Why a fractional CMO or interim head of marketing is perfect for startups
As I’ve pitched the idea of fractional CMO or interim head of marketing services to a few potential clients, the most frequent question I’ve had to answer is “why should I hire a fractional head when I can hire a permanent employee?” It’s a fair question and you might be wondering the same thing, so I’ll explain.
The concept of hiring marketing consultants to fill gaps in an organization is pretty commonplace.
Consultant contracts vary in their length of engagement but typically it’s not long-term, and work scales up and down based on the needs of the company.
Contractors are often less expensive to hire than permanent employees because they aren’t “fully loaded,” meaning that these contracts don’t come with equity, benefits, or retirement plans.
Work completed by contractors is typically specialized based on the contractor’s area of expertise.
A fractional CMO or interim head of marketing is not entirely different.
For start-ups or smaller businesses, a full-time CMO is often too much for what they require in the early stages and very expensive when you consider salary, benefits, AND a steep equity grant. They may also require a team, albeit a small team, or an external agency, to implement the tactics needed to support the strategy, increasing overall costs before the company may be ready to support these resources.
Instead, a fractional CMO or interim head of marketing is often hired with a given scope based on their expertise:
create and drive brand awareness
create and execute a go-to-market strategy
build the marketing stack and processes
support the sales team
hire the right marketing team mix to drive continued company growth, or
any combination of these activities
To clarify, a fractional CMO is a contract position, typically part-time, and is intended to support and lead the company’s marketing practice. They become part of the executive team to work closely with the heads of the other disciplines (business development, legal, product/engineering, sales, customer success, etc.) and implement sustainable and scalable processes and programs.
The benefit to the company is that organizations who are too young for a full-time CMO are able to leverage years of experience and a successful track record at a fraction of the investment to hit the ground running. These roles develop strategy and understand how it ties to the greater company goals AND executes them at a practitioner level. This allows other members of the executive team to focus on their areas of expertise (leading the company, business development, generating sales, meeting customers, etc.) because the marketing practice is being handled by a vetted and experienced leader. They can also help build the right mix of marketing team members to ensure that what is put in place today will have legs to live on going forward.
Typically, though, start-ups will hire someone more junior to get their marketing practice started. Hiring a less experienced marketing manager means that they likely will face a steep learning curve and not enough time to acquire the skills needed to run marketing for an entire organization. Instead, they typically specialize in one area at the sake of all the others (example: lead generation expertise, but no brand awareness, events coordination, sales support, or social media experience). And focusing on one area of marketing but ignoring the rest will inhibit the ability for a company to grow at the fastest pace possible.
Marketing has many facets and successful companies must employ experts who know what levers to pull, when to pull them, and how much they should be pulled (or not). Hiring a part-time CMO or interim head of marketing can be a young company’s easier path to both short-term success and long-term growth.
Interested in learning more about how fractional CMO or interim head of marketing services can benefit your company? Please send me an email or fill out my contact form, I’ll be happy to discuss it with you.
