What’s a fractional CMO? And how can they grow my B2B business?

You’ve spent years building your company from the ground up — and it finally feels established. You have proven product-market fit, a solid revenue stream, and a growing number of happy clients, so you’re ready to accelerate your growth.

You’ve done some marketing, but marketing isn’t what you’re best at and you can’t seem to make it a priority. Your superpower is something else: sales, technology, engineering, or maybe data analytics.

Every time you have to think about marketing, you get that sinking feeling that it’s not working as well as you’d like.

Maybe you’ve tried some consultants, freelancers, agencies, or internal hires, but no one’s quite delivered the results you hoped for. You’re only left with more questions: Do you need to rebrand? Invest more in digital advertising? Maybe you could try some PR? Start a podcast? Will AI help? What should you do first? How much should you spend on all this? How do you know you’re getting a return on your marketing investment?

The role of a fractional Chief Marketing Officer

A fractional Chief Marketing Officer (fCMO) works with you to accelerate your business growth by getting the fundamentals of marketing right for your business. They’re a seasoned marketing professional who works on a part-time or project basis to develop and execute a marketing strategy for your company.

A fractional CMO drafts the strategy, advises on budget, sets a hiring plan, manages agency and freelance partners, leads go-to-market execution, generates leads, customers and revenue, and reports on the results marketing is driving for your business.

A fractional CMO is a good fit for a business that’s ready to grow, but doesn’t yet have the resources to hire a full-time senior marketing leader. In my experience, fractional CMOs have the most impact on businesses in the mid seven-figure to mid eight-figure range for revenue or funding. But this will vary depending on your margin (high margin businesses can hire a fractional CMO sooner) and business strategy (marketing-led growth companies need senior marketing support as soon as possible).

Book a free discovery call to see if a fractional CMO is right for you.

Before you pick your fractional CMO, identify your needs and goals

Before you decide to hire a fractional CMO, make sure you’re clear on what your company needs. You should be able to state clear revenue or acquisitions goals, and what else you are doing to drive growth (like product launches, new market entry, or expanding the sales team).

So, what problems can a fractional CMO solve? For more than 15 years, I’ve worked with clients with a variety of pain points. Here are some of the most common problems I’ve been brought in to solve:

Marketing feels like a slog: You know you need to move fast, but your marketing is bogged down by revisions, meetings and lack of follow-through.
Lack of a clear marketing strategy: You've tried a bunch of different things, but you’re not sure why you picked those specific things or if they’re even working.
Difficulty in generating leads and acquiring customers: You're not getting enough leads, or the leads that you are getting aren’t converting to paying customers.
You don’t stand out in a crowded market: You’re losing market share to competitors that have imitated your product, service or brand.
Unclear measurement and impact: You’re not measuring how marketing impacts the business, the results aren’t clear, or you’re not confident in your decision making.
Your marketing team is too junior: You have one or more junior employees, but they need strategy, mentorship and training to develop their skills and capabilities.
You’re consistently unhappy with your contractors, agencies and hires: You’ve tried a bunch of different partners, but nobody is getting it; you’ve finally come around to the idea that the problem is probably you.
You need to focus on other priorities: You’ve been doing marketing off the side of your desk, but as your business has grown that’s no longer sustainable and you need a trusted, strategic partner who can take over this workload.

Overall, you should consider hiring a fractional CMO only if bringing on senior marketing expertise will help you achieve your business goals. Ask the question: is marketing a critical part my business strategy right now? If it is, then it’s a good time to start exploring your options. If it’s not, go work on the stuff that is critical to your business strategy.

If you don’t have a business strategy, work on that first.

When should I hire a fractional CMO for my B2B business?

Hire a fractional CMO when you’ve proven product-market fit and are ready to accelerate your growth curve. A fractional CMO will address a wide and flexible strategic scope, with a focus on improving measurable business outcomes for your company. Typical mandates for a fractional CMO include any and all of the following:

Accelerate go-to-market: Get into market faster and execute with greater velocity and scale.
Execute on your business strategy: Develop a clear and effective marketing strategy that supports your overall business goals and objectives.
Increase brand awareness: Establish your unique positioning, build a strong brand identity, and increase awareness among your target audience.
Generate demand and revenue: Identify the most effective customer acquisition tactics to increase leads, customers, and revenue.
Improve ROI: Track and analyze the results of your marketing efforts and make data-driven decisions to optimize performance.
Grow your marketing team: Hire, mentor, and train your marketing team, whether that’s employees, contractors, agencies, or a mix of all three.
Improve decision making: Make data-driven decisions to optimize your marketing investment and achieve better results.

