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Fractional CMO: The Smarter Way to Grow Your FEC | The GrowthPro Edge · The GrowthPro Edge

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  (Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Welcome to the GrowthPro Edge.
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  We're here to help scale your business, build stronger teams and sharpen your leadership skills.
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  Hello and welcome to the Growth Pro Edge.
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  I'm Denise Killian, your host with the GrowthPro Group.
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  And today we're gonna be talking about that magic word that keeps popping up in a lot of businesses and that's the fractional leadership role.
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  And we're joined by Tiffany Avery, who is one of my favorite marketing gurus to talk about fractional CMOs, Chief Marketing Officers.
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  So Tiffany, you had worked with international brands, with state governments, with nonprofits, with small businesses in a variety of capacity and marketing positions.
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  So first off, tell us a little bit about yourself.
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  Well, I have a 25 year marketing background.
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  Started out with L Brands when I was younger and I was quickly worked my way through the company, starting or I worked with different brands within the enterprise.
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  So I worked with Victoria's Secret, Bath and Body Works, Henry Bendel and then just throughout the enterprises, what they call a rented employee, kind of doing special project work.
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  After that, I did web development for a while.
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  I then went into a director of marketing and communications role in a government capacity and then nonprofit.
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  So a lot of PR and marketing and really just like a director role.
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  So it was kind of leadership and really designing those programs to see how they would look and running a team and just making sure that we had a full faceted approach to all of our marketing and communications efforts.
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  Then I went to go work for Embed for a while, just a great experience.
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  It really is what kind of got me into the fractional kind of world of marketing.
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  I really enjoyed working with some of the business owners and having one-on-ones with them and discussing their marketing with them.
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  And I would often be asked if I would do, if I could do any type of consulting and that was just something that Embed didn't offer.
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  So that is something that I do now and I very much enjoy it.
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  I've been doing it for several years.
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  It's wonderful to work just with the business owners directly.
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  You feel like you have such an impact on their business and it's just a really good way to feel good about the work that you're doing.
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  Yeah, yeah.
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  So you were kind of early on the game of this fractional CMO notion, right?
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  So let's start off with what is a fractional marketing executive?
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  So think of it like a shared services type of situation.
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  So you know how there's like there's three PL centers like third-party logistics centers and things like that.
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  So think of a fractional leader as somebody who works for multiple companies but not one person has to pay them their full salary.
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  So you get to work in smaller increments but for multiple people at one time.
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  So it's a, if you're looking or thinking about a fractional either, you know, I've worked with some companies that had a fractional financer under, right?
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  Fractional marketing.
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  So it's not a full-time employee from the business's perspective but it is a leadership level kind of high strategy.
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  And you're able to get expertise without having to pay the full-time salary.
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  Right, of an executive.
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  So it's great because a lot of companies will have, you know, like a marketing manager or those kinds of roles in-house but bringing on a fractional CMO is a great way to make sure that in the terms of marketing that your strategy is there, your I's are dotted and your T's are crossed.
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  Yeah.
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  And it gives you a little bit more oversight and a little bit more experience to pull from.
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  Right.
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  So, you know, a company that couldn't necessarily afford a full-time salary of someone who has significant expertise.
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  You're able to use that but not have to pay the full price for it.
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  So with that being said, what are those boundaries of strategy and execution?
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  Right?
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  Should you think of the fractional position as somebody who is more of a strategic big thinker or is this person, should they be executing all of the strategy points as well?
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  I would say it's more, it just depends on the company too but I would say it's more about strategy.
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  Usually the execution comes down to the team.
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  It just depends on how the company is set up and what phase of life the company is in.
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  So if they're brand new, you know, if they're a little bit more established, if they're a mom and pop shop versus, you know, a several location operation or, you know, it just depends on the size of the company.
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  I would say though that it's generally more oversight and strategy and direction.
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  Okay.
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  Okay.
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  Which, so you're talking about, because again, this isn't a full-time position.
