Fractional CMO Services
You don’t need a $200,000 CMO. You need senior marketing leadership that tells you what’s actually working.
Since 2016, we’ve built and managed marketing for publicly traded companies, national brands, and local businesses. Our fractional CMO service puts that experience on your team without the salary, equity, or risk of a full-time executive hire.
Engagement starts at $999/month
Three-month initial engagement, then month-to-month.
What you get:
A written marketing plan built around your revenue goals — not a channel checklist
A monthly strategy session with a senior marketer, not an account coordinator
A KPI dashboard that shows what every dollar is actually doing
Access to our network of vetted vendors and subcontractors — already negotiated, already proven
Straight answers on which agencies, platforms, and tools are worth your money
Ready for a clearer marketing plan?
You don’t need to have everything figured out before we talk. Tell us a little about your business, where you’re investing, and what feels stuck. We’ll take a look and show you where we see the biggest opportunities.
Chicago agency since 2016 · Active clients in over 30 states
Most business owners aren’t short on marketing. They’re short on someone to run it.
You may already have an agency, someone managing social, a web partner, paid media campaigns, and a growing stack of marketing expenses. What you don’t have is one person who can look across all of it and tell you what to keep, what to cut, and what to do next.
You’re spending, but you can’t prove it’s working
The reports come in. The numbers look fine. Nobody can connect them to revenue. That’s a tracking and attribution problem, and it’s fixable.
Every vendor says their channel is the answer
The SEO firm says SEO. The ad agency says ads. Nobody’s accountable for the whole picture — so nobody’s accountable at all.
A real CMO costs more than the marketing
A senior in-house marketing leader runs well into six figures before benefits. For most growing businesses, that math doesn’t work yet.
What’s included in every engagement
Every fractional CMO engagement includes the core leadership and strategic support below. Your monthly hour allocation is based on the level of involvement your business needs, and the engagement can scale as those needs grow.
Marketing audit & baseline
We start by looking at what you’re already running — spend, channels, tracking, website, and results — and tell you plainly what’s working and what isn’t.
A written 90-day marketing plan
Priorities, budget allocation, and the specific moves to make next quarter. Updated as the business changes, not filed away.
Monthly strategy session
A working call with a senior marketer to review performance, make decisions, and set the next set of priorities.
KPI dashboard
One place to see how your marketing is performing across channels, built on your actual data instead of platform-reported vanity numbers.
Vendor & agency oversight
We review what your current partners are delivering and tell you whether it’s worth what you’re paying. Honest answers, including when the answer is “keep them.”
Access to a vetted vendor network
Developers, videographers, PR, printers, fulfillment, specialty media — subcontractors we’ve already worked with and already vetted. You get our bench and our rates instead of starting a search from scratch.
On-call for the big decisions
Email access between sessions for the questions that come up — a new opportunity, a pitch from a vendor, a budget call you need a second opinion on.
Interim coverage between CMOs
If your marketing lead has left or is on the way out, we step in and keep the function running — holding the strategy, managing the team and vendors, and handing off cleanly when your permanent hire starts.
Want us to run it, not just plan it?
Most clients start at the strategy tier, and many of them hand us the execution once they see the plan. We’re a full-service agency — media planning and buying, digital and performance marketing, creative, and web all live under the same roof. Same senior team, no handoff to a third party, no finger-pointing when something underperforms. We’ll scope it when you’re ready, and never before.
Media planning & buying | Digital marketing | Performance marketing | Creative & content
How it compares
Who this is for
If you recognize your business in any of these, the conversation is worth having.
You’re in a leadership transition — your CMO or marketing director has left, and the function can’t sit still while you run a search
You’re about to hire a marketing leader and want someone to build the plan they’ll inherit — and help you evaluate the candidates
Marketing has become too important to wing, but not yet big enough to justify a six-figure hire
You’re already spending on marketing and can’t tell what’s actually producing
You have a capable team or agency doing the work, but nobody senior setting direction
You’ve raised money or you’re scaling fast, and marketing needs to get serious quickly
You’re juggling several vendors and want someone in your corner who has sat on the other side of that table
You need someone to run the campaigns too — we have a full in-house team ready when you want it
You want a straight answer more than you want a cheerleader
Not sure whether you qualify?
