Five things you’ll need when hiring a Fractional CMO

If you’ve just hired, or you’re looking to hire a Fractional CMO to help your business grow, you’ll already know how valuable marketing support will be to your business. But how can you make the most of your relationship moving forward with your Fractional CMO?

Side note: If you want to find out if a Fractional CMO is for you, I've written a short guide here

A lot of that will be the ability to understand that a lot of the initial groundwork will need your input to ensure that the proper foundations can start to be built and that structure is developed and deep rooted into your core processes from the very beginning.

There are so many thing that will make your Fractional CMO’s life a million percent easier, so they can help you grow quicker, but these are the 5 things that I’ll always speak to my clients about before we officially start working together, the questions I would ask and use the answers to hit the ground running.

1. Clear business objectives and priorities

Sounds obvious but you’d be surprised. Structured and organised objectives will help your Fractional CMO understand and start to navigate the current priorities. Even start to stress test them. So, you’ll need your objectives and priorities for the next 6-12 months and be prepared to answer the questions of how and why.

2.  All of the data and tech access you have

If you’re absolutely starting with marketing from scratch you’ll still have sales data in your CRM, along with data on how your customers use your product from sales. Even if you’ve never run a full marketing campaign previously, the data and information you do have will still enable your Fractional CMO to ask questions and make decisions. This will also include access to tools such as Google Analytics and your website back end to start to identify the various points on the customer journey.

3. Access to your customers and market experts

Your Fractional CMO will need to understand the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) of your product - what industries, job titles, geographies that you are targeting, along with information on how your product solves their biggest problems. Ideally they should have freedom to contact and speak with your customers to find out what makes them tick and the industry trends they’re seeing. If you have any information from your investors or mentors, grant access to them too, especially if they have any specialist market knowledge which could get your Fractional CMO up to speed more quickly. 

I had a client once that was very defensive when it came to talking about clients and the competitive space. Always skirted around the subject when I asked, deflected me on to something else and was very closed about it. When they finally did open up it was to tell me that they’d signed a new customer and let slip that ‘that now makes three’. Absolutely no judgement here on the number you have but it’s a necessary starting point and something that just wastes time overwise.

4. Alignment on decisions, resources and capacity

Do you already have freelancers working on SEO or graphic design? Are you hoping to get your Fractional CMO to strategically align them on everything? If so, make that clear from the outset so that there’s no surprises. Are you also looking at hiring other specialists within marketing? Align that with your Fractional CMO first, it might not be what you need right now and could cause bottlenecks before a proper strategy is developed. Throughout the discovery phase, your Fractional CMO will uncover where the capacity gaps are and work with you to fill them. Additionally, outline how you work, your decision making process and the kind of things you want taken off your plate up front, that way when something needs to be resolved, it can happen quickly before the next challenge arises (as is the way in start ups).

I once worked with a CEO who handed me across a freelance graphic designer after our first session and asked me to work with them to increase output. After I spoke to the designer it was clear that in order to increase output, there had to be some sort of input. They hadn’t been briefed on anything in a couple of weeks although there was plenty to do. There was just no one with the appropriate capacity on hand until I entered. This all felt like the wrong way around.

5. An open mind and a willingness to do something a bit different

This is probably the most challenging point and something that Fractional CMOs encounter from time to time but you’ve got to be open to a new way of thinking when it comes to working through the customer journey, scaling the GTM strategy and growing campaign reach. They’ll be surprises that crop up that will challenge what you had initially intended for, and that’s fine, all products evolve. But by having an open mind and going with what works, you’re already growing. 

I once worked with a founder that fully believed that their product was for everyone and that the market should be everyone. As his Fractional CMO it was my role to get them to niche down and understand why this would be essential to his business. There was massive resistance but over the course of a month he slowly came around by seeing the data and realising that aligning your offerings to industries wasn’t as restrictive as first thought.

By (eventually) opening up to the idea, they were able to grow revenue into a previously untapped market.

How it helps when hiring your Fractional CMO

So, to summarise, if you want your Fractional CMO to be on it from day one, this is the majority of information they’ll need from you so they can be getting on with building the function, rather than keeping on at your for the information. Don’t hoard, give your CMO a chance!

If you’re interested to learn more about the Fractional CMO/marketing services that I provide, get in touch and we can have a chat over a coffee about your current challenges and requirements.