Fractional CMO services should include strategy and planning, brand messaging and positioning, budgeting, tracking, reporting, and managing execution across all marketing resources (internal team, freelancers, agencies, and the marketing tech stack). These are the typical accountabilities for a Chief Marketing Officer.
- Building Strategy
- Managing Execution
- Tracking and Optimization
- Growing the Ecosystem
- Maturing MarTech
Building a Marketing Strategy, Plan, and Roadmap
Creating an effective B2B marketing plan requires a thorough understanding of all opportunities and prioritization of those that will have the highest impact short term and long term. Every item that ends up on a marketing plan should align with business goals to drive profitable revenue, improve brand reputation, and strengthen business resilience. This requires a deep dive into the business model including current and potential opportunities with existing customers, current prospects in the pipeline, and future prospects that fit your ideal customer profile (ICP) or buyer persona.
Strategy also includes market research to analyze your industry, current and emerging competitors, and any changes in customer needs, preferences, and behaviors. By identifying market trends early, your CMO can help you uncover and capture opportunities to seize competitive advantage and drive growth.
Your fractional CMO should develop a strategic plan that includes a roadmap outlining marketing activities over the next 3-6 months along with the KPIs that will be used to measure success. These tasks should be prioritized based on urgency, impact, ease, and resources. Your CMO should also align budget and spend with these priorities so that you can maximize marketing ROI.
Brand Development Is Included in Fractional CMO Services
Brand development is a key component of any marketing strategy, and it should be a major focus of any fractional CMO’s services. This involves defining or refining elements such as:
- Brand Positioning
- Brand Differentiation
- Brand Identity
- Brand Messaging
- Brand Character
And much more.
Your fractional CMO should help you create a strong and consistent brand that resonates with your target customers as well as your current and future employees. They will guide you in communicating your brand’s truth, values, and personality. They should also have strategies in place for managing your brand’s reputation, both online and offline.
Wondering if an outsourced CMO can REALLY get to know your business? Find the truth here.
Fractional CMO Services Include Managing Resources & Execution of Marketing Tactics
From project management to overseeing external resources and developing marketing team members, a fractional CMO uplevels your results across the board. A good CMO proactively works with your 3rd party agencies and freelancers to ensure you are getting the most for your marketing dollar. This includes ensuring they have access to and adhere to all brand guidelines, have a full understanding of how their results are being measured, and negotiating to get the greatest value for your marketing dollar.
With your internal team, a CMO should be managing project workload for each member and making sure everyone is able to make the best and highest use of their time. Your fractional CMO can also help with the interviewing, hiring, onboarding, and training process for new marketing hires. Mentoring existing marketing team members and helping them uplevel their skills is another important fractional CMO service.
From a project management perspective, a fractional CMO is accountable for managing the team to hit deadlines. They should also help with developing processes that make future projects more streamlined by identifying and helping the team document repeatable systems and frameworks.
Tracking and Optimizing Marketing Efforts/Outcomes
A Fractional CMO should begin with an audit to uncover areas of risk and opportunity. This can include:
Backend/Technical SEO Audit – How is your website performing and what needs to be improved?
Organic SEO Audit – What search terms are you being found for and what terms should you target to rank higher and get found more often?
PPC (Paid Ads) Audit – What keywords are your competitors bidding on? What keywords should you run ads for to gain more visibility and drive more traffic?
Social Media Audit – How is your brand perceived on social? What is your competitive landscape and how can you better connect with your audience and build a “tribe”?
Your fractional CMO will also provide regular performance analysis and reporting. This means tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), analyzing the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing initiatives, and providing regular reports on your marketing performance including what to start, stop, and change, how you stack up against the competition, and how you are tracking toward goals.
Typical tracking often includes metrics from the following sources:
- Visibility and web traffic trends from Google Analytics
- Search behaviors from Google Search Console
- Marketing pipeline health and Marketing/Sales alignment from your CRM
- Nurture health based on email performance data from your ESP
- Social presence including reach, engagement, and market sentiment from LinkedIn, YouTube, and other platforms
- SEO rankings from tools like SEMRush or UberSuggest
This fractional CMO service is critical as it allows you to understand the effectiveness of your marketing strategies and make informed decisions. Your Chief Marketing Officer should provide clear, concise, and comprehensive reports that give you insights into what’s working, what’s not, and what can be improved. Don’t get lost in the details. Remember that your CMO will be accessing potentially hundreds of points of data and distilling this into those that are decision-making criteria for leadership.
Still on the fence? Here’s why you should hire a fractional CMO.
Growing Your Marketing Ecosystem for Brand Awareness & Lead Generation
Your Fractional CMO should understand the latest digital marketing trends and tools, and know how to leverage them to reach your target audience across multiple platforms. The guideline is “Go where your buyers go.” The CMO should direct their creative and digital team to develop and deploy engaging content, build a strong online presence, and use data-driven strategies to optimize your digital marketing efforts to improve awareness, increase brand authority, and generate leads.
Examples of what should be included in a Digital Marketing Strategy are diverse and can significantly enhance the online footprint of a business. Here are a few:
- SEO: Implementing keyword research to understand what potential customers are searching for and optimizing website content to rank higher in search engine results.
- Content Marketing: Creating valuable, relevant content tailored to address the needs and questions of the target audience, such as blog posts, whitepapers, and infographics.
- Social Media Marketing: Developing a social media calendar and engaging with the audience through regular posts, stories, and interactive sessions across various platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube.
- Email Marketing: Crafting personalized email campaigns with segmented lists to target different groups within the audience, ensuring content relevance, and fostering customer relationships.
- Paid Advertising: Using platforms like Google Ads or social media advertising to generate immediate visibility for key campaigns or promotions, with carefully tailored targeting to reach the desired customer demographics.
Each of these strategies should be integrated into a comprehensive digital marketing plan that aligns with the brand’s overall objectives and encourages growth and engagement in the digital space.
Maturing The Marketing Technology Stack for Automation & Efficiency
One of the fastest ways your fractional CMO services will deliver ROI is by helping you realign your MarTech stack around what you actually need. There is often unnecessary spend in this area that can be immediately switched off. As an example, you might have old social media management tools that have been replaced with new, native functionality on social platforms.
Your CMO will also help you maximize ROI on the technology you do keep and help you determine the next solutions to add. As an example, the CRM is one of the most common areas for overinvestment and underutilization. By activating features from automation to analytics, you can rapidly improve your marketing.
Explore Our Strategic Fractional CMO Services
Fractional CMO capabilities can be much more extensive than those listed above. At Blender, our CMO services can also include:
- Sales & Marketing Alignment
- Pipeline Acceleration
- Customer Retention Strategy
- Comprehensive Brand Experience Development
- “Big Idea” Innovation and Blue Ocean Strategy
- Merger & Acquisition Strategic Support
- Mission, Vision, and Values Alignment
- Marketing Team Leadership & Mentorship
- Board and Investor Communications
- Employee and Internal Communications
- Learning & Development Asset Creation
- Employer Branding, Talent Branding and Culture Branding/Messaging
In addition, our fractional marketing team can fill any gaps in your current marketing department. This include branding, creative, digital marketing, social, copywriting, email marketing, and much more.
Are you ready to find out what an experienced fractional CMO can do for your business?
