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Fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Digital Growth Strategist
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My Fractional Chief Marketing Services (CMO)

I help startups and small to medium sized businesses implement a growth-focused marketing strategy to build a bigger business. A fractional chief marketing officer with 15+ years of digital growth experience.

Growth Goals

Branding

Positioning

Go To Marketing Strategy

U

Target Audience

Content Strategy

Industry Analysis

Marketing Operations

Who is Neil Sheth

Fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)

Neil Sheth is a former Investment Banking consultant turned fractional chief marketing officer (CMO) or digital growth strategist.

Neil is the founder of writefully, helping businesses blossom online with growth-focused thought leadership funnels.

After launching his first business online in 2009, Neil became obsessed with digital marketing and initially specialised in SEO and content marketing before the temptations of paid advertising with persuasive funnels took over.

In 2017 Neil transitioned from his career in Investment Banking to help other businesses win online – either offering strategic consulting or doing it for companies through his agency.

Neil has worked with over 250+ businesses across a wide range of industries including: health & wellness, finance, technology, SAAS, sustainability, coaching, design, hospitality and more.

Neil Sheth Pic

Neil’s “give first” growth strategy to take your business to the next level

My growth strategy is based on the simple premise that when we give to our customers first, we can begin to create a better, more intimate relationship.

The know-like-trust wheel of influence begins turning in your business.

My growth approach will weave in a ‘give first’ approach within every step of your journey.

Next, the growth activities required to take your business to the next level largely depends on the growth stage of your business:

  • startup
  • growth
  • maturity
  • renewal/decline

My business growth strategy is centred on the following 7 growth steps:

1 – audience: define and zone in on your target audience and delve into their frustrations, desires, dreams and fears.

2 – positioning: placing your product and service in your audience’s mind in a way that stands out and is memorable. I want you to be incomparable and this is why brand positioning is key.

3 – messaging: constantly iterating and testing messaging against customer feedback to identify messaging that instantly gets positive feedback and reactions.

4 – awareness: strategically grow the awareness and reach of your business through a combined organic and paid ads strategy built on my growth-focused thought leadership content strategy. Here we can cover SEO, Google Ads, social media ads, challenges, downloadable content offer ads, webinars, etc.

5 – trustworthiness: establish a trustworthy brand and drive marketing and sales efficiency with a brand that connects as a trustworthy resource.

6 – conversions: drive lead and sales conversions

7 – product: extend your customer life-time-value and referral probability by continuously improving your product.

Overarching this is two key control streams:

A) Planning and management stream where we agree objectives and deliverables
B) Reporting stream defining KPIs, measuring and learning

Once we’ve fully understood your growth situation I’ll help you to prioritise the right activities and create a 12-month growth roadmap for your business.

As your fractional CMO, I’m impatient for your growth and success.

Neil Sheth Pic

Not sure you need a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)?

What is a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer?

As a Fractional CMO, you’re fulfilling most of the typical duties that a Chief Marketing Officer would undertake for a business, but it comes without the commitment of doing the job full-time. It offers scope to work with a variety of clients across different sectors on a part-time basis. It’s a hugely interesting, multi-faceted role.

Just because it’s part-time, it doesn’t mean the role is any less important! A Fractional CMO is a great opportunity for a marketing executive to take responsibility for leading a business’s marketing team and strategy.  

It’s a useful role to be aware of – especially when a business might be going through a period of rapid growth. Specialised marketing and strategy services are sometimes needed in these situations to help keep the momentum going and push the campaigns forward. 

The role of a Fractional CMO offers the chance to get a highly experienced member of staff on board to help on an as-and-when-needed, or per-project basis. 

When is the right time to hire a fractional CMO?

Think about the following reasons when you’re considering a Fractional CMO: 

  • If you have budget limitations: Some startups (and even long-established businesses) have budget limitations that mean they need advice but can’t afford a CMO. A Fractional CMO can do the job but on an ad-hoc basis. 
  • Running shorter projects: A Fractional CMO can be brought in for a defined time frame to oversee a one-off project on a short-term footing. 
  • To complement an existing team: There may be times when a marketing team lacks one particular skill set – and in this case, so a Fractional CMO can fill in any knowledge gaps. 
  • If you need flexibility: They can be hired part-time. This allows companies to adjust their marketing needs to suit the projects they’re working on. 
  • Help with financial relations: When a company has to deal with any financial concerns – be it a merger or reverse IPO, it can really help to have a Fractional CMO on board to assist with communications, investor relations, internal communications, PR, and marketing strategies. 
What is the difference between a CMO and a Fractional CMO?

A Fractional CMO will simply work part-time – on a temporary, or ad-hoc basis. They might also work with multiple clients at the same time on short-term, one-off projects. Whereas a CMO is employed and will work on a fixed contract as a full-time employee of one company, typically for a couple of years or so. 

A CMO has control over budgets and hires marketing talent to undertake a range of campaigns. They also occasionally act as a channel between product and marketing teams. They’ll look for helpful ways to drive more engagement and traffic to company websites, and with that, generate increased leads for the sales team to follow up. 

A Fractional CMO differs slightly from this. They’ll be there to try and optimise a strategic business plan and identify all the right people to do the job as a project develops and progresses.  

With a Fractional CMO, a company can get high-level marketing expertise on an as-needed basis, and there’s little to no long-term commitment (or associated costs). It’s a flexible option that allows a business to scale up and down accordingly but still gets the same level of expertise from a qualified professional. 

