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As a private equity investor, you’re an expert at seeing the potential in a business. But you may also be familiar with the fact that in many cases, the founder of that business doesn’t have the background or knowledge as to how to actually reach it. This is why more and more private equity firms that invest in small- to mid-size businesses or start-ups ready to scale up are leveraging the benefits of fractional CMOs.
Fractional CMO services offer the full executive power of seasoned Chief Marketing Officer through a fully customized commitment. These subject matter experts work with you for a fixed amount of time in a given month, utilizing their proven experience and success to assess the risk, value, and potential of your acquisition through a flexible investment.
A fCMO will lead, manage, and deliver a return on your investment by:
This model is perfect if your portfolio company needs a marketing reset, its current management team lacks senior-level marketing talent, it cannot afford/doesn’t need a full-time marketing department, or it wants to reduce the risks of developing and implementing a new business marketing plan.
The marketing landscape is rapidly changing, and recent trends are amplifying the benefits in using fractional CMOs and digital marketing team.
fCMO services could be a great fit for your portfolio company if one or more of the following applies:
&Marketing not only helps you uncover the true potential of your investment, but it can also complement your fractional CMO with a full team of digital marketing experts to handle the entire creative execution. Unlike other providers who leave that to the company or a third-party, &Marketing offers a full-team approach with a digital-first fCMO that becomes a key part of your leadership team supported by our digital marketing experts who will take full responsibility of your company’s strategy — from pre-acquisition due diligence to post-acquisition delivery.
We’ve built a network of 40+ digital-first, ROI-driven fCMOs with proven experience as external consultants and leading in-house marketing departments to ensure every facet of your strategy is connected in the most effective way. These battle-proven executives lead your marketing due diligence, while digital marketing specialists handle the creative execution to ensure your efforts drive the most meaningful results.
Your team of digital experts will help you gain a deeper understanding of the market’s dynamics, key segments, primary and secondary competition, and most importantly, current and potential customers.
Through a single point of responsibility, you’ll receive:
Full-time CMOs in the U.S. average a salary of $175K, plus benefits, earning between $200-300/hour (Glassdoor). With a time commitment starting at one week per month, our full team of marketing experts led by a fractional CMO start between $15,000 to $25,000 per month (plus any out-of-pocket expenses). This team includes the fCMO, a Marketing Manager, and the subject matter experts needed to creatively execute your digital marketing programs. That means you can get a full team without going through a lengthy and expensive search and hire process — AND the money saved can be used to develop more effective marketing programs and initiatives.
Pre- and post- acquisition digital due diligence and a strong marketing strategy allows companies to build their branding, attract new customers, generate leads, maintain customer loyalty, accelerate growth, and more. That’s why executing the best marketing strategy possible is crucial to the growth of your portfolio company in the digital age. A fCMO supported by a digital marketing team offers a single point of responsibility to ensure your business strategy and execution is done in the most effective and successful way.
To see our full roster of seasoned fCMO or learn more about how we can help your acquisition drive long-term success, contact &Marketing today.
A cutting-edge healthcare technology company (BUDDI.AI), whose target audience includes C-level healthcare executives, was poised for major growth in 2021. However, they were playing in a fragmented competitive landscape that would require them to creatively “break through the noise” in order to build and maintain brand awareness, drive lead generation, and achieve tangible results. To become a true thought leader and partner of choice in the industry, they needed to enhance their digital presence.
&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.
Are you facing challenges of your own in generating leads and meeting your business’ growth goals?
We’d love to learn more about your challenges and how a coordinated marketing approach might help take your organization to the next level.
These days, you can find any information you could want online. Thanks to Google, instant gratification has become a daily feature in our lives. What has become more rare, however, is human connection.
That’s why connecting with consumers more deeply as human beings has become more effective. It’s not enough anymore to simply share the logical reasons why your brand has something special to offer. To cut through the noise of today’s oversaturated markets, you also need to weave emotion and empathy into a narrative that captures and holds their attention.
Why a narrative?
Storytelling is always at the core of what we do for our clients, and we’re passionate about helping organizations realize the power of its impact. Below, you’ll learn more about the neurological impact of storytelling on the human brain, the basics of brand storytelling structure, and how positioning your customer as the hero positions you to win more business.
Recent scientific studies show that storytelling has a measurable impact on the brain, particularly the synthesis of oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone released by the pituitary gland, sometimes referred to as the “love hormone,” as it can be released by things like touch, music, and exercise, which produce feelings of well-being.
