Building a startup can be very challenging. Do you know that one in five U.S. businesses fails within the first year? So many factors contribute to the failure of a startup, but one of the main contributors is a poor marketing strategy, and that’s why every startup needs a Fractional CMO (Chief Marketing Officer).
But what exactly is a CMO, and how can they help your startup thrive?
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What Is a CMO?
A Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is the most senior marketing official who aids business growth via developing and implementing effective marketing strategies.
The CMO’s marketing strategies can help a startup to increase its brand awareness, develop a competitive edge in the market, and deliver an exceptional customer experience. They also define marketing metrics to track key performance indicators such as revenue goals. In short, a CMO is essential in helping a startup achieve its business goals and deliver on promises to customers.
Responsibilities of a CMO
A CMO’s primary responsibility is to assist the business in increasing sales and revenue by developing innovative marketing strategies that offer it a competitive edge. The CMO must have substantial business and marketing skills to help a startup accomplish its goals.
Some of the significant responsibilities of a CMO are:
Market Research
Market research refers to the act of gathering, evaluating, and interpreting information about your target audience, competitors, and industry as a whole. A good CMO employs a variety of tactics like customer surveys, focus groups, and distributor surveys to gather this crucial data about the target market. This makes it easier to understand the market's demands and the favorability of the company’s product.
Brand Management
Brand management is the process of creating and maintaining the consumer’s perspective of a company and its products/services. It creates a loyal fan base by making a promise to the customers, materializing that promise, and maintaining it. It helps to manage tangible elements like product, pricing, and packaging and intangible elements like customer experience. A CMO incorporates different methods to create a strong brand image, increase brand awareness, and build a loyal fan base for your company’s products.
Marketing Communications
Marketing communications, or marcom, are the messages and media a business uses to communicate with its target audience. This is accomplished by using different tools like advertising, digital marketing, sponsorships, etc. A CMO ensures that a clear and consistent message that aligns with the startup’s values reaches the target audience across all touch points.
Product Management
Product management is the process of planning, developing, and marketing a product or service. A CMO plays a crucial role in product development and product marketing. During the product development phase, a CMO’s responsibility is to conduct research on the proposed product and determine customers’ needs. Whereas, during the marketing phase, their role is to launch new products, create promotions, observe the competition and gather consumers' feedback.
Find Unique Solutions
As the head of the marketing department, it is the CMO’s responsibility to collect consumers’ feedback and figure out ways to increase customer satisfaction and sales. They then lead and inspire marketing teams to arrive at unique solutions for their customers that increase the company’s ROI.
Now that you know what a CMO is and how they can aid your business growth, you might be considering hiring a CMO for your startup. However, recruiting an in-house CMO means paying a five-figure salary a month, and frankly, most startups just don’t have the budget for that. That’s when a fractional CMO steps in to save you tens of thousands of dollars and help you grow your business exactly like a full-time in-house CMO would.
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What Is a Fractional CMO?
As the name suggests, a fractional CMO is a marketing executive hired on a part-time basis to help a company with its marketing. They bring their insight and experience to the table and offer expert advice and guidance to take your startup to the next level. But they aren’t entirely in charge of the day-to-day operations of the marketing department.
Generally, a fractional CMO works with a business for a predetermined number of hours each month and only gets a fraction of the pay a full-time CMO gets. To put it another way, they get the work done in less time and for less money!
Why Should You Hire a Fractional CMO?
One of the smartest moves you can make for your business is to hire fractional marketing services. They can help you reach your marketing ROI goals faster without burning a hole in your pocket. Here are the seven benefits and reasons to hire a fractional CMO as opposed to an internal CMO:
1. Improve Cash Flow
Hiring a fractional CMO has many benefits, but the biggest one is that it saves your company money. Of course, all businesses want to save money, but doing so is necessary for startups.
As reported by Glassdoor, CMOs earn between $73,000 and $306,000 per year, with the typical CMO in the United States earning $174,371. That’s a significant increase in payroll regardless of your city, industry, or candidate. While adding an employee at this salary level may be worthwhile for certain businesses, it is neither beneficial nor practicable for startups due to financial restrictions.
On the other hand, a fractional CMO services often charge between $200 and $250 per hour for their services. This can result in considerable cost savings in salary alone, and the difference widens when additional full-time employee expenses like health insurance, 401k matching, bonuses, incentives, and payroll taxes are considered.
2. Valuable Experience
The marketing departments of startups often struggle with a lack of strategy in their brand marketing initiatives. Fractional CMOs are well known for their wide range of experience with strategic and tactical execution. With the assistance of a fractional marketing services, you can launch your marketing campaigns quickly and intelligently.
3. Access to Advanced Tools
If you’re hiring in-house, you’ve got more to worry about than just salaries. Today, your employees need sophisticated tools to do their jobs successfully. Tools like Hubspot, Tribilo, SEMrush, etc. require you to pay a hefty monthly subscription fee. These expenses will build up, and on top of that, you’ll need to adjust to utilizing new applications in your current system, which adds even more expenses.
But when you outsource, you are paying for both human resources and tools. Good fractional marketing services will be honest about the tools they employ to demonstrate their professionalism as well as their seriousness about their business since they invest extensively in the applications they use. Thus, by outsourcing, you not only have access to the best people but also to the most up-to-date tools, which will ensure great outcomes.
4. Improves efficiency
Because a fractional CMO isn’t a full-time employee, they can devote their whole attention to a single project or marketing endeavor without having to deal with the day-to-day, time-consuming activities that full-time employees frequently face. Moreover, they have experience in developing innovative marketing strategies every day, which is why they take less time to give you great results.
5. Better Communication
Without good communication, nothing productive can be accomplished in any business. A good fractional CMO knows that. Since they are an outsider, fractional CMOs must be transparent and communicative. They can also assist you in improving communication within your startup, with current consumers, and with future clients. Their job is to unify the whole team and marketing program, increase functionality, and improve communication.
6. Fresh Set of Eyes and Expertise
Sometimes an outside opinion is necessary for the growth of a business, as it brings a new perspective without any filter. A fractional CMO, by definition, is an outsider with a fresh viewpoint on how to increase assets, identify and implement strong partnerships, improve productivity, and mentor junior marketing personnel. If your marketing strategies are not working or if your business needs rebranding, repositioning, or refashioning, you need to hire a fractional CMO agency asap.
7. Low Risk
If you’ve ever hired full-time employees, you know how time-consuming the process can be. There is also the risk of recruiting someone who doesn’t fit in with your company’s culture or brand.
But you don’t have to worry about this if you hire a fractional CMO, as the hiring process is faster. And due to their part-time status and the fact that they will be serving as a consultant, you don’t need to worry as much about whether or not they fit in perfectly with your culture.
Fractional CMO Services are Perfect for Your Startup!
You may need to hire a fractional CMO for a variety of reasons. It may be to save money or to reap the benefits of a high-level marketing strategy. Regardless of the specific reason, investing in a fractional CMO is smart as it can boost your startup’s growth and ensure that the entire marketing team is headed in the right direction.
If you want to learn more about what a fractional CMO can bring to your startup, don’t hesitate to reach out! We would be delighted to give you further information about our fractional CMO services and how we can assist in your startup’s success.
Hire a fractional cmo now and start winning!
The team at Win at Ecommerce would love the opportunity to talk with you. We can give you a free evaluation of your technology and help your business win.
Damon Didier
Data-driven performance digital marketer with 20 years’ experience expanding and scaling B2B and B2C businesses successfully. Develops and supports insightful customer-centric sales and marketing plans and processes with application of complementary technology.
