The 4 Killer Forces Driving the Rise of Fractional CMOs

Why You Might Be Seeing "Fractional CMO" on LinkedIn a A Lot More These Days and in the Future

Startup CEOs often tell me, "Prasid, it's such a pain to hire. All the best growth talent is working as consultants." 

The newest manifestation of growth consultants: the Fractional CMO

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Fractional CMOs are red-hot right now. They're hired guns, who come in guns-blazing, meaning you get the A-grade talent without shelling out for a full-time package. 

Numbers Don't Lie 

Here's the shocker - according to Chief Outsiders, a leading fractional CMO firm, there's been a 38% spike in demand for fractional CMOs in the past year alone. And the Association of Professional Executives in Marketing and Sales (APEMS) predicts this demand will grow by another 20% in the next five years. 

But there's a catch. Fractional CMOs might not bleed your company colors. They may not be deep in the trenches of daily ops, and it could be tough to pin them down on revenue targets. So, why is everyone in Silicon Valley jumping on this bandwagon?

1. Remote-Work Has Made it Easier to Zoom from Startup to Startup

These days, I'm a powerhouse. I know each of the businesses I help intimately. I "zoom" from startup to startup in a blink. No sweat, no traffic. 

But, there was a time when it wasn't all zippy and instant. Picture this, a decade ago, my badass manager/mentor, a Fractional CMO before it was a buzzword, would burn two hours a day in her Mini Cooper "zooming" up and down Highway 101. Most of my time with her? On the phone, while she was driving.

She'd block out half-days to be at each client's site. And us, the hungry startup, had to bend our schedules to her calendar or catch her up after meetings she couldn't make. She'd often miss hallway conversations, and it was hard for us to feel like she was fully "embedded" with the team. 

But remote work has flipped all that. I'm fractional, but I’m all-in, fully-present in every meeting, no compromises. No more time-blocking nonsense. My calendar? It's open season. Got a question? Slack me, and you'll get your answer faster than you can say "Highway 101." 

2. Hiring a Fractional CMO Turbocharges the Time-to-Value vs. Hiring Full-Time CMOs

Think about this: I've been in exec searches that stretched past 6 months, and even a a year. First, you write the job description, open the role, then you squander 1-2 months interviewing candidates and being underwhelmed enough to bring in a search firm. You burn two weeks just picking the right firm, then another two just getting them up to speed with your company. Then, you endure a month waiting for candidates to trickle through the funnel. And that's not even the end of it. You've still got to deal with final presentations, offer negotiations, backchannel reference checks, and even the chance of an offer getting declined. And after all that, the chosen one wants another month: 2-weeks notice and a 2-week vacation! 

Meanwhile, a fractional CMO could be hitting the ground running next week! If it's not a match made in heaven, you part ways in a month. No muss no fuss. 

And let's not downplay the stakes here: I've seen first-hand how a leadership gap can cripple, even kill, a startup. I was at a startup that went a year without a VP of Eng. Sure, it made hiring good engineers difficult, but that was about it. But a leadership gap on the revenue side? That's bad news bears. I've seen pricing missteps that sent revenue freefalling and conversion optimizations that doubled revenue practically overnight. That's the kind of game-changing impact a badass marketing exec can have. So there’s a cost to every week the role goes unfilled.

3. Fractional CMOs Extend the Life of Your VP of Marketing

I've seen it a dozen times: you raise your Seed/Series A, and you hire your first VP of Marketing. They're good at 1 or 2 things (maybe they're great at brand and PR, but weak on analytics and growth), so the startup's growth hits a ceiling.

The old solution was to bring-in a CMO. The old VP of marketing gets "layered" or fired. And most of the time, the new CMO won't understand the startup's values and customers nearly as well. So you often lose that.

Here's where a Fractional CMOs are a great alternative: I often come-in with a light-touch. I'm an advisor and mentor to the VP of Marketing and make it clear they'll still own a lot of the. decisions. The VPs of Marketing like this: they preserve a sense of ownership. And the business benefits from keeping that VP of Marketing who is scrappy and who deeply understands the customers and industry.

Here are a few specific ways I helped the VP of Marketing at Coding Dojo:

• Conversion: Coding Dojo's VP of Marketing was strong on Performance Marketing and Design, but weak on Marketing Automation, and managing paid spend in a full-funnel way. Additionally, the Director of Sales was good at motivation, but weak on data, automation, and tools. That meant that we had massive lead volumes, and conversion rates in the toilet. I was able to help them ship funnel optimizations, process changes, and automations that effectively doubled the revenue we were getting from the existing marketing spend. 

• Hiring: Strong Director-level candidates who were interviewing with us didn't want to work for a scrappy VP of Marketing who was younger and less-experienced than them. It was a much easier sell to tell those candidats they'd be working with fractional CMO with polish, grey hair, that had worke for brand-name startups.

And it's not just words: I brought a more temepred approach to how we empower and motivate these heavy-hitters once they joined. 

Most importantly: I was able to help us filter-out the "interview actors" from the real deals. Coding Dojo hadn't raised oodles of capital or garnered media attention: we had to find diamonds in the rough: people who perhaps hadn't worked for brand-name startups, but who knew their shit and were hungry. 

4. Fractional CMO Work Offers Execs More Stability than Full-Time

I know it sounds counter-intuitive but hear me out: I once spent 6 months interviewing for full-time jobs only to land a CMO job that lasted just 6 months.  And then I spent another 6 months interviewing before I landed again. That sucks. 

Paul Graham advises: "hire slow, fire fast." And the higher the stakes, the slower the hiring. The result is that as I've become more senior, the recruiting processes get longer and more-involved.  I remember spending 20+ hours creating final presentation, only to not get the offer because the well-meaning CEO "had a feeling."  I was depressed for a week after that one. 

Now, as a fractional CMO, I help 2-3 startups at any time. So if one wants to part ways (this has happened exactly twice across 15+ engagements), it will cut my income by 33% at-most. And oftentimes less, because the other two CEOs want more of my time. The result: my mental health is better than ever.  No wonder "all the best talent works as consultants." More important than the money is the depression: now instead of my self-worth being entirely wrapped-up in one job, it's spread-out, almost like three "career horcruxes." 

Looking Forward 

Fractioanal CMOs are going to become a much bigger thing. Why?

1. First, we've democratized the "means of production" for consultants - it's easier than ever to be a solopreneur.

2. We've also made it easier than ever to discover great talent. Every day hundreds of people are consuming my content on Substack, LinkedIn, (and for a brief while my discontinued podcast) and deciding "hmm... this person is competent. Let's hire him." 

3. We've also de-stigmatized consulting. When I worked at Microsoft, "contractor" or "vendor" was a loaded word: it signalled that you were on the lower-rung of our two-class society. (There was even a massive class action lawsuit about it). But that's not the case anymore: at MIRROR many if not most of our leadership team were mercenaries like me. But this time it signalled something completely different: that the CEO (Brynn) had hired the best of the best in every domain.

4. It's also getting easier every day to "plug-in" new talent faster with tools like Zoom instead of driving between offices, Notion for self-serve onboarding, and Loom for quick video explanations. 

The next iteration I expect to see: organizations that are more blended and that plug-in and unplug talent with more fluidity.

Rather than individual consultants embedded within companies, I expect to see more blended orgs. I imagine a startup where many of the subject matter experts are consultants, and less-experienced full-time employees form the glue.

Rather than companies where you expect to work for many years, I imagine small teams forming to launch a startup and then handing-it-off, then a permutation of that team forming to launch the next venture: similar to how movies get made. 

What do you imagine? Let me know below.