“Oxytocin is produced when we are trusted or shown a kindness, and it motivates cooperation with others,” says Paul J. Zak, founding director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies and a professor of economics, psychology, and management at Claremont Graduate University. “We found that character-driven stories do consistently cause oxytocin synthesis. Further, the amount released by the brain predicted how much people were willing to help others.”
Zak’s team has also gotten insight into what makes stories effective at spurring oxytocin production, finding that a story must first grab and hold the audience’s attention by creating tension. When the characters experience tension, the audience’s ability to empathize and get transported into the story increases. If you’ve ever felt like working out or taking a karate class after watching an action flick, this is why. This may be because our attention to the story at hand sharpens as more tension arises. Our senses heighten as we get swept more and more into the story, imagining ourselves in the hero’s place.
If you can present your consumers with a story that places them in the center of the narrative as the hero triumphing over daunting obstacles to achieve their goals, you can capture their attention and empathy. You’ll have the opportunity to show them (not tell them) how you can help them defeat their villains and change their lives for the better.
Another reason storytelling is so effective is that it helps our brains organize information in a way that’s easy to understand. Stories put everything in order to prevent the audience from getting confused and tuning us out.
Because effective storytelling has been studied and practiced for thousands of years, it can be distilled down into a definable and repeatable structure. This structure is highly effective at helping brands simplify their message and use their opportunity to communicate with the audience to its fullest potential.
In Building A StoryBrand, Donald Miller identifies seven essential parts to storytelling:
“A character who wants something encounters a problem before they can get it. At the peak of their despair, a guide steps into their lives, gives them a plan, and calls them to action. That action helps them avoid failure and ends in a success.”
Miller says that customers are most interested in how your brand will help them to survive and thrive. Once you understand their needs, desires, problems, fears, and goals, you can place them in the center of this storytelling structure as the hero conquering their foes with you by their side as a trusted expert and guide. Just remember — they are the hero, not your brand!
People want to see themselves as the heroes of their own stories, and helping them do that is a vital way to cut through the noise and differentiate your brand. By focusing on their goals rather than your own, you position your brand as a wise guide that can help them overcome their challenges and thrive.
Once you’ve identified your ideal customer/main character, you need to define the problems they need your help solving. Focus on internal problems, the kind that keep your audience up at night — the primary villain, the dragon they need to slay. In what concrete ways do these problems present themselves in daily life? How does it nag at them mentally throughout the day?
As their empathetic and authoritative guide, you should be able to articulate how your brand can help them vanquish their villain. That means you’ll need to present yourself as wise, showing your expertise through case studies and testimonials to demonstrate how you’ve helped others. You’ll also need to show empathy and that you thoroughly understand their challenges.
Now that they’ve got a trusted guide on their side, they need a plan of attack. That’s where calls to action come into play. Don’t be coy — tell your audience exactly what they should do to fight their villain and come out on top. Articulate how this action will help them to achieve success and avoid failure, transforming them from the striving hero to the ultimate champion.
Do you want to unleash your brand’s inner Yoda, guiding customers toward their Luke Skywalker moment? Learn more about storytelling in our free guide to narrative marketing, where you’ll find a full breakdown of each step from StoryBrand.
Content Specialist Kim Steinmetz helps brands and thought leaders discover and develop their unique voice and tone while establishing authority on a topic through compelling messaging and copywriting. An accomplished writer and marketer with over a decade of experience, Kim is well-versed in both B2C and B2B content.
&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.
Are you facing challenges of your own in generating leads and meeting your business’ growth goals?
We’d love to learn more about your challenges and how a coordinated marketing approach might help take your organization to the next level.
Your content marketing strategy is vital to your organization’s overall success, so getting buy-in from stakeholders outside the marketing department is crucial to keep everyone aligned toward business goals. When everyone puts their heads together to provide input into the new plan, fresh perspectives and ideas are uncovered to make the strategy work better for each department.
We’ve spent years discovering the most effective approaches to get buy-in from stakeholders, so we combined our knowledge to create this guide. Keep reading to discover our 3-step process to winning your entire organization over to your brilliant new content marketing strategy.
There are many reasons why getting buy-in from stakeholders for your content marketing strategy is a step that should always be remembered. It may take hard work and patience, but it’s worth it — when everyone is aligned on a strategy:
Marketing is constantly evolving, so you must be strategic about getting buy-in when you propose changes to your strategy. Leadership especially wants to be reassured that any changes are highly likely to deliver results, so you’ll need to come prepared with plenty of data — but that’s not all:
Map out how various departments interact with or may be impacted by your strategy. Examples may include outside sales, customer service, IT, and others. Start thinking about their responsibilities, needs, and possible objections. What will you need from them, and how can you ease the burden on them to provide that?
