Fractional Marketing Could Cost You More if You Don’t Use it

Lowering costs is one of the deciding motivators behind hiring a fractional marketing expert or CMO. However, small- and medium-sized companies don’t have a sufficient operating budget to hire one full-time. Even if they did, it wouldn’t be the smartest use of their money. Fractional marketing only takes up a small chunk of your budget at the start, and in the long run, it saves your brand even more for reasons that go beyond payroll, benefits packages, and office expenses

Also Read: A Beginner’s Guide to App Marketing

If you choose not to use this popular and effective method for handling marketing strategies, you may end up wasting money that could serve you far better. Due to pandemic-related economic changes and shifts to non-employee positions, fractional marketing CMOs stand out as an integral part of growth across many industries around the world.

Operating Without a CMO

If your company doesn’t have a chief marketing officer (CMO), it may use one of the following methods. You might have an in-house marketing manager whose primary role is to oversee ads and campaigns. Otherwise, the CEO or another executive may take on marketing management roles themselves. While it may seem like both options save money because you don’t have to do any hiring, they end up costing more in the long run.

How? A marketing manager may not have the expertise needed to use data effectively and come up with strategic plans that improve results. They may act reactively to the market instead of staying agile within your industry or niche. A general disconnect between their skill set and responsibilities may lead to dissatisfaction and stress, which leaves you needing to hire someone else and spend more money.

If a CEO takes on CMO responsibilities, they are more likely to focus on a result that makes the brand the most profitable, rather than bringing expertise that creates the most effective strategies. One person simply can’t take on every role and give all the attention that each deserves. The lost opportunity for conversions, sales, and profits are why the failure to use fractional marketing costs more.

Fractional Marketing Cost and Value

When it comes to running a successful business, everything comes back to the comparison between cost and value. You can’t seek to save money on talent or advertising methods without taking the end result into account. No matter how inexpensive current marketing efforts are, they’re nothing but a waste of money if they don’t deliver results.

The same thing holds true for a fractional CMO. You already know hiring a part-time executive or outsourcing on a contractual basis costs less than onboarding a full-time executive. Fractional marketing uses a smaller amount of your administrative budget in the beginning as well as on a long-term basis. Yet you may still worry that the savings translate into lower overall value when it comes to the returns for your company.

When you find a high-quality fractional marketing expert to help, the value far exceeds the cost. Not only do you stop wasting your marketing budget on strategies that don’t work, but you also increase returns on new campaigns and efforts the CMO develops for your brand. This is what fractional marketing expertise offers.

How Does Fractional Marketing Cost Less?

The hourly pay or overall contract costs for a fractional marketing CMO may look prohibitive at first glance. Startups, as well as medium-sized companies, may balk at the idea of spending so much money on a part-time executive. However, not using fractional marketing ends up costing more than ignoring the need to revitalize strategy and streamline campaigns.

Fractional marketing is not all about finding an outside CMO. According to Digital Authority, this umbrella term covers a wide variety of talented experts that provide diverse marketing benefits. Many of these represent tasks you may already outsource to freelancers or contract workers, like writing content marketing texts, designing graphic or video ads, creating advertising strategies using different methods or platforms, working on SEO both on-site and off-site, and auditing existing assets and efforts for improvements.

The ability to bridge gaps in your employee or executive teams with outside talent gives you affordable and high-value help exactly when and where you need it. Even if you do create a contract with an outside executive or other specialized service providers, you still have to pay close attention to results to measure true value. A contract with a fractional marketing executive usually lasts one year or longer. While speed and flexibility are both assets, it may take some time for the CMO to properly analyze existing problems and come up with strategies to fix them. The fact that they only work with you for a set number of hours each month should also help you set your expectations.

On the other hand, a fractional marketing service provider contract may not cut into your budget nearly as much. Changes might happen slowly as past mistakes get corrected and processes streamlined. However, as long as you source talent intelligently and look for those with the experience and know-how to use modern marketing methods, the value they bring to the company will vastly exceed the cost. In the long run, it’s more expensive to stick with outdated or ineffective methods than to engage the services of fractional marketing experts and make smart changes that lead to better results.

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