Messy Marketing? A Fractional CMO Can Help

By Nicole Croizier

If you’re like many B2B CEOs, you’ve grown your company on mainly sales-led initiatives with ad-hoc marketing for various campaigns or activities here and there.

Over the years, this ad-hoc marketing has become scattered and messy. You’ve engaged various different marketing agencies and contractors. One agency created your eBooks. Another agency set up your SEO. You brought in a freelancer to write those blog posts. And you’re not quite sure who set up those social media and AdWords campaigns… are they even still running?

At the same time, your sales and customer success teams have been filling in marketing gaps by creating their own sales, marketing, and training materials.

At best, your messaging is all over the place. At worst, it’s confusing, conflicting and works at cross purposes. And nothing is connected or working together.

B2B companies can continue on in this fashion for quite a while before reaching a high enough pain point to grab attention. And usually, when that happens, it’s because you’ve hit a revenue plateau and realize that more and more sales efforts are no longer working to move your revenue needle.

You realize you need marketing help – and then you realize your current marketing is a scattered disaster and impossible to figure out. We call this the Messy Marketing Moment. That moment you realize you can’t do this alone, you need help.

So what do you do? You don’t have a single point of contact for your marketing, you don’t know what’s working and not working, you don’t even know where everything is. There could be more marketing stuff out there you don’t even know about!

Enter the Fractional CMO – Your Messy Marketing Hero

When you’ve reached that Messy Marketing Moment, this is not the time to assign an executive assistant or your graphic design person to “figure it out”. I will tell you flat out, they won’t be able to.

It’s also not the time to hire a junior marketing person and say – “Ok – unravel this mess – good luck!”. A junior marketing person needs structure, guidance and mentoring. Asking this person to fix a marketing mess is an unfair ask and simply sets them up to fail.

You need to bring in the big guns…

…You need someone who can meet you at your level as a CEO and really understand your business goals, and what’s been happening in your business up until now

…You need someone who can talk to your other leaders in sales, product and customer success to understand what they’ve been doing to support business goals

…You need someone who can see the overarching marketing strategy needed to achieve your business goals, along with the real world systems, content and activities to make it happen.

You need a senior marketing leader, someone who has been around the block. You need a Fractional CMO.

A Fractional CMO has the strategic mind and deep experience needed to understand where your business has been, where it’s heading, and what is needed now marketing-wise to get there. Then, they can audit all of the messy marketing that’s in place right now, and recognize why it’s there, if it’s working, and what needs to be fixed, changed, connected or discarded altogether.

Your Fractional CMO can clean up your messy marketing, and put a best practices system in place that makes sure everything you do is on brand, on message, integrated, and working together efficiently toward a common goal.

Here’s how a Fractional CMO can transform your fragmented marketing landscape into a seamless and effective strategy:

Unified Strategy Building: If your marketing has felt like a collection of disjointed efforts, a Fractional CMO is your solution. They excel at assembling the pieces of the puzzle to create a unified strategy that aligns seamlessly with your business objectives. Say goodbye to scattered campaigns – with their guidance, you’ll have a strategic roadmap that leads to consistent and aligned success.
Bringing Order to Chaos: With multiple agencies and contractors in the mix, your brand might have lost its consistent voice, and your campaigns may have started to work at cross-purposes. A Fractional CMO takes on the role of your brand’s guardian, ensuring that every campaign, message, and visual element ties into a singular brand identity. This consistency not only reinforces your brand, but also makes you instantly recognizable in the market.

Budget Alchemy: Shuffling between various agencies and contractors can sometimes lead to budget leaks, especially when managed by different people or departments. A Fractional CMO conducts a thorough review of all marketing activities, agencies, and contractors, consolidating them under a single, consistent strategic umbrella. This approach helps you manage costs effectively, ensuring that your marketing budget is allocated where it matters most, preventing wastage and guaranteeing that each dollar contributes meaningfully to your growth.

Seamless Team Collaboration: Internal teams and external agencies often operate in isolation. A Fractional CMO steps in as the bridge that connects these disparate entities. They streamline communication, ensuring that everyone works cohesively towards a shared goal. This collaborative synergy results in campaigns that are well-coordinated and perfectly aligned.

Insights That Drive Informed Decisions: If your marketing efforts have primarily relied on hunches and guesswork, a Fractional CMO introduces a fresh perspective grounded in deep experience and data-driven decision-making. They meticulously analyze past marketing efforts, measure results, and apply these insights to refine strategies. The outcome? No more blind shots in the dark – just marketing strategies that consistently hit the mark.

With your messy marketing cleaned up, you’ll say goodbye to confusing and conflicting messaging and have all of your marketing working together in an integrated, efficient system.

With a Fractional CMO in place, you’ll have a single point of contact for all of your marketing, and a support system for your sales, product and customer success teams. So if you’re stuck in a Messy Marketing Moment and aren’t sure what to do or which next step to take? Contact a Fractional CMO. You won’t regret it.

Is a Fractional CMO Right for You?

Fractional CMOs offer flexibility and expertise without the long-term commitment and expense of hiring a full-time CMO. You access high-level marketing guidance without the need for a permanent executive-level hire. Best of all, you get the instant senior marketing leadership you need, now.

To help you make important decisions around hiring and working with a Fractional CMO, we’ve created a comprehensive eBook: The B2B CEO’s Ultimate Guide to Hiring & Working With a Fractional CMO.

In this eBook, we walk you through the six most important questions B2B CEOs need to answer in order to build their first marketing team and choose the right marketing model for their stage of business:

What is a Fractional CMO?
Benefits of Working with a Fractional CMO
Is a Fractional CMO Right for Your Organization?
Choosing the Right Fractional CMO
What to Expect from Your Fractional CMO
Working with your Fractional CMO
A Typical Fractional CMO Engagement and Cost

You can download the eBook RIGHT HERE.

If you have any questions about this blog post or the eBook, send an email or book a consultation time.

Jen Kelly leads New Initiatives Marketing, Inc., a Fractional CMO & Expert B2B Marketing Team company. Since 2009, our team of senior marketing leaders and expert marketing specialists has been helping B2B CEOs with the strategic leadership and real-world marketing execution needed for practical, long-term results.