Fractional CMO Leadership
The senior marketing brain your company needs, at the fraction of the cost it can actually afford.
Interim CMO
Interim CMO Leadership
Your CMO left. The executive search will take six months. Marketing cannot sit still for six months.
The Problem This Solves
When a marketing leader exits, the damage is rarely the vacancy itself. It is the drift: campaigns running on autopilot, agencies with no one to answer to, a team that stops making decisions because nobody is authorised to make them, and a board that keeps asking for a number no one owns. By the time the permanent hire starts, they inherit two quarters of decay and spend their first quarter undoing it.
Typical EngagementDelivered inside a Core Marketing CMO retainer, or scoped as a standalone project.
See pricingAn interim CMO is a full-authority marketing executive who steps in for a defined period — typically three to nine months — while you run the permanent search. I take the decisions, hold the team and agencies to a standard, keep the pipeline moving, and hand over a marketing function in better condition than I found it. This is deliberately temporary work, and I structure it that way from day one.
What’s Included
Six things that actually change.
01
Immediate operational control
Budget, agencies, campaign approvals, and the weekly team cadence get an owner in week one, not week six.
02
Continuity of pipeline
The demand engine keeps running. Nothing critical gets paused because a decision-maker is missing.
03
Team stabilisation
Your marketers get direction, cover, and someone to escalate to — which is usually what stops them from resigning too.
04
Board and CEO reporting
The marketing update keeps arriving on schedule, with the same rigour it had before the departure.
05
Honest assessment of the function
By month two I can tell you what your permanent CMO will actually need to be good at, which sharpens the search.
06
Structured handover
Documentation, live plans, agency relationships, and a 30-day briefing for whoever takes the chair.
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
- No pipeline gap between the outgoing and incoming CMO
- A marketing team that stays intact through the transition
- A sharper, evidence-based specification for the permanent hire
- A successor who starts on month four of progress, not month one of cleanup
| Phase | Deliverable |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | Take control of budget, agency relationships, approvals, and the reporting cadence |
| Week 2–4 | Stabilisation audit: what is running, what is broken, what must not be touched mid-transition |
| Month 2–3 | Operate and improve — plus a written role specification to sharpen your executive search |
| Handover | Full documentation pack, live quarterly plan, and direct briefing of the incoming CMO |
Answers
Questions about interim cmo
Time horizon and intent. An interim CMO is a bridge — full authority for a defined window while you hire permanently, then a deliberate exit. A fractional CMO is an ongoing arrangement for a company that does not need or cannot justify a full-time marketing executive at all. Same seniority, different endpoint.
Usually within one to two weeks. That is most of the point. A permanent executive search runs three to six months before a start date, and marketing cannot productively idle for that long.
No. I tell clients this at the outset because it changes the quality of my advice. If I were auditioning for the job, I would have an incentive to make the function look dependent on me. Instead my incentive is to hand over something that runs without me.
We extend month to month. Interim engagements should never have a cliff edge — but they should also never quietly become permanent by default, so we review the arrangement every quarter with an explicit decision rather than automatic renewal.
Related
Works alongside
CMO Consulting
Sometimes you do not need a marketing leader. You need one hard question answered properly, once.
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