10 Reasons for Hiring an Outsourced CMO

What is an outsourced CMO?

Let’s start with the easy part, the CMO is a Chief Marketing Officer.  The C-suite designation is earned through experience in leadership and management of the marketing function within an organization. Typically CMO’s will have a dozen or more years’ experience in both strategy development and tactical execution.

The CMO’s role is to advise the CEO and other executive team members how best to expand markets, increase awareness, build loyalty, drive engagement and grow revenues.  The high-level marketing leader is responsible for creating the “voice” for the organization through the brand experience.

A CMO is the brand ambassador, loyalty activist and customer champion.

Internally, the function of a Chief Marketing Officer is to bring together the talent, processes and technology that helps an organization realize the vision and execute upon the strategy that is aligned to specific organizational goals. It is the CMO’s responsibility to build the marketing plan that outlines roles, responsibilities, budgets, resources, timelines, tactics and measurable outcomes.  They lead the marketing organization and orchestrate their day-to-day activities.

Outsourcing for a company or organization is to purchase (goods) or subcontract (services) from an outside supplier or source.

Outsourcing is simply giving the responsibility of the position to someone that does not reside within the business. Why would you outsource an executive-level position?

Top reasons organizations outsource:

  • Experience and competence
  • Budget and/or need to reduce costs
  • Assessment of people, processes and/or technology
  • Gaps in skills and capabilities
  • Need for industry and market expertise
  • Resource constraints within existing teams
  • Urgency to drive initiatives or deliver critical projects
  • Strategic development
  • Team leadership
  • Tactical management and oversight
  • Need to streamline operations and workflows
  • Test job requirements and long-term business needs
  • Reduce risk
  • Advise and consult with leadership

Startups, SMBs, high-growth, turnaround and transitioning businesses can lack the time and dollars required to invest in bringing aboard a full-time senior marketing executive.  Outsourcing the CMO function allows leaders to leverage high-level talent in smaller increments of time and budget, while still gaining qualified and capable expertise that can help accelerate strategic business plans.

When do you need an outsourced CMO?

  1. You have a strong tactical marketing team; however, you do not have a marketing person sitting at the table where company decisions are made about the vision, mission, strategy, tactics and growth plans for the next 3-5 years.
  2. You lack a marketing strategy or plan.
  3. You desperately need a sustainable marketing engine that can deliver predictable results.
  4. You spend money on marketing, though you see little ROI or do not have the capabilities to track budgets, measure performance or forecast results.
  5. You need better competitive analysis and market research to know if you are talking to the right people and delivering the right products and services.
  6. You need a comprehensive assessment of marketing tactics, team members and capabilities to ensure you are built for long-term success.
  7. You know digital transformation can greatly improve your business, yet you lack the expertise that can represent marketing’s role in that process.
  8. You want to implement advanced tactics or implement marketing technologies to help the organization best utilize their data and assets to improve the customer experience.
  9. You need an expert that can help you improve brand loyalty, reduce churn and supports the business development team to achieve their growth targets.
  10. You are dissatisfied with results of marketing and the impact on revenue and know that you are missing out on existing market opportunities.

Today’s marketing function is complex. Business are operating at Internet speed, content is coming in from right and left, technology is taking over the world and digital transformation is accelerating the way we operate in our global economy.

Compounding it all are needs to manage vast amounts of data, utilize advanced analytics, define complicated customer journeys, understand the infiltration of artificial intelligence, manage talent, assess numerous marketing technologies, facilitate demands for personalization and improve customer experiences and create endless amounts of content to stay relevant. And that’s just the beginning. It’s overwhelming for most organizations, along with managing everything else that impacts growth.

It can’t be overstated, marketing is getting more and more complex. Companies need experienced executive marketing leadership to help manage growth, breakdown internal silos, and improve efficiency and economics.

Senior marketing expertise and leadership is essential at a macro-level to bring together the micro-level experts needed to deliver results in this entangled environment.

Having a competent leader that can help an organization stay abreast of trends, recognize opportunities, align resources, implement strategies and resist temptations to waste money is critical for any organizations’ success – whether working within the leadership team or as an outsourced contributor.

An outsourced CMO can provide the experience required to create, define, build, manage and execute the multitude of tactics needed to achieve your business goals.  

If you don’t have the resource internally, outsourcing the Chief Marketing Officer function provides flexibility for a business to utilize an experienced resource for the required time, scale and budget that the business can afford today.

If you have questions about the benefits of an outsourced CMO or are looking to assess your current marketing function, contact me at [email protected].

