Want to up your marketing game because your company is scaling fast? But don’t have the budget to hire someone full-time? The answer could lie in hiring a part-time Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). A part-time CMO will help you take charge of your marketing strategy and bring it to life, delivering results that reflect your company’s growth, while keeping within your budget. Read on to find out how hiring a part-time CMO can help you grow and scale your business at a fraction of the cost.
What is a part-time CMO?
To put it bluntly, hiring a full-time CMO doesn’t come cheap. So, if you don’t have a huge budget and six-figure salary to blow on a marketing executive, what do you do?
Most part-time CMOs are freelancers or sole traders, so they work for themselves offering consultancy and advice to businesses. You can hire them as a contractor to work for your company for as many hours as you need them to, at a fraction of the cost.
A good part-time CMO will still be able to get your marketing strategy up and running, lead your marketing team, organise your business strategies so they align with your goals, and generally help your business grow by providing an experienced set of eyes to lead your marketing team and strategy. They should bring fresh new perspectives and ideas to the table, and help take some of the workload off of your shoulders, or providing much needed senior expertise if you have a young, talented, but inexperienced team.
What does a part-time CMO do?
A part time CMO will help you identify areas of growth within your business, and deliver a marketing strategy that helps your company generate even more sales through greater customer engagement.
They won’t just guess or make assumptions on which marketing tactics to use – they’ll know from experience what works, what doesn’t, and be aware of all the latest and emerging trends.
They’ll drill down into what works for your business, making data-based decisions and liaising with your current marketing team to establish what has (or hasn’t) worked for your marketing strategy in the past.
If you lack knowledge in a certain area of marketing, or just want an experienced pair of hands to manage your strategy, a part-time CMO should deliver the results you need with a streamlined marketing plan.
There are different part-time CMOs working across different sectors, so do your homework and hire someone with a great reputation in (and understanding of) your industry.
Will hiring a part-time CMO help small businesses?
Yes! If you feel like your marketing strategy is nothing but a headache you can’t get rid of because you’re time poor, constrained by budgets, or just don’t know a lot about marketing, then it’s time to get a part-time CMO on your team. They’ll offer a fresh pair of eyes to look at your marketing efforts, filling any gaps and turning things around to prioritise what really matters to your business, so you can continue to grow and scale.
More cost-effective
A CMO joining your business on a part-time basis is far more cost-effective than a hiring a CMO as a full-time employee. According to Forbes, the average starting salary for a full-time CMO is around or £133,000. With these kinds of salaries, both you and your part-time CMO will be aware that the time you have is valuable. So they’ll be solely focused on the projects that matter, rather than time-wasting tasks. The idea is that you’ll get better value for money, because you’ll only need to hire them to deliver on projects that matter, whether short- or long-term.
Improve recruiting efforts
As your business grows, hiring a part-time CMO will open doors to other C-suite executives who can take up meaningful roles in your company. The CMO will be able to make staffing recommendations as you continue to scale up and should give advice on hiring and delegating team members within your business.
5 reasons to hire a part-time CMO
Have we convinced you yet? Let’s break it down and give you five main reasons why hiring a CMO could be the right decision for your business growth and marketing strategy.
1. They bring years of knowledge and experience to the team
A part-time CMO will bring years of experience with them. They’ll have an enviable black book of contacts, and plenty of ideas up their sleeve to get your marketing strategy steaming ahead. Working with your existing marketing team, they’ll coach and mentor team members, and arrange coordination between your business and external agencies if needed. They’ll focus on the day-to-day marketing operations within your company, and how these align with your overall objectives. In areas of the business where there isn’t designated marketing leadership, a part-time CMO will take the reins and put together a strong branding strategy that is team-wide, so that all staff members are working together in a more tight-knit fashion.
2. They bring business leadership to your company
They’ll be a leader who can hit the ground running. Many part-time CMOs are senior marketing executives, and are very likely to have their own businesses themselves. This means that they can help you with your strategic positioning within your industry, and ensure company growth. They’ll have experience at board level, and can bring this leadership to your brand, as and when you need it, all at a fraction of the cost of a full-time CMO.
3. They see the big picture
Part-time CMOs aren’t just doers. They step back and see the bigger picture. With them by your side, your business can achieve its long-term goals with a tailor-made strategy. Of course, making sales is fundamental to your overall success as a business, and good marketing keeps the cash flowing. A part-time CMO will see opportunities to make new sales organically, across new and existing channels, to increase growth. They will help your own team to understand its demographic and effective targeting.
The CMO will also make sure that you have the means to track data properly, so you can see what works, and what doesn’t, in terms of your marketing. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will measure a campaign’s success or failure, and your CMO will be able to use these indicators to track the overall performance of your company. It’s been suggested that around half of small business owners often fail to set KPI’s, making it harder for them to make decisions based on evidence and current data.
4. They provide mentorship to management and teams
Hiring a part-time CMO will mean that your current marketing team has a mentor and guide. Your staff members can pick their brain in terms of strategies, workload capacity, and working towards goals. The CMO will have a highly experienced background in business and marketing and can provide mentorship to more junior and inexperienced members of staff in your business. The CMO may also provide workshops or in-house training if they feel staff are lacking in knowledge in some areas, or they may advise that you hire new talent to add to the success of your current team.
5. They free up time for business owners
Hiring a part-time CMO won’t be the same as hiring a marketing agency. And sometimes, there are perfectly valid reasons why you shouldn’t hire a marketing agency, especially if you’re a small business owner. The CMO will focus on branding, design, social media, marketing and strategy, leaving other duties to you and your staff. But because of their amazing skills in marketing and leadership, you can trust them to get on with the job in hand, leaving time free for the important jobs that you need to focus on in your business.
Key takeaways
- Before hiring a part-time CMO for your business, take a more detailed look at what your company needs. Does your marketing team lack direction and strategy? Do your marketing techniques need an overhaul? Do you need more effective branding and design? Once you have identified where your business needs work, it’s time to get hiring!
- The results you will get from hiring a part-time CMO will be as good as the person you decide to hire. Check their experience and qualifications in business and marketing, and check if they can collaborate effectively with your current team. What does their track record look like? Ask if they’ve worked on similar projects before, and if you’d like to see proof.
- Ultimately, the best skill a part-time CMO should have is execution. They should understand what good content marketing is, and which tactics to implement into your current strategy. They won’t just be creating effective marketing strategies – they’ll need to execute them as well. You should also lay down an agreement to keep in touch with them and have their ongoing ad-hoc support even once their contract with you is complete.
Combined, all of the above should give you the freedom and time you need to focus on running your business, and less time on menial tasks and managing your own marketing machine.
Looking for a Part-Time CMO transform your business?
At Leadership Services, we provide part-time Marketing Directors and CMOs for businesses who want to outsource their marketing efforts without hiring a full-time MD or CMO.
If you’re interested in learning more about part-time MDs/CMOs and how they could help your business grow, reach out to us today. We’d be happy to discuss your specific needs and see if a part-time CMO is the right fit for you.