Articles Written by the Edge Marketing Team


by Megan Miller

Live events and in-person networking took a back seat in the marketing mix for many companies during 2021. The pivot caused many to shift resources back into digital marketing, including webinars, virtual social events, social media, and the workhorse – email marketing.

Email remains at the core of business marketing strategies, with 89% of marketers saying email marketing is their primary strategy. Email marketing makes money. For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $36. That’s a higher return than you can expect from any other form of marketing — digital or otherwise.

Do you know the ROI on your email investment in 2021? Chances are, you don’t know, or you do know, and see some room for improvement in 2022. Pay attention to the basics for success in email marketing, and be aware of some elements that are changing and could impact your results. Here are some steps you can take now to achieve better results from email marketing in the coming year.

Quality, not quantity: Use an Opt-in Approach

Don’t send emails to people who did not opt in to receive email from you. Buying email lists or sending to non-opt-in contacts builds a lower value list, and risks data privacy law violations. Building an opt-in list of prospects who have real interest, and with whom you can build a relationship, is the only way to achieve sustainable list growth for email marketing. By building an opt-in list, you’ll get better open and click-through rates, realize greater ROI from campaigns, and avoid being blacklisted as a spam sender.

Segment and Focus

As you build a contact list in a CRM system over time, continue to refine the profile of each contact. Most CRM programs can track lead source and engagement, tagging a contact with dates and details of their interaction with each campaign – opens, clicks, downloads and other activity.  Careful management of segmentation details allows you to conduct more targeted campaigns over time. Tracking an original source code will help identify where higher quality leads and clients originally found your firm.

Keep Messages Short and Targeted

Using the segmentation data in your CRM system, you can pull a list of prospects who fit a profile and have shown interest in a particular solution or subject. For example, a managed services provider might offer a new service to all contacts with corporate legal titles who have shown interest in your Microsoft 365 white paper. A provider of automated payments software might target accounting firms of 20 or more accountants who also use QuickBooks. Careful targeting might pull a smaller, but higher quality list of people who will appreciate your message and be more likely to engage.

Message content should be short, with the attention grabbing questions in the opening lines. Don’t make the reader guess why you’re emailing.  Use your customer knowledge to focus the message on their needs and valuable content you offer.  It’s about the customer, it’s not about you.

Be Mobile friendly

Surprisingly, 58% of mobile device users check email first thing each morning, compared to 14% who check social media first. Yet many business emails are not designed for proper rendering on a mobile device.

Use tools that support responsive design. Responsive emails adjust their format, style, font, margin, and size based on the screen a person uses. Test your email on multiple device types and browsers prior to sending, to catch any quality issues.

The way an email displays could affect customers’ perception of your business. Overlooking mobile design – particularly if you are a tech, software or services provider – can leave a poor impression that works against your brand.

Use Unique Links

To track and segment contact activity as described above, use unique URLs in marketing emails. Many email platforms can create these automatically. The unique URL returns details about the actions a particular contact takes when they view your email. Did they click through to the white paper, read the article, or hit the Contact button? With unique links, the reader’s activity will be captured in your CRM system, adding more value to future targeting efforts.

Encourage Engagement

Reader engagement, and your appropriate response, are key to growing a community of followers and interested individuals. Interactive emails include elements that users can manipulate without having to visit another page and leave their inbox. Interactive content might include:

  • Survey data or maps that readers can interact with
  • Carousels of images users can swipe
  • Videos users can view

Be sure to share social media links in every email. When you create a social media promotion, share the same news with email subscribers to make sure they see it and can engage.

Test and Measure

It’s important to A/B test both subject lines to calls to action (CTAs). The results will tell you what topics, terms, phrases and offers hold the greatest appeal for readers. Test one element (subject, offer, etc.) at a time, with as large a sample size as possible.

Measure the success of each email campaign, and capture results over the course of each quarter or year. Over time the metrics will help identify the hot topics of interest, the most popular offers, and the issues your readers find most engaging.

