Key Takeaways
- Evolving market realities demand agile, smart, data-driven marketing tactics paired with the ability to pivot to new realities almost instantly.
- A fractional CMO offers strategic, high-level marketing leadership—without the CMO cost. They’re the ones who can provide the expertise and outside perspective that help businesses make the right pivot during times of crisis.
- Frequent communication, consistent guidance, and teamwork fosters an atmosphere that allows teams to stay focused and engaged even through times of uncertainty.
- By welcoming new concepts and thinking outside the box of traditional assumptions, you can discover countless opportunities and new, previously unreachable customer segments.
- By measuring the impact of marketing efforts on a regular basis, you can rest assured that your strategies are effective and highly responsive to changing business needs.
- Tapping into outside expertise such as a fractional CMO helps create that resiliency and better equips businesses for sustainable, long-term growth.
They were incredibly supportive in providing overall direction, but in pushing our thinking. This CMO had tremendous expertise in local markets and digital trends. They kept a consistent line of communication open and continued to challenge our thinking and ideas to find innovative methods to energize our customers.
Advice on transitioning sales online, choosing the most effective social platforms, and accelerating our transition with local LA ads helped us pivot quickly. We learned how to leverage data to track what was effective and what wasn’t. Regular short weekly meetings to review the plan and progress allowed us to stay proactive with the plan and to pivot quickly when circumstances changed.
Read on to learn how each step affected us. LA proved to be a difficult year in retail.
The [Event] That Shook Our World
When the pandemic came to Los Angeles, everything turned upside down overnight for our small marketing team. We had to quickly navigate unfamiliar regulations, a drastic loss of foot traffic, and an overnight move to digital marketing. The atmosphere in the city became increasingly fraught as marketing leaders slashed spending plans, shattering the world we knew as normal.
Sudden Market Freeze
A sudden market freeze occurred as stores shuttered virtually overnight. Concerts and sporting events were suddenly canceled. Our leads completely dried up, and our sales plummeted within weeks. Consumers quit buying discretionary items, and emails and ads that used to perform well fell flat. For a while, the entire market felt frozen.
We witnessed how quickly the conversation moved online—every creative, every medium, every strategy had to be re-examined. Our former growth strategies were mismatched to this new tempo. Rapid adaptation was imperative, or we faced getting left in the dust.
Our Old Playbook Failed
Prior to the event, we relied on in-person events, hyper-local ads, and trade shows. These immediately ceased to function. What we discovered were huge holes in our planning. We were woefully unsupported on the digital side, and our creative team was too far behind the curve to be willing to experiment.
The crisis illuminated our failures—such as lackluster digital content and delayed response times on social media. We had to actively unlearn the way we operated, unlearn from our egregious blind spots, and create new muscle memory.
Facing Tough Choices Daily
Facing tough choices daily became a new reality. Do we need to stop spending on ads or start experimenting in new channels? Would we be able to retain personnel or reduce work weeks? These decisions were no fun.
We had to balance short-term hurt with the damage to our long-term reputation. We relied on data like never before—keeping a close eye on spend, results, and trends allowed us to avoid much larger risks.
What Is a Fractional CMO?
A fractional CMO is typically a part-time, on-demand, marketing executive. They offer c-level leadership and expertise to companies that don’t need, or can’t yet afford, a full-time CMO. This role is especially well-suited for today’s economic environment in which agility and value are top priorities.
In places like Los Angeles, where startups and small businesses compete with larger brands, a fractional CMO gives access to high-level marketing skills without the full-time price tag.
Experienced Fractional CMOs
Most fractional marketing leaders come with 10 to 15 years of CMO-level experience, offering strategic marketing guidance across both B2B and B2C sectors while spanning multiple industries. This is the beauty of fractional marketing teams—they step in only a few hours per week, fill leadership gaps, and focus on everything that drives toward clear marketing goals.
Expert Leadership On Demand
Exceptional marketing expertise, on-demand Fractional CMOs are accomplished marketing professionals. These experts assist with high-level strategy, messaging, and team building, coming aboard quickly when the priorities shift.
When faced with a market disruption or unexpected decrease in demand, a fractional CMO can pivot campaigns in short order. They can navigate the team through change and towards opportunity. You receive a senior leader’s strategic input, without the commitment of a long-term hire or the expense of a six-figure salary.