Depending on your organization’s size, it might be worthwhile to have a different session with each department. This can help you avoid bogging anyone down with extra information irrelevant to them, tailor your presentation more closely to your audience, and provide them with individual attention.
When it comes to getting leadership buy-in, ensure you understand what metrics leaders are most interested in improving and can demonstrate how your plan will help move the needle toward the company’s goals.
Make sure everyone knows the purpose of each meeting beforehand, so stakeholders know what to expect. Don’t wait until the end of the session to finally get to the ask — tell stakeholders what you want from them at the beginning, then provide a clear explanation of why they should agree.
Set a baseline by explaining how things are currently done and where there’s room for improvement. This is an excellent opportunity to incorporate data showing where your current strategy could improve.
Pro tip: don’t just rattle off facts. Storytelling is an incredibly powerful tool — don’t just use it in your content marketing strategy. Use it to create an engaging and impactful presentation that pulls your stakeholders in just as you would a customer.
Once you’ve captured your audience’s attention and imagination, appeal to their logical side by providing data to give your proposal more legitimacy. Make sure it’s easy to understand and leads to a clear conclusion. Share examples of other organizations that have seen success with similar strategies. Most stakeholders don’t want to be the first to try a new tactic, but if they can see that others have succeeded, they’ll feel more comfortable giving it a try.
Clearly describe the benefits of your plan. A strong content marketing strategy makes customers feel more comfortable interacting with you because they’ve come to you. It also often costs significantly less than outbound marketing strategies while netting higher quality leads and improving visibility online. Make sure your audience also clearly understands any benefits specific to their department or goals, and make a clear and concise ask for exactly what you want them to do next to support your plan.
Sometimes there are factors beyond your control influencing stakeholder decisions. For example, if you’ve just joined the company, your peers and leadership might not have had enough time to get to know and trust your expertise. While it can be frustrating, it is understandable, and there are ways to help stakeholders warm up to your ideas even if they haven’t yet warmed up to you. For example, consulting with an outside expert, someone likely to be trusted and respected, can be valuable in helping to reinforce your claims.
If your plan requires marketing skills you don’t currently have and you aren’t ready to make a significant investment in headcount, you can outsource key roles. It’s common to do this for tactical roles like website design or content creation, but you can also hire part-time executive-level content marketing help in the form of a Fractional Content Marketing Officer, or fCMO. An fCMO can lead your team in both strategy and execution of your content marketing strategy without the high overhead of adding another full-time member to your C-suite.
Content marketing is ultimately a long-term strategy, but stakeholders are often interested in hearing about short-term results whenever possible. At the outset of your plan, establish your baseline to measure against. Short-term goals to track include social media interactions (likes, shares, mentions, followers), backlinks, and leads and conversions. Search engine traffic will take longer to rise, but with a baseline, you’ll be able to see any quick bumps if they do happen.
Whether you need help creating an impactful story for stakeholders or customers, we’ve got a roadmap for you. To help you successfully lead your hero down the path to their own happily ever after, &Marketing has broken down Donald Miller’s StoryBrand roadmap into easily digestible bites. Download our free guide to narrative marketing for a simple breakdown of each step.
Content Specialist Kim Steinmetz helps brands and thought leaders discover and develop their unique voice and tone while establishing authority on a topic through compelling messaging and copywriting. An accomplished writer and marketer with over a decade of experience, Kim is well-versed in both B2C and B2B content.
&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.
Are you facing challenges of your own in generating leads and meeting your business’ growth goals?
We’d love to learn more about your challenges and how a coordinated marketing approach might help take your organization to the next level.
Our fractional marketing team, led by a Fractional CMO, provides you with highly experienced, executive-level leadership to develop a robust marketing strategy – plus, it will ensure effective execution. It can be your marketing team or supplement existing marketing professionals on your staff. Let’s start with the basics.
A fractional marketing department is exactly what it sounds like: a complete marketing team led by an executive-level marketing leader to replace or augment an existing internal team. The team and CMO offer proven skills and capabilities paired with repeatable marketing processes at a fraction of the cost.
A fractional marketing team and CMO can be the perfect solution to help small to mid-sized companies and start-ups:
A fractional marketing team and CMO may be ideal for you if:
We believe that combining highly experienced executive leadership with solid execution capability is the recipe for success.
We combine executive leadership with a Fractional Marketing Manager and have on-demand experts with a wide variety of marketing skills and capabilities for executing these strategies. This helps ensure that your marketing investment achieves a solid return.
