Marketing strategy
Business growth
10.10.23

Why a fractional CMO is the best idea for VC startup portfolio growth

By
Laura Derbyshire
Founder & Consultant

The pay-as-you-go model for marketing strategy is a smarter way to inject some highly experienced and quality thinking into your startup portfolio, without the huge price tag, strain on resource to find the right people, or commitment to full-time hires.

It can give founders and CEOs a jump-start to their thinking, set the roadmap for growth, and focus the in-house team on deploying the marketing strategy immediately, to get ahead of the competition.

With this model, you’re in control of how much you spend, and the results you get. That means you can start small, test the water, and see what works before investing further. Plus, you can roll with the punches of global markets and world events.

High-level strategic thinking is a costly resource and the return on investment is not immediately apparent. There tends to be two scenarios that play out for startup CEOs. Either hire a costly full time CMO to drive initial strategy and then have a lower cost, lower skilled team to activate the strategy (at which point the CMOs remit diminishes over time, until the next bout of strategic planning) or hire a mid-weight performance led activation team, and forgo the high-level strategic planning at the start.

Neither of these options work as hard for startup business growth as a consultant strategist, who can translate the business objectives into marketing objectives, set out a plan, and bring some energy. The consultant can then hand-over to a strong and experienced activation team, with check-ins on demand, for in-campaign optimisation.

To maximise effectiveness, focus-in on both types of work. Create clear plans and sound strategies with the CEO and consultant working in partnership, and set up an environment where the team knows exactly what to do daily.

At Oser we offer a CMO pay-as-you-go model, providing A-grade thinking, and tangible activation plans, to allow your CEO to achieve their business objectives quickly, and cost effectively. Our consultants are hybrid thinkers with experience across all marketing channels and multiple sectors.

"Without strategy, execution is aimless. Without execution, strategy is useless". %%Morris Change, CEO TSMC%%