This is perfect for businesses who are monitoring their spending very tightly or those who are in a more precarious situation.
More Than Just Consulting
Unlike consultants, fractional CMOs get hands-on and work shoulder-to-shoulder with your team. They develop and implement marketing concepts, track KPIs, and adjust in real-time.
They help mentor internal teams, define and refine the brand, and even assist in hiring or training up internal talent. That hands-on approach goes a long way in building trust and ensuring everyone remains on the same page.
A Strategic Growth Partner
More than a Band-Aid Solution, fractional CMOs aren’t just about putting out fires. They further create value by influencing sustainable growth through connecting the dots between marketing activities and overall business objectives.
Their wide-ranging experience enables them to identify new opportunities and guide the company through turbulent times.
How Our Fractional CMO Led Change
In practice, during the crisis, our fractional chief marketing officer acted as a hands-on, pragmatic leader. With extensive experience in strategic marketing leadership, she combined fresh insights with a deep well of expertise. This required her to work quickly, fact-check, and sift through distractions to ensure effective marketing leadership kept us on course.
1. Immediate Crisis Triage
The first step was to size up what mattered most. She ran a quick audit, checked on which campaigns needed attention, and pulled the team together to map out a plan.
She helped us sort resources, making sure funds and time went where they mattered most. By targeting quick wins—like reworking messaging and speeding up digital ads—she got momentum going. This kept the team focused and eased some of the early panic.
2. Uncovering Hidden Opportunities
She conducted a thorough audit of our communications ecosystem, looking for trends and unmet needs in our market. Through interviewing customers and data analysis, she identified holes our team overlooked.
Early in the pandemic, she observed a digital-first trend taking hold and quickly growing. Consequently, she encouraged us to introduce a new, online service. With her outside perspective, she was able to help us identify potential areas for growth that we didn’t even realize we were overlooking.
3. Crafting Our Pivot Strategy
She guided us through creating a comprehensive pivot strategy. This meant aligning marketing with new business objectives and mapping out a plan to pivot our approach.
She ensured that each person on the team had full transparency to the plan and could visualize their role in it. Her impressive track record provided our stakeholders confidence to support the pivot.
4. Rallying Our Stressed Team
She made sure to check in with the team regularly, providing updates and setting clear, actionable tasks. Clear up concerns through open discussions.
Her calm voice of reason helped unify a fragmented world to keep everyone focused on the shared goal, even during the crisis moments.
5. Executing New Marketing Plays
We implemented new digital campaigns, and tested concepts in rapid, short-term cycles. She emphasized testing, iterating quickly, and scaling up what was successful.
Innovative thinking allowed our creative to be highly relevant to what their customers needed in this moment.
6. Measuring Impact Relentlessly
She instituted weekly reports, established KPI tracking and ensured we were auditing results regularly. This allowed us to pivot quickly.
Her data-driven approach not only saved us money, it increased our return—reducing our spend by as much as 45%. It let the numbers dictate what to double down on—and what needed to change—so we stayed at the forefront of innovation.
Fresh Eyes, New Directions
When an industry is undergoing disruption, adhering to old concepts is a recipe for stagnation. A fractional marketing team tends to offer that fresh pair of eyes, looking beyond practice and precedent that marketing teams may overlook. This objective perspective provides unique insights into identifiable gaps within the market, paving the way for effective marketing leadership.
It creates new opportunities to serve customers as well as to identify threats more proactively. Having someone cut free from the old ways liberates the company from the dangers of groupthink. This approach comes with a heavy dose of realism and strategic marketing guidance.
This allows teams to test and find out whether their assumptions about the market are correct. In dynamic cities such as Los Angeles, trends change in the blink of an eye. This one simple move can be the difference between leading the pack or being left in the dust!
Challenging Our Assumptions
We discovered that much of our assumptions were shaped by past market conditions that no longer existed. The fractional CMO didn’t shy away from asking hard questions that caused us to reevaluate everything we thought we knew about what our customers’ needs were.
By demanding evidence and data, they really pushed us to stop operating on our best guesses and actually approach this with facts. Our team began to appreciate candid discussions, where each notion could be challenged—not just the comfortable ones.
