What Kind of Reporting Should You Expect From Your Fractional CMO?

A fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) can help your business reach its goals by providing reports that outline your organization's marketing roadmap. Learn more about what kind of reporting you should expect from your fractional CMO.

What Kind of Reporting Should You Expect From Your Fractional CMO?

When it comes to managing projects, many managers opt for one-on-one meetings as a way to stay in touch. However, this type of registration can be done just as easily through Slack or email. The purpose of individual meetings is to discuss how projects relate to a person's broader professional goals, solve problems with other teams, and provide feedback (positive and negative). In addition to a clear roadmap, your fractional CMO should have facilitated the creation of a strong brand. In short, the performance of a good fractional CMO depends on their ability to manage the marketing channels, resources and strategy that will generate additional incremental revenues for your company.

A fractional CMO usually works 10 to 30 hours a week for the first 1 or 2 months of an engagement. This model is only beneficial if you want to improve your current marketing initiatives and get a better ROI on your current marketing expenses. The fractional CMO model has gained a lot of popularity in recent years; however, it's not for everyone. A fractional CMO can only be successful if they have a dedicated internal or external team to manage. If you have a fractional CMO that does SEO work for you, or paid ads or posts on social media, you're simply paying too much money for the wrong resource.

On the contrary, if they ask questions about the marketing strategies currently in place and jump straight into execution bragging about the type of strategies they are going to implement, this is not a fractional CMO. Practically all fractional CMOs should take responsibility for managing the money invested in paid advertising, paid media and social management and paid SEO. The only exception to this rule is when you really want to hire a fractional CMO first to evaluate and hire other external agencies or fill vacant marketing positions in your company. This means that you have some internal or external resources ready and available to execute all the recommendations established by the fractional CMO. You need internal teams (or a series of external partners (for example, SEO, SEM, paid social networks or marketing agencies) to already be working on several marketing results before adding a fractional CMO to the template.

The core ability of a fractional CMO is to understand the business, the team and then, and only then, talk about specific marketing strategies and tactics. For the past three years, I have worked as a fractional CMO or marketing consultant for eight start-ups in the growth phase (I define the growth stage as backed by companies, after revenues, of 50 to 300 employees). The fractional CMO then provides you with a report that outlines your organization's marketing roadmap. In addition to extensive knowledge of marketing and modern tactics, your fractional CMO should have executive-level experience.

Mike Volkin
Mike Volkin

Fractional CMO, author, speaker, and serial entrepreneur