The future of in-house marketing teams.
The purpose of the CMO is changing. It’s no longer about advertising and brand management, I mean it is, but it’s so much more, they’re a business strategist, a data, systems and customer expert. Scale-up retailers are looking for a CMO who can build an end-to-end marketing strategy that supports long-term growth. A CMO that promotes a customer-centric environment and leads and nurtures a thriving team.
The last two years, the complexity of systems and customer needs has led founders to need a heavy-hitting CMO to take them to the next era of growth, so they can still be focused on the other critical areas of business operations. Whilst remaining confident marketing will work and sales will grow. But, is it affordable to have a CMO valued anywhere from $150k-$300k for a growing business, of course not! But you need one… So what are your options.
In this article, we explore:
- What is an incrementally focused CMO
- 3 Options for hiring a CMO for scale-up
- Tactics, Team & Tech, 3 competitive advantages of an Incrementally focused CMO for scale-ups
- The future of in-house teams & getting started
What Is an Incrementally focused CMO?
An incrementally focused CMO sits between the founder, owner or operator fulfilling the CMO role designed to drive performance and strategy. Simply put, it’s an expert who focuses on small changes that compound in impact over time. They have an approach to performance improvement focused on small efforts to slowly but surely move towards success. Their ideas are typically low risk and are implemented by employees through your organisation. What’s beautiful about the incrementally focused CMO is that they understand the importance of building capabilities to execute, making your staff become more valuable and, when done right, also become intrinsically motivated about their work. Leading to happier more passionate engaged teams and the thing we all want… better results.
3 signs you need an incremental CMO & Options for hiring a CMO for your scale-ups. Hire Vs Agency Vs Training
Sign #1: You’re not a marketer, you’ve done a good job to date but you’re over it and want someone else to do it!
Sign #2: You’ve hired some people to help or maybe you’ve outsourced marketing, like designers, they get sh*t done but they don’t know how to do strategy, and you’re constantly telling them what to do. However, you see some potential if they could learn how to be more strategic.
Sign #3: You have agencies doing paid performance, it’s working, but your customer data (email lists, past purchases and campaign performance) is gathering dust.
CMO’s are expensive and not affordable for everyone, they might also not be necessary full time. You need someone who can design and implement an amazing marketing growth strategy based on your low hanging fruit and long-term vision.
So how do you get an incremental CMO? Here are 3 options
Option 1, Hiring: Well like I said they can be very expensive, don’t get me wrong having a high performing full time CMO in a large organisation is exactly what is required. On average they will cost you about $190K+. We have seen requests of salaries up to $300k, depending on experience. Not always the best option for a business who needs to keep control of costs.
The benefit of having an in-house CMO is that it allows more oversight and control of direction.
Option 2, Agency: The beautiful thing about an agency is that they can provide you with a different view. But this can be both a good and bad thing. For example, agencies typically aren’t connected to your customers as you need to be for things like retention, customer experience and email marketing.
Don’t get me wrong, some full-service agencies can be an amazing resource, but when we’re talking about scale-ups, sometimes you won’t get what you dream of.
Agencies can be wonderful for top of the funnel activities such as SEO and PPC. But if you’re looking for overall strategy and execution across your entire customer journey this can quickly become expensive.
There is also an element of internal strategic skills you will need to develop for driving an agency, the biggest complaint we hear from agencies is “our clients can’t tell us exactly what they want done”, meaning they are relying on you for strategic direction when it comes to campaigns. So, you still need some skills and know how to direct then in-house.
Option 3, Fractional & Up skill: So, what if you could have the best of both worlds a fresh set of eyes and strategy, not to mention have someone train some internal people or hire some key skills to help you execute? Sounds like a dream right? Well, this is the role of a fractional CMO, someone who has CMO skills, can direct strategy and if they worth their weight they should leave you with the skills and frameworks to execute for growth in marketing for the long term.
A fractional CMO is a service designed to audit your business and identify opportunities, paths, people and the processes to reach your goals. Providing you with a roadmap for future growth and an understanding of the capabilities available now. All while training capabilities internally to achieve the goals with incremental improvements to team performance, processes and procedures.
