Somewhere on your company’s journey, you will need to add marketing leadership to your executive team. Marketing leadership is essential to provide the strategic vision to drive business growth. And you won’t find this type of leadership from junior members of your marketing team or outside agencies or freelancers.
You’re going to need a chief marketing officer. But you may not be ready to add a full-time marketing director to your senior team. Perhaps you can’t justify the cost of bringing in a high-salaried executive on a full-time basis. Perhaps what you need is a highly skilled leader to manage some key marketing initiatives. In these cases, a portfolio CMO is a great solution that gives you the leadership you need with a lower level of cost, commitment and risk.
What is a portfolio CMO?
A portfolio CMO is typically appointed to set-up or lead your company’s marketing function on a part-time or short-term interim basis.
The portfolio part means you get a senior marketing leader who’s a fully committed part of your team but means that you not burdened with the costs of a full-time executive. Depending on your needs, you may work with your portfolio CMO either 1, 2 or 3 days a week or more.
CMO engagements will usually last six months or longer. This means that you and the CMO have a high level of commitment to each other. And the reality is that marketing strategies and initiatives need time plan and implement. Typically, six months will be required to start to produce results.
A CMO brings professional direction to your marketing strategy and a depth of marketing knowledge. It also gives you an experienced leader that can get things done, implements best practices and establishes the measurement and control including KPIs that will drive revenue and growth. The CMO part means you get deep marketing knowledge, an executive-level partnership and an experienced leader who knows how to get things done.
You may have never heard of a portfolio CMO. So, how would you know that you need one?
Here are 6 signs that working with a portfolio CMO could be right for you.
- Your company isn’t ready for a full-time marketing executive
- Appointing a full-time marketing executive can be risky
An effective marketing executive will influence decision making across the entire business. So, you need to choose carefully. Choosing a CMO who is a poor cultural / personality fit or has strategic goals that are misaligned to the business can be both expensive and damaging.
- You are a well-established company, but the marketing landscape is changing
- Marketing materials generated on an ad hoc basis
- Your senior team lack marketing insights to make strategic decisions
- You need an interim leader or advisor
Maybe you’re a start-up or an SME that needs of marketing leadership, but there’s not enough work or budget to justify a full-time person in the role. A portfolio CMO offers an affordable entry point for early-stage companies.
You may have an established brand built over many years before many of the new (often digital) marketing channels and automation were around. But to remain successful in the future, you will need to embrace current strategies, tools and techniques. A portfolio CMO can help mature companies to transform their marketing activities.
Your customer service and sales teams do a good job, but if they’re creating their own presentations, sales leaflets etc it’s likely that your brand and messaging will be inconsistent and fragmented. A portfolio CMO can help you create clear, consistent brand and messaging across all your sales and marketing assets. This will strengthen your brand and lead to significantly improved customer perceptions
Without clear marketing measurement and insights, it is easy to get drawn into a spiral of chaotic and unfocused marketing activity. When is purchasing a new website a good strategic decision or a money pit? And your ad agency is unlikely to tell you that you are burning significant sums on pay-per-click ads that generate lots of visitors but few customers. If your marketing is just a list of “stuff” then you will start to see marketing as a money pit, achieving little. A portfolio CMO will help you create a structured way of measuring the success of marketing and which will inform business decisions towards activities that increase revenue and growth.
Maybe you need a marketing executive to quickly step into a vacated position while you conduct a talent search for the perfect candidate. Or fill a seat during a leave of absence. Some companies want an external player to audit an existing marketing team and advise on new directions. A portfolio CMO provides quick-relief for marketing needs and pain points.
What does a CMO do?
In some cases, the portfolio CMO rolls up their sleeves and is highly engaged in research, analysis, messaging, and so forth. In some cases, the portfolio CMO pulls in external resources – specialists or even agencies – to help. In every case, the portfolio CMO leads the implementation of the growth strategy. After all, a plan is only as good as it gets implemented.