The Fractional CMO Engagement
Next available Fractional CMO Engagement begins on Monday, January 6th, 2025.
The 12-week Fractional CMO Engagement is designed to quickly and effectively get your B2B SaaS company on-track to achieve your business goals through Performance Marketing. The Engagement structure is outlined below:
1. Understand Business Goals
If you aren’t 100% sure what you want to achieve, it’s pretty much impossible for performance marketing (or anything else, really) to get you there.
Simply put, business goals should drive the performance marketing strategy. If your business goal is to sign deals with 20 Fortune 1000 companies this year, you will have a very different approach than if your goal was to generate 10 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). The reason for this is that the targeting, marketing channels, technology, and, most importantly, KPIs for each are very different for each specific goal.
In order to understand business goals intimately, Discovery Conversations are arranged with the Executive Sponsor of the Engagement - typically, the President, CEO, COO or CRO (Chief Revenue Officer). From these conversations, the business goal is clearly outlined - and, if more than one, prioritized - to become ‘the North Star’ by which all other decisions in the Engagement are made.
2. Identify Performance Marketing Goals
Performance marketing goals should tie directly to the business goals - otherwise, you won’t achieve those business goals, and what the heck is the point?
‘Launching a Google Ads campaign’ is not a performance marketing goal. ‘Getting your name out there’ is not a performance marketing goal. Generating 30 marketing qualified leads (MQLs) per month could be a performance marketing goal - if it ladders up directly to achieving a business goal, such as generating 10 million dollars in ARR. In short, a good performance marketing goal means that if you achieve it, you achieve the business goal. It’s really not rocket science.
To identify the performance marketing goals that will best ladder up to the business goal, Discovery Conversations are conducted with all relevant stakeholders from sales, marketing, and client/customer success. All of the collective wisdom from your team needs to be gathered and understood. These conversations relate, broadly, to the four Performance Marketing Areas, namely: Analytics & Insights, Lead & Client Nurture, Lead Generation, and Platform Optimization.
3. Identify the Engagement Goals
With the performance marketing goals in-hand, the next step is to figure out what will (and will not) get done during the Engagement.
Not all of the performance marketing goals will get done during the 12-week sprint, but we’ll knock off what is most important. For example, if ‘setting up automated and scalable full-revenue pipeline measurement and reporting’ is a performance marketing goal, then an Engagement goal may be to ‘set up the customer relationship management (CRM) software’, and/or ‘establish KPI measurement framework and baseline metrics’. These are necessary, but not necessarily sufficient (logic is fun), initiatives that need to get done to achieve the business goals.
To identify the Engagement goals, all of the Discovery Conversations are synthesized to create the Discovery Summary & Engagement Roadmap. The information and Engagement goals outlined are then reviewed and approved by the Executive Sponsor. After approval, a kick-off meeting is arranged with the Engagement stakeholders (all of those interviewed for the Discovery) to solicit feedback. As you’d expect, the Engagement goals also relate directly to the Performance Marketing Areas, and involve augmenting either people, processes, or technology.
4. Getting It Done
The majority of the Fractional CMO Engagement is spent getting things done. The first three steps ensure that we’re doing the right things (IE the things that will actually achieve the business goals) - this step is about that the execution is done well.
The best way to achieve the Engagement goals will vary depending on the capabilities/bandwidth of the company and the goals themselves. For example, a company with an in-house HubSpot expert that needs to completely overhaul their HubSpot instance will have a different optimal way to get this done than a company with absolutely no experience with HubSpot (the latter company would either need to upskill, hire or contract-out). Figuring out the best way to get these tasks done (and making sure they get done well) is my special sauce.
To do this, the Engagement Roadmap breaks out each Engagement goal into discrete and actionable tasks. The Roadmap weighs the effort and impact of each task, identifies any dependencies that might exist, clearly outlines who is accountable, and most importantly, when the task will get done. There isn’t any magic fairy dust here - it’s simply driving strong execution on a well-thought out plan.
5. Transitioning for Ongoing Success
Regardless of how corny it may sound, your success is my success.
The Fractional CMO Engagement is designed to identify what needs to get done in regards to performance marketing goals to achieve your business goals - and to complete the top priorities (Engagement goals). That said, setting up your company for success beyond the Engagement is essential. Building up the competency, capabilities, and resilience of your systems and team is baked into the Engagement.
To ensure a smooth transition, the Engagement Roadmap is updated to reflect any changes in opportunities/needs of the company. This provides absolutely clarity on what should get done for people, processes and technology in each of the four Performance Marketing Areas so that your company can continue to scale through performance marketing.
Note that, in a number of instances, it may make sense to collaborate on a subsequent Fractional CMO Engagement (this is done on a case-by-case basis).