How do I choose the right fractional CMO for my B2B business?

Marketing is a big subject, and nobody is good at everything. Different fractional CMOs will have different subject matter expertise. One fractional CMO might be highly specialized in consumer cosmetics brands. Another might be great at VC-backed SaaS startups. I work almost exclusively with highly technical or scientific B2B businesses.

In my experience, the most important things to look for in a fractional CMOs are:

Strong culture fit: a fractional CMO will be part of your leadership team, so hire someone who will work well with your team and leaders. Trust your gut; it’s okay to decline to work with someone just because you have a bad feeling about them.
Familiarity with your life-cycle stage: small to mid-size businesses with established revenue are very different from pre-profit startups that have just closed series A funding. Look for a fractional CMO who has experience with companies like yours.
A clear and repeatable process: look for a fractional CMO who has an established methodology. They should be able to show you the specific phases they would take you through and/or specific deliverables they would produce for you.
Results-driven case studies: don’t look for a fractional CMO with the fanciest logos on their site. Look for CMOs who can show you the results they’ve driven for clients like you. You can always ask them for a reference check as well.
Examples of specific work: marketing is full of buzzwords, jargon and trends. When interviewing a fractional CMO, ask them how they approach specific scenarios such as:

Developing a marketing strategy and plan for a specific product launch or new market expansion.
Conducting market research and competitor analysis to inform positioning and brand.
Creating and implementing a lead generation and nurturing program to attract and engage potential customers.
Managing and optimizing your company's digital marketing efforts, such as website optimization, search engine marketing, and social media campaigns.
Developing and implementing a content marketing strategy to establish the company as a thought leader in your industry.
Providing training and mentorship to the company's internal marketing team to build their skills and capabilities.

When to hire someone other than a fractional CMO

A fractional CMO’s job is to decide what marketing will and won’t do to support your business strategy. If you already know what marketing tactics you want, it’s often best to hire an employee, contractor, or agency to execute those specific tactics:

If you want blog posts or case studies, you could hire a content writer.
If you want a targeted campaign or launch, you could hire a marketing agency or a digital ad manager instead.

If you want to optimize your company's website for search engines, you could hire an SEO partner, a content agency or an inbound marketing team.

If you want to implement a social media strategy, you could hire a social media manager.
If you want to rebrand, you could hire a brand or design studio instead.
If you want to optimize your marketing tech stack, CRM, sales funnel or automations, you could hire a Hubspot specialist, a sales operations leader, or a marketing operations manager.

Sometimes you don’t need or want a fractional CMO. The best time to hire a fractional CMO is when you know what business outcomes you want (revenue growth, client acquisition, etc.), but don’t yet know what marketing strategies and tactics will get you there. Figuring all that out is your fractional CMO’s job.

How you know you have (or haven’t) found a fit

A fractional CMO isn’t right for every business. It's important to evaluate whether your company is ready and willing to invest in marketing. Depending on what is happening in your business today, you may have other priorities to focus your time and budget on. Here are the the reasons I decline to work with potential clients, or they decline to work with me:

You don’t have a business strategy: Without a clear business strategy and goals, your fractional CMO won’t be able to deliver results. I’m fond of saying that marketing supports the business strategy, not the other way around.
You need full-time support: If you already have a high-growth rate, you’ll be better served by a full-time marketing manager or director to keep up with demand.
You’re looking for a quick fix: It takes time and effort to build a successful marketing function through data-driven decisionmaking and incremental improvement. My typical engagement is 1.5 years and my longest engagement was 2.5 years.
You think “this stuff will sell itself”: If you’re right, then you don’t need marketing; if you’re wrong, then you’ll be disappointed no matter what.
You don’t have the budget to execute: A fractional CMO is a leader, so they can't be your only marketing resource. I advise my clients that they should expect to invest at least 4x my fee in execution and tactics.

You or your team don’t have time for marketing: Your fractional CMO will need to meet regularly with you and your leadership team in order to ensure clear alignment between marketing and the rest of the business.

The right fractional CMO can help your business grow faster and further than ever. Look for a fractional CMO who has a history of building brand equity and driving revenue growth for companies like yours.

Are you ready to grow? Book your free discovery call today.