Growth is one of the primary focuses of any business owner, but achieving it sometimes isn’t as easy without proper marketing leadership. Some businesses can’t afford a full-time chief marketing officer to oversee and scale their marketing efforts, and that’s when virtual CMO services benefit your business.
A virtual chief marketing officer, or vCMO, provides the services of a CMO except virtually and comes equipped with an outside perspective for your business’s marketing growth.
Below, we’ll cover what a vCMO is and why you need one for your business.
Virtual CMO Definition
A virtual CMO (vCMO) is by definition a chief marketing officer that works remotely. Depending on the needs of the business, a vCMO is a great option for small-midsize businesses to scale their marketing efforts without the exorbitant cost of a full-time chief marketing officer.
What a vCMO does
A vCMO often comes with experience working with social media, SEO, email marketing, content marketing, lead generation, PR, and customer experience. That said, some specialize in a specific field such as business-to-business (B2B), e-commerce, or other area of marketing expertise. While these experiences are important, the primary goal of a vCMO is to determine your business’s goals and design the marketing campaigns that you’ll need to achieve them.
How a Virtual CMO benefits your business
vCMOs and CMO consultants generally bring experience without expense. This means that you’ll gain similar benefits a full-time CMO would offer without the cost. For that reason, vCMOs should be considered less financially risky of an investment. Their experience is the main benefit they bring to your business, including marketing experience and leadership.
Reasons to hire a vCMO
vCMOs are the cost-effective solution for your business’s growth, but there are many reasons you should consider hiring one. Below are our top reasons:
1. External business perspective
Since the vCMO works virtually by definition, they come with an outside perspective that enables them to focus solely on their task at hand and your overall marketing strategy. This factor is very beneficial for organizations because it means they aren’t bogged down in the daily aspects of running a business that would impede their work or progress.
In addition, their outside perspective is typically unbiased and fresh in relation to internal team members. This improves critical thinking and becomes necessary to create the campaigns that will drive your organization’s growth.
2. Marketing strategy scaling
One of the ideal aspects of a vCMO is their ability to scale your marketing efforts. Typically, a vCMO works with all types of businesses and comes with experienced marketing tactics that apply to your business as well. Adaptation is one of the key qualities of a good vCMO because even if they aren’t experienced in the specific product or service you offer, they’ll be able to adapt their efforts to accommodate your business.
3. Consistent quality in marketing campaigns
Another added benefit of a vCMO is their attention to your marketing strategy. Their goal is to develop a marketing strategy that works best for your business and that involves consistency. Good marketing requires consistency to be effective, which means you’ll need a person in a place to oversee your marketing consistently.
Determining if your business needs a vCMO
If you’re unsure if your business needs a vCMO, then there are a few signs you should look out for. In addition to the signs below, we recommend checking out our page on the signs you need a Fractional CMO for more information.
1. Marketing team lacks organization
A vCMO is a highly-experienced consultant equipped with best practices for your organization’s marketing team to implement. Leadership is one of the defining characteristics of a vCMO which comes from their experience wearing many hats within a marketing team. This enables them to align with other facets of your organization to alleviate some of the growing pains when creating new campaigns.
Through this and their understanding of marketing strategy, you’ll find vCMOs are equipped to be a leader within your marketing team.
2. You don't need a full-time CMO
One of the telltale signs that your business needs a vCMO is that your business is not ready or able to afford a full-time CMO. This niche is where vCMO and fractional CMO services come into play to promote growth and good practices within your marketing department.
Finding and hiring a Virtual CMO with CMOx
At CMOx, we employ our Functioning Marketing® Framework when working with new clients to tailor our vCMO services to your unique business. Through this process, we’ll work with your marketing team to reduce your team’s inefficiencies, schedule team meetings to keep them on track, develop a strategy tailored to your business’s messaging and positioning, and create a scorecard that allows you to track your campaign’s performance.
Schedule a no-cost discovery call with one of our team today to learn more about our vCMO services and how they can complement your business.
