Choosing the help you need
Marketing adviser or fractional CMO: which do you need?
A marketing adviser helps you make decisions while you or your team leads the work. A fractional CMO takes responsibility for the marketing plan and leads the agreed work.
Titles vary between providers. Ask who will own the decisions, coordinate the people involved, and follow through between meetings.
Choose advice when you already have a leader.
You may be that leader. You may have a marketing manager who knows the business and can get things done. An experienced adviser gives that person someone to think with: which audience matters, what to say, where to spend, and what to stop doing.
Agree on the questions to work through and what happens after each meeting. Advice is useful when someone inside the business has the time and authority to put the decisions into practice.
Choose leadership when the responsibility has no owner.
A fractional CMO can set the marketing plan with you, turn it into priorities, and coordinate your team and outside partners. You still make the business decisions that belong to you. The marketing leader takes responsibility for the agreed area of work.
If every supplier needs direction from you and every unfinished task comes back to your desk, another advisory meeting may leave the underlying problem in place.
Ask these questions before choosing.
- Who will decide the next priority?
- Who will brief the designer, writer, agency, or website developer?
- Who can approve spending, and within what limit?
- Who checks whether the work was completed and what happened afterward?
- Who will change the plan when the evidence changes?
If you can name an internal owner for those responsibilities, advice may be enough. If you cannot, discuss leadership. Either arrangement needs a clear scope and a way to review progress.
Can either role include making things?
Yes, when that is part of the agreement. At Sharp Pencil, Micah can write, design, and build websites as well as lead or advise. A design task and an ongoing leadership responsibility still need to be clear to everyone involved.
For Daniel Allen Coaching, advice about explaining the coaching approach carries through websites, presentations, and other marketing. For BH&K, the relationship includes ongoing marketing leadership. The client stories show these different kinds of involvement.
Start with the work you need owned.
Write down three decisions or responsibilities you want help with. Mark which you want to keep and which you want someone else to lead. That gives the first conversation a useful starting point.
Read when a fractional CMO may fit, or explore the Brand Diagnostic.
Sharp Pencil is Micah Voraritskul’s marketing leadership and advisory practice in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Send a note if you prefer to write.