Fractional CMO:
A Guide to Services,
Cost and Engagement Models

THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO FRACTIONAL CMO LEADERSHIP FOR GROWTH-STAGE COMPANIES

A $22 million B2B software company closed its Series B eighteen months ago. The board celebrated. The founders started planning. And then the questions started landing — the ones nobody in the room could answer.

Do we have the right go-to-market strategy, or do we even have one? Who’s going to drive it? How do we allocate the capital we just raised? What metrics should we measure? Who’s going to execute — and are the people we have capable of executing at the level we need?

The company had a two-person marketing team that managed the website, ran some LinkedIn ads, and staffed the booth at two trade shows a year. Revenue had come almost entirely from the founders’ personal networks and an outbound sales team that was running hot but starting to cool. The pipeline that once seemed endless was thinning. Win rates were slipping. Competitors who’d been irrelevant two years earlier were suddenly showing up in every deal — with sharper messaging, better content, and a digital presence that made them look like the market leader.

“They called us on a Thursday afternoon,” says Lou Hughes, who has spent nearly two decades running Moving Minds, a fractional CMO agency that has helped companies across SaaS, healthcare, financial services, professional services, and private equity portfolios navigate this exact inflection point. “The CEO said what most of them say in the first conversation: I know we need to invest in marketing, but we don’t have a plan, and I’m not confident in our ability to execute to hit our growth targets.”

This company’s story is not unusual. It is, in fact, the defining challenge of growth-stage businesses across the American mid-market — the moment when the complexity of the marketing challenge outpaces the capability of the people responsible for solving it. The inflection point looks different from company to company. For some, it’s a Series A check that demands a go-to-market plan the founders don’t know how to build. For others, it’s a plateau — twelve months of flat revenue despite a strong product-market fit. For private equity portfolio companies, it’s accelerating to an exit horizon that demands top-line revenue growth to improve EBITDA—not just cost-cutting—and no marketing leader in place capable of driving it.

The traditional answer was a full-time Chief Marketing Officer. But at $236,000 to $438,000 in total compensation — plus a six-month recruiting process and another six months to get oriented — that solution comes with its own set of problems for a company with $10 million, $25 million, or even $50 million in revenue.

The answer an increasing number of companies are choosing instead: a fractional CMO.

What Is a Fractional CMO?

A fractional CMO (fractional Chief Marketing Officer) is a senior marketing executive who provides strategic leadership and team management on a part-time basis, typically 10–20 hours per week, giving companies C-suite marketing expertise without the full-time salary and benefits of a permanent hire.

The word “fractional” describes the time commitment, not the depth of involvement. A fractional CMO runs your marketing meetings, builds strategy, manages teams and vendors, owns pipeline targets, and reports to your board. They attend leadership meetings. They make budget decisions. They develop your people. The distinction between a fractional CMO and a full-time one isn’t the scope of the work — it’s generally the number of hours per week they allocate to your business.

You’ll hear the role described by other names depending on context. An interim CMO is typically filling a gap during an executive search. An outsourced CMO emphasizes the external arrangement. Part-time CMO is self-explanatory. The fractional CMO meaning in every case is the same: experienced marketing leadership calibrated to the hours and budget a company actually needs.

“There’s a misconception that fractional means you’re getting less,” Hughes says. “What you’re getting is someone with twenty-plus years of experience across multiple industries who can step in and start delivering value from day one — without the six-month learning curve a new full-time hire needs just to get oriented.”

The model has moved from novelty to norm faster than most executives realize. Spencer Stuart’s 2025 CMO survey found that roughly one-third of Fortune 500 companies don’t have an enterprise-wide marketing leader at all — not because marketing doesn’t matter, but because finding the right full-time chief marketing officer executive at the right time is that difficult.

For mid-market companies competing for the same caliber of talent with a fraction of the budget, the math is even harder. Factor in recruiting time and onboarding, and companies lose nearly a full year of every three-year cycle to transitions. EY’s 2024 Private Equity Pulse Survey found that 73% of PE firms now recommend fractional executives to portfolio companies, up from 31% in 2020. The fractional executive market overall has grown 57% since 2020.

What Does a Fractional CMO Do?