About the Author

Megan Miller is a senior consultant with Edge Marketing, assisting clients in development and execution of strategic marketing plans and implementation of marketing technologies. A global technology hound, Miller has built brands, trained teams and introduced successful products for global companies and startups. A certified eDiscovery expert, Miller has written on trends and topics in electronic discovery, consumer electronics and the internet of things – before the IoT was even a thing. Her work has appeared in Attorney at Law, US Tech, TechnoLawyer, ACEDS and other industry publications.

/by Megan Miller

by Jennifer Marsnik

Whether your organization operates in the reality of lengthy sales cycles where you need to keep the process moving, or in more transactional, quicker sales requiring you to always stay top of mind among your target audience, ongoing outreach to prospective clients is a priority.

For many sales professionals, that outreach has traditionally come in the form of in-person connections. Effective sales executives often point to strong personal relationships as their keys to success; but, without handshakes and hugs, lunches and dinners, and other events to share face time with clients and prospects over the past year, sales teams have had to rely on virtual meetings and digital communications to stay connected with their target audiences.

We all were forced to adapt to new ways of working last year but pivoting from in-person events to more emails and Zoom calls hasn’t come easy to everyone. For people who rely on face-to-face connections for professional success, it’s been especially challenging, in some cases with unfortunate results.

In an article published recently by Law.com’s Legaltech News, Frank Ready reports an increase in what’s being described as “aggressive” and “demeaning” behavior being used by technology sales professionals over the past year. Sources quoted in the article point to infractions beyond an unwelcome volume of unsolicited email, but worse: Communications that are tone deaf and pressure-filled.

These are certainly not the words any business leader wants to think may be used to describe their team or their company.

What should you do if your communications aren’t hitting the right note with your target audiences? Here are a few places to start:

  1. Revisit your core messaging platform. Ensure the language used to describe your company’s purpose, value proposition, and competitive differentiators, is not only up to date, but still resonates with the people you’re trying to reach. Circulate the platform internally and encourage its consistent use for all communications.
  1. Reassess your buyer personas. What impact – temporary or permanent – did pandemic-forced changes have on your target audiences? Are your buyers the same people? Have their job responsibilities, their pain points, or their priorities changed? Update your messaging and the channels used to reach them to reflect any significant changes they’ve experienced that might impact their decision-making process.
  1. Validate contact lists and respect the wishes of any who have requested to opt-out of marketing emails by updating their preferences accordingly. It’s not worth risking a disgruntled email recipient who may report noncompliant outreach practices.
  1. Reconnect sales and marketing. Even in organizations where these departments collaborate, working remotely may have caused a disconnect between the sales executives and the marketing team, whose job it is to drive communications, support them with events and activities that generate leads, help nurture prospects through the sales funnel, and assist with longer-term client satisfaction initiatives. Make sure they’re all still rowing the boat in the same direction.

Every team member has a role, each bringing different talents, so remember use them. Don’t assume your most highly skilled sales executives are also expert copywriters. Take advantage of your marketers who focus on strategy and positioning, as well as tactical concepts, choosing words carefully to ensure communications reflect the company’s key messages in the professional, respectful tone your target audiences expect and deserve.

Follow these tips to keep your teams working together and ensure your sales and marketing communications aren’t disregarded – or worse.

About the Author

With Edge Marketing since 2007, Jennifer Marsnik specializes in helping clients develop and implement strategic plans that support their overall business goals. She lives in the Twin Cities area with her husband and two daughters, and enjoys golf and cheering on the Twins, Vikings, and U of M Gophers.

/by Jennifer Marsnik

by Cindy Kremer Moen

Relationships take work: Time, energy, and effort all go into the foundation of a great partnership, whether it is personal or professional. Whether you’re already in a relationship with a marketing agency or are considering “swiping right” on a new one, here are four proven ways to get the most out of your investment.


