The eCommerce market in the USA has grown so much in recent years. And, so far, it’s not showing any signs of slowing down because the latest market forecast reveals that eCommerce will grow by 50 percent in 2025. So, as an eCommerce business owner today, you are not considering scaling your operations, then you are sleeping!
But with the help of a comprehensive marketing plan and a competent marketing leader, you might be able to scale your business to where it needs to go.
Now, it’s no secret that marketing can eat up a significant fraction of your eCommerce business’s budget. That’s why a substantial number of eCommerce business owners are debating whether they should hire a full-time marketing professional or a fractional eCommerce CMO / marketing manager.
If you stuck in the same dilemma, we wrote this bog post to help guide you to the best option for you, we thought of listing the top 8 reasons why you need to hire a fractional eCommerce CMO / marketing manager for your business. Read more about these below.
#1. Create a comprehensive marketing plan
A solid marketing plan is the backbone of every successful eCommerce business today. It gives your marketing team a direction to ensure that everything will fall into the right place. A fractional eCommerce CMO works hand in hand with your team to create a strategy that can help meet the goals set by the CEO and leadership team.
#2. Strong marketing leadership
Primarily, fractional eCommerce CMOs provide leadership – a service that thousands of companies tend to overlook when establishing their teams. They’re also committed to ensuring a consistent and singular direction for your eCommerce business’ marketing game. On top of that, fractional CMOs aren’t influenced by office politics, allowing them to work without prejudice and provide the team with unbiased and unified leadership.
More importantly, they help you move your projects forward so you can focus on the big picture and not the day-to-day of your marketing team and efforts.
#3. Boost your marketing team’s efficiency
Improving a marketing team’s efficiency comprises several factors. One of which is communication – an area that most fractional CMOs excel in. A fractional CMO ensures smooth communication between the marketing team, company company leadership, and external contractors.
Additionally, your part-time CMO can help minimize the need for trial and error. This can help your team save time and other resources. Furthermore, it can boost the team’s productivity and turnaround rate.
#4. Develop a process that works
Ensuring the steady growth of an eCommerce business involves developing a rational and working process. Thankfully this is where a fractional CMO comes in handy. Guided by their extensive experience in handling marketing concerns and tasks, they can help your team formulate reproducible processes that yield results for the company.
Companies like ours use project management software and proven systems to keep your marketing on track and under budget.
#5. Enjoy flexible arrangements
Hiring a part-time eCommerce CMO allows you to enjoy flexible arrangements and long-term results. Most fractional CMOs offer a minimum of a 90-day contract, giving you enough room to mitigate risks and assess whether your hired professional is a good fit for your team. At the same time, the 90-day period can help you gain as many insights as needed to help you move forward with your marketing campaigns.
If its not a good fit, then you can always just end the contract and move on, unlike a full-time employee that may be hard to fire.
#6. Optimize your marketing budget
Hiring a CMO full-time can cost a lot of money because you need to cover the standard salary plus employee benefits. Thankfully, if you opt for a more flexible arrangement, such as hiring a fractional eCommerce CMO, you can cut your HR costs. Then, you can allocate your savings for other marketing needs, such as creating content or running ads.
Furthermore, with their experience of running and managing marketing campaigns, they can help you to cut costs on wasteful spending with marketing channels that are underperformance or not performing at all. Which in turn can help pay for themselves.
#7. Establish reasonable and attainable KPIs
Key performance indicators are extra crucial for every eCommerce company. That’s because they help business owners gauge their progress and determine specific areas that need improvement. With a fractional eCommerce CMO in your team, you can develop reasonable and attainable KPIs to help your team set monthly or weekly goals.
Working with many different eCommerce brands in various vertices helps us fractional CMOs to know the right KPIs to focus on for your business model and stop the guessing game of “Is this marketing channel even working for me?!”
#8. Benefit from the proven knowledge of a fractional eCommerce CMO
A fractional eCommerce CMO can work with several partners at a time. This means they get to develop their knowledge and experience better than a traditional full-time CMO who often concentrates on one partner. As you might already know, eCommerce is constantly evolving. Hence, it would help to have someone on board who can develop innovative ideas based on the different trends prevailing in various niches of the eCommerce business.
This allows the fractional CMO to deliver insights on marketing trends in the industry as well as new, fresh ideas to the table.
How to find the right Fractional CMO for your eCommerce business
Making the decision to hire additional C-level support for your growing eCommerce company is only the first step. That’s because you also need to learn how to pick the right fractional CMO to spearhead your marketing plans.
Here are some tips to help you hire a top-notch part-time CMO:
- Check the candidate’s track record – Ask for the portfolio of the candidate’s past work. You can also request a few character references to gauge their skills and expertise. Find out how they helped others reach their goals and KPIs and how long it took to implement their plans.
- Look at the strategy – Every marketing plan needs an exceptional leader who will execute the different tasks on hand. That’s why it’s crucial to assess the techniques used by a fractional CMO and determine if they fit your needs and branding.
- Explore team dynamic – Try doing a test run to see if your chosen fractional CMO can mesh well with the existing team dynamics in your office. This will help you see whether your hired professional can challenge the status quo, listen to team members, and present and execute ideas well. Starting with as little as a 90 day contract can really test if there is a good fit there.
- Once again, make sure you choose someone who has a track record of helping grow companies they work with – As we have mentioned above, fractional CMOs often have short-term commitments with companies. So, as much as possible, you should select one who can provide your company with long-term results.
Work with a Fractional eCommerce CMO today!
There you have it, our list of benefits hiring a fractional eCommerce CMO and a few tips on how to find the right person/team for the job. We hope that our discussion has helped shed light on the value of having a fractional eCommerce CMO in your team.
Are you ready to hire a fractional CMO for your eCommerce business?
Call us today for a free top-down marketing audit of your business or If you have any additional questions, you can contact our team at Yecommerce today.