Senior marketing leadership without the full-time hire

Fractional CMO

Here’s the pattern I see most often. The team is executing, the channels are running, and work is getting done. What’s missing is someone whose actual job is deciding what to stop doing, where next quarter’s budget goes, and whether any of it is moving pipeline. That decision usually lands on a founder who’s out of hours, or a director already running thin on time.

That’s the job I take. I own marketing as your fractional CMO: the plan, the budget, your team, your agencies, and the number you report upward. I’ve spent 20+ years doing this work not just directing it, so I’ll also build the pieces that are too important to hand off.

What I own

I take accountability for the marketing function, not a list of deliverables. In practice that means six things.

• The plan. Where growth comes from next quarter and next year, and what we stop doing to fund it.
• The budget. How it splits across channels, what each channel has to return, and when we reallocate.
• Your team. Priorities, workload, and the standard the work is held to. I’ll run the marketing standup and the one-on-ones if that helps.
• Your agencies and vendors. Scope, performance, and the call on whether to keep them.
• Your martech stack. I’ll evaluate it against what the business goals are as well as the marketing strategy and help make decisions on what should stay, go, or be added as net new.
• The number. Pipeline against target, CAC and payback by channel, and the MQL to SQL handoff, reported the same way every month.
• The work on the critical path. When something is too technical or too important to delegate, I build it. Measurement, technical SEO, content, and lifecycle architecture are the ones I usually keep.

What a month looks like

A fractional engagement runs on a fixed rhythm, so you always know when decisions get made and when numbers land. Here’s the standing cadence.

• Weekly, with you. A 90-minute working session where we decide things rather than report on them.
• Weekly, with your team. Standup and priority review, so nobody is guessing what matters this week.
• Monthly. A leadership review covering pipeline against target, CAC and payback by channel, MQL to SQL conversion, what moved, and what I’m changing next.
• Monthly. Board-ready reporting you can forward as-is.
• Quarterly. We rebase the plan and the budget against what the last quarter actually proved and the business priorities ahead.
• In between. I’m in your communication channels and available to your team, not parked until the next meeting.

The first 90 days

The most common worry about a fractional hire is ramp time. Here’s exactly what happens, and when.

Days 1 to 30: diagnose

I start with measurement, because most teams can’t yet see which channel produces revenue. I sit in on sales calls, read the CRM, and talk to your team and your agencies. You get a written read on where pipeline actually comes from, where it leaks, and what I’d stop doing. I also start the evaluation process of your outside vendors and martech stack.

Days 31 to 60: decide and rebuild

We lock the plan and the budget split. I fix the tracking so the numbers we’re about to manage against are true. Spend moves off what isn’t returning, agency scopes get reset, and your team’s priorities get rewritten around the plan. The martech stack gets refined and locked in to start working toward the main objectives.

Days 61 to 90: run it

The cadence is in place and the first full month of clean numbers lands. By day 90 you should be able to answer “which channel gets the next dollar” in a meeting, without commissioning a project to find out. We also forecast. What does the next quarter look like, what objectives are known and which are not settled.

How engagements work

Every fractional CMO engagement is ongoing, with a six-month or annual commitment and a set amount of my capacity each month. There’s no package to choose from, because I scope each engagement around the number you’re carrying and what your team can already cover. If I think you’d be better served by a full-time hire, I’ll say so before we start rather than after.

Who this is for

This works best for growth-stage B2B SaaS, healthcare, and DTC companies where the marketing team is smaller than the target it’s carrying. A few specific situations.

• You carry a revenue or pipeline number and marketing reports to you.
• Your team executes well and has nobody setting direction.
• You’re between marketing leaders, or you’ve never had one.
• A full-time VP is either too expensive right now or too early.
• You have agencies running and nobody senior holding them to a number.

When I’m the wrong call

• You need one defined project delivered. I only work on an ongoing basis, so someone else will serve you better.
• You need 40 hours a week. At that point, hire someone full-time and I’ll happily help you write the role.
• You have the strategy set and want execution against it. That’s a retained specialty engagement, and it’s a better fit and a smaller commitment.

Proof

Before I was consulting, I was Senior Director of Growth Marketing at Haymarket Media, leading growth across 22 clinician-focused brands with a $2M budget and an eight-person team. The portfolio grew from about $12M to $16M, audience grew 40%, and retention improved 20%.

Earlier, I ran a digital marketing department with full P&L responsibility, growing it from $200K to more than $1M in revenue within two years while building the team from two people to six. So when I take on your budget and your team, I’ve carried both before.

I’ve since been the outside growth partner to B2B SaaS companies including Thought Industries, Eurekos, 3G, Auditdata, and Assembly Voting, with four-year partnerships at each. I drove both strategy and execution throughout each engagement.

Read the results.

Questions I get asked

Is a fractional CMO the same as a marketing consultant?

They overlap, but the difference is accountability. A consultant hands you a plan and you execute it. As your fractional CMO I own the plan and the execution: the budget, your team, your agencies, and the number you report upward. If the number moves the wrong way, that’s mine to fix, not yours to interpret.

How is this different from hiring an agency?

An agency executes a scope you define. I define the scope, then hold the agency to it. Plenty of clients keep the agencies they already have and bring me in to run them.

How long before you’re useful?

You’ll have a written read on where pipeline comes from and what I’d change inside 30 days. The first full month of clean numbers lands around day 90.

What if we already have a marketing manager?

That’s the most common setup I walk into. I set direction and priorities, they run the day to day, and they tend to grow faster for having someone senior to work alongside.

Do you do the work, or only direct it?

Both. I direct your team and your agencies, and I build the pieces on the critical path myself. Measurement, technical SEO, content, and lifecycle architecture are the ones I usually keep. I can also build marketing automation programs and account-based marketing programs.

What does it cost?

It depends on how much of the function you’re handing over and how much capacity you need each month. Tell me what you own and where the gap is, and I’ll come back with a monthly number and what it covers.

Can we start smaller?

Yes. If you want one part of the funnel owned rather than the function end to end, that’s a retained specialty engagement. Same cadence, narrower scope, smaller commitment.

Let’s talk about what you’d hand over

Tell me what you own, what your team can realistically cover, and where the gap is. I’ll come back with how I’d staff it, what I’d take on in the first 90 days, and what it costs monthly. If I’m not the right fit for what you’re facing, I’ll tell you that instead.