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Fractional CMO: Reinventing Marketing Strategies written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with John Jantsch

John Jantsch, host of the Duct Tape Marketing podcastIn this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I’m doing a solo show, and I’m gonna talk about how Fractional CMOs are becoming increasingly popular among business owners and marketing agencies.

Key Takeaway:

Strategy is one of the most essential elements to running a successful business today. Whether you are a business owner or a consultant, who doesn’t understand why your marketing is not working the way it should, the Fractional CMO model could change your business. 

Fractional CMOs help companies and business owners develop strategic marketing plans in a more cost-effective solution as they are not full-time employees, but they have the expertise of a seasoned marketing executive. They will develop the marketing activities through strategic planning that could improve the relationship companies have with their clients, as they are able to understand better how to guide the perfect customer journey.

Topics I Cover:

  • [01:15] Introduction to the trend of Fractional CMOs
  • [04:34] Why hiring Fractional CMOs is an appealing idea?
  • [05:28] The role of a CMO in an organization
  • [05:50] Comparing the cost of hiring a full-time CMO and a fractional CMO
  • [08:55] How fractional CMOs focus on developing strategy
  • [10:41] The importance of the Customer Journey

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John Jantsch (00:01): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Creative Elements hosted by Jay Klaus. It’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals creative elements goes behind the scenes with today’s top creators. Through narrative interviews, Jay Klaus explores how creators like Tim Urban, James Clear, Tori Dunlap and Cody Sanchez are building their audiences today. By learning how these creators make a living with their art and creativity, creative elements helps you gain the tools and confidence to do the same. In a recent episode, they talked with Kevin Perry about how he goes viral on every single platform. Listen to creative elements wherever you get your podcasts.

(00:53): Hello, welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and I’m going to do a solo show. It’s been a while since I’ve done one. So there’s a couple topics I want to get off my chest. So I might do a couple shows in a row. Who knows? This first topic I wanna talk about today is a trend, I guess definitely a trend that I’m seeing, and it applies to anybody in the marketing consulting agency world as well as frankly to anyone who owns a business in terms of how to get your marketing done, how to think about your marketing more strategically, and that’s the trend of what I will call the fractional CMO, Chief Marketing Officer. This idea of fractional whatever, titles, accountants, fractional management consultants, fractional hiring consultants. I think that this idea has really taken on a life of its own recently, probably like so many things here in the beginning of 2023, very influenced by the pandemic.

(02:01): But what I’ve seen is many, many business owners over the years really are looking for a marketing agency, a marketing consultant, somebody to get the tactical things done. They quite frankly, rarely hire unless they’re from a marketing background. They rarely hire strategic marketing folks internally because quite frankly, when you bring somebody in at a really high level to do marketing in your business as an employee, and you’re the owner of that business and don’t feel like you know that much about marketing or how to direct really a strategic marketing, dare I say, CMO type of role in your business, it can be a little intimidating. And I’ve experienced that over the years. A lot of times I’ve been hired, my firm’s been hired because, you know, there’s something easier about saying, Hey, this isn’t working out. You know, it’s not an employee, it’s, it’s a vendor almost.

(02:49): And so they can part ways, but I think what’s happened over the last few years is people have dramatically increased their understanding and and desire to really start with strategy. I mean, I’ve been my kind of my mantra for 20 years strategy before tactics. But I think a, I think people are finally getting it right, . And so this idea that they would hire a a a C-suite type of role where the implication is that that person’s going to be strategic, that person’s not gonna write copy necessarily or do social media posts. They’re going to really develop the grand plan for, you know, how you’re gonna go from where you’re today to where you want to be, certainly from a marketing standpoint, but they’re gonna get involved in the dollars and cents of it, the objectives overall for the organization, maybe a little deeper relationship then you would think of your traditional marketing agency.

