Having a full-time Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) or marketing manager in-house certainly provides a sense of comfort. After all, this individual, completely immersed in your team, should ideally have the best understanding of your company’s intricate workings. However, “knowing your business” takes many forms, even within your existing team. That’s why having a fractional CMO is something that many businesses are turning to. But that means you need your outsourced CMO to be able to really “get” your business.
Knowing Your Offering vs. Knowing Your Business
There’s a significant difference between knowing the details of your offering versus comprehending your business, market, message, and differentiators. A fractional CMO can quickly become familiar with these aspects because they don’t spend months figuring out what to do. They are proactive, onboard themselves, and focus on how to achieve goals rather than just achieving them.
So, can an outsourced or fractional CMO attain the same level of connection and knowledge? The answer is a resounding yes. Here’s why and how:
- Understanding Your Market
Often, organizations have a massive blind spot when it comes to their market. There’s a difference between buyer personas and a market or sector. You can sell to anyone, but you shouldn’t market to everyone.
Having a documented strategy is essential, and having an objective outside perspective is actually very valuable. A fractional CMO is going to bring a wealth of knowledge to the table that it is hard to see from inside the business.
- Grasping Your Message
Understanding your message involves recognizing real differentiators valued by the market, identifying attention triggers, comprehending brand tone and voice, and internalizing core values. Your outsourced CMO is hearing you with fresh ears and is going to give you push back if something doesn’t make sense.
They are committed to ensuring the success of your marketing since they know that this will determine how long they keep you as a client. In contrast, a full time, in-house CMO often has to dilute their attention by focusing on the internal politics of the workplace and how it will impact their career.
- Evaluating and Optimizing Your Resources
One of the most challenging tasks in marketing is prioritizing. This includes managing human resources such as time and attention, establishing decision-making criteria, budgeting and calculating ROI, and being able to pivot and adjust smoothly and proactively.
A fractional CMO already knows how to manage a blend of freelancers, internal team, external team, interns, and multiple agencies. You want this type of effectiveness when it comes to making the most of your resources.
Want to learn more about how to hire an outsourced CMO? Watch this.
Outsourced CMOs Dive Deep into Your Numbers
A proficient fractional CMO wants to know as much about your business as possible, whether on-site or remote. They will delve into your overall business structure, examine your profit and loss statement, explore all the ways you bring in and grow revenue, analyze your profit margins, and understand what’s most profitable.
In addition, they’ll want to know how you define success (e.g., revenue growth vs. profitability), how you plan to scale operationally if marketing/sales bring in more business, how sales compensation aligns with business goals, and your full business growth strategy.
Moreover, they’ll strive to understand your company culture, how your team works together, the business goals beyond revenue, and each executive’s objectives. All of this ties into being an effective Chief Marketing Officer for your business.
Inviting Your Outsourced CMO Deeper into Your Strategy
Unfortunately, outsourced CMOs are often excluded from critical business conversations – usually unintentionally. Businesses are used to outsourcing marketing activities to agencies, but an agency doesn’t have the responsibility for building and executing a marketing strategy; a fractional CMO does. Whenever you discuss growing and strengthening your business, your marketing executive should be included.
At The Marketing Blender, our outsourced CMOs help drive value for the companies we serve by participating in these critical conversations. You’ll find that a fractional CMO can indeed know your business in all the ways that matter for driving results around Revenue, Reputation, and Resilience.
Key Conversations That Should Include Your Outsourced CMO
Here are a few examples of the types of conversations to plug your fractional CMO into this year:
- Talent Acquisition: Talent/employer branding ARE marketing responsibilities since they deal with communication and how your organization is perceived.
- EOS® Quarterly Meetings: Include your CMO in any of your other strategy meetings where you are talking about solving problems with business growth and organizational health.
- Mergers & Acquisitions: These decisions have a profound impact on branding and market opportunity as well as communication.
- Exit Planning: Branding has a strong influence on business valuation, and your fractional CMO can find ways to improve your multiplier.
- New Product Design & Development: You must build what your market wants, or it won’t sell. Who better to help you gather that intelligence than your marketing leader?
- Board and Investor Meetings: Marketing is about communication, and your key stakeholders need to FULLY understand what you are trying to get across.
Many B2B business leaders still see Marketing as something on the periphery of the “core” of the company. But a skilled fractional CMO brings value across many areas of business strategy.
Outsourced CMO & Business Growth
In the evolving world of business, the role of a CMO is no longer confined to merely overseeing marketing campaigns. Instead, a skilled fractional CMO can contribute significantly across many areas of your business strategy. From talent acquisition and employer branding to EOS® Quarterly meetings, Mergers & Acquisitions, Exit Planning, New Product Design & Development, and Board and Investor Meetings, a fractional CMO can offer valuable insights and strategies that drive business growth and health. Contact us to learn more about how a fractional CMO can help take your business to the next level.
Gone are the days when marketing was viewed as something on the periphery of a company’s core operations. In today’s fast-paced and competitive market, successful businesses recognize that effective marketing is crucial for growth and sustainability. However, with constantly changing technology and consumer behavior, it can be challenging for a company to keep up and stay ahead of the curve.
This is where a fractional CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) comes in. By hiring an outsourced CMO, companies can tap into a wealth of knowledge and experience without committing to a full-time executive salary. A fractional CMO brings value across various areas of business strategy, making them an invaluable part of your leadership team.
Ready to explore more? Contact Blender today to find an outsourced CMO for your B2B company.
