Fractional CMO Responsibilities

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Ramank SEO Ramank SEO
Marketing
June 21, 2023
Have you heard about a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer or Fractional CMO and wondered what are the Fractional CMO responsibilities? Worry no more, as we deep dive into what Fractional CMO services are and why you may need CMO services. I’ll be honest here – there’s not much difference between the terms “Fractional,” “virtual,” or “outsourced” CMO. People with these titles are ones with high marketing skills and expertise who offer their assistance similar to in-house CMOs but work from a distance and with many companies at once. In simple terms, a Fractional CMO is a de facto growth officer in the company working with other C-executive roles to encourage customer centricity in overall operations – and ensuring marketing efforts turn into sales and hence increase the company’s revenue. To help you dive deeper, we’ve put together this blog post, where we’ll be covering the following sections:
  • What is a Fractional CMO?
  • What are Fractional CMO Responsibilities?
  • Which Companies Require Fractional CMO Services?
  • How to Choose the Right Fractional CMO?

What is a Fractional CMO?

A Fractional CMO is a company’s Chief Marketing Officer – but not full-time. He or she is a C-level marketing strategist hired by a company on a contract basis. A Fractional CMO functions similarly to any in-house CMO, including strategizing and deploying marketing activities. Typically, a Fractional CMO handles a number of clients at the same time and works at dedicated hours as per the contract signed. He or she may work with you for a few months or a few years – depending on the contract. The skills and qualifications required for a Fractional CMO include having a broad understanding of brand development, sales management, product and distribution management, and more. Additionally, they should be well-versed in market research, customer service, pricing, marketing communications, advertising, and public relations. Some benefits of hiring a Fractional CMO are:
  1. Cost savings: Opting for fractional CMO services can be more cost-effective than hiring a full-time CMO, especially for small or medium-sized businesses.
  2. Flexibility: A Fractional CMO can be hired on an as-needed basis, allowing businesses to scale up or down their marketing efforts as needed.
  3. Expertise: A Fractional CMO can bring a high level of marketing expertise and experience to a business, providing valuable insights and guidance.
  4. Fresh perspective: A Fractional CMO can provide a fresh perspective on a business’s marketing efforts, helping to identify areas for improvement and new opportunities.
  5. Improved efficiency: A Fractional CMO can help businesses to streamline their marketing processes, leading to more efficient and effective use of resources.
  6. Access to a network: A Fractional CMO can bring a network of contacts and resources that can benefit a business, such as access to specialized vendors or industry experts.
  7. Objective advice: As an outsider, a Fractional CMO can provide objective advice and recommendations, free from any internal biases or conflicts of interest.

What are Fractional CMO Responsibilities?

A Fractional CMO’s primary goal and responsibility is generating sales and revenue. He/she influences end-to-end business internalities to bring and achieve positive systemic change. A Fractional Chief Marketing Officer wears different hats simultaneously. Let’s look at a few of these Fractional CMO responsibilities:
  • Developing competent marketing strategies with customer/market research 
One of the most important Fractional CMO responsibilities include keeping himself/herself at the forefront of the market and anything that impacts the business. That means not just what’s new and sexy in the world of marketing but also:
  • Sales methodology
  • Regulatory changes and legislation
  • Product/service enrichment and trends
  • Startups and investors in the space
  • Industry insights 
  • Consumer behaviour
  • Competition
  • International news that intersects their space
It’s all about creating market-backed steps to go further!
  • Managing and working with marketing teams 
One of the most important fractional CMO services includes engaging with sales, development, and customer success teams. The Fractional CMO responsibilities don’t normally stretch to project management or execution-related chores. But their core responsibility — is to serve as a guide, helping build marketing strategy and competencies.  This brings us to another element: leadership – a CMO sets the strategy and empowers and guides the rest of the organization (not only marketing) to execute.  Building a good team is critical and being a good leader (not only a good manager) is fundamental.
  • Content strategy
The odds of success in content strategy lie behind this one method – shooting the right content at the right time to the right person! A Fractional CMO manages content (audio, visual, and/or written) campaigns, does SEO planning, and decides the form and channels of content according to target audiences and segmentation.  The main goal a CMO achieves via content strategy – is better customer acquisition and retention with personalized, engaging, and valuable content across every funnel stage. That also includes keeping the engagement alive in the post-purchase phase and collecting data and feedback.
  • Brand storytelling – one of the most critical fractional CMO responsibilities
In today’s business world, marketing is not enough; you need solid brand positioning to connect with your ideal customers.  In branding, the storytelling ingredient plays a crucial role in making your marketing customer-centric and engaging your target customer by leveraging “Story scaping”, — which is related to connecting with your customer’s emotions, where you trigger pain points and present your product as a revolutionary solution.  So, the CMO also handles the company’s creative side and makes sure  innovative marketing ideas capture new eyeballs while conveying the business mission and vision to them. 
  • Campaigns overviewing and submitting performance reports
Setting up campaigns is not enough – you need robust systems to monitor and make them successful.  The campaign overviewing step determines the performance KPIs of campaigns and analyses overall health against resources it took and the results/outcomes the company got.  It comprises visually interactive graphs and various tools to measure ROI, cost per opportunity, etc., across your campaigns. It allows CMO to gain valuable insights such as how many people clicked on a particular ad and how much money was spent on the campaign.
  • Budget allocation 
The CMO again helps with robust budget allocation – so you never waste valuable resources and make economic decisions for your business. It takes a lot of experimentation, hiring different personnel at different posts, and back and forth moving to ditch non-useful functions in marketing that aren’t resulting in any business growth, thus, putting the resources elsewhere. 
  • Converting sales and generating revenue 
“Revenue accountability” is what a Fractional CMO can help you with, as marketing is considered the growth engine of any business.  Hence, the key assistance and CMO services you can ask are customer acquisition, customer retention, and growth. However, the major point to be noted — A experienced Fractional CMO will likely evaluate “quick wins” and opportunities for improvement in your business. But it takes considerable time to move the needle – you have to be patient to see the growth results and momentum.   Now let’s jump to our next part!

