“I need a marketing leader, not another hire.”
A fractional CMO for multi-location brands.
SOLVBL gives multi-location brands and operators a senior marketing leader one or two days a week, without the salary, the search or the risk of a bad hire. We set the plan, split it between the brand and the locations, run the agency against it, and coach whoever owns marketing in-house.
- 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, and ramp time before the plan is even running — plus 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. We set out what each option really costs, line by line.
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 worth checking
- 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.
What a fractional CMO owns when the business has locations
A single-site business has one marketing plan. A multi-location brand has one plan per location and a brand above them, and these are the five decisions that sit between the two.
- The split between the brand and the locations
- Which spend runs centrally and which runs locally, who decides each, and how a location's budget follows its stage: presale or opening, ramping, or mature. That includes the central marketing budget and any minimum local spend each location is expected to run.
- Numbers by location, not just the company total
- Cost per lead and cost per new customer for each location, read every month. A company-wide average hides the locations that need help; a location-level readout shows which ones are behind and gives each a specific fix instead of the same plan as everyone else.
- A plan location managers will actually run
- A local marketing playbook each location manager can follow, and a readout each manager can see, so the brand's plan reaches every location instead of stopping at headquarters.
- New locations and existing ones
- For a brand that is still opening locations, launch marketing for new sites and demand for existing ones compete for the same budget and the same agency's attention. The plan says how much goes to each, and measures them separately.
- Who executes what
- The client's agency and vendors make the ads and buy the media. We decide what that work should be, brief it, and hold it to the plan, so there is one senior owner across every vendor.
By industry: fitness studios · med spas
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. Either shape is delivered senior-only: there is no junior account team between you and the person setting the plan.
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.
- 011–2 weeksDiscoveryProblem definition, impact analysis, current-state assessment, stakeholder map.
- 022–3 weeksSolution designSolution architecture, implementation roadmap, resourcing, risk and mitigation.
- 03Scoped 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. No hourly billing, no annual lock-in. Three months minimum while the plan and the relationships get built, then month to month.
Common questions
- What does a fractional CMO do for a multi-location brand?
- A fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader who works one or two days a week instead of full time. For a multi-location brand, that means setting the marketing plan, deciding how spend splits between the brand and the locations, reading results location by location, and holding the agency and local vendors to the plan. SOLVBL provides this for multi-location brands and operators, typically 5 to 100 locations, and delivery is senior-only.
- Does this work for a brand still opening locations and for an established chain?
- Yes. For a brand still adding locations, the work includes the central marketing budget, getting every location to run the plan, and the balance between launching new sites and filling existing ones. For an established chain, it centers on location-level spend and the agency. The industries we cover are fitness and wellness studios, med spas and aesthetics, and chiropractic and dental groups.
- How is this different from hiring an agency?
- An agency executes channels. A fractional CMO decides which channels matter, briefs the agency, holds it to the plan and reports results back in the terms the business runs on. Your current agency usually stays and gets managed more closely; if the relationship needs to change, that becomes part of the plan rather than a surprise.
- What do the first three months produce?
- The engagement opens with the same Discovery and Solution Design stages as every SOLVBL engagement: a read of the current spend, agency and location numbers, then a plan with owners and dates. The rest of the three months puts that plan to work with your agency and reads the first results against it. 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 a fractional CMO cost?
- SOLVBL charges a monthly rate scoped to advisory or operator, quoted after a twenty-minute call. Never hourly, and no 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.