Commitment
How many weddings are planned on a first date? It’s nearly impossible to predict the outcome of a relationship the first time you meet, even if the person across from you checks all your boxes. For marketing, you should find an agency you want to stick with for the long-term.

To help you decide whether you’re ready to commit to one agency, do your due diligence:

  • Meet with the executives at the agency to better understand the company’s background, philosophy, successes, longevity, and experience within your industry.
  • Meet with the project manager who will be assigned to your account. You should mesh with this person since they will be your day-to-day contact.
  • Speak with the agency’s current and past clients.

When you feel you have found the right match, commit for the long-term. At Edge, we ask for a six-month minimum commitment from new clients. Our experience has taught us that six months is the sweet spot for companies to start seeing real, measurable results. The average length of an Edge/client relationship is 2.5 years, and the longest is twelve years and counting!


Trust
You did your due diligence during the “get to know you” stage of the relationship and selected the best agency for your needs. Do not second-guess that decision. You should trust that the professionals you hired are going to lead you toward your company’s goals.

Your agency has decades of experience and expertise in your market; prior to working with you, they have helped hundreds of clients to meet their goals. Remember why you hired them: They have a great team of experts and their track record proves that they can deliver results.


Communication
In a personal relationship, you don’t outsource communication with your partner to your friends and family. The same should be true with your marketing agency: Your agency should provide you with a single contact, usually your project manager, to whom you can always reach out with questions and communications. On your company’s side, select a single point of contact who can gather feedback from your organization when needed, and who has the authority to make financial decisions and final approvals on work product.

At Edge, we’ve found the most successful relationships are with a senior-level professional at our client’s firm, such as a director, vice president or c-level executive. Decisions can be made more efficiently, and results appear more quickly when we work with senior-level professionals.

Communications with your agency should occur as you might expect them in a personal relationship, too. Your agency should commit to reasonable response times to emails and phone calls, and regularly scheduled status calls will help you to feel confident your projects are moving forward.


Be all-in.
The best way to start any relationship is by being open and honest with each other, not holding back important details. I would be suspicious if a first date asked me to sign an NDA, but your marketing agency should include one as part of your contract. Your agency will not share details of your company with anyone else.

Start by sharing current and forecasted financial information, past and current sales performance, past marketing materials and experiences, and corporate goals. If your reputation has taken a recent hit, let the agency know. All this information is important for your agency to help you create a successful path forward.

At Edge, the relationships that have lasted the shortest length of time are the ones in which the firms’ executives held back important information, like leads were down to the point of crisis, owners wanted to find buyers for their companies, or their product was losing traction because it wasn’t keeping up with current technologies and best practices.

You will gain the best results from your agency when your partnership is built on openness and honesty.

At Edge, we feel so strongly about these pillars of a good relationship that new clients will find them in our proposals; and, while you do not need to send roses to your marketing agency (I actually prefer peonies), you do need to cultivate that relationship to get the best return out of your investment. Be all-in, communicate frequently, trust, and commit for the long-term to enjoy a long and fruitful partnership with your marketing agency.


About the Author

Cindy Kremer Moen has helped Edge Marketing clients with strategies and tactics to meet their goals since 2006. She and her husband have two college-age boys and are happy for the return of DII football, in-person education and travel without restrictions.

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by Tanya Amyote

What portion of your social media audience, or web site visitors, consumes your content with the aid of assistive technologies such as screen readers, magnification tools or software, eye trackers, etc.?

The World Health Organization indicates 2.2 billion people worldwide have some form of vision impairment, including colorblindness, low vision, near vision, or blindness, and one in four people in the U.S. identify as having at least one disability.

According to DiverseAbility Magazine, the disposable income for U.S. adults with disabilities is $490 billion! It’s also interesting to note that studies have also shown that, when people with disabilities find vendors, products, or service providers who make accessibility a priority, they become more loyal clients and customers.

