What Do Fractional CMOs Do? (5 Central Responsibilities)

Many businesses can benefit from a San Diego fractional CMO agency. But knowing more about  how fractional Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) can aid your business is key.

This article lists a fractional CMOs five chief responsibilities:

• Strategic marketing planning
• Brand development and management
• Marketing campaign formulation and management
• Marketing team leadership
• Tracking and optimization

A fractional CMO helps build and manage your marketing department so you can grow fast while efficiently using available resources. Take advantage of the opportunity to hire one by learning about their primary roles in the article below. Let’s go!

Wondering what a Fractional CMO can do for your business? Watch this video below.

1. Strategic Marketing Planning

Marketing strategies (or the lack thereof) can make or break businesses. The job of a San Diego fractional CMO agency is to devise a marketing strategy and set the conditions for success. Two of its to-dos are:

• Conducting intensive market research
• Formulating the right marketing plan

When learning more about your market, a fractional CMO finds the answers to the following questions:

• Who is your target market?
• Where do they buy?
• How do they find your products and services?
• What is their customer profile and buyer journey?
• Who are your competitors? How long have they been in business?
• What is your niche?
• What are the current market and industry trends that might affect your growth? Can they benefit or harm your goals and plans?

From these answers, the fractional CMO can create the ideal promotional plan that aligns with your business objectives, resources, and target audience.

2. Brand Development and Management

Amazon is one of the biggest e-commerce marketplaces online. However, it is not the only one. What makes it different from others, even overshadowing the leaders in many niches, such as Barnes & Noble?

A podcast dived into its growth strategy and discovered that most of its products and services are tightly connected. It did not just acquire Whole Foods. It wanted to maximize its hundreds of fulfillment centers and give more value to its Prime offers.

Such is the power of branding. Branding goes beyond logos and slogans and covers your unique selling proposition, a deep understanding of your markets and competitors, and a comprehensive growth strategy tailored to your organization’s culture and business plans.

A fractional CMO helps you build, refine, and manage your brand identity by helping you:

• Communicate the brand’s value and distinctiveness to the target audience.
• Craft messaging that aligns with the brand strategy and resonates with the target audience.
• Implement strategies to address any negative feedback or public relations issues.
• Enforce brand consistency by establishing brand guidelines and ensuring adherence to them across all marketing materials, campaigns, and customer touchpoints.
• Identify strategic partnerships and collaborations that help increase brand exposure and enhance perception.
• Focus on improving the overall brand experience for customers.

3. Marketing Campaign Formulation and Management

Some marketing flops happen not because of a lack of planning but because of poor execution and management. The Gap logo redesign is a classic example.

The idea was simple: introduce a different brand direction to its existing audience. However, the new look was generic and unattractive to its loyal fans, who were fond of its old logo.

When your marketing campaigns are not producing the desired outcomes, it is a sure sign to get high-level guidance from a fractional CMO. Although this professional is not deeply involved in the legwork (a.k.a., writing content or doing search engine optimization), they manage many elements that influence your advertising outcomes. In particular, they allocate marketing budgets and resources efficiently and identify the best promotion channels.

A San Diego fractional CMO agency, for example, conducts an audit of your existing marketing campaigns by:

• Defining the audit objectives, such as evaluating returns
• Collecting relevant data and documentation related to the campaigns being audited
• Reviewing the overall marketing strategy and goals to understand the intended outcomes of the campaigns
• Analyzing the target audience for each campaign, reviewing customer profiles, segmentation, and persona research
• Assessing creative assets, such as advertisements, landing pages, emails, or social media content, for messaging, design, branding, and overall effectiveness
• Conducting an analysis to benchmark the campaigns against industry competitors and identify areas where the campaigns might be falling short
• Determining the strengths and weaknesses of each campaign, including recognizing successful elements such as high-performing channels or effective messaging

4. Marketing Team Leadership

What do Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Oprah, and Barack Obama have in common? Many believed they followed the five-hour rule, wherein one spends an hour each weekday (thus, five hours in a week) engaging in a learning activity. It could be reading, listening to a podcast, or watching a YouTube video on your chosen topic.

The knowledge can help you grow personally and professionally. From a business standpoint, it can ignite innovation and inspire creativity. However, most business owners do not have the time. Many spend over 12 hours a day running the company and handling tasks they hardly know anything about.

If you truly desire growth, leave some essential business aspects to the experts. Let a San Diego fractional CMO agency handle marketing and give yourself more time for other essential activities, including learning. 

The agency can:

• Determine the optimal team structure and composition
• Assess whether to build an in-house marketing team or engage and manage external agencies
• Define roles and responsibilities within the marketing team
• Identify the key areas of expertise needed, such as digital marketing, content creation, or analytics
• Facilitate cross-functional teamwork by promoting collaboration with other departments
• Establish processes and tools to streamline work, assign tasks, and monitor progress
• Provide guidance and support to team members, helping them navigate challenges, make informed decisions, and excel in their roles 
• Foster a culture of learning and growth

5. Tracking and Optimization

Just because you have millions of followers and a high engagement rate does not mean your social media plans are working. Sometimes marketing campaigns can result in a lot of smoke and mirrors. What you really want are greater conversions and sales.

Tracking and analyzing the available data is the only way to know if you are hitting your campaign objectives, whether to improve demand generation or increase returns. However, although this step is crucial, it is time-consuming and complex.

This is when fractional CMOs are ideal for businesses. They:

• Leverage analytics tools and technologies to collect data on key performance indicators (KPIs) such as website traffic, conversion rates, engagement metrics, customer acquisition costs, and revenue attribution
• Understand the performance metrics to gain actionable insights
• Identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement, such as allocating resources to more successful channels
• Enhance campaign performance, increase efficiency, and drive better results by adjusting targeting parameters, refining messaging, optimizing ad placements, or experimenting with new approaches
• Conduct A/B testing to compare different variations of marketing elements and determine the most effective options

Summing Up

A fractional CMO is like having a top-caliber marketing consultant or strategist in your business without paying full price for their service and expertise. This gives you more room for growth.

If you want to succeed, choose the right team to work with. Digital Authority Partners, a San Diego fractional CMO agency, helps you scale by giving you the best of both worlds: a marketing team that understands your business objectives and a digital strategy that works.

Contact us to get started on your journey.