FRACTIONAL CMO · JASON SPENCER · ASHEVILLE, NC
Fractional CMO for $1M to $10M ecommerce and home service companies
A fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader you hire part-time to own strategy, budget, and results, instead of hiring one full-time at roughly $400,000 a year fully loaded. I do that job for ecommerce and home service companies between $1M and $10M in revenue. Unlike most of this category, I am the one in the ad account, in the analytics, and in the landing page build.
No pitch. A real plan, yours either way.
30 yrs building businesses18 yrs digital marketing55+ industries5.4-yr average client retention
THE DEFINITION
What a fractional CMO is, in one paragraph
A fractional CMO is a marketing executive who takes ownership of a company's marketing strategy, budget, channel mix, and performance on a part-time retainer, typically one to two days a week, for a defined term. The role is the same as a chief marketing officer. The difference is the fraction of the week and the absence of employment, equity, and severance. A fractional CMO decides and is measured. A consultant recommends and leaves.
| Role | What you are buying | Who owns the result | Typical term |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fractional CMO | Marketing leadership and the decisions | They do | 90 days, then monthly |
| Marketing consultant | Analysis and a recommendation | You do | Project |
| Interim CMO | A seat filled while you recruit | They do, temporarily | 3 to 9 months, full time |
| Marketing agency | Production against a plan you approved | You do | Monthly retainer |
THE THESIS
What I actually touch, and what I do not
I am in the accounts. On a typical engagement I am the person logged into Google Ads and Meta, the person writing the email flow in Klaviyo, and the person reviewing the landing page before it ships. I do not hand you a strategy deck and wait for someone else to execute it. Here is the actual line, by function, between what I do myself, what I direct a named specialist to do, and what is not in scope.
| Function | I do this myself | I direct a named specialist | Not in scope |
|---|---|---|---|
| Constraint diagnosis, offer and positioning | Yes | ||
| Budget allocation and channel mix | Yes | ||
| Paid search and paid social structure | Yes | Daily build and management | |
| SEO and AI search architecture | Yes | Page production | |
| Email and SMS lifecycle | Yes | Template build and QA | |
| Landing pages and CRO | Direction and final review | Design and build | |
| Analytics and attribution | Yes | Tag and dashboard build | |
| Creative production and video | Yes | ||
| Brand identity design | Yes | ||
| Public relations and media buying outside digital | Not in scope | ||
| Your existing staff and vendors | Directed, not replaced by default |
Every specialist on an ROI.LIVE engagement is a named person you can email, not a pooled queue. You reach me directly, not an account manager.
Why this section sits second rather than last: it is the question the category will not answer. Ask any fractional CMO who is logged into the ad account. If the answer is a team, ask for the name.
PRICING · PUBLISHED AUGUST 2026
What it costs, as of August 2026
An ROI.LIVE fractional CMO engagement starts at $5,000 a month and most land between $5,000 to $15,000 a month, scaling with scope rather than with hours logged. Ad spend, software licenses, and third-party production are billed separately and are never marked up. The published US market range in August 2026 is $1,000 to $40,000 a month, and that 40x spread is caused almost entirely by undisclosed hours and undisclosed scope, not by real disagreement about the work.
| Your revenue | Typical monthly retainer | What the engagement covers | Billed separately |
|---|---|---|---|
| $1M to $3M | $5,000 to $7,500 | One constraint at a time. Usually offer, paid, or measurement. | Ad spend, software |
| $3M to $6M | $7,500 to $12,000 | Full channel mix plus the measurement rebuild. | Ad spend, software, production |
| $6M to $10M | $12,000 to $15,000 | Full marketing ownership plus team direction. | Ad spend, software, production |
A $10,000 retainer with $8,000 of media behind it is an $18,000 month. Any operator who will not split those two lines on the page is hiding one of them from you.
What a full-time CMO actually costs
On a $300,000 base, a full-time CMO costs roughly $407,000 a year steady state, and about $515,000 in year one once a retained search fee is included. Worth knowing before you compare: this category routinely applies a flat 25% to 35% payroll load to a CMO salary. That is wrong at this income level, because Social Security contributions stop at the 2026 wage base, which puts the real employer payroll load closer to 5% of cash compensation.
| Line | Amount | Assumption |
|---|---|---|
| Base salary | $300,000 | Mid-point of published 2026 US CMO ranges |
| Bonus | $60,000 | Assumed at 20% of base |
| Employer payroll tax | ~$17,000 | Social Security capped at the 2026 wage base, plus Medicare and unemployment |
| Benefits | $30,000 | Health, retirement match, and statutory |
| Steady state, per year | ~$407,000 | Sum of the four lines above |
| Retained search fee, year one only | ~$108,000 | Assumed at 30% of first-year cash compensation |
| Year one, all in | ~$515,000 | Steady state plus the one-time search fee |
These are assumptions, stated so you can change them. Published August 2026. Next reviewed February 2027. If you want the model with your own salary band in it, ask on the call and I will run it.