(03:41): But we are finding that, uh, both business owners are, are really embracing this idea of hiring, you know, us or somebody as a fractional CMO. And certainly a lot of consultants, agencies, coach, implementers, you know, I’m finding are really drawn to this idea of maybe having a handful of clients that they are very deeply involved with and, you know, have a seat at the table , you know, for making or helping make big decisions. And obviously orchestrating the tactics to implementation. Maybe in some cases the team that’s already been assembled. So just the textbook definition, what is a fractional CMO? It’s a marketing strategist brought into an organization on a part-time basis to help set strategic direction and orchestrate marketing implementation using internal and external resources. So I spent the last 10 minutes just talking about what , what I just described there. But, but again, this role, this idea really has a lot of, I think a lot of appeal to business owners because it is a necessary piece that I think that, that you can acquire, or at least the idea you can acquire for much less.

(04:53): I mean, look at Google trends if you ever do that. The term fractional CMO is definitely on the rise. And I think a lot of it has to do with, I think people are tired of the tactic of the week of no real direction. Um, you know, everybody says they want customers, but, but a lot of the CEO’s, business owners that I talk to, what they really need is some clarity first, and the confidence that they’re making the right decisions and some control over their marketing. And I think that that’s a, that’s a big part of what you get by at least taking this strategy approach and, and by bringing in somebody that is very strategic to help you get those customers. And you know, the, the role of a typical CMO in an organization is strategic planning, brand management, you know, obviously the marketing campaigns, analyzing data, helping develop and use a budget and, and maybe even managing team players.

(05:43): And frankly, what most people do is they hire somebody just to do marketing campaigns and all those other things are left by the, the wayside. The reason I think this model works and why business owners should be really addressing it, looking at it, understanding it better, and certainly agency folks or consultants ought to be positioning themselves this way because typical, or I should say the average salary for a chief marketing officer, according to salary.com, this last year was between 208,000-375,000. And that really doesn’t include any kind of implementation or, you know, other people that you might hire to, to actually supplement that typical, average fractional CMO probably costs somebody 60 to $75,000 a year, plus a lot of the implementation now is done kind of on demand. It doesn’t, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to hire those people as full-time people.

(06:38): You’re gonna, your CMO, fractional CMOs gonna bring them in as needed, you know, from a consultant or an agency standpoint, you know, if you do the math on, on what the average is, you know, you working with five or six clients that can be at the top, the absolute top of the CMO chain. So, you know, it really works for both parties as far as I’m concerned. Hey, marketing agency owners, you know, I can teach you the keys to doubling your business in just 90 days or your money back. Sound interesting. All you have to do is license our three step process that’s going to allow you to make your competitors irrelevant, charge a premium for your services and scale perhaps without adding overhead. And here’s the best part. You can license this entire system for your agency by simply participating in an upcoming agency certification intensive look, why create the wheel?

(07:33): Use a set of tools that took us over 20 years to create. And you can have ’em today. Check it out at dtm.world/certification. That’s dtm.world/certification. And now, word from our sponsor, are you ready to get out of spreadsheets? Look with HubSpot crm, get realtime data at your fingertips so your teams stay in sync across the customer journey, build better content, generate more conversions, and get the context you need to create amazing experiences for your teams and your customers at scale. All from one powerful platform. It’s why more than 150,000 companies already use HubSpot’s CRM to run their businesses better. Plus, HubSpot’s user-friendly interface sets you up for success from day one so you can spend less time managing software and more time on what matters your customers. There’s no better time to get organized. Get started for free @hubspot.com today.

(08:37): And so what the typical sort of agency project based path looks like. You know, you put out free content as a marketer, you get a sales meeting as a business owner, you, you then ask for a proposal project gets worked on, or maybe a handful of projects get worked on, and then, you know, everybody starts over again. And, you know, I think the fractional CMO approach is more that the very first thing you do for 30, 60 days is that you’re going to actually develop strategy first. And, and what that’s going to mean is you’re going to really drill into the ideal client. Who is the ideal client you should be attracting, you know, what is the core difference that your business makes out there in the market? And it’s not what you sell , it’s the problems that you solve for your ideal customers. You know, what is your customer journey look like? What should it look like?

