Spending on tactics with no strategy or accountability.
What we did
- Plugged in as fractional CMO
- Set the plan, budget, and KPIs
- Managed vendors and the in-house team
Result A clear plan, an accountable budget, and steady month-over-month growth.
Strategy & Leadership
Fractional CMO
Senior marketing leadership, without the full-time cost.
What it is
Strategy before spend.
Most businesses don't have a marketing problem; they have no one steering it: tactics run in every direction while the strategy, the numbers, and the team go unowned. A Fractional CMO gives you senior marketing leadership on a fraction of a full-time budget, accountable for the plan, the channels, and the results.
Core services include
- Marketing strategy and roadmap tied directly to revenue goals
- Channel and budget allocation, where every dollar goes and why
- Team and vendor management, in-house or agency
- KPI dashboards and accountability that leadership can read at a glance
- AI-adoption strategy to make marketing faster and leaner
- Hands-on leadership in your meetings, not a deck you never open
Definition
What is Fractional CMO (Chief Marketing Officer)?
A Fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader who runs your marketing part-time, on a monthly retainer, instead of as a full-time executive hire. They own the strategy, the budget, and the team, giving you C-level marketing leadership at a fraction of a full-time CMO's cost.
How it works
Unlike a consultant who advises and hands you a deck, a Fractional CMO embeds as your acting head of marketing: they set strategy and budget, choose channels, and then direct and hold accountable the in-house staff, agencies, and contractors who execute. Engagements typically run one to three days per week on a flat retainer, scaled up during launches or funding pushes and revisited each quarter.
Who it’s for
Best for founder-led and growth-stage companies that have outgrown ad-hoc marketing but cannot yet justify a full-time CMO salary, or teams with execution but no senior direction. The outcome is better marketing decisions and accountability: a clear strategy, a rightly-allocated budget, vendors and campaigns tied to pipeline and revenue instead of vanity metrics, and leadership without the full-time payroll cost.
In practice
A founder juggling three agencies and a junior marketer with no unified plan brings in a Fractional CMO, who sets a quarterly strategy, reallocates spend away from underperforming channels, and installs pipeline reporting, so the leadership team can finally see which marketing dollars produce qualified opportunities.
When a Fractional CMO makes sense.
- You're spending on marketing but no one owns the strategy or results
- You need senior direction but can't justify a $250K+ full-time hire
- Your channels run in isolation with no unifying plan
- You want to adopt AI across marketing but don't know where it pays off
See if Fractional CMO is the right move for your team.
Request a free quoteSee it in action
The weekly brief that puts someone at the wheel.
CMO Weekly Brief · Wk 42
Your Brand, Marketing Ops Review
BUDGETCut branded-search overspend; move $3.8k/mo into email nurture● Decided
AGENCYPaid-media agency on 30-day review, CPL target set at $92● Watching
TEAMContent hire briefed on new ICP messaging; first drafts due Fri● In motion
STRATEGYQ4 goal locked: 120 SQLs, every channel now reports against it● Locked
Blended CAC
$412 → $368
SQLs / mo
84 → 97
Total spend
unchanged
Illustrative example, styled to show the kind of output we deliver.
Selected work
Representative engagements.
Senior marketing leadership and strategy, without a full-time hire.
Growth stalled and priorities were unclear.
What we did
- Ran a positioning + go-to-market review
- Re-set the channel mix
- Built a two-quarter roadmap
Result Refocused spend on what worked and broke the plateau.
Examples are anonymized to honor client NDAs and edited to illustrate typical scope, outcomes vary by market, budget, and starting point.
How & why it works
One hand on the wheel, every dollar accountable.
Results come from installing a marketing operating system, not from adding more tactics. We diagnose where spend actually converts, reallocate against a single revenue goal, and run a weekly decision cadence so strategy, budget, and team all pull in the same direction.
- Growth-diagnostic auditWe map the full funnel and rebuild attribution in your CRM and analytics (GA4, UTMs, offline conversion imports) so every channel ties to pipeline, then pressure-test unit economics: blended CAC, CAC-by-channel, LTV:CAC, and payback period. This surfaces which spend actually produces sales-qualified opportunities versus vanity traffic.
