If you’re wondering if you need to hire a full-time CMO or an Outsourced Chief Marketing Officer, you first must understand: We’re in a new era of labor.

When my father graduated from college, he quickly found a great job with IBM. For over 25 years, he worked from entry-level to senior salesman. During his tenure, he changed roles, had new and different responsibilities, and became a great senior salesman.

It’s a typical story in America. Pick a company, find a job, then work your way to the top.

But in the world of the microchip, the work landscape is changing.

Jobs like my father’s are disappearing. When I was teaching at Tulane University, my students would tell me their plans of getting a job like their mother or father; they would say “I’m going to do the same thing and I’m going to get the same result.” I’ve seen it unfold as those students graduated, unable to find a predictable career path.

That’s why I committed to myself and a process I developed.

I knew years ago that I wouldn’t find a job that I could hold for 25 years or more. If I wanted to be successful, I’d have to get damn good at one thing and keep doing it for anyone who it could benefit.

Today’s economy needs outsourced chief marketing officers. We need specialists, not generalists. When I go to hire, I don’t want a Jack-of-All-Trades on my team. I want a specialist who can do a great job at a specific task or set of tasks.

In much the same way, you don’t need a full-time CMO. You likely don’t need a CMO in a corner office at your business. Maybe that’s because you don’t even have an office; you work from coffee shops, a co-working space, or from your couch. You also don’t need 40 hours of a CMO each week.

When I look at marketing, I see three major components: Vision, Strategy and Execution.

Vision: This is the ability to see the future, to predict where the market will be. A Chief Marketing Officer must know where the market is going and hedge bets on the right technology, platforms and media. The CMO must consider themselves a futurist (at least in some regards). Constantly reviewing what new innovations are hitting the market, the CMO needs to have a pulse on the direction of the entire ecosystem.

Strategy: Once Vision is identified, a strategy must be put in place to achieve clear goals. Those goals must be measurable and the success of any campaign should be wrapped in a KPI (key performance indicator). The strategy is where vision meets your business’s needs. Do you prioritize one campaign over another? How do you incorporate a new technology or encroaching by competition?

Execution: This is the work for contractors and employees. For specialists. The execution of a marketing strategy should be given to those who are able to execute and be accountable to the results. I believe execution is a skill that can be found in the market, both locally and digitally. However, execution is rarely the missing piece. All too often, I hear the laborers at organizations say “Just tell me what to do!”

Most organizations lack Vision and Strategy. Marketing vision is left to the CEO to define, with strategy being co-created (typically haphazardly) with the employees and contractors. Finally, the strategy is executed to the limit of the team’s capabilities.

As an Outsourced Chief Marketing Officer, I can provide a unique view on the marketplace through the lens of a marketer and salesman.

I define success through dashboards and reporting. I grow conversion rates, opt-in rates, lifetime value and referrals month over month.

I co-create a vision for success with you, the CEO. You may have built it this far, but in order to continue to grow, you need better marketing and sales, something that an Outsourced Chief Marketing Officer can do without being a full-time employee.

outsourced chief marketing officer cmo - hire casey stanton

I have a process my team and I use for marketing, sales and teams. I call it Functional Marketing®, Functional Sales™ and Functional Teams™. Each of these three components have processes and tools to make marketing and sales more predictable. Processes produce predictable results. I don’t expect to climb a corporate ladder and have the same employer for the rest of my life. My life vision is to act as an Outsourced Chief Marketing Officer for businesses that impact the health and well-being of 1 billion people.

Your organization does not need an in-house Chief Marketing Officer; a generalist. Instead, you need someone committed to growing companies through marketing as an Outsourced CMO. You need the benefit of a specialist who understands the market and is inside other 7, 8 and 9 figure businesses; a CMO with a process that produces predictable results, so that you can finally have the confidence you need in your businesses future.

If you’re interested in hiring my team as your Outsourced CMO, please visit CMOx, the Outsourced CMO company I founded.