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.