Why Hire a Fractional CMO?

They’re typically well-organised self-starters, who can offer a wealth of talent and experience to develop strategic business plans that result in successful outcomes. 

You might want to hire a Fractional CMO if you’re a business that needs help and assistance with marketing and communication strategy but are in the position of not being able to afford someone to work with you full-time. They’re a win-win talent to work with as they’ve got all the necessary expertise and can devote time and knowledge to one specific project to help you get the results you need. 

Fractional CMOs can understand how to create marketing strategies that are tailored directly to overall corporate strategy. They’ll also consider this alongside any cost-benefit analysis.

Can a fractional CMO work alongside an in-house team?

The simple answer: yes! 

A Fractional CMO can work wonderfully alongside an already well-established in-house team. Someone taking on this role will be well-versed in adapting to a whole host of different roles and working styles. 

They’re a forward-thinking person to have on your team, who can help define a strategic direction for a project, and also engage in coaching and mentoring team members of varying skill levels. They can also coordinate between internal teams and other outside agencies to make sure everyone’s ideas are aligned and that all are working in tandem.

Basically, a Fractional CMO will perform the same kinds of tasks that a full-time chief marketing officer will do – just in a part-time role. 

What will Neil help us with everyday?

Let’s play out a few scenarios:

Scenario #1: you’re launching a startup and need help getting it started

A flavour of what he’d be looking at: 

  • target audience
  • positioning and value proposition
  • competitor and industry analysis
  • build an optimal website lead capture and generation strategy using PATS framework
  • implement growth-focused thought leadership strategy
  • create organic marketing strategy
  • ideate and implement low-acquisition offer ad campaigns
  • analyse client experience and improve product

 

Scenario #2: your business is slowly growing but hasn’t found product-market fit

A flavour of what he’d be looking at: 

  • define and understand your target audience
  • analyse and prioritise specific segments
  • competitor and industry analysis
  • identify key problem, solution and customer-results combination
  • analyse and improve website lead capture and generation
  • hypothesise and run audience messaging experiments
  • identify opportunities and tests within the sales process
  • review online presence and improve positioning, messaging and apply a growth-focused content strategy
  • review marketing strategy and tighten paid and organic marketing approach
  • leverage results and social-proof across online and offline

 

Scenario #3: you have a proven product or service and now want to take it to the next level

A flavour of what he’d be looking at: 

  • zero in on 2-3 target audiences and messaging
  • competitor and industry analysis
  • review key marketing metrics across inbound and outbound
  • analyse key marketing and sales metrics and craft GTM strategy
  • implement SEO strategy based on keyword and competitor analysis
  • review and improve sales process and collateral
  • optimise usage of social proof and customer stories
  • community growth ideation and implementation
  • optimise customer onboarding and delivery experience
  • ideate and implement low-acquisition offer ad campaigns
  • run full partnership programme implementation
  • set goals, metrics and 90-day delivery plans
Is a Fractional CMO worth it?

Most definitely! 

They’re a valuable person to have on your side – especially if you want someone with a  great level of senior experience and marketing expertise. 

It’s a flexible, adaptable, cost-effective solution to having on hand, when you need it – without the long-term commitment. You’ll get the best service for a competitive rate.

How much should you pay a Fractional CMO?

If you’re based in the UK then the salary for a Fractional CMO stands on average at around £67,763 per annum (that’s as of August 2023). 

However, many working in a role like this are hired on an hourly rate or work for a rate per project, so it can vary depending on the company you’re working for and/or the hours you put in. 

To put this into more context, if you hired a Fractional CMO who charged a rate of say £250 per hour and they went on to work 12 hours a month for you, that would be a monthly rate of £3000 which would be £36,000 a year on a part-time basis.

Companies I’ve Worked With

“I’ve known Neil for a while and what I admire most is his integrity. If you work with Neil he will present a plan and that will take your business forward. He considers carefully and he will make sure you understand the plan and the expected outcome. Neil is a professional marketer and will not let you down.”

Neil is much more than a digital marketer. The commercial knowledge and expertise he brings from the City is why he is able to gain such deep understanding of our market and audience. He really takes the initiative and goes well beyond our expectations. This is a truly bespoke service that is worth every penny.

Lateral Enterprises

Co-founders, James & Adam

We have been working with Neil and the team for over 2 years now. From the start we were very impressed with Neil’s technical knowledge of SEO and digital marketing. The team has a very transparent, proactive and hands on approach and their service and results have been outstanding. Neil made sure that our website was fully optimised for SEO and created compelling content and content guides to engage our audience and increase organic traffic. Their work has been invaluable in successfully launching our new website and ensuring that our site is highly ranked in Google. Only Way Online is a great partner to work with and I would highly recommend them to anybody that wants fast results for their business.

Everglade

CEO, Jayesh

Why should you hire Neil as a fractional CMO?

Strategy

Skip the queue and save 2 to 3 years and thousands on learning.

 

Proven growth marketing experience

Neil has worked with over 200 businesses helping across multiple industries focused on helping them to convey what they do, communicate their value proposition and reach a larger audience.

 

Leadership

With over 10 years of Investment Banking consulting experience, Neil has led teams of developers and business analysts whilst managing stakeholder expecations.

 

Flexible costs

You can hire Neil for as little as a few hours a month, easily adding in a level of strategic oversight, guidance and accountability. Rent Neil’s mind whilst comfortably growing your business.

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