What is the difference between an Interim CMO and a Fractional CMO? Understand these two unique models for contract, outsourced marketing leadership, and discover which approach makes the most sense for your business.

At Authentic Brand, we work primarily with small to midsize growing businesses that have started to invest in marketing activities but aren’t sure whether those activities are the best ones to support business growth. One of the most common questions we get from clients is, “How much should I spend on marketing?” It seems like a simple question, but unfortunately, the answer isn’t. The not-so-satisfying answer we often give to questions about marketing budget allocation is, “It depends.”

Choosing, implementing, and using marketing technology is one of the most common and painful marketing headaches. There are thousands of martech solutions on the market, making it challenging to determine which ones your business should invest in (and perhaps more importantly, which it shouldn’t). Get advice from three Authentic Brand Fractional CMOs.

If you haven’t read parts one and two of our random acts of marketing series, we encourage you to start there! Random acts of marketing are common, particularly for sales-driven organizations facing stalled growth. Executives at these businesses might know they need marketing, but they’re unsure how best to structure or measure its effectiveness. Not knowing how best to proceed, they often test out one tactic, channel, or message after another, hoping at least one of them works.

Tired of spraying your marketing budget across numerous tactics, channels, and audiences and hoping at least one of them will work? You’re not alone. We call this spray-and-pray approach “random acts of marketing.”

It’s a story we hear all of the time: A business grew rapidly in its first years by focusing on sales and pursuing whichever opportunities came its way. Eventually, growth leveled off. The company needed to do something to jumpstart its sales and fuel its next-level growth. Executives recognized it was time to invest in marketing.

Authentic Brand is pleased to welcome Craig Levinsohn as the most recent addition to its growing roster of Fractional CMOs. A tenured revenue leader and business advisor, Levinsohn’s career spans multiple industries and business models, with an emphasis on helping emerging organizations achieve next-phase growth.

Passionate about helping organizations and their people achieve peak performance, Kiger’s background includes leadership roles in healthcare/medical devices, retail/eCommerce, and software/tech sectors.

It’s hard to believe that YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram were all launched within the last 15 years. As consumers, we’ve quickly become accustomed to social media being the first place we turn to engage with the brands we love. Given how embedded social media is within consumers’ day-to-today lives, these channels have also become one of the best ways for brands to reach their audiences.

It’s no secret that how much a person trusts a brand impacts whether they’ll purchase from it. Sixty-seven percent of respondents to the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer said they’d buy a product from a company with a good reputation, but also said, “unless I come to trust the company behind the product, I will soon stop buying it.”

There’s a delicate balance between progress and perfection in marketing. When businesses strive for perfection, decision-by-consensus slows or stalls efforts. Innovative products, campaigns, and services never make it to market or a competitor launches their offering first, diluting your offering and investments. On the flip side, there’s a risk of moving too quickly and promising something that the business can’t deliver on or launching something that doesn’t meet customers’ needs.

We’re halfway through 2020, one of the most multi-faceted years in our lifetimes. As businesses look to the second half of the year, they’re scrambling to adapt their go-to-market approach to navigate the disruptive economic environment. They’re asking tough questions about their relevance in this new market and whether their product or service needs to change. They’re looking for new opportunities to grow. The lesson that businesses will learn this year is one that has always been true. Focus is critical for sustained growth.