More startup businesses are adopting a model of outsourcing certain business functions such as marketing, finance and development. By outsourcing marketing, startup businesses can get hands-on senior-level expertise without having to pay salary, overhead and benefits for a senior-level full-time employee.
What can an Outsource Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) do for your startup?
1. Validate your product or service concept through research and analysis. Your Outsource CMO can research demographics, psychographics and market opportunities by conducting interviews and surveys and by researching existing industry statistics and studies.
2. Create a strategic plan for marketing your product or service. An Outsource CMO can find new market opportunities, analyze strengths and weaknesses, identify the best positioning for your product or service, and create standard messaging that will carry throughout all communications.
3. Manage the initial branding process. Your Outsource CMO can make sure that branding reflects the intelligent positioning and messaging researched and created in the first two steps.
4. Create a tactical marketing plan to create awareness and generate leads. Your Outsource CMO can identify the right tactics that fit your budget, your market and your industry and write a plan that makes it easy for you, your staff, and your marketing vendors to execute.
5. Execute marketing according to the tactical plan. It’s not uncommon for an outsource marketing resource to execute marketing for a startup, including website creation, social media marketing, creating presentations for investors, writing and distributing press releases and generating leads. This outsource approach to marketing execution is certainly more cost-effective than hiring employees or an ad agency with overhead.
Outsource or Interim CMOs can come into the marketing startup process at any point. Maybe you’ve already validated your concept and done a branding exercise, and now you just need to make it happen. Whatever the case, outsourcing the marketing function so that you can focus on the core business of your startup company is a growing trend.
For information on New Incite’s services for startup businesses, contact Jennifer Beever today.
