The Top Marketing Challenges for Franchises for 2025—and How a Fractional CMO Solves Them
Franchise marketing is always a challenge–as the individual franchise owner, you must balance the needs of your business and its unique location with the overall brand identity and positioning of the parent company. This is a complex mix, and some knowledgeable help might just make all the difference in building your franchise’s success.
While most franchise owners can’t afford to hire a full-time marketing professional–and may not have the skills or availability to do the job themselves–another option exists. Fractional CMOs provide experience and marketing know-how without the cost of hiring full-time marketing experts. A good fractional CMO can help you and your franchise rise to the marketing challenges ahead in 2025 and ensure that the coming year brings the success you deserve.
First: What is a Fractional CMO?
While a traditional chief marketing officer (CMO) is generally either employed full-time by a business or a stakeholder in it, a fractional CMO is an independent contractor who works as the business’s CMO for a set number of hours weekly or monthly. Hence “fractional”–they spend a fraction of each week working with their client business.
Fractional CMOs offer many advantages to franchises, startups, and small businesses. Costs and time investments of a fractional CMO can be scaled, allowing their clients to work within their existing budgets and schedules. They still supply expert marketing services, which can augment a business’s existing capabilities and help it grow its marketing presence and brand without the cost of a full-time employee. As a result, fractional CMOs are an increasingly attractive option for businesses of all types.
Fractional CMOs Create Real Solutions
To illustrate the potential a fractional CMO can bring to your franchise, we’ll take a look at five real-world marketing challenges for the franchise and explore some of the ways that a fractional CMO can solve them. This list does not represent the limits of what a fractional CMO may be able to offer; it’s just an illustration of how they can potentially work with your franchise.
Digital strategy alignment
It’s an often requested service for fractional CMOs and with good reason. The marketing landscape is increasingly oriented towards high-tech solutions and digital marketing strategies. Both are effective for businesses of all sizes and across all industries, but they require a high level of technical expertise and a detailed understanding of the current state of the market. This can be a challenge for a franchise owner or small business proprietor to cultivate, but a fractional CMO can provide a turn-key solution by bringing their knowledge and skills to the table when and where needed.
Audience segmentation
For new franchise owners–or any business in a growth phase–audience segmentation is both a powerful marketing strategy and a vital marketing function. It can also be a real challenge; audience segmentation is the art and science of identifying relevant subgroups or subcultures within the target audience and creating marketing strategies and brand messages that better connect with them. Combining digital marketing, conventional marketing, B2B strategies, and demographic understanding, audience segmentation is a specialty unto itself and one of the many solutions that a fractional CMO can render affordable and accessible.
Managed business growth
It is another great strength of the fractional CMO. Whether the business in question is a franchise or small firm just starting up or an established one moving into a period of rapid growth and expansion, a fractional CMO represents a scalable solution for rapidly evolving marketing and branding needs. By working closely with a business within their time and budgetary needs, a fractional CMO can leverage the growth solutions that help marketing and branding strategies expand as the business does.
Expanding into new markets and new industries
It means new opportunities, but it also may call for specialized marketing expertise and detailed industry knowledge. This is another place where a fractional CMO can bring fresh, effective solutions to the table. By contributing their specialized skills to the overall effort, a fractional CMO can help a company move into new territory with the confidence that its branding and marketing will adapt to the landscape.
Wahha Designs: Fractional CMO Services For Your Business
So you’ve decided that a fractional CMO might just be the force multiplier that your franchise needs–but where do you find the right service for you? A good fractional CMO will get to know you and your business, develop a plan tailored to your needs, and work with you to develop your marketing and branding going forward in a way that works best for you. Wahha Designs knows that you’ve poured your heart and soul into your business, and we’re here to work with you. We take the time to give each client the individualized attention their business deserves and craft the solutions that help them grow. The time to start is now, so get in touch today and let’s schedule a free initial consultation to discuss how our fractional CMO services can help your business thrive.