Bringing Outside Market Views
The CMO encouraged us to bring in research from outside our industry. This was any and all external factors, from competitive moves/actions to a real change in customer habits.
By leveraging on top of what other people were doing we recognized these new patterns and opportunities to expand. The CMO helped ensure we were constantly pressure-testing our creative ideas against what was actually occurring in the market.
Innovative Ideas We Missed
In the past, some of these ideas that were daring just stayed on the whiteboard. To democratize idea sharing, the CMO facilitated brief, targeted brainstorms that lowered the barriers for anyone to propose an innovative approach.
These were innovative approaches to using digital ads and engage with customers online that we had not explored or tested. The more they expanded their vision, the more willing the team became to test small, doable, testable ideas, not just plan-sized concepts.
Integrating Our Fractional CMO
Bringing on a fractional CMO to our team was about more than simply bringing on a new hire. The onboarding experience began with very candid discussions about everyone’s roles and who should be doing what, removing any confusion. We set up time with not only their in-house leaders but their CMO.
This made sure all of us were aligned and kept everyone accountable. This flexible, low-pressure format allowed us to quickly get comfortable with a new collaborative working dynamic. This was particularly helpful when the stakes were high during [ event ].
Bridging Strategy and Action
Our fractional CMO not only helped shape those broad plans, but she helped break them down into manageable steps our team could immediately start taking action on. This in turn required establishing detailed schedules of work and developing checklists.
We outlined KPIs associated with our objectives such as lead increase and campaign ROI. With concrete metrics to track, we’d be able to visually monitor progress and pivot quickly if things weren’t going according to plan. Being a CMO, the magic was in the “how” that drove our plans.
This prevented us from getting off course, even in periods of major transition.
Empowering Our In-House Talent
So skill-building was a primary objective. The CMO was open with information and willing to share their expertise. She taught our marketers to interpret data, experiment with new AI tools, and develop customer-first campaigns.
These weekly working sessions, which combined real-time feedback with active, hands-on learning, proved crucial to our success. That mentorship has elevated our staff to a new level of skill and collaboration. It helped everyone get comfortable sharing both their wins and lessons learned.
Clear Communication Cadence
We established weekly check-ins, project trackers, and open Slack channels, ensuring the entire marketing team was always informed about ongoing initiatives. These frequent, transparent updates fostered trust and helped align everyone toward effective marketing leadership.
Navigating Internal Skepticism
When people were skeptical, there was a point at which leadership, particularly the fractional marketing team, heard that skepticism and produced evidence of initial successes. This really aided in transforming worry to buy-in and helped maintain the group steady throughout the modification.
Real Results, Renewed Hope
In Los Angeles, when downtown was closed for those infrastructure improvements, we hired a fractional CMO. We wanted more than rules and regulations; we wanted evidence that a different future was achievable. From the start, the signs arrived quickly.
Specific measures create a roadmap for consistent victories. Each step in the right direction, no matter how minor, restored a glimmer of hope and renewed the fire in the crew’s belly.
Stabilizing Our Revenue Stream
Our journey down this new path began by stabilizing our revenue stream. The CMO provided a detailed breakdown of our revenue streams and expenditures. When foot traffic disappeared, we turned our business to online sales.
We quickly implemented curbside pickup and created relationships with local delivery providers. When we diversified how we earned, it meant we weren’t putting all of our eggs in one basket. This not only helped us weather the storm, it kept us from being so rickety when the ground shifted in rapid succession.
Marketing was the magic ingredient! When we were able to feature our improved offerings directly in front of our customers’ thumbs—sales began to bounce back almost immediately.
Entering Untapped Market Segments
The team made a concerted effort to reach underserved communities, especially as we looked at expanding our messaging and outreach. We found that younger shoppers in our region were expressing a desire for more plant-based snacking options.
We incorporated those into our presentations and took to social media to experiment with new concepts. By changing what we sold, we were able to serve more people, expanding our customer base step by step.
Boosting Team Morale, Focus
Those successes, large and minor, were celebrated in weekly meetings. Public shout-outs for creative problem-solving and meeting daily goals re-energized participants, helping everyone feel seen.
The CMO advocated open discussions and candid feedback, creating an environment where ideas were allowed to flourish. This fresh atmosphere motivated everyone to be a part of something great and bigger than themselves.
