a Fractional CMO vary by company as each company has a specific, unique set of goals they need to accomplish. However, for many start-ups and small businesses, the benefits of hiring a Fractional CMO can be generalized into the following:

Lower cost, affordable executive insight (versus hiring a full-time, high siz-figure salaried professional)
Working with someone who has an incredible amount of concentrated experience in your specific industry, such a B2B SaaS, Distribution, Finance, Legal or other vertical
They have nothing to gain within your organization, providing objective feedback and honest, transparent information that helps you grow, also no nepotism issues or challenges