There are many good reasons to hire a fractional CMO, whether you’re interested in building a new campaign, analyzing your current marketing efforts, or just bringing in some fresh perspective. But no matter what your reasoning is, you’ll need to be diligent and discerning when looking for a fractional CMO.
What should you look for in a fractional CMO candidate? And where do you find a fractional CMO?
The Value of a Fractional CMO
A good fractional CMO can help you with a wide range of business challenges and marketing efforts. Depending on who you hire and why you hire them, you might utilize them for auditing and analyzing your existing marketing efforts, brainstorming new campaign ideas, adding new capabilities to your marketing department, or even educating and training your marketing staff members.
Most fractional CMO candidates will have a wealth of knowledge and experience to share with your organization, and they’ll be in a position to help you solve your most pressing problems. That doesn’t mean that a fractional CMO is a magic wand that will fix everything wrong in your marketing department, but it does mean that on average, it’s a good investment if you’re looking to improve how your marketing department runs or how it fits within your business.
What to Look for in a Fractional CMO Candidate
These are some of the most important things to look for when considering different fractional CMO candidates:
- Years of experience. As you might imagine, years of experience are fairly indicative of skills, knowledge, and capabilities in the marketing realm. A person who has worked in marketing for many decades is probably going to be more valuable for your marketing department than someone who is fresh out of college. That said, you may not want to rule out a candidate just because they have a few years less experience than someone else.
- Former (and current) credentials. Think about this candidate’s former and current credentials. Do they have any impressive certifications? Were they a traditional CMO at a major, recognizable business? What types of roles have they had in the past, and how have they achieved success in those roles?
- Examples of successful campaigns. It’s also a good idea to look at examples of successful campaigns, especially if those campaigns were created and executed in the context of the candidate’s service as a fractional CMO. Can they explain how and why these campaigns were successful? Do they feel capable of replicating these results with your business?
- Availability. Intuitively, you should know that not all fractional CMO candidates are going to be available to all businesses at all times. There may be an attractive candidate who’s currently contracting with another business and may be unavailable for the next few months. In fact, some candidates may not be willing to work with businesses like yours at all. Spend a moment to validate availability before continuing with other evaluations.
- Flexibility. You may also want to consider a candidate’s flexibility. They may prefer working in a certain area of specialty, or with certain types of businesses, but if they seem like they could be a good fit for your organization, you may try to persuade them to work with you even if your business doesn’t fall neatly into these categories. Certain fractional CMO candidates may also have preferences for certain types of payment arrangements or timelines as well.
- Areas of specialty. If you’re thinking about hiring a fractional CMO candidate, it might be because you have a very specific marketing problem to solve or a specific weakness that you want to compensate for. If this is the case, you may need to consider a narrow range of candidates with areas of specialty that align with your needs. In other cases, a generalist may be perfectly acceptable.
- Communication. To be successful, consultants need to be able to communicate effectively and concisely with their clients. They need to be able to articulate both their ideas and their reasoning in clear, concise ways, and they need to be able to collaborate with the individuals in your marketing department. Both communication and overall personality fit are important considerations here.
- Price. And of course, you’ll need to think about the price you’re going to pay for this fractional CMO’s services. You might find a candidate who can hypothetically fit all your needs on paper, but if they cost so much money that they’re out of your budget, you may not be in a position to hire them.
Ultimately, you’ll need to weigh both objective and subjective factors when making your fractional CMO candidate hiring decision. You know your needs better than anyone else, so only you are going to be in a position to choose the right fractional CMO. Review multiple candidates, do your due diligence, but ultimately, you may have to trust your gut.
