The Benefits of Hiring a Fractional Marketing Team to Boost Your Business

A fractional marketing team is a group of marketing professionals who work for your business on a part-time or project-based basis. Unlike hiring a full-time in-house team, a fractional team provides you with access to high-level expertise and diverse skill sets without the commitment and overhead costs associated with full-time employees.

These teams are composed of specialists across various marketing disciplines, such as digital marketing, content creation, SEO, social media management, and more. The key advantage of a fractional marketing team is its flexibility. You can scale their involvement up or down based on your current needs and goals.

 

Benefits of a Fractional Marketing Team

• Cost-Effective Solution: Hiring full-time marketing staff can be expensive, especially for startups and small businesses. Fractional teams provide top-tier talent at a fraction of the cost.
• Access to Specialized Skills: With a fractional team, you gain access to specialists with a diverse range of skills and experiences, ensuring that all aspects of your marketing strategy are covered.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Whether you need support for a short-term project or ongoing marketing efforts, a fractional team can adjust to meet your needs, allowing for greater flexibility.
• Quick Onboarding: Fractional marketing teams are usually ready to hit the ground running, with minimal onboarding required. This means you can start seeing results faster.
• Focus on Core Business: By outsourcing your marketing efforts to a fractional team, you can focus on your core business activities, knowing that your marketing is in capable hands.

If you're interested in exploring how a fractional marketing team can benefit your business, check out our Fractional Marketing Team service page for more information.

In the next sections, we’ll dive into when to hire a fractional marketing team and how to ensure you choose the right one for your business needs.

Modern buyers discover you; they do not wait to be found.

This statement defines the challenges businesses face, especially from a historical marketing approach that assumed customers had to be found, convinced, and converted.

In B2B, especially where outbound marketing is king, businesses struggle to right their ships to catch the winds of modern technology-driven marketing, where the buyer, marketing funnel, marketing technology, and marketing channels are markedly different.

To this end, businesses are looking towards solutions like fractional marketing teams to overcome the following market challenges:

Shifting Market Perceptions of Brands

B2C brands have long understood that buyers want personalized brands to which they can relate. B2B brands, on the other hand, have never needed to personalize. Instead, they focus on creating compelling products and services they hope will meet buyer expectations.

Well, now B2B buyers want to purchase from more personalized brands. They want better tailored and contextualized messaging that aligns with their purchasing intent, all of which traditional B2B marketing departments are ill-equipped to deliver.

Increasingly Complex Marketing Landscape

Forrester found that 68% of B2B buyers today prefer doing business online. Traditional marketing methods like in-person presentations are not as effective in such a landscape as they were. As more B2B businesses move their purchasing activities online, MarTech has risen to fill the gap left by traditional marketing methods.

B2B companies are finding they need to quickly adopt MarTech and make it work in a race to capture online leads. Fractional marketing teams offer the only practical way to bring in talent, tools, and processes quickly and cost-effectively to help B2Bs navigate this complex marketing landscape.

Increasing Pressure on Marketing Budgets

Hiring a full-time CMO can set a company back, on average, $397,572. Not surprisingly, businesses opt for leaner marketing strategies to rein costs and maximize returns. They simply cannot afford to spend so much money without a guarantee of returns. Fractional marketing teams provide the best of both worlds; highly specialized services without the prohibitive costs of hiring full-time talent.

Marketing Shifting from A Cost Center to A Revenue Center

Traditional perceptions have placed the marketing role right beside customer experience and finance. It is an important department, just not one that brings in money. A lot has changed since those good old days.

Marketers are now under pressure to prove their department is not a cost center but a revenue driver. However, most lack the skills and tools to make this transition.

Hiring a fractional marketing team can help a business increase ROI from marketing spend through modern marketing strategies like revenue attribution.

High turnover of CMOs

Marketing has never enjoyed the security of tenure, not like finance and sales. CMOs are the most likely C-suite members to churn, averaging only forty months in office compared to CEOs who remain in office for an average of eighty-five months.

Such high marketing executive churn is expected due to intense pressure to deliver profitable growth, address changing demands for business transformation, and keep up with increasing complexity in the broader marketing landscape.

