Our fractional CMO work is delivered by senior marketers who have run marketing functions, not by account managers. And because the wider agency sits behind them, a fractional CMO can bring in execution capacity without you sourcing another vendor.
A fractional CMO gives you senior marketing leadership for a fraction of an executive salary — strategy, budget ownership, and management of whoever executes — and ours comes with the market’s real rate card explained on the page: advisory work runs $150–$350/hour industry-wide, core fractional engagements $3,000–$8,000/month, embedded leadership $8,000–$15,000/month. Our own quote arrives in writing the same business day. Month-to-month, no equity ask, no lock-in — leadership you can cancel in one email.
The rate card
| Engagement | Rate | What it covers | Fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advisory | $150–$350/hour (market band) | Strategy sessions, plan reviews, hiring help, second opinions on agency proposals | Founders who execute themselves but want senior judgment on tap |
| Fractional — core | $3,000–$8,000/month, typically 2–4 days/mo (market band) | Owning the marketing plan and budget, running vendors/freelancers, monthly reporting to you | Businesses spending real money on marketing with nobody senior steering it |
| Fractional — embedded | $8,000–$15,000/month, typically 6–10 days/mo (market band) | Everything in core plus managing internal marketing staff, weekly leadership presence, owning pipeline numbers | Companies with a marketing team and no marketing leader |
Almost nobody in this market will even show you the shape of a rate card before a sales call. The bands above are the market’s real numbers, stated plainly — and our own rate for your engagement arrives the same business day you ask, in writing, because a leadership hire that starts with a pricing mystery is starting with the wrong lesson in how the relationship will communicate.
The first 30 days
What a fractional CMO does in the first 30 days, concretely — this is the plan, with dates, that the engagement letter commits to:
- Week 1 — audit the reality. Money in, leads out: every channel, every vendor contract, every number currently being reported, reconciled against your actual analytics and P&L. Most engagements find the first budget leak here.
- Week 2 — talk to the customers. Interviews with recent buyers and lost deals. Strategy written before this conversation is decoration.
- Week 3 — the plan. One page: the number marketing owes the business, the two or three channels that will produce it, what gets cut, what each remaining dollar is supposed to do.
- Week 4 — the operating rhythm. Reporting you’ll actually read, vendor accountability reset against the plan, and the first uncomfortable decisions made — usually cancelling something.
Outsourced CMO
Same role, different label — “outsourced CMO” tends to be searched by businesses replacing a departed marketing lead rather than hiring their first one. The engagement is identical to the embedded tier above, with one addition worth naming: transition work. Inheriting a predecessor’s vendor stack, half-finished campaigns, and reporting habits is its own 30-day project, and pretending otherwise is how outsourced leadership fails in month two.
Virtual CMO
Also the same role — “virtual” just means remote, which in 2026 describes most fractional work anyway. We’re NYC-based and on-site is part of the embedded tier for metro clients; for everyone else the operating rhythm runs on video, shared dashboards, and your Slack. What “virtual” should never mean: invisible. The calendar commitments in the rate card are real hours on real days, not an inbox that bills monthly.
Fractional CMO for B2B and startups
B2B: the fractional model fits B2B small companies unusually well because the marketing problem is usually strategy-shaped, not volume-shaped — long cycles, few deals, message and targeting mattering more than content tonnage. The work leans on positioning, sales-marketing alignment, and making the pipeline math visible. Startups: pre-product-market-fit, most startups need experiments and founder-led selling, not a CMO of any fraction — we’ll say so. Post-fit, when the question becomes “which channel scales this,” fractional leadership is often exactly the bridge to the first full-time hire, including running that hire’s search.
Fractional CMO vs an agency
Different layers. An agency executes channels — SEO, ads, content — and is accountable for channel results. A fractional CMO sits above the channels: deciding which ones deserve budget, holding every vendor (including agencies, including us) accountable, and owning the total number. The failure mode we see most: businesses buying execution from three vendors with nobody senior deciding what the execution is for. If you have that problem, leadership comes first — and a fractional CMO who then recommends our own agency services will put that conflict of interest in writing and price the alternatives honestly. You’re free to run our leadership with someone else’s hands, and sometimes that’s the right call.