While we can’t pin down the portion of our audience that uses assistive tech to consume our digital content, a best practice in 2021 is to assume that our audience includes people with disabilities.

Making an effort to prioritize accessibility on your social media and web site also says a lot about your company, and your team’s values.

So, how do you ensure you’re creating social media posts and digital content that are accessible to all? Here are seven tips that you can start implementing today:

  1. Use alt text for images: Describe the image, including content and context. Be concise, but don’t skimp on detail. Think of alt text as a supplemental tweet of about a hundred characters, and you don’t need to include “Image of”, or “graphic of”. A caption or alt text that says, “Image of a chart,” is not nearly as helpful or clear as one that says, “A bar chart that illustrates the number of social media users in the past five years, with 3.9 billion in July 2020.”
  2. Include closed captioning on your videos or enable auto-generated ones.
  3. If you are posting an image that contains text, ensure that the text is also included in alt text or in the body of the post. Your logo may be the smartest, most visually appealing logo that ever was but, if you don’t also have your company name somewhere in plain text, someone using assistive tech may not be able to catch it!
  4. Don’t rely solely on font color to differentiate text or other elements:
    • On graphs and charts, avoid using solid colors to differentiate data; patterns and/or clarifying data labels are more easily discernible by people who are colorblind or who have other vision impairments.
    • Don’t rely on color to convey that hyperlinked text is clickable: Also use underlines or hover animations.
  5. Optimize hashtags. We all know the benefits of using hashtags on social media: They can bring your content to a more varied audience than your post alone. Here are a few things to consider when crafting your hashtags:
    • Write long hashtags in CamelCase: #careeropportunities will sound garbled and confusing to someone using a screen reader, but #CareerOpportunities will be read properly and will be more easily understood by the viewer as well.
    • Use hashtags as part of the text or add extra hashtags in a comment on your post. See below for an example.
    • Use a link shortener. It’s less annoying to hear a screen reader spell out 10 characters than 50!
    • Example:
  6. Do content audits periodically: Are you using inclusive language that is gender-neutral, and not ableist or ageist? What about the people in your stock photos? Do the images reflect your efforts to foster diversity and inclusion
  7. Emojis: Use them, but sparingly! Be mindful that someone viewing your post with its 10 emojis needs to sit through their screen reader rhyming off every single one!

Diversity and inclusion are not just buzz words in 2021: They are the difference between equity and bias, accommodation and prejudice. Ensuring accessibility is a priority when creating your digital content can mean the difference between offering someone a seat at the table or making them build their own.

About the Author

Tanya Amyote joined the Edge team in December 2016 as marketing assistant, Excel guru, and token Canadian. When not solving the world’s pivot table problems, Tanya is an avid reader and fountain pen user.

As a person with Osteogenesis Imperfecta (brittle bone disease), Tanya is an outspoken advocate for diversity and inclusion, and accessibility.

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by Vicki LaBrosse

The COVID-19 pandemic changed how people live and how businesses operate, and the media and media relations were no exception. Organizations have to adapt and learn how different communication channels function and use these appropriately to reach and relate with their target audiences. With fewer media outlets than ever before, how are PR pros pivoting and changing the ways they approach media relations in 2021? There are many ways companies can focus on and sustain customer engagement. One of these is establishing media relations suitable for the current situation. Here are some best practices that will help enable your organization or your clients to improve the quantity and quality of their coverage.

Provide value with relevant PR.

Pitch stories that are relevant to what your audience cares about in this exact moment. Choose the right story and offer solutions when you engage with the media and your audience. Staying on top of what is happening and how it is affecting your audience will allow you to offer educational insights and position your organization as the thought leader in your industry. This will help your company increase its visibility and build strong relationships and trust among your target audience. Audience interest in your story can lead to media interest in your story.

Choose a suitable platform.