Fractional Chief Marketing Officers and teams are marketing professionals with extensive marketing experience and skills from working on marketing campaigns in multiple industries and verticals and can meet these challenges head-on to deliver significant ROI on marketing spend.

The Challenge of Omnichannel Marketing

B2B’s cannot afford to ignore omnichannel marketing because of these reasons:

• According to McKinsey, omnichannel is the standard, not the exception.
• TechRepublic found that 75% of B2B customers would buy from their provider again if they had omnichannel capabilities.
• Data from Think with Google shows that omnichannel strategies drive an 80% higher rate of total store visits.

While it is arguable that most B2Bs understand the need for omnichannel marketing, most lack the internal talent, technology, and expertise to implement effective omnichannel strategies.

O8’s fractional marketing team has experience deploying B2B omnichannel capabilities in multiple industries. Our experienced marketing team can provide technology and skills to add omnichannel marketing to your marketing mix.

Successfully integrating a fractional marketing team with your in-house marketing team is essential for seamless collaboration and optimal results. Here are some strategies to ensure smooth integration and effective marketing efforts.

Strategies for Seamless Integration

1. Clear Communication Channels: Establish clear communication channels and protocols from the outset. Use tools such as Slack, Trello, or Asana to keep everyone on the same page. Regular meetings and updates ensure transparency and alignment between your in-house team and the fractional marketing team.
2. Define Roles and Responsibilities: Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of both the fractional team and your in-house team. This helps avoid overlap and ensures that each team member knows their specific duties, facilitating smooth workflow and cooperation.
3. Collaborative Tools and Platforms: Utilize collaborative tools and platforms to streamline project management and collaboration. Tools like Google Drive, shared calendars, and project management software allow both teams to work harmoniously and stay organized.
4. Shared Goals and KPIs: Align both teams on shared goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). This ensures that everyone is working towards the same business goals and understands the metrics for success. Regularly review these KPIs to track progress and make necessary adjustments.
5. Cultural Integration: Foster a culture of inclusion and collaboration by involving the fractional team in company meetings, events, and social activities. This helps build rapport and trust, making it easier for them to integrate with your in-house team.
6. Regular Feedback and Optimization: Establish a feedback loop to continuously improve collaboration and performance. Regularly solicit feedback from both teams and make adjustments as needed to optimize the working relationship.

By implementing these strategies, you can ensure a smooth integration of your fractional marketing team, leading to more effective marketing outcomes. For more insights on improving marketing team performance, visit our blog post on How Marketing Teams Can Work Smarter.

In the following section, we’ll discuss how fractional marketing teams can be particularly effective for small businesses, providing the expertise and flexibility needed to thrive in a competitive market.

The previous section offered insights on why B2B companies should explore fractional marketing as an alternative to traditional full-time marketing and outsourced marketing.

This section addresses how to approach fractional marketing teams. As marketing experts at O8, these are our seven essential fractional marketing team best practices.

Fractional CMO ≠ Fractional Marketing Team

Whenever the term ‘fractional marketing’ comes up, what immediately jumps to mind is fractional CMO, and rightly so. This fractional marketing leader is critical to any modern company that wants to infuse expert marketing leadership into an internal team.

However, a fractional marketing team extends to hiring an entire marketing team or department on a fractional basis. As such, when considering your marketing needs, be aware that your marketing needs can be served by a fractional marketing director, a fractional marketing team, or both.

Define Performance Metrics Early

Unlike an internal B2B marketing team structure that handles all marketing tasks, from the mundane to the mission-critical, a fractional marketing team delivers key outcomes in specific areas.

The best way to achieve this is to define KPIs early. For example, when hiring a fractional marketing team to integrate omnichannel capabilities, ensure you define KPIs tied to this specific deliverable to ensure the team remains aligned with your expectations.

Have a Mid-Long-Term Outlook

Although you can hire a fractional marketing team for project-based work, it is essential to tie their work to a longer-term strategic plan. One mistake B2B businesses often make is trying to package a long-term strategy as a short-term project.

For example, if you hire a fractional marketing team for a content marketing project, their work might last six months, but you may reap the benefits of their efforts for years to come.

