Depending on the size of your organization, chances are you’ve heard at least one of these titles. The chief marketing officer is the de facto head of the marketing department, where the marketing director is a leader within their part of the marketing team. A marketing director tends to be more specialized in a specific area of the marketing team, like PPC, SEO, or even social media.
Below, we’ll cover the differences between a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and a marketing director.
What a Marketing Director is
Marketing directors are members of the marketing department and usually oversee a particular part of the department, team, or aspect of the department’s responsibilities. While they will come up with ideas, develop projects, or organize team members’ marketing activities, they aren’t involved in the overall marketing campaigns.
Marketing Director duties
Job responsibilities for a marketing director include:
- Organizing a budget for a specific team within the marketing department (i.e. sales, design)
- Working with clients and vendors
- Supervising teams to ensure deadlines and standards are met
- Creating marketing projects in line with the department’s goals, objectives, and strategy
Marketing Director vs Chief Marketing Officer
The role of a chief marketing officer is much broader and requires more strategy than a marketing director. There are increased expectations in the role, and you’ll be responsible for more than just one team within the marketing department. In addition, your role is about more than just revenue generation; in fact, your role should lay the strategic foundation for your marketing team to follow so they may pursue goals like revenue generation.
Marketing Director vs Marketing Strategy Consultant
Typically, a marketing strategy consultant fulfills similar responsibilities to a marketing director, except an outside perspective. Marketing strategy consultants are external professionals hired to solve specific problems for a business, like expanding online offerings, SEO, social media, and more. However, since they’re not an in-house part of the marketing team, their duties do not include implementing their strategies but only how to implement them.
Fractional CMO vs Full-Time CMO
If your goal is to grow your business, inevitably, you’ll need the assistance and leadership from a CMO. However, not every business is capable of hiring a full-time CMO to lead their marketing efforts; that’s where a fractional CMO comes into play.
At CMOx, we provide fractional CMO services designed to help companies grow at a fraction of the cost of a full-time CMO. Our experienced fractional CMOs will design and implement marketing strategies created with your business in mind. To learn more about our fractional CMO services and how a fractional CMO leads your marketing efforts, contact us today at (219) 804-0797 or fill out a contact request form here.