With more people than ever working from home, many now rely more on digital platforms to communicate, conduct business and stay connected. There are so many influential platforms available today, and PR pros must decide which one fits the message. From published daily papers to podcasts, hand selecting your platform to launch your news increases the effectiveness of your media relations program.

Take opportunities to help the media.

Like PR professionals, journalists and producers are working to adjust to the “new normal.” Make an extra effort to understand the media’s needs by identifying the coverage interest of outlets and reporters. Adjusting your pitching and follow-up strategies around this knowledge will both make you more effective and help media professionals do their jobs. The key is operating with a mindset of wanting to serve the press rather than having the press serve you.

Make personal engagement a priority.

Personal engagement with the media has been eroding for many years. Technology such as texting, Slack and social media have contributed to this. PR professionals need to find new ways to create personal engagement. Platforms like Zoom with video and screen share capabilities are a great tool to engage the press in a face-to-face environment. Remote interviews for TV and online media outlets have always been possible but were not usually preferred. With fewer in-person engagements, this means training clients to make Skype and Zoom interviews interesting. With the improved technology we now have in place, we can expect this trend to continue.

Build and cultivate solid relationships.

For a good part of 2020, if your story was not about COVID-19, it was difficult to get reporters to engage with any story pitch. Not only do PR professionals need a strong hook to garner journalists’ attention, but you also need a good relationship. The media industry is suffering because of the economic shutdown. Some outlets have let go of some of their employees, and reporters are swamped with work and deadlines. Media outlets have to produce a lot of content with ever-dwindling staff and are relying increasingly on outside sources to provide that content. Be that go-to source for content that media professionals can rely on. Be kind in your interactions with the press. It humanizes you and builds your relationship with the person you are talking to. Good relationships can take you a long way.

About the Author

Vicki LaBrosse, director of global public relations, Edge Marketing, has more than 18 years of marketing and communications experience in both the legal and accounting industries. LaBrosse works with clients to develop and execute comprehensive PR and marketing strategies that will help grow their business.

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by Jennifer Marsnik, Originally published on CPA Practice Advisor

Post-Pandemic Priorities: Reassess Your Target Markets

Yay! At long last we are finally seeing light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. With increasing vaccinations, many accounting firms, technology companies and service providers are slowly moving back from remote work to in-person environments. But are we really going back to “normal.” In some ways, yes. In other ways… not exactly.

As we navigate our way toward what will surely be a new normal, now is a good time to pause and recognize the things that may have changed permanently.

Click to read the article on CPA Practice Advisor.

About the Author

With Edge Marketing since 2007, Jennifer Marsnik specializes in helping clients develop and implement strategic plans that support their overall business goals. She lives in the Twin Cities area with her husband and two daughters and enjoys golf and cheering on the Twins, Vikings and U of M Gophers.

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by Nicolle Martin

Five Ways to Alleviate Zoom Fatigue for You and Your Team

We have all changed the way we communicate this last year. Pretty much all office workers moved to a remote work scenario and even family gatherings, friend get-togethers and happy hours turned to videoconferencing over a computer screen instead of meeting with people in person. This has been taxing on a lot of people and is now being referred to as “Zoom fatigue.”

While things seem to be slowly opening back up and a return to normal is in sight, it seems that communication over tools like Zoom, Teams and other videoconferencing methods is here to stay. While there are definitely benefits to this type of communication – no travel time, access to people in different locations, etc. – there are also downsides as well. Here are some tips to ensure Zoom fatigue doesn’t set in for you:

Schedule Breaks – Don’t do back-to-back video calls all day. While this may seem productive, it can be very tiring. In fact, in a recent interview in the Wall Street Journal, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan actually admitted to having meeting fatigue after having 19 back-to-back video calls in one day. He said he now makes sure to put a break between any video meetings.

Have an Agenda – Make sure your meetings have an agenda, so you have a clear start and stop time for the call. That way, if people start going off topic, you can bring it back on target easily and make sure you stick to the scheduled time and subject.