A fractional CMO provides three things most growth-stage companies are missing: strategic direction for the marketing function, leadership of the people and partners executing it, and accountability for the business outcomes marketing produces.

That third point — accountability — is where most companies hit the wall. The marketing situation we walk into is different every time. Some companies have no marketing function at all. Some have a junior coordinator doing their best without senior guidance. Some have a patchwork of freelancers and agencies that nobody is managing. Some are doing all the right activities — running campaigns, producing content, showing up at events — with no way to connect any of it to pipeline or revenue. What they all share is the same gap: there’s no senior leader who can assess where things stand, build a plan that ties to growth targets, and hold the operation accountable for results.

Build and Own the Marketing Strategy

The fractional CMO starts by assessing where the company actually stands — not where leadership thinks it stands. Market position, competitive landscape, customer segments, what’s been tried, what’s producing, and where the obvious gaps are. The output isn’t a consultant’s deck. It’s a working plan with clear priorities, budget allocations, realistic timelines, and metrics that directly tie to the pipeline and revenue.

“Every company we walk into looks different,” Hughes says. “Some have no marketing function at all. Some have a team that’s executing hard against the wrong strategy. Some are spending six figures a month with nothing to show for it. The common thread isn’t what’s broken — it’s that there’s nobody at the senior level connecting marketing to revenue.”

Own Revenue Metrics and Reporting

This is where the role separates itself from consulting. A fractional CMO is accountable for pipeline contribution, customer acquisition cost, conversion rates, and marketing-sourced revenue. They build the attribution infrastructure. They create the dashboards that leadership actually looks at. And when the data shows something isn’t working, they adjust in real time—not at the end of a quarterly review.

From our experience across 50+ engagements, the average fractional CMO produces a measurable marketing-sourced pipeline within 60 days. Quick wins — fixing attribution gaps, killing campaigns that waste money, sharpening messaging that’s been diluted by committee — tend to show up within the first two to three weeks.

What does that look like in practice? We recently stepped into a PE-backed B2B software company, spending $35,000 a month on paid media with no attribution showing how ad spend connects to closed deals. Within three weeks, we rebuilt their tracking, found that 40% of the budget was producing clicks but zero pipeline, and reallocated that spend to two channels already generating qualified opportunities. Pipeline contribution from marketing doubled in 60 days—not from spending more, but from stopping waste.

“That company wasn’t broken,” Hughes says. “They were just spending blindly. Nobody had ever connected the inputs to the outputs. That’s a thirty-minute diagnosis for someone who’s seen it before.”

Lead and Orchestrate the Team

Most companies that hire a fractional CMO already have marketing people — a coordinator, a small team, a couple of freelancers, an agency or two. Those people aren’t the problem. The problem is they’re operating without direction. The fractional CMO gives them a senior leader who sets priorities, creates accountability, manages vendor performance, develops junior talent, and organizes scattered resources into a coordinated operation where everyone knows what they’re building toward.

Additional Scope

Depending on the company, a fractional CMO may also handle brand positioning, go-to-market launches, investor communications, sales enablement, marketing technology selection, or digital transformation. The role flexes to fit whatever the business needs most at any given phase.

For a full breakdown of responsibilities and qualifications, see our Fractional CMO Job Description guide.

What Services Does a Fractional CMO Provide?

Fractional CMO services span the full scope of what a marketing leader is responsible for — strategy through execution, team through technology, brand through pipeline. What that looks like in any given engagement depends on what’s working and what isn’t. But the work nearly always touches these six areas:

Strategic Marketing Planning

Every engagement begins here. Who are we targeting? What are we saying to them? Where are we reaching them? And how are we measuring whether any of it is working? The fractional CMO builds the go-to-market roadmap — ideal customer profiles, channel strategy, budget allocation, timeline, and KPIs. Not a sixty-page strategy deck that collects dust in a shared drive. A working plan the team runs against every day.

Demand Generation and Pipeline Development

This is where the pain usually lives. The funnel is thin. Leads are unqualified. Sales and marketing are pointing fingers at each other. The fractional CMO architects the demand engine — content, paid acquisition, SEO, email nurture, account-based programs — and manages the whole system against pipeline and revenue. Not vanity metrics. Not MQLs that sales ignores. Pipeline that converts.

