In my former roles as chief marketing officer (CMO) for large, global businesses and now in my work as a fractional CMO, I have scrutinized the marketing budget across a variety of organizations. I have been doing this for 25+ years and it’s still not an easy task. Here is what I know now that I wish I knew then. Consider fractional resources as part of the marketing budget.

The Agonizing Budget Process

When working on the annual marketing budget for B2B SaaS companies, I ask questions such as:

• What are our annual revenue goals? What are the pipeline expectations?

• What mode are we in? (growth, steady, etc.)

• Do we have product/market fit established?

• What percentage of the overall budget is marketing? Does that ratio make sense?

• What historically has taken up most of the budget? Marketing ops? Events?

These are critical conversations I will have with the CEO, CFO, and sometimes the Board. My goal is to attract A-players, ensure we can strategize and execute, and all without sacrificing program budget. Sounds straightforward but it’s honestly the hardest thing to balance. I’m sure my marketing leader friends will agree.

Here are some easy mistakes to make:

• If you are too top heavy in your talent, you don’t have budget to execute
• If you don’t have product-market fit and you don’t have a full-time product marketing leader, you are out of luck
• If you have executors but no strategy people, someone outside of marketing is running marketing which frustrates everyone
• You have great people but no program budget. As a result, your team produces great content that no one is reading

It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way – Consider Fractional

Marketing leaders likely have experience considering agencies or contractors, but what about fractional marketing support? What is the difference you might ask? Fractional is still a new term for many. Check out my article on understanding Fractional CMOs if you are new to this. (Don’t worry, I was too.)

In a nutshell, a fractional marketer brings extensive experience to their role but works for you at a reduced monthly allocation. Instead of an FTE, they devote say 20 percent of their monthly time to your business. Really want to dive into the cost savings? The 512Financial fractional savings calculator is an awesome resource for this.

The benefit you get from a fractional team member is often a considerable breadth of experience. The downside is you may sacrifice marketing campaign speed. For SaaS companies still working out product-market fit or in development mode, slower execution is okay. The rest of the company is still forming, storming, and norming.

Fractional Marketing Resources in Practice

To demonstrate this effectively, here are a few models I have plucked from my marketing leader examples:

In-house CMO, fractional resources

Your company needs a full-time leader that thinks only about your business. Yet a fractional content strategist can work alongside your CMO to build a true playbook of messaging which can be handed off to content writers upon completion.

Or you have a full-time CMO, but you really need to nurture that database with ongoing webinars. Let’s put together a webinar! Anyone? Hire a fractional marketer to focus on owning your webinar strategy – the program management, the copywriting, the securing of topics and speakers. An experienced marketing manager can help for 15-20 hours per week to ensure the program doesn’t fall into the abyss.

Fractional CMO, in-house team for other roles

In this case, the company desires a strategic marketing leader to manage a team already in place. Essentially the CEO or another senior leader was managing marketing but probably not doing well or has run out of bandwidth or both. Is your head of sales running marketing? I have some thoughts on that.This works well to have someone working on strategy and budgeting but relying 100 percent on the in-house team to execute. A fractional CMO can quickly bring in new thinking and oversight.

Fully fractional team – fractional CMO and fractional team

This can work too. You can pay $200K or more for a full time CMO who is juggling multiple priorities, and often personally tackling tasks that could be more economically delegated to a more junior staff member. Or you can pay $250K annually for an entire fractional marketing team and save on overhead costs.

My Goal as a Fractional CMO? To Be Replaced.

A fractional CMO is a one-to-two-year solution for a growing company. Let’s face it, marketing leadership is a full-time job. But experienced people are in high demand and command great salaries. Why not get an A-player for an affordable rate and agree to move a bit slower? It’s better than asking an inexperienced person to lead the team and feel like you lost a year because you didn’t have the right resources.

That is why, once the marketing function has been established, a full-time CMO will be needed. As a fractional CMO, I hope to positively contribute to the client enough that they have budget for that full time person.

The key here is that a fractional team or an individual needs time in marketing to get to know the business, the goals, and challenges to do the job right. Therefore, if you are looking for fractional resources, you will want to consider contracts of six months or more. A contractor or a consultant can be project based with a shorter term.

Interested in learning more? Here is where I promote 512Financial which supplies fractional marketing, finance, accounting, and HR roles to all types of companies. Reach out to me or our business consulting team to set up a call to discuss options.