Digital-first CMO Consultants to Grow Your Business

A great CMO consultant offers services based on industry knowledge. They can help you lead your business to achieve
substantial growth. CMO consultants’ full-scope experience can drive you toward your goals with:

1. Roadmaps

   Roadmaps include timelines and milestones to keep the project on track. An experienced CMO consultant works with you to develop this roadmap in a way that makes it possible for you to visualize each step along the path to your goals.

2. Execution

   Once planning is complete, a CMO consultant will guide you through the process of plan
   execution. They will use their breadth of experience to steer you clear of potential pitfalls and support you in capitalizing on untapped opportunities.

3. Monitoring

   In marketing, obstacles are bound to present themselves. Having a CMO consultant in your corner can prove to be a critical asset. Understanding your data is the key to enriching and refocusing your marketing.
   Your CMO consultant will actively monitor and measure results based on the project roadmap.

   If yours is a newer company or if you are restructuring, you might not be able to hire a full-time CMO. A CMO consultant’s duties can
   be outsourced while still obtaining all the advice you need to put your business on track. Having a CMO consultant craft SEO strategies and complex marketing plans will free your company to communicate your value proposition to the right people and grow revenue.

A CMO consultant works on a contractual basis. Their hours vary, depending on the scope of work and your budget. Even though they don’t work full time, consultants still provide many beneficial solutions specifically designed for your business. Regardless of whether your business is a startup or a multi-national chain, working with a CMO consultant gives you an edge to help you stand out from your competitors.

What are some benefits of hiring a CMO consultant?

Running your own business can prove to be a stressful task. Unfortunately, the more overwhelmed you get, the higher the chances are of things slipping through the cracks. A CMO consultant can help you grow your business by bringing in-depth marketing knowledge and expertise. That takes one major item off of your checklist. Here are a few other benefits that come with hiring a consultant.

1. Save Money

   Believe it or not, you can save money by hiring a CMO consultant.

   If you are just starting your business or have limited funds, hiring a full-time CMO is a big financial commitment.
   Full-time CMO salaries average $175,000/year, not counting the cost of benefits. Since benefits raise salaries 1.4 times the base salary, keeping a full-time CMO can quickly reach $245,000 after factoring in overhead, bonuses and other benefits. And you still must dedicate additional funds to marketing.
   With a CMO consultant, you get the benefits of a marketing professional without fronting costs for salary or benefits.

2. Save Time

   Hiring a CMO consultant gives you more time for other areas of your business.

   The digital marketing industry is constantly changing; keeping up with new trends and technology is a full-time job
   in itself. With a CMO consultant on your team, you can concentrate on your clients and on building your company.

3. Fresh Perspective

   Marketing may seem like a process of trial and error. How can you determine what is
   causing a sluggish campaign or what is driving traffic growth? You can see the flaws in your current situation, but
   it might be hard to identify the opportunities. An experienced CMO consultant can provide you with valuable feedback on both conditions based on work with many other companies.

   Although you know your business better than anyone else, it is easy to get lost in the details. A CMO consultant
   will help you focus your time, money, and resources on the right platforms, tactics, and strategies.

4. Direct Access to Marketing Expertise

   As with most professions, experience matters. Our CMOs have worked with a range of businesses over the years and have learned many hard lessons by watching companies’ successes and failures. With a CMO consultant, you get the benefit of wisdom gained through varied and broad experience. They can advise you on the best marketing path for your business. They know the right questions that should be asked; in many cases, they also know the answers. But even if they don’t know the answers, their broad networks serve as invaluable resources for finding them.

What will an effective CMO consultant do for my business?

Growing companies must prioritize all aspects of the business—making finding the right support a critical task. CMO
consultants offer much-needed flexibility within the marketing function. A great consultant provides clients with
modern marketing expertise and the agility to maintain a competitive edge.

Here are five benefits to partnering with a CMO consultant:

1. Agility

   Popular with agile teams, the pod concept groups members based on each project’s needs. At the beginning of a project, you might need a strategist. In the second phase, it might be time to bring in a writer or designer.

   This level of flexibility can prove essential to growing businesses. And a CMO consultant can serve as a key component to any marketing-focused pods, helping to guide your groups to success.

2. Deep Expertise and Experience

   When you bring on a CMO consultant, you’re giving your business access to a deep well of industry experience and expertise. This means you can plan and execute marketing activities with more control and
   more confidence. When you’re unsure, you have an experienced guide there to provide expert insights and
   recommendations.

   Having access to this level of experience means greater leverage for your business—leverage that will directly
   translate to an increase in your bottom line.

