Intro To Fractional CMO: The Marketing Solution You’ve Been Waiting For

Ever wished you had a team of marketing experts in your back pocket?

For business owners without their own marketing department, the idea of having a marketing team at your fingertips probably seems too good to be true. Luckily, sometimes the truth is just that good! 

You may have heard the term “fractional CMO” floating around the B2B/B2C sphere lately. And if you haven’t looked into it, the simplest explanation we can give you is this: 

It’s basically all your marketing dreams and wishes come true. 

But let’s get into specifics. Our team at Wild Fig Marketing has recently started offering this awesome service, so today we’re going to take a look at what exactly fractional CMO is, who needs it, and how you can get started with it.

What is a Fractional CMO?

Let’s take a look at the definition of Fractional CMO. 

Fractional CMO: A Fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is an outsourced marketing executive who performs the function of a CMO, without your company having to commit to a full-time, in-house marketing leader.

A Fractional CMO works with businesses for a fixed amount of time in a given month, usually over a certain length of time (for example, WFM’s Fractional CMO package starts at 6 months). Because they only dedicate a fraction of the time that a regular CMO would spend on the company, they are a fraction of the price. 

Any good Fractional CMO package should include: 

• Automation
• Blog writing
• Sales & marketing consulting
• Copywriting
• Email marketing
• Lead generation
• Paid ads
• SEO 
• Sales enablement
• Social media management 

…and more. 

With a Fractional CMO, you get all the benefits of a professional marketing expert – their array of skills, nuanced knowledge, and years of experience — without the lost time, money, and incurred risk associated with finding, training, and onboarding your own in-house marketing team. 

Who Needs Fractional CMO Services? [Top 3]

Do you wish you had a trusted partner to help create and execute an effective marketing plan, but can’t justify the expense of bringing on an in-house team of marketing staff? Then you’re someone who could benefit from Fractional CMO services.

But we understand that sometimes it’s not that simple… So let’s get more specific. 

1. Small To Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs)

Small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) face many challenges when it comes to marketing. While running this size of business can be incredibly rewarding, it also comes with a fair amount of restraints: 

• Smaller Budget: This goes without saying, but SMBs usually have smaller marketing budgets that restrict their ability to invest in paid advertising and can seriously limit any hiring activities for their marketing departments (if they have one!). 
• Fewer Resources: And what if an SMB doesn’t have the resources to have a whole marketing department? In that case, marketing duties fall to just a few people or even one person who has multiple roles within the organization, limiting their ability to focus on marketing strategies.
• Competition: SMBs are often competing with larger, more established businesses in their industry, and standing out in a crowded market can be challenging.

Fractional CMO services help SMBs overcome these challenges by providing a cost-effective and efficient solution to help them stand out in a competitive marketplace. Most importantly, outsourcing a marketing team in this way allows SMBs to drive growth for a fraction of the cost that it would take to hire in-house marketing staff. 

2. Startups

Startups need a solid marketing strategy if they’re going to get their product/service off the ground. This can be challenging, though, as most startups face: 

• Low Brand Awareness: Since startups are new to the market, people are going to be unfamiliar with the brand, which means you’re starting from ground zero in building a customer base. 
• Limited Budget: Startups need to maximize the impact of every marketing dollar spent. Startups usually have even less of a marketing budget than established SMBs, but they need great marketing even more if they want to survive those first couple of years of business. 
• Unclear Target Audience: Startups often struggle with identifying their target audience and understanding how their product fits into the market. Without an experienced guide to help you, this type of understanding can take years to come by. 

Fractional CMOs can supercharge the growth of startups by employing expert marketing strategies that increase brand awareness. Inherent in this process is also market research tactics that help startups define their audience, such as buyer persona creation. With a clear understanding of their ideal customers, creating compelling marketing content becomes much easier, and growth becomes more accessible. 

3. Companies in Transition 

Do the words “mergers,” “acquisitions,” or “restructuring” mean anything to you? If so, you probably know that having solid marketing support during those transformational times can be crucial to a successful transition. This is because companies in transition must address: 

1. Brand Identity and Messaging: When a company is going through a transition or a significant change in its business model, brand identity changes, which means the messaging must change also. It’s important that these are aligned.
2. Customer Retention: Customer retention is crucial to a successful transition. Existing customers may feel uncertain about the changes that the company is undergoing and may consider switching to a competitor, so it’s important to have a good marketing strategy in place that addresses this.
3. Internal Communication: Change can be just as hard for employees as it is for customers. They might feel uncertain about their roles, the company's direction, or the changes affecting them, which can interfere with their performance. 

Fractional CMO can play a key role in a company’s change management strategy. Marketing experts have the experience and know-how to help businesses transition from one phase to the next in the most seamless way possible by making data-based decisions about your business’s content, website design, and even internal communications, keeping everybody on the same page. 

The 5 Phases of WFM’s Fractional CMO Process

At Wild Fig Marketing, we know that for a marketing strategy to be effective, you need a team of marketing pros — no one person can do it all! That’s why we’ve started offering our own Fractional CMO package for business owners who are interested in outsourcing their marketing needs. 

As part of our Fractional CMO services, our team will lead you through a five-phase process to create and implement a sales and marketing plan tailored to your needs:

1. Discovery: In this initial step, we’ll talk with you to gather information about your goals, target market, and the top revenue-generating product or service you want to grow. 
2. Analysis: Then, we’ll provide a SWOT analysis, marketing benchmark report, website analysis, and a review of your marketing and sales processes.
3. Development: Once we have our data, we’ll create any sales collateral, lead magnets, or other content you need, and build a comprehensive sales and marketing plan to help your business move forward.
4. Implementation: We’ll begin implementing the deliverables outlined in the sales and marketing plan (bringing in Sales Qualified Leads, writing monthly content, etc.) and identify KPIs to track as we go.
5. Training: If you need an internal team member to assist in implementing your marketing strategy, we’ll connect you with our hiring partner to help you hire for that position. Then we’ll train your new staff member for you, ensuring no disruption to your marketing.

The best part? Our Fractional CMO services give you all the benefits of having an internal Chief Marketing Officer (plus access to our team of experts) at a fraction of the cost of hiring an internal team. 

But don’t take it from us — here’s what one of our clients has to say: 

“As an organization that has not had dedicated marketing support for years, we wanted to bring on a true partner to help us grow our offerings and expand our market reach while remaining agile in a rapidly changing market. Having a team of experts with their finger on the pulse is exactly what we have found in Wild Fig. We are excited to see where this partnership takes us!” - Clara, Executive Director of the Electrical Association

Are You Ready For a New Marketing Solution?

If you’re ready to talk about outsourcing your marketing, Wild Fig Marketing can help. Contact us to set up a FREE 30-minute strategy session to find out how we can take care of your marketing needs for you, whether it’s with our Fractional CMO package or another one of our digital marketing services. We look forward to helping your business grow!