Signs Your Company Needs a Fractional CMO
Knowing when is the right time to reinforce your marketing team and overall operations with a fractional CMO might not be easy. Here are some of the signs coming from within your own business.
Summary:
A lack of coherent strategy or strong leadership for your marketing, an overwhelmed marketing team or marketing campaigns that no longer showing results? These and a few more concrete signs that it might be a good time to look for a fractional CMO to join your team and bring in a new perspective going forward.
What are the signs that your company could use a fractional CMO?
A high-level marketing professional who works with your company on a part-time basis, driving the marketing strategy definition, implementation and tracking - this is a definition for a fractional CMO.
If what is a fractional CMO is no secret to you, clearly you are also aware of the sweet spot such a figure hits in terms of skills and cost: start-ups and small business can also tap into top-tier skills and leadership, without having to commit to the full C-level price tag. Such valuable experience can be outsourced, with a flexible contractual arrangement and for a fraction of the cost of a FTE.
Sounds great, but can one know if the company is really at a point where the presence of a fractional CMO on board is necessary?
Let’s explore a few signs and flags coming from within, before you let anyone else tell you that having a fractional CMO in your team is a game changer.
Signs Your Company Needs a Fractional CMO
From a high level, the “fractional CMO needed” clues can indicate, in one way or another, one or several of the following issues requiring the skills and experience of such a figure:
lack of an aligned, comprehensive and coherent marketing strategy
lack of (strong) marketing leadership
lack of results for the ongoing marketing campaigns
lack of experience and skills to drive business growth aided by the marketing strategy
lack of a proper and professional marketing department (to begin with!)
lack of budget for a full-time CMO (and/or no need to have such a figure full-time). Usually this is combined with one of the reasons listed above.
Let’s take a closer look at a few more concrete examples now.
You don't have a marketing team
For various generally good reasons, focus has been placed somewhere else - on the product or service development, on the operations or sales. You are now ready to add marketing to your mix in order to start building up a brand, to promote your company and gain new clients while keeping your early ones on board. Marketing has never been a strength within your team and you need someone to start building it up from scratch - but it must be a cost effective route. A fractional CMO generally brings a rather diverse experience, with a background mixing industries and cultures exposure and, very important, a network. Having a vetted set of professionals to tap into and get the ball rolling will prove to be critical at this point. So go out there and find a fractional CMO who can do this for you!
You have a team of marketing experts, you don't have a leader
A great team of tactical marketing experts has been whipped up: an advertising rock star, an ingenious designer, a social media wizard, a whizzy marketing automation expert. They all focus on doing their job and they exchange thoughts but they lack a common direction and struggle to come up with a cohesive, results-driven marketing plan. A fractional CMO brings the holistic view and expertise to design an overarching marketing strategy - one where every tactical execution falls into its right place, with shared deadlines and goals and a common understanding of success. It’s time to bring in a T-shaped marketing leader to stir your marketing boat for the journey forward.
Your marketing is led by other departments
In the absence of a (strong) marketing leader, it is not uncommon for other departments to take over the marketing operations or to go about producing their own marketing collateral. Clearly sales teams are generally and naturally sharp and creative when it comes to marketing ideas and input. Product teams will also have strong opinions about how marketing should look like. So you either have one of these driving your marketing or some sort of a power struggle. Good marketing is devised by collecting input from all departments and balancing it all out in a cohesive strategy. An experienced marketing leader, used to cooperate across departments while keeping “the hands on the wheel” will make the most of such a scenario and maintain the marketing strategy on the right path. You guessed it - a fractional CMO is your best next step.
Your marketing efforts are no longer showing results
Your marketing is working hard, maybe you also collaborate with external partners, however lately your marketing campaigns no longer show results and it is time for a healthy shake-up. A new perspective that challenges the status quo and moves the needle from the “we always did things this way”. A fractional CMO will bring in the authority, knowledge and that set of fresh but experienced eyes. In most cases such a move does not mean your existing marketing team or set-up is wrong, it might just be that you need a breath of fresh air, usually coming from “the outside” to question the status-quo.
You need to step-up your marketing efforts
Your marketing strategy and campaigns have worked fairly well and brought your company up until a certain point. A clear step-up is required in order to unlock further growth or get out of a period of stagnation but you feel a bit anxious about doing this with the resources you have in house. You need someone who can hit the ground running, who brings in the expertise and frameworks that support the scale-up you are looking to achieve. Onboarding a fractional CMO, who capitalizes on her/his diverse experience within your own business context, is the right move for the journey ahead.
You are planning a marketing overhaul
The time has come for your overall branding and marketing strategy to go through a revamp. Between your internal resources and maybe outside help (agencies, freelancers) you put together a strong mix of skills and inputs to make the project a success but wait… who is going to lead it all and be accountable for it? Somebody who has been through this process before, a t-shaped marketing professional who can have leveled conversations with all partners involved. Also someone, who is used to sitting at the management table while is also versed in building and inspiring teams and rolling out complex marketing and tech initiatives. A strategist, a good communicator who works collaboratively across departments and stakeholders. That sounds like a Head of Marketing or a CMO - and that sounds also expensive. Enter - the fractional CMO. She or he will come in on a part-time basis, plan, manage and roll-out your marketing overhaul and take you out successfully at the other end of the project - and for a fraction of the cost of a full-time CMO.
Finding the right fractional CMO for your business is the obvious next step, once one or several of the signs above have been spotted across your organization.
If you are looking for someone with a strong grasp of digital, who can work seamlessly across departments and has experience with building strong marketing foundations and teams - we might have a solution, or two! Meet our fractional CMOs at Journee GmbH and learn more about our CMO for hire offer.
About Journee - Digital at Ease
Founded by two digital marketing professionals with extensive international experience, Journee GmbH is a female owned digital marketing and technology boutique consultancy.
Diana and Ana Maria, two fractional CMOs with a strong digital core, are helping companies set up, improve and further grow their marketing operations, always adapted to the company size and goals.
Their combined expertise covers marketing leadership, digital marketing, digital analytics, advertising, marketing technology and overall digital strategy support and mentorship.