“The number one complaint we hear from CEOs,” Hughes says, “is some version of *I’m spending money on marketing but I can’t tell you what it’s producing.* That’s not a marketing problem. It’s a leadership vacuum.”

Brand Positioning and Messaging

Here is a pattern we encounter constantly: a company with a genuinely differentiated product whose website and sales deck could belong to any of ten competitors. Nobody has done the hard work of defining what sets them apart and translating it into language that resonates with buyers. The fractional CMO tackles that head-on — value proposition, competitive differentiation, messaging frameworks that give every channel a consistent, compelling story. When positioning is right, conversion rates improve everywhere: ads, landing pages, proposals, sales conversations.

Marketing Operations and Technology

Most mid-market companies have too many marketing tools doing too little useful work. The CRM isn’t connected to the marketing platform. Attribution is a mess. Nobody trusts the dashboard. A fractional CMO audits the stack, keeps what works, kills what doesn’t, and makes sure the remaining pieces talk to each other so decisions can be made from data instead of intuition.

Team Development and Vendor Management

Maybe you have a marketing coordinator who’s capable but has never had a senior leader to learn from. Maybe you have three agencies who’ve never been introduced to each other. The fractional CMO organizes the human side — assessing capabilities, identifying gaps, coaching junior team members, and pulling scattered resources into a coordinated operation.

Performance Measurement and Reporting

If the CEO has to ask *what is marketing doing?* — that’s a measurement failure, not a marketing failure. The fractional CMO builds the reporting infrastructure that makes marketing visible at the executive level. KPIs that map to revenue. Attribution models that separate the activities producing the pipeline from the ones producing noise.

Core fractional CMO services include:

– Go-to-market strategy and marketing planning

– Demand generation and pipeline development

– Brand positioning and messaging
– Marketing technology selection and optimization

– Team leadership, hiring, and vendor management
– KPI development, attribution, and executive reporting

– Sales enablement and sales-marketing alignment

– Product launch planning and execution oversight

At Moving Minds, we pair fractional CMO leadership with an integrated execution team — demand generation, content, SEO, paid media, marketing automation, and analytics specialists operating under one strategy and one point of accountability. We call it Growth as a Managed Service.

For a deeper look at each service area, see our fractional CMO services overview.

How Much Does a Fractional CMO Cost?

Most fractional CMO engagements cost between $5,000 and $15,000 per month for 15–25 hours of weekly involvement. Senior fractional CMOs with specialized expertise — SaaS, private equity, regulated industries — typically command $15,000 to $25,000 monthly.

The pricing conversation is where most executives start, and it’s the wrong place to start. The right question isn’t what a fractional CMO costs. It’s what the absence of marketing leadership is already costing you — in stalled pipeline, wasted spend, missed positioning, and the compounding effect of competitors who are investing while you’re deliberating.

That said, the numbers matter. Here’s how the pricing models work:

Monthly Retainer

The most common arrangement. A fixed monthly fee for a defined scope of involvement. Retainers range from $5,000 to $15,000 a month and typically include a minimum commitment of three to six months. This is the right model for companies that need sustained strategic leadership — not a one-time project, but an ongoing presence in the business.

Day Rate

For defined projects — go-to-market launches, brand repositioning, marketing audits, martech overhauls — day rates run $1,500 to $3,500. This works when the scope has a clear start and end.

Hourly Rate

Hourly rates for fractional CMOs generally fall between $200 and $500 an hour. Most experienced operators prefer retainers because sustained involvement produces better results than drop-in work. Strategy without continuity is just advice.

How That Compares to a Full-Time CMO

A full-time CMO costs $250,000–$400,000 in base salary. Add benefits, bonuses, and equity, and total compensation typically exceeds $500,000 a year. A fractional CMO at $10,000 a month — $120,000 a year — delivers comparable strategic leadership at roughly a quarter of the total cost.

The financial advantage goes beyond the rate. There’s no six-month recruiting process. No severance if the fit isn’t right. No equity dilution. No extended learning curve while a new executive gets oriented.

“When a PE firm acquires a company and needs to accelerate revenue growth,” Hughes says, “they can’t wait nine months for a recruiter to find a CMO and another six for that person to get up to speed. They need someone who’s done this before — someone who walks in, recognizes the pattern, and starts building within thirty days.”

