Chief Outsiders provides part-time marketing executives to growth and mid-sized businesses for a fraction of the cost of hiring a full-time Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). And when we place a Chief Outsider with a company, our clients get access to the human capital of our entire executive marketing team by virtue of our peer review process (see below).
The CEO's Marketing Right Hand
The CEO should be the #1 marketing visionary for the company. Our job is to be your marketing right hand to help articulate and implement your market-based growth vision.
The Chief Outsider’s job is to translate the CEO's growth vision and value proposition into an insightful, actionable and measurable strategic marketing plan that delivers results. We call our marketing executives Chief Outsiders, because they provide an external market-focused perspective along with the skills and experience to discuss and debate the business and financial implications of marketing and growth strategies.
Your Chief Outsiders outsourced CMO oversees the implementation of the plan including providing direction and guidance to agencies and the internal marketing team. All of our executives bring strong business and financial acumen and have experience in finance, operations, and sales. We develop business plans and marketing strategies that are backed up by great research, believable financials and align the entire organization.
Lower Marketing Costs and Risks
Through CMO outsourcing, we greatly reduce the cost and risk to companies of hiring a full-time Chief Marketing officer.
One of the greatest risks a growing company faces is not having the resources or expertise to develop a successful marketing strategy. Another risk is to spend a lot of money on a full-time CMO with no guarantee of marketing success. CMO outsourcing provides a part-time marketing executive who is a part of the company's team – but at a fraction of the cost of hiring a full-time CMO.
Senior marketing executives are expensive and difficult to recruit and their impact on a company is difficult to predict. Chief Outsiders finds the right marketing executive for its partner companies. The CEO can drop the contract at any time, or ask for a different marketing executive. A major part of our compensation is based on achieving mutually agreed business results.
Our Fees are Based on Results
We align our service with the interests of a company by basing a significant part of our compensation on achieving mutually agreed business results.
As an ongoing, part-time member of management team we focus on driving business results, not selling marketing programs. We believe that a CMO should have skin in the game. We are not an agency that is paid to produce material or implement programs. We are not a consulting firm that is paid to deliver a strategy document. We are paid to integrate a company's business and marketing strategy and then lead the implementation of the agreed actions.
We focus on driving alignment with our clients. We therefore base our performance on delivering Key Leading Indicators (KLIs).
- Revenue is a lagging indicator. In order for revenue to go up, lots of things may have to happen first.
- Key Leading Indicators are business conditions that can be manipulated to directly and predictably affect performance. KLI’s are, by definition, leading indicators of revenue growth.
- Key Leading Indicators that are critical in one company may be unimportant in another. We are experts in helping our clients define and measure these KLI’s.
Our Peer Review Process Provides Greater Expertise
When a company engages a Chief Outsiders outsourced CMO, they gain access to an entire team of experienced and skilled executive marketers.
The Chief Outsiders’ team of CMOs comes from a broad range of industries. While there are strong commonalities in the level of experience of the team members and in our belief in how marketing can help significantly grow a company, our differences can be a great strength also. Utilizing that depth of experience can be very powerful.
Our team structure, tools, oversight and Peer Review process means that Chief Marketing Outsiders have access to an incredible level of executive marketing expertise within the Chief Outsider team. The growth strategies we develop for each of the companies we serve are tested, reviewed and enhanced by our team. Our Peer Review process ensures that your growth plan and major deliverables have been discussed and debated in order to benefit from an experience base broader than any one person could deliver alone.
Unlike Traditional Marketing Consulting Firms
What makes Chief Outsiders different from traditional marketing consulting firms is our executive operational experience. All of our CMOs have been a VP of Marketing or higher at an operating company. Our clients find that our experience in larger organizations helps us quickly assimilate and integrate with their executive teams, adding value as peers, not career consultants. Like consultants, Chief Outsiders' outsourced CMOs provide strategic guidance. Unlike traditional consultants, we stick around to oversee implementation, adjusting the plan to assure success.