So you’re ready for a CMO but can’t quite afford one.
Fractional leadership in marketing may be the answer.
Let’s learn how to find the right person for your organization.
In this episode of Closing Time.
Thanks for tuning in to Closing Time, the show for Go to Market Leaders.
I’m Val Riley, head of marketing for Unbounce, Insightly, and LeadsRx.
Today I’m joined by Andrew Dod.
He’s a CMO, owner of Qmarq
Marketing Consultancy and a fractional CMO.
Welcome to our show, Andrew.
Great to see you again, Val.
Yeah,. PS, Andrew was my CMO back in the day,
so it’s always nice to see a familiar face.
Andrew,
the data shows that the CMO role is the shortest tenured role in the C-suite,
and it’s so easy to correlate that with the fact that there is a ton of risk
when you’re hiring one.
Let’s talk about the ways this role can be filled.
So, typically, the
CMO role is one of the significant
roles on a full C-suite.
And larger companies can afford,
the, the full boat of the salary
and the bonuses and the equity for a full time CMO
that ranges anywhere from $190k to $250k and up for larger,
more successful companies, and probably 2x that for,
for bonuses and equity is in addition to that so you’re
talking about a pretty significant investment.
A lot of companies
who can’t afford that full ride, if you will,
if they don’t have enough money
to pay for somebody with 20 or 30 or 40 years experience, will either hire
a part time CMO who might have 20 years experience but only work 20 hours a week,
or they might have a fractional CMO,
who has, you know, a lot of seasoned tenure,
a lot of experience, experience with leadership and so forth.
And they might work one week a month.
So 40 hours a month, in total.
And that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing on and off
since 2006, the fractional role,
and I’ve gone full time a few times when,
when, the opportunity arose.
Okay, so for the purposes of today’s discussion,
let’s take full time out of the equation.
Because if an organization has the budget for that,
they can probably hire a firm to guide them through that hire.
And they might not need to hear from us.
But let’s dig into fractional, because I really do feel like
it’s a great middle ground.
So in your experience, how many clients would a fractional
CMO likely have at one time?
Yeah.
The ideal would be, fully utilized would be anywhere between 4 and 5 clients.
Any more than that and, and that’s for a full boat, full,
full ride for a fractional CMO.
I would say four is optimal.
You can, with a little extra time, you can handle five,
and it depends on the mix.
I’ve been a fractional CMO for a $2
million company and a $2 billion company.
So there’s, you know, with with no marketing staff on the, on the smaller
company and, 150
marketing and communications staff in 90 countries.
On the other hand, so you’re talking about
significant differences in time dedication,
based upon the type of client, how large they are,
and, time zones and things of that nature.
So, in contrast, if you were to say, a part time CMO,
would you think that that person maybe just works for one company?
Maybe 20 hours a week and just doesn’t want a full time role?
Would that be the distinction?
Yeah, that’s that’s primarily the distinction. Yes.
so let’s say a firm is selecting a fractional CMO.
Can you talk about like leadership versus execution.
Because I think that as marketers in general
and marketing leaders in general, we sometimes get caught in that.
But in a fractional, situation, it feels like there’d be expectations around it.
Yeah. There are.
So, in smaller companies,
they’re the first marketing hire is usually at director level,
and then expand from there because they hire somebody,
like a marketing manager to go along with that person.
And then they get gradually as they grow, they’ll get into more specific,
skillsets.
So those who are very good at execution on digital marketing,
those who are in charge of print, those who who are running the, you know,
HubSpot things of that nature, you start to get more specific, and get get deeper.
When you’re looking at hiring a fractional CMO,
you need to understand where you are in life cycle.
If you’ve got, one or 2
or 3 people who are already there,
you’re going to be looking for somebody who’s going to complement that skillset.
So if you don’t have the content creator, you don’t have the creative genius.
You’re going to want to look for a CMO who either has that skill set
in their quiver or is able to bring people to, to that marketing team.
On the other hand, if you if as I came into your organization,
yours was a a full time gig, there were three dozen
people there in the marketing and sales development team.
And in that case, you need somebody who’s not just good at execution,
you need somebody who understands how to work with people,
how to lead people, how to grow the team
in a way that, makes them more efficient,
allows them to develop themselves more.
So when you’re hiring a CMO, make sure you’re picking
the right person for the right environment.
In my case, I’m
very heavily into strategy,
and content creation.
And also,. I do a fair bit of execution myself,
but the teams that I come into usually have,
like when I inherited you as a great content director,
and then had other people who were running
pay per click and, and, dealing with, you know, the website
and, and design development,. SEO, all of that.
You really want to pick the right leader to be able to manage
all of those skill sets.
So I’ve heard terminology about you know,
you need a marketer that is horizontal or vertical.
Can you that kind of fits into what you were just describing.
Yes. So there. I look at CMOs in two different ways.
The horizontal CMO is,
so that,
all elements across the marketing continuum.
And I would put myself in that category where I start with strategy
and you go all the way down to rolling up my sleeves and getting,
into the dirt on very specific elements of marketing programs and execution.
