Don’t Know What Your Marketing Needs Are?
fractional marketing acts like an in-house team of marketing rockstars
Are you stuck at the starting line? You know you need to do some kind of marketing. Where do you begin? What kind of budget will you need? What kinds of marketing would even work for you?
Many small and mid-sized businesses have gotten by with a VP of Sales and Marketing, a lead sales manager, or have hired contractors for a specific deliverable. You might have hired a:
- Contract developer to create your website
- Freelance graphic designer for your trade show materials
- Summer intern to set up your social media and begin posting
You’re likely facing three situations:
1) You’ve discovered your “marketing” needs more attention, but:
- The contract web designer quit for a full-time job
- Your graphic designer hasn’t returned an email in weeks
- None of the social media accounts have had an update since the intern went back to school
- Your office manager tried to start an email newsletter, but everything went to spam
- You’ve asked to hire a marketing manager, but there isn’t $150K for that salary, plus the software tools, PLUS the advertising
2) You’ve reached out to several marketing agencies and quickly discovered they:
- Look for a serious deposit to even begin talking
- Need a detailed scope of work (and you don’t know what to ask for)
- Want a targeted budget for advertising spend and another for “agency services”
- Provide detailed recommendations without having a single conversation about your business
3) You need help:
- Evaluating your specific marketing needs
- Creating a realistic marketing plan
- Understanding what a realistic paid ad budget would be
- Simply getting it done
- Reporting on how well it’s working
Bottom line: You need an internal marketing department full of experts, someone to lead it, and pull it off with a realistic budget.
Just imagine having a team of marketing experts at your disposal. Providing:
- Overall marketing strategy tailored specifically for your business
- Dedicated project management directly communicating and collaborating with you
- Knowledge sharing to educate leadership on the process and activities
- Expert support for special projects like branding, websites, or trade shows
- Boots-on-the-ground execution for content creation, social media management, email newsletters, paid ad management, graphic design, photography, and video production
- Detailed performance reporting based on predetermined metrics
All of it done for a pre-planned monthly investment. How Would It Work?
Marketing is about the long game. While there are some quick wins, successful marketing is more about half-year and year-over-year performance. Creating that successful strategy involves getting to know your business, your customers, and your industry.
Success will come through following our step-by-step process:
- Initial audit or evaluation
- Establish objectives
- Create the strategy
- Create deliverables
- Implement the strategy
- Report on progress
This whole process would feature active management of the day-to-day marketing activities. Social media, content creation, website updates, graphic design, and other marketing activities common to an in-house department are determined by the project scope and budget.
Key Benefits of a Fractional Marketing Team
There has been a lot of talk about fractional Chief Marketing Officers and fractional positions for years. However fractional marketing teams are relatively new. What are the key benefits of Signalfire’s solution?
- Regular check in meetings for updates, approvals, and feedback
- Does a deep dive into your business to assess and recommend an action plan
- Focuses on the strategic goals instead of specific deliverables
- Avoid the expensive, time-consuming hiring process
- Reduces overhead costs from personnel to software
- A team of experts from day one
- Can easily support special projects like a new website or a brand refresh
- Provides detailed performance data
The Fractional Marketing Department is intended to be exactly that: the resources, activity, and services equivalent to an in-house team. Investing in this program will be for a 12-month period because successful strategies take time to setup, implement, and evaluate.
There are three (3) primary investment areas:
- The marketing services investment will cover Signalfire’s activities from meetings to deliverables like social media management.
- The advertising budget will include paid advertising including paid social ads, Google, YouTube, or other platforms determined to be important.
- Special projects will involve significant projects that go beyond the day-to-day marketing efforts like a brand refresh or web development. A separate estimate will be provided when/if special projects are needed.
What’s a realistic budget for each investment area and what is included?
Marketing Services
Marketing services will be the “agency costs” of collaborating with Signalfire. These services involve a lot of “getting it done” from content creation to digital marketing management.
Signalfire works with 12-month engagements because great systems take time to build and take time to get measurable results. If you’re looking for a quick, 90-day campaign—we may not be the right fit.
Depending on the exact scope of services, monthly fees will range between $4,000 to $8,000 per month.
Why such a wide range? It will depend on how much content, how much social, and how much needs to be done.
Advertising Budget
An exact spending plan will ultimately depend on your specific needs and the overall strategy. Depending on your business, LinkedIn may be better than Facebook. Google Ads may reach your ideal clients at key buying stages. And YouTube ads might catch engineers researching the challenges you solve.
An impactful ad spend can range from $50,000 to $100,000 per year.
Why such a wide range? Cost of Google Ads for different keywords can dramatically change based on your specific needs. Ad costs vary widely between social platforms. And other content placement varies, too.
Special Projects
Marketing programs may not cover everything. Does the website need to be redesigned? Is the logo due for a refresh? Are you ready for a new trade show booth? Needs like these don’t fall under the day-to-day marketing program, but can be just as critical for success.
No one proposes marriage (or a year-long contract) on a first date. Before we can build a successful strategy, we need to learn more about you and you learn about us. Our Business Marketing Assessment and Plan (MAP for short) is a flat fee marketing audit to better understand your current marketing efforts.
The MAP is to learn about your business. You’ll be given a findings report and a one-hour review session. We include our recommendations.
This also gives you the opportunity to ensure Signalfire fits your needs. If you like how we work and what we recommend—we can get started. If not, it gives everyone a great place to part as friends. You have a detailed marketing audit to act on as a takeaway.
You can learn more details about the MAP process here.
Signalfire recommends setting aside 10% to 15% of your total marketing budget “just in case” any of these special projects need to be done.