Find Business Sweet Spots with Fractional CMOs

So, you’ve decided to work with a Fractional CMO to oversee the planning, development, and execution of your marketing strategy. This is a massive undertaking, but an advantage of working with a Fractional as opposed to hiring an in-house CMO is that you don’t need to hire them for the full amount of the time. You can essentially pay for the amount of time you need, but it isn’t always straightforward what that means. How do you know how much you need? There’s no easy way to answer this, but you do need to work on finding your sweet spot so that you can optimize results. Here’s more information:

Consider Your Goals First

When deciding how much time is needed for your Fractional CMO to do the work needed, you should really have clear goals and objectives to assess. When meeting with the Fractional, these goals will be a factor on how they will plan their time. They might even be able to estimate how much time per week they’ll need in order to help you achieve your goals. The more specific the objectives are, the easier it will be for the Fractional CMO to estimate.

Granted, part of the reason why you hire a Fractional CMO might be to get them to help you determine what your goals should be. Knowing that you want greater business success is not enough. The goals need to be very specific and measurable so that the Fractional can plan his or her time. Without the goals, you won’t get as much out of the process. Once the goals are clearly established, the next phase is to assess and discover what really needs to be done to achieve these goals.

Find the Sweet Spot for Your Business

The ultimate goal should be that you need to find the sweet spot amount of time for your business. Too little and the results won’t come as quickly as you like. Too much and this may also be a waste. If there is a lot of time left on the clock for the week, the Fractional CMO could feel compelled to take on activities and tasks that may not be entirely necessary to help you achieve your goals. It’s all about finding the right blend.

How do you do that? Well, as mentioned above, this all depends on the goals themselves. Once those are determined, the fractional will create a strategic plan to achieve them. From there, he or she will give an estimate on the time needed. Let’s say you have the budget for more time than they are suggesting. That’s great! You can save some money. If you have less money than they are proposing, just understand that if they have to use fewer hours than they predict will be needed, your results won’t come as quickly.

Finding the sweet spot starts with your business goals and objectives. From there, a strategic plan to help you achieve them will adequately figure out the rest.