Fractional CMO Leadership
The senior marketing brain your company needs, at the fraction of the cost it can actually afford.
CMO Consulting
CMO Consulting
Sometimes you do not need a marketing leader. You need one hard question answered properly, once.
The Problem This Solves
There is a category of marketing problem that does not justify a retainer and cannot be solved by your team. Should we enter this segment. Is this agency worth what we pay them. Why did acquisition cost rise 40% while spend stayed flat. Is our positioning the reason deals stall at proposal. These questions need someone senior, independent, and unafraid of the answer — for a few weeks, not a few years.
Typical EngagementDelivered inside a Core Marketing CMO retainer, or scoped as a standalone project.
See pricingCMO consulting is project-scoped work: a defined question, a defined timeline, and a written answer with the reasoning shown. I am not embedded in your leadership team and I do not run your marketing function — that is the fractional engagement. Here I bring executive-level judgement to one decision, tell you what I actually think, and hand you something you can act on without me.
What’s Included
Six things that actually change.
01
A scoped question, not a scope creep
We agree the question in writing before we start. The engagement ends when it is answered.
02
Independent analysis
No agency relationships, no referral fees, no incentive to recommend anything that keeps me billing.
03
Access to your real data
Ad accounts, analytics, CRM, and financials — because opinions without the numbers behind them are worthless at this level.
04
Stakeholder interviews
Sales, service, and often customers. The answer is rarely visible from inside the marketing team alone.
05
A written recommendation
With the arithmetic, the assumptions, the risks, and what would have to be true for me to be wrong.
06
A working session, not a slide dump
I present it, defend it, and take the hard questions from your leadership team in person.
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
- A decision your leadership team can defend to a board
- The arithmetic behind it, so it survives scrutiny
- An independent read on your agencies and internal capability
- No ongoing dependency — the engagement is designed to end
| Phase | Deliverable |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | Scope the question precisely, gain data access, and agree what a useful answer looks like |
| Week 2 | Analysis: channel economics, funnel behaviour, competitive position, and internal interviews |
| Week 3 | Draft findings and pressure-testing against your team’s objections |
| Week 4 | Final written recommendation plus a live leadership working session |
Answers
Questions about cmo consulting
Accountability. A consultant delivers a recommendation and leaves; you own the execution. A fractional CMO sits in your leadership meetings, directs the team and agencies week to week, carries a pipeline number, and stays accountable for whether the strategy works in market. Consulting is cheaper and faster. Fractional is what you want when the problem is that nobody senior owns marketing.
Most engagements run $5,000 to $7,500 as a fixed fee for a scoped four-week project — the same structure as the Growth Audit. Larger multi-question or multi-market scopes are quoted individually. Fixed fee, not hourly, so the incentive is a fast clear answer rather than billable hours.
Often, but never automatically. Plenty of clients start with a scoped project, find the answer is “you need someone owning this permanently,” and move to a fractional retainer. Just as often the answer is “fix these four things and you do not need me.” I will tell you which one it is.
Yes, and I interview them as part of the analysis. I am also careful about how that is framed internally — an outside consultant reviewing the function makes people nervous, and nervous people give you sanitised answers. We agree the internal narrative before I speak to anyone.
Related
Works alongside
Interim CMO Leadership
Your CMO left. The executive search will take six months. Marketing cannot sit still for six months.
Business Consulting
Before you spend another dollar on marketing, it is worth knowing whether marketing is the problem.
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