Why a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer may be right for you

What is a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer (FCMO)?

A Fractional Chief Marketing Officer (FCMO) is a professional marketing executive that can be a game changer for your business. Hiring the right FCMO provides the company with extraordinary marketing expertise, helps you grow your business and generate innovative ideas all while you can stay focused on other important tasks.

FCMO’s are Chief Marketing Officers’s (CMO’s) that are only there for a fraction of a full time employee. Essentially, business owners can hire them as part-time C-level executives or set a temporary working term. Completely, at the disposal and needs of the company, FCMO’s can add a lot to a business.

Knowing when to hire a FCMO can be transformative. The following examples illustrate the effectiveness and positive impact of a good FCMO.

Day-to-day Management

When it comes to your everyday tasks, FCMO’s can be the solution to a wide range of problems. When you are not ready, don’t have the budget for a full-time CMO or are in between switching CMO’s, FCMO’s can be a great option. FCMO’s are capable of helping you expand your company, synthesize your existing sales and marketing team, introduce new product lines, develop a consistent marketing message, generate a powerful sales technique, audit an existing marketing strategy and much more. This can be incredibly rewarding for your company and allow you to enhance your marketing efforts substantially in an effective manner.

Targeting specific industries

If you are trying to enter a new specific vertical market, there are many challenges and issues that may arise in the process. The FCMO would supervise and guide the vertical market entrance. They would be able to go over each departmental change and challenge and help your company transition more smoothly with the process. The beginning is always the most challenging, and with their help in tackling specific issues and internal production, they can help you overcome the most difficult part. Once they have helped you integrate the company into the new industry, they can hand over their responsibilities and move on to other clients, or you could move them into a more day-to-day role that works for you.

Rebranding

If you are looking to rebrand or update the brand of your company, it would be very helpful to receive professional input and help in ensuring that the new company vision and brand is presented to your customers in the best way possible. A FCMO helps bind all the aspects of marketing and sales into your operations while creating your new brand. Rebranding is never easy and when done poorly can be incredibly detrimental to the company – this is especially true when completed in a piecemeal way by taking one element (for example: you website) and rebranding it alone, while not integrating it with everything else that represents your brand.  This leads to a disconnected message that customers and clients alike notice, and question who you really are. When facing something this important, a specialized FCMO can be beneficial and once the brand concept has been established, you can decide whether the FCMO has a further role to play or not.

Connecting sales and marketing

Marketing and sales are often spoken of as the same thing, but they are absolutely not.  Marketing tends to operate more actively at the top of the sales funnel, helping to make potential customers aware of the company or product/service, and generate sales leads, while sales tend to operate lower down the funnel qualifying and closing those leads.  Managing the sales and marketing teams in concert with each other is very advantageous, and something that many companies fail at.  The FCMO can assist in this process and ensure that there are strategies in place to make this work.  Whether is is new or existing campaigns, having someone with a broader perspective can help bring these teams together.

Developing a comprehensive marketing strategy

Many companies operate marketing as a number of independent tactics that never connect into a wholesome, pre-determined strategy that build on each other.  This idea of building one tactic on another leads the marketing effort to become ever more impactful (making 1 + 1 =3).  Having a FCMO develop such a strategy is important to all companies desiring business improvement or growth, and is something that does not require a full time person.  What is required is someone that knows how to do this.  Junior marketing staff tend to be tactical implementers, not strategists.  For this job, a strategist like and experienced FCMO is required.  If you have goals that you have set and do not know how they will be achieved, call a FCMO to help.

Bottom line is, if your business is struggling to take on new marketing challenges and need a contributing professional, hiring a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer may be the right move. The right person can grow your business effectively and provide a lot of knowledge and expertise.  For more information about hiring a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, call 1-844-647-6984 Ext 1. or complete the form on this page.