Fractional CMO cost summary:

– Monthly retainer: $5,000–$15,000/month (15–25 hours/week)

– Senior/specialized: $15,000–$25,000/month

– Day rate: $1,500–$3,500/day

– Hourly rate: $200–$500/hour

– Full-time CMO comparison: $300,000–$500,000+/year total compensation

– Fractional CMO annual cost at $10K/month: $120,000/year (roughly 25% of full-time)

Fractional CMO vs. Full-Time CMO vs. Marketing Agency

Before the comparison, a clarification: these aren’t always either/or decisions. A fractional CMO often works alongside agencies, providing the strategic direction and accountability that agencies need from their clients but rarely get. Without that leadership layer, agencies tend to optimize within their own silo — improving click-through rates in isolation without connecting activity to business outcomes. The fractional CMO is the connective tissue.

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For companies between $5M and $100M in revenue, a fractional CMO typically offers the strongest balance of strategic depth, cost efficiency, and flexibility compared to a full-time CMO hire or agency engagement.

For a detailed comparison of top providers, see our guide to fractional CMO companies and firms.

Who Is a Fractional CMO Right For?

The revenue range is $5M to $100M. But the number alone doesn’t tell you whether the model fits. What matters more is where the company is in its growth arc — and whether you recognize your own situation in any of these:

The post-funding reckoning. The capital came in. The board is asking about the go-to-market plan. The pitch deck promised growth that the current team has no idea how to deliver. The founders built this company on relationships and hustle, and both of those hit a ceiling around $15 million. Someone needs to build the marketing engine, and the company can’t afford — in time or money — to get the hire wrong.

The plateau.

Revenue has been flat for three or four quarters. Sales is grinding. The pipeline hasn’t grown even though the team has. Marketing exists, but it’s tactical — a trade show here, some Google Ads there, a website nobody has touched in two years. The CEO knows something needs to change, but isn’t sure exactly what.

The team that’s outgrown its leadership. There’s a marketing coordinator — or even a small team — doing capable work. They’re loyal. They try hard. But they’ve never built a demand generation engine, never managed a seven-figure marketing budget, never reported pipeline metrics to a board. They don’t need to be replaced. They need a leader who can elevate what they’re doing and connect it to the bigger picture.

The PE clock. A private equity firm acquired the company. The value creation plan calls for aggressive growth on a three-to-five-year timeline. Marketing is the most underleveraged growth lever in the portfolio, and there’s no one at the operating level who knows how to pull it. The fractional CMO walks in with a 100-day plan and starts executing against the thesis.

The gap between CMOs. The last marketing leader left — or was asked to leave. Momentum is evaporating. Agencies are drifting without direction. The company needs someone to hold the wheel while leadership figures out the long-term answer. Many discover the fractional arrangement works so well that they stop searching for a permanent replacement.

Pre-product-market-fit companies. Pre-seed, seed stage — typically need a hands-on growth marketer more than a strategic CMO. And companies above $100M with complex, multi-product operations usually need a full-time executive embedded five days a week. For the wide band in between, the fractional model closes the leadership gap at a fraction of the cost and risk.

Our complete guide covers how to hire a fractional CMO — evaluation criteria, the right questions to ask, red flags, and what to expect in the first 90 days.

Fractional CMOs by Industry

The model works across industries. The work inside those industries is not interchangeable. The marketing playbook for a B2B SaaS company burning through runway at $5M ARR shares almost nothing with the playbook for a PE-backed industrial manufacturer modernizing its channel strategy. The fractional CMO who knows your market from day one gets to impact in weeks. The one who doesn’t will spend six weeks asking questions you don’t have the patience to answer.

Fractional CMO for SaaS Companies

SaaS runs on subscription economics — CAC, lifetime value, churn, net revenue retention, and the tension between product-led and sales-led growth. A fractional CMO who doesn’t speak that language fluently will optimize for the wrong things.

The sweet spot is $3M to $20M ARR. Below that, a growth marketer is usually a better fit. Above it, the function is complex enough to warrant a full-time leader. In between, the fractional CMO builds the demand-generation infrastructure, aligns marketing and product around a coherent growth model, and establishes the analytics that investors expect.

