If you want to know how to become a fractional CMO, you first must have years of experience as a marketing leader working at a managerial level. A fractional CMO must have a broad knowledge of current marketing strategies and tactics, as well as experience in leading successful, growth-driven marketing initiatives. This is so they can work with a variety of agencies, freelancers and employees to reach the organization’s marketing objectives. You must be organized and very results-oriented.
While there is no single method to becoming a fractional CMO, that simply means you have options to pursuing this career path. You may seek out formal training, obtain certifications in executive level marketing strategy, or move out of a marketing consulting career. This guide breaks down the different paths on how to become a fractional CMO so you can grow into a career with plenty of opportunities.
If you’re ready to make the first step to becoming a fractional CMO, the CMOx Accelerator can get you started.
Key Takeaways
- Becoming a fractional CMO generally involves a business or marketing degree and years of experience in marketing.
- You may pursue training from another fractional CMO to learn from their experience.
- You could seek certifications from various businesses or organizations offering fractional CMO certifications through proprietary courses.
- If you already have the experience as a marketing director, you could move to consulting or an agency offering placements for fractional CMOs.
Understanding the Role of a Fractional CMO
A Fractional CMO is a part-time marketing executive who provides strategic guidance and support to businesses on a flexible, project-based, or retainer basis. They bring a wealth of experience and expertise to help companies develop and implement effective marketing strategies, improve brand awareness, and drive revenue growth.
Unlike a full-time CMO, a Fractional CMO works with multiple clients, offering their high-level marketing leadership without the long-term commitment. This allows small businesses and startup companies to benefit from top-tier marketing strategies without the high cost of a full-time marketing executive.
Fractional CMO Training: Learn to Lead High-Impact Marketing Teams
Many marketing agency owners, marketing consultants, and in-house marketers have enough managerial experience and expertise to do a great job in most aspects of being a fractional CMO.
What they need is specific fractional CMO training that sets them up for success.
Benefits of Fractional CMO Training:
- Avoid spending years learning the best practices, systems, and processes of a successful fractional CMO
- Be led by someone who has achieved what you want to achieve
- Shortcut the long and arduous learning process
- Know how to position yourself as a fractional CMO
- Quickly understand what a successful sales pipeline looks like to get high-quality fractional CMO leads
- Have confidence in a sales system that works consistently
Here at CMOx, we help you connect with other high-level fractional CMOs and the clients who want to hire you. Our fractional CMO training helps prepare experienced marketers to become world-class fractional CMOs.
Are you interested in becoming a fractional CMO?
If you are interested, head over to the CMOx Accelerator to find out more. You can watch the video to get a bit more insight into the career of a fractional CMO before booking a call with us.
How to Identify Great Fit Fractional CMO Clients
- What size marketing department your ideal client needs to have
- The secret of low-stress client services
- What prospective clients can be a home-run for you (and who you should steer clear of!)
- Strategies to evaluate start-ups and nonprofits
- How to protect your reputation
Fractional CMO Certification: Do You Need One To Kickstart Your CMO Career?
Becoming a certified fractional CMO demonstrates to colleagues and employers that you have invested in your commitment to be a world-class marketer. There are a number of CMO certifications marketers can seek out for either developing their skills as an executive or further education on other elements of both traditional and digital marketing.
Benefits of a Fractional CMO Certification
- Shows potential clients your level of commitment to learning and practicing the highest standards of operating as a fractional CMO
- Gives you the confidence that the systems and processes you deploy into a business are effective, predictable, and proven
- Being associated with one of the industry leaders
- Have access to CMOx’s leads
- Stand out from the mediocre marketers who can also call themselves a fractional CMO
- Justifies a higher rate
To become a CMOx® Certified Fractional CMO, head over to CMOx Accelerator and apply to see if you are what we are looking for.
Other ways to become a Fractional CMO
Are you ready to step into a more demanding role? Marketing operations play a crucial role in this transition. The trends are showing just how important CMOs are as digital migration is in full swing for all companies spanning all industries. Take on a position of marketing leadership in a highly valuable spot as a marketing executive.
Some other methods of becoming a fractional CMO include:
- Moving from in-house to consulting or an agency
- Joining a business offering fractional CMO services
- Transition from a consultant to fractional CMO
Resources for Becoming a Fractional CMO
If you’re ready to become an in-demand fractional CMO, CMOx has resources to help grow as a marketing leader.
“The Fractional CMO Method” is a step-by-step breakdown of how Casey Stanton, CMOx’s founder, grew as a fractional CMO. You can grab a copy here to learn more.
Also, make sure to listen to our podcast, The Fractional CMO Show, for episodic breakdowns of elements of being a fractional CMO for business leaders.
Go from being an in-house CMO to consulting
You are going to need experience to become a CMO and then transition to a consulting role. A CMO should have a firm grasp of SEO, social media marketing, paid media, email marketing, content marketing strategies, lead generation, metrics and more to develop a comprehensive marketing strategy and improve marketing performance for each of their clients.
It helps to have a degree in marketing—or at least a lot of experience in the field with creating and implementing marketing plans. You will need to learn key soft skills, including the ability to lead marketing initiatives, build up team members, improve customer experience and understand marketing methodologies.