Turn Off Self-View – When we are in meetings in person, we don’t have to sit and stare at our own faces and critique the way we look. Turning off your self-view will allow you to focus on others in the meeting and what is being discussed instead of thinking about scheduling that next haircut!

Avoid Multitasking – While it seems so simple – you are on your screen already, why not check your email and keep up with things that are coming in? – the truth is, you likely wouldn’t do two things at once if you were at an in-person meeting in a conference room, and you shouldn’t do it when you are on a video call. Not only does it distract you and take your focus away from the topic of the call, but it can also make you more exhausted at the end of the day.

Limit Online Social Events – If you are on videoconferencing all day for your work, scheduling social events in the off-hours can add to your fatigue. If you do plan virtual happy hours with friends or other virtual outings, try to change your physical location to give yourself a break from sitting in the same place all day – even if it’s as simple as moving from your office to your kitchen!

Videoconferencing for a large portion of meetings and events isn’t something that is going to go away anytime soon but, if we take the right steps now, we can alleviate some of the exhaustion and stress it can cause.

About the Author

Nicolle Martin is a senior account manager for Edge Marketing. She has more than 20 years of experience doing public relations and marketing in the legal and accounting industries.

Nicolle is looking forward to spending the summer weekends on the lake with her husband, two teenaged daughters, and dog (Jax) who is treated like a human member of the family.

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by Tanya Amyote

Allyship 101

“The Guide to Allyship”, created by Amélie Lamont, is a starter guide to becoming a more thoughtful and effective ally. In it, they share:

“Anyone has the potential to be an ally. Allies recognize that though they’re not a member of the underinvested and oppressed communities they support, they make a concerted effort to better understand the struggle, every single day.

Because an ally might have more privilege and recognizes said privilege, they are powerful voices alongside oppressed ones.”

Now, before you object to being accused of having privilege, let’s clarify exactly what that means.

Privilege, in this context, does not mean financial wealth. Privilege, in this context, does not mean that your life has been without conflict, difficulty, or trauma. Privilege, in this context, means that the conflicts, difficulties, and/or traumas in your life have not been caused or exacerbated by your race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or ability differences.

As a white, cisgender female, my inherent privilege is undeniable; as an ally, it is my responsibility to leverage that privilege, and serve as a voice of support, ensuring that members of underrepresented communities are heard, included, validated, and engaged.

The Edge team recently committed to an inspiring and enlightening Diversity & Inclusion training program and partnership with Poh Lin Khoo of Khoo Consulting, a woman-owned, small business based in Minnesota. Poh Lin and her team, through their tailored curriculum, help companies to grow crucial expertise in creating an inclusive work culture, enabling all employees to bring their authentic selves to the workplace. This insight and education can then be carried forward to clients, through the development of relevant marketing messages, reflecting and resonating with diverse and global audiences.

Our team was deeply moved by Poh Lin’s personal history as a survivor of the racial riots in Malaysia on May 13th, 1969, and her drive to “shape (her) own destiny”.

From our first session with Poh Lin, two other key takeaways have continued to stick with me:

  • The danger of a single story; and
  • Equality versus equity versus justice.


The Danger of a Single Story

In her renowned TED Talk, Nigerian-born author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks about her experience of moving to the United States to go to university. Adichie came from a middle-class family; her father was a professor, her mother was an administrator, they had live-in domestic help, and English is the official language of Nigeria.

Upon Adichie’s arrival at university, her American roommate was shocked that she spoke English so well; that she knew how to use a stove; that she listened to Mariah Carey as opposed to “tribal music”.

Before they had even met, the roommate’s biases, conscious or not, had led her to make assumptions about Adichie, based on a single, incomplete story: Her country of origin. Well-meaning though the roommate surely was, this myopic framing of Adichie as the poor, African girl, precluded any possibility of the roommates connecting as equals.