The honest caveat this category leaves out: below roughly 13 hours a week of executive attention, a fractional CMO costs more per hour than a full-time hire would. The saving only exists because you are buying less time. Buy the decision, not the hours, or hire full-time.
CAPACITY
How many clients I carry at once
I carry no more than 6 fractional CMO clients at a time, and I will tell you the current number on the first call. The most common structural failure in this category is a leader whose attention is split across six or eight companies, none of which they know well enough to be useful in. If I am at capacity when you call, I will say so and tell you when a slot opens rather than take the retainer and thin the work.
1
Fractional CMO slot open of 6
Updated 27 August 2026 · I do not take two direct competitors in the same market at the same time.
Zero of the eight fractional CMO pages currently ranking on page one of Google publish a client cap or a current count. Ask every candidate for both numbers, and ask them in writing.
THE PERSON ON YOUR ACCOUNT
Who does the work: Jason Spencer
Jason Spencer is the founder of ROI.LIVE and the person who does the work on every fractional CMO engagement. He has 30 years building and running businesses and 18 of those years in digital marketing, across 55+ industries, working from Asheville, North Carolina. There is no bench, no account manager layer, and no junior handoff after the sale.
He did not start in a marketing department. He started as an IT innovator inside the largest private company in Philadelphia, left in 2004 to build a brick-and-mortar IT services company to a team of twelve, and sold it in 2008 to build ROI.LIVE. That is the difference between someone who has managed a marketing budget and someone who has carried a payroll. He has carried one.
Certified Google Partner and certified Klaviyo Partner. Paid media across Google, Meta, and TikTok. Search, answer-engine, and generative-engine optimization. The cross-industry range is deliberate: a booking-friction fix built for an HVAC company became the angle that lifted a med spa's consult rate weeks later.
30
years building businesses
18
years in digital marketing
55+
industries served
5.4 yr
average client retention
For context on that retention figure: Spencer Stuart puts average CMO tenure at an S&P 500 company at about four years, the shortest of any C-suite role. The average ROI.LIVE relationship has outlasted it.
THE RECEIPTS
Named clients, dates, and numbers
Every claim on this page has a client, a date, and a number. Not industry benchmarks and not a logo wall: our own pipeline, and we will walk you through any of these against your own books on the first call. Nobody else in this category publishes a cost per business outcome. Blue Tree's is on this page.
EAST PERRY · ECOMMERCE · 3-YEAR ARC
$396K → $2.57M
Annual revenue over three years. 5.09× blended paid ROAS, 18.56× all-time SEO ROI on $71.8K invested, +95% year over year.
Receipt · dated · checkable
COASTAL CAROLINA COMFORT · HVAC
$750K → $2.18M
From the year before we started to 2025. The owner sold to a larger HVAC company in Q1 2026.
Receipt · exit · Q1 2026
BLUE TREE · POOL & OUTDOOR LIVING
$172
Marketing investment per job won, H1 2026. 981 jobs signed in 15 months, traced from source to won work.
Receipt · cost per outcome
REMARKABLE · DTC COATINGS
$0 → $1.2M+
Annual revenue. Arrived burning $10K a month on a big-agency retainer with no revenue to show, then crossed seven figures on a small organic budget.
Receipt · turnaround
ZIZE BIKES · PLUS-SIZE BIKES
8×
Monthly revenue growth, $10K a month to $80K+ a month. Flat at the same number for years before the plateau broke.
Receipt · plateau broken
WINDOWS SOURCE OF HOUSTON · WINDOWS
25.7×
Return on organic search investment, with paid Meta returning 4.9× alongside it. Two engines, both profitable.
Receipt · search + paid
FIT
Who this is for, and who should not hire me
This is built for ecommerce and home service companies doing $1M to $10M a year that already have marketing activity, already have revenue, and do not have one person accountable for whether any of it works. If you are pre-revenue, looking for a co-founder in exchange for equity, or looking for someone to execute a plan you have already written and validated, hire someone else. I will tell you that on the first call rather than after the first invoice.