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  So, you know, are you looking at for business owners out there considering this?
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  I mean, you know, you're thinking about maybe 10 hours a week, five hours a week, certain hours a month.
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  Is that sort of how it's set up?
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  It sort of is.
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  It just depends on the customer as well or on the business.
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  So I have some clients that I work with on a weekly basis that get a little bit more of my time that, you know, they pay a little bit higher price.
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  I have some people who, and I generally start at that higher level depending on the size of the company.
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  I have some companies that I work with just on a bi-weekly basis.
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  It's just a quick one or two hours on the phone every other month with some tasks in between and follow-up.
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  And then it can go as low as monthly or even quarterly.
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  So I have clients in all phases of that.
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  I like to start a little more hands-on at the beginning.
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  And then my goal is to phase my clients out of my services by teaching their team how to do these things because I don't want someone to have to pay me forever unless they just want to keep me quarterly or annually for like a planning type of situation.
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  Like I have clients that I phase myself out of their business because I've worked with their team for so long.
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  It's the same team.
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  They've had great retention and I've been able to teach that team what to do, how to do it and to continue to get results.
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  That's interesting.
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  Yeah, okay.
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  And that's a fascinating thought process as well of you're able to, or at least your intention is I want to show you how to do it yourself.
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  Correct.
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  So that this isn't a permanent situation.
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  Well, and also as businesses are growing.
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  So that's another thing is I'm there to provide that direction and have that oversight.
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  But as the businesses grow, sometimes they're able to afford maybe a more seasoned leader who is able to do some of that strategic planning.
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  But a lot of times I'll just stay on to do the strategic planning and then just meet like quarterly with the team as they get more experienced.
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  Okay, that's fantastic.
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  So I guess one of the questions that probably is out there that I'm sure business owners are asking themselves is why wouldn't I just have somebody in-house?
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  Well, again, it's that cost efficiency.
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  If you can afford to have somebody in-house with that level of experience, I say that's amazing, that's wonderful.
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  But the top quality leaders that you're gonna find are gonna have a salary demand that is normally especially in a marketing world, not attainable for most smaller companies.
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  Yeah, absolutely.
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  Especially in this economy.
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  And especially in this economy, the way marketing's going, marketing is unfortunately, marketing is always one of the very first things to be cut when times are hard.
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  And that's because it's not necessary for day-to-day operations.
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  Marketing is necessary if you want to grow and maintain your level of business.
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  However, most people see it as kind of an added thing that's not 100% necessary for day-to-day operations.
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  So that's why fractional work is very popular in marketing, especially even just freelance work.
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  Yeah, absolutely.
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  So one of the things to think about is if you're looking for a fractional position, whether it's a CFO or a fractional CMO, is the expectation is that what kind of team needs to be in place to make that position successful?
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  Like, right?
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  So you should have some level of a team of maybe junior level.
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  I would say at least manager, maybe junior manager.
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  I would say mid-level managers, usually a good place to start.
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  It's usually a very, it's usually kind of a sales manager, even a lot of times is where I'll start is with a sales manager.
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  And then I'll kind of make them into a sales and marketing person and explain the differences and teach the differences and help them understand the different strategies for the different functions and the different things that have to be done.
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  So whether it's sales versus marketing and whether it's business-to-business marketing in terms of group sales or things like that, or business-to-consumer marketing.
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  So those are all things that I try to teach as I work with companies so they understand what kind of marketing person and what kind of team they're putting in place as they continue to grow and hire.
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  Great, okay.
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  So ideally, this isn't a situation where you don't have any infrastructure in place and you hire a fractional CMO.
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  You need to have some level of infrastructure there.
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  Not necessarily.
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  Okay.
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  It is nice to have.
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  You're definitely gonna pay less for your fractional leader if you do have people on staff or on your team who can execute under the direction of that leader.
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  If you don't, then you're basically paying someone to be more of a full-time employee and to do some of those tasks that you could pay someone a third of the amount of money annually to do.
