For Best Minneapolis SMB Growth, Try Guidance from an FCMO

Small and medium-sized businesses perform well under the right conditions. However, nowadays, competition is getting tighter as more companies are competing with one another. This leaves small businesses without the right marketing tactics or plans to fall behind.

For SMBs based in Minneapolis, this might seem like the case. However, the burden of competing with other companies can disappear with the help of a fractional CMO.

A fractional CMO in Minneapolis is a marketing expert specializing in personalized and well-crafted campaigns that get people talking about your brand name.

This guide goes over the benefits of hiring a Minneapolis fractional CMO, such as:

• Market analysis and strategic development
• Digital market optimization
• Brand building and positioning
• Custom acquisition and retention strategies
• Sales and revenue optimization techniques
• Data-driven decisions
• Scalability and sustainability

Can a Minneapolis fractional CMO help your SMB? Find out more with this video!

8 Ways a Minneapolis Fractional CMO Helps Your SMB

Hiring a Minneapolis fractional CMO is optimal for small to medium-sized companies who want to scale up and gain more visibility.

Here are some of the benefits of choosing one for your SMB.

1. Guides SMBs in Market Analysis and Strategy Development

Unlike large corporations, SMBs often lack the financial capacity to hire a full-time marketing executive compared to larger companies in Minneapolis. They may also need some assistance in creating a marketing plan that shows off the best of their business. 

When SMBs need a boat, the FCMO is there to lift them up. FCMOs bring a wealth of experience in various areas to guide SMBs toward proper market research and analysis. Fractional CMOs’ specialties include a keen understanding of different markets and industries. They bring that knowledge to SMBs to help them create campaigns, including training for when the FCMO leaves. 

Additional services include finding the right demographic for your product or service, finding patterns or trends in customers’ behavior, and knowing their pain points. This information helps inform a marketing funnel (which your FCMO can better build out with certain types of digital channels at certain funnel points).

All this information is vital in devising an ideal marketing strategy that allows you to speak to the right audiences.

2. Conducts Competitor Analysis

Minneapolis FCMOs also specialize in competitor analysis. They look into your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses and see how you can fill marketing gaps in your industry.

For example, let’s look at the arts, entertainment, and recreation industry. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, there are 28,474 businesses in this sector in Minnesota. That’s a lot.

Regardless of what sector you are in, you’ll have to compete with a thousand competitors, which seems impossible at first—but not with a Minneapolis FCMO. One way they might do this is by examining the marketing mix of your competition, which includes:

• Products - What are your products or services like compared to theirs?
• Pricing - What are the price discrepancies?
• Place - What location are they targeting?
• Promotion - How are they promoting themselves?

In this step, your team and Minneapolis FCMO will work together to determine your competitive edge. What can you offer that others cannot? How is your product better (or worse) than this other brand? These questions give insights into how to potentially one-up your competition in any way.

3. Prioritizes Digital Marketing Optimization

Everything is digital nowadays. You can find almost every business promoting their services all over social media and even on search engines. Digital or online marketing is one of the best ways to reach a wider audience. Your Minneapolis fractional CMO can help boost your online presence through different methods.

One of the ways to increase your online visibility is through proper search engine optimization (SEO). This process involves finding the right keywords to rank for on the search engines and creating user-friendly content that aids users and provides them with valuable information.

This also includes optimizing your company website. You can ask your fractional CMO to help maintain your website and keep it SEO-friendly and ADA-compliant guidelines to rank higher on the search results.

4. Promotes Brand Building and Positioning

Unlike larger corporations that can spend more on marketing and target expansion, small businesses do not have the same budget, expertise, or staff to handle these tasks.

This is where the FCMO comes in handy. Coming up with your branding and positioning is a good starting point to put your name on the map. They do this by breaking your brand down into smaller parts, identifying a target audience, and your unique selling proposition. Additionally, your FCMO can help create a positioning statement that describes your product or services and how it fills a gap in the market.

The FCMO also helps your SMB create its mission and vision statements. Once you figure out these messages and convey them to the right audiences, you can easily convince more customers and position yourself well within the industry. Your FCMO helps determine your brand’s current position and how to move up, making it easier to find a place in a giant industry.

5. Creates Strategies for Customer Acquisition and Retention

Customers can come and go. When customers interact with your brand once, we want them to interact with the brand again. As a small or medium-sized business, pulling in new customers and encouraging them to remain loyal for the long term is the best way to make use of the lead generation budget. 

Here is where the services of an FCMO come in handy: They excel at developing strategies that guarantee new customers and retain old ones. For an SMB, this consistent flow of customers is paramount for achieving business growth in a competitive market.

Part of this process involves market research and analyzing your Minneapolis customers’ behaviors, pain points, and unique needs. That way, you can understand their stories and how you can provide the solution to their problems.

Your FCMO can help you devise marketing campaigns that resonate with your desired market. Using the information and data from the research stage, your SMB’s marketing plans speak to the right audiences at the right time and on the right platforms.

6. Develops Techniques for Sales and Revenue Optimization

Small and medium-sized businesses have to find a way to generate enough sales and revenue to outperform their competition, especially if up against large names with more customers and higher profits.

Fortunately, Minneapolis fractional CMOs are proficient in creating revenue-driving tactics that keep still-growing businesses afloat and competitive. FCMOs create tailored strategies that attract prospective customers and get them to spend money on products and services. These are data-driven strategies, meaning that money is spent wisely, giving groups a better chance of return on a dollar.

7. Applies Data-Driven Decision Making

Minneapolis fractional CMOs are data-driven professionals who base all their decisions on research and facts. They leverage various data sources and analytics tools to make objective conclusions and prevent biases or preconceived notions.

One of the FCMO’s tasks is setting objectives or KPIs to help measure the success of their campaigns. These KPIs can include various factors such as conversion rates or new leads generated (depending on what the company needs at that time). These KPIs act as benchmarks for what the company plans to achieve and by when. This also allows them to see what elements they need to improve on for future campaigns.

8. Promote Scalability and Sustainability

Sustainability is more important than ever, and businesses of all sizes strive to maintain this responsibility. Fractional CMOs help you achieve the same through sustainability marketing, focusing not only on financial sustainability but on social and environmental sustainability as well.

For example, your Minneapolis FCMO can design marketing strategies to promote sustainable and eco-friendly practices and materials. It is also a matter of having defined long-term sustainability goals to work toward.

FCMOs also allow their clients to execute marketing campaigns flexibly. Market changes happen nearly every day, and companies need to be on their toes and adjust their plans accordingly. Fractional CMOs develop scalable plans so companies can reallocate resources if necessary for improved changes at marketing success.

Hire a Fractional CMO from Minneapolis Now!

Hiring a Minneapolis fractional CMO could mean the difference between outperforming your competitors and falling behind. An FCMO helps steer the ship and guides your business toward the right path using their knowledge of the ins and outs of marketing.

There are a lot of factors to consider when looking for fractional marketing assistance: Let’s talk at Digital Authority Partners! Here at DAP, we have an extremely talented pool of CMOs who bring years of experience to the table. If you are interested in starting your journey, contact us now!