By mistakenly imagining Adichie through one singular lens, as opposed to seeing her as a woman with a multi-faceted identity formed by a lifetime of experiences, the roommate sees an incomplete portrait in which the single story is the only story.

Although they came from vastly different corners of the world, a simple change in perspective could have veered the roommate toward the realization of their intersecting identities: They were both women, students new to adulthood, both Mariah Carey fans, both daughters of teachers, and on and on.

In the words of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.”


Equality versus equity versus justice

In this November 2020 piece by George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health, equity and justice are outlined as, “Equity is a solution for addressing imbalanced social systems. Justice can take equity one step further by fixing the systems in a way that leads to long-term, sustainable, equitable access for generations to come.”

In the Equality image on the left, the available resources (the crates) are allocated equally amongst the three people watching the soccer game. Equality does not account for varying levels of need; the same resources are divided evenly, regardless of any other factors.

In the Equity image, the resources are allocated such that each person receives the support they need in order to level the proverbial playing field.

Lastly, in the case of justice, the root cause of the inequity is addressed: The inherent issue (the systemic barrier) is the fence. By changing the fence, no supports or accommodations are required to enable all three people of varying positions to be included.

To revisit Lamont’s “The Guide to Allyship”, the author shares important Dos and Don’ts of true allyship. This piece is invaluable to those of us who are learning to have an awareness of our implicit biases, and are using privilege to amplify suppressed voices.

As allies, it is our responsibility to take it upon ourselves to use the tools around us to listen, learn, lift, and support.

About the Author

Tanya Amyote joined the Edge team in 2016, as marketing assistant, Excel guru, and token Canadian.

When not solving the world’s pivot table problems, Tanya is an avid reader, fountain pen user, and outspoken advocate for awareness of Osteogenesis Imperfecta (brittle bone disease). On May 6th, Wishbone Day, we’ll be wearing yellow to raise awareness of the varied, full, and meaningful lives of people with O.I., including Tanya and her 9-year-old son, James.

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by Megan Miller

Go to the Next Level with a Fractional CMO

Chief marketing officer – for many the term conjures up an image of a P&G-trained marketing executive found only in a Fortune 100 boardroom. But today’s technology-driven, fast-innovating startups and small to medium-size businesses have the same – or even greater – needs for strategic marketing talent.

Startups, SMBs and more mature midsize businesses seeking growth can all benefit from the insights of a fractional – part-time or temporary – strategic CMO. When budgets or resources are limited, a fractional CMO can help set your organization on a path to success by actively working with the executive team to clarify strategy, market targets and messaging and building a marketing organization that can execute on the strategic plan.

For many companies, marketing is one of seven hats worn by a founder or CEO who has little time or marketing knowledge. Marketing messaging and strategy inevitably take a back seat to development and financial management tasks. Or it may be relegated to a junior marketing manager instructed to develop leads by managing email or social media campaigns. If you are lucky enough to be in a rapidly growing segment or have a unique solution to an acknowledged business challenge, that approach can carry you for a while, but a junior marketing manager often will not have the industry or technology depth needed to build market leadership.

If you are a founder or CEO of a product or services company in the professional services space, you know you are in an environment undergoing rapid change. Treading water is not enough. The growth potential is there, but how can you best tap it, and quickly?

It’s not enough to have strong technology, patents or even a few keystone customer wins. Can you clearly articulate your company’s unique value proposition? Do you have a plan to make it go viral in the industry? How can you turn those early wins into a consistent stream of profitable business? Who are the influencers that can carry your message to the market?

A CMO can help you answer all these critical questions, particularly at important turning points in company growth such as:

  • A launch of the business or of a major product offering
  • Rebranding the company to position for future growth
  • Disrupting a traditional market with a nontraditional solution
  • A change in focus to a new segment or vertical market
  • A key merger or acquisition
  • A geographic expansion or sales team expansion to capture market share
  • Last but not least, struggling to find your voice and value proposition in a crowded market

A fractional CMO is an executive role – helping you define strategy and communicate it consistently.

