Fractional CMO – It’s a title that has become considerably more common over the past few years. Unfortunately, the more popular it becomes, the less clear it sometimes seems to be what one actually does.
So let’s clear something up.
A Fractional CMO isn’t someone who does a fraction of your marketing.
They’re not supposed to arrive every Tuesday, write three LinkedIn posts, adjust a Google Ad and disappear again.
In this episode of Marketing, Properly!, Sean Makin looks at what business owners and Managing Directors should genuinely expect when they bring senior fractional marketing leadership into their business.
A good Fractional CMO should start by understanding the business before prescribing the marketing.
- Where are you trying to go?
- What’s driving growth?
- What’s holding it back?
- Who are your best customers?
- What’s Sales struggling with?
- Where is the marketing budget going and is any of it actually working?
From there, you should expect clarity, strategy, leadership, challenge and commercial accountability.
That means connecting marketing with the wider commercial strategy, providing direction to internal teams and agencies, challenging assumptions and being prepared to ask uncomfortable but useful questions such as: “Why are we spending money on this?”
It also means recognising that more marketing isn’t necessarily better marketing.
Sometimes the first contribution of experienced marketing leadership isn’t launching another campaign or increasing the budget.
It’s stopping things.
Software nobody needs. Agency services that aren’t delivering. Events attended through habit. Underperforming channels. Activity that exists largely because nobody has asked why it’s still happening.
We also look at what you shouldn’t expect.
A Fractional CMO isn’t an entire marketing department. Their job isn’t necessarily to personally write every article, design every advert, manage every social account and update every page of your website.
Senior marketers can and should roll up their sleeves when required, but that isn’t where most of their value lies.
You’re not hiring another pair of hands. You’re hiring another experienced head.
And over time, good fractional leadership should help build capability inside the business, developing people, improving agencies, establishing systems and creating a marketing function that becomes stronger and more self-sufficient.
Because when marketing lacks leadership, the instinct is often to do more.
More campaigns. More channels. More content. More agencies. More software.
When what the business may really need is someone experienced enough to say: “Here’s what actually matters.”
And then make sure it happens.
Marketing, Properly! – practical marketing thinking for business owners and Managing Directors who want clearer strategy, better decisions and marketing that genuinely supports business growth.
Produced in Scotland.