The other type of person is that vertical CMO
who might have specific expertise
in a specific area, like for example,
being an Insightly expert, or having expertise
in pay per click or search engine optimization and so forth,
so that an organization really needs to think when they’re
when they’re looking at or interviewing potential fractional CMOs,
whether they need a horizontal one or vertical one to supplement
the skills and to fill the gaps that exist on their current team.
Let’s keep on that same note.
And talk about the size of an organization.
The size matters, right?
So are there fractional CMOs who maybe specialize in different stages,
like if you’re pre-revenue up to 10 million, etc.?
And if so, can you talk about how the role changes based on those stages?
Yeah. That’s, that’s a great question.
I’m currently working, with another organization that’s pre-revenue.
They have not announced yet, and that requires a strategic thinker
because you’re building your strategic plan, your strategic marketing plan.
You’re figuring out what types of people you’re going to need on your team.
You’re interviewing folks.
So you need somebody who’s been there, done that before.
So pre-revenue.
You need somebody who is a horizontal player.
To really come out, with,
everything soup to nuts
to get the company off the ground.
Most of my clients end up being in the sub
$50 million range in terms of revenue.
And, in a lot of cases, those companies,
would need me for less for strategy because they’re already
an ongoing concern, but more for message development.
Message tweaking.
But they’ve got a new product that’s coming out.
How are we going to launch it?
And things of that place.
But most that there aren’t a lot of fractional CMOs in a fractional role
for a company in a true fractional role, meaning 40 hours a month.
For companies that are, you know,
over $100 million,
that would be, considered very uncommon.
And also, depending on what stage you’re at.
Right? It’s talking about who you’re answering to, right?
It’s much different to answer to a founder or a leadership team versus a board.
Oh, yeah.
Absolutely, absolutely.
But when you don’t know what that feels like, when you’re
dealing with board members, you’re going to need somebody with 20 to 35 years
experience to be able to to sit and really have the gravitas,
to make sure that everyone understands where the company is currently,
where you’re seeking to take it and when.
Here’s where
setting expectations are very important how long it’s going to take.
You know, we all have the attention span of a Instagram story these days,
and so do CEOs when they’re tired of their CMO.
You know, we’re all looking for immediate gratification,
an immediate increase in leads, immediate increase in conversions,
and, fundamentally, that’s not always possible.
There are a lot of reasons why a CMO may or may not be successful.
And it’s not entirely on him or her,
the success or the speed with which that success can can happen.
Boy, don’t I know that?
So let’s talk money.
What’s a reasonable budget to have in mind if you’re hiring a fractional CMO?
Would it be a function of the marketing budget?
Or in some cases, are fractional CMOs often asked
to, you know, be paid, tied to performance?
That’s not uncommon.
I’ve see that, quite often.
And then there are multiple different incentives in terms of,
you know, we’re going to pay, we’re going to buy 40 hours of your time.
But if you want to put in extra time, we’ll give you some spiffs.
If you’re able to accomplish X goals or achieve
these particular KPIs.
I would say if you’re
you’re looking for somebody who has 20 to,
more years experience and has led
teams before, you’ve got a team of people,
you’re going to be looking at a minimum of 7500 a month.
Which is still not a lot of money when you’re
talking about somebody who has that much experience.
Up to 12,500 a month, or maybe in some cases
of the larger company, and you’re dealing with international travel.
It might be 15,000 a month.
That’s, I think, an accurate number to at least ballpark
what you’re going to be looking at.
All right. Let’s spin it around.
So we’ve talked about how companies can hire a fractional CMO.
What about the folks out there who might want to become a fractional CMO?
What advice would you give them?
And what kind of person might be a good fit?
Okay. You have to be an extrovert.
Number one
because you’re going to be bouncing from company to company,
which some may view as a negative, but I view it as a positive
because I’m able to bring learnings and experience
in one company or one other industry to someone over here who may not have
that experience or would not have had that exposure otherwise.
You’ve got to be an extrovert.
You’ve got to be, a team builder.
You’ve got to be somebody who believes that politics
inside of your marketing team is totally, totally unacceptable.
You’ve got to be somebody who’s willing to put
in the time to help your team professionally develop,
because you’re not always going to be there.
Longevity of these engagements can do range pretty significantly
from from a few months to,
in my case, I have one client that’s going on eight years now.
So, or seven years.
So there’s a pretty significant difference in terms of what
you should be looking at in as you’re considering becoming a fractional CMO.
But you’ve got to be comfortable with quick movement, sharp turns.
I mean, it’s a little bit like being a snow skier that slalom.
You’ve got to be able to go back and forth, back and forth and not lose speed.
Yeah. I imagine that’s a huge challenge.
That context switching.
You know, you could be taking a call from one client
and then turn around and take a call for another one.
So really keeping your ducks in a row, right?
Yeah.
If again, if you’re if you’re an I individual,
if you’re if you’re more vertical than you are horizontal.
It’s and you’d like to go deep into a company
or a product that becoming a fractional. CMO is probably not for you.
You probably don’t have the right
to bounce back and forth, left and right,
very quickly, because that’s what it really requires, that.
Awesome.
Okay. Well, anybody out there? Hopefully.
We’ve inspired you.
Andrew, thank you so much for joining me today and closing time.
Great to see you again.
Yeah.
Thanks to everybody out there for tuning in.
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