WHAT IS A GOOD FRACTIONAL CMO HOURLY RATE?

Fractional CMO Hourly Cost

What is the hourly rate for a fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)? A good fractional CMO average hourly rate is $200/hr., while the best fractional CMOs may charge $300/hr. If they are charging an hourly rate of less than $150/hr., I would worry about the “help” you are receiving. It varies wildly based on the factors we will outline below. The average fractional CMO may or may not have as much experience as ours typically do. That said, if you are looking to hire a Fractional CMO, read on!

Fractional CMO Salary Range

Typically Fractional CMOs are not paid a “salary” or they wouldn’t be considered fractional. Generally it works better to have a fractional CMO working on a specific set of marketing initiatives, developing the marketing team and delivering on a predefined set of fractional CMO services. This creates clearly defined objectives, milestones and a timeline. That means it is more common to hire a fractional CMO based on a Scope of Work (S.O.W.) or on a project basis with predefined goals (OKRs and KPIs). True marketing leadership will embrace the challenge of measured deliverables within a timeframe.

Fractional CMO Flat Rate with Scope of Work

Based on my conversations with fractional CMOs, you should probably forget about a fractional CMO hourly rate. They tend to work on holistic scope projects and are paid based on the fractional CMO services they provide. For a deeper dive into fractional CMO services, please see our article titled “Fractional CMO Services“. To understand a project based S.O.W. with a flat rate, let’s take a look at what our fractional CMOs make with a regular full-time job. By understanding an average full-time CMO salary, we can better understand how it might roughly translate into a fractional engagement with a clearly defined S.O.W..

Full-time CMO vs Fractional CMO Salaries

Working in corporate, most of our Fractional CMOs had an average salary of $250,000 – $500,000 annually, plus benefits.  As a middle of the road example:

Full-time Chief Marketing Officer Cost

$333,900 + 15% benefits = $384,000

Fractional Chief Marketing Officer Cost

$384,000 / 12 months / 50% of time = $16,000 / mo. x predefined number of months.

Obviously the big advantage here is that you can engage a fractional CMO to put a scalable plan in place in 4 or 5 months, then have a less costly team execute the plan. Bring the fractional CMO talent back as needed. You can access higher end talent than you could afford if you paid a year’s salary and you use that caliber talent much more efficiently.

What are the benefits of hiring a fractional CMO?

Opting for a fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) offers several benefits over maintaining a full-time marketing team. Here are the key reasons:

1. Focus on Core Business: Being a business owner demands full-time attention, leaving little room for sales and marketing. A fractional CMO will allow an entrepreneur to concentrate on essential tasks while the marketing needs are expertly handled.

2. Comprehensive Go-To-Market Strategy: A fractional CMO helps develop a growth plan, crafting an actionable marketing strategy aligned with business goals. They evaluate campaign readiness and accelerate the marketing process, improving metrics.

3. Efficient Management: Marketing involves multiple components, making it challenging for small business owners to keep up. Chief Marketing Officers take charge, prioritize tasks, and train the team, ensuring effective execution.

4. Diversify Marketing Channels: An outsourced CMO brings expertise across industries, facilitating connections with experts and uncovering hidden opportunities for business growth.

5. Outside Perspective and Expertise: A fractional CMO provides fresh ideas, professional expertise, and valuable insights into market trends, enabling effective audience engagement and innovative marketing strategies.

6. Improve Communication and Efficiency: By offering management training and coaching, a fractional CMO enhances internal communication, ensuring efficient coordination between teams.

7. Enhance Hiring Practices: Fractional CMOs contribute to recruiting top marketing talent, offering guidance on job descriptions, interview processes, and talent retention strategies.

Choosing a fractional CMO empowers businesses to focus on their core operations, execute effective marketing strategies, and leverage external expertise to drive growth.

Choosing the Right Fractional CMO for Your Business

When it comes to small businesses, founders and CEOs often come from diverse backgrounds, but marketing expertise may not always be their strong suit. In the early stages of a startup, there is usually a strong focus on finding product/market fit, acquiring initial customers, and refining the product itself. As a result, marketing tends to take a backseat, leading to challenges such as lackluster product launches, difficulty reaching the target audience, and ineffective website messaging. However, as time moves on, small businesses eventually realize the need for a dedicated marketing team to address these issues.

Building an effective marketing department is a critical step that can greatly impact the success of the organization. It is important to learn from the experiences of seasoned marketing professionals who have navigated similar challenges. By leveraging their expertise, startups can make informed decisions and avoid common pitfalls.

One common mistake among founders is to view marketing as a monolithic discipline instead of recognizing its various specialties. Each marketer brings unique skills and strengths, so it is essential to identify the types of marketers that align best with the startup’s specific needs.

What is your GTM Motion?

Consideration should be given to the startup’s sales process when hiring a marketer. Depending on whether the company follows a product-led growth approach or relies on top-down sales, different types of marketers may be required. For product-led growth, marketers who excel in consumer-focused tactics like ads, email marketing, social media marketing, SEO, and SEM are essential. On the other hand, sales-driven companies targeting enterprise customers need marketers who can create educational materials, write case studies, and craft authoritative website copy.

Fractional CMO Services: Brand Marketing

In addition to these core pillars, brand marketing plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between creative-oriented product marketers and analytical growth marketers. Brand marketers can create campaigns that drive immediate sales while also building long-term awareness. They possess a mix of creative and analytical skills that can be highly valuable for startups.

When aligning marketing skills with the startup’s go-to-market strategy, it is crucial to assess the strengths and gaps within the founding team. Founders who excel in creative and design-oriented aspects may benefit from hiring a more analytically inclined marketer. Similarly, if a technical product requires better explanation, a technically adept marketer can effectively communicate its value.

Fractional CMO Services: Product Marketing

During the hiring process, it is important to evaluate the technical aptitude of product marketers. This can be done by conducting exercises like asking candidates to fill in the blanks for product pages or assessing their ability to understand and respond to customer support questions. It is also valuable to inquire about candidates’ elevator pitch for the last product they worked on and dive into their launch experiences to gauge their success in product marketing.

To attract a product marketing candidate, founders should ensure they provide a compelling product demo. Demonstrating the product’s functionality and value directly to the candidate can be more convincing than relying solely on the website or marketing materials.

Fractional CMO Services: Growth Marketing

When hiring a growth marketer, it is important to understand that this specialty focuses on optimizing the user acquisition funnel, user engagement, and retention. Growth marketers are well-versed in various strategies and tactics to effectively reach the target audience. They employ data-driven approaches and implement experiments to drive growth.

In conclusion, building the right marketing team is crucial for the success of a startup. Understanding the different marketing pillars and aligning them with the startup’s go-to-market strategy and the strengths of the founding team can help in making informed hiring decisions. Evaluating technical aptitude and past experiences are essential during the interview process. Lastly, providing a compelling product demo can greatly influence the decision-making process for product marketing candidates.