As a startup or small business owner, you wear many hats. You have much on your plate, from overseeing daily operations to managing finances. With limited time and resources, it can be tempting to try and handle all marketing responsibilities yourself. However, there comes a point when it makes sense to bring in a seasoned marketing expert like a fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Here’s a look at when hiring a fractional CMO may benefit your company.
Your Marketing Efforts Are Stagnating
If you’ve noticed your marketing campaigns and activities yielding diminishing returns, it could signal a need for an infusion of strategic marketing leadership. A fractional CMO brings specialized expertise to identify untapped opportunities, develop integrated strategies across channels, and implement best practices you may be missing. Rather than sticking to status quo marketing tactics, an experienced fractional CMO can overhaul your approach to drive growth.
You're Launching a New Product or Service
Introducing a new offering requires thoughtful planning and execution to connect with your target audience. From positioning to promotion, there are many moving pieces to coordinate. A fractional CMO has launched products and services many times before, giving them an edge in developing creative strategies that grab attention in crowded markets. Their leadership and oversight of the entire launch process can help your new product get off to a strong start.
You're Entering a New Market
Expanding into a new customer segment, geographic region, or industry vertical brings its own set of challenges. Nuances in buyer behavior, competitive forces, and communications channels require an adaptable marketing approach. A fractional CMO can help you navigate unknown territory with their experience entering new markets. By conducting in-depth market research, pinpointing the right messaging, selecting appropriate channels, and developing key partnerships, a fractional CMO reduces missteps and drives effective market entry.
You Need to Raise Brand Awareness
While you may enjoy strong customer loyalty, your branding and messaging may not be cutting through the clutter to expand your reach. A fractional CMO brings an objective outside perspective to identify brand messaging and positioning opportunities you’re missing. Refining and differentiating your brand story and implementing multi-channel promotions expands awareness with your target audience and helps drive growth.
There's No Unified Marketing Strategy
Do your marketing tactics feel disjointed? Are you unsure if activities across social media, email, content marketing, and advertising are working cohesively? Absence of an overarching strategy leads to inefficient and ineffective marketing. A fractional CMO can align your messaging, promotions, and initiatives under one comprehensive strategy that maximizes impact across all activities.
Your Current Marketing Team Needs Support
Perhaps you have an in-house marketer or agency partners supporting certain aspects of your marketing. However, they may need guidance and leadership to work cohesively and effectively given bandwidth constraints and capabilities. Rather than hiring multiple specialists, a fractional CMO provides broad oversight to rally and direct current marketing resources. Their experience and skillset identifies gaps to fill for a comprehensive approach.
You Don't Have Marketing Analytics in Place
A telltale sign your marketing efforts are missing the mark is lack of data and analytics. Without tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), you can’t measure marketing ROI or identify low-performing areas needing improvement. A data-driven fractional CMO will build out dashboards and reports to quantify marketing performance and spend. With these insights, marketing can be fine-tuned to optimize return on your marketing investment.
Your Sales Cycle Needs Shortening
Lengthy sales cycles indicate ineffective marketing programs upstream. From weak branding to poor lead nurturing, the problems hampering sales lie in marketing. A fractional CMO can pinpoint how to strengthen branding, generate more qualified leads, and shorten the lag time between prospect interest and closed sales. Identifying and addressing marketing gaps results in higher sales-readiness.
You're Fundraising or Preparing for Exit
Marketing plays a pivotal role in capital raising and maximizing valuation upon exit. Demonstrating market traction, growth potential, and competitive advantages requires compelling messaging and positioning. A fractional CMO lends their expertise to showcase your company in the best light to attract investors or buyers through well-crafted branding, messaging, content, and more.
Your Growth is Stalled
When growth stalls, marketing is often the problem. Your current efforts may be failing to reach and resonate with your audience. Or perhaps you need to expand into new market segments. An outside perspective is invaluable for diagnosing issues impeding growth. With their cross-industry experience, a fractional CMO can pinpoint marketing gaps and opportunities that recharge growth.
Next Steps When Considering a Fractional CMO
The responsibilities of a fractional CMO are far-reaching, from brand building to campaign management. That’s why defining specific objectives you want to achieve by bringing on a fractional CMO is key. Areas for potential focus might include:
- Developing an integrated marketing strategy
- Increasing brand awareness and engagement
- Generating and nurturing quality leads
- Launching a new product or entering a new market
- Optimizing digital marketing performance
- Tightening sales and marketing alignment
Clearly communicating goals and challenges enables a fractional CMO to develop a customized approach to make the biggest impact. Other considerations are chemistry fit, evaluating fractional CMO experience and specializations against your needs, availability, and budget, and establishing reporting frequencies and metrics to track performance.
Just like a full-time hire, take time to interview multiple qualified fractional CMO candidates before deciding on the right strategic marketing partner. Although an investment, an experienced fractional CMO provides hard-to-find expertise to take your marketing and growth to the next level. Their fresh vision and execution capabilities expand your bandwidth to drive results.
If You Need a SaaS Fractional CMO, We Can Help
If your company needs SaaS Fractional CMO Services, consider working with Peter Geisheker, CEO of The Geisheker Group. Peter has been providing Fractional CMO services for over 20 years. His specialty is B2B lead generation, and in particular, B2B lead generation for SaaS companies.