We start by building a data-driven foundation for a robust marketing strategy which leads to a road map with clear objectives and goals. It can be simple or more complicated depending on your situation, your competition, the uniqueness of your products or services, and the cohesiveness of your target group. We have done this in two weeks, or it can take three to six months.
We are firm believers that this should be an iterative process with you and your team so that we produce the best approach possible. We aim for at least a bi-weekly check-in with the CEO to align with company goals. The Fractional CMO leads the development of the strategy, then provides overall executive-level guidance for the execution. Finally, we will make a formal presentation to your Management Team at the end of this stage.
Our execution focuses on brand building, creating awareness, and generating leads/trials. We focus on a variety of content that informs, inspires, and excites, choosing the best medium for you. We qualify leads with a call-to-action and use landing pages and websites. For B2B, we qualify leads and work closely with your sales force/inside sales to convert potential customers.
Our execution process:
Good marketing builds your brand, creates awareness, generates leads, attracts new customers, and accelerates your growth. Finding a way to do the absolute best marketing you can is critical, especially when times are tight. Hiring a Fractional CMO with a solid execution team may be a smart way to go. Plus, you can add people and capabilities as you grow. At the right time, we will help you transition by developing the right organizational structure while helping you hire the right people. For &Marketing, this transition is a sign that we have been successful. Contact us today to start driving growth with a Fractional CMO.
&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.
Are you facing challenges of your own in generating leads and meeting your business’ growth goals?
We’d love to learn more about your challenges and how a coordinated marketing approach might help take your organization to the next level.
Are you ready to accelerate your company’s growth to the next level? Do you need to increase awareness and inspire prospects to try your products or services? Do you need a highly experienced marketing leader to bring a fresh perspective? That is why we created &Marketing+ with its Fractional CMO service. This may be the right answer for you – at a fraction of the cost of a full-time in-house team.
You may have seen the term before and wondered, “what is a Fractional CMO?” A Fractional CMO is a senior marketing executive retained part-time to provide executive-level leadership. An fCMO offers proven skills and capabilities paired with repeatable marketing processes at a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire.
Hiring a top chief marketing executive in the United States costs upwards of $300K per year, plus bonuses and benefits. &Marketing’s Fractional CMOs offer a high level of expertise at a fraction of the cost. Additionally, we provide access to our team of digital marketing experts. Your fractional marketing team will include the CMO, a Marketing Manager, and the subject matter experts needed to create and execute your digital marketing plan. With us, you can get a full team without going through a lengthy and expensive search and hire process. Instead, you can use the money you save to develop marketing programs and initiatives.
This may be an ideal way to get started. When you are ready to hire full-time people, you will have processes in place, and we will be able to help you transition by developing the organizational structure that is right for you and helping you hire the right people. This transition, for &Marketing, is a sign that we have been successful.
Many companies across industries, from start-ups to the middle market, can benefit from quickly onboarding a marketing leader and an execution team. With &Marketing+, they can do it without incurring the tremendous costs and risks associated with searching, training, and ramp-up time that a full-time in-house Marketing Department would take.
You will benefit from this arrangement if some of the following characteristics apply to you:
This is ideal for start-ups or scale-ups with funding in place to provide customer or market perspective, usually at the time of a Series A. A Fractional Chief Marketing Officer is also ideal for middle-market companies which have never seriously invested in marketing.
For more established companies, a Fractional CMO and team can bring incredible value when launching a new product or service, especially when having a full-time CMO wouldn’t make fiscal or practical sense.
Do you think that you can benefit from a Fractional marketing team? Contact us with any questions and see if there is a good fit.
Our approach allows you to tap into the services of subject matter experts and digital marketing teams who bring unique and diverse strategies to the table. They have the knowledge and experience of leading several marketing teams to drive the results your company needs. They have done it before, many times.
&Marketing’s Team and Fractional CMOs can provide you, and the rest of your team, with a deeper understanding of your market and its dynamics, key segments, your primary and secondary competition, and, most importantly, an in-depth understanding of your current and potential customers.
The team will take ownership of your company’s marketing programs and help ensure that your company properly implements everything from digital marketing to analytics.
We combine the development of a robust marketing strategy with complete execution so that you have just one point of responsibility. Services include:
Our Fractional CMOs and teams are process-driven to enable you to scale up – ensuring you have the proper guardrails and strategic oversight to meet your long-term growth needs. Our brand building, lead generation, and conversion processes are outlined below.