Hire me if
- You are between $1M and $10M in revenue with proven demand.
- You are already spending on marketing and cannot tell what is working.
- You have tried a strategist who handed execution to someone else, and watched the plan drift.
- You are the bottleneck: every marketing decision routes through you.
- You want the person setting the strategy to also be accountable for the number.
- You are willing to act on what the data says, even when it contradicts you.
Do not hire me if
- You are pre-revenue or pre-product-market-fit. You need customers, not a CMO.
- You want a co-founder in exchange for equity.
- You already have a validated plan and just need production volume. That is an agency.
- You need someone on site five days a week. That is a full-time hire.
- You want a channel plan handed to you in thirty minutes.
- You are not willing to hand over the marketing decision.
The verticals where the receipts are deepest: pools and outdoor living, home comfort and HVAC, windows and exteriors, landscaping, and direct-to-consumer ecommerce. Each of those has a named client with a number on this page.
THE FIRST 90 DAYS
What happens in the first 90 days
In the first two weeks I do not run a brand workshop. I get access to your ad accounts, analytics, CRM, and P&L, and I come back with a written diagnosis of where the money is going and what it is producing, by channel, with numbers. By day 30 you have a written plan with owners and dates. By day 60 the first three changes are live. By day 90 you have a baseline, a scorecard, and a decision about whether to continue.
DAYS 1 TO 14
The diagnosis
Access to accounts, analytics, CRM, and the P&L. I find where the money goes and what it produces, by channel.
You receive: the Growth Constraint Snapshot
DAYS 15 TO 30
The plan
The one constraint capping the others gets named, and the sequence to clear it gets written down with owners and dates.
You receive: a written 90-day plan
DAYS 31 TO 60
The first changes ship
The constraint gets fixed in market, not in a deck. Usually offer, paid structure, or the path from lead to booked work.
You receive: live changes, not slides
DAYS 61 TO 90
Measurement and the decision
Attribution gets rebuilt so every dollar is traced. Then the next constraint is named and sequenced.
You receive: a baseline and a scorecard
What you get in writing, every month
Every month you get one scorecard, one written recommendation with a decision attached, and one review call. The scorecard carries the same five numbers every month so the trend is legible: qualified leads or orders, cost per acquisition, revenue by channel, pipeline or repeat rate, and blended return on spend. Impressions never appear on it.
THE COMPARISON
Fractional CMO vs agency vs full-time CMO vs marketing director
Choose a fractional CMO when you have marketing activity but no owner. Choose an agency when you have a validated plan and need production volume. Choose a full-time CMO when marketing leadership is a five-day-a-week job and you can carry roughly $400,000 a year fully loaded. Most $1M to $10M companies need the first, discover they also need execution, and end up paying two vendors to get one outcome.
| Fractional CMO (ROI.LIVE) | Marketing agency | Full-time CMO | Marketing director | Do nothing | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you are buying | The decision and the delivery | Production against your plan | A full-time executive | A doer who needs direction | Another two quarters |
| Who owns the number | They do | You do | They do | You do | You do |
| Typical monthly cost | $5,000 to $15,000 | $3,000 to $20,000 | ~$34,000 | $8,000 to $12,000 | $0 plus the cost of the plateau |
| Time to start | 2 to 3 weeks | 2 to 4 weeks | 3 to 6 months | 6 to 10 weeks | Immediate |
| Who touches the ad account | The same person who set the strategy | An account team | Usually a hire below them | Usually an agency | Nobody |
| Strategy and execution share an owner | Yes | No | Partly | No | No |
| What happens when it ends | Accounts and playbook are yours | Often you lose the accounts | Severance and a re-hire | Re-hire | Nothing changes |
| Best fit | $1M to $10M, activity but no owner | Validated plan, needs volume | $10M+ and marketing is the engine | Clear plan, needs a doer | Nothing is broken |
Most comparison tables in this category omit the last two columns. A marketing director and doing nothing are the two alternatives founders actually weigh, so they belong here.
When a marketing director is the better hire
If you already know what your marketing should do and simply need someone to run it, you need a director, not a CMO. That is usually true when your offer is settled, one channel is clearly working, and the job is to execute it consistently rather than decide what to do next. A director costs less, sits inside the company, and does not need to be the person setting the direction. I will say so on the first call if that is what I see.