Lessons Learned From the Pivot
Working with a fractional marketing team at a critical inflection point brought valuable lessons learned and tangible growth. Our industry changed quickly, and we needed to be alert on all fronts, especially in our marketing strategy. The key lessons learned were to be flexible with process and approach and learn from everything. Whatever you do, don’t lose sight of the steady progress of the tortoise! Here, we parse the biggest lessons we learned from this pivot.
Adaptability Is True Strength
Adaptability was our competitive advantage. The market continued to change, and there was no way to stay the course with previous plans. Straightforward adaptations—whether changing campaign objectives or pivoting the type of content we created—helped us stay in motion.
This mindset brought about more sustainable development, rather than short-term successes. What we figured out A proactive mindset goes a long way. Teams who flagged workflow delays right away or spoke up about red flags helped us fix problems before they got big.
Remote work for months on end was difficult, and one team member quickly raised this concern. It really did make it hard to maintain morale. This level of transparency helped us to schedule in-person meetups and maintain a positive atmosphere.
Value of External Expertise
Having a fractional CMO helped us with that because she was able to come in with new eyes. External experts don’t just fill gaps—they help identify blind spots within the team.
The CMO challenged us to start measuring impact earlier, particularly within the first 90 days. By packaging our services in a clearer way and establishing appropriate benchmarks, we were able to identify what worked well and what required further development.
The CMO was instrumental in helping us create a deep bench of experts. This didn’t just make our own marketing more robust — it allowed us to rely on a broader range of expertise.
Future-Proofing Our Business Now
Looking ahead, we learned to think beyond what’s next, and more towards what’s now. We developed a blueprint that focused on developing a pipeline of robust multiyear contracts and well-defined service offerings with flexible options.
Consistent check-ins and transparency about what was working and what wasn’t helped us stay the course on our strategy. We focused on cultivating relationships with our communities, allowing us to identify emerging trends early and prevent being caught off guard.
Setting time to rest and batch creative work really helped us stay fresh and not burn out.
Conclusion
A fractional CMO provided a level of detail-oriented focus and the ability to pivot quickly when we needed to make a change fast. With their guidance, we identified blind spots, innovated in ways we would have never attempted otherwise, and maintained focus. Our staff expanded overnight, and our vision sharpened. We moved from guesswork to experiment-based adjustments. Sales shot through the roof, and our team shared in that high. Suddenly, big changes didn’t seem so risky with someone who understood the ropes. A fractional CMO doesn’t sit back and pontificate, they roll up their sleeves and get to work right alongside you. When your marketing team reaches an impasse or is looking for creative new ideas, seek expertise that matches your team’s size and pace. Have a tale of your own or an inquiry about the submission process? Send us a msg or come into the conversation—let’s share concepts and actual successes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a fractional CMO?
What is a fractional CMO? They’re a fractional marketing leader that provides your business with executive-level marketing expertise, ensuring effective marketing leadership without the cost or commitment of a full-time hire.
How did a fractional CMO help during our [event] pivot?
The second benefit of collaborating with a fractional marketing leader was their ability to introduce fresh ideas and perspectives. Their strategic marketing guidance enabled us to quickly adjust our marketing strategy, ensuring we remained relevant and competitive in a complex marketing landscape.
Why choose a fractional CMO over a full-time CMO?
You gain access to effective marketing leadership through a fractional marketing team, eliminating the overhead of a full-time salary or long-term contract.
What kind of results can a fractional CMO deliver?
A fractional marketing team provides a roadmap to deliver both quick wins and long-term growth. As a result, we experienced not only more leads but also higher conversion rates and significantly improved brand awareness in the process of our transformation.
How do you integrate a fractional CMO into your team?
We brought our fractional marketing team in as if they were full-time team members. Through clear communication, alignment on marketing goals, and consistent touchpoints, they were able to support the change with effective marketing leadership.
Can a fractional CMO work remotely with Los Angeles companies?
Can a fractional marketing team based remotely help Los Angeles businesses? Our fractional CMO utilized digital marketing capabilities and expertise in the local market to ensure seamless collaboration.
What should you look for when hiring a fractional CMO?
Consider seeking effective marketing leadership, industry insights, and local market knowledge from a fractional marketing team. Run through reference checks to ensure their approach aligns with your company culture.