Five Best Practices of a Fractional CMO

The expertise of a fractional CMO can make it much easier for tech startups and other small companies to meet their goals. Fractional CMOs, however, can only do their jobs well when you give them the tools and freedom to make decisions.

The following best practices should help you understand the relationship between your business and its fractional CMO. Try these tips to make it easier for your fractional CMO to exceed your expectations.

1 - Treat Your Fractional CMO Like You Would a Full-Time CMO

Treat your fractional CMO like you would treat any other C-suite officer. Although the CMO serves multiple clients and only plans to stay with your organization for a short time, they fill your immediate CMO needs. Keeping the fractional CMO in the loop will only make it easier for them to do their job.

What does it mean to treat a fractional CMO like you would a full-time CMO? It often includes inviting them to executive meetings and board meetings, adding their addresses to emails and keeping them updated on any changes you make within your organization. 

Expect to see your fractional CMO at important meetings and brainstorming sessions. Keep in mind that you must extend the invitation for your fractional CMO to know when and where to arrive.

2 - Provide a Robust Compensation Package Similar to Those Other Executives Get

Overall, you can expect to save money by hiring a fractional CMO instead of a full-time CMO. The savings, however, largely come from paying the professional for the work they do rather than providing a full-time annual salary. The fractional CMO comes in, does the job and moves on, so you only pay for what you get. That doesn’t mean you should skimp on your CMO’s compensation package.

Make sure the compensation package for your tech startup’s fractional CMO includes benefits such as:

• Performance bonuses for reaching or exceeding KPIs.

• Short-term incentives for completing effective marketing campaigns on time.

• Stock options that will give the CMO a vested interest in your company’s ongoing success.

Ideally, your fractional CMO’s compensation package should provide the same incentives that you give other C-suite officers. However, you don’t need to include employment benefits like health insurance and paid time off.

3 - Establish Clear Expectations for Deliverables

Startup marketing campaigns often come with unique challenges. Depending on how long your brand has been serving customers and clients, you might not have clearly defined milestones for your outreach campaigns.

Take time to establish expectations for deliverables so your fractional CMO knows how to plan and meet goals.

Arch Collective makes the process easy. It starts by creating a marketing plan that clearly outlines a project’s goals and strategies. By establishing a marketing plan, business leaders and the fractional CMO have predetermined goals that align expectations and improve workflows.

If you don’t have a statement of work (SOW) or another plan that sets milestones and expectations, sit down with your fractional CMO to discuss what’s possible. You want realistic deliverables that let CMOs do their jobs well without feeling that they need to rush or cut corners. You also want to know what your business gets the consumer and B2B marketing services needed to reach your audience and start increasing revenues.

There is a happy medium – a sweet spot – that gives you excellent results and respects the CMO’s project management skills.

4 - Understand Your Fractional CMO’s Executive Model

A full-time CMO will expect you to have a marketing team that fulfills tasks. Few startups have full marketing teams, though. It just doesn’t make sense for a young small business to invest in marketing professionals when it needs to focus on building a sales team and developing products.

You need to understand your CMO’s executive model before you start working with them. Ask them how they plan to execute marketing strategies without a team behind them. Will they rely on freelancers they have worked with before? Will they do most of the work independently? Will they outsource to a marketing group?

Realistically, few CMOs have time to pay attention to small tasks like writing content for a LinkedIn campaign, measuring metrics in Google Analytics and getting into the nitty-gritty of HubSpot’s platform.

Find out how the fractional CMOs plan to deliver on those essential skills. They probably already have a strategy that has worked well with other small businesses like yours.

5 - Trust the Fractional CMOs Expertise

While there are pros and cons of hiring a fractional CMO, it’s important to remember that you want them on your side for good reasons. Perhaps most importantly, these professionals can bring innovative concepts to your tech startup marketing plans.

Trust your fractional CMO just as much as you trust your other C-suite officers. If you don’t have faith that a certain fractional CMO can meet your marketing goals without a lot of interference, then you should not hire that person for the job.

You wouldn’t try to micromanage your CTO or CFO. Don’t treat your fractional CMO differently just because they don’t work full-time positions for you.

Want to Learn More About Fractional CMOs?

Reach out to Arch Collective to learn more about how you can empower fractional CMOs to do excellent work!