Why Fractional CMOs Are the Secret Weapon for Scaling Your Startup
Let’s start with a riddle. What do you get when you cross a freelancer and a C-level executive?
Many startups dream of hiring that magical Chief Marketing Officer — the one who can help them make their dreams a reality. The only problem? They can only afford to live this dream on a part-time basis. If this sounds familiar, we’d love to introduce you to the part-time CMO aka the Fractional CMO.
Would an organization really want a C-level executive on a freelance basis? Are there folks out there willing to work part-time as a CMO? The answers, respectively, are “yes ” and “absolutely, yes!”
If you’re a startup founder who wishes you could peek inside a great CMO’s brain just to gain more insight, we hear you.
While your organization might not be ready to onboard a marketing executive, you can still have one. The only caveat is that you might have to share them.
Let’s talk about Fractional CMOs.
What is a Fractional CMO?
Simply put, a fractional CMO is a part-time Chief Marketing Officer. One could also call this person a freelance CMO or a contract CMO.
Here at Carter House Copy, we love the Fractional CMO for many reasons — but mostly because this person is a game-changer for early-stage companies.
Here’s a shocking fact: Not every working professional wants that high-power, full-time C-suite position at a Fortune 500 company. The old structure doesn’t work for many folks, especially busy parents, caretakers, and those who require a flexible schedule.
Fractional CMOs take their experience to work with different organizations. Just like any freelancer or contract employee, a fractional CMO can be hired for short-term projects, go-to-market strategy, parental leave coverage, consultant work, or on an hourly at-will retainer.
Fractional CMOs bring their expertise directly to your organization—all at a fraction of the cost of a traditional Chief Marketing Officer. As you can tell, the name is very on the nose.
Fractional CMO Versus Traditional CMO
So, when would an organization seek a Fractional CMO over a traditional CMO?
Let’s talk numbers. Simply put, hiring a CMO is a huge and costly decision. For cash-strapped startups, a Fractional CMO can bring the expertise without the huge cost.
According to Salary.com, the median salary for a Chief Marketing Officer is $363,558. For an early-stage startup or a cash-strapped business, this is a hefty hire that can feel quite risky.
While this might seem like a hot take, not every organization needs a CMO — and they certainly don’t require one from day one. As with any startup, there’s a ton of foundational work to be done before investing in a huge marketing hire like a CMO.
When to Hire a Full-Time CMO
There are a few scenarios in which a full-time marketing leader like a CMO might be wise or even necessary, including:
When the organization needs someone to create and oversee rapid growth marketing strategies.
When a funded company needs to attract more attention and business — and quickly!
When a company has established or rapidly-growing competition
When an organization is looking to expand into new markets or industries
When a funded organization needs to answer to demanding investors looking for their return
When a company expands its products and/or services offerings, and they need help with brand positioning, customer segmentation, and overall cohesiveness
When the first marketing hire (e.g. Head of Marketing, Director of Marketing) needs more support and expertise in a season of accelerated growth
As with any significant business decision, weigh the pros and cons, crunch the numbers, and decide the right move for your business as it exists today.
What Does a Fractional CMO Do?
The beauty of a fractional CMO is that they can bring pretty much any capability beneath the marketing umbrella directly to your organization.
Perhaps your organization has great word-of-mouth-fueled growth, but you need support in nurturing and retention.
Maybe your organization has an unparalleled content library, but you need help getting eyeballs to it.
Finally, you might only require some startup brand strategy assistance to get through this quarter. A fractional CMO can help with any of these demands!
If you’re familiar with the term “buffet religion,” you might understand why a CMO is so great. "Buffet religion" is a term used to describe a way of practicing religion that involves selecting aspects from different religions that appeal to you. While this term isn’t typically used in a complimentary way, it’s a great way to describe how an organization can use a fractional CMO — buffet style!
Here are some of the key skills a fractional CMO can bring:
Strategic Marketing Planning: Looking to get a marketing plan into motion? Fractional CMOs can produce comprehensive marketing strategies aligned with business goals and growth objectives.
Brand Development: Careful brand strategy is essential to a trusted and lasting business. Fractional CMOs can help to build and refine brand identity — with special attention to brand messaging, positioning, and visual identity.
Market Research and Analysis: Fractional CMOs can also help with some of the deep market research. This can paint a better picture of the target audience’s needs, the market trends, and the entire competitive landscape.
Digital Marketing Expertise: Fractional CMOs have experience with every channel. They can help identify which digital channels to focus on, and how to do so effectively. This includes SEO, SEM, social media, email marketing, and content marketing.
Data-Driven Decision Making: What good is a bunch of data without an expert to translate and analyze? CMOs can help simplify marketing metrics to make informed decisions and optimize campaigns.
Sales and Marketing Alignment: Sales and marketing teams need to be aligned and harmoniously collaborating to make the machine run. Fractional CMOs can help to ensure that marketing strategies align with sales objectives to drive revenue growth.
Product Marketing: If you’re looking to execute go-to-market strategies for new products or services, you guessed it! A fractional CMO can help with an infallible GTM strategy.
Team Leadership and Development: CMOs don’t need to be full-time to make an impact on the team. Fractional CMOs can help to develop and mentor team members, to align with contractors and agencies, and to generally keep the marketing program cohesive.
