A new Des Moines-based company is looking to fill a gap in marketing leadership by creating a Marketing Leadership-as-a-Service model for midsize businesses and venture-backed startups.
The new company — called Propel — provides fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) services to mid-size companies and venture-funded startups who need a marketing strategy and the leadership to deliver on their growth objectives. A fractional CMO is an outsourced marketing executive who performs the function of a CMO without a company having to commit to a full-time in-house one.
Once a company signs up for Propel’s services, they will be guided through a proprietary matching process, that will match them with the best-fit CMO for their needs.
“Rather than going through a time-intensive and very expensive, recruiting and hiring phase of six or more months, a business can reach out to us,” said Gregory Bailey, founder and CEO of Propel. “And often within two or three weeks, they will have one of Propel’s fractional CMOs on their team, ready to get to work.”
Bailey says that “Marketing Leadership-as-a-Service” is a new category that Propel is pioneering, and that the company is at the intersection of a couple of different trends happening in business and in the economy.
“One is the gig economy where talent and employees, now more than ever are resigning from their W-2 employee jobs. Employees, including executives like chief marketing officers, are wanting more flexibility and more autonomy,” said Bailey. “And then on the other side, we’re really focusing on midsize businesses and venture-funded startups, to help them with marketing leadership, everything from a marketing strategy to marketing campaign execution, all in the spirit of growth.”
The company officially launched last Tuesday and in addition to Bailey, Propel’s team currently includes three fractional CMOs — Haley Stomp, Glenn Rothenberg, and Randy Bachman.
“Speed matters when you’re building a company because you have to go from zero to 60 as quickly as you can and build that early momentum. So we’ll be in the market, having a ton of conversations, meeting with a ton of different midsize companies and venture-funded startups,” said Bailey. “The next six to twelve months will be a combination of accelerating our own sales pipeline, bringing more value to more of these types of companies that become our customers, and then on the other side, recruiting more key talent.”