Fractional CMO for B2B Companies

Mid-market B2B businesses — especially between $10M and $100M — face a particular challenge. Buyers are sophisticated. Sales cycles stretch for months. Competitors are indistinguishable on paper. And in many cases, the company has been winning through relationships for so long that it’s never built a marketing function capable of generating pipeline on its own.

“B2B buyers have changed,” Hughes says. “They’ve done their research long before your rep gets the first meeting. If your marketing isn’t shaping that early-stage perception, you’re starting every deal from behind.”

A B2B fractional CMO brings sales-marketing alignment, account-based programs, pipeline analytics, and positioning work that gives the sales team something to lean on beyond personal relationships.

Fractional CMO for Startups

Early-stage companies face a marketing problem money alone can’t solve: limited budget, zero brand awareness, and investors who expect traction yesterday. The right timing for a fractional CMO is typically post-Series A — capital raised, product validated, time to scale customer acquisition without building a half-million-dollar internal marketing department from scratch.

For startups between $2M and $15M in revenue, the fractional CMO tackles three things at once: building the go-to-market strategy the board expects, standing up demand-generation infrastructure that actually produces pipeline, and putting a senior marketing voice in the room where growth decisions are made.

Fractional CMO for Private Equity Portfolio Companies

PE firms are among the most active users of the model — and the fastest-growing segment. Portfolio companies need to accelerate revenue on a defined timeline. Marketing is almost always the biggest untapped growth lever, but most portcos don’t have anyone at the executive level who knows how to use it.

A fractional CMO for PE runs rapid assessments, builds 100-day growth plans aligned with the investment thesis, professionalizes existing marketing operations, and serves as the communication bridge between portco management and the PE firm’s operating partners — translating marketing performance into the language investors care about.

“Private equity figured this out before the rest of the market,” Hughes says. “Marketing isn’t overhead. It’s leverage. And having a senior operator who knows how to pull that lever is worth multiples of what you pay them.”

Fractional CMO for Healthcare and Professional Services

HIPAA constraints. State bar advertising rules. Referral-driven business development where traditional demand gen feels tone-deaf. Trust-building cycles measured in months. These sectors come with guardrails most marketing generalists have never encountered.

A fractional CMO who knows these industries doesn’t waste the first 90 days learning what they can’t do. They build marketing systems that work within the boundaries — thought leadership, referral nurture, event strategy, and content that positions the firm as an authority without triggering compliance concerns.

Industries where fractional CMOs deliver the most impact:

– B2B SaaS ($3M–$20M ARR): demand generation, CAC optimization, product-led growth

– B2B mid-market ($10M–$100M): sales-marketing alignment, pipeline development, positioning

– Startups: go-to-market strategy, investor-ready marketing, demand infrastructure

– PE portfolio companies: 100-day plans, rapid assessment, value creation acceleration

– Healthcare: patient acquisition, brand awareness, service line marketing, referral development programs

– Professional services: thought leadership, referral nurture, authority positioning

– Financial services: compliance-sensitive content, trust-building programs

– Manufacturing: digital transformation, channel marketing, brand modernization

– Construction and engineering: project pipeline marketing, bid support positioning, workforce recruitment branding

How a Fractional CMO Engagement Works

A fractional CMO engagement typically lasts six to eighteen months and moves through three distinct phases. The time commitment starts heavy — 20-plus hours a week — and steps down as systems take hold and the team finds its rhythm.

Phase 1 — Discovery and Assessment (Weeks 1–3)

The first few weeks look nothing like consulting and everything like archaeology. The fractional CMO digs into the business — market position, competitive landscape, what marketing has been doing, how the team is structured, what’s in the tech stack, where leadership wants to go, and where the current trajectory will actually take them. They interview stakeholders. They pull campaign data. They audit the funnel. They follow the money.

“This phase is unglamorous,” Hughes says. “Nobody’s excited about reconciling six months of ad spend against pipeline data. But every time we’ve seen a fractional CMO engagement underperform, we can trace it back to this step being rushed.”

Phase 2 — Strategy and Roadmap (Weeks 3–6)

The plan gets built — not in a vacuum, and not for a company that doesn’t exist. The strategy is designed around the resources the company actually has, the market it’s actually in, and the growth targets it’s actually committed to. Priorities. Timelines. KPIs. A budget that ties every dollar to expected outcomes. This becomes the operating document the engagement is measured against.

