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Five Reasons to Hire a Fractional CMO

Why should you hire a fractional CMO? Depending on your stage of business and its goals, there could be many potential reasons, from helping you scale your company to providing a roadmap for optimization and growth. 

In this article, we’ll explore 5 of the top things that business owners tend to consider when making the decision to work with this type of senior marketing executive:

  • Hiring and onboarding process
  • Cost 
  • Ability to delegate
  • Mindset towards growth
  • Understanding of data

How can a fractional CMO help with each of these things? Let’s take a look.

1. Faster Hiring and Onboarding

Hiring fractionally is much quicker than recruiting for a full-time permanent candidate. If you’re trying to decide between a fractional CMO and a full-time CMO, consider that executive candidate searches are often lengthy endeavours that tend to require a major time investment, specialized recruitment, and board approval. 

In contrast, bringing on a fractional CMO can save you months of time that you might otherwise spend recruiting and onboarding. As a result, you’re likely to start seeing results much faster than if you hire a full-time CMO.

2. C-Level Experience (at a Fraction of the Cost)

A lot of small businesses don’t have the budget to hire a full-time CMO, relying instead on the efforts of a few freelancers or relatively junior marketers. Unfortunately, this can often lead to fragmented, disorganized, or even directionless efforts that are based on individual tactics rather than a full-picture strategy. 

Compare that to the mandate of a fractional CMO, whose purview it is to bridge the high-level vision of a business owner with the day-to-day operations of a marketing department by creating a strategy and overseeing its implementation. This person has the experience and insight to evaluate your current efforts and make recommendations, as well as set a strategy and roadmap that moves the needle for the business. However, since they offer their services for just a fraction of the work week, you get that expertise at a fraction of the cost.

3. Lighten Your Load

Many small business owners find that marketing is one of the hardest things to delegate, because this business area is so closely tied to the soul of the company. After all, it’s hard to entrust the voice and image of something you built to someone who might have a different idea, or who might not understand how it should be expressed. However, business owners are busy enough without having to keep an eye on social media, manage an ad campaign, or write a blog post each month.

Enter: a fractional CMO. In addition to helping you capture and communicate your brand to the employees responsible for executing it, they can lighten your workload by overseeing and managing the daily aspects of your company’s marketing. They can also help make the whole process run more smoothly and efficiently by implementing best-practice systems and processes to save your business time and money. 

Bonus: If you hire a Crisp fractional CMO, you can also get access to a whole team of marketers to execute your marketing strategy.

A women Fractional CMO showing clients a successful marketing plan

4. Business-Minded Growth

CMOs are business growth experts, and part of their role is to oversee marketing strategies that align with the goals of the overall business. This can include a diverse range of initiatives, like a rebrand, a digital transformation project, a go-to-market strategy for launching into a new market, or a new strategy to increase market share. In this way, hiring a fractional CMO is an investment in the business as a whole, not just the marketing department.

5. Data-Driven Approach

Part of the role of a fractional CMO is to oversee marketing performance data. They’ll closely track, monitor, and evaluate the correct KPIs, and analyze campaigns and customer data to ensure you are on track to meet your goals. They’ll also use these evidence-based results to inform future strategies and tactics. 

In short, a fractional CMO can help you: 

  • Develop short- and long-term marketing strategies
  • Evaluate your current marketing program and understand which activities best meet your business goals
  • Solve any challenges you might currently be facing with your marketing department and efforts

Curious to learn more? Book a free consult with us to see if hiring a fractional CMO is a good fit for your business.