When Should You
Hire a Fractional CMO?
A Fractional CMO provides an ideal solution for companies at pivotal moments in their growth. Below are scenarios where hiring a part-time Chief Marketing Officer delivers immediate and strategic value:
Overhaul Your Brand, Positioning & Messaging
Your company’s level of brand awareness is essential for generating demand and capturing market share. A Fractional CMO brings the expertise needed to lead rebranding efforts or refresh messaging to ensure your offerings resonate with ideal customer personas (ICPs). By refining your brand and positioning, they help accelerate the customer journey and fill the sales pipeline with high-quality leads.
Revitalize Growth Trajectories
If your company’s growth has plateaued, a Fractional CMO Agency can pinpoint obstacles and launch new strategic initiatives to reignite momentum. By addressing underperforming areas and reallocating resources, they help ensure that your marketing delivers measurable results.
Pre- or Post-Acquisition Due Diligence, Discovery & Integration
Before and after a merger or acquisition, a Fractional CMO conducts due diligence on marketing readiness, assessing KPIs, strategies, resources, channels, and martech systems to ensure the combined entity can meet growth targets. By hiring a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, they can oversee integration planning for a smooth transition, accelerating both the acquisition’s time-to-value and the realization of its strategic benefits.
Lead Marketing Through Leadership Transitions
In times of a void or leadership change, hiring a Fractional CMO can be the bridge your business needs to maintain marketing momentum and advance strategic initiatives. A part-time Chief Marketing Officer offers stability and provides clear, expert guidance for existing teams while aligning efforts with growth objectives. By ensuring continuity and keeping your marketing on course, a Fractional CMO Agency supports your company’s growth trajectory during transition periods.
Audit and Optimize Organizational Marketing Performance
A Fractional CMO conducts a thorough audit to assess marketing talent, department structure, and any gaps in expertise. They review current strategies and KPIs, aligning them with growth objectives, and identify areas to optimize for better impact. By analyzing martech systems and operational processes, they remove barriers to growth, ensuring your marketing infrastructure supports efficient, scalable efforts. This audit establishes a clear course for sustainable growth and operational improvement.
Guide New Product Launches
Hiring a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer provides the strategic oversight essential for a successful product launch. They develop a comprehensive, multi-channel campaign strategy tailored to target audiences and maximize market impact. Leading both internal and external resources, a Fractional CMO Agency ensures seamless execution across all channels—from messaging creation to customer engagement—positioning the product for revenue growth and optimal market penetration.
Optimize Marketing for Acquisition or Investment Readiness
If your company is preparing for an exit, hiring an experienced Fractional CMO can be invaluable. They assess the entire marketing operation, identifying key areas for improvement to enhance appeal to potential investors or buyers. By optimizing your martech infrastructure, aligning with due diligence requirements, and showcasing the company’s readiness for growth, a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer helps strengthen valuation and market share.
Develop an Effective Marketing Strategy
Companies without a strategic marketing leader often lack a cohesive strategy, leading to disjointed, ad-hoc tactics that are ineffective in driving meaningful impact. A Fractional CMO for hire brings the expertise needed to develop a long-term roadmap aligned with your business objectives. They provide a fresh perspective on untapped growth opportunities, guiding the company in developing and executing a multi-faceted plan that generates a higher return on marketing spend.
Develop a Strategic Marketing Budget to Achieve Growth Targets
A Fractional CMO collaborates with your executive team and board to align growth goals with the required marketing resources and budget. Many companies without a Chief Marketing Officer face questions about optimal spending levels, channel prioritization, and measuring marketing performance. A Fractional CMO helps resolve these uncertainties by crafting a budget grounded in realistic growth targets, ensuring each dollar is allocated to the most effective channels that drive measurable results.
Conduct a Competitive Analysis
Understanding competitors’ strategies is crucial to maintaining a competitive edge. A Fractional CMO conducts in-depth competitive analyses to help identify opportunities and ensure your marketing strategy remains adaptive and optimized.
Optimize Your Martech Infrastructure
Your martech stack or infrastructure is essential for scalable growth. A Fractional CMO ensures your CRM, automation tools, and analytics systems are fully optimized to enhance marketing capabilities and revenue growth.
