A part-time marketing executive who takes ownership of the function: strategy, budget allocation, the team and agencies, and accountability for the result.
Not a consultant who advises and leaves. Not an agency that executes channels. An owner, working a defined number of days per week, for a fraction of what a full-time chief marketing officer costs.
Most companies arrive at this role from the same place. Revenue is real, marketing spend has become a meaningful line on the P&L, and nobody in the building can say with confidence which parts of it are working.
There's a gap that opens up in most companies somewhere past $10M in revenue. Marketing has grown beyond one person's job. There are channels running, an agency or two, maybe a marketing manager or a small team. Things are being executed. But the person deciding where the budget goes is either the owner, who has six other functions to run, or a marketing manager who has never held a P&L and isn't positioned to tell the CEO that a channel should be cut.
That isn't a talent problem. It's a seniority gap. The function needs someone accountable for allocation and outcomes, and the business often isn't ready to carry a full-time executive at $250,000+ in base salary before bonus, equity, and benefits to get it.
A marketing plan tied to your revenue targets, with budget assigned by expected return and revisited as evidence comes in. Not more activity. A thesis about where money should go and why.
Building and managing the people doing the work, whether that's internal hires, agencies, or contractors, on a fixed delivery cadence. Strategic direction stays with the CMO.
A weekly scorecard covering your target KPIs alongside blended return across the whole portfolio, reviewed with leadership and adjusted openly. Including when the numbers are bad.
The distinction that matters: a fractional CMO sits on your side of the table. An agency is paid to keep executing the channels it sells. A fractional CMO is paid to decide whether those channels deserve the money.
The revenue number is the least useful indicator, but it's the one people ask about, so here it is alongside the signals that matter more.
| Signal | Ready | Not yet |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | Past roughly $10M | Under $5M, pre-product-market-fit |
| Marketing spend | Enough that misallocation is expensive | Small enough a manager can run it |
| Team | People executing, nobody deciding | No one executing yet |
| Reporting | Describes activity, not return | No spend to report on |
| Agencies | Two or more, unmanaged | None, or one tightly scoped |
| The owner | Is the bottleneck on every decision | Still has capacity to run marketing |
The clearest single tell: if you cannot answer which channel produced our last ten customers without asking three people and getting three answers, you have the problem this role solves.
This matters more than the qualification list, and most people writing about this role won't tell you.
A fractional CMO is the wrong hire if you haven't found product-market fit, because strategy cannot substitute for a product people want. It's wrong if what you actually need is execution capacity, in which case hire a contractor or an agency and save the money. It's wrong if leadership isn't prepared to change anything, since an executive who can't get decisions made is an expensive observer. And it's wrong if you want someone to do the work rather than own the outcome.
Four situations where hiring me would be a mistake →Every option below is the right answer for some company. The question is which problem you actually have.
| Option | Best when | The tradeoff |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing agency | You know the strategy and need execution in specific channels | Paid to keep executing what they sell |
| Full-time CMO | Decision volume genuinely fills a week | $250,000+ before bonus and equity, plus a long search |
| Marketing consultant | You have a specific bounded question | Advice you receive rather than decisions someone owns |
| Marketing director | You need the day-to-day run well | Rarely positioned to reallocate budget or overrule a channel |
| Fractional CMO | You need executive ownership at less than full-time cost | You get days per week, not a person in every meeting |
Senior judgment above an existing team. Allocation review, plan pressure-testing, and a standing session with leadership.
Hands-on ownership of the function: strategy, budget, team and agency management, the weekly scorecard, and accountability for the outcome.
For comparison, a full-time CMO typically costs $250,000+ in base salary before bonus, equity, benefits, and the months of search required to hire one.
The honest caveat on any published range: scope drives price. Two days a week running a large media budget across four markets is not the same engagement as a standing advisory session, and pricing either from a package rather than from the problem produces a bad outcome for somebody.
What the return actually looks like →The first 30 days are audits, not launches. Where revenue actually comes from, where budget is leaking, which existing assets are underused. Recommendations come after evidence, not before.
After that the cadence is fixed: a weekly scorecard reviewed with leadership, two-week execution sprints with the team and agencies, and quarterly plans tied to a longer-term view. Everything gets documented as it goes, so the function keeps running whether or not I'm in the room and the knowledge doesn't live in one person's head.
There's no fixed end date. Some engagements run a few quarters, others run for years. The right length is however long the arrangement keeps returning more than it costs, and that's a conversation worth having openly at any point rather than a countdown set at the start.
A fractional CMO is a part-time marketing executive who takes ownership of a company's marketing function: the strategy, the budget allocation, the team and agencies, and accountability for the result. Not a consultant who advises and leaves, and not an agency that executes channels. An owner, working a defined number of days per week, for a fraction of what a full-time chief marketing officer costs.
No. A consultant delivers advice or a plan, and accountability ends at delivery. A fractional CMO owns the outcome, manages the team and agencies, and is measured on results.
Typically one to three days per week per company, depending on scope. The engagement is sized to the problem rather than sold as a fixed package.
There is no set timeline. Some engagements run a few quarters, others run for years. The right length is however long the arrangement keeps returning more than it costs. Plenty of companies well into eight figures keep fractional leadership indefinitely, because executive judgment at the cadence their decisions actually arrive is better value than carrying a full-time executive's fixed cost.
Yes. The work that moves a marketing function is allocation decisions, team leadership, and weekly review of honest numbers. That runs on operating cadence, not proximity. In-person time goes where it earns its keep.
Established businesses past roughly $10M in revenue, typically eight and nine figures. The common thread isn't industry, it's that marketing has grown big enough to need an owner and honest measurement.
Advisory engagements generally run $3,000–$4,500 per month and hands-on fractional CMO work $7,500–$20,000+ per month, depending on days per week and scope. A full-time CMO typically costs $250,000+ in base salary before bonus, equity, and benefits.
Based in Toronto, working with companies across Canada and internationally. You'll get a direct answer about whether I can help, and if I'm not the right fit, I'll say so.