Add professional marketing to your SME with a Fractional CMO
The business of many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), is driven by a plethora of daily issues such as customer complaints, product failures, disruption in supplier support, and human resource conflicts. In too many SMEs, these issues land on the desk of the owner. The longer-term strategic issues never find resolution. Product launches are delayed,?the price increase is implemented late, and production delays are experienced. That long-envisioned goal of a better-planned, marketing-led business. remains.
Appointing a?Fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) will realise that goal and bring professional marketing leadership to your business.
You are the owner of a SME.
Your quiet night hours are filled with thoughts of the exciting things you could be doing to make your business bigger, stronger and more valuable.
The day hours are chaotically busy,?filled with urgencies. A promised customer payment did not come through. Your driver had an accident, and the police are now involved. A worker was hospitalized after a shop floor accident. A customer service agent reported a concerning product failure. A staff delegation is demanding your time to discuss salary increases. That large order you were expecting, did arrive but you cannot produce it as the supplier could not deliver the raw materials.
Late that night, the exciting thoughts return, and you realize another day has passed, and that strategic idea is no closer to fruition.
One of the ideas you have contemplated is the appointment of a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). That would realize the objective of transforming the business. In terms of the remuneration and the job actualisation cost that idea began to look more and more costly,
The candidates all wanted to know about the previous marketing initiatives and looked disappointed when you explained that there was very little marketing history to the business. They wanted to know more about the marketing resources currently in place.?Their enthusiasm dimmed when you explained there was no one yet in place. And when you were asked about the formal planning process, their passion visibly waned when you reported that you would need the new appointee to put that into place.
You also grew concerned about whether the business could sustain that kind of cost and you began to doubt whether there was enough work to keep a marketing person fully employed.
The reality is that many SME owners around the globe are struggling with the same situation.?The good news is that there is an answer, and that solution goes by the name of a Fractional CMO.
A Fractional CMO performs the regular function of a CMO, doing all the things a senior and experienced marketing executive would do, not as a full-time employee, but as a committed freelancer. In other words, they dedicate a fraction of the time that a regular CMO would spend with the company, and they receive a fraction of the pay.
The fractional CMO will assume several key roles.
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That execution will take marketing within the business into a leadership position. The Fractional CMO then turns that strategy into a marketing plan and takes responsibility for implementing that plan. That responsibility includes the resources, time, and budgets as agreed in the planning phase.
The Fractional CMO will get the entire team (sales, production, warehousing, finance, operations, and HR) pulling in the same direction. Imagine how impressed the customer will be when they begin to experience a united workforce working as one towards a single business vision.
?Here the Fractional CMO’s skill and experience will prove invaluable.?The resource requirements go into the plan at the approval stage and the Fractional CMO works to those agreed parameters. It is in finding, briefing, and mentoring the human resources that the experienced Fractional CMO stands out. That means managing, and mentoring members of the business's own staff, hiring and briefing consultants as necessary, and appointing external agencies to complete the agreed work to the agreed time, investment, and quality standards.
It is widely recognized that poor planning and lack of management skills are among the reasons why SMEs fail to sustain their businesses. In the marketing area, the result is a lack of single-minded focus as the marketing initiatives are driven by whatever sounds and looks most innovative at the time.?
A key part of the marketing process is to formally record ideas and discussions and develop those into a documented Strategy and Marketing Plan. When a great idea is seen on paper and the feasibility of that is evaluated against the resources that the business has available to it, the reality of implementing the innovation becomes real. And the approval that follows will be implemented without distraction.
Defining clear goals and objectives will give the SME a much better chance of success. If you combine those goals and objectives with a clear plan and a disciplined implementation, monitored, mentored, and managed by an experienced marketer, the chance of success will be further increased. Add to that the freelance project style execution which will mean the returns on investment will be measurable and sustainable.
Can you afford not to appoint a Fractional CMO today?
About Garth Sutherland
Garth Sutherland has an extensive multicultural understanding. He has worked with local brands (creating independent strategic positions) and international brands (integrating the international brand vision with the local demand to optimize the “on the ground” brand presence). His strengths include bringing a strong strategic focus into all aspects of marketing delivery, working with multi-agency perspectives, independent thinking & implementing with a consistent and practical teamwork-focused delivery.