Phase 3 — Execution and Optimization (Ongoing)

Now it stops feeling like strategy and starts feeling like having a CMO. They run the team. Manage the agencies. Launch campaigns. Watch the numbers. Report to leadership. When something isn’t working, they adjust. When the quarterly review reveals a pivot is needed, they make the case and lead the change.

One advantage companies consistently underestimate: fractional CMOs bring networks. Need a performance marketing agency that actually performs? They’ve vetted several. Need PR for a funding announcement? They have people. That curated ecosystem of specialists and vendors frequently delivers as much value as the strategic work.

Typical fractional CMO engagement timeline:

– Weeks 1–3: Discovery, stakeholder interviews, marketing audit

– Weeks 3–6: Strategy development and roadmap delivery

– Month 2–3: First campaign launches and quick wins

– Month 3–6: Pipeline impact becomes measurable
– Month 6+: Optimization, scaling, and team development
– Average engagement duration: 6–18 months

The Value & Impact of a Fractional CMO

The question most executives ask first is what a fractional CMO costs. The question that determines whether the investment pays for itself is what changes when senior marketing leadership actually arrives.

The pattern, across hundreds of mid-market engagements industry-wide, is remarkably consistent.

Pipeline goes from invisible to measurable. In most companies that hire a fractional CMO, marketing-sourced pipeline either doesn’t exist or can’t be tracked. Within the first quarter of a well-run engagement, attribution is established, campaigns are producing qualified opportunities, and marketing’s contribution to revenue becomes visible — often for the first time in the company’s history.

One CEO of a professional services firm told us after six months: “For ten years I treated marketing like a cost center because I couldn’t see what it produced. Now I can see it. And I’m doubling the budget.”

Revenue growth accelerates. Companies that bring in fractional CMO leadership typically see revenue growth rates of 3x to 5x their pre-engagement trajectory within twelve to eighteen months. That’s not magic. It’s the compounding effect of better positioning, tighter messaging, smarter targeting, and disciplined measurement — applied consistently by someone who has built this machine before.

Valuations respond. For PE-backed companies and startups approaching their next funding round, the impact goes beyond the income statement. A company with a documented go-to-market strategy, measurable marketing metrics, and a scalable demand engine is valued differently than one with identical revenue and no marketing infrastructure. Exit multiples, funding valuations, and acquirer interest all respond to the maturity of the growth function.

“The best time to invest in marketing isn’t the quarter before you go to market for a raise or an exit,” Hughes says. “It’s eighteen months before. That gives you time to build the results that actually show up in the numbers buyers and investors look at.”

The existing team gets better. One of the most underappreciated outcomes: the people already in the building start performing at a higher level. The marketing coordinator who was operating without direction gets coached by someone with two decades of experience. The junior content writer learns to tie her work to pipeline. The agency that was running campaigns in a vacuum starts receiving direction that improves their output. A fractional CMO elevates the entire operation, not just the strategy.

Sales and marketing stop fighting. In most mid-market companies, the relationship between these two functions ranges from indifferent to adversarial. Marketing blames sales for not following up. Sales blames marketing for sending garbage. The fractional CMO breaks that cycle by establishing shared definitions, shared metrics, and shared accountability for pipeline. When both teams are measured on the same number, the finger-pointing stops.

The Moving Minds Approach

We’ve provided fractional CMO services for nearly twenty years. Our client roster includes Fortune 500 brands — MasterCard, Citibank, Fannie Mae, United Nations — and the growth-stage B2B companies that are our primary focus today: Series A and B startups, private equity portfolio companies, and mid-market businesses between $10M and $100M.

What sets our model apart from a solo fractional CMO is that we bring the execution team with us. Most fractional CMOs hand off a strategy and leave implementation to your internal resources or a patchwork of outside vendors. That handoff is where growth plans go to die. We pair senior CMO leadership with integrated specialists in demand generation, content, SEO, paid media, marketing automation, and analytics — all operating under one strategy, one team, one accountability structure.

