Fractional CMO for owners and leadership teams
Senior marketing leadership for part of the week, for companies doing $5M to $100M a year. I own the direction, run the vendors and your team, and stay in the room for the decisions. Based in Houston, working with companies across the U.S.
What a fractional CMO is, and who brings one in
A fractional chief marketing officer (CMO) leads a company’s marketing for part of the week. They own the direction, the plan, the budget and the people and vendors doing the work, and they answer for the results, without a full-time executive on the payroll.
Companies usually bring me in when:
- The owner is still the marketing department, and it’s costing them the rest of the job.
- The marketing leader just left, and the work can’t wait for a search.
- A CEO wants a senior marketing voice at the leadership table without hiring one yet.
- A capable marketing manager needs someone senior to set direction and back them up.
- There’s a board or investors expecting a plan and numbers they can trust.
Most of my experience is with B2B companies, and I advise consumer brands too.
What changes when I’m in the seat
One CEO asked me what I’d do if I were their chief marketing officer. That question is most of the job. I’ve owned businesses since my twenties and built a seven-figure agency from scratch. I’ve also done this job before it had a name: for one client, the agency that was running about three million dollars a month in their Google Ads reported to me, and I joined the owner on every call with their other vendors. So I run marketing the way I’d want it run if it were my money.
Every dollar has to earn its place
Your marketing budget competes with every other use of the money, including another salesperson, and I weigh it that way.
A plan built from your numbers
Your buyers, your margins and what your team can actually carry decide the plan, not a playbook from the last client.
Measured against what you answer for
Every activity ties back to a company goal: qualified opportunities, revenue, margin. Where the data can’t prove something yet, you’ll hear what it can and can’t show.
Some things stop
A lot of the early value comes from what we stop paying for.
One plan across your agencies
Each vendor works to its own scope. Someone has to look across all of them and ask how the campaign connects to the quarter.
Your team picks up AI along the way
I work AI-first, and the people around me tend to start using it on their own work.
How it works
The first month: onboarding and a 90-day plan
I interview leadership, sales and whoever is closest to the customer. I get into your reporting, the budget and what each agency and vendor is actually doing, and work out where the money goes and what it produces. You come out of the month with a written plan for the next 90 days: what we’ll do, what we’ll stop, what we’ll measure and who owns what.
Months two and three: working the plan
Vendors get redirected, measurement gets fixed so we can tell what’s working, and a couple of early moves get made. New requests get weighed against the plan, and anything that would do things out of order waits or gets scoped on its own. At day 90 we review it together and set the next stretch.
A normal month after that
A weekly working session with your leadership team to look at what’s moving, make the calls and set the next priorities. In between, time with your team and your vendors, reviewing what they produce and tying it back to revenue. How you see the results is something we set up together: some companies want a dashboard, some want a deck for a leadership council or a board, and for some the weekly sessions are enough. If there’s a board or investors in the picture, I build the marketing plan and the numbers they’ll see, and I can be in the room to answer for them.
What we agree on before we start
Who decides
We agree on it at the start. Some leadership teams want me to own the plan, the budget split and the call on which agencies and vendors stay. Others want those decisions to run through them until they’re comfortable. Either works, and it can change as trust builds.
What it asks of you
Time from leadership each week, access to the numbers and to your agencies and vendors, and someone on your side with the authority to make the call.
If your marketing leader just left
In the first week I sit down with the team that’s still there, take the decisions that can’t wait and set priorities for the month. Your team and vendors keep doing the work, and you can reach me between our sessions for the calls that come up. What I don’t do is manage people day to day. If your team needs someone in the building every day to supervise them, 8 to 12 hours a week isn’t enough, and the better answer is an interim leader, a stronger internal lead with me behind them, or more of my time while you hire.
What it costs
My attention is the thing you’re buying. The hours are reserved for you, not billed by the minute or banked from month to month, and at each renewal we look at how much of my time the work is really taking and adjust the level up or down.
Advisory
From $3,000
a month · about 2 to 4 hours a week
Decision support on your highest-stakes calls.
Ownership
The fractional CMO seat$8,000 to $12,000+
a month · about 8 to 12 hours a week
I lead your marketing: the plan, the budget and the people and vendors doing the work.
Portfolio
$12,000 to $18,000+
a month · about 12 to 20 hours a week
For investors or holding companies with several companies under one roof.
Hands-on implementation, when I do it, is scoped and priced separately, and so is agency and specialist work. Your ad spend is yours.
What moves the fee
Up
- A team I direct week to week
- Several agencies or vendors to direct
- A board I report to
- A launch or rebuild running alongside
- More than one business line
Down
- A strong marketing lead carrying execution
- A settled plan
- Fewer moving parts
We agree on the fee before we start, and your price is locked for the term.