Look for Diversity of Skills

The best fractional marketing teams have various skills like social media, SEO, Conversion Rate Optimization, paid ads and PPC, and MarTech like CRM and analytics. The more diverse the skills represented within the team, the better the chances that you will not need to hire additional marketing talent to plug any skill gaps.

In addition, when hiring a fractional marketing team, consider the presence of a CMO within the team, as you do not want to hire a team that looks to you for leadership.

Involve Sales and Customer Success

Do not lock out your sales and customer success teams from the process of hiring a fractional marketing team. The best results come from looping in both departments and providing them a seat at the marketing decision-making table. With their input, you can better define deliverables and KPIs and provide the fractional marketing team with the data and insights they need to deliver the best results possible.

Set Realistic and Achievable Goals

The fractional marketing team at O8 is exceptional at what we do, and we thrive in an environment that sets realistic and achievable goals. One of the challenges we have seen businesses face is the difficulty of matching realistic goals and market pressures.

When hiring a fractional marketing team, formulate goals and objectives collaboratively so that they are based on facts and attainable aspirations. The best fractional marketing teams will always ensure the goals are SMART because such goals benefit everyone.

Hiring the right fractional marketing team requires a strategic approach to ensure alignment with your business goals and marketing needs. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you find the perfect fit.

Steps to Hire a Fractional Marketing Team

1. Define Your Needs and Goals: Before starting your search, clearly outline your business goals and marketing needs. This will help you identify the specific skills and expertise required. Consider the areas where your current team could use support, whether it’s enhancing brand awareness, executing a new campaign, or refining your marketing operations.
2. Research and Shortlist Candidates: Look for fractional marketing teams with a proven track record of success in your industry. Check their portfolios, client testimonials, and case studies. Prioritize teams that have experience with in-house marketing teams and can demonstrate effective marketing strategies.
3. Evaluate Skills and Expertise: During the vetting process, assess each team's skills and expertise. Ensure they have the right mix of marketing functions covered, from SEO and content creation to strategic marketing and social media management. Ask about their experience working on a retainer basis to understand their commitment and ability to deliver ongoing support.
4. Conduct Interviews: Once you have a shortlist, conduct interviews to gauge their understanding of your business goals and their approach to achieving them. This is also an opportunity to assess their communication style and compatibility with your in-house marketing team.
5. Request Proposals: Ask the shortlisted teams to provide detailed proposals outlining their approach, strategies, and expected outcomes. Evaluate these proposals based on how well they align with your business goals and how comprehensively they address your marketing needs.
6. Check References: Before making a final decision, check references to verify the team's track record and client satisfaction. This will provide you with insights into their reliability, effectiveness, and ability to deliver results.

By following these steps, you can hire a fractional marketing team that complements your in-house efforts and helps drive your marketing operations forward. Now, let's discuss some qualitative aspects to look for in a fractional marketing team.

We have identified seven crucial factors to consider in hiring a fractional marketing team:

1. Marketing Leadership and Growth Strategy

The fractional marketing team must provide an integrated growth strategy linked to your company’s marketing goals. The strategy must reflect your strenghts, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) and the steps required to achieve identified KPIs.

Similarly, the marketing team structure must provide marketing leadership in assembling and directing necessary resources towards executing set goals in achieving the laid-out strategy. This may come in the form of a fractional CMO, or someone on the team who can think like a CMO and fill CMO-like duties.

Also consider noting that the team must offer both strategic and tactical support to ensure the project runs smoothly from start to finish.

2. Branding and Messaging

Branding and messaging are crucial to your marketing success. The fractional marketing team must have the requisite art direction skillset to ensure marketing collateral and deliverables conform to your organization's image, tone, and voice.

The team must understand how to position marketing content to align with your branding to resonate with target audiences without alienating legacy audiences.

3. ABM, Go-to-Market, and Sales Capabilities

Sales is sometimes considered separate from marketing, but in today's world it's absolutely inseparable. Sales-focused capabilities such as account-based marketing (ABM), Go-to-Market strategy (GTM), and other sales-driven capabilities are crucial to succeed, especially in B2B contexts. 

