Why Startups Need a Fractional CMO Early on?

As a marketer for over 30 years, I've seen firsthand the transformative impact that experienced leadership can have on early-stage startups. While founders often possess the passion and vision to drive their ventures, they often lack the specific expertise or bandwidth to navigate the complexities of marketing and growth. This is where fractional CMOs can be invaluable assets. By providing strategic guidance, operational expertise, and a fresh perspective – they can help startups accelerate their growth, build strong brands, and achieve long-term success.

I end up talking to SaaS founders and their investors regularly. And a common question I hear is “Do I really need marketing at the early stage of my business?

My answer will always be “YES,” but it’s not that simple, as it sounds.?Unfinished Products Don’t Need Branding, marketing should develop as the product (or idea) evolves.

When Should I start Marketing?

Every product or service starts with identification of a problem that has not been solved yet or can be solved in a drastically better way. This gets followed by gathering feedback from potential customers to ensure your idea aligns with their needs and pain points. It needs validation from users / potential buyers that they see it the same way and are desperately wanting a solution. It may also involve evaluating the technical feasibility of implementing the idea. Once it is established that there is a gap that can be profitably solved or an existing need that can be serviced at a significantly lower cost or effort, you set about translating it into possible ideas, prototypes, testing, iteratively refining and getting to a minimum viable product. An MVP focuses on the core features that deliver the most value to your target market. Rapid Development of a basic version of the product or service is next, then taking feedback from early adopters and use it to iteratively refine on features.

Product-market fit is a crucial step that refers to the alignment between the offering and its target market pain-points. The biggest risk of an early-stage startup failure is to discover that the problem your product can solve either doesn’t exist or interests only a fraction of the market. Once a product passes product-market fit evaluation, we know that it meets a genuine market need, resonates with customers, and there exists a sufficient market demand to ensure financial viability and profitability. A strong product-market fit gives you an excellent start in the marketplace.

Once your startup has grown, validated its product-market fit, and has the necessary resources, you can consider investing in marketing.

When Should I Hire a Marketer?

Marketing can be an uphill battle for any business, but it’s especially challenging for early-stage startups. With limited resources, it’s difficult to know where to focus your efforts, and mistakes can be costly. But, getting marketing right from the start can be a game-changer for your startup. It can help you gain a competitive advantage, attract investors, and generate buzz around your brand.

It’s easy to spend money on the first possible shiny thing that comes your way. There is demonstrated behaviour of startup founders investing the newly got cash on performance marketing. The other common them I hear is, I am not getting enough leads! In reality, without a solid foundation, urgency of overspending on selective tactics will exhaust your budgets but won’t lead to success.

One of the most crucial aspects that a lot of early-stage startups miss out on is?defining their “north star.” Without a clear understanding of your direction and goals, investing in marketing is bound to fail . Laying a strong foundation - who do you want to be as a brand, what you stand for, and for whom you are solving the problem? What will make them buy? will help you to identify your target audience, decide your tactics, arrive at a budget, and direct your effort towards driving your business success.

1.???? The pre-seed goal is to learn as much as possible about potential customers, their pain points and urgency to solve them. This is the job of the founder.

?2.???? At seed-funding, it’s still too early to hire a full-time marketer. Many startups at this stage try to hire a marketer because their investors tell them they need this. I disagree. It is too early and a waste of money. There is not enough work for a full-time marketer to do. Most companies can only afford a junior marketer who may not have the experience to set the right marketing strategy. The founding team also doesn’t know what the marketer should be doing, and the person is thrust into different areas where they have little experience, resulting in wasted money and, more importantly, wasted time.

Instead, invest in an experienced marketing advisor on limited engagement basis - strategic guidance on initial messaging, positioning, differentiation, and market strategy is invaluable. The advisor can also challenge the founders' assumptions, a role that a junior marketer may not be equipped for and may not be in a position to be heard.

3.???? At series A stage, you should have established the product -market fit with beta customers and had some wins with founder-led sales. This is the time to build the go-to-market strategy, complete marketing, and sales plans, and start creating that growth engine.

You need marketing expertise to use the company’s data and tribal knowledge to create a focused marketing strategy along with a crawl, walk, run execution plan. A great option is to hire a fractional CMO. With this path, you will get highly experienced marketers who have worked with many more startups and can provide best practices and a built-in network of operators (product, design, demand gen, content, PR, SEO/SEM, and front-end development).

Because of their experience, fractional marketers usually take less time to get up to speed and execute. In addition, you only pay for what you need, as you will not need all these resources full-time.

4.???? Series B is when you should be hiring full-time marketers. You have established a churning growth engine that creates demand and revenue. This is a huge inflection point for startups, and it is all about execution. Your marketing and sales team should be fully aligned with each other. You can be cost-conscious by hiring full-time junior or mid-level specialty marketers whom a fractional CMO can guide.

The Series B marketing goal is to execute and tweak the GTM strategy and exponentially grow revenue. This is where, you start scaling up with hiring flexible marketing generalists. Fractional CMO will help onboard and get them up to speed, while still continuing to oversee.

5.???? At Series C stage, you get to a point, where you want to have your own marketing team consisting of a VP of Marketing and specialists covering Brand & Comms, product marketing, demand gen, marketing operations,, PR & analyst relations.

At this stage Fractional CMO can hand-off and be available on need basis for consultation on complex projects and strategic issues.

Having the right leadership in place can make all the difference. By leveraging the experience and expertise of fractional CXOs, startups can increase their chances of success, accelerate growth, and achieve their long-term goals.