What Does a Fractional Marketing Director Do?

A Fractional Marketing Director Looks at the Whole Business

Hiring someone for an individual marketing service is different from hiring someone to direct your marketing.

A social media specialist is hired to work on social media. A paid advertising specialist focuses on ads. An email marketer focuses on email. Those people can be very good at what they do, but their job is usually to concentrate on their particular area. A Fractional Marketing Director takes a wider view.

They need to understand where the business is today, where it’s trying to go, and which combination of marketing efforts can help it get there. That means looking beyond any single service and making decisions based on the needs of the business as a whole.

Sometimes the answer is SEO. Sometimes it’s advertising, branding, social media, email, or a better website. Often, it’s a combination of several things.

The strategy should determine which tools you use, rather than starting with a tool and trying to make it fit every problem.

They Take Marketing Decisions Off the Owner’s Plate

For many businesses, one of the clearest signs that a Fractional Marketing Director could help is how much of the owner’s time marketing consumes.

Even after individual tasks have been delegated, employees may still come back to the owner or general manager for approval. What should we post? Does this ad look right? Should we spend money on this? Which message should we use? What should we work on next? Each question may only take a few minutes, but they add up.

When marketing decisions begin to take too much time away from running the business, a Fractional Marketing Director can take responsibility for more of the process. Instead of the owner fielding marketing questions throughout the month, regular meetings can establish priorities and give the director the guidance they need to lead both internal employees and external resources.

The owner still has input. They just don’t need to personally manage every decision.

They Help Keep Your Marketing Consistent

Growth can also create another problem. More people start having opinions about the company’s marketing.

Different salespeople may have their own ideas about how social media should sound. Someone wants a different look for printed materials. Another employee has strong opinions about branding. Individual ideas aren’t necessarily bad, but without someone providing direction, the company’s marketing can start to feel disconnected.

A Fractional Marketing Director can help bring those efforts together so the business presents itself more consistently.

That doesn’t mean shutting down employees’ ideas. It means having an established strategy, brand, and direction that those ideas can work within. Customers shouldn’t feel like they’re encountering a different company depending on whether they’re looking at your website, social media, advertising, or a sales brochure.

The Work Starts With Understanding Where You Are

Before deciding what your business should do next, a Fractional Marketing Director needs to understand what you’re already doing.

That can involve reviewing your website, social media, email marketing, advertising, reviews, business listings, branding, and other existing marketing efforts. It also means understanding who is already involved, including owners, salespeople, marketing coordinators, outside vendors, and anyone else who needs to contribute to or approve the work.

From there, the conversation turns to goals.

Maybe you want more sales. Maybe hiring is the bigger concern. You might want stronger brand recognition in your area or better visibility than a particular competitor. Those goals give the marketing strategy somewhere to go.

Without that understanding, you risk spending more time and money on marketing activities without knowing whether they actually solve the business’s problem.

Data Helps Determine What Comes Next

Marketing strategy shouldn’t be based entirely on gut instinct.

When the information is available, a Fractional Marketing Director can look at historical data to understand what has already happened and use it to guide future decisions.

Google Analytics can provide information about website traffic and conversions. Google Search Console can show which searches your website appears for and how often people click through. Keyword tracking can provide another view of search visibility over time. Having a year or two of historical information can be particularly useful because it provides a baseline for understanding where the business has been before deciding where it should go next.

The goal isn’t to collect reports for the sake of having more numbers. It’s about using available information to make better decisions about where marketing resources should be spent.

They Can Provide Strategy or Help Execute It

A Fractional Marketing Director isn’t necessarily limited to telling everyone else what to do.

The role can include both strategy and execution, depending on the business’s needs. Some companies already have employees or vendors capable of carrying out the work and primarily need experienced direction. Others need more hands-on help executing parts of the marketing plan.

At Blue Ox, that flexibility is supported by having a broader agency team behind the Fractional Marketing Director. Instead of expecting one person to be an expert in every marketing discipline, the director can draw on people with different skill sets when the strategy calls for them.

There will still be times when the client’s team needs to participate. An employee may need to provide information, capture photos, approve materials, or handle tasks that require physical presence at the business.

Fractional Marketing works best as a partnership rather than an outside company operating in isolation.

They Can Work With the Marketing Resources You Already Have

Hiring a Fractional Marketing Director also doesn’t mean replacing everyone currently involved in your marketing.

If you already have a social media person you trust, they can remain part of the team. The same applies to videographers, advertising specialists, email marketers, software consultants, internal employees, and other outside contractors.

The Fractional Marketing Director can work with those people, provide direction, and help make sure everyone understands what they need from one another.

That’s an important distinction. The purpose isn’t necessarily to move every marketing service under one roof. The purpose is to make sure someone is looking at the whole picture.

Marketing Strategy Is Different From Marketing Activity

It’s possible to do a lot of marketing without having much of a marketing strategy.

You can publish social posts, send emails, run ads, write blogs, and redesign brochures. Those are all marketing activities. But simply staying busy doesn’t tell you whether those activities are moving the business toward a particular goal.

Take training for a race, for example. You could run around simply for the sake of exercising, or you could follow a training regimen designed around a specific 5K, half marathon, or other goal. The individual activities may look similar, but one approach has a destination and a way to measure progress. A marketing strategy provides that destination.

A Fractional Marketing Director helps determine where you’re trying to go, what needs to happen to get there, and how you’ll evaluate whether the strategy is working.