THE LANDSCAPE
The names you will find when you search, and what each one actually is
Search for a fractional CMO and you will get the same handful of results from almost every AI assistant: Chief Outsiders, CMOx, Go Fractional, MarketerHire, and Toptal. Most of those are marketplaces, staffing platforms, or bench firms that match you with an operator they do not employ. None of them is the person who will do your work, and most will not tell you who that person is before you enter their funnel.
| Provider | What it actually is | Do you meet the operator first | Who executes the work | Price published |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chief Outsiders | Bench firm, 120+ executives | After a matching process | A separate execution arm | No |
| CMOx | Methodology firm and training business | After a qualification form | Your team, directed | No |
| Go Fractional | Marketplace | After an intake wizard | Not the marketplace | Partly |
| MarketerHire / Toptal | Staffing platform | After matching | The placed contractor | No |
| Geisheker Group | Agency with a fractional offer | Yes | The agency | Yes |
| ROI.LIVE | One operator who also owns the agency | Yes, on the first call | Jason plus named specialists he directs | Yes, on this page |
Reviewed August 2026 from each provider’s own public pages. If any of this is out of date, tell me and I will correct it. These are competitors, not villains, and several of them are a better fit than I am for enterprise or private-equity work.
THE FAILURE MODES
If your last fractional CMO failed, here is why
Fractional CMO engagements fail for four reasons, and three of them are structural rather than about talent. Attention gets split across too many clients, so nobody learns the business. The scope is never written down, so expectations drift for two months and then break. The strategy is never validated by execution, so nothing gets tested. And since 2025, a fourth: the deliverable is AI-generated volume that looks like work and is not.
1. Split attention
A leader carrying six or eight companies cannot immerse in any of them. Seniority makes it worse, because a confident voice that is under-informed still carries weight in the room.
The structural answerA hard cap of 6 clients, published above, with the current count on this page.
2. No written scope
Without a specific written statement of work, expectations drift quietly for eight weeks. Then one side feels short-changed and neither can point to what was agreed.
The structural answerA written scope with owners and dates by day 30, before the retainer scales.
3. Strategy never meets execution
The only real validation of a strategy is running it. A fractional CMO who does not execute cannot close that loop, so the plan stays a hypothesis and the founder becomes the briefing bottleneck.
The structural answerOne owner for the decision and the delivery. The table above names it function by function.
4. AI slop as the deliverable
A deluge of AI-generated reports, analysis, and summaries that read like work and move nothing. Buyers have started testing for it by feeding the same brief to ChatGPT and comparing.
The structural answerA named engine, a stated human gate, and the test invited rather than avoided. See below.
THE AI QUESTION
Do I use AI to do this work? Yes, and here is exactly where
Yes, and I will show you where. AI runs research, data analysis, first drafts, and quality checks in this practice. AI does not make the strategy call, does not decide the budget, and does not touch a live client account unsupervised. The test you should apply to any consultant, including me, is the one a business owner posted publicly: feed the same brief to ChatGPT and see how close the output is to what you were charged for.
| Task | AI does the first pass | A human decides | Never automated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Market and competitor research | Yes | What it means for you | |
| Query and demand analysis | Yes | What we go after | |
| Copy and content first drafts | Yes | Every word that ships | |
| Data analysis and reporting | Yes | The recommendation attached to it | |
| Budget and bid changes | Human-invoked, one run at a time | ||
| Live ad account writes | Dry run read by a human first | ||
| Strategy and the constraint call | Jason | ||
| Anything published in your name | Jason approves |
The two systems worth naming, and how each one works
LOOMeria is the in-house engine ROI.LIVE built. The mechanism, stated plainly: a governed brand corpus for each client holding voice, positioning, ideal customer, samples, and assets, loaded on every deliverable; a memory layer that recalls and cites past work so month six is sharper than month one; a library of versioned production skills that encode the method; and an enforced anti-slop and fact-check gate before anything reaches a human reviewer. It is a frontier model wrapped in your brand and our judgment, not a model we trained from scratch. A human owns every publish decision.
Search Command is how the search and AI-visibility work gets sized. The mechanism: instead of guessing a keyword list, it measures the full query universe for your topic, collapses it to unique search intents so two phrasings of the same question become one page rather than two competing ones, then derives coverage from that lattice. Coverage is derived, not asserted, which is why the map is not limited by what anyone happened to think of. In 2026 that matters because buyers ask an assistant before they open Google.
