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Hey there - it's Brian 👋

This week a friend from Canada flew in to Boston, so we met for drinks.

He’s the CEO of a consulting firm and I’m a fractional CMO.

So naturally he challenged me:
“When does it make sense to use a CMO vs an Agency?”

Well…

In today's issue, we’re not holding back.

You’ll hear:
• The type of marketing you need at each stage of your business
• Is a CMO any good? How to tell
• Agencies I recommend for SEO, ads, LinkedIn etc

Let’s make your business an outlier: 👇

A Canadian challenged me: CMO or Agency?

Caffeine gets me jittery and makes me far too focused for a social conversation. So I rarely have it.

But I broke my rule for Jeff!

We met in Boston’s North End and the espresso martinis are too good to ignore.

Jeff Tetz is the CEO of a consulting firm in Canada (called Results). He also hosts the Unleashed podcast where he interviews business giants (including Adam Grant).

Anyway, Jeff asks me the most common question about my fractional CMO business:

When does it make sense to hire a CMO vs an agency?

I’m biased… BUT Jeff is a close friend so I gave him the honest answer.

And I’ll share the same answer with you.

When does a business actually need a CMO? What does a CMO do that an agency doesn’t? What skills does a CMO need?

Let’s get into it:

Does your business need a CMO? Or should you use an agency?

So it depends on how big your business is.

3 stages:
1) $0 - $3M: Prioritize testing and staying flexible
2) $3M - $50M: Prioritize building systems to scale
3) $50M+: Prioritize running the systems & making investments

Since you have different priorities, you’ll have different marketing needs.

Here’s when you need a CMO vs an agency depending on your stage:

Stage 1: “The mad scientist” ($0 - $3M in revenue) - Use Agencies

When you’re starting out, your only mission in life is to find your positioning. Nothing else matters.

At this point you need to tinker in the lab. Test out:
• Who’s the perfect customer type?
• What’s their pain?
• How do you solve that pain (better than anyone)?
• What words get them to buy?

Test. Test. Test.

You need to be flexible, quick, and test constantly to find that magic combination.

At this stage, we do not know what systems we need yet. Optimize for learning what customers want.

Focus on testing individual marketing channels (ads, SEO, Socials etc.)

Don’t hire someone in-house (unless they’re a co-founder). Stay flexible.

Tinker with marketing channels yourself or hire an agency.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:
You’ll work with agencies no matter how big your business gets.

As you move to the next stages your CMOs will run the show (and use agencies to reach their goal).

Stage 2: “Build the systems” ($3M - $50M in revenue) - Use Fractional CMO

At this stage, you’ve tinkered with a few marketing channels. You’re more confident with your business model.

You’re looking to tie your marketing together to scale your business.

You want more customers. But more customers = more complexity.

To scale you need systems:
• People to bring specific expertise to each channel
• Processes to align work across channels
• Tech to handles more customers

Systems keep the wings from falling off as your business takes off.

At this point, you can afford to bring a few people in-house to focus on running the systems you build.

To build these systems, you need your own marketing department.

But you aren’t a marketing expert.

So you’ll want to bring on a CMO to be responsible for building the people, processes, and tech systems for your marketing department.

At this stage, you can’t afford full-time top talent (roughly $350k: $250k salary + equity/revenue share).

A fractional CMO gets you access to the top talent without spending top budget.

A good Fractional CMO will take you from $3M to $50M.

That moves you to the next stage.

Stage 3: “Run the systems” ($50M+ in revenue) - Use Full time CMO

At this stage, you can afford a full-time CMO.

The Fractional CMO’s systems will have scaled you up to $50M and it’s time to transition to full-time.

The full-time CMO’s focus shifts to thinking of bigger investments with longer time horizons.

This CMO will now run the systems that the fractional CMO created, and operate the full marketing department.

How can I tell if a CMO is good? Or if my agency is good?

A CMO will sit over your whole marketing department. So you’re looking for a generalist.

CMOs build systems that tie everything together:

• Strategy (Go-to-market & growth)

• Channels (SEO, Ads, socials)

• Landing page conversions

• Email marketing

• Management

• Analytics

• Funnels

• Etc.

It comes down to skills for: strategy, management, & marketing channels.

On the other hand:

For an agency, you need a specialist. Someone who’s really good at one specific marketing channel (at much better at their expertise than the CMO is).

Example expertise:
• Email marketing
• Facebook ads
• LinkedIn
• SEO

See how much more specific that is?

The agency needs to be on top of all platform specific changes. Facebook changes their algorithm? They know how to stay on top.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:
I’m going to heavily emphasize “strategy” as a core CMO skill here that 99% of people think they have (but don’t).

Strategic thinking is mandatory for a CMO, but nice-to-have for an agency.

How to tell a strategic thinker:
• Rarely surprised: they simulate possibilities in their head
• Understand 2nd and 3rd tier impacts of their decisions
• Think in systems (interactions, not actions)
• See signals when others see noise
• Use nuanced decision-making

So what should I do?

If you’re starting out, use an agency to test out specific channels.

In fact, I’ll even share some agencies I trust at the end.

Then, once your business is big enough that you need systems to scale….

Bring on your Fractional CMO to build your marketing systems.

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian

P.S.

If you want your own Fractional CMO, grab time with me (for free).

I’ll check out your SEO, ads, socials, & website. Then, I’ll give you a list of small changes you can make to get big results (paying customers).

If we’re not a fit, I’ll introduce you to someone who is.

🧑🏻‍💻 My friends who run agencies:

• LinkedIn brand building - Lara Acosta

• Content - Teddy Mitrosilis

• SEO - Barrett O’Neill and The Boring Marketer

• Ads - Samuel Thompson

• Newsletter Growth - Shane Martin

Note: I wish these were affiliate links. But they’re not. I don’t trust a lot of agencies, but I’ve known these people for a while and I like them.

Tell them I sent you their way and they’ll treat you well.

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