- Strategy + budget reallocationWe set one north-star revenue goal (e.g. SQLs or marketing-sourced pipeline), lock positioning and ICP, then reallocate budget away from channels below their cost-per-SQL target toward those clearing it. Output is a quarterly plan and a defensible budget every channel reports against, not a channel-by-channel guess.
- Operating cadence + reportingWe run a weekly leadership brief with a decided/watching/in-motion status on each initiative, and a monthly review against CAC, conversion rate by funnel stage, and marketing-sourced revenue. Underperforming channels get a fixed-window SLA rather than an open-ended budget line.
- Own the marketing operating systemWe direct the in-house team, agencies, and contractors as the accountable head of marketing: agency SLAs with cost-per-lead targets, clear KPI ownership per role, a marketing tech and automation stack that isn't duplicated, and a headcount plan sequenced to the roadmap.
- Build toward a permanent hireOnce the function runs on a documented plan and reporting, we write the role definitions, screen candidates, and onboard a full-time marketing lead, then step from operator to advisor so the system outlives the engagement instead of depending on us.
Worked exampleA $6M B2B services firm running three agencies with no in-house marketing lead and no line of sight from spend to closed revenue.
- Built one revenue model in the CRM tying every channel to opportunities, exposing that ~40% of paid spend flowed to a channel producing no sales-qualified pipeline
- Reallocated that budget into a mid-funnel email + retargeting sequence and set a blended-CAC target the whole team reported against weekly
- Put the paid-media agency on a 60-day SLA with a defined cost-per-SQL, and wrote the JD for the first full-time marketing manager the CMO would later hand off to
- Over two quarters, marketing-sourced SQLs rose from roughly 80 to 100 per month at flat total spend, with blended CAC easing about 10% as budget shifted to converting channels
Why it works
Fractional works because senior marketing leadership is a decision-and-accountability function, not a full-time-hours function: the value sits in choosing the right goal and killing the wrong spend, which takes judgment more than volume of hours. A single owner tying every channel to one revenue number compounds over time, because each quarter's reallocation shifts budget from what doesn't convert to what does, so the same spend produces more pipeline instead of resetting with every new campaign.
FAQ
Questions, answered.
A consultant advises and leaves you a deck. We embed as your acting head of marketing: we own the strategy, set the budget, build the funnel, and then run and manage the execution alongside or in place of your team. That means we sit in your leadership meetings, make the calls on channels and spend, hold vendors and contractors accountable, and report on pipeline and revenue, not just impressions. The agency relationship typically reports up to the fractional CMO, not the other way around.
Most fractional CMO engagements run in the range of one to three days per week, scaled to your stage and how much hands-on execution you want us running. Pricing is a flat monthly retainer tied to that committed time, not hourly billing, so you can budget it cleanly against the cost of a full-time CMO hire. For example, an early-stage company often starts at a lighter cadence to set strategy and hiring plans, then dials up during a launch or funding push. We right-size the commitment at the start and revisit it each quarter.
The first weeks are a deep audit: your funnel, your data and attribution, current spend efficiency, the team and tools you have, and where revenue is actually coming from. By roughly day 30 you get a prioritized marketing strategy and budget; by day 60 to 90 we are executing on the highest-leverage moves and standing up the reporting that ties marketing activity to pipeline. We do not wait a quarter to act. Quick operational fixes, like cleaning up tracking or killing wasted ad spend, usually happen in the first few weeks while the bigger strategy takes shape.
Both are common. If you have a team, we lead it, set priorities, coach the people, and fill capability gaps with our own bench or vetted contractors. If you do not, we run the function ourselves and help you hire toward a permanent structure when the timing is right. For example, we will often write the role definitions, screen candidates, and onboard a full-time marketing lead, then transition from operator to advisor so you are not dependent on us forever.
We agree on the metrics that matter to you up front, typically pipeline contribution, customer acquisition cost, conversion rates, and marketing-sourced revenue, and report against them on a regular cadence. Because we run the work and not just advise on it, you can see real movement in campaigns, spend efficiency, and reporting clarity within the engagement, not just at the end. Engagements are month to month or on a short-term basis after an initial ramp period, so you are never locked into a multi-year contract. If it is not delivering, you can wind it down with notice.
Let’s make it measurable.