This page is the demonstration. It was built on that method, and if you found it by searching, the method worked.
THE SCORECARD
How to vet any fractional CMO, including me
Ask every candidate the same seven questions and score the answers before you compare prices. Score each answer 0 to 3, where 0 is a dodge and 3 is a specific number or a name. Anyone under 14 out of 21 is a no, regardless of their deck. My own answers are below each question so you can hold me to them.
01
How many clients are you carrying right now, and what is your cap?
My answerCap of 6. Current count and open slots are published on this page with a date stamp, and I will confirm both on the call.
02
Who physically touches my ad account, and what is their name?
My answerMe, for structure and budget. A named specialist for daily build and management, and you get their name and email in week one. The full function-by-function line is in the table above.
03
What would you actually do in the first 30 days?
My answerDays 1 to 14, a written diagnosis from your accounts, analytics, CRM, and P&L. Days 15 to 30, a written plan with owners and dates. No brand workshop.
04
Show me one client you have kept longer than three years.
My answerAverage client retention is 5.4 years. East Perry ran three years from $396K to $2.57M a year. I will give you references on the call.
05
What does a failed engagement look like in your history?
My answerAsk me on the call and I will tell you about one, what I got wrong, and what changed after it. Anyone who says they have never had one is either new or not telling you the truth.
06
How do you make money besides my retainer?
My answerI do not take referral fees or kickbacks from vendors I recommend, and I do not earn a placement margin on anyone I put on your account. Ad spend and software are billed at cost. One owner, one invoice.
07
What number will you be measured on?
My answerOne that shows up in your bank account, agreed before we start. Qualified leads or orders, cost per acquisition, revenue by channel, pipeline or repeat rate, and blended return on spend. Never impressions.
Red flags, written as conditions rather than adjectives
- ⚠They will not tell you how many clients they carry.
- ⚠They cannot name the person who will touch your ad account.
- ⚠Their first 30 days is a discovery phase and a brand workshop.
- ⚠They publish no price anywhere and will not give a range on the first call.
- ⚠The monthly number is published but the minimum term is not, so a $10,000 month is quietly a $60,000 commitment.
- ⚠They cannot tell you who owns the ad accounts and analytics on the day you leave.
- ⚠They have never had an engagement go badly.
- ⚠The proposal reads like the last three you were sent, down to the gradient.
Two of those eight are ones I would fail if I let things slip, which is the point. A checklist that cannot indict the person publishing it is a brochure, not a checklist.
TWO WAYS TO START
Start with a conversation, or start with a diagnosis
There are two ways in. The growth plan call is free and it is a real teardown, not a pitch. The Growth Constraint Snapshot is a paid, fixed-scope diagnostic with a written deliverable, for founders who want the answer without a sales conversation attached to it. Neither one requires you to decide anything on the call.
START HERE · FREE
The growth plan call
Free30 minutes · on my calendar
Bring your numbers. We open the books together, find the leaks live, and you leave with a written plan you keep whether we work together or not.
- What you spend, what you make, where you are stuck
- A 30-minute teardown, done live, not prepared in advance
- A written plan in plain English, yours either way
- No deck, no pitch, no close, and no decision asked of you
Book the free growth plan
You will not be sold to. Worst case, you hang up with a plan to run yourself.
PAID DIAGNOSTIC · FIXED SCOPE
The Growth Constraint Snapshot
$2,500Written deliverable · not a sales call
A full diagnostic of what is actually capping your growth, delivered in writing. Growth rarely stalls for five reasons at once. It stalls for one, and the other four are symptoms.
- I go into your ad accounts, analytics, CRM, and numbers
- The one binding constraint gets named, with the numbers behind it
- The sequence to clear it, with what to do first and what to ignore
- What it is worth if you fix it, and what it costs you if you do not
- Delivered in writing, then a call to walk you through it
Book the Snapshot
The fee is not credited toward a retainer. If it were, this would be a sales call with a deposit, which is the thing I am trying not to sell you.
Do not book the Snapshot if you want a channel plan in thirty minutes. Anyone who hands you one that fast has not looked at your business, and I would rather tell you that now than take your money to prove it.
Book the Growth Constraint Snapshot
QUESTIONS
Questions founders ask before they book
How much does a fractional CMO cost in 2026?
Published US retainers run $1,000 to $40,000 a month, a 40x spread caused mostly by undisclosed hours and undisclosed scope rather than real disagreement. ROI.LIVE retainers start at $5,000 a month and most land between $5,000 to $15,000 a month. Ad spend, software, and third-party production are billed separately and never marked up.
