Learn How to Become a Fractional CMO using Skills You Already Know
Are you a marketing professional who's interested in becoming a fractional CMO? Maybe you have extensive background in business or consulting, but you keep hearing about opportunities for fractional CMO, but you aren’t quite sure what that is or exactly how to start. If so, you're in the right place. In this article, I'm going to be introducing you to the concept of being a fractional CMO. I'll share a little bit about my own fractional CMO consultancy along with how you can provide valuable marketing expertise to help drive a business forward.
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Leverage Your Business Experience to Become a Fractional CMO
Whether a business is looking to improve their brand image or increase their customer base or launch a new product, a fractional CMO is one of the best ways that they can get to their ideal destination.
What is a Fractional CMO?
Maybe you’ve been seeing the term ‘Fractional CMO’ popping up everywhere from Google Trends, articles, and even Jenna Kutcher, one of the country’s top influencers with millions of followers, shared a podcast recently on why she recently hired a fractional CMO for her brand. like Jenna Kutcher! So without even knowing what one is, you can see how it's quickly growing in popularity. Technically speaking, a fractional CMO, or Chief Marketing Officer, is a senior level marketing sales operations business professional with a marketing expertise who's hired on a part-time or project basis.
In other words, they provide strategic marketing expertise and guidance to organizations that are in need of marketing support, but may not otherwise have the resources or the budget to hire a full-time employee. Fractional CMOs typically work with multiple clients at once and offer a flexible alternative to hiring a full-time executive.
Soft Skills Every Fractional CMO Should Possess
It’s easy to get started as an in-demand consultant, but to excel as a fractional CMO, you really have to possess the drive, and most importantly, the courage to bring fresh ideas into play. This new outlook can give a business the much needed impetus towards meaningful transformation or to create a new product.
Remember though, when you come into an existing team, your new ideas may or may not be welcome. Sometimes there is a tendency to become comfortable with the way things are done and they can be resistant to change, even if it may be for the better. They may see your fresh perspective as a threat to their established way of doing things. Consider too since you are coming from outside their organization, the team may not have developed the same level of trust with you yet. It’s important not to take their resistance personally, and just be confident in your own expertise and understanding of how to drive organizational change so that your clients can see a result from your recommendations.
Sometimes when newer fractional CMOs are just starting out, they don’t have that skill set fully developed so instead of being able to present their ideas and recommendations to the team, they instead come in and rescue. For example, they might see the copy isn’t quite right or isn’t being completed timely, so they may just come in and write it themselves. Or if they are skilled designers, they'll come in and do the design. If they know how to do ad management, they'll swoop in and rescue.
This behavior of defaulting to being a consultant who also implements the work is typically an absence of having skill sets around driving organizational change. Instead, I suggest when consulting with clients and teams, to give them a menu of options. In my own consulting business, I might offer two options along with the pros and cons of each and ask for feedback. This helps the team take ownership for the final decision.
In my experience, by narrowing down the options into the things that I think are going to work best, but allowing them to be part of the decision, it’s no longer viewed by the team as a consultant coming in from nowhere with all of these fresh ideas. Of course, this can feel really frustrating to somebody in the organization that's grinding it out every day.
The other thing I suggest is making connections and building relationships with the in-house team as quickly as possible. I will build them up, I will compliment them, and will tell them what a great job they're doing. And then I'll ask, have you considered something like this? And if they haven't, they might say, “Great idea; I actually hadn't. Thanks so much!” This creates a relationship that will allow you to sustain your fractional CMO retainer for the long haul.
Create a Toolbox of CMO Resources
With every single client that you serve, you want to maximize your CMO services in a timely manner with a well-organized toolbox for your company.
Remember a fractional CMO allows you to work with multiple clients at once, and of course, there may be client turnover. So you may find you are in this company for a little while, and then in this company for a little while, and then in this company for a little while. Ultimately you offer a different prescription for each one, that's pretty common. But what's also pretty common is that there's patterns along the way.
Over time you start to build toolboxes, resources, and templates that you are going to want to have internal to your organization that makes it really easy for you to deploy these different prescriptions for each client. While the tactics might be different, usually the patterns are the same. Meaning that, let's say that you need to improve a sales process with better messaging. You might have some messaging templates on file or some email templates on file that makes it really easy for the in-house team to implement your recommendations. Of course the template gets tweaked a little bit for voice and tone, and you can delegate this to someone on your team as you grow. Then, off to the client it goes.
By curating a living file of templates, resources, and tools that will empower your clients to move forward confidently, you’ll also be eliminating redundant efforts within your own company. Think of starting with copy templates, SEO guidelines, SOPs for workflow, or a planning tool that you can use over and over with a client. This is a way in which you can get really efficient, and avoid your fractional CMO work from becoming a huge time suck.
One of the other things I encourage consultants in my certification program to do is to be clear on the ROI they are able to provide. By starting to collect case studies of successful transformations and results you’ve created for your clients, you’ll be able to demonstrate the outcomes you’re likely to get for future clients, and this can result in your commanding a higher income, retainer, and project fee - as well as an abundance of referral partners.
How to Become a Fractional CMO
Fractional CMO work is in incredibly high demand right now, and it can also be extremely profitable and a fantastic lifestyle business. If you have sales or marketing or C-suite experience or consulting experience, becoming a certified fractional CMO could actually be the next best step in your career with high upside potential and minimal overhead costs. My consulting certification program, Fractional Freedom, will teach you everything you need to know to get your consulting offer up and running within 10 weeks or less.
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