Jamie Glass, CMO + President, Artful Thinkers, a sales and marketing consulting company.

Leading Transformation in the New Year

Executives around the world are locking down budgets, business plans and growth strategies that will lead them into a new year with confidence and clarity. Or, at least that is how the process is supposed to work as we exit another year.

The reality is we are often distracted from planning our future, as we are buried in the real-time business demands of “now” for closing out the year, assessing our performance and measuring the success of our current year stated business goals. Our future is ahead, not behind us. We need to look ahead.

The actions we take today to change how we do things in the next year really deserves our full attention. Transformation requires prioritization.

There are many businesses who have great stories to share about the past year, highlighting lists of remarkable accomplishments in growth and opportunity. They have expanded into new markets, launched new products, added new channels for business development. The simple recipe for those businesses will be to double down and do more of the same. We’ve all heard it, GROW MORE! Those that look at how they might have done better over the past year will be focused on clarified business plans that pivot from where they have been to a future path of prosperity.

One thing is certain, whether looking to exploit past success or tearing down the obstacles that led to failure, transformation is imperative for any business in the new year.

Transformation is more than updated goals or repeating the past, it is doing things differently. It is tackling “big” things that others can’t and won’t do.

Transformation is change. It is new coordinates, new variables, new operations and new formulas for success. It is what leads to great. As marketers, we often hear about digital transformation. The way in which we consume information, the speed of the Internet, the Internet of Things, all driving behaviors and pushing businesses to behave differently with their consumers, partners, employees and even regulatory agencies. Yet, transformation applies much more broadly today than just digital. It applies to everything.

Change will happen. The upcoming 12 months will be loaded with transformation for most people, some of which they will have no control or input. It is taking place all around us. Point to the many global examples ripe with political change, where we will see instances of transformation in a new year that can and will change our existence in the world as we know it today. It will likely change how business is conducted globally.

It’s also personal. We’ve all rehearsed transformation to some degree. Personal and professional transformation will be veiled in the guise of declarations of resolutions in the next few days. We all need something to work on and often will state so “out loud” to be held accountable for our changing ways.

What about business transformation? How will businesses change in the new year to capitalize on the new, inspire the potential consumer, foster team development and capture the imagination of dreamers through vision and execution? Well, businesses like people, have to do things differently.

There are five signs a business is ready to lead through transformation.

  1. A focus on globalization will transform any business, as it is not just about selling products beyond a geographic region. It is thoughtfully reaching out through cultural connectivity to orchestrate engagement, learn and drive meaningful (and profitable) relationships around the world. It is understanding the global economy and embracing differences that are ripe in worldwide opportunity through relative experiences. A bit of advice on this point, rely on experts to guide you through the market, cultural and language complexities if you really want to take advantage of transformation through globalization.
  2. Acquiring talent with new insights, skills and competencies that do more than align to a job description will transform a business. Hiring smart and passionate people to join the “team” to challenge the status quo, rule outside the governing boxes and raise the ceiling on what can be done by thinking and ACTING differently is transforming. These individuals will bring experiences and richness of ideas that can expand the possibilities when embraced by an environment of collaboration and exchange.
  3. Diversity of thought and leadership that spans across all functions and roles is encouraged and celebrated by businesses that lead through transformation. Create an environment for bringing people together through idea generation, expanding digital and remote work spaces and systematically rewarding those for participation in solving problems and offering ways for capitalizing on change.
  4. Go beyond innovation, as it is an overused word in the lexicon of business strategies. Innovation is survival today, part of the life blood of existence as a business. Leading in innovation requires transformation, going beyond what has been done in the past and exploring the possibilities through new approaches, processes, technology, thinking and knowledge sharing capabilities. Innovation should be flowing throughout the organization and fundamental to how a business directs and drives transformation. Leaders must ask every team member, “How are you transforming what you do today to take us into the future?”
  5. Predictive analytics must be a basis for transformation, using smart data to guide decisions and empower actions with a bet on the future. Reporting is old, tiring and can paralyze an organization with constant reviews of the past. Using data as intelligence to guide decision-making and focus on outcomes that are in front of the business will free businesses from spending all their time looking in the rear view mirror. Let data push you forward.

Change is constant. Change is here. Transformation is critical to success.

Executives and business leaders that are thinking about their global journey, pushing the boundaries on talent acquisition and diversity of thought, living innovation and predicting the future with accuracy are the leaders of tomorrow and beyond. They will transform the world, doing more and doing things differently.

How are you transforming your business?

Jamie Glass, President + CMO at Artful Thinkers, a sales and marketing consulting company.