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  Yeah.
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  Write copy or send out emails or make campaigns and run social media and things like that.
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  Right, okay.
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  Excellent.
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  Now, this is the question that everybody should ask themselves and understand the answer.
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  But how quickly do you expect to see some sort of results from any marketing effort?
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  I always tell people to give me at least 90 days.
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  It doesn't always take 90 days.
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  Sometimes, depending on how much information is already known and what kind of data points have been gathered and what kind of sales data we have, it's a little bit easier to go in with a more educated guess or a more educated direction on what strategy is gonna be best and what methods should be used.
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  But not always.
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  That's not always the case, especially in brand new businesses when they're just now opening their doors for the first time.
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  We don't know anything yet.
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  So I always say, and Sarah has taught me this, it's fail fast and move on.
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  So if something doesn't work out, then you just move on to the next thing, right?
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  Quick and quickly.
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  Don't continue to waste money if it's not working out, but you do need to give it that old college try.
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  Right, right.
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  And it's not you hire someone or you start the campaign and the next day you're gonna see results.
• 12:27
  Correct, especially in digital marketing and digital advertising, you have to give it at least 90 days to gain momentum and to figure out algorithms and learn user behavior and things like that.
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  I do see this a lot in my work where a business owner doesn't see an immediate result and they just wanna move on to the next thing.
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  So they're hiring the next person or they're hiring the next agency or they're gonna try, radio didn't work, so now we're gonna go to TV or TV didn't work, so now we're gonna go to digital.
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  Digital didn't work, but they're not giving it at least a 90 day shot.
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  And sometimes, especially even with programs like loyalty programs and things, membership programs and things like that where you're trying to convince customers to keep coming back, those take even longer.
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  So it really just depends on what kind of program or strategy or campaign you're running and what the goal is.
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  Excellent, excellent.
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  All right, so Tiffany, we have a lot of thoughts to consider here, which I think is fantastic, but we are coming up on the end of our time, but I wanna ask you the important questions here, our Youth Growth Pro Edge.
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  We are all about growth.
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  So what do you do to grow yourself?
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  Oh, I do a lot of reading, a lot of reading.
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  I listen to podcasts, as you described, to a number of different marketing and leadership programs, like podcasts, emails, newsletters, things like that.
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  I have my favorite people that I follow and learn from them.
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  And a lot of growth, a lot of that personal growth is honestly for me is getting in into the nitty gritty and doing it myself.
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  I'm definitely a hands-on learner.
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  So for me, that's basically how I learned web development, believe it or not, was I went into a job where I was gonna do websites and I learned how to cope.
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  It's that easy, folks, right?
• 14:32
  No, you are very much a self-taught, but also incredible experience.
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  And that's the thing that I love about you.
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  If you don't know how to do it immediately, you're like, give me a second, and you're gonna figure it out, which is, yeah, which is fantastic.
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  All right, Tiffany, if people have questions about this or wanna talk with you, how can they get ahold of you?
• 14:53
  They can find us on the Growth Pro Group website.
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  I know I'm available there.
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  They can also email me at tiffanyatthegrowthprogroup.com.
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  Perfect, perfect.
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  Tiffany, thank you so much for being here, for having me.
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  Appreciate it.
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  And there's your edge for today.
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  I hope you enjoyed our conversation and appreciate your time today.
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  If you enjoyed today's conversation, I hope you'll look us up at thegrowthprogroup.com.
• 15:22
  And if you're ready to grow yourself, your business, and your team, reach out to us and schedule a free coaching call with one of our coaches.
• 15:32
  I'd also like to take the opportunity to thank our sponsors for 2026, Party Center Software, Roller, Betson, A&A Global, Schaffer Distributing, Embed, and Semnox.
• 15:46
  Thank you again for joining us.
• 15:49
  I'm Denise Killian.
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  Keep growing, keep learning, and keep striving for the extraordinary.