It is essential to ensure that the fractional marketing team you hire understands how to integrate these strategies and processes into your marketing efforts, which is also part of sales and marketing alignment, covered below.

4. Marketing and Sales Alignment

Marketing and sales alignment are vital to any company’s success. One of the challenges of bringing in a fractional marketing team is the relative disconnection with internal sales teams. While the in-house teams may be aligned with sales, outside teams may not.

It is, therefore, crucial to ensure the fractional team you hire understands the importance of sales and marketing alignment. They should prioritize such alignment through shared goals, centralized communications, connected systems (e.g., CRM), and data visibility (no silos).

5. Digital Marketing Capabilities

SEO, PPC, and social media are no longer just B2C marketing channels. No matter how sophisticated your B2B buyers are or how far removed they are from the consumer market, digital marketing is now a permanent fixture of the B2B marketing mix.

As such, your target part-time fractional marketing team must include extensive digital marketing capabilities to ensure you are at the forefront of digital marketing trends. Look for a wide array of services. 

For example, marketing videos are a significant trend B2Bs are yet to catch up with, even though 96% of people learned more about a product or service by watching an explainer video, and 88% say watching a brand’s video convinced them to purchase.

6. Marketing Infrastructure and Technology Partners

The last piece of the puzzle is the fractional marketing team’s ability to source, test, and implement new MarTech tools, as well as bringing existing technology partnerships to the table.

7. Flexible Integration

Ultimately, the fractional marketing team must be flexible enough to fill in where needed. There may be some cases where your team takes part of a given role, and the fractional marketing team supplements the other half. In other situations, the fractional marketing team may take all (or none) of a given role. Flexibility is key to meld in with your current marketing team, including the critical fractional CMO role.

Small businesses often face unique challenges when it comes to marketing. Limited budgets, a lack of specialized skills, and the need for quick scalability can all pose significant hurdles. This is where a fractional marketing team can offer a substantial advantage.

Benefits for Small Businesses

1. Cost-Effective Expertise: Small businesses can access high-level marketing expertise without the financial burden of hiring full-time employees. Fractional marketing teams provide specialized skills at a fraction of the cost, making them a budget-friendly option.
2. Scalability: As your business grows, your marketing needs will evolve. A fractional team can easily scale its efforts to match your growth trajectory, providing the flexibility to increase or decrease support as needed.
3. Diverse Skill Sets: Fractional marketing teams bring a wide range of skills and expertise to the table, from SEO and content marketing to social media and paid advertising. This ensures that all aspects of your marketing strategy are effectively covered.
4. Quick Implementation: Fractional teams are often ready to hit the ground running, with minimal onboarding required. This means you can start seeing results more quickly, which is crucial for small businesses that need to make an impact fast.
5. Focus on Core Business Activities: By outsourcing your marketing efforts to a fractional team, you can concentrate on your core business activities. This allows you to focus on what you do best while knowing that your marketing is in capable hands.

Small businesses can greatly benefit from the flexibility and expertise offered by a fractional marketing team. For insights on creating a robust marketing plan that leverages fractional marketing services, take a look at our guide on How to Create a Marketing Plan in 10 Steps.

In the next section, we'll delve into how fractional marketing teams can effectively work alongside in-house staff, enhancing capabilities without redundancy.

Fractional marketing teams are helping transform marketing into a revenue driver for companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies. When correctly implemented, hiring a fractional marketing team can bring skills, experience, and tools to your organization and change the trajectory of your sales and marketing efforts.

O8 fractional marketing team is a self-managing, expert-level marketing team that scales and adjusts to your marketing needs at a fraction of the cost. We seamlessly integrate with your marketing and sales team, adding the necessary role(s) on-demand, so you get the proper support when needed.

Our team members fill eighteen distinct roles on an hourly basis, including marketing data architect, SEO specialist, automation expert, project manager, and others on the marketing front and chief technical strategist, UX designer, and front and backend developer, among others, on the technology side.

Contact us today to explore how our fractional marketing team services and Fractional CMO services can help you successfully launch a new product, accelerate your marketing programs, and take your marketing ROI to the next level.