Which Companies Require Fractional CMO Services?

The suitability of a Fractional CMO highly depends on these factors –business size, nature, and stage. And as per that, the aptness greatly matches small to medium size businesses — those who can’t afford and need full-time CMO hiring in its initial stage/phase. The average salary expectation for a full-time CMO is $339,600 annually, including other incentives like bonuses, in-house benefits, and other perks – not quite affordable for small to mid-sized businesses. Whereas Fractional CMO services are contracted based on the types of CMO services provided. He/she can be available at your business’ convenience and personalized need – whether weekly or fortnightly or hire or pause requirement — some Fractional CMO services also incentivize on performance bases. That also guarantees results in some tangible way. Here are four signs your business needs a Fractional CMO:

When your marketing results are not matching the expectations

Even after putting in effort and money — the obvious results aren’t showing in your business reports.  That means, to streamline your marketing process, ditching back and forth going thousand times and wasting your business resources in the end — it is time to hire a CMO who brings dedication and takes feasible steps towards the company’s objective, avoids indulging in remote working politics and ensures real revenue and turnover – for which you’ve signed the contract.  

When your marketing team needs a supporting pillar

Marketing is done right when all the teams in the business take assigned steps with measured goals and results. And this can happen only when a single authority watches their every step, from rolling out adequate content, reaching target audiences, and analyzing lead acquisition reports – eventually taking corrections due at the right time.  Hence, here a Fractional CMO can circulate this craving system within your marketing team. 

When you’re not able to catch up with changing dynamics of marketing

As we already know, marketing is complex and comes up with new technologies every day: from marketing automation to big data to social media. In this situation, a person who is well versed in the market’s dynamic needs and the environment – can make business strategies proactively while mitigating possible risks due to rapid changes is the biggest asset of an early-stage business. Thus, a Fractional CMO comes to the aid. 

You’re on a short budget

Having a short budget makes it very crucial where you invest those limited resources. Being that said – the perk a Fractional CMO comes with is a contract and performance-based incentive model per business customized needs, or you can only go with consulting services as part of CMO services. With this, let’s come to our next part – how to choose the right Fractional CMO.

How to Choose the Right Fractional CMO?

Usually, a full-time CMO asks for months and rounds of interviews to onboard the right fit. Hiring a Fractional CMO requires some due diligence to kick start, and it can usually be done within a few days or weeks.  But the biggest advantage is that the business requires less commitment, so working with a Fractional CMO for a few months is possible to get the idea and verify they are an apt choice. So let’s understand some factors to consider while hiring one- 
  • CMO Services and offerings check 
Every CMO serves and specializes in their certain industry. So to make a suitable choice for you, it must intersect with you and the company’s goal. So, cross-check –
  • If the CMO services provided match with your product and customer.
  • What processes, SOPs, and teams are they going to work along with? 
  • Social proof
The biggest advantage of working with a Fractional CMO is that you can check their previous client experience, feedback, and the results they got after hiring. It helps to choose between several alternatives without really hiring anyone or wasting your and others’ valuable time!
  • Niche expertise 
The niche and industry knowledge of a CMO can be the game changer for your business – when it comes to providing exceptional and unique solutions in the compassion of your competitors as you get in-depth and experienced-backed insights.  It also benefits from a huge network of valuable people for strategic partnership — and as well as higher trust, credibility, and motivation within business internalities and externalities like investors, customers, and suppliers. So, you need to analyze it with all time and due.
  • Team members will be required in a project 
With Fractional CMO services, a number of heads are required for different tasks and to perform specialized job accomplishments for the business. However, to check if the team member has the necessary expertise and confirm there is no duplication of work and responsibility if they are charging individually – then you must check the individual services offered and job roles. 
  • Personalization curvature 
Businesses are different, so their individual needs. A Fractional CMO needs to have a high personalization curvature to provide customized solutions to the business.  There needs to be flexibility in packages offered by the CMO services provider — and they should be open and engage in real-time changes rather than following templated campaigns, same for all industries and their clients.  All boils down to a CMO should be aware and keep looking to give better solutions proactively. 

FAQs

  • What is a Fractional CMO?
A Fractional CMO is the C-Suite executive position level for a marketing strategizing role but works on a contract basis and can be outsourced to a third-party professional. 
  • What are Fractional CMO Responsibilities?
Fractional CMO responsibilities include – documenting and implementing marketing strategies and eventually ensuring growth in sales and the company’s revenue. 
  • Is a CMO higher than the CEO?
Usually, a CMO reports to the CEO about marketing performance and results through data. Both are C-Suite executive positions. 
  • What skills does a CMO need?
Leadership, communication, motivation, managing skills, etc
  • How much does the CMO get paid on average?
The average salary package of a CMO is $339,600.

How Can We Help?

As we’ve now seen – Fractional CMO roles are growing in popularity because of the extra hand and proactiveness in marketing leadership they provide to the business owner who can’t afford the full-time alternative. Not as mere consultants, but Fractional CMOs have stood apart as accountability partners in generating sales and results via marketing. If you are looking to hire one for your business, we can help. Book a call NOW to talk directly with one of our professionals and see if we can help you identify the missing link to reach your marketing goals.
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