When deciding between hiring a marketing consultant and an in-house resource, it's important to consider your specific objectives, budget, and long-term goals. An in-house resource offers deep integration with greater connectivity to your brand and company culture; however, it may not be feasible to make the long-term investment in a full-time resource at this time. If your existing team is resource-constrained and the process for securing additional resources is challenging or unclear, hiring a seasoned consultant to address a specific challenge or objective for a set cost and timeline can be beneficial. Consultants also bring an outside and unbiased perspective, as well as diverse knowledge gained from working across a variety of clients and industries. With this experience, consultants can introduce new ideas and tactics that have proven successful elsewhere, while adapting them to your organization's specific needs.

The Marketing Program Audit is designed to analyze and optimize 1-2 key components of your marketing strategy. Example focus areas include the customer journey from discovery to purchase, marketing organization foundations like budgets, in-house resourcing structure and external agency/vendor resourcing, acquisition channel efficacy and efficiency, retention strategy efficacy, and brand positioning and articulation through your marketing channels. Schedule a complimentary consultation call so that we can discuss and scope the specific challenges and opportunities you’d like the audit to address.

In these focused 1- or 2-hour conversations, we will address a specific challenge that you or your organization is facing. Example topics include examining your organization chart and discussing potential realignment opportunities, outlining an incremental marketing budget justification to present to Finance, discussing strategies for maximizing your relationship and productivity with agency partners, and prioritizing tactics on your long-term marketing roadmap.

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• 1-Hour Marketing Advisory

• 2-Hour Marketing Advisory

The Marketing Program Audit is a thorough assessment of key aspects of your marketing strategy, aimed at providing actionable recommendations for your team to implement. If you've pinpointed an area of your marketing strategy that needs improvement, but need help determining the best way forward, then the Marketing Program Audit might be the best next step for you.

The Marketing Advisory Session is a dynamic conversation. Perhaps you’ve identified an opportunity for your organization, but want to talk through it before determining how to take action. Or perhaps you’ve done 90% of the research on a particular topic and now need an expert to serve as a sounding board to finalize your decision-making. In this engagement, Cara Verwholt will provide quick, targeted guidance to keep your strategy moving forward. In some cases, the Marketing Advisory Session is a helpful first step in solidifying objectives and an area of focus for a full Marketing Program Audit.

A Fractional CMO is a part-time, contract-based executive who provides embedded marketing leadership to a business. The Fractional CMO provides the same strategic guidance as a full-time CMO, overseeing all aspects of growing the brand, representing the voice of the customer, designing and/or optimizing the customer journey, and launching revenue-driving marketing initiatives, without the cost and overhead of a full-time hire.

If you are looking to expand your business, a Fractional CMO can offer in-depth marketing expertise, a fresh perspective on executing your vision, the knowledge and experience to design marketing infrastructure, and the ability to articulate your brand at every stage of the customer journey. A Fractional CMO can also provide hands-on leadership and mentorship of your in-house team, helping to develop their expertise and scope in line with your business’s growth.

There are various inflection points in your business where hiring a Fractional CMO could be beneficial. Here are a few examples:

You need to clarify your strategic direction. Perhaps you have an existing marketing strategy but are finding that it’s not serving your long-term vision for the company. Or, you’re at the beginning phases of contemplating a marketing strategy that can accelerate your business’s growth. Regardless of the maturity of your marketing approach, a Fractional CMO can design marketing objectives and KPIs that are built to serve your top-level business objectives to ensure alignment between marketing and overall business strategy.

You are navigating a new growth phase. You have developed a great product and revenue engine, possibly through a scrappy, bootstrapped approach. Now, you are ready to scale your business and have recognized the need for brand and marketing investment to ensure that your company stands out amidst the competition and fosters strong, enduring relationships with your customers. If you're considering how to take your growth to the next level, it may be time to bring in an experienced marketing executive to develop sustainable, revenue-generating marketing infrastructure for your business. And if you’re not quite ready for a full-time CMO, a Fractional CMO will provide the experience and perspective your business needs, for a fraction of the cost.

Your business’s growth has decelerated. Growth can plateau for a variety of reasons, including market changes, rising competition, lack of innovation, and poor customer retention. A Fractional CMO can examine your customer funnel and provide focused recommendations to spur business growth.

You need guidance through a specific business transformation. An experienced marketing leader can help you navigate major business transformations, such as launching a new product, changing or expanding your distribution strategy, rebranding, and restructuring your organization. It’s likely that your Fractional CMO has led a team through the exact transformation you are contemplating or facing, and can help you look around corners to lessen the impact on your customers and internal team.

Your existing leadership is transitioning. While a Fractional CMO can help build marketing infrastructure from the ground up, they can also step in to provide turnkey support during existing leadership transitions or gaps. The Fractional CMO not only provides strategic guidance to business leaders, but also acts as a leader and mentor to marketing resources and external agency partners.

