How much do fractional CMO services cost?

How much do Fractional CMO services cost?

We’ve defined what a Fractional CMO is and does, and now it’s time for the high stakes discussion: what are these services going to cost you?

Fractional CMO services

Our services page outlines the kind of work you can expect to rely upon a CMO for, particularly when you work with us at Perana Viosa. For the sake of benchmarking fees and costs, we want to highlight these three core components of a CMO’s portfolio:

Research and development: a Fractional CMO has the experience and skills to oversee your research and development operations. This includes market and competitor research.
Brand management: Fractional CMOs know what it takes to build and grow a strong brand and corporate image. Cause-related marketing and CSI/CSR integration are most likely going to be involved.
Customer acquisition: This is a big ticket item. A competent Fractional CMO should be able to structure campaigns across multiple channels, even weaving them together, to show you how much it costs to bring customers into your business and enable you to constantly refine your campaigns to align with your goals: sales volumes and/or profit margins.

Research and development

Because research and development covers such a wide range in both scope and depth, high-level work can cost anywhere from R3-10k with extensive field and product research ranging in price between R200-500k per project. That’s anywhere from $200 – $30k.

At Perana Viosa, the price of research and development services is quoted on a case-by-case basis, built specifically around what’s required for you to harness the full benefit of the research project and outcomes.

Brand management

Most agencies are expensive because you pay for more than you actually get from them. You’re covering their overheads. A branding workshop alone can cost in the region of R20-50k ($1.5-3.5k), and don’t even get us started on the price of branded merchandise and outreach campaigns.

If you want to build a powerful brand, you have options when you work with us at Perana Viosa. If you’re just starting out and you’re not sure what your corporate identity really is, we can help you with that from as little as R5k. If you’ve passed the first few branding hurdles and you want the market to recognise your company and what you stand for, you would be better off running well-structured brand awareness campaigns with us, which also start at R5k per month in management fees. That’s agency-level delivery at a fraction of agency-level pricing.

Customer acquisition

Getting leads and customers is critical to the survival of your business. Agency fees for lead generation vary between R20-250k. That’s a broad range: $1.5k-18k. And that’s just for managing the campaigns: it doesn’t include your media spend budget, which is what you pay to the ad platform companies, like Facebook or Google.

At Perana Viosa, our pricing is configured around your specific campaign needs. Whether you need help getting started or you want to dominate your niche and industry, here your costs can be as low as R5k per month.

Fractional CMO hourly rates

Our advice: don’t go there. When you outsource, you’re asking someone to produce a specific outcome or result. Paying people by the hour gives them no incentive to deliver the results early or even on time.

If you believe that the only way to measure the value of someone’s contribution to your business is to look at the number of hours they put in, your company’s in trouble. We don’t bill by the hour at Perana Viosa and we don’t produce timesheets. Our clients consistently receive value from us without wasting time on tracking useless metrics.

If you’re part of the dwindling number of people who still rely on hourly billing, though, expect to pay anywhere between R1-10k per hour ($100-700).

Why do Fractional CMOs cost this much?

A Fractional CMO is a seasoned executive level contributor to your team. You’re bringing in at least 10-15 years of experience, qualifications to boot and probably one of the strongest personal brands that your business can gain from being associated with. Our aim at Perana Viosa is to make top tier talent available to driven and deserving SMMEs at fair rates, lowering the barrier to compete against established brands in the marketplace.

Sources

Bonnell, A. 2014. 4 Tips for determining your market research budget. Marketresearch.com. Article online. 1 September. Available at: Click here to access[Accessed 30 July 2021].