As an experienced marketing professional, you may be able to find an in-house spot that will value your skillset and decided to make you a full-time marketing executive. Work to enhance your knowledge of marketing and learn what a CMO should be doing. When the time comes to jump ship, you can start looking into options for becoming a fractional chief marketing officer.
Join a business offering Fractional CMO services
Next, find a marketing agency or consultancy, like CMOx that hires fractional CMOs and helps connect them with clients to achieve their marketing goals. By using a company experienced in fractional CMO services, you will have more support at your fingertips.
It’s possible to freelance as a marketing expert, but it can be tough. You have to find clients, bill clients and settle disputes all on your own. An agency is going to offer a lot of benefits that you won’t find if you just freelance.
Move from Marketing Consultant to Fractional CMO
When you are ready to make the jump, it’s time to move towards a fractional CMO role.
You need to be quick on your feet in this role—finding solutions for your clients’ business development needs no matter what industry they are in. There is a huge benefit to the freedom and flexibility of working with multiple teams and companies. For example, if a company just isn’t able to thrive or decides to sell, you won’t be trapped by their decision.
There are a lot of similarities between a traditional CMO and a fractional CMO, so the changeover usually isn’t too difficult. However, it helps a lot if you can find an expert to share the wisdom they’ve learned by trial and error.
Who should be a Fractional CMO?
Do you like a fast-paced environment with a lot of variation? While some marketing professionals like the familiarity of working with one company, other professionals prefer to solve the problems of many clients. Understanding who should and should not become a fractional CMO can help you determine if this is the right career path.
A fractional CMO, or part-time CMO, can work with different organizations, in a variety of sectors. This can be working to fill in the gaps of their own business and marketing department or to execute effective marketing strategies through leadership and direction.
These high-level professionals are well-paid for their expertise and often charge companies on a retainer basis. Growth-focused companies are able to use the CMO as needed, rather than hiring a full-time CMO (which would often be slightly overkill based on the amount of work they have for someone in that role). This is a good way to explore various company niches without taking on a lesser role.
The fractional CMO should be confident in leading the entire marketing department and directing the marketing team to keep them on track of the company’s business objectives and KPIs. You need to have a firm grasp of digital marketing tools and trends.
What a Fractional CMO Does
When startup companies or small businesses need support, they usually aren’t quite ready to hire for a full-time CMO position. Most of the time, companies with less than $50 million annual revenue have select jobs they need an on-demand CMO to help with, but not enough to fill 40 hours every week.
If they hire a full-time CMO, they end up paying top dollar for this highly qualified marketing executive to answer emails and work on data entry that could be done just as easily by a lower-tier marketing professional.
A fractional CMO fulfills the duties of the executive role but on a part-time basis. Additionally, fractional CMOs typically spend their time working with more than one company.
How much does a Fractional CMO cost?
We’ll be honest—fractional CMOs are not cheap. But, they are only a fraction of the cost of hiring a full-time chief marketing officer.
For a company that is ready to really take its marketing game to the next level, a CMO is essential. However, there are many companies that just don’t completely have the workload to justify another full-time c-suite manager.
In these cases, a Fractional CMO can be brought in to do the high-level work and manage the teams part-time for a fee.
Pricing typically starts at a few thousand dollars per month and can grow to over ten thousand. This depends on the level of engagement a client needs. Fractional CMOs can also help run audits and work on shorter-term solutions. This will most likely still come in under the cost of a full-time CMO salary.
What is a Fractional CMO's salary or hourly rate?
Payscale reports that the average CMO is making over $170k every year. In some industries with a higher skill level required and a more demanding role, the salaries are closer to $210k and can reach as high as $300k.
As a Fractional CMO, you would spend time working with different clients. Your retainer fee may be different for different clients, based on what they are having you do. In some cases, you may be able to set your own rates, provide quotes and set your own hours. Due to this, the salary for a fractional CMO varies depending on how much work or how many clients they take on.
How many hours a week does a CMO work?
A typical CMO works full-time. A fractional CMO is going to work as often as they want. As a fractional CMO, you may choose to turn down work if you get too many offers. You might mark out your schedule so you always have a certain part of the day off or certain days of the week free.
Required Skills to Become a Fractional CMO
Leadership
Strategizing
Strategizing, conceptualizing, and data-driven decision making is an integral part of any CMO position. As a fractional CMO, you may need to know how to strategize for a variety of different markets and business needs as your clients cater to differing niches.
Project management tools can help you in managing your marketing strategies as you monitor their progress and the stages your teams are in.
Communication
Effective communication is especially important for fractional CMOs. While full-time CMOs learn to communicate with a single set of stakeholders, part-time executives will need to learn how to communicate with different business owners and stakeholders at a time. The same communication methods you use for one client may not be as effective with another, so you need to adapt accordingly.
Reporting is crucial to your success as a fractional CMO. Consider what metrics are most important to your clients or ask them during onboarding to ensure your efforts align with their goals.
Accelerate Your Career by Becoming a Fractional CMO with CMOx
There are different paths to becoming a fractional CMO. There is no ‘best way’ but whichever way a marketer goes should lean on their strengths. This can be their experience, their network, or their skillset.
Each client will have different requirements and business objectives for their executive-level marketer. The impact on marketing efforts the fractional CMO makes will depend on their unique ability.
If you feel you are ready to shortcut the long and arduous process of going out alone, check out the CMOx Accelerator and get in touch with us to discuss things further.