Who shouldn’t hire a fractional CMO
- Businesses whose marketing spend is under the rate card. If total monthly marketing spend is smaller than a leadership retainer, the overhead inverts the math — buy execution with senior judgment attached instead.
- Founders who won’t delegate the decisions. A CMO of any fraction whose plans are overridden weekly is an expensive form of company.
- Companies needing full-time presence. Past a certain team size and revenue, the fraction becomes the bottleneck. Part of this job done honestly is naming the month that happens and helping hire your full-time replacement.
Terms, stated once
Month-to-month leadership with a one-sentence exit. Every account, dashboard, vendor relationship, and document created during the engagement belongs to you and lives in your systems from day one — the standing ownership guarantee applies to leadership engagements exactly as it does to everything else we do. Same-business-day replies. And the anti-guarantee, as always: anyone promising specific revenue outcomes from a leadership hire is selling astrology with a rate card.
Frequently asked questions
What is a fractional CMO?
A fractional CMO is a senior marketing executive who leads a company’s marketing part-time — typically a set number of days per month — providing the strategy, budget ownership, and team/vendor management of a chief marketing officer without the full-time salary. The longer answer, including cost comparisons and when you need one, comes down to one test: is there real budget with nobody senior steering it?
How many hours a month do you work?
The tiers above are denominated in days — typically 2–4 days/month on core and 6–10 on embedded, fixed in the engagement letter and scheduled as recurring calendar blocks you can see. Advisory is hourly as used. Scope creep runs in both directions, so hours are reported monthly like every other number.
How much does a fractional CMO cost?
The market runs from roughly $3,000/month for light-touch engagements to $15,000+/month for near-half-time work at larger companies; the comparison that matters is against a full-time CMO’s fully loaded cost, which is several multiples of any fraction.
Fractional CMO or marketing agency — which do I need first?
Ask what’s missing: if nobody in the building can say what the marketing budget is supposed to produce, leadership first. If the strategy is clear and the hands are missing, execution first. If both are missing, a fractional CMO for one quarter to set the plan — then hire execution against it — is usually the cheapest correct sequence.
What is a fractional CMO?
A fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader engaged part-time and ongoing, rather than full-time or for a single project. They own strategy, budget allocation and the performance of the marketing function, and they usually manage whoever is executing — in-house staff, freelancers, an agency, or all three.
The distinction from a consultant matters and is frequently blurred. A marketing consultant diagnoses and recommends; the recommendations land on someone else's desk. A fractional CMO consultant owns the outcome: they set the plan, they run the people executing it, and they are accountable for whether the numbers move. If a proposal ends at a strategy document, you are buying consulting, whatever it is called.
It is also not an agency relationship. An agency sells a service line and is incentivised to sell more of it. A fractional CMO is meant to tell you when the answer is to spend less, to fix the product page instead of buying more traffic, or to fire the agency.
What does a fractional CMO actually do?
In a typical engagement: set the strategy and the targets, decide where the budget goes, build or fix the measurement, manage the people and vendors executing, and report to the founder or board on what is working.
Strategy and positioning
What you sell, to whom, and why they should pick you. Most engagements find this is the actual problem rather than channel performance.
Budget allocation
Deciding what gets funded and what gets stopped. Stopping things is usually the higher-value half and the one an internal hire finds hardest.
Measurement
Making sure the numbers in the report match the numbers in the platform, and that both connect to revenue. This is frequently broken on arrival.
Team and vendors
Managing in-house marketers, freelancers and agencies, including holding agencies to a standard the client did not have the time or expertise to enforce.
Reporting
One honest monthly view for the founder or board, including what failed.
What does a fractional CMO cost, and how are rates structured?
Fractional CMO rates are normally a monthly retainer tied to days per month rather than an hourly rate, because the value is in continuity and ownership rather than in hours. Expect a meaningful monthly commitment — materially less than a full-time CMO salary plus equity, and materially more than a consultant's project fee.
Be cautious of hourly pricing here. It creates the wrong incentive on both sides: you hesitate to call, and they have no reason to solve the problem quickly. A day-rate retainer with a defined scope of work and a fixed term is the structure that behaves well.