Every business can benefit from the strategic insights of a CMO. A fractional CMO can be a bridge from the current reality to a more productive future. The fractional CMO works closely with founders, CEOs and the executive staff to elevate the marketing effort. In a fractional CMO engagement, Edge marketing executives will typically:

  • Put your current business strategy in a holistic context, based on depth of experience in the legal or accounting segments, players and trends.
  • Quickly build knowledge of your business, road map, channel strategy and partnerships and make suggestions for improvements or new opportunities.
  • Inform the executive team on market trends, analyst viewpoints and the competitive landscape.
  • Size the market and build a marketing plan to address the opportunity.
  • Prioritize marketing efforts, whether for new website content, events and sponsorships, social media or digital advertising.
  • Assess the strength of existing marketing resources in your organization and recommend actions to build out the marketing organization, with the addition of talent or a technology stack.

The greatest challenge most companies face is not a dearth of new ideas, but rather the desire to do everything at once. A strategic CMO can help your organization identify the most advantageous and profitable opportunities at hand and assist you in telling a clear and compelling story about the value you bring to customers and clients. The CMO then sets a tactical plan to keep the focus on your value proposition and bring your story to the marketplace. The fractional CMO will develop a well-oiled marketing and communications machine that can stand the test of time.

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Ahhh, pie. Who doesn’t love a slice of pumpkin pie after Thanksgiving dinner? If it is good pie, just a slice will make you feel like you had a taste of the whole pie, without the burden of all those calories.

For so many small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), hiring a full-time head of marketing or chief marketing officer (CMO) is like eating the whole pie, not just a slice. It is unappealing and simply out of reach.

The average salary of a CMO in the United States in 2020 was $244,930 per year according to salary.com. Figure in additional compensation in the form of health care benefits, PTO, 401K contributions, bonuses, equity and the rest, and total compensation averaged $397,473 last year.

After taking the option of a CMO off the table, many SMBs experiment with hiring a junior-level marketing staffer, only to be disappointed with their limited expertise, industry contacts, and pool of resources. These staffers rarely have the experience or vision to provide strategy and results. Hiring a junior marketing coordinator or manager usually means the CEO or owner will spend more time on marketing than in the past – hours that could be spent making major corporate decisions, managing overall operations and resources, and ensuring the company is implementing its vision, mission, and achieving goals.

Enter the fractional CMO. A fractional CMO is like getting a slice of pie. A fractional CMO comes from an outside company that provides resources such as public relations, graphic design, web development, copywriting, marketing automation, and so much more. The fractional CMO has many years of experience and can build strategies to help your company attain its sales goals.

Fractional CMOs can be available to you on-demand when a specific project requires marketing advice and help, or on a longer-term basis if ongoing market awareness and lead development are needed. With a fractional CMO, you will gain the knowledge and know-how of a full-time employee, but without the associated salary and compensation. Fractional CMOs can work within your scope and budget.

I have provided Edge Marketing clients with services similar to those of a fractional CMO for years. One company brought us on at first to generate marketing awareness and sales leads. We did so through public relations, industry events, and email marketing. A few years later, it shifted goals to position the company for sale. With increased market share generated from our years of work leading up to this point, Edge Marketing refocused to help rapidly increase sales. The company proved to be a desirable acquisition. For another client, Edge Marketing was brought on in the months leading up to the company’s launch and stayed on for several months after while the company’s sales grew, and staff were added. Eventually, the company was large enough to justify hiring a full-time CMO.

The bottom line is that fractional marketing services make sense for SMBs. Go ahead and grab a slice of the marketing pie!

About the Author

Cindy Kremer Moen has helped Edge Marketing clients with strategies and tactics consistent with fractional CMO services since 2006. She and her husband have two college-age children and are anticipating the return of DII football and travel without quarantines.

/by Cindy Kremer Moen