How to Get the Most out of Your Fractional CMO

Maybe you’ve heard Ice-T’s track “Don’t Hate the Playa.” Even if you haven’t, you’ve heard the line, “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

The opposite is true for founders and CEOs when we discuss growth. They’re fine with the marketing game; it’s marketers themselves, the players, that have caused problems.

I often find myself in the strange position of being a fractional CMO while listening to people air their grievances about their current or last CMO or VP of Marketing. It’s happened so many times that I can predict what they’ll say and have to stop myself from completing their sentences:

“She became a glorified project manager who spent too much time in the weeds.”
“He did a lot of talking and got us excited but never really delivered.”
“She’s okay, but she’s not originating many new ideas.”
Marketing is challenging in part because marketing leaders must hold so many things in tension: strategy and tactics, ideation and execution, experimentation and measurement.

And as you may have experienced, things can get tense. Wheels tend to fall off the bus.

Perhaps I can help you diagnose what went wrong, and how, and when, and to that end, I’ll share seven risks to watch out for. I’ll also explain several key pieces of my approach to fractional CMO engagements.

You’ll glean an idea or two at the very least, and you may be intrigued enough to reach out to me. I turn down 60-70% of the folks who do, but I’ll still do my best to point you in the right direction.

Let’s begin.

6 Risks to Watch Out for

No marketing leader sets out to do a mediocre job. In fact, it’s in their best interest to knock it out of the park for you.

If they drive meaningful, measurable growth for your company, you’ll keep them around. Longer relationships means higher lifetime value means less pressure to close new engagements any given month. Satisfied clients make running a profitable practice a bit easier and make the work more satisfying for the consultant.

That alignment of interests (your growth and their stability and satisfaction) is worth remembering as you consider the risks I’ve outlined below.

1. Ill-defined goals, growth strategy, growth levers, marketing plan, weekly marketing schedule, meeting cadence, or metrics

Plans tend to drift, even when written down.

And if you don’t write down your strategy and plan, you’ve got nothing to revisit or recalibrate later, only the faulty memories of team members.

Improving over time is harder if time has erased some of the details: your working hypothesis and key assumptions, decisions made and the information supporting them, the anatomy of the strategy itself, and desired outcomes.

The fix here is so simple it’s easy to overlook: Put it all in writing. Create your strategy’s instruction manual for later troubleshooting.

2. Too much time in the weeds with creative direction or project management

I’ve been guilty of this one for sure. Long before I was leading marketing teams I was crafting copy. The work was familiar and comfortable, and who doesn’t love that dopamine hit of being good at something?

Most fractional CMOs have a security blanket—an area of original competence, such as media buying, SEO, PR, brand development, or events—and the challenge and opportunity for top-level marketing leaders is foregoing comfort so we can make our highest, best contribution through leadership, strategy, planning, decision-making, big projects, and hiring.

More on that in a moment.

3. Too little thinking time

Many effective CMOs rise up the ranks because we have a bias toward action.

But there comes a point, many points in fact, when what the situation demands is not doing but clearer, more rigorous thinking; not pellmell execution but reflection in the form of pen and paper, a walk, or an hour spent peppering the challenge or opportunity with better questions.

A quote from Peter Drucker serves here: “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

4. No marketing manager / coordinator

Conscientious CMOs want to keep their promises, and if there aren’t enough hands on deck, they have to use their own.

Several CEOs I’ve talked to weren’t “getting enough” out of their CMOs because they hadn’t given them enough hands and had inadvertently forced them into the marketing coordinator role.

It’s the CMO’s job to tell CEOs what they need, but still, you can’t give a CMO two jobs and expect them to be superb at both. There won’t be enough time and attention to go around.

You’ll get more out of your CMO if you 1) give them a marketing manager / coordinator, and 2) also give them budget to hire specialists (agencies, consultants, freelancers) to move more projects along faster without overcommitting themselves.