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Why Hire A Fractional CMO? - Mahdlo Fractional Executives CMO | CRO

Written by Craig A Oldham | March 25, 2022

If you happened to land on this post, you probably already know a thing or two about fractional CMOs, who they are, and what they usually do. The dilemma you’re most likely facing now is why you’d need to hire one for your business.

Whether you’re a well-established company, a fast-growing startup, or an emerging brand, marketing is crucial for your business success. As a CEO, you need someone knowledgeable by your side to ensure your marketing efforts are moving in the right direction and will pay off eventually. However, hiring a full-time Chief Marketing Officer might not be feasible for many businesses. And that’s when part-time CMO, aka fractional CMO, can come and help you reach your marketing objectives. 

To make it a bit easier for you to decide, we’ve gathered the top six reasons you should hire a fractional Chief Marketing Officer to boost your business. 

1. You Aren’t Ready to Invest in a Full-Time CMO

A median salary of a Chief Marketing Officer in the US is around $251,710. While it can be small potatoes for a huge corporation, it’s a significant expense for most small and mid-sized businesses. And honestly, even if you had the budget to afford a full-time CMO, it’s not always that you need one for your particular business. 

Hiring a fractional CMO allows you to reap the benefits of having a high-level executive on your team without spending extra money on them taking care of non-marketing business tasks. Instead, a part-time CMO comes to you as an expert whose primary goal is to analyze your current marketing efforts, fill the gaps in your strategy, find growth opportunities, and provide you and your team with guidance on moving forward with your marketing plan.

First, you might need a fractional CMO for 10-20 hours per week; later, once everything is implemented and working, you can switch to only a few consulting hours per week. Also, you might not even need their services for a while if your current goals were met. Thus, hiring an interim CMO is a more flexible, affordable, and efficient way to boost your business growth.

2. You Don’t Know Where to Start

When your business is growing fast, it might be quite a daunting task to figure out where and how to start with marketing. Do you use all possible marketing channels or stick to just a few of them? How much money do you need to spend? What is the best way to position your brand? These questions can be endless. However, a fractional CMO can provide all the answers and knows exactly what your business needs at this particular moment and each stage of its growth.

So instead of blindly spending your time and money on marketing without concrete and proven strategy, consider delegating this vital task to a marketing expert who’ll guide you all the way up to reach your goals. A fractional CMO will gladly take upon this duty and help your business grow even more.

3. Your Current Marketing Efforts Aren’t Working

Do you have a somewhat okay marketing strategy that doesn’t bring you the expected results or something is missing out of it, and you don’t know what? Then a part-time Chief Marketing Officer can be an essential asset in your company. 

Having the tools and knowledge to analyze current marketing efforts and data, fractional CMOs can make data-driven decisions and spot the gaps in your marketing endeavors. Most importantly, they know what needs to be done to improve results and make your marketing strategy work well. 

4. You Want to Expand Your Strategy

Do you have a good marketing strategy, and it’s working just fine, but you’d like to find more growth opportunities and keep up with the latest trends? Hiring a fractional CMO will help you achieve this goal. These people “live” in the marketing world and know about all marketing tools you can start exploring. And since part-time CMOs work with various industries, these specialists also know which marketing channels would work best for your business and which would be a waste of time and money.

5. Your Marketing Team Needs More Training and Guidance

If you have a talented team that is well-versed in marketing and is willing to learn more, an interim CMO can be very beneficial in accomplishing this goal. Part-time Chief Marketing Officers are great leaders and team players, which might be what your current marketing team needs to get more organized and acquire new valuable skills. 

Experienced fractional CMOs will never pose themselves as someone your team has to be afraid of. On the contrary, they’ll make everything to create an atmosphere of trust and desire to grow, experiment, and reach new heights. If you believe that’s what your business needs right now, don’t wait and start looking for a part-time CMO.

6. You Want to Eliminate Risks 

Any hiring process is timely and costly, especially if you’re hiring a full-time Chief Marketing Officer. Plus, you need to give them a few months to show what they can do in practice and whether they can handle all the tasks well to justify your investment. In short, it’s a big risk for any CEO as you might lose both time and money if things go wrong. And we’re not even talking about other paperwork and complications that might follow. 

However, if you choose to hire a fractional CMO instead, you’re already winning as you’re not committing to long-term contracts or enormous budget spending. Depending on your business goals, an interim CMO joins your company for a certain period of time with outlined tasks they need to accomplish. Then, you can stop using their services when you don’t need them or see they’re not a good fit for your company: no long-term commitment, just business, and high-quality services.

Where Can I Find a Fractional CMO?

Now that you know how beneficial a fractional Chief Marketing Officer can be for you and your team, the question is where to find a highly qualified part-time CMO who could help take your business to the next level. 
At Mahdlo, we offer fractional CMO services that allow you to get the expertise of an entire executive team without paying for all their time or overhead costs. Don’t hesitate to contact us to discover more about how we can help you boost your marketing efforts or schedule a free, no-obligation consultation now.