The Fractional CMOs will lead, manage, and deliver a return on your investment:
This works because the Fractional CMO and team are highly experienced; they have done it before. They have seen the ups and downs and are equipped to effectively manage marketing departments and work closely with the entire team. They are trained to focus on results and help the company to scale.
Good marketing builds your brand, creates awareness, generates leads, attracts new customers, and accelerates your growth. Finding a way to do the absolute best marketing you can is critical, especially when times are tight. Hiring a Fractional CMO with a solid execution team may be a smart way to go. Contact us today to start driving growth with a Fractional CMO.
&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.
Are you facing challenges of your own in generating leads and meeting your business’ growth goals?
We’d love to learn more about your challenges and how a coordinated marketing approach might help take your organization to the next level.
An expert marketing team led by a highly experienced Fractional Chief Marketing Officer (fCMO) can be the right answer if you are not ready or don’t want to spend the money on a full team. This is ideal for start-ups ready to scale up and small to mid-sized businesses that want to accelerate growth.
Here are five indicators that you may want to hire a Fractional CMO working with a group of subject matter experts. This strategy ensures a data-based marketing plan grounded in a deep understanding of your market, competitors, and customers. It also effectively executes marketing programs and initiatives to give you a better return on your investment.
In many smaller companies and start-ups, the CEO or the sales leaders do marketing “on the side.” They may have some administrative help, but marketing is not a primary focus. They may be sending emails to customers, preparing marketing materials, or even writing blogs, but this is not likely very effective. The messages shared by these marketing efforts tend to be scattered and confusing.
In addition to marketing strategy, our team can help you develop a focused brand image and message that you can effectively communicate through marketing materials with a unified and recognizable brand identity.
You may want to hire a Fractional CMO if you believe that an investment in marketing can accelerate your company’s growth trajectory or if you are ready to scale up. Investing in marketing without executive-level leadership and subject matter expertise will reduce your likelihood of success and diminish your return on investment. These teams offer the experience and practices used by larger companies and have experience with a variety of clients and industries.
Often companies are stuck within their own walls and ways of doing business. Apply outside perspective in developing and executing marketing strategies and programs to accelerate your growth. Executives with decades of experience in other similar situations can provide insights on what is more likely to work in your business or industry.
Many companies often deploy a hodgepodge of marketing tactics without a methodical, systematic approach. However, marketing is as much an art as a science. Proven processes that have been repeatedly successful in other situations can dramatically increase your chances of success, usually at a lower cost.
Our teams are highly data-driven and use data on key performance indicators to measure and drive marketing results. Empowering you with a deeper understanding of your market, competition, and current/potential customers is our starting point in developing the right marketing strategies for you. This is followed by execution processes all the way to working with your sales force to ensure that leads generated are quickly followed up.
Many businesses do not need, and cannot afford, a full-time CMO with a large marketing department. An investment like that is a significant commitment and can be expensive, especially for smaller businesses and start-ups. You should commit to this only if it is absolutely necessary. If you hire a Fractional CMO with a solid team, they can deliver the same value for a fraction of the cost.
If you’re wondering what to look for in a Fractional CMO candidate, here are a few characteristics of successful fCMOs:
A successful fCMO has experience across a variety of industries and situations, so they know which winning strategies are likely to work for your business. They also know how to use their leadership skills to guide the execution and deployment of those strategies, ensuring that projects focused on short-term results still tie into the overall strategy. They will also guide you in choosing metrics and KPIs that clearly demonstrate progress toward that strategy.
A good fCMO should come prepared with a proven set of winning processes and procedures. They should have the flexibility to tailor those processes to your organization’s unique needs, empowering you with the tools to reach the vision outlined in the overall brand marketing strategy and sustain long-term growth. A modern Fractional CMO also has a working knowledge of the ins and outs of digital marketing.
Great fCMOs act as an extension of your team, working “in” the business, fully integrating with a high level of attentiveness and investment in your company’s goals and culture. They focus on results, driving teams to fully close the loop from strategy to execution, ensuring projects are fully realized to the highest level possible.
Good marketing builds your brand, creates awareness, generates leads, attracts new customers, and accelerates your growth. Finding a way to do the absolute best marketing you can is critical, especially when times are tight. Hiring a Fractional CMO with a solid execution team may be a smart way to go. Plus, you can add people and capabilities as you grow. At the right time, we will help you transition by developing the right organizational structure while helping you hire the right people. For &Marketing, this transition is a sign that we have been successful. Contact us today to start driving growth with a Fractional CMO.
&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.
Are you facing challenges of your own in generating leads and meeting your business’ growth goals?
We’d love to learn more about your challenges and how a coordinated marketing approach might help take your organization to the next level.
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