3. Long-Term Planning and Execution

   Not only can a CMO consultant help you navigate day-to-day marketing tasks, but they can
   help you build complex marketing systems that carry you into the future.

   That’s why small and mid-sized businesses bring in CMO consultants early and often. They can assess the needs and
   goals of a growing company and help them develop long-term marketing strategies to support those goals.

4. Efficiency

   Working with a CMO consultant ensures that every ounce of company resources spent on
   marketing efforts is going towards the most viable, scalable activities at your disposal.

   Sustainable, repeatable results from marketing are the cornerstones of efficiency. And a great CMO consultant knows
   that efficient results have the greatest impact on your bottom line.

5. Built for Growth

   CMO consultants organize your efforts for future growth so that you can scale. This
   approach works well for both small and large businesses due to the level of flexibility and customization it
   affords.

   Often, businesses ready to scale face a troubling dilemma. They can run the risk of growing too large too quickly,
   forcing their processes to fold under the pressure, or they can risk scaling too slowly, forcing them to lose
   traction, market share, and revenue (amongst other things).

   Employing the help of a skilled CMO consultant who is slated to support you in your efforts to scale efficiently and effectively has the potential to make all the difference,

   They will allow you to outsource complex, critical aspects of your marketing without taking on too much or too little
   commitment for your current level of growth. And if at any time the numbers are no longer making sense, you can
   easily adjust contracts to suit your current needs and business goals.

   What’s more, a CMO consultant will help you define and track your internal marketing climate. They can tell you which
   positions you will most likely need to fill, what to look for, and when to do it.

Why should I outsource marketing leadership as opposed to hiring full-time?

The simple answer is: many businesses don’t need or can’t afford a full-time CMO. Often, growing businesses simply need to organize, consolidate, and align their marketing efforts in order to get to the next level. Whether you need additional resources or help maximizing the efficiency of your current resources, a CMO consultant can help you
with the critical decision-making process.

Marketing is only effective if it is innovative and engaging. Outsourcing lets you connect with agencies that specialize in keeping up-to-date on new trends and technology. These professionals bring fresh perspectives on your business and help you formulate new and exciting strategies and ideas.

You might want to outsource some, but not all, of your marketing efforts. Let’s take a look at several aspects of your overall strategy to help you decide if you need to hire a third party.

Content Outsourcing

You can position your business as a thought leader in your industry by creating valuable
content that is authoritative and informative. It doesn’t matter if this content is created by someone outside of
your business or within it. What does matter is their ability to provide relevant, engaging content to your target audience and that they are fully engaged in and have an understanding of the complexities of your company.

If you are considering outsourcing content marketing, you have two options: hire an agency or a freelancer. Websites such as Upwork or Fiverr offer great (delete hard return after the word ‘great’)
resources for entrepreneurs. They also allow you to evaluate the work of professionals before you commit.

Outsourcing Marketing Strategy

Solid marketing strategies should address all stages of the buying cycle, including
lead generation and email workflows. This crucial groundwork involves developing buyer personas, mapping out
campaigns to meet needs, and identifying emerging market trends.

As experts in the industry, CMO consultants are uniquely equipped to support you in this work. They will ‌assist you with your overall marketing strategy and in identifying new marketing methods. They can even help you identify new audiences that you might not have considered.

Your business may not outsource all of this work to a CMO consultant. Another great option is to bring on a
consultant to provide you with the direct and next steps your internal team then executes. This gives you the best
of both worlds while allowing you to mind your budget.

Outsourcing Marketing Analytics

Analytics data can inform your marketing. Many businesses discover they lack the
expertise to gain insights that could transform marketing efforts. Unfortunately, it can be costly and time-consuming to hire and
train data scientists and engineers within your company.

But specialty agencies can provide the data-driven insights and expertise needed to interpret your data.

Instead of spending unnecessary money or stretching your resources, you can concentrate on developing exceptional
products and providing outstanding service.

Outsourcing Email Marketing

Don’t worry about nailing down an effective email marketing strategy that successfully
lands you in more inboxes than spam folders. With today’s personalization features and automated functions, it’s
becoming easier than ever before to define highly effective email campaigns that convert.

Yet, to put all of this in place there is an initial level of strategy, implementation, and then optimization. If
you don’t have a team member well-versed in email strategy, outsourcing may be exactly what you need.

Try bringing someone in just to handle this one aspect of your marketing campaign. Or better yet, bring on a CMO consultant and
determine the best strategic approach to email marketing for your specific business before you make hefty investments and commitments.

What will a CMO consultant do for my business?

Do you have enough people to cover all the different marketing disciplines in your company? You may need a CMO
consultant for your business for a variety of reasons. How can you benefit from outsourcing your marketing efforts?
What can you do to ensure that the consultant you hire is competent? These are the top tips to remember when hiring
marketing consultants or agencies.

