How does a fractional CMO work? A mini case study.
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to hire a fractional CMO or fractional marketing director? Well, you’re in luck, because I’m going to tell you—using a client of ours as an example.
This client, an established e-commerce company, came to us a few years back because they wanted help with their marketing. They had a staff full of talented and creative people, but nobody had the time or the experience to build and execute an effective marketing strategy.
Getting started with a CMO engagement
Enter the fractional CMO firm (us!). I set up an appointment with the owner and key staff members, and together we built a marketing plan that reflected their marketing goals, brand, target audience, and budget. We customized it to leverage in-house talent as much as possible to keep costs down; in the end, they were in charge of creating content such as videos and photos and acting as the subject matter experts for written content such as blogs. On our end, our job was to oversee the strategy, monitor results, and execute the rest of the plan, including social media (organic and paid), search marketing, email marketing, website conversion, SEO, and more.
Step two: executing the marketing strategy
Once the plan was in place and had buy-in from the team, we got to work. To execute the strategy, we:
- Built automatic email flows to, among other things, capture browse and cart abandonment traffic and improve site conversion
- Created an email campaign calendar, and started to send monthly sales campaigns
- Created a social media posting plan and began to execute it, relying heavily on user-generated content for social proof. We also created a YouTube channel.
- Integrated a review-generation platform (in this case Trustpilot) to grow social proof around both the brand and the products themselves
- Started building their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) with informational blogs and other website updates
- Took over the existing search marketing and paid social media advertising, made updates, and continued to optimize them for better performance
- Provided direction and feedback to in-house talent to help them produce content that performed well as ads, website content, social posts, and YouTube videos
- Created a print catalog and other printed promotional materials
- Reported back results to the owner and key team members so that we could improve the marketing plan over time
In short, we acted exactly as a new CMO or marketing director would if they joined your company: we set the path and got to work. Of course, being fractional, we only focused a portion of our time on this client and therefore kept costs to a minimum.
Does a fractional CMO get results?
So what did all this do for the bottom line? Here are some key results that show that good marketing does work to grow your business… even if your CMO or marketing director is only part-time. Pro tip; the more you treat your FCMO or FMD (Fractional CMO or Fractional Marketing Director) like they’re a part of the team, the better the results will be. This client rolls with us exactly like we’re their head of marketing, and it shows.
- Email marketing: we’ve grown annual email revenue by 47%.
- Social media: our Instagram following has increased by 172%
- SEO: just last year, one of our blogs built around a long-tail keyphrase received 26,144 views (admittedly the best performing of the blogs, but we love that stat!)
- Revenue (the most important metric!): in the first year, we grew overall revenue by 30%, and our second holiday season (November and December) netted 177% more revenue than the first.
In conclusion
So, there you have it, folks. If you’re thinking of hiring a fractional CMO or fractional marketing director (pssst… we’d be happy to help!), you should expect to have someone in your marketing corner acting just like your new team member… but for a fraction of the cost.
Happy marketing!
Katie & Theron
At Urban Sherpa Marketing Co. we offer fractional marketing director services, which include marketing advisory, strategic planning, program and staff management, and marketing implementation for small to medium businesses and startups. Our goal is to make high-quality marketing possible for every business, no matter the size. Think of us as your outsourced marketing department, strategic marketing adviser, and phone-a-friend marketing lifeline. We specialize in building efficient marketing programs to grow your business without blowing the bank.
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