Fill out the form. We’ll tell you honestly on the call, and you’ll leave it with something useful either way.
What you’re really paying for is judgment
The reason a marketing leader costs what one costs is experience. Knowing which of the ten things you could do this quarter is the one that matters. Knowing which vendor pitch is worth taking and which is a rebranded version of something that didn’t work five years ago. Knowing what to cut first. That judgment is expensive to hire and slow to build from scratch.
We’ve spent a decade building and running marketing functions — for publicly traded companies and national brands as well as local businesses. Not only the advertising, but the tech stack and CRM, email and retention programs, the website and how it converts, brand and creative, analytics and attribution, and the operating rhythm that keeps all of it moving. The fractional model is simply how we make that experience affordable to a business that isn’t ready to buy it full-time.
ROI OVER VANITY METRICS
Every recommendation ties to a business outcome
Not impressions, not engagement rate. Revenue, leads, and cost per acquisition.
SENIOR TALENT
You work directly with the people running your strategy
No layers between you and the person actually making the calls.
TRANSPARENCY BY DEFAULT
Clear reporting, no mystery line items, no jargon
Including when the honest answer is that you should spend less, not more.
See what we’d do with your marketing
Tell us a little about your business.
We’ll follow up within one business day to set up a time to talk.
No pressure, no obligation.
Questions we get a lot
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There isn’t one. The base package includes everything listed above with a set number of hours each month, sized to what your business needs. That’s genuinely enough for a lot of companies — a monthly working session, the plan, the dashboard, and access between sessions. If you need more time than that, whether it’s weekly involvement, sitting in on your team’s meetings, or heavier hands-on work, we move you to a higher tier and price it to the hours. You’ll know which tier fits after the first conversation, and we’d rather start you low and move up than oversell you on day one.
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Three months to start, then month-to-month after that. The three months isn’t there to lock you in — it’s there because the first month is diagnosis, the second is building, and the third is when you start seeing whether it’s working. A 30-day engagement would leave you with an audit and no results, which serves neither of us.
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Yes, and it’s one of the most common ways these engagements start. When a marketing leader leaves, the usual result is that the team keeps executing without direction while the search drags on for months. We step in and hold the function — the strategy, the budget, the team, and the vendors — so you’re not losing ground during the search. We can also help you evaluate candidates, since we’ll know exactly what the role needs by then, and we hand off cleanly to whoever you hire. Some clients keep us on afterward in a lighter advisory capacity. Others don’t need us anymore, which is a fine outcome.
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Yes. We’re a Chicago agency with active clients in over 30 states. The fractional CMO engagement runs remotely, so where you’re based isn’t a limitation.
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A consultant scopes a project, delivers a document, and leaves. That’s not what this is. The intent from day one is an ongoing relationship — we’re in your numbers every month, adjusting as the business changes, and accountable over time for whether the plan is actually producing. It’s also why the engagement starts at three months rather than a single deliverable: we’re not trying to sell you a report, we’re trying to become the marketing leadership your business keeps. Our client relationships tend to be measured in years, not projects.
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We ask about your business, your goals, and what you’re currently spending. Then we tell you what we’d do differently. If it’s a fit, we’ll outline the engagement. If it isn’t, we’ll say so and point you somewhere better. Either way you leave the call with something useful.
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You’ll have a clear picture of what’s working within the first few weeks, because that’s mostly a data and tracking exercise. Meaningful movement in leads or revenue depends on your market and what we change — anyone promising you a specific number before seeing your business is guessing.
Find out what your marketing could actually be doing
One conversation, no obligation.
Tell us about your business and we’ll show you where the opportunities are.