The comparison that actually matters is not fractional-versus-full-time cost. It is what happens to the next twelve months of marketing spend with senior judgement applied to it versus without. On a business spending six figures a year on marketing, the retainer is usually smaller than the waste it removes.
When should you hire a fractional CMO?
When marketing spend has grown past the point where a founder can supervise it properly, when you have people or agencies executing without anyone senior setting direction, or when you need a full-time CMO in eighteen months and not today.
The signals are consistent. Nobody can say which channel produced last quarter's pipeline. The agency reports look good and the revenue does not move. Marketing decisions are being made by whoever has capacity rather than by whoever has the judgement. A founder is approving ad copy at eleven at night.
The wrong time is when the problem is execution capacity rather than direction. If you know exactly what to do and simply need it done, hire the doer. A fractional CMO with nobody to direct becomes an expensive strategist.
How do you find and evaluate a fractional CMO?
Evaluate on whether they will own numbers, whether they have run marketing in a business at your stage and model, and whether the scope of work is written down. The reference question that separates them is what they stopped, not what they started.
Fractional CMO, consultant, agency, full-time CMO
| Fractional CMO | Consultant | Agency | Full-time CMO | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Owns the outcome | Yes | No | For their channel only | Yes |
| Manages your team | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Manages vendors | Yes | Sometimes | No | Yes |
| Will tell you to spend less | Yes | Yes | Rarely | Yes |
| Typical commitment | Monthly retainer, 6-12 months | Project fee | Monthly retainer per service | Salary plus equity |
| Ramp time | Weeks | Days | Weeks | Months, plus a hiring cycle |
| Best when | Direction is the gap | A specific question needs answering | Execution in one channel | Marketing is the core engine |
Frequently asked questions
What is a fractional CMO?
An experienced marketing leader who runs your marketing part-time on an ongoing retainer, owning strategy, budget and the performance of the function.
What does a fractional CMO do?
Sets strategy and targets, allocates budget, fixes measurement, manages the people and agencies executing, and reports honestly on what is working.
How much does a fractional CMO cost?
Typically a monthly retainer tied to days per month. Materially less than a full-time CMO's salary and equity, and materially more than a consultant's project fee.
What are typical fractional CMO rates?
Day-rate retainers rather than hourly billing. Hourly pricing creates the wrong incentive on both sides — you hesitate to call and they gain nothing from solving it quickly.
How many days a month does a fractional CMO work?
Usually one to three days a week, depending on whether they are setting direction only or also managing a team and vendors.
When should I hire a fractional CMO?
When marketing spend has outgrown founder supervision, when people or agencies are executing without senior direction, or when you will need a full-time CMO later but not now.
What is the difference between a fractional CMO and a marketing consultant?
A consultant diagnoses and recommends. A fractional CMO owns the outcome, manages the people executing, and is accountable for the numbers.
What is the difference between a fractional CMO and an agency?
An agency sells a service line and is incentivised to sell more of it. A fractional CMO is meant to tell you when the answer is to spend less or to change agency.
What should be in a fractional CMO contract?
Days per month, the scope of work, who they manage, which numbers they own, the reporting cadence, the term, and the notice period. Vagueness here is the main source of disappointment.
What is a fractional CMO's scope of work?
Usually strategy, budget allocation, measurement, vendor and team management, and board or founder reporting. What it excludes should be written down as explicitly as what it includes.
Is a fractional CMO right for a B2B business?
B2B is where it fits most often, because long sales cycles make attribution hard and founders frequently cannot tell which activity produced pipeline.
Is a fractional CMO right for a SaaS startup?
Often yes, particularly between seed and Series A, when marketing spend is real but a full-time CMO hire would be premature and hard to attract.
How do I find a fractional CMO?
Look for someone who has run marketing in a business at your stage and model, insist the scope of work is written down, and ask references what the person stopped rather than what they started.
How long does a fractional CMO engagement last?
Six to twelve months is common. Shorter than that rarely produces compounding results; open-ended arrangements with no review point tend to drift.
Can a fractional CMO replace my agency?
Not usually — they manage it. The change is that someone qualified is now holding the agency to a standard, which is often the point.
What does a fractional CMO not do?
Day-to-day execution. If you need someone to build the campaigns rather than direct them, you need a doer and the retainer will be poor value.
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