Evaluate and Optimize Marketing Channels
A Fractional CMO reviews your current media mix and marketing channels, adjusting your strategy to ensure resources are invested in the highest-performing platforms. This approach helps optimize return on ad spend (ROAS) and improve performance.
Conduct an Agency Review
Hiring a Fractional CMO provides essential expertise during an agency review, evaluating current agency partnerships to identify strengths, weaknesses, and alignment with your company’s unique marketing objectives. Recognizing specific needs in functional areas or channels, a Fractional CMO Agency bridges gaps between internal resources and agency talents, ensuring the partnership is fully equipped to support and execute a cohesive marketing strategy.
What You Get When You
Hire a Fractional CMO from Moving Minds
Comprehensive, Multi-Year Strategy & Execution
A Moving Minds Fractional CMO works deeply within your business to develop a comprehensive, multi-year marketing strategy that aligns with your long-term growth objectives. We manage all aspects of your marketing efforts—from brand positioning to digital marketing, and from campaign execution to data analytics—ensuring consistent progress toward growth and revenue targets.
Integrated Leadership Across All Marketing Functions
As your dedicated marketing leader, a Moving Minds Fractional Chief Marketing Officer oversees every facet of your marketing operations. This includes managing your internal marketing team, coordinating with external vendors, and collaborating with other departments to ensure cohesion across all marketing initiatives. From social media strategies to martech infrastructure, we ensure everything works together to drive measurable growth.
Accountability for Long-Term Growth and Revenue Targets
Our Fractional Chief Marketing Officers take full accountability for your marketing success. By managing your entire marketing ecosystem, we ensure all strategies and campaigns are aligned to meet your revenue goals. We continuously optimize marketing performance, ensuring sustained growth over the long term.
Flexibility with Full Executive-Level Commitment
In a retainer-based partnership, you gain ongoing access to high-level marketing leadership without the cost of a full-time CMO. You benefit from the flexibility to scale your marketing efforts based on business needs, all while maintaining continuous access to expert leadership dedicated to driving your company’s growth.
Meet Our
Fractional CMOs for Hire
LOU HUGHES
FRACTIONAL CMO FOR HIRE
Lou Hughes is a marketing executive with a wealth of experience in leading strategic marketing initiatives, demand generation, and digital campaigns for clients ranging from venture and private equity backed startups to Fortune 500 companies. Serving as a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer since 2006, Lou Hughes has crafted and executed marketing strategies, campaigns and initiatives that have significantly impacted client growth and market impact.
Throughout his career, Lou Hughes has been at the forefront of product launches, go-to-market strategies, and revenue-driving initiatives. He helped Schweiger Dermatology achieve 303% year-over-year growth, making it the fastest-growing dermatology company in the U.S., and led the launch of Resensation for Axogen, a NASDAQ listed company, that generated $12 million in revenue within just 90 days. His work also includes driving a 2,477% increase in web traffic and a 2,300% jump in sales leads for a SaaS startup acquired by West Communications.
Lou Hughes’ expertise spans digital advertising, SEO, social media, content marketing, and brand positioning. He has played a key role in helping companies navigate market challenges, optimize underperforming channels, and improve customer acquisition. His collaborations with companies like MasterCard, the United Nations, Citi, Fannie Mae, Costar Group, TESSCO and Siemens have reshaped their digital strategies and enhanced their marketing performance.
In addition to his work at Moving Minds, Lou Hughes has served as a Fractional CMO for companies like Unimarket, Vendorin, Novocardia, Alo Solutions and PaceMate, where he managed multi-channel marketing, demand generation, and communications efforts. His hands-on experience with marketing tech platforms, data analytics, and UX design has enabled him to implement best of breed martech systems that provide the infrastructure to scale marketing operations and measure every dollar of marketing spend.
Lou Hughes combines strategic insight with practical execution, consistently driving results that consistently deliver record growth.
To schedule a consultation with Lou Hughes, call +1 (800) 420-7026 or select a preferred day and time here: https://movingminds.io/schedule-a-consult/
KATHRYN HUGHES
FRACTIONAL CMO FOR HIRE
Kathryn Hughes is a marketing executive with a proven track record of turning lesser-known organizations into widely recognized brands. Known for her strategic vision and expertise in brand positioning, Kathryn Hughes has driven significant growth in market share, revenue, and consumer engagement across various industries, including healthcare, finance, and consumer services.
