Fractional CMO:s Offers Unique Opportunity for Startups, PE:s and Venture Capital

Anna-Lisa Natchev
3 min readDec 15, 2022

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Enter the Fractional CMO

As the world becomes ever more competitive, startups and venture capitalists need to find strategies to help them scale quickly and efficiently.

A fractional or interim chief marketing officer (CMO) is a unique way for both parties to gain the skills and experience they need without paying for a full-time executive with the expertise they need.

By working with a fractional CMO, startups can get the benefits of a full-time executive without the cost, while VCs can gain the skills and an experienced core team without providing extra funding.

So for Venture Capital, bringing in Fractional Executives with domain expertise and proven results to their portfolio companies is a significant risk management element. Growth combined with risk aversion is crucial, especially in today’s volatile markets.

In addition to providing services, fractional CMOs often offer insights, contacts, and otherwise unavailable strategies for founders and scaleup executives who have yet to prove themselves as Go To Market experts.

If we look at this pragmatically, benefitting from the lessons learned and prices paid of previous growth initiatives and failures will save the startup a pretty penny and something even more valuable, time.

What is a Fractional CMO?

The fractional CMO is an executive with CMO expertise but who works with several clients simultaneously or one client as an external consultant. The main difference is that while a “hired” CMO spends up to 60% doing “nonmarketing stuff” in a tightly resourced startup or scaleup, the fractional CMO focuses 100% on generating outcomes that will bring growth.

This saves money and time as there are often more cost-effective ways that existing team members can contribute to things that the “hired CMO” can help with.

A seasoned fractional executive also helps connect startups with the right customers and investors via their networks and guides the founders into safer passages to growth. In addition to her marketing expertise, fractional CMOs are skilled in digital marketing, so they can help your startup reach a wider audience.

A fractional CMO could be the perfect solution if you’re looking for an innovative way to expand your business.

Modern Talent Management

A fractional CMO is a new possibility to work with talent. It offers startups and venture capitalists several benefits.

Among these is the ability of a skilled professional to focus on marketing strategies while the core team oversees other business functions. This enables startups and venture capitalists to achieve marketing objectives in a fraction of the time and without sacrificing other business functions. Additionally, fractional CMO roles are becoming increasingly sought-after due to the increasing demands of consumers for faster-paced marketing initiatives. As such, fractional CMO positions offer startups and venture capitalists unique opportunities to differentiate their businesses.

Enter: THE CMO!

Marketing is essential for any business, but hiring a full-time marketing team can be expensive and time-consuming.

Enter fractional CMO services — a new way of harnessing the talent that helps startups scale their businesses faster and achieve tremendous success in record time.

A fractional CMO offers comprehensive marketing solutions at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing plans and provides startups with access to top-tier professionals and technology platforms in their networks.

Increasingly, businesses are looking for part-time executive additions to their management team. A Fractional CMO provides just that — strategic guidance, oversight, and mentorship while bringing a wealth of experience and best practice tricks into the business’s day-to-day operations.

A fractional CMO is a modern talent strategy that allows you to minimize costly executive hires and focus on getting the right skills into your team when you need them. In addition to “remote first,” using a global talent pool, and sustainable growth, this trend is not going away.

This innovative approach is nothing new in the startup market; we have been used to Fractional CFO.s for a long time. Now it’s time to get the skills you need into the commercial teams for a fraction of the price and risk.

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Anna-Lisa Natchev
Anna-Lisa Natchev

Written by Anna-Lisa Natchev

SaaS Growth Navigator ,also sharing insights into reaching happiness from the Happiest people in the world...