Top 5 Freelance CMOs for Hire to Improve Your Overall Marketing
Help your marketing team succeed. Hire a freelance CMO to lead, strategize, and execute on the best marketing tactics for your business.
Published February 15, 2024.
As a small or medium-sized business, you may not have the resources for a full-time CMO to oversee your marketing efforts. This is where hiring a fractional CMO can be hugely beneficial. An outside perspective from a seasoned marketing professional can uncover blindspots in how you currently attract, engage, and convert customers.
Our picks for the top freelance CMOs
1. Bing H. - Best overall
2. Dan G. - Best for marketing in health and lifestyle industries
3. Katia G . - Best for CMO strategies in Saas
4. Mick B. - Best for leading eCommerce marketing campaigns
5. Doron D. - Best for marketing in the financial industry
What does a freelance CMO do?
A freelance or fractional CMO is a part-time executive marketing leader who usually covers the same range of tasks as a full-time chief marketing officer would. They're a expert who leads the marketing efforts and strategy, oversees the implementation, tracks marketing metrics, and helps with acquisition and brand awareness.
A fractional CMO is more hands-on than a marketing consultant or marketing agency, has less power of decision than a marketing director, but can provide you with all the skills and know-how of a full-time marketing executive.
Here are some more activities and duties performed by fractional CMOs:
- Building a holistic marketing plan and setting priorities
- Identifying the target market, ideal clients, and buyer personas
- Helping with the unique selling proposition
- Overseeing marketing channels
- Creating a go-to-market strategy
- Helping you overcome marketing challenges
- Building and managing a sound marketing budget, in an efficient way
- Hiring marketing roles and coordinating a modern marketing team
1
Bing H.
Expert freelance CMO
Experience
10+ years
Country
USA
Industry focus
Technology | Beauty | Health & wellness | Automotive | Sports, outdoors & fitness | Home & garden
Brief overview
Bing has over 10 years of growth marketing experience, helping clients drive sales and retention. She is passionate about growth strategies and using data analytics to inform marketing directions and creative campaigns.
Specialties
- CMO
- Marketing strategy
- Tracking and implementation
- Google Ads
- Bing Ads
- CRO
Why hire Bing?
Bing was the first lead digital marketer hire in a large corporation, tasked with providing a digital marketing strategy to help the company grow. She led the Marketing and Customer Success teams to expand their presence globally and provide users with the best experience through their user journey.
2
Dan G.
Fractional CMO
Experience
8+ years
Country
Canada
Industry focus
Baby | Health & wellness | Style & fashion | Social & community | Home & garden | Sports, outdoors & fitness
Brief overview
Dan sees his job as understanding your problems and using the channel expertise and process-oriented approaches he has accumulated to help you progress toward your goals.
Specialties
- CMO
- CRO
- SEO
- Marketing strategy
- Social ads
- Affiliate marketing
- Growth hacking
Why hire Dan?
As the Head of Growth of Kotn, Dan's job was to create the processes and culture to enable rapid testing and insight gathered across their acquisition and retention portfolio. Whether it be via Facebook Ads, Google, CRO, affiliates, or new channel testing, Dan leverages a number of different tactics and approaches to appeal to consumers and enable them to prioritize their health.
3
Katia G.
Professional marketing strategist
Experience
8+ years
Country
Spain
Industry focus
Education | Professional services | Technology
Brief overview
Katia is a PPC, SEO, and Content Marketing specialist for B2B SaaS. She has formed CMO-leading marketing and growth strategies for subscription-based businesses globally.
Specialties
- CMO
- PPC
- SEO
- Social Ads
- Marketing strategy
- Content
- Tracking and implementation
Why hire Katia?
After deeply understanding the buyer persona and their needs, Katia revised her Google Ads campaign structure to get a better quality score and impression share. The goal was to get a lower CPC with more impressions for their best-performing keywords, achieved with roaring success.
4
Mick B.
Experienced freelance CMO
Experience
15+ years
Country
USA
Industry focus
Health & wellness | Food & drink | Technology | Beauty | Home & garden | Style & fashion
Brief overview
Mick is a strategic growth marketing and eCommerce leader with 15+ years of experience in various industries, helping small and large brands optimize omnichannel marketing activities with a special focus on finding opportunities at the intersection of performance marketing, algorithms, conversion optimization, content, and creatives.
Specialties
- CMO
- Marketing strategy
- Social ads
- Growth hacking
- Amazon PPC
- Google Shopping
- Search ads
Why hire Mick?
Mick directed marketing activation strategies and executed product and brand campaigns across multiple channels, including retail, professional, DTC (eCommerce and digital), and more. He helped increase net revenue for a global brand by +26% YOY (2019), outperforming broader US eCommerce growth (+14%).
5
Doron D.
CMO freelancer and strategist
Experience
8+ years
Country
Israel
Industry focus
Travel | Gaming | Art & entertainment | Health & wellness | Finance | Technology
Brief overview
Doron has worked with/for 100+ startups worldwide, with 10+ years of experience in digital marketing.
