Introduction: Greening Your Garden - How a Fractional CMO Can Accelerate Your Growth

In the world of botany, there are only a fortunate few who have the expertise to produce green, healthy, and thriving plant life every time they put a seed in the ground. For the rest of us – well – we generally need MiracleGro or some other catalyst to make the garden grow.

As a CEO, you, too, are invariably looking for your own version of MiracleGro – that evasive ingredient you need to help catalyze growth and turn your brown landscape a verdant shade of green. The good news? A confluence of trends, including the rise of the “gig economy” and the COVID-19 pandemic, have supported the notion of the fractional Chief Marketing Officer – essentially, a gardener supreme who brings the plant food, seeds, and water in a bid to help you sow success.

Although the pandemic alone was not the force that gave rise to fractional executive employment—in fact, fractional executives have been around for decades—it did accelerate an existing trend toward companies attaching less value to where people work and how many hours they put in the office and, instead, focusing more on outcomes. Fractional Chief Marketing Officers fit perfectly into this change in mentality.

Have Insights, Will Travel

As a CEO, you likely have experienced the frustration that goes with investing significant resources, time, and capital to bring along a new member of your senior leadership team, only to realize all too soon that the fit wasn’t optimal, or the results were less than stellar.

In fact, the average tenure of a corporate CMO these days is just 40 months – a downward trend that illustrates the difficulty in achieving a lasting fit. With flexibility being the name of the game these days, more executives are embracing the opportunity to find the resources they need now – today – to get or remain competitive in a hyper-charged marketplace.

By hiring a fractional executive, you can cherry pick someone who has the particular skills you are looking for, along with new perspectives that might serve you well – for example, someone who could help you apply next-generation thinking about the software world into your retail business, or someone who has developed successful strategies in retail that would apply well to manufacturing.

Why Do I Need a Fractional CMO Now?

In my experience as a fractional executive, I’ve seen a variety of scenarios where hiring a part-time CMO was the right path. Here are five such reasons:

1. Opening New Frontiers: Let’s say you're facing a merger or new product launch that requires a skill you don’t currently have in-house. A temporary CMO with those specific skills can help you pivot to quickly take command of the opportunity – supplementing your resources, very quickly, without the commitment of adding headcount. No ramp-up required!
2. Marketing Reboot: Another scenario I encounter is when a CEO has “cleaned house” and needs to rebuild a marketing team from the ground up. Even if your ultimate goal is to install a permanent CMO to lead the troops, you may not have the luxury of sitting around and waiting for the ideal candidate. Instead, you can plug in a fractional CMO as a stop-gap measure – with the added benefit that we have all led best-in-class marketing teams, so we know what to look for.
3. Gauging Your Marketing Efficacy: If you have an existing marketing team, but not the insights to understand whether you have the right personnel – or if their strategies and tactics are hitting the mark – a fractional CMO can come in and help you evaluate your current state. Additionally, we are great at mentoring junior-level marketers to help make them more focused, and more effective.
4. Marketing Vision: You may not know exactly WHAT you need to get your marketing working for you – including what attributes you are looking for in your permanent CMO. We can help you evaluate your short- and long-term strategic plan and recommend the right experiences and skills to look for in that long-term choice.
5. Size Matters: Your SMB or mid-market business may NEVER need a full-time, high-level CMO, offering strategic insights on a daily basis. Or it may simply not be in the financial cards. A fractional CMO is easy to bring in without a long-term commitment and costs. Unlike full-service hires, a fractional CMO does not come with a steep hiring fee (which, in my experience, can be up to 40 percent of the expected first year salary if using a recruiting agency), benefits, or an expectation of severance if things do not work out as planned.

Of course, knowing you need a fractional resource, and determining the best option, does take some more insights than I’ve shared here. It is my hope in this blog series that you will learn how to best assess your current needs and challenges and to understand what resources you need to close the knowledge (and success) gap.

Future blogs will answer the questions:

• Do I need a CMO, agency, or in-house team?
• What can I expect from the fractional CMO relationship?
• When is the right time to transition to a full-time resource?

Ready to earn your marketing green thumb? Stay tuned for our next blog!