Terms and onboarding
The first month takes the most of my time. I’m interviewing your team, getting into your numbers and writing the 90-day plan, so there’s a one-time onboarding fee of half a month’s fee, invoiced with the first month. A longer term reduces it, and twelve months waives it. The first invoice is paid before onboarding starts, and after that I bill on the first of each month for the month ahead.
Terms renew for the same length unless either of us says otherwise before the last month of the term starts.
On a 12-month term, the first six months are committed. After that you can end it with 60 days’ notice, and the waived onboarding fee then becomes due.
Full details are on Work With Me.
| Term | Onboarding | First invoice at $10,000 a month |
|---|---|---|
| 3 months | Half a month’s fee | $15,000 |
| 6 months | A quarter of a month’s fee | $12,500 |
| 12 months | Waived | $10,000 |
What this looks like when it works
Healthcare IT · since 2025
Focus Solutions
A healthcare IT company where a positioning project grew into the go-to-market seat I hold today.
My role. I led the positioning and guided my team through everything built on it: identity, sales tools, content, video and trade shows, all from one strategy. Today I work directly with their board on go-to-market.
- “The best he’s ever seen.” A leadership advisor who had worked with six other agencies on brand work.
- Repositioned from “another MSP” to a category of one, with a framework their sales team still uses with prospects.
Food inspection equipment · since 2021
TDI Packsys
An equipment maker competing against industry giants. TDI says more than 90% of its sales start on the website.
My role. I set a research-first strategy and guided my team across the site rebuild, SEO, paid search and content, under one plan. The relationship has since grown into strategic advisory.
- 600% growth in qualified organic traffic since 2021, with organic now matching paid in lead volume.
- On ChatGPT’s shortlist, alongside the industry giants, when a poultry processor asks about x-ray bone detection (November 2026).
Fractional CMO, from the owner’s chair
If you’re still deciding whether to hire one, the sections below cover when the role fits, how it compares with the other options, what happens to your team and your agency, and how an engagement ends well.
Is it the right call for your company?
It makes sense when marketing has outgrown the owner’s attention but the company doesn’t need a full-time executive yet, or isn’t ready to hire one. For a $5M to $100M company, that moment tends to show up in a few familiar ways: you’re spending real money on marketing and nobody can say what it returns; you have two or more vendors and no one setting a shared direction; a big move is coming, like a new market, a rebrand, an acquisition or a website that has to start carrying sales, and nobody in the building has led one before.
It isn’t the answer for everybody. If you already know exactly what you need built, you need people to build it, and a good agency or a freelancer is the better buy. If nobody can make a decision, an outside leader just adds another opinion. And if the plan is already decided and you need someone to sign off on it, you’ll save money skipping this step. In each of those cases I’ll point you to someone better suited.
How it compares
| Option | Best fit | The trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Fractional CMO | You need senior leadership for part of the week, and you have people or vendors to do the work. | Limited hours. It needs capable execution around it. |
| Full-time CMO | The function needs daily leadership, there’s a team big enough to lead, and the role will matter in three years. | A bigger commitment, and a longer search. |
| Interim CMO | You need a full-time leader for a set stretch, often while you search for a permanent one. | Full-time cost for that stretch, and it ends when the search does. |
| Marketing consultant | You want an outside view on where the money should go, with your own people running the work. | Help with the decisions, not someone running your team week to week. |
| Agency | You know what you need made and you need specialists to make it. | They work to their scope. Steering the budget across every vendor usually sits outside it. |
A common setup is a fractional CMO leading the agency you already have. If you’re weighing a full-time hire against a fractional one, I’ve written about that decision in more detail. For outside help on the decisions without the weekly seat, see marketing consultant.
Why the seat has to stay for the execution
A plan is a document until someone senior stays to make it happen: directing the agencies, holding the measures and changing course when the numbers say to. That’s the difference between a fractional CMO and a strategy deck, and it’s why this seat runs every week rather than ending with a presentation.
I held the seat at a company whose leadership doubted marketing could work at all. It was a relationship business, and the instinct was to hire more salespeople. So we set aside a slice of the budget to test marketing against that, and I was in the board meetings where it got discussed. When a marketing-sourced lead came through that made a real difference to their bottom line, it changed how they thought about growing the company.
What happens to your team and your agency
Usually your agency stays. It keeps producing, and the brief, the priorities and the measures come from the seat. A few of the companies I’ve led marketing for brought me in partly to sit across the table from specialists who were very good at their tools and focused entirely on their own channel. When an agency is the wrong fit, I’ll tell you and help you find a better one.