Phase 1: The first month of the Fractional CMO engagement focuses on discovery and recommendations. Cara Verwholt will examine your business goals and current performance through stakeholder interviews and hands-on analysis. She will also review your customer profile(s), competitors, brand guidelines and messaging, customer journey through owned and paid channels, and marketing technology infrastructure. Cara takes these inputs and summarizes observations and recommendations in a strategy deck so that we can align on the key business priorities for marketing to address. Finally, Cara will provide a working roadmap to guide initiative prioritization and implementation.

Phase 2: Months two and three then focus on strategy development for the key items identified in phase 1. Focus areas can include, but are not limited to the following:

• Brand identity

• Marketing objectives & KPIs

• Marketing budget allocations

• Customer acquisition channel plan (organic & paid)

• Creative plan; agency evaluation & onboarding

• Specific campaign or product launch plans

• Customer retention and lifetime value initiatives

• Sales team enablement

• Marketing technology infrastructure

Ongoing: Following the initial three-month engagement, we focus on strategy implementation and ongoing leadership. This can include, but is not limited to:

• Marketing team leadership & mentoring

• Process development

• Agency negotiations, onboarding & management

• In-house resource identification & onboarding 

• Marketing technology evaluations, vendor negotiations & onboarding

• Implementation guidance:

  • Audience segmentation and targeting

  • Content development

  • Website & customer journey optimization

  • Search engine optimization (SEO)

  • CRM

  • Paid media channel and creative testing

  • Customer retention

  • Marketing measurement and analytics

• Strategic partnership evaluation

• Weekly team calls

• Bi-monthly or monthly progress reports

Our initial engagement lasts for three months and then renews on a month-to-month basis. While our typical engagements span from six to twelve months, the ideal length of engagement will depend on your business's needs and budget. In the first month of our engagement (discovery phase), we will propose an ideal overall length. However, after the first three months, you will have the flexibility to terminate our engagement by providing a 30-day written notice.

A marketing consultant can act as a strategic advisor for your business, providing value even if you already have a high-performing marketing team in place. There are many reasons to hire a marketing consultant for your business, but here are five key ones:

Long-term visioning support: Developing long-term strategies can be challenging when you have to address short-term needs, especially if your marketing resources are limited. A strategic marketing consultant can assist in planning for long-term growth, allowing your marketing team to remain focused on the day-to-day initiatives driving customer engagement, acquisition, and retention.

Expanded subject-matter expertise and contextual depth: A strategic marketing consultant can help bridge a gap in subject-matter expertise within your current team. They can offer extensive industry knowledge and/or provide fresh perspectives from experience in a different industry to drive innovation.

Budget and resource optimization: A strategic marketing consultant can review your current marketing expenses and adjust your allocations to better align with your revenue goals, while taking into account the realities of fixed costs and cash flow. A marketing consultant can also offer a fresh perspective on your in-house resourcing and organizational structure, as they have likely observed and operated in various marketing organizations. 

Marketing plan optimization: Even if your current marketing tactics are effective, there are probably numerous opportunities to take advantage of low-hanging fruit and further optimize your strategy. Sometimes it just takes a second pair of eyes and an outside perspective to identify these opportunities. A strategic marketing consultant can analyze your current approach and offer prioritized recommendations to help you boost revenue, enhance the customer experience, and gain operational efficiencies. This can be especially powerful if you feel like the effectiveness of your marketing tactics have waned, or your overall business growth has stalled.

Brand identity and messaging optimization: Perhaps the abilities of your in-house marketing team are more geared toward performance marketing than brand growth. A strategic marketing consultant can turn your company’s mission, vision and values into a brand identity that communicates a clear value proposition to your target customer. A consultant can also help articulate your current brand identity. They can build functional messaging frameworks to guide internal teams and external agencies, and advise on how your brand should show up at each stage of the customer journey.

The Strategic Marketing Blueprint is a built-for-you plan so that your business is prepared for a key initiative. This engagement is designed for one specific initiative, and examples include go-to-market launches, product launches, seasonal campaigns, partnership or sponsorship initiatives, physical event activations, and distribution expansions (e.g. a direct-to-consumer or 3rd party marketplace launch). Schedule a complimentary consultation call so we can discuss and scope your needs for the project.

The Fractional CMO Service addresses a leadership need within your organization. With a Fractional CMO, you will receive embedded leadership to drive marketing strategy, marketing operations, and marketing organization development. The Fractional CMO will work alongside you and your team to drive business growth and, while there will be a roadmap guiding the prioritization of marketing initiatives, the Fractional CMO’s focus areas can also be somewhat dynamic to ensure that the greatest needs of the business are being addressed.