Fractional CMO plus Agency Model: Helping Organizations Scale their Businesses

Aveteran marketing expert with nearly 30 years of experience, Sheila Kloefkorn has helped hundreds of enterprises increase revenue by hundreds of millions of dollars. Serving as a Fractional CMO, as well as founder of KEO Marketing Inc, she leads a talented team of marketers to create and execute award-winning marketing campaigns across the U.S. and more than 100 countries across the planet.

She conceived and has built a unique model of providing Fractional or part-time Chief Marketing Officer leadership services, paired with senior-level outsourced marketing talent. It allows cost-conscious companies to scale faster and more economically.

Delivering Innovative Marketing Solutions

After assisting in leading the planet’s largest youth marketing agency during the late 90s, Sheila founded Phoenix, Arizona-based KEO Marketing Inc, a full-service, business-to-business marketing agency. The firm specializes in marketing strategy, messaging, digital infrastructure, execution, and analytics. KEO Marketing helps Fortune 1000 companies, and medium-sized organizations grow.

KEO Marketing helps medium and large brands around the world drive business growth by delivering innovative marketing solutions that achieve tangible and substantial business results.

Specializing in B2B marketing strategy, messaging, infrastructure, execution, marketing analytics, and results, KEO Marketing helps its clients achieve and exceed their business goals.

The firm starts by understanding its client’s business, industry, and marketing plans. Based on that understanding and research, KEO Marketing then creates a customized marketing strategy for its clients.

In addition to Sheila’s Fractional VP of Marketing / CMO services, the firm is a full-service B2B marketing agency and offers trusted marketing services, including messaging and website development, lead generation, lead nurturing, inbound marketing, account based marketing, marketing automation, search engine optimization, content marketing, search marketing, creative, video marketing, email marketing, app development, local and mobile marketing, traditional advertising, sales support, event support and more.

Keeping it Going

As a business leader, Sheila is extremely passionate about helping her team members and clients achieve their dream lives. She says, “For my team members, that’s about career and personal growth. For our clients, it is about tangible business results. I get up and feel excited about making even more progress in those areas daily.”

Over her long career, Sheila has received several local and national marketing awards. Recently she was named as one of the “Top 10 Business Leaders of the Year” and “Top 25 Dynamic Women in Business” by the Phoenix Business Journal. Also, on behalf of KEO Marketing, Sheila has received several Stevie® American Business Awards for “Marketing Campaign of the Year” and personally, a Stevie Worldwide Women in Business Award in Advertising, Public Relations, and Marketing. She was also named among the “U.S. Top 100 Marketing and Advertising Leaders” by Marsum.

For many years, KEO Marketing has been recognized as a top interactive, web and social media agency in Arizona and the U.S. by the Phoenix Business Journals and other publications.

As a diversity, equity training, and policy-making leader over the last three decades, Sheila also ensures KEO Marketing actively participates in various corporate social responsibility (CSR) campaigns. Its team volunteers for many kinds of community, diversity, and climate change initiatives.

Tackling Primary Challenges

After leading a large team early in her career, Sheila has worked hard to keep KEO Marketing small and agile, so that she can remain involved in marketing on behalf of her clients. She takes her Fractional CMO role seriously. However, the agency has grown over the years through service and value expansion.

Sheila states, “Finding the right people and managing growth is always a challenge, but I feel very grateful that our team consistently delivers outstanding results and clients tend to stay with us for a very long time.”

Since its inception, the firm has been recognized with hundreds of awards, and many of its team members have gone on to serve in senior leadership positions in multiple large companies.

Advice for Young Female Entrepreneurs

Sheila believes many female entrepreneurs prefer to take care of everything themselves and then burn out quickly. She suggests they learn to get help from other team members and states, “Don’t be afraid of asking what you might think are dumb questions. There are so many women who came before you who figured it out the hard way. You don’t have to. Surround yourself with other successful entrepreneurs.”

A Promising Future

With its innovative solutions, KEO Marketing continues to grow its Fractional CMO plus outsourced marketing department offering to companies of $5-50M in revenue.

Sheila says, “I successfully serve as Fractional CMO to several of those, and our team is their outsourced marketing department. This enables organizations to deliver superior marketing and sales results with less investment.”

It is a particularly compelling model in challenging economic times. It helps smaller companies gain senior-level marketing strategy and execution so they can scale their businesses to compete with larger competitors without the same marketing investment.