How do you stay up to date with marketing? If you’re leading an organization that is not a marketing organization, how do you stay on top of your marketing? Are you investing in a staff person who’s keeping up with marketing? Is it their sole responsibility? Are they having to do all the areas of marketing or are they focused in just one area? Or do you not have someone in marketing and are you having to try to learn marketing for yourself, even though you might be really good at something else like banking or insurance or roofing? There’s been a new concept that’s becoming more and more popular in our economy called fractional work or outsource work or part time work for chief financial officers and chief marketing officers. This fractional CMO or part time CMO or outsource CMO has become more and more prominent and it’s something that we are doing more of because more and more companies are deciding it’s not worth investing in a marketing person full-time for a couple of reasons. When you hire a full-time marketing person, you want them to do everything. And it’s very difficult to do everything. Very few creatives are capable of doing many things very well across lots of disciplines.
Marketing strategy is different from graphic design. Graphic design is different from videography. Videography is different from social media and social media is related to but different from copywriting. Previously, small and medium-sized companies would expect someone, whether they thought it out loud or not, they wanted someone to do all of these things and to do them all well, and that’s just an impossible task. We’ve worked with several companies where we either augment an existing person’s ability or advise those marketing managers to a higher level, or we come in and fill the need completely because we can provide marketing strategy and with our team delivery of that strategy. Additionally, because of our experience in the marketplace, we have a lot more experience than a lot of people who start in these positions because many times these companies hire younger people to fill these roles and we bring a touch of experience and expertise from different industries and cross-pollination from our different accounts. When you hire internally, the hiring and firing of staff members brings a lot of cost and a lot of trouble that can come with it. You have to be thinking about, I’m not just hiring this person for a few hours, I’m hiring them 40 hours a week with salary and benefits and time off and drama and things of that nature.
So how do you compensate for all that? The great thing about a fractional CMO is a fractional CMO is responsible for providing value, not punching a clock. You can fire them and hire them, and well, there’s no severance, there’s no insurance, and there’s no drama. David C. Baker pointed out that perspective and seeing the bigger picture are hugely important values that consultants bring to the table. You are dug into the details of your work. You’re looking at the map with a magnifying glass, and we’re standing back and looking at the entire mountain. Outside consultants give perspective that insiders can often miss. Marketing consultants are available. Like I am, you can call me. But the question you need to ask is, is the focus of your organization enough on marketing? Are you properly equipping someone to do the marketing if you’re internal? Or are you spending enough time learning so that you can stay up on top of what’s new in marketing? Because someone has to do it if you want to thrive as organization. So if you’d like to talk about hiring a fractional CMO and maybe that would be us, I would love to set up a Zoom with you.
Give me an email at kevin@adelsbergermarketing.com or send us a DM. Thank you for listening to the Content Machine Podcast. Stay tuned for more insight and future episodes.
