Fractional CMO is your sustainable growth champion
You aim for the growth of your business but it just doesn’t happen fast enough. Fractional CMO can create growth momentum.
Our previous experience
What is a fractional CMO?
A fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader joining to build or lead your company’s marketing function on a part-time basis. The fractional part of the term means you get a professional who’s fully committed to your business for 8, 16, 20 hours per week or more. The remainder of the CMO’s weekly hours are then spent on another company or two.
Great product will bring your first users and start the word of mouth. Great marketing will amplify this effect and make growth consistent and predictable.
Why hire a Fractional CMO
Fractional CMO makes sense for startups and small businesses while they are growing to the stage when they can justify investment in a full-time CMO. Some organizations state lack of cohesion and limited commitments as the man cons for hiring a Fractional CMO. However, lack of cohesion is more relevant for consultant gigs, while Fractional CMOs dive into their organizations headfirst and gain a holistic understanding from inside. Limited commitment is in fact a strong benefit of Fractional CMO as it allows organizations to get the same knowledge and level of expertise for a more reasonable investment.
Fractional CMOs bring 6 core benefits to the table. Let’s have a look at them.
01.
Customer understanding.
A Fractional CMO is always on the lookout for customer feedback. We’ll rely on both qualitative and quantitative data to distill what existing users love about your product and what they miss. In-product communication and onboarding process, when done based on customer understanding, improve conversions big time.
02.
Crystallized strategy
It covers the whole stack from positioning and messaging to tools and channels appropriate for execution. Having a growth roadmap does not contradict the growth hacking concept. Digital strategy defines which tactics are worth trying and which are bound to fail. Equipped with the strategic digital plan, you will assign specific roles to each of the marketing channels and have the set of KPIs to assess the efficiency of each of them.
03.
Meaningful innovations
A Fractional CMO will not let you fall in love with your current product because it’s the shortcut to fail. We will distill relevant data to help you focus product development pipeline. You can be sure that your costly product development investment will pay off.
04.
Profitable growth
Guesswork in marketing is an expensive exercise. There are tons of user-friendly marketing tools. Your assistant will have the capability to set up many of them. However, you would never know which part of your marketing mix works. Does that sound sustainable? A Fractional CMO creates a data-driven marketing system structured around customers’ decision-making process. You will know what to communicate through which channels and tools and what to expect in return.
05.
Capability building
A Fractional CMO working in close cooperation with the customer support team will boost their performance. Moreover, a CMO will document all marketing procedures and thinking behind. Your organization will keep the marketing backbone even after the contract is terminated.
06.
Optimal cost
We split the work into quick sprints. You get the results needed at the right moment. We can race with 4 sprints per month or go slower to spread the cost over a longer period. No retainers, no recurring costs, no HR hassle.
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How does a Fractional CMO work?
Marketing strategy and some tools like content marketing take 6 months to ripen, produce results, and deliver a sustainable foundation for growth. In order for both parties to have a high level of commitment, we advise opting for a 6+ month engagement.
Every company is unique, and our approach is bespoke. To share our way of thinking, this is how we approached a 6-month collaboration with one of our previous B2B SaaS clients in the startup stage.
- Sprint 1. Strategy development, market analysis, KPIs definition
A good plan creates realistic expectations, drastically increases execution effectiveness, and saves tons of time and money. - Sprint 2. Setup analytics tools to track KPIs.
Before we spend a single cent on execution, we must be sure we have a way to track its performance. - Sprint 3. Adjust messages within all communication channels
Make sure your communication is straight to the point and resonates well with the target audiences. - Sprint 4. On-Site SEO: copywriting, meta data, internal linking, etc.
Assuring targeted organic traffic in long-term - Sprint 5. Onboarding sequence, transactional emails adjustment.
Improving email communication for higher retention - Sprint 6. Nurturing sequence: lead magnets, email marketing
Boosting conversion rates - Sprint 7. Growth hacking experiments
Finding the most efficient avenues in paid ads - Sprint 8. Media and PR fundamentals: press kit and press-releases
Creating the basis for exponential growth - Ongoing:
– SEO: link building, content, starting after Sprint 4
– Ads management, starting from Sprint 7
– Conversion rate optimization based on findings
– Regular reporting
Every business is different, we step in at various stages and make sure that the strategy and execution are tailored to where your business is right now and where you want to bring it.
What does a Fractional CMO do?
Our fractional CMOs have experience building and managing teams of 20+ persons. Yet, they keep their feet on the ground and are ready to get their hands dirty in execution. Jumping from strategy to execution and from coaching to data analysis within the same day is the most common pattern. Here are some examples of what our CMOs do:
Ads. Growth hacking leads acquisition at the bottom of the sales funnel.
Content. Leads acquisition at the top and middle of the sales funnel.
Data analytics. Capturing insights from your users’ and website visitors’ behavior.
Email marketing. Leads nurturing to guide them along the sales funnel.
Outreach automation. Getting directly to the decision makers in your target audiences.
Pre-launch campaigns. Building targeted waiting lists for your product launch.
Social media management. Bringing together a community of your brand’s fans.
Strategy development. Laying out the roadmap for growth.
Web development. From landing pages to managing the development of your product’s MVP.
… and more and more and more. You get real T-shaped marketing experts able to bring in a fresh impulse to your business.
When to hire a Fractional CMO
Hire a Fractional CMO in the following cases:
- You don’t know where your clients/users come from or lack data to make grounded marketing investment decisions
- Your business has been around for some time but marketing still doesn’t have a clear structure behind.
- Your benefits, solutions and messages are fragmented and articulated all over the place.
If any of these are true – it’s high time to hire a Fractional CMO.
Fractional CMO hourly rate
Hiring a Fractional CMO hourly is the shortest way to forfeit all the benefits of this approach. Fractional CMO should be an integral part of your team over a significant period of time of at least 6 months to deliver a strong base for continuous growth.
For your reference, the hourly rate depends on several factors. You may expect the following hourly rates on the CMO services market:
- Startups and e-commerce projects – $80-$110 per hour
- Scaleups and businesses with fragmented marketing function – $120-$180 per hour
- Larger organizations and complicated situations requiring particular expertise – $200-$250 per hour
We strongly believe that charging by the hour is inefficient and not fair for our clients. We split our work in sprints and charge our clients for deliverables, not for the time spent.
Every case is special, so book a call now to see how a Fractional CMO can bring value to your business.
Where to find Fractional CMO
Here are 3 ways to quickly find a Fractional CMO:
- The best one – book a quick call with us to see if we are a good match.
- Google search. You will find a number of sites offering this service.
- Searching for Fractional CMO on LinkedIn will list hundreds of people and their experience.
Why go elsewhere? Grab a time and let’s find ways to grow your business starting today!
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