How to assess a fractional CMO
When assessing a fractional CMO, what does ‘good’ look like?
The answer is, a lot of it depends on what you’ve done to get to here. And chances are, it ain’t going to get you to ‘there’.
Here’s some common missteps:
Assessing their suitability to your business based on direct industry experience, or experience with something that’s too new - rather than zooming out to let the CMO show their expertise, asking for someone with experience in matcha RTD drinks vs just drinks - or better, FMCG in general. We get it, this is a big expense for you, and often, comes a smidge too late in the game. but anyone with real, solid backed and backup-able experience will have enough chops about them to figure out the route in your industry. The risk of going too category applicable is you get the same again.
Assessing “performance” based on too small a window of time to prove impact. Like a week’s worth of data - if you want to make things better overall, a shift away from the same activity may mean a slight readjustment for success metrics, if KPIs aren’t hit for a week it doesn’t mean the CMO isn’t doing their job.
Only focussing on bottom of funnel metrics - a CMO will be able to see and understand the whole funnel, clients need to understand that sometimes the job to be done might be something other than solely sales - and should be communicated as such.
Agreeing timeline that the agreed assessment criteria applies for - if you bring on a CMO and agree their scope initially is to focus on one area of the business, and then factors change that, it isn’t always easy to pull the plug on everything and pivot overnight.
Pressuring CMO to give a guaranteed uplift in sales % without giving them access to ALL of your data. Anyone that comes in and guarantees an uplift without seeing your data, be warned.
And mainly - if they’re managing a team, albeit part time or for a shorter period, assess how much growth your team get from working with them. If you have a junior marketing team, if they show signs of creating and crafting great ideas, experimentation and floating out there ideas that may or may not work, this is a sign that you’re fostering a psychologically safe environment.
Where creativity and growth thrives.