Developing the right marketing plan is an art. It is a challenging process and requires a strong foundation that orients the entire strategy towards success. The stakeholders need to use the right data sets and metrics that will help them to identify their target customers, competitors, and market and aligns them to their business goals. The right marketing strategy helps to filter out distractions and create products with the best chances for making a profit.
Choosing the right combination of marketing across the 7 P’s, i.e., product, price, promotion, place, people, process, and physical evidence is an overwhelming task. Most businesses fail to incorporate these elements judiciously, due to which the marketing strategy does not deliver optimal results. However, with the right marketing executive in place, with the right skills, and expertise in your marketing domain, you can select the combination of these to develop marketing strategies with the overall goal of maximizing company profit.
A fractional CMO is a for-hire Chief Marketing Officer that helps enterprises improve their marketing results. Adding a fractional CMO to your team is a smart way to efficiently manage your marketing investments and strategy, and get a better return on investments. They bring marketing management to small businesses without the need of establishing an in-house dedicated industry expert. Fractional CMO cost much lesser than a full-time marketing management team. Here are a few important aspects of Fractional CMO.
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Who needs a Fractional CMO?
If you are facing the following issues, working with a fractional CMO could be right for you.
- If your industry has an established marketing team, but requires executive leadership and marketing guidance without employing a full-time marketing executive, hiring a fractional CMO is the right choice for you. For businesses that need an entry point into the market, a fractional CMO will enable them to adopt the best strategy to make an impact in the marketplace.
- If your company still operates on traditional marketing structures and needs guidance for adopting the right technological infrastructure, like automation, AI, data analytics, cloud computing, and more, a fractional CMO can help them augment the digital transformation in the business.
- If your company needs a stop-gap (temporary) marketing leader before you locate the right marketing executive, you can hire a fractional CMO. They can provide quick relief for marketing needs and pain points.
- If your company lacks a strategy to extract valuable marketing insights that help to develop informed business decisions, hiring a fractional CMO is a feasible option. They will help you close the marketing gap, and help you drive growth and revenue into your business.
What Are the Benefits of a Fractional CMO?
There are many benefits to a fractional CMO, which include the following.
- Manage Costs, Time, And Resources: Hiring a fractional CMO gives you the benefit of driving executive-level marketing expertise at a much lesser cost. You can access the expertise of experienced consultants to support your long-term goals. They will oversee your day-to-day projects while building for the future. Moreover, they will employ solid, achievable plans, and set goals for orienting your business towards growth.
- Fresh Perspective: Fractional CMOs bring in their strategic and creative minds, and provide a fresh perspective to your business. From their wide experience in guiding various industries, they can deploy a customized marketing strategy for you by integrating ideas and proven tactics.
- Focus On Growth: Since the Fractional CMO will look into your marketing plan, you can better focus on the core competencies of your business and open up new avenues for growth. They can execute the marketing strategy with lesser bumps in the road.
How To Make the Right Hire?
Hiring the right fractional CMO for your business is a daunting task. The availability of many qualified candidates to fill in the role will pose the stakeholder with many hiring difficulties. However, with the correct strategy in place, they can make a quality hire. Prepare a list of potential candidates or service solutions who have proximity to your business for better availability. Check their track record, and carefully assess their work portfolio to determine if they can deliver on their promises. Also, check if they have worked in your domain, with businesses of similar size and industry. The work portfolio will give you a better idea if they have helped companies to increase revenue and ROI during previous positions.
While they must bring valuable insights from their previous work experiences, they should not completely rely on it. Instead, they need to study your company inside out to understand your goals and objectives and define the metrics to measure your company’s growth. A one-size-fits-all approach is redundant, and they should focus on adopting strategies that will work for your business. Also, assess their cultural fit to determine if their services are compatible with your business, and are willing to listen to suggestions and take requested actions in the marketing cycle.
To Conclude:
These are the important elements that are concerned with the domain of hiring and understanding the role of fractional CMO. However, you must understand that they are fractional, and will not work with you permanently. With this knowledge in mind, you must make the right choice using the points mentioned above to choose the right fit for your business.