As a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer at Moving Minds, Kathryn Hughes has led several impactful marketing initiatives. She played a key role in developing Schweiger Dermatology’s marketing strategy, which resulted in 303% year-over-year growth, establishing the company as the fastest-growing dermatology group in the country. Kathryn Hughes also spearheaded Virginia Commerce Bank’s first integrated advertising campaign, which generated $20 million in new deposits within a week and contributed to the bank’s $490.6 million acquisition. Her experience also includes guiding brand transformations, such as her work with Acsys Interactive, where she developed a new brand and naming strategy for their software and services.
Kathryn Hughes has served as Chief Marketing Officer for several prominent healthcare organizations, including Halifax Health and Virginia Hospital Center. At Halifax Health, she implemented strategies that increased new patient volumes by 19% in the first year and drove notable growth in orthopedic, cardiac, and neuroscience services. During her time at Virginia Hospital Center, Kathryn Hughes’ efforts boosted market awareness by 70% and significantly increased patient volumes across multiple departments. Her skills in crisis communications were critical during the September 11 attacks when she acted as the lead spokesperson for the Pentagon’s designated trauma center.
Her leadership at Prospira Pain Care as Chief Marketing Officer led to exceeding patient referral goals by 172%, driving over 2,000 new patient referrals per month with a high conversion rate. Kathryn Hughes’ accomplishments have been recognized with numerous awards, including EFFIE Awards for advertising effectiveness and multiple ADDY Awards for her regional campaigns.
Kathryn Hughes is known for her strategic mindset, dedication to building strong brands, and her ability to navigate complex marketing challenges. Her leadership and results-driven approach have made her a trusted advisor and respected figure in the marketing world.
To schedule a consultation with Kathryn Hughes, call +1 (800) 420-7026 or select a preferred day and time here: https://movingminds.io/schedule-a-consult/
DARLA ESPINOSA
FRACTIONAL CMO FOR HIRE
Darla Espinosa serves as a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer at Moving Minds, where she is responsible for crafting strategic marketing solutions that enhance brand recognition, drive lead generation, and increase revenue through digital content, advertising, and effective marketing programs. With over 25 years of experience in integrated marketing, Darla excels in aligning marketing strategies with business goals to achieve sustainable growth and market differentiation. Her role involves not just high-level strategy but also hands-on project management and execution, ensuring that every initiative meets client expectations and delivers measurable results.
Before joining Moving Minds, Darla was the Director of Marketing at American Vision Partners, where she defined and executed integrated marketing strategies that encompassed media placement, digital automation, social media management, reputation management, and public relations. She played a pivotal role in brand alignment during mergers and acquisitions, helping to build a cohesive brand presence in the market. Darla’s leadership was instrumental in shaping the company’s marketing approach, driving significant growth in patient volume and market presence.
Darla also spent eight years as Regional Marketing Manager for TLC Laser Eye Centers, the world’s largest provider of laser vision correction services. She joined TLC when the company was expanding into the U.S. market, leading marketing strategies across 12 states in the Western Region. Darla developed outreach initiatives that supported regional sales teams, driving growth through optometric partnerships and patient referrals, which were key to the company’s expansion.
As a driven and analytical leader, Darla is passionate about developing long-term partnerships built on exceptional customer service, strategic insights, and impactful results. She specializes in influencing what happens behind the scenes, using her expertise in digital marketing, strategic data analytics, market research, and audience definition to drive revenue and brand engagement. In her role as a Fractional CMO, Darla helps organizations refine their go-to-market strategies, direct key initiatives, and execute marketing programs that create brand differentiation and support long-term business objectives.
Darla’s ability to combine big-picture strategy with detailed execution sets her apart as a marketing leader. She brings a hands-on approach to every project, ensuring that marketing efforts are aligned with the overall business strategy and that they deliver the intended impact. Her commitment to excellence and her passion for driving results make her an invaluable asset to the Moving Minds team and to the clients she serves.
To schedule a consultation with Darla Espinosa, call +1 (800) 420-7026 or select a preferred day and time here: https://movingminds.io/schedule-a-consult/