“I need a marketing leader, not another hire.”
A marketing leader, without the salary, the search or the risk of a bad hire.
Senior marketing leadership one or two days a week: someone who sets the plan, runs the agency relationship, and coaches your team — on a three-month minimum, then month to month.
- Cadence
- 1–2 days a week
- Minimum
- 3 months
- Then
- Month to month
A full-time hire is not the only option, and often the wrong one
A full-time CMO comes with a salary and benefits, a hiring cycle, ramp time before the plan is even running, and the risk that the person who interviewed well is not the person who can run marketing across your locations. Most 5–100 location businesses do not have enough work to fill that role five days a week.
What they still need is the judgment a senior marketer brings, applied to the agency, the team and the plan already in place. That is what this engagement is built to give, in the amount of time the business can actually use.
Signals we hear most
- Marketing decisions get made in whatever time is left after everything else running the business.
- The agency asks who signs off, and the honest answer changes depending on the week.
- You have priced out a full-time marketing hire more than once, and backed away from the number each time.
- The person closest to marketing internally is capable, but is learning the job with no one senior to check with.
- Past reviews and growth plans produced a document, but no one owns it once the consultants leave.
- Priorities shift every time you sit down with the agency, because nobody set them beforehand.
What the engagement produces, month to month
- Deliverable 01
A marketing plan with owners and dates
Not a slide deck. A working plan that names who is responsible for what, and by when, so progress is a fact rather than an opinion.
- Deliverable 02
An agency or vendor managed against it
Someone senior sits in the relationship, holds the work to the plan, and pushes back when it drifts — instead of reviewing it after the fact.
- Deliverable 03
A reporting rhythm you can read in five minutes
A short, regular readout built around what changed and what it means for the business, not a dashboard you have to interpret yourself.
- Deliverable 04
A named internal person getting better at the job
Whoever owns marketing day to day is coached in the work itself, so the judgment stays in the business as their role grows into it.
Advisory or operator: pick the shape that fits your team
The work scales with how much of it your business needs someone else to run.
About a day a week
- Strategy and priorities, set with you on a regular cadence
- Review of the agency's or vendor's work against the plan
- Coaching for the person who owns marketing internally
Suits a business with a working agency relationship and someone internal already doing the work, who wants senior judgment on the decisions without someone else running the day to day.
About two days a week
- Everything in advisory
- Actually running the plan, week to week
- Owning the agency relationship directly
- Sitting in the numbers every week, not just at the monthly readout
Suits a business with no marketing leadership in place yet, or an agency relationship that needs someone actively driving it — and a growth push that needs an owner, not just an advisor.
How it runs
The full method →- 1–2 weeksDiscoveryProblem definition, impact analysis, current-state assessment, stakeholder map.
- 2–3 weeksSolution designSolution architecture, implementation roadmap, resourcing, risk and mitigation.
- Scoped to the workImplementationDeployment plan, adoption and training, performance monitoring, success measures.
How we price it
A monthly rate scoped to advisory or operator, quoted after a twenty-minute call once we know which shape fits and how many locations and vendors are involved. Three months minimum while the plan and the relationships get built, then month to month. No hourly billing, and no annual lock-in.
Questions operators actually ask
- What does a fractional CMO actually do day to day?
- Sets the plan, reviews and directs the agency's or vendor's work against it, reads the numbers every week or month depending on the shape of the engagement, and coaches whoever owns marketing internally. The exact mix depends on whether the engagement is advisory or operator.
- How is this different from just hiring an agency?
- An agency executes channels. This is the person who decides which channels matter, briefs and holds the agency to that plan, and reports the results back to you in language the business runs on. Most operators end up needing both — an agency for the work, and someone senior deciding what the work should be.
- What happens to our current agency?
- In most cases nothing changes about who does the work — the agency stays, and gets managed more closely against a plan with owners and dates. If the review of that relationship turns up something that needs to change, that becomes part of the plan rather than a surprise.
- What's the minimum commitment?
- Three months, which is roughly what it takes to build the plan, get it running with your agency, and see the first results. After that it runs month to month, and either side can end it with notice.
- How quickly can you start?
- Typically within a week or two of a first call, once we've agreed whether the engagement is advisory or operator and how many locations and vendors are involved.
- What does it cost?
- A monthly rate scoped to advisory or operator, quoted after a twenty-minute call once we know the shape and the number of locations involved. No hourly billing, and no annual lock-in beyond the three-month minimum.
Tell us what is going on.
Five questions, two minutes. You get a written read on your situation before anyone talks about scope or price.