You're seeing it. I'm seeing it. More and more business owners, your competitors are moving away from the full-time CMO model into the fractional CMO model. And in today's episode, I'm going to give you the six reasons why.

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SOFTWARE TOOLS RECOMMENDED BY BRIAN WEBB & WHATBOX DIGITAL

Active Campaign - CRM & Marketing Automation

TypeForm - Web Forms

Monday - Project Management (on steroids)

Pipedrive - CRM Alternative

Instapage - Landing Pages

Creative Market - Graphic Design & Creative Template Resources

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TRANSCRIPT

Brian Webb:

This is the Learn More Earn More Business Growth Podcast.

Brian Webb:

Hey everyone. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Brian Webb. This podcast is designed to be your number one premier place to learn the framework, secrets, and growth hacks, to grow and scale your business smarter and faster. While you're working on pursuing your dreams and growing your business, I'll be here to help you make better decisions and avoid costly pitfalls and expensive mistakes along the way. So let's go ahead and jump into today's episode.

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the show. If you're new to the show, welcome, welcome, welcome. If you are a loyal listener, you will understand that we have been on a little bit of a sabbatical. So we wrapped up season one and we are now embarking on season two of the podcast. So lots and lots and lots of great content coming your way this season. You may have noticed, but more and more business leaders are wanting to work with and are working with a fractional chief marketing officer rather than a full-time CMO, AKA fractional CMO. And you may be wondering why that's happening and I'm going to give you the six reasons that more, and more, and more business leaders, your competitors are working with a fractional chief marketing officer, as opposed to a full-time CMO. But before I get into those six reasons, I want to break down what is a true CMO and what is not a CMO.

Let me start with what it's not. A CMO is not someone who coordinates your social media. A CMO is not someone who handles your graphic design projects. Those are valid technicians that are necessary in the execution of marketing, but that is not the recipe for a true chief marketing officer. Typically, your best chief marketing officer is someone who's going to have had years, if not, decades of broad cross-industry experience that can be brought to your table, to your business, to leverage tactics and strategies that drive revenue to your bottom line. They are not project managers. Through their experience, they know what works and what does not work. Now, your CMO might possess a lot of those skills, those technical skills that are necessary in the execution of marketing, but each one of those skills by themselves is a discipline that's necessary, but it does not bring everything to the table that's needed to be a true chief marketing officer.

A high-quality CMO is someone who brings depth, years, decades of experiments, of experience working with marketing campaigns, tactics, strategies that develop a true return on investment that actually grow the business. That said, a lot of the CMOs that I know have prior years of owning an agency. So they have a lot of experience at working with a broad range of clients. And as a result, a lot of times they have a deep bench of people or technicians that are at their disposal and ready to be leveraged for their existing clients. So that's what a true CMO is. Let's talk about why more and more business leaders, your competitors, the top six reasons. One of them, I just covered. That they're working with a fractional chief marketing officer rather than a full-time employee. So number one, I suppose, perhaps the most easily guess cost. A true seasoned chief marketing officer, according to glassdoor.com states that the average CMO is paid somewhere between $190,000 a year to about a quarter of a million dollars a year plus not to mention benefits and frequently equity.

And of course, this doesn't include vacation. This doesn't include downtime, sick time. This doesn't include office space, computers, software, and a lot of times a support team to go around that person. So the cost differential between a fractional CMO and a full-time CMO is significant and the reality is most businesses can't afford that. And the clients that I work with don't really necessarily need it. They don't need a full-time C-suite level hire chief marketing officer. So by hiring a fractional CMO, you get to leverage the experience and the brainpower that you need without all of the expensive full-time costs.

Second reason, new strategies via a broader level of experience. Someone who has only served with your company brings knowledge and insight, but they likely lack the broader perspective of someone who has worked with both B2B and B2C businesses in a wider range of industries. When you're working with a fractional CMO who has multiple clients, and again, multiple years of doing this, you're bringing in someone who has experience in potentially a half a dozen or a dozen or more different industries, different sectors, a different business niche that you get to leverage and bring those insights into your business rather than just someone who goes to work every day at your office, and only sees what's in front of them, that myopic view that is limited by the fact that they work at one place full time. We'll get back to the show in just a moment, but first, a quick word from our sponsor Whatbox Digital.

Do you want to grow and scale your business better and faster with fewer mistakes? Of course, you do. Then you're in the right place right now. Like so many others, you're tired of relying on a failed hope marketing system where you're spending valuable time and money on marketing, and then hoping it works. You've thrown away tons of money towards marketing mistakes and failures, and you wish you could get all of that money back. When you don't have a reliable system for generating lead and acquiring new customers, then you're doomed to suffer from industry downturns, lumpy cash flow, and ultimately higher stress and sleepless nights. I'm Brian Webb, the CEO and senior guide at Whatbox Digital. I know where you are, and I've been there before. It pains me to watch business owners and entrepreneurs suffer from relying on hope and bad advice that simply doesn't work.

