Imagine your company with a full marketing team. It's a team that compliments your sales department. It's a team that is brilliant, efficient, creative, and drives sales. It's a marketing dream team!
Unfortunately, for many business owners, it feels like a dream that is just out of reach. There is always the lingering question of how to grow your company while scaling up marketing to make it happen. It takes a lot of resources to properly staff a department. And if you're going to do marketing right, you'll want a full-stack team.
If this next step looks like a big jump, it's time to consider fractional marketing services.
What are fractional marketing services?
Fractional marketing services can be your marketing lifesaver.
Marketing departments do a lot. They support sales, too. Social media, ad campaigns (both print and digital), and content creation are common tasks. Strategy creation, budgeting, and reporting are also needed.
Good marketing teams consist of people who have overlapping skill sets and unique specialties. For example, someone experienced in keyword analysis might also be writing blogs. The person in charge of setting up your ad campaigns may also have to do your social media. But in reality, many people are not cross-trained and are specialized in individual areas — causing you to have to hire for multiple roles to fill your marketing needs.
When you can't afford a large, in-house team, fractional marketing agencies provide a solution. They staff marketing experts with a variety of skills and talents. When you contract with them, they pull the right people from their staff to meet your goals.
You can think of it as a shared service. It works because fractional marketing companies have many clients across a variety of industries. This is how you gain the benefits of having a fully staffed marketing department, while only having to pay for the expertise and time you need.
Benefits of Fractional Marketing Services
When you’re starting to build out your business case for working with a fractional marketing team, you'll want to keep these benefits in mind:
1. It's a lower cost than having your on-site team
Full-time employees come with a lot of costs built in. You will have to account for recruitment, insurance, training, salaries, and equipment.
The fractional marketing company you work with takes on those costs. You get to reap the rewards of having talented people at your fingertips with no overhead.
2. Fractional marketing services are flexible
One of the coolest things about fractional marketing services is being able to "swap" people in and out depending on the task. Together, you will examine your needs and create a plan.
Once the plan is created, you’ll have a list of marketing goals and tactics that can be handled by someone with that specialty. If you have a tactic to write 12 blogs a year, your fractional marketing team has someone specialized in that. If you need to run digital ads, your fractional marketing team will have someone with experience in that too.
With an in-house team (unless it's huge) it's impossible to get an expert for every marketing task that comes up. With a fractional team, you’ll know that you’ll have what you need.
3. You turn your marketing services up and down like a dial
When you have an in-house team, you have to keep them busy all the time. By using fractional marketing services you can adjust, on the fly, for what you need. You might find that there is a sudden need to generate more leads. Your marketing partner will be able to switch from lower-priority tasks and get an ad campaign rolling for you.
There is an ebb and flow to marketing. By staying in constant communication with your fractional marketing services provider, you will be able to turn up the strategies and tactics that are the most needed now. You’re also able to turn down the ones that aren’t a priority at the time. It's more efficient, and you're not paying someone a salary to do things you don’t need to do at the moment.
4. You'll see marketing's value with a fractional marketing team
This is the nature of contract work! When setting up your plan with a fractional marketing team, make sure you set measurable goals. It's not about how many social media posts get seen or Google Ads that get clicked. You can track leads from marketing through sales and prove your marketing ROI.
The fractional marketing services provider will strive to hit those targets — it's the lifeblood of what they do. They will create goals and hold each person accountable who works on your marketing.
Set the measurable goals up correctly, and you will see the return you’re getting.
Are you ready to increase sales by improving your marketing?
You can develop your strategies and goals by yourself and begin to hire an internal team. Or you can use fractional marketing services. Hiring an agency is the best way to go if you are looking for a partner with a wide range of capabilities.
At 1 Bold Step, we've created a diverse team of experts that complement each other's skill sets. We have also modeled our approach after the LEAN principles, common to manufacturing.
To take the first step into fractional marketing services, check out the 1 Bold Step Fractional Marketing Team to explore more.
So, do you want an engaged and energetic marketing team with clear goals and the oomph to deliver on KPIs? Would you like to know how each dollar you spend on marketing affects your bottom line?
Of course, you do! Take a bold step and contact us to get the conversation started.
