A fractional CMO is a senior-level marketing executive who provides strategic leadership and guidance – in a part time capacity. They’re responsible for developing your marketing strategy, building the marketing team, and managing them towards results.
The compensation structure for a fractional CMO is the biggest reason companies are switching to a fractional model. Expertise at the c-suite level is hard to find and even harder to afford.
A CMO’s salary depends on industry and location, but to give you an idea, a Los Angeles-based CMO in the real estate industry will earn $360k per year, according to salary.com. For most businesses without a functional marketing department, that’s a hard cost to justify – and that doesn’t include any of the additional resources that are needed to run the department – multiple marketing hires, significant ad budgets, and a ever increasing tech stack.
The fractional CMO model solves for this hurdle, allowing lean teams to hire flexible, top-tier talent without the heavy cost of a full-time CMO.
Fractional CMO Responsibilities
The highest-level responsibility of a CMO (or any c-suite executive), is to bring the CEO’s vision for themselves, and the company to reality. This is an important piece that most CMOs forget about. They are not just serving the company, they are also serving the vision of the owner(s).
Shared Vision of the Future
What is your vision for the company? Do you want to exit in 2-5 years? Do you want a lifestyle business that can bring in passive revenue so you can sit on a yacht in Croatia? Are you competitive as hell and just want to show the world that you’re better than them? What is it?
Without vision you’ll never get to where you want to be. Of all of the founders we speak to – we spend the first chunk of our time digging into where they want themselves and the business to be.
Two questions to ask yourself (pro-tip: write these down and make sure to check in on these frequently!)
- Where do you see yourself in 2 years?
- Where do you see your company in 2 years?
Strategy Is Not What You Think It Is
Strategy is one of those terms that gets thrown around too easily these days. If it was so easy, why do so many of the most successful companies have a fully built-out marketing department with a CMO at the top running it?
Putting a collection of tactics is simple – and it sounds something like this:
“We need more leads. Fire up some LinkedIn ads and sends emails to everyone who submits their information. That should be good enough to get us to where we want to go this month.”
This is a strategy – but it’s lazy and the farthest thing from strategic. Strategy isn’t something you just come up with in a Monday morning Level 10 meeting. Strategy requires a deep understanding of the product, customer, and competitors to provide a winning combination that work together to achieve an outcome.
Strategy is not a collection of marketing tactics. Its a set of strategic decisions that when executed properly, mathematically lead to a desired outcome.
An actionable marketing strategy and plan also needs to include:
- Timeline: when are we firing up each campaign?
- Budget: how much will this plan cost us?
- Forecast: how much ROI are we expecting to see?
- Resources: who will execute the plan?
- RACI chart: Responsible, Accountable, Contributors, and Informed (important for accountability)
- Scorecards: metric tracking systems (usually updated weekly)
CMOs are Strategy Mangers First, People Managers Second
Strategy always looks good on paper. Without proper execution, your CMO is as useful as your collegiate intern – and far more expensive.
As a CMO, managing strategy isn’t just about keeping your team on track, it’s about owning the outcomes. It’s a shift in mindset. Instead of compromising the strategy to fit your team’s current capabilities, you adjust your team and resources to fulfill the strategy. Strategy drives execution, not the other way around.
As a founder, this distinction is important. It sets the right impression between the CMO and CEO, that strategy comes first because strategy equals outcomes. The right people are out there and it’s the job of your CMO to identify weak points in the team and fill the gap… quickly.
And They Are Accountable to Results!
This all leads us to results. If you’re evaluating your CMO, keep an eye out for these two things:
- Where do I look to see how marketing is performing?
- Is the data clear and obvious?
If you can’t answer these two questions, then how can you hold anyone accountable? This is one of the first things that your CMO will set up once the strategy is in place. Often, our founders are looking for a nice recap of what is happening weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly, so we’ll put an executive summary in place, as needed.
At the end of the day – if you’re not seeing the results that were laid out in forecasting, your CMO is the person you point to. It’s their job to make it happen, even if they are not executing themselves.
How Does This Fit into the Fractional Model?
Here’s the dirty little secret: setting strategy and managing the team isn’t always full time job. This can be accomplished with the right CMO setting up the proper systems.
The fractional model truly works in between these two maturity levels of a company:
- Less mature: the business is profitable and/or just received funding. At this stage there is typically no reason for a marketing function in the organization – especially when they are founder or sales led.
- More mature: a company truly needs a full-time CMO to work with other leaders around the company to find ways to grow. The marketing team is humming, now its the job of the CMO break down silos within larger organizations. This usually happens in the $10m-$100m mark, depending on the industry, product, and ACV’s.
Fractional CMO is not For Everyone, But It’s a Lightning Rod For Most
If you company can afford $360k per year for a strategic marketing leader, go for it! Here’s some criteria to help you decide on fractional or full time:
- Your revenue and budget allow for it
- You’re spending heavily on marketing but it feels disconnected and you’re not sure what is working and what is not.
- You need a leader who can tie GTM, brand, demand gen, and team-building together.
- You want marketing involved in strategic, company-level decisions
If you are feeling the pressure of needing to grow but can’t afford the price tag, you’re probably ready for a fractional CMO. Here’s a set of criteria to help you determine if you should hire a fractional cmo. Everything above, plus:
- You have a small marketing team or no team. A fractional CMO can help build the foundation.
- You need interim leadership
- You want executive level insight, but part time
- You’re a leaner team and want to move quickly
A fractional CMO doesn’t have time to waste in your business. Because of this, they’ll set a faster pace at which the team moves. Quick decisions and testing equals faster outcomes. If you’re hiring fractional, make sure you’re strapped in tight – because the right one will be a lightning rod for your business.
Interested in learning more about a fractional CMO? Book a free consultation with our team.