Why Would a Small Business Hire a Fractional Marketing Leader?
If you’re a CEO running a business with less than $10M in revenue (which includes most businesses in America), chances are you’ve felt tension within your marketing.
Maybe you have a marketing “jack of all trades” team member handling social media, email, and some design work. Maybe you’re leaning on an agency with high overhead costs and less control. Maybe you’ve been doing it yourself, squeezing out rushed LinkedIn posts between team meetings, sales calls, finance reviews, and the hundred other things on your plate.
In each case, there’s plenty of activity. But the results are inconsistent. The clearest path forward would be to bring in a full-time marketing leader, but you are not in a position to pay upwards of $200,000 (plus benefits) for a strong candidate.
If this sounds like a familiar scenario, take heart: it is exactly where a fractional marketing leader can help.
In this post, I’ll explain what a fractional marketing leader does, why the model works so well for small and mid-sized businesses, and how to know if hiring one is the right move for your company.
First: What Does “Fractional” Actually Mean?
A fractional marketing leader is an experienced marketing executive who works with your business on a part-time basis. Generally, you’ll agree on a set number of hours or days per week/month in which the leader will be embedded in your team. He/she will provide the strategic leadership and focus that your marketing function has been missing.
Importantly, hiring a fractional is not the same as hiring an agency or a marketing consultant.
A typical agency is focused on execution; you give them your goals, and they’ll launch and manage the campaigns to meet those goals. But many agencies don’t (and can’t) sit at the executive table to answer the key strategic questions that will determine the success of a campaign.
As for a consultant, your experience will greatly vary depending on how the consultant runs his/her model. But in most cases, consultants stay at arm’s length from your management team and won’t be there for the actual execution of the strategy that they may help you develop.
A fractional marketing leader joins your business as a member of your leadership team. They sit alongside you and your management team. He/she will be in your meetings, join your planning sessions, and be part of your decision-making process. A strong fractional leader will ensure that marketing is aligned with your revenue goals and integrated with the rest of your business.
Why This Model Works for Small and Mid-Sized Businesses
For businesses with anywhere from $1M-$20M in revenue, there’s a common challenge that I see repeatedly: the gap between marketing activity and marketing strategy.
Your team is likely active on social media, sending email campaigns, and updating your website frequently. But without a strategic leader connecting those activities to your ideal customers and your positioning (while keeping your major revenue goals in mind), you’re likely spending time and money on activities that don’t move the needle.
Here’s why hiring a fractional marketing leader is often the right solution to this common problem:
You get an experienced operator, not a theorist. The good fractional leader has been in the leadership seat before, preferably multiple times, across multiple industries. They know what works, what doesn’t, and how to manage limited resources. You’ll benefit from their experience in leading a marketing practice down a growth path.
You get speed to results. A full-time executive hire can take three to six months to recruit and onboard. A fractional leader can typically begin making an impact within weeks after signing a contract, particularly when the goals you set are well-defined and measurable.
You get flexibility. As your business grows and your needs evolve, your fractional engagement can also evolve. There’s no long-term, open-ended employment contract, and you can grow or shrink working commitments to either accelerate your marketing or redeploy your resources.
You get strategic leadership at a fraction of the cost. A full-time CMO can command $200K or more in total compensation, and even department directors are now earning over $150K. Just as the name says, a fractional engagement costs a fraction of a full-time investment, while delivering the same caliber of strategic thinking and leadership.
The Most Critical To-Dos for a Fractional Marketing Leader
A fractional marketing leader should come into an engagement ready to focus on the most important needs of your business, but here are some “must dos” that you should make sure he/she is ready to accomplish:
Defining your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): getting clarity on exactly who you’re selling to, and making sure your entire revenue team (marketing, sales, and service) is clear on this profile.
Establishing your positioning and messaging: defining what makes your business different and establishing why your ideal customers should choose you over alternatives.
Building a demand generation plan: identifying the right marketing channels and activities to create awareness and generate sales opportunities with the right prospects.
Aligning marketing with sales: ensuring that the opportunities marketing creates are the ones sales can close, and that the handoff between the two functions is seamless.
Setting goals and measuring what matters: moving beyond vanity metrics like impressions and followers, and toward pipeline contribution, conversion rates, marketing efficiency metrics, and ultimately the impact of the department on revenue growth.
Leading and developing your marketing team: no matter who leads execution of your marketing (whether it be internal employees or agencies), your fractional leader should give strategic direction, engage in coaching, and manage a cohesive department.
In short, a fractional marketing leader does what a great CMO does: build and run a system that turns marketing into a reliable driver of revenue growth.
Signs That Your Business Is Ready for a Fractional Marketing Leader
While hiring a fractional CMO has clear benefits, bringing one on is not without risk. Not every CEO is in a position (based on revenue, season of the business, etc.) to bring one on.
If you aren’t sure if it’s the right time for you, here are some signs to look for:
You’re spending money on marketing but can’t draw a clear line from that spend to revenue.
Your marketing team is executing tactics but lacks strategic direction.
You are leading marketing directly, and it is taking too much of your focus away from other areas of your business.
You’ve tried agencies or freelancers, and the results have been disappointing — often because there was no strategic leadership guiding their work.
You know you need a marketing executive but can’t justify (or afford) a full-time hire.
If you’re nodding along to two or more of these, you’re likely in the sweet spot for a fractional marketing engagement.
Fractional Marketing Isn’t Just for “Big/Tech”
One of the most persistent misconceptions about fractional marketing leadership is that it’s reserved for high flying tech companies and/or “big” companies. While it’s true that the fractional concept took off in these segments over the last decade, there is actually now a greater opportunity in a more diverse set of business segments, which operate with varying revenue levels.
Some of the businesses that benefit most from fractional marketing leadership are in industries like construction, manufacturing, healthcare, and professional services. These are industries where marketing has traditionally been underinvested in or treated as a cost center rather than a growth driver.
With new economic opportunities in front of these segments, CEOs need to get their marketing practices up to speed fast. Bringing on a fractional CMO would be the quickest way to get real marketing results.
No matter what industry you are in, if your business has a growth mindset, a product or service that solves real problems, and customers who value what you do, you have everything you need to benefit from strategic marketing leadership.
What to Look for When Evaluating a Fractional Marketing Leader
If you’re ready to look for the right fit as your fractional CMO, here’s what you should look for:
Cross-industry experience. Someone who has led marketing across different industries will bring a broader perspective and a more versatile toolkit to your business.
A systems mindset. Look for someone who thinks about marketing as part of a larger revenue system, and not just a set of content and campaigns.
Cross-departmental influence. Marketing leaders should deeply understand sales, customer service, and operations teams, and how all these teams connect towards the greater goals of growing revenue.
A balance of strategic thinking and creativity: To be able to effectively lead your marketing team, a leader needs to tie back activity to the bigger picture while also getting deep enough in the brand and messaging to create a unique position in your marketplace.
A focus on outcomes. Avoid anyone who leads with tactics before understanding your business. A great fractional leader thinks like an executive: with strategy and clear goals to determine the right activity.
The Bottom Line
Hiring a fractional marketing leader isn’t about settling for less. It’s about getting exactly the level of marketing leadership your business needs, at a stage where that makes the most financial and strategic sense.
For CEOs of growing businesses who know that marketing should be doing more but aren’t sure how to get there, a fractional marketing leader can be the catalyst that changes your growth trajectory.
If this resonates and you’d like to explore what fractional marketing leadership could look like for your business, I’d welcome the conversation. Schedule a call here.