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The Outside CMO: How Can An On-Demand & Contracted CMO Help Your Business Grow and Thrive?

Written by Tina Miletich | Dec 18, 2017 9:20:19 PM

Your business’s marketing plan is a map to guide you toward your goals. Without executive marketing talent to help you create that map, you’ve likely experienced a number of challenges that are holding you back from achieving those goals.

Businesses that lack strong marketing leadership put themselves at risk to lose sales and revenue. Because your priorities may be on other things, marketing your business takes a backseat. Poor planning and execution can ultimately leave your business vulnerable -- whether it’s being outpaced by your competitors, not positioning yourself strategically in the market, failing to resonate with your customers, etc.

However, if you know you need experienced marketing leadership, but you’re not quite ready for a full-time in-house resource, the outside Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) can help. A seasoned marketing executive can provide startups and SMBs the vital leadership and execution that will result in successful marketing programs, guiding your business toward its long-term goals.

Why would a company want to hire an outside CMO?

Here are a few ways businesses can benefit from on-demand executive marketing talent:

  1. Immediate Impact on a Strategic Level

Outside CMOs bring a career’s worth of experience and a fresh perspective to the table, from which they can immediately begin developing a strategic plan to organize available resources at your business. Their broad-based and on-demand perspective allows Outside CMOs to provide best practices for:

  • Marketing strategy formulation,
  • Development of positioning and messaging for your brand,
  • Market segmentation,
  • Customer acquisition and sales pipeline development,
  • Establishment of performance metrics,
  • Selection of vendors for specialized tasks,
  • Implementation, management, and coordination of marketing initiatives and efforts, and much more.

While members of your team focus on specific projects, an Outside CMO is able to focus on bringing all of these pieces together to create a cohesive strategy that drives your business’s success in the market.

  1. Widen the Talent Pool

C-level executives come from a wide variety of industries, educational backgrounds, and job experiences. And finding the right one that understands your business is imperative to your success.

Widening the talent pool outside of your physical area by utilizing an Outside CMO yields more personnel options and a wider range of expertise. You’re able to pull in talent from around the world and find the person that fits your business’s unique needs.

  1. Convenient and Cost-Effective

With an Outside CMO, you’ll avoid the hassle of bringing on or replacing an in-house CMO -- which means you’ll avoid hiring delays, turnover, long-term commitments, relocation costs, and more. All of these extra hurdles are not only inconvenient, but can also add up in the form of lost money to your business.

Outside CMOs bring impactful experience and expertise especially concerning digital transformation. Partnering existing marketing strategy with new CMO strategies from outside your organization can significantly impact bottom line without completely deconstructing your marketing practice. For smaller organizations that don’t have a CMO, an Outside CMO provides the business acumen to help you develop a marketing strategy that aligns with their existing business model. Finally, an Outside CMO is beneficial for businesses in the startup or emerging phases who may be running on tighter budgets.

Your businesses success relies on a fine-tuned marketing strategy. Utilizing an Outside CMO allows you to leverage high-level talent in smaller increments of time and budget, while still gaining qualified expertise that will help accelerate your business.