A Marketing Maturity & Needs Framework
Founders of growing businesses take extra care that everything is done right – after all, the company is your baby. You have loyal customers, a proven product, “WOW” service and steady referrals. But what happens when growth is stunted? After careful analysis, perhaps every marketing initiative feels like a one-off experiment: a social campaign here, a new website there and an endless stream of qualified lead promises that never quite materialize. Your sales team keeps asking for “better leads,” yet no one can pinpoint what “better” means. Your marketing department is busy but not effective - producing activity, not traction.
You’re not alone. In a Constant Contact survey with over 1,300 SMBs, 73% acknowledged a lack of confidence in their marketing strategies.
For countless small-to-medium sized business (SMB) founders, the dilemma often lies in whether to hire another consultant, build an in-house team or bring in strategic leadership. The symptoms are familiar - scattered efforts, inconsistent metrics, unclear ownership - and the pressure can be intense. The company’s next growth chapter, and potentially your exit strategy, depends not just on doing more marketing, but on having the right kind of marketing leadership to turn chaos into clarity.
Oftentimes the problem can be solved by going through a simple exercise of mapping the five key stages of company growth against your own to determine when a consultant, fractional marketing leader, full-time CMO - or all of the above - are best for your business and how. Start here 🏁:
SMBs in Foundational Stage (Pre-Seed/Early Seed)
At this stage, you’re seeking to validate your business idea and establish an early presence in the market. Your product is the MVP – even if it only exists in concept. Typical signals of this stage include no established brand identity, founders making all marketing decisions and ad hoc messaging. Budgetary resources tend to be extremely limited, so often the best route is engaging with a marketing generalist or consultant. Look for a professional who can help quickly take on tactics, such as experimenting with product-market fit and developing positioning, messaging and brand assets at a manageable cost. Consultants deliver focused expertise to stand up your core brand and digital presence in a short time frame on a temporary basis, which can be vital to getting you to the next stage of growth.
Here's some examples of marketing consultant engagements in early seed stage:
- Market Validation & Audience Definition
- Brand Identity, Story and Positioning
- Website or Landing Page Creation
- Early Social Proof and Messaging Testing
The Traction Stage (Seed) of SMB Growth
Once you’ve acquired your first customers and are tracking acquisition metrics (CAC, LTV, churn), marketing results can fluctuate. Inconsistent brand awareness and unstructured processes are common, such as how leads are classified and managed or marketing materials are created and distributed. You may be craving proven product-market fit with repeatable channels for revenue stability and sustainability.
At this point, bring in an industry-specific fractional strategic marketer, like Towers Fractional Marketing, who serves as your resident marketing leader on a part-time basis. Towers works to define and manage the execution of go-to-market (GTM) strategies, optimize spend and establish scalable channels. This level of strategic input helps founders move from unreliable results toward predictable growth, building early-stage infrastructure ready for Series A.
Once your demand generation becomes repeatable, the next challenge is efficiency to ensure marketing integrates seamlessly with sales and operations.
SMBs in the Scale Stage (Series A)
Here, marketing needs to deliver consistent leads, nurture prospects and integrate with sales. Marketing operations often struggle with fragmented tools and reporting. This can be evidenced by increased time, effort and costs to execute marketing plans, such as piecing together clean prospect/suspect data to send out aligned and timely e-mail campaigns. Reporting issues can be visible with duplicate records stemming from data pulls across multiple systems.
If you haven’t done so already, it's important to appoint a fractional marketing leader to build your growth engine and organization structure. S/he is responsible for refining the GTM and related marketing plan, architecting your marketing technology stack and mentoring your internal team while managing contractors or agencies. This ensures accountability and scalability - without the full-time leadership overhead until complexity demands it.
Gearing up for the Acceleration Stage (Series B)
The team and agency roster grows now, new markets are targeted and silos emerge, that is, when “different departments work independently, with little communication or collaboration…lead[ing] to duplication of effort, conflicting priorities and slow decision-making,” says SaaS CRM developer Saphyte. You want to expand market reach and accelerate brand visibility well beyond what you’ve accomplished so far.
Start with a fractional marketing leader but prepare to bring on a full-time Marketing VP or CMO as operations develop and specialized management is needed. At this juncture, retaining the fractional leader may be necessary to augment the responsibilities of the in-house marketing executive to ensure that strategy and execution stay unified while new initiatives, like deploying AI or launching a brand content development and campaign execution hub, help keep the business on pace with demands. Marketing consultants can also be vital at this stage to help take on tactics such as social media management, newsletter distribution and graphic design.
The Leadership Stage (Series C+)
This stage requires the marketing function to possess a sophisticated data infrastructure, brand consistency and advanced analytics. You’re preparing to be a category leader and acquisition or IPO readiness means every area - from PR to data science - needs professional oversight. This is the time to “improve the areas of your business that are most valuable to a buyer or potential shareholder [and] enlist your management team to help keep the company running smoothly and performing at its best,” suggests the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Hire a full-time CMO supported by directors, managers and analysts. At this level, a committed executive ensures top-down leadership and cross-functional alignment for enterprise-level growth. There is still opportunity to strengthen internal marketing resources utilizing consultants as well as a fractional marketing leader, particularly between funding rounds to show rapid, measurable gains that justify further investment.
Common fractional, strategic marketing engagements include:
- Go-to-Market Strategy Overhaul
- Pipeline and Revenue Optimization
- Brand Positioning and Messaging
- Martech Stack Automation and Upgrades
- Team Coaching/Mentorship
- Performance Audit and Quick Wins
- Cross-Functional Alignment
Timing is the Strategy
The decision to bring in a marketing consultant, fractional leadership or a full-time executive hire is about alignment. At each stage of growth, your marketing needs to evolve from experimentation to execution to orchestration. The best founders recognize when it’s time to shift from tactical help to strategic guidance.
A consultant can help you build the pieces.
A fractional marketing leader helps you connect them into a system that scales.
By charting where your company stands today, and where you intend to be in the next 12–24 months, you’ll gain clarity on the type of leadership that can accelerate results without taking on unnecessary overhead. Whether you’re validating your model or preparing for an acquisition, the right marketing partner ensures every dollar, every channel and every decision moves your business toward predictable, measurable growth. Reach out to Towers Fractional Marketing to discuss the marketing needs of your maturing SMB and how a custom strategic marketing engagement can help move your business to the next level.
