When a company can't afford a full-time CMO or doesn't need one due to the relative simplicity of their marketing, they should consider hiring a fractional CMO. A fractional CMO is someone who plays the role of marketing director on a contractual basis, working in your company for only a “fraction” of their time, often just a few hours a month. The fractional payment rates of CMOs can vary, but it's important to evaluate the value you'll receive and whether you'll save money. In most cases, these agencies are simply relabeling the role of the account manager, manager, or strategist as a fractional CMO.
A good fractional CMO is process-based and has a history of helping companies of a similar size or offering to their own, ensuring that they have the right barriers and strategic oversight to meet their long-term growth needs. Without experienced marketing leadership, growing companies sometimes struggle to answer four key questions: What should be done? How should it be done? Who should do it? And when should it be done? Authentic Brand is an organized fractional CMO company. As you can tell from the above, the role that a fractional CMO will play will be reduced to a combination of the needs of the company that hires them and the skills and experience that the marketing professional brings. Several organizations can benefit from hiring a fractional CMO agency, but there are certain criteria to evaluate if you need one.
The third category of fractional CMOs is very similar to the first, except that independent fractional CMOs operate as a collective under a unified brand using a licensing or franchise model. As a result, the fractional salaries of CMOs represent only a fraction of the cost of salaries for marketing managers. The cost of a fractional CMO depends on your level of knowledge and experience, the number of working hours, and the scope and duration of the project. It should be noted that large companies can also take advantage of having a fractional CMO to help them execute their marketing activities, either as leaders of strategic projects or as sub-strategists of a CMO. An important distinction to be made in this case is that, compared to an external consultant, a fractional CMO tends to participate in daily operations as if they were an employee, unlike an external project-based consultant who is often used as someone who comes from and often stays out of key decision-making activities. Being a fractional CMO allows me to offer a cost-effective service with high added value to my clients, where I literally operate like one of their employees with aligned objectives.
If you're stuck between working with freelancers or agencies and hiring a full-time CMO, then hiring a fractional CMO may be an option worth considering. The main differences between a fractional CMO and a marketing director are the hours they work and the salaries they receive. A fractional chief marketing officer (CMO) is an outsourced marketing executive who performs the role of a CMO without your company having to commit to a full-time in-house marketing leader. A CMO (or fractional CMO) will take charge of the success or failure of your company's marketing campaigns.