Doron was formerly the Head of User Acquisition at Lemonade (LMND) and the VP of Growth at Lili Banking.
Specialties
- CMO
- YouTube Ads
- Outbrain
- Bing Ads
- Google Ads
- Social ads
Why hire Michael?
As VP of Growth in a former position, after spending the first $ in user acquisition, Doron scaled up the activity within a year to $10M/month.
Why you should hire a fractional CMO
As a business owner or founder, hiring a fractional CMO is valuable for many reasons. Here are some of the most important ones:
Your remote marketing department needs a leader
If you already have marketing pros in your team, a fractional CMO can provide leadership to your remote marketing team and ensure that all goals are achieved on time. Having someone to coordinate, mentor, and guide your agile marketing team will be invaluable down the line.
You need to build a marketing strategy
A marketing strategy is not the same as a set of marketing tactics - or a marketing calendar, for that matter. A fractional CMO can develop a comprehensive strategy that considers your current market situation and devise plans to grow brand awareness and generate more leads.
You don't need a full-time hire
If you're running an early-stage company, you may not need the services of a full-time marketing executive. That’s when having a fractional CMO can come in handy — you will get the assistance you need without spending a lot of money.
They can bring their experience and expertise
A fractional CMO has hands-on experience and expertise, so they can help you get the desired results. They can offer you experience-driven insights about marketing trends and new ideas for your business—things that may not have crossed your mind if you're not a marketer or if you just don't have the time to keep up with all the trends in marketing.
You need to keep track of the KPIs
You can't know how your marketing is doing if you don't measure your efforts. A fractional CMO can identify your essential key performance indicators (KPIs), track them, and create reports so that you can make better decisions.
You need marketing campaign optimization
To maximize your success, you should ensure that all marketing campaigns are optimized for the best results. A fractional CMO can identify areas of improvement and help you optimize your campaigns for the best performance.
You have to build a GTM strategy
Need to build a go-to-market (GTM) strategy? Your fractional CMO can help you reach this business goal. They can create a strong GTM plan and make sure it’s up-to-date with the latest market trends, so your business can be successful in the long run.
You're looking for a fresh perspective
Sometimes, when you’re too close to the problem, it can be hard to see the bigger picture. That’s when you need someone with a fresh perspective, such as a fractional CMO. They can look at your business from the outside and help you develop new ideas.
You need the flexibility to pivot in a new direction
The reason so many businesses look for fractional CMOs is that they need the flexibility to pivot in a new direction. When things change, they can quickly adjust to the new reality and focus on what works best for their business - and how to scale going forward.
Skills every fractional CMO needs
Not hiring a full-time CMO doesn't mean you have to settle for marketing leadership with less-than-excellent skills. Here are some non-negotiable skills your fractional CMO should have:
Lead generation
A great fractional Chief Marketing Officer knows how to drive lead-generation marketing programs. They have a good understanding of all marketing activities (from performance marketing to content marketing and community marketing efforts).
They know how to bring together the entire marketing plan in a way that helps your business generate more leads based on data-driven marketing insights and current trends in the market.
Retention
Your fractional CMO understands that retention is one of the biggest marketing challenges, so they will focus on developing and implementing customer retention strategies.
They need to understand customer lifetime value (CLV) as a marketing goal, how it impacts your business's bottom line, and how to craft campaigns that will keep your customers engaged and loyal.
Brand positioning
You can run all the SEO, social media, and PPC in the world - but without a brand to unify all your efforts and make people recognize your products/services, it's all a race to the bottom. Your fractional CMO should know how to craft a powerful brand identity and company narrative that resonates with your target audience.
Marketing communications
Your fractional CMO should also be able to create and manage marketing communications. They must understand how all the pieces fit together in your overall marketing strategy, including digital channels and traditional media. Moreover, they need to know how to communicate effectively in a way that's aligned with your brand strategy.
Research and analytics
Finally, your fractional CMO should be able to research and analyze data. They must be able to interpret the numbers and draw insights from them. This will help you make informed decisions about your digital marketing strategy, budget, and other campaigns.
How much does a fractional CMO cost?
A fractional CMO's services cost between $250-$300 per hour or $2,850/month and $5,350/month, depending on what you need them to do. Of course, these figures aren't set in stone.
If you only need your CMO to mentor you and create your marketing strategy, you will pay less. But if you also need to execute the strategy, as well as hire marketing talent and manage them, it will be more costly.
Hire the perfect fractional CMO for your business
Hiring a fractional CMO provides the high-level marketing expertise of a full-time CMO without the extensive cost. It gives you an objective outside perspective on how to enhance your marketing efforts for greater success. With the help of a fractional CMO, you can optimize your overall marketing strategy and see measurable improvements in your marketing and business results.
Looking for a fractional CMO with a lot of experience and a track record of success? Look no further than Mayple. Our vetted freelance Chief Marketing Officers are here to bring their wealth of expertise to the table and help you drive your business forward. We can match you with the best option for your specific needs.
