Fractional CMO Leadership
The senior marketing brain your company needs, at the fraction of the cost it can actually afford.
Agency Management
Agency Audit & Vendor Management
Agencies do not underperform because they are bad. They underperform because nobody senior is holding them to a number.
The Problem This Solves
You are paying a retainer plus a percentage of ad spend. The monthly report is full of activity — impressions, posts, optimizations — and thin on outcomes. You suspect you are overpaying but you lack the internal expertise to prove it.
Typical EngagementDelivered inside a Core Marketing CMO retainer, or scoped as a standalone project.
See pricingI become the sophisticated client your agency has to answer to. That changes the relationship immediately: scopes get tightened, senior staff get assigned to your account, reporting becomes honest, and the work gets measurably better — often without changing agencies at all.
What’s Included
Six things that actually change.
01
Independent performance audit
Account structure, spend efficiency, creative quality, and reporting integrity assessed objectively.
02
Contract and scope review
What you are paying for, what you are receiving, and where the fee structure creates bad incentives.
03
Agency scorecards
Quantified monthly evaluation against agreed targets rather than subjective impressions.
04
RFP and selection management
Brief writing, shortlisting, pitch evaluation, and negotiation if a change is warranted.
05
Onboarding and transition
Clean handovers of accounts, assets, and data — with your ownership protected.
06
Ongoing QBR leadership
Quarterly business reviews run by someone who knows what good looks like.
Engagement Shape
How it runs.
Phases overlap in practice, but this is the shape of the work and roughly when each part lands.
What You Should Expect
- Retainer fees aligned to deliverables you can verify
- Senior agency staff actually working on your account
- Full ownership of your ad accounts, data, and creative assets
- A clear, unemotional answer on whether to keep or replace
| Phase | Deliverable |
|---|---|
| Audit | Written findings on performance, spend efficiency, contract terms, and risk |
| Decision | Fix, restructure, or replace — with a recommendation and the reasoning behind it |
| Action | Scope renegotiation or a managed RFP and selection process |
| Governance | Scorecard system and QBR cadence that keeps standards in place |
Answers
Questions about agency management
Good agencies welcome it. The best ones are frustrated by clients who cannot evaluate their work or make decisions quickly. Agencies that resist a sophisticated client are usually the ones with something to hide in the account.
Never. Referral fees corrupt the recommendation, and you would be right not to trust advice from someone paid by both sides. My compensation comes exclusively from you.
That is a legitimate outcome of the audit. I model both scenarios — fully loaded in-house cost including salary, benefits, tooling, and management overhead versus agency fees — and give you the honest arithmetic.
Two to three weeks for a thorough review including account access, contract analysis, and interviews with your team and the agency. You get written findings and a recommendation at the end.
Related
Works alongside
Interim CMO Leadership
Your CMO left. The executive search will take six months. Marketing cannot sit still for six months.
CMO Consulting
Sometimes you do not need a marketing leader. You need one hard question answered properly, once.
Next Step
Find out what your marketing is actually costing you.
Every engagement starts the same way: a straight conversation about your growth plateau, your current spend, and whether a fractional CMO is genuinely the right answer for you. If it isn’t, I’ll say so.
Free 30-minute call · No pitch deck · Direct answer either way