In practice: a mid-market B2B services company came to us after cycling through two agencies and a solo fractional CMO in eighteen months. Each one produced a strategy deck. None of them implemented it. The internal marketing coordinator didn’t have the experience to translate strategy into campaigns, and the agencies optimized for their own metrics without connecting anything to pipeline. Within our first quarter, we had the CMO leading strategy and a dedicated execution team running content, paid media, and automation — all measured against the same pipeline targets. Marketing-sourced pipeline went from essentially unmeasurable to 35% of total qualified opportunities within six months.

“Most companies don’t fail at strategy,” Hughes says. “They fail at the handoff between strategy and execution. That gap — between the plan and the work — is where growth goes to die.”

We call it Growth as a Managed Service. One [fractional CMO agency](/fractional-cmo/agency/) that builds the strategy and executes it — so you’re never left with a plan nobody can implement.

What a Moving Minds engagement includes:

– Fractional CMO strategic leadership (typically 15–20 hours/week)

– Integrated multi-channel execution team

– Full martech stack implementation and management

– Monthly performance reporting tied to revenue KPIs

– Flexible engagement models: ongoing retainer, project-based, or advisory

Schedule a consultation to discuss whether this model fits your growth objectives.

Frequently Asked Questions About Fractional CMOs

How quickly can a fractional CMO produce results?

The strategic assessment and roadmap typically land within the first 30 days. Real quick wins — fixing broken attribution, cutting wasted spend, sharpening messaging — happen in the first two to three weeks. From our engagement data, measurable marketing-sourced pipeline shows up around day 63 on average. Your timeline depends on sales cycle length and how much marketing infrastructure already exists.

How many hours per week does a fractional CMO work?

Typically 10 to 20. Some companies front-load to 20–25 hours during product launches, funding rounds, or the first 90 days, then settle into a lighter cadence once systems are established. The model is built to flex.

Can a fractional CMO work with my existing marketing team?

That’s usually the point. Most companies already have marketing people — what they lack is senior leadership guiding priorities. The fractional CMO doesn’t replace your team. They set direction, create accountability, coach skills, and draw a straight line from daily activities to business outcomes.

What’s the difference between a fractional CMO and a marketing consultant?

Accountability. A consultant delivers an audit and a strategy deck and moves on. If the recommendations don’t work, that’s your problem. A fractional CMO owns the outcomes. They lead the team, make budget calls, sit in leadership meetings, and measure their own performance on pipeline and revenue.

How long do fractional CMO engagements typically last?

Six to eighteen months is standard. Shorter engagements — three to six months — work for defined projects like a go-to-market launch or post-acquisition integration. Many companies keep the arrangement indefinitely because it delivers the leadership they need without the overhead of a full-time hire. There’s no rule that says you have to convert to full-time eventually.

Is a fractional CMO right for a startup?

It depends on stage. Pre-product-market-fit, you probably need a hands-on growth marketer more than a strategic CMO. Once you’ve closed a Series A, validated the product, and need to scale customer acquisition, the fractional model earns its keep. Startups between $2M and $15M typically get the most value.

What industries do fractional CMOs work in?

Nearly all of them, though most specialize. The heaviest usage is in B2B SaaS, technology, healthcare, financial services, professional services, and manufacturing. PE portfolio companies across every sector are the fastest-growing segment. What matters more than the industry label is whether the fractional CMO has go-to-market experience matching your business model and buyer journey.

How do I measure whether a fractional CMO is working?

The same way you’d evaluate any executive — results against the targets you set before they started. Pipeline contribution, customer acquisition cost, marketing-sourced revenue, conversion rates. Review monthly. The right fractional CMO won’t resist measurement. They’ll build the dashboards that make their own performance impossible to miss.

Continue Reading: Fractional CMO Resources

– Fractional CMO Job Description — Full breakdown of responsibilities, qualifications, and what to look for in a fractional Chief Marketing Officer.

– How to Hire a Fractional CMO — Step-by-step evaluation process, interview questions, and red flags to avoid when selecting a fractional CMO.

– Best Fractional CMO Companies — Side-by-side comparison of leading firms and agencies, with evaluation criteria for choosing the right partner.

– Fractional CMO Agency Model — How the agency model differs from a solo practitioner and when it delivers better outcomes.

– Private Equity CMO Growth Strategies — How PE firms use fractional CMOs to accelerate portfolio company value creation.