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How an Outsourced CMO Can Give You F500 Experience at a Fraction of the Cost
Interim chief marketing execs face a consumer public that is far savvier and well-informed than ever before. With instant access to an unlimited trove of both objective and biased information and messaging there is a lot competing for the scarcest of all assets in the modern world: attention. Walking into an interim marketing engagement requires a broad and deep skill set.
Have You Built a Strong Brand?
Whether product or service-based, B2B or B2C, local or global-focused, all businesses need to understand why they do what they do and how best to communicate that and tell a compelling story to customers and the marketplace. Yet along the way so many organizations lose a sense of values, direction, and purpose. A good Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is the lifeline to these companies, crystalizing brand, positioning, and growth strategy.
For fast-growing organizations, however, a full-time CMO may seem like too much firepower. But there is a solution: enter your on-call CMO. A specialized group of CMOs have started splitting their brain power between multiple organizations, serving as an Outsourced or Fractional CMO.
This model allows companies to tap into top brand experience while getting a hands-on resource to not only create a clear marketing strategy, but execute on it.
What makes your organization work the way it does? What is your unique culture, and how does that fit with an opportunity to build a strong brand? Where should your company go? Why should people care? These are all questions a CMO will answer.
FRACTIONAL CMO SPECIALTIES:
• Brand Positioning
• Community Engagement
• Digital Strategy
• B2B and B2C
• Product Development
• Global Distribution
• Pricing
• Market Research
• Advertising and PR
• Social Media
• New Product Launch
• Search Engine Marketing (SEO and SEM)
• Data and Analytics
• Company Spinoff
• Team Building
• Merger or Acquisition
• Company Spinoff
The Interim CMO Approach
An interim CMO jumps in to prioritize their strategic and tactical list. Hands-on learning about the marketing team, about the consumer mindset toward the product, and about competition rank high on any list. The CMO must immediately supplement in real-world terms the advance research they’ve already conducted before showing up at the door.
Marketing execs say understanding the existing team is a key priority. Questions like “who do I have, what are they working on, what are their priorities, and where are the gaps,” are among the essential early questions. The target: to get a functioning team in place straightaway.
Understanding the brands follows closely. Who’s buying the product? What insights do they have?
Companies that ignore the need for top-notch marketing strategies put themselves at risk: for example, it’s great to see an early-stage company packed tight with engineers and coders, but second-rate marketing can rob the product of its full market potential.
So many businesses still think simply in terms of ‘I produce a product’ and ‘I’m going to sell my product’ and that’s all there is to it, yet they wonder why they don’t have a bigger brand, more sales, and more impact on the world. Well, it’s because you don’t have enough of a marketing presence.
-Robert Jordan, CEO, InterimExecs
A Fractional CMO Solves Big Marketing Challenges
Strategic Marketing Plan
Where are you, and where are you going? An interim or outsourced CMO develops a strategic marketing plan that sets an organization on a clear path to achieve measurable marketing goals. In creating a comprehensive marketing plan, the CMO will also assess internal capabilities and fill any gaps to ensure solid execution across content strategy, advertising, public relations, social media management, SEO, and performance metrics.
Digital Marketing Strategy & Marketing Technology
Today companies have access to a massive potential customer base, however most do not utilize technology at hand. A Fractional CMO can create a strong digital marketing strategy and implement marketing technology and tools that enable marketing automation, scale marketing programs, and help businesses increase revenue and reach marketing goals faster.
Data and Analytics
What gets measured gets improved. Organizations that want to stay competitive and capture new markets must know how to analyze market data and use that intelligence to develop data-driven strategies. An outsourced CMO helps businesses understand and use market intelligence to reach their target audiences, improve customer experience, and increase conversion. A good CMO synthesizes market research data, market forecast trends, and competitor data into a marketing plan that works.
Brand Identity & Brand Development
How do customers see you and is there a strong brand awareness in the marketplace? Positioning can make or break a company. An interim CMO helps companies build a strong brand and develops a content strategy, brand positioning, and increased brand awareness online while ensuring there is a consistent brand messaging across all marketing channels.
Lead Generation
An interim or fractional CMO collaborates with sales leadership to capture leads, identify prospects, and create sales enablement materials. From content development to marketing automation and CRM management, an Interim CMO can help develop lead generation strategies for all stages of the customer journey.
New Market Entry
An interim or outsourced CMO helps B2B and B2C companies expand their market presence locally and in the global market. Based on careful market research, audience segmentation studies, and competitor analysis, an interim CMO can get a company on track to grow quickly by penetrating new markets and outpacing industry competitors .
Products & Services Launch
Launching a new product or service takes careful planning, and a fractional CMO can be engaged on a project basis to lead the charge in bringing something new to market. Companies can get guidance and leadership throughout all stages of product marketing beginning with product development where a focus is on analyzing competitor products and identifying target audiences. In preparing to launch the product for global distribution, a CMO can ensure success through good product pricing, branding of the product, and a strong roll-out strategy.
Sale, Mergers, and Company Spinoffs
For companies expanding quickly, a project-based or outsourced CMO can guide an organization that has recently acquired a business or merged with another company. A clear integration plan and marketing strategy is essential to creating a cohesive brand that will accelerate growth for a company.
An Interim CMO Creates Marketing Strategies that Scale
- Hospital, Healthcare, & Medical Device
- Manufacturing
- Distribution & Logistics
- Retail & Ecommerce
- Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)
- Technology & Software
- Media & Entertainment
- Business Services
We match management teams and owners with Chief Marketing Officers from InterimExecs’ RED Team, an elite on-call team of leaders around the globe. Engaging the Rapid Executive Deployment Program means you get access to the marketing brainpower you need fast.