What can you expect from hiring a CMO consultant to help your business?

A CMO’s utility depends on your current marketing team’s capabilities and your future plans. Smaller businesses might
need to hire marketing consultants to help them with comprehensive marketing planning and leadership. A larger
company might already have a marketing team, but may need specific help. The company may need help with search
engine optimization (SEO), site design, content marketing, or other areas. Sometimes, businesses just need to hire short-term marketing experts to create a plan that their in-house team can then execute, or for a specific project or type of training.

CMO consultants first research your market and business. After that, they conduct research and create a marketing
strategy for you. These three questions should be answered in your marketing plan:

• Who are you targeting?
• What is the goal of the initiative, project, or program?
• What measures or indicators of success will be used to assess results?

Depending on your requirements, you and your CMO consultant will create a plan and then move forward.

Things to Remember When Hiring CMO Consultants

1. Consider Your Budget

   Although it is nice to have the world’s top CMO consultant, it can come with a large price tag.
   Understanding your budget ensures you only sign on to arrangements sustainable at your current level of business.
   That way, you have time to reap the rewards from the work.

2. Do Your Homework

   Be sure to do your research before hiring a CMO consultant. What projects and clients are
   they familiar with? Do they know your industry?

   Check References. Any CMO consultants will have case studies that demonstrate results, execution, and metrics from
   previous work. What did they do for others? How successful was it?

3. Interview Candidates

   Plan the interview. Prepare your questions so that they reveal whether or not the candidate has the characteristics and skills you want. What abilities are you looking for from them? What outlook will fit with the way your company conducts business?

   Make sure to discuss your:

   • Goals
   • Target customer (demographics/profile)
   • Process of decision making
   • Competitors
   • Unique selling propositions (USP), or points of differentiation
   • Most profitable offering
   • Conversion efforts and lead generation
   • The idea of success and how it can be measured

4. Request a Proposal

   CMO consultants should make detailed recommendations and describe their processes and
   systems. A consultant is essential to provide clear direction. They should be able to guide your business in the
   right direction, and so should be able to clearly articulate that direction in this initial proposal.

5. Make Your Choice

   Once you have determined your need for external CMO consulting, have done your research
   thoroughly, and assessed your options, you are ready to choose. What strategy best suits your company’s needs? Who
   has demonstrated the most success? What is the budget? Keep these key questions in mind as you consider candidates.

What should I look for in a CMO consultant?

A CMO consultant can be useful for many reasons. You can hire them when your marketing goals seem too difficult for
your existing staff. Or you can bring someone in to help you if you don’t have the resources to hire a new or specialized team member.

Why use a CMO consultant?

There are many ways that a CMO consultant can be utilized. For smaller companies, the consultant might be the best
source of marketing information. Some larger companies might want to hire a consultant to help them with more
complex marketing projects or strategic direction. Skilled CMO consultants can benefit all aspects of your
marketing.

Here are a few more things to remember when selecting the right CMO consultant for your specific business needs:

Budget

You don’t want to hire a consultant who will charge more than what you would get as a
return on your investment with them (ROI).

References

CMO consultants who have successfully directed marketing in the past will provide you
with detailed reports, case studies, or references. Carefully review this information. You want to
make sure that your consultant is both skilled at their job and responsive to their clients.

Personal Requirements

A CMO consultant may specialize in a specific area of marketing. You may find that
certain goals are important to them. More commonly, CMOs display a wide breadth of marketing knowledge, can simultaneously keep in mind the large and small picture,
and know the steps involved to successfully communicate brand value to drive growth. You will need to decide what is important to
you and your business goals and clearly convey those to your consultant. This will allow you to find an expert whose priorities align with yours.

Experience

CMO consultants should have a broad knowledge base. It is important that they can work in
your business environment.

It’s also important to ensure that your consultant has experience in your specific industry. Do not waste time
asking your CMO consultant to learn about your industry before they start working on your marketing strategy.

Skills

Ask your consultant for tangible metrics that demonstrate their skill. People, process,
technological skills and competencies are important factors to note when choosing a CMO consultant.

Relationship

It is important to have a strong relationship with your CMO consultant. This means you
need to feel confident that the consultant is adding value to your company.

How much will a CMO consultant cost me?

CMO consulting comes with many pricing options. The most common is the hourly consulting rate. The
second is a fixed bid that is determined project-by-project. This is usually based upon a predetermined number of
hours that will be allocated to the project. This is simply the expected number of hours for a given project
multiplied by the hourly rate of the consultant.

Typical CMO consulting services range from $300-$350 hour.