(09:23): What could it look like? What’s a, what’s a content or editorial content approach going to look like? What are the near term priorities that you need to be looking at? I mean, those stopping and taking the time to develop that allows you to then month by month, look at, look, here’s what we’re doing this quarter, the next quarter, the next quarter. Because we’re, we’re going to evolve our marketing. It’s going to grow. We’re not going to simply just throw, you know, another tactic at everything and see if it works. Some of these concepts, the, the idea of developing strategy, in fact, we have a, we have a set, I’ve done th a strategy as I’ve described it here, probably in the neighborhood of a thousand times with businesses. I have taught hundreds of agencies and consultants how to do our product, if you will, called Strategy First.

(10:12): It’s really how we start every engagement. And as far as I’m concerned, if you are buying marketing services, you should actually be engaging somebody who is going to demand that you do strategy first. And as a consultant agency, that ought to be the way that in my mind, that you lead with every engagement strategy has become more important, quite frankly, than ever. It is the way that you not only differentiate your business, it is the way that you actually charge a premium for what you do, because you are able to understand how to guide the perfect customer journey. You’ve heard me talk about things like the marketing hourglass for, you know, years, our, our approach to the customer journey. That that has seven stages, no, like trust, try by repeat and refer. Just understanding what you need to move people through those stages that are essentially marketing, sales, and service or success is how you build long-term growth, focusing intentionally, focusing on those stages.

(11:14): This is a tool that I’ve seen it change dramatically change businesses in the way they view marketing. But then secondly, this approach to marketing, uh, hiring a fractional CMO who is going to become a senior. They, they’re not, you’re not gonna pay them as such. They’re not going to be there on-premise every day, but you can view them as a senior strategic hire in your organization. Even if you have people doing various marketing tasks, is an absolute game changer for most of the businesses that, that really can address or engage or embrace this idea. So that’s all I had for today. I wanted to introduce this idea of fractional CMO. Whether you are a business owner who doesn’t understand why marketing’s not working the way it should , or you are a coach or a consultant who doesn’t understand, you know, why you’re always getting beat up on price and getting tired of just doing, you know, the tactics that are demanded of you lead with strategy and that will change completely change the relationship you have with your clients.

(12:16): So if you’re either one of those a business owner or somebody who is in marketing consulting world, and you want to see how this fractional CMO model could change your business, just visit duct tape marketing.com. You’ll see at the very top there, you’ll pick your flavor. I’m a business owner, or I’m an agency that wants to license this fractional CMO approach. We’d love to talk with either one of you. Have an amazing day, week, month, quarter whenever you’re listening to this, and thanks for tuning in to the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast.

(12:51): Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @marketingassessment.co not.com. Co check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketing assessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

This Duct Tape Marketing Podcast episode is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network.

HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals seeking the best education and inspiration to grow a business.

arketing insider group shares why marketers should consider content marketing before hiring a fractional CMO

Have you considered hiring a fractional CMO because your small business can’t afford a full-time marketing executive? Fractional CMOs have become increasingly popular in recent years, and can provide many of the same benefits as a full-time CMO without a long-term commitment.

But before you pull the trigger, consider starting up your content engine. Hiring a content marketing agency will not only reserve some of your marketing budget, but also deliver a marketing strategy that’s backed by data and guaranteed to succeed.

Quick Takeaways

  • The fractional model emerged over 20 years ago once companies realized they could hire on-demand executives on a contracted basis
  • A lack of trust between CEOs and CMOs, and a rise in popularity of the gig economy has caused a dramatic rise in popularity for hiring fractional CMOs
  • About 60% of marketers create at least one piece of shareable content per day
  • Hiring a content marketing agency ensures consistent content, use SEO-backed data, regular delivery of performance reports and a maximized budget

Not every SMB needs a fractional CMO. Here’s what you need to know about trending fractional CMOs and why a content marketing agency may be a better fit for your business.

What Is A Fractional CMO?