Do fractional CMOs actually execute, or just advise?
Usually they advise. Most fractional CMOs set direction and hand execution to your team, a freelancer, or an agency, which is why buyers end up with a strategy deck and nothing moving. At ROI.LIVE the same owner who sets the strategy owns the agency that ships the ads, the pages, and the emails.
What does a fractional CMO actually do?
A fractional CMO owns marketing strategy, budget allocation, channel mix, and the performance number, on a part-time retainer. In practice that means diagnosing what is capping growth, deciding where the money goes, directing the people who execute, and reporting on what it produced.
What is the difference between a fractional CMO and a marketing consultant?
A fractional CMO decides and is measured on the result. A consultant analyzes and recommends, then leaves the decision and the execution with you. If the person you are hiring is not accountable for a number, you have hired a consultant regardless of the title on the contract.
Fractional CMO or marketing agency: which do I need?
An agency executes a plan you already have. A fractional CMO decides what the plan should be. Buying both means paying two margins and refereeing them when results stall. ROI.LIVE collapses it into one owner accountable for the decision and the delivery, on one invoice.
Is a fractional CMO worth it at $2M in revenue?
At $2M, yes, if the person executes. A pure advisor at $5,000 to $15,000 a month adds a briefing bottleneck, because nothing moves on the days they are not there. Below roughly 13 hours a week of executive attention, a fractional CMO also costs more per hour than a full-time hire would.
How many hours a week does a fractional CMO work?
Typical engagements run 5 to 20 hours a week. The more useful question is how many clients they carry at once, because that is what determines whether they know your business well enough to be useful. ROI.LIVE caps concurrent fractional CMO clients and publishes the current count.
What does a full-time CMO cost by comparison?
On a $300,000 base with a 20% bonus, benefits, and employer payroll tax, roughly $407,000 a year steady state, and about $515,000 in year one once a retained search fee is included. Note that Social Security contributions stop at the 2026 wage base, so the real payroll load is far below the 25% to 35% this category usually quotes.
What is not included in a fractional CMO retainer?
Media spend, software licenses, and third-party production are separate. The retainer buys decisions and delivery hours. A $10,000 retainer with $8,000 of ad spend behind it is an $18,000 month. Any operator who will not split those two lines on the page is hiding one of them from you.
How do I know I am not paying for ChatGPT output?
Ask to see the last thing they wrote and who approved it. ROI.LIVE runs an in-house engine, LOOMeria, trained on your brand and your data, and a human makes every publish decision. Speed comes from the tooling. Judgment does not get delegated to it, and nothing ships unreviewed.
Do you work with businesses outside ecommerce and home services?
Yes. The receipts are deepest in pools and outdoor living, HVAC, windows, landscaping, and direct-to-consumer ecommerce, but the work spans 55+ industries including B2B services, med spa, beauty, and financial. Cross-industry pattern transfer is a deliberate part of the method rather than a compromise.
Are you remote, or will you come here?
ROI.LIVE is based in Asheville, North Carolina and works with clients across the United States. The work is remote by default, with the monthly strategy review on video. On-site visits happen when there is a reason for one, and they are agreed in advance rather than billed as a surprise.
What happens to my accounts and data if we stop working together?
Everything built is yours: ad accounts, analytics properties, domains, tag containers, creative files, content, and the written playbook, transferred in working condition. If an operator cannot tell you who owns the accounts on the day you leave, assume the answer is that they do.
Can you work with my existing in-house marketing person?
Yes, and that is the most common setup at this size. Your marketing person keeps doing the work and gains someone senior to set direction and unblock decisions. I direct rather than replace by default, and I will tell you honestly if the role and the person are mismatched rather than let you find out in six months.
How is a fractional CMO different from an interim CMO?
An interim CMO fills a full-time seat temporarily while you recruit a permanent one, usually three to nine months at close to full-time cost. A fractional CMO is a permanent part-time arrangement with no expectation that it converts to a full-time hire. Different problem, different structure.
THE NEXT STEP
Bring your numbers. I will tell you what is actually wrong.
Thirty minutes. I look at what you spend and what it produces, and I tell you whether you have a leadership problem, an execution problem, or a measurement problem. If it is not something I should own, I will say so on that call and point you at what you actually need.
1 fractional CMO slot open of 6. Updated 27 August 2026.