Campaign Management: What’s a marketing team without some impressive and impactful campaigns? Fractional CMOs can help with planning, executing, and monitoring marketing campaigns across multiple channels.
In short, Fractional CMOs can do anything a traditional CMO does.
Strategic Advantages of a Fractional CMO
Hiring a full-time CMO is a dream scenario for small startups. However, sometimes the timing and the budget constraints aren't there yet.
In the meantime, an organization might hire a skilled Head of Marketing. This person is likely accustomed to acting as a full-stack (or at least half-stack? Is that a thing?) marketer. Translation? This marketing hire has a ton of work to do.
In these cases, hiring a Fractional CMO is a wise way to provide the marketing team with top-level strategy, brand positioning, lead generation techniques, and campaign ideation. With this helpful guidance, the in-house marketing team can implement for results.
In short, a fractional CMO provides a top-level marketing strategy without a top-level salary.
In-House Expert Brand Positioning
Who are you? What do you offer? How is your organization different from your competition?
While many founders can answer these questions on a basic level, a Fractional CMO can help hone in on your brand voice.
In fact, Fractional CMOs can act on a consultancy basis by defining what a brand is — and what it is not.
Beyond that, Fractional CMOs can complete research-based brand work, including:
Competitive analysis and market research
Envisioning and implementing brand methodology
Unlike outsourcing to a marketing agency, enlisting the guidance of a fractional CMO brings expertise into the house. They act as a centralized leader and owner, which mitigates the confusion that can come from strictly outsourcing your marketing support.
Controlled Cost
As marketers, we’re all about that ROI. As discussed earlier, many lean startups choose to hire a Marketing Director or Head of Marketing rather than a full-fledged CMO. Here, we’ll let the numbers speak for themselves.
CMO: $363,558 annually
Head of Marketing: $292,986 annually
Marketing Director: $189,051 annually
Fractional CMO: $150 - $500 per hour
For reference, we did some quick math. The median full-time CMO Salary breaks down to $174.79 per hour. An organization hiring a Fractional CMO for 10 hours per week will pay $90,890 annually.
The fractional route is a cost-effective solution for an organization feeling wary about hiring a full-time CMO. In fact, some fractional CMOs bring their marketing skills to an organization to become the Chief Marketing Officer down the road.
*All salary data is gathered from Salary.com
Growth + Scalability
We love our Marketing Directors and Head of Marketing, but CMOs bring undeniable experience when it comes to scaling.
Here’s the conundrum: an early-stage startup might not be in the position to hire a full-time CMO until they have mastered the art of growth and scale.
Luckily, fractional CMOs are experts in both growth and scale. But aren’t those two things the same? Nope!
Growth describes the work to increase a startup's metrics like revenue or user base.
Scale, on the other hand, is a little more nuanced. It’s figuring out how to expand efficiently so that a startup can grow significantly without a proportional increase in resources or costs. This requires a focus on optimizing systems and processes for greater output without adding significant cost.
Effective growth and scale require careful attention, efficient processes, and a business model that supports sustainable expansion. This is perfect work for an experienced marketing professional looking for flexible work. Speaking of flexibility…
Flexibility
You can bet that flexibility is at the core of modern work—and those unwilling to embrace flexibility will be left in the dust.
Marketing is a hydra of responsibilities — and each head of the marketing beast demands to be fed and entertained regularly. Think of the digital marketing arm alone, which includes social media, SEO, SEM, campaign management, PPC, CRO, KPI, CPC — even the acronyms are endless.
Whether it’s developing a strategic plan, launching a new product, or optimizing existing campaigns, fractional CMOs can bring their expert guidance when (and where) it’s most needed. Their flexible careers also bring a breadth of experience from working with various industries and companies.
This comprehensive background enables them to adapt quickly to different business environments and challenges. Their ability to step in and implement strategies efficiently means startups can pivot rapidly in response to market changes or business needs.
Mentorship
Any startup would love to get a hold of the best and brightest CMOs. For example, a startup founder in fitness tech might dream about poaching a CMO from Peloton, Apple, or Oura. However, with big-name tech alum CMOs come large salaries.
What if, as a startup founder, you could access the perfect CMO with the perfect experience for a fraction of the price? And the benefits don't end there.
Hiring a Fractional CMO opens your entire organization to learning from the best of the best. Your marketing team benefits from working with an individual who brings contagious influence, experience, and action to the entire organization.
Is a Fractional CMO for You?
Hiring a CMO is a huge responsibility.
If you’re not ready to make that commitment, we get it. If you’re looking for strategic marketing leadership with no strings attached, Carter House Copy can bring the vision and expertise to get you on the road to long-term success.
We understand that ParentTech, FamTech, and women’s health industry startups have unique challenges.
In a crowded space, each startup needs to establish genuine trust and authenticity. That’s precisely why we focus on working with brands that face these unique challenges. We are right there alongside you!
Fractional hiring allows startups to find a competitive advantage that was previously reserved for unicorns and organizations with copious amounts of funding.
Our founder, Diana Carter, is well-versed in providing fractional support in these spaces. Luckily, she takes on select Fractional CMO work. To inquire about Fractional CMO services, fill out our Contact form.