I've had the privilege of owning and leading a successful marketing agency in the greater Houston metroplex for almost 20 years. Having worked in over 60 industry verticals, I've led my team and clients to achieve business growth time and time again. And that's exactly what I want to do for you. Our marketing strategy, playbook consulting engagement allows us to do just that. In just four weeks or less, we'll take you through our three-step process that will open your eyes to the readily available growth opportunities you need, want, and deserve. To learn more, or just get started simply go to whatboxdigital.com/strategy and click the get started now button, or just text the word playbook to (832) 324-2432. Don't waste another day or another dollar on failing hope marketing strategies that do not work. If you want to grow and scale your business better and faster and with fewer mistakes, you're in the right place. You need to get unstuck. You need a plan and we're here to help. Let's get started today. Right now.

The third reason more of your competitors are working with a fractional CMO, and this is something really that any CMO should bring, which is what I call time compression. A legitimate CMO fractional or not helps business leaders to compress decades and years of learning and experience into hours and minutes. Why would a business leader or a business owner want to reinvent the wheel when it's not necessary? Reason number four, and this is another big one, efficiency. Since a fractional CMO isn't a full-time employee, they're also aware that time is valuable. They'll be able to completely focus on a specific project or a marketing initiative instead of needing to attend to the other day-to-day time-wasting tasks that full-time employees often need to contend with. We all know what it's like to deal with day-to-day distractions at the office, water cooler hallway conversations, catching up on the big Super Bowl game, which it's February 14th. So we just had the Super Bowl yesterday.

You're getting a more efficient use of someone's time because they're not having to deal with those day-to-day office distractions. This can be done with deadlines as well as project outlines that are written out. This can be used to utilize a strategic marketing approach so that you get what you want, the results that you want faster, more efficiently. Number five, I spoke about a little bit earlier, which is their bench of relationships. Most fractional CMOs that I know like myself, by the way, spent decades running an agency, which means that they know how to hire talent. They know how to vet talent, and they have a deep bench of talent that's already been vetted because they've worked with them. They know who is good at what they do and who is not. And that deep bench of strategist, technicians come along with that person and you get to benefit from that.

And number six, let's talk about the thing that all of us hate and we try to avoid, risk. We try to avoid unnecessary, uncalculated risks where we can. And by working with a fractional chief marketing officer, you minimize the risks associated with hiring a full-time employee. You've hired full-time employees. You know that the process is cumbersome and it requires a multi-step process that can take months. There's also the risk that you might hire someone and find that they don't quite fit well within your company, or your culture, or your brand, but you don't have to worry about this risk when you're working with a fractional AKA part-time chief marketing officer. It makes the process quicker because they're part-time, they act more as a consultant, which means you don't have to worry as much as to whether or not they're an exact fit for your culture.

They're not there all the time. You also don't have to worry about basic personality and compatibilities. Now, clearly, I'm not suggesting that all of that goes away. I mean, we need to like who we work with. I believe that anyway. Life is way too short to work with people that we don't enjoy being around, but clearly, that's exponentially more so the case, if I'm going to be working with someone all day, every day, Monday through Friday.

So if you're wondering why more and more of your competitors are hiring a fractional CMO, rather than a full-time employee, that's it, six reasons. One way, way lower cost. Two, you get newer strategies, fresher perspectives, because they have a broader experience. Three, they compress time. They bring all these years to you in minutes and hours. Four, efficiency. Because they're part-time, time is of the essence. You don't waste a lot of time. Five, the bench of relationships that a great, great CMO brings to you. Most business leaders have no idea how to recognize whether or not they're working with a gifted ad specialist, a graphic designer, a copywriter, or a funnel builder. And last, risk. You minimize risk as much as you possibly can.

So that's it. Thanks for being with me today. Again, more and more great content is in the works. Stay tuned. We are passionately committed to helping you grow your business smarter and faster. Let's keep growing together and going together. I will see you on the next episode. Thanks for joining me today. And listening to this episode of the Learn More Earn More Business Growth Podcast. We can be found on all the major platforms like Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, and even Amazon Music.

I genuinely hope you enjoyed today's episode. And if you did, I'd be honored if you subscribe to the show and leave us a rating and an honest review. I'd love to connect with you on Instagram. You can find me at, @BrianWebb, and the show sponsor Whatbox Digital can be found at, as you might guess @whatboxdigital. You can also find me and Whatbox Digital on Facebook and LinkedIn, with the links in the show notes. This will allow you to stay up to date and never miss out on exciting new announcements, events, special offers, and opportunities. And you'll be in the know when we drop a new episode of the Learn More Earn More Business Growth Podcast. And if you'd like to send me a DM on Instagram to say hello, or share your thoughts on how we can make this podcast even better for you, I'd love to hear from you. Again, thanks for listening. Let's go and grow together. I'll see you on the next episode.

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DESCRIPTION

The Learn More Earn More Business Growth Podcast is sponsored by Whatbox Digital, a marketing and consulting agency in the Greater Houston Metroplex. This podcast is your premier place to learn the frameworks, secrets, and growth hacks to grow and scale your business and revenue smarter and faster.

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