A fractional CMO is an on-demand, part-time chief marketing officer. Their expertise is outsourced to play the role of a full-time CMO, without any in-house commitment. They are responsible for mentoring the marketing team through specific tasks, such as:

  • Defining a marketing strategy
  • Driving traffic and sales growth
  • Improving digital presence
  • Managing content
  • Reporting on marketing results

Many small to midsize businesses, or SMBs, can’t afford to hire a full-time CMO. Instead, they opt for a fractional hire to free up their marketing budget. In-house CMOs make approximately $211K/year, whereas fractional CMOs only make about $130K/year.

What’s Next?

Fractional leadership isn’t a new concept. In fact, the fractional model was born over 20 years ago once companies realized they could utilize on-demand finance executives on a contracted basis.

In more recent years, research has shown a lack of trust between CEOs and CMOs, in addition to the rise in popularity of the gig economy. This explains the dramatic rise of traffic growth for fractional CMOs.

rise in traffic growth for fractional CMOs

Source: Google Trends

A growing number of companies now list open positions for part-time, virtual or fractional executives. Additionally, premium talent marketplaces, like Toptal and Catalant, are supporting this trend by high-end remote talent easily accessible to companies.

Clearly, the trending fractional CMO market is seeing rapid growth. If you’re thinking about jumping on the bandwagon, it’s essential to first understand whether or not your business is the right fit.

Who Needs A Fractional CMO?

An in-house chief marketing officer holds more responsibility, whereas fractional CMOs only work with your business enough to offer honest feedback, guidance, and training.

Fractional CMOs are mostly beneficial when a company:

  • Needs a CMO, but can’t afford full-time leadership
  • Needs help running campaigns identified by an in-house CMO
  • Doesn’t need full-time leadership due to a simple marketing strategy

To learn more about whether your business can benefit from hiring a fractional CMO, enjoy the short video below.

Video Source: CMOwashere

Although hiring a fractional CMO sounds like a financially responsible option, you may not need one at all. Other options, such as hiring a content marketing agency, can be more affordable and beneficial to your company.

Why Prioritize Content Creation Before Hiring A Fractional CMO?

Content creation is the epitome of marketing best practices. In fact, 60% of marketers create at least one piece of shareable content per day.

By prioritizing the creation of high quality content, you can drive traffic to your website, maximize engagement and increase customer retention– without adding another employee to the payroll.

Before hiring a fractional CMO, consider turning your budget into working dollars and spending it on content marketing. Doing so provides a number of benefits, such as brand awareness, educated audiences and increased credibility in your community.

bar graph shows how marketers are using content marketing to provide benefits to their businesses

Image Source: Visme

One of the most effective ways to master content marketing is by hiring an agency to help your business succeed. Not only do content marketing agencies create an effective strategy, but they also:

  • Provide Consistent Content. Two of the most important factors in driving traffic to your website are frequency and consistency. Hiring a content marketing agency guarantees you can share high quality content consistently.
  • Use SEO Data. Google’s algorithm is looking for content that both uses keywords and provides genuine value to human readers. Content marketing agencies have a team of SEO experts that help deliver content that meets the high standards of SERPs.
  • Share Performance Reports. Measuring the effectiveness of your marketing efforts is key to growing your business. Content marketing agencies demonstrate their value by sharing performance reports that prove success.
  • Help You Save Money. When you’re choosing between filling an in-house leadership position and hiring a content marketing agency, the latter is guaranteed to maximize your budget. Paying salaries and benefits required by in-house employees is much more costly than working with an agency’s team of content marketing experts.

By focusing your budget on content creation, you can answer the questions of your audience with high quality content. Doing so creates a valuable customer experience, ultimately encouraging both engagement and conversions.

Get Your Content Engine Running Today!

Before you hire a fraction CMO to define your marketing strategy, consider Marketing Insider Group. Our team is full of content strategists, professional writers and SEO experts who will build and execute a marketing strategy that delivers success.

Learn more about how Marketing Insider Group can help grow your business today by checking out our SEO Blog Writing service now, or schedule a quick consultation today!

The post Get Your Content Engine Running Before Hiring A Fractional CMO appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.