Get all the benefits of hiring one without the price tag. Perfect for a scale-up organisation and dare I say, this is the future of in-house marketing!
While a CMO may act as an authority, resource or strategic guide to your business, an fractional incrementally focused CMO will offer the same level of service, all while training your people to deliver on the opportunities, keeping you in control and aware of new opportunities as the arise.
Tech, Team, Tactics – 3 Advantages of hiring a factional incrementally focused CMO
Okay, so you’re probably keen to know more about how a fraction CMO who focuses on incremental growth and training can do for your organisation. There are many direct and even in-direct benefits to engaging an incrementally focused CMO for your scale up. Many of which are focused on the growth of your internal capabilities.
- Team = Incremental Practices
An incrementally focused CMO will provide direction and guide implementation of incremental practices throughout your marketing team (and beyond!). They will offer insights and systems for continuous improvement. They will provide you access to a broad toolkit of strategies, frameworks and tactics in order to aid the gradual improvement of outputs and outcomes. This can be anything from uncovering efficiencies in marketing teams, improving your team’s performance, scoping and developing customer-centric projects, or even optimising strategy and campaign performance. The key here is that all of it can be accomplished with sustainable, incremental improvements that gradually lift your organisation with visibility and insight. - Tactics = Processes To Optimise Performance.
If you’re scaling up, starting out or even well established in eComm, it’s mission-critical to understand what’s required to optimise your performance. The skills and processes required to optimise, grow and nurture your team, tech and marketing tactics can take years to acquire. An incrementally focused CMO offers you the benefit of mapping where you are now. Starting with an in-depth audit, the opportunities for your next growth phase will be outlined, as well as the processes you need to reach them.
- Tactics = Laser Focus On Objective
Whether you have objectives set, or are feeling lost in the processes of setting them, an incrementally focused CMO will give you the framework to both set and reach your objectives. As a scale-up, you’re very aware of the amount of time soaked up by reactivity. Constant reactivity is an objective killer. While there is no silver bullet to end reactivity, an incrementally focused CMO can show you methodologies for making proactivity scheduled, predictable and productive. As well as providing the mechanisms to build predictability and structure to your reactive times too. - Tech = Making The Most Of Spend, Tech & Capabilities
Lastly, and perhaps one of the more overlooked benefits of an incrementally focused CMO: Milking it! The modern marketer is being constantly bombarded with new tools promising the world. Selling the dream of 400% YoY growth or AI-optimised websites, bid strategy or audience targeting. All of this noise is distracting us from the most common-sense approach of all:
What can we achieve with what we have now?
The ever-growing access to new tools is stifling innovation. Tech debts (underutilised technology) are crippling businesses. The state of the great reshuffle is creating representatives that are less informed about the tools they are selling or integrating for retailers. This is compounding tech debts as their promised ROI dwindles. Founders are often left scratching their heads and asking if the investment or migration stress was really worth it. Could they have done something different?
Incrementally focused CMOs are accustomed to working with smaller teams, they are geared toward running lean, high-performance machines. Unlike an agency an incrementally focused CMO won’t make you invest in new tech unless it’s critical for the growth goals of the organisation. Whether it’s a CDN, CDP, CRM or any other acronym in the alphabet soup, any incrementally focused CMO worth their weight can improve your processes to make the most of what you have now before looking at the next right tool for you.
What this means for the future of in-house marketing & your next best steps…
In-house capabilities are becoming more critical than ever for business agility, performance and customer-centricity. It’s mission-critical that we nurture individuals now in order to develop high-performing assets for the future.
The opportunities that a fractional incrementally focused CMO can create for your team go beyond that of just fulfilling a function of a CMO. An incrementally focused CMO will help extract your brand’s vision, mission and values in order to create alignment within your team and implement a proven strategies to improve growth working with what you have and not breaking the bank to get growth.
With even further opportunities for nurturing and train individuals to excel within your growing business.
So start here, a fractional CMO who can first audit and has a focus on team training it’s a common-sense next step.