Marketing dollars in hand, growth goals in mind, and a need to hand over your marketing function to a true expert—it’s time for a CMO. For many, this means blasting posts on Indeed, Glassdoor, and LinkedIn, sifting through candidates, and finding the next member of their C-suite. Experienced CMOs are not easy to find, however, and often when a good candidate is found, it may be even harder to afford them.
This difficulty, combined with a pressing need for results, has led many companies to turn to outsourced CMOs, where guidance, support, and execution are provided on a service basis. These marketing leaders can latch on to your company as a functioning employee without the commitment of an in-house CMO.
For companies at the right place in their growth, these services can be a great way to quickly get expert support for their company, but for others, more permanent, dedicated support will be required. Here we’ll walk through the core pieces of what makes each option a viable one for the right company and how to pick the right choice for you.
Outsourcing your CMO
Speed
A foremost benefit of outsourcing your CMO function lies in the speed at which you can both locate and onboard a marketing leader. While finding an in-house leader through traditional channels can take months of dedicated searching, application reviews, and interviews, outsourced CMO services can quickly provide you with a selection of candidates to select from.
What’s more, outsourced CMOs will often have developed systems for onboarding and becoming acquainted with the business practices, industry, and day-to-day tasks of your company. This means that instead of spending weeks onboarding your new internal CMO, an experienced outsourced CMO can be taking on important tasks almost immediately.
Cost
Another important benefit of outsourcing your marketing leadership is cost. Good CMOs aren’t just hard to come by, they’re darned expensive, too, with Glassdoor placing the average US CMO’s salary at $209,764 annually (as of March 2022). Benefits, bonuses, and expenses add up on top of yearly pay to make this position a pricey one to fill.
The full-time support of a CMO will also not be worth this pricetag to many businesses, but luckily outsourced CMOs can provide these businesses with scalable support. Only need part-time coaching? Need more support when launching a set of campaigns and less once they’re up and running? Going with a CMO-as-a-service option is a great way to get this kind of flexibility out of your marketing function and cut back on wasted marketing dollars.
Flexibility
CMOs, on average, have the highest turnover in the C-suite. Other C-suite positions tend to last upwards of 5 years, but the Harvard Business Review found that 57% of CMOs have been in their position three years or less, with an average tenure of 4.1 years, compared to CEOs’ eight-year average. This means that the investment of time, training, and resources you put into a CMO will likely return much less than that spent on other internal positions.
Outsourced CMOs, on the other hand, require less investment and training because they are designed to eventually leave without you having invested too greatly in an internal CMO that may soon churn.
These fractional CMOs also have the benefit of being able to be cut from your company whenever is needed. Whether you’re looking to start building an internal marketing function or are simply not totally satisfied with the support you receive, you can simply end your plan with your CMO-as-a-service like any other subscription. In fact, some outsourced CMO services will apply their experience to help you in hiring and training your ideal marketing team.
Building an in-house team
Going with the traditional hiring route is, of course, not without its benefits too. For many, the full commitment an internal CMO can give their company will make this the ideal option. Let’s look at some more reasons why you may consider this route.
Industry expertise
Outsourced CMOs are often well-experienced in quickly picking up whatever knowledge and context they need to work within your specific industry, but an internal CMO will almost always have more time to train in the ins and outs of it. Whether it’s knowing what kind of language your audience likes to hear or what channels they are most receptive to, having a marketing leader who is focused on your industry can be of great benefit.
Depending on what industry you are in, having an expert in this field will be more or less crucial. If you are concerned about the ability of an outsourced CMO to perform successfully in your industry, it will likely be helpful to look to their testimonials and speak directly with the CMO on what fields they have worked in that would provide experience relevant to your own.
Investment in your performance
A major benefit of an internal CMO for many businesses will be that of commitment to your company. If their salary, performance reviews, and job security are all tied to the success of their initiatives and thus the company as a whole, they will naturally be driven to put a great effort into their work. Here they focus on and are rewarded for results, not deliverables.
Though an outsourced CMO may never fully be a part of your team, in the same way, a handy solution for this conundrum of misplaced incentives is finding a fractional CMO that will sign on for performance-tied compensation. If a significant portion of their payout is tied to the results they produce, they are much more likely to focus on how they can improve their efforts and do whatever it takes to produce great results rather than simply trying to tick off the boxes on the campaigns, items, and projects they signed up for.
So, what’s right for your business?
Hopefully, the pros and cons of both marketing leader solutions given in this resource are helpful for you and your team as you continue your search for a CMO that fits your needs.
If you’re ready to invest the time and resources needed to find and train your own in-house CMO to gain a committed member of your team, it’s time to put up those job postings. If, however, you need a more flexible, scalable, speedy solution to get a jump on marketing-led growth, outsourced marketing leadership could be a great option to explore.