Your own people get someone senior to set direction and back them up. Sometimes the right answer is a stronger in-house leader. At one company the strategy was working well, and I still told the owners they needed their own marketing leader, someone who knew the day to day and owned it. They asked me to help hire that person.
How it ends well
The best version of this seat often ends with someone else in it. When a company is ready for a full-time marketing leader, I’ll help find them and hand over. I’ve helped a board interview and hire the person who took the seat over from me. Other times the right step is down to Advisory, once the plan runs without me in the weekly meetings.
Who’s actually in the seat
The person you meet is the person in the meeting. When the work needs hands-on help, I bring in specialists I trust, alongside your own team, and you choose who does it. I keep my client list short on purpose. Continuity doesn’t depend on my memory: I keep a running record of every meeting, decision and result, so the context is always there and nobody has to explain things twice.
AI in the seat
AI is how I get more done in the hours I’m in the seat. I use it to get through a company’s reporting, transcripts and vendor work quickly, to build and stress-test budget models, and to draft plans that I then pull apart myself, while the judgment about what we actually do stays with me. Teams tend to pick it up from watching how I use it on their own problems.
We agree at the start which of your information goes into which tools. I use paid tools set up so your data isn’t used to train their models, and if something shouldn’t go into AI at all, it doesn’t.
How to hire a fractional CMO
Whoever you talk to, me included, these are the questions I’d ask.
- What responsibility have you held for budgets, commercial results and the people doing the work? Titles vary. What they’ve been accountable for tells you more.
- Have you run vendors and an internal team at the same time? Most of the job is getting several groups to row the same way.
- How will you connect marketing to qualified opportunities and revenue, and where will the data fall short? A good answer names the limits.
- Will you tell me to spend less? A good one will, sometimes in the first month.
- Who does the work, and do you have a stake in any of it? Get a clear answer on what they do themselves, what your team does and what goes to vendors.
- What happens in month one? If they can’t describe it, they’re going to figure it out on your time.
On that last point about vendors: I founded Connective Web Design, and it’s one option when a client needs execution. It’s never the only one, and you choose who does the work.
Based in Houston, working nationwide
I’m in Houston, so for local companies the seat can include being in the building: leadership meetings, the quarterly planning day, sitting with your sales team. Outside Houston it runs the same way over video, with travel for the moments that matter. Either way you get the same person in the seat.
Start with a conversation
Send me a few sentences about the company and what you need help with. I’ll reply within one business day, and if there’s a fit, we’ll set up a free scoping call.
Rodney Warner
Marketing and business advisor to owners and leadership teams. Based in Houston, working nationwide.
Talk it through with me
Bring the decision you’re stuck on. We’ll work out whether you need advice, an agency, or neither.
Free scoping call. Reply within one business day.
Questions about hiring a fractional CMO
How is this priced?
By how much of my attention the work needs and how much rides on the decisions. Advisory starts at $3,000 a month, Ownership is $8,000 to $12,000+ and Portfolio is $12,000 to $18,000+. Most fractional CMO work sits at Ownership. See how it works.
What are the terms?
Three, six or twelve months, with a one-time onboarding fee that shrinks as the term gets longer and disappears at twelve. Terms renew for the same length unless either of us says otherwise before the last month starts.
What if it isn’t working?
We’ll know early, because the measures and review dates are set at the start and the 90-day review is built in. If it isn’t working, I’ll tell you what I’d change, or that this seat is the wrong tool. A three or six-month term ends with the term; a twelve-month term can end with 60 days’ notice after the first six months.
Do you also do the work?
Sometimes, when doing it myself is the fastest way through. Hands-on work is scoped and priced separately, so the seat’s fee stays about leading.
Will you work with our existing agency?
Almost always. Pointing it at the right goals and measuring it against them is part of the job.
Do you work alongside our marketing lead?
Yes, and it’s often the best setup. They run the day to day; I set direction with them, back their calls in leadership meetings and help them grow into more of the role.
How is this different from hiring a full-time CMO?
A full-time CMO is the right hire when the function needs leadership every day. This gives you senior judgment on the decisions that matter for part of the week, and I can help you hire and hand over to a permanent leader when the time comes.
How many companies do you work with?
Few enough to give each the attention its level promises. If I don’t have room, I’ll tell you when I expect to.
What’s paid separately?
Hands-on implementation, agency and specialist work, tools, and your ad spend. You approve anything outside the fee before it starts.
Who is this for?
Owners and leadership teams at roughly $5M to $100M in revenue, with someone who can say yes to the plan. My experience leans B2B, and I advise consumer brands as well.
Will you promise results?
No result on a date. We agree on expectations, the measures and the review dates at the start, so you know what I expect to happen and when we’ll check.
How do we start?
Send a note through the form on Work With Me. I reply within one business day, and if there’s a fit, we set up a free scoping call.