Fractional CMO
Know what your head of marketing did, every month.
A head of marketing with a written scope.
Senior marketing leadership for a business that needs it and can’t justify the full-time salary. Two tiers on this page, fixed: $5,000 or $10,000 a month, each with the reserved days, the meetings and the deliverables written down before you pay. There’s also a fuller arrangement, with the work itself included, that we scope on the call. And if, at any monthly review, you can’t say what we did and why it mattered, that month’s fee comes back.
Three months in, what did you buy?
Plenty of owners who’ve hired a fractional CMO can describe the person. Fewer can describe the work. There were meetings, a strategy document, some direction for the agency, and by the end of the quarter, a sense that things were a bit more organized. Then the invoice came, along with the question a partner or a spouse asks: what exactly did we get for that?
It’s the same question that ends plenty of agency relationships. This time it’s being asked about an executive.
What the market offers instead.
If you go looking, you’ll mostly find three kinds of help:
- Hourly consultants, who sell you time and leave you to judge what it produced.
- Big fractional firms, whose price you learn after the discovery call, and whose executive you meet after you sign.
- Marketplaces, which match you with someone in a day or two and tell you nothing about what a month with them contains.
They differ in price and polish.
They share one thing: the scope is whatever the relationship turns out to be.
The scope comes first, and it’s written.
Before you pay anything, you get a one-page scope. It says:
- how many days a month are reserved for you
- which meetings happen, and how often
- what gets delivered in the first thirty days
- which numbers we’re responsible for moving
- the point at which we’d tell you to stop something
After that, a Friday note reports against it every week. Every task sits in a log you can open. And every month ends in a review that says what you paid, what we did, what happened, what failed and what we’d stop.
A head of marketing should hand an owner all of this anyway, so we put it in the scope.
A page from a scope, as a sample.
The named numbers from a sample scope, for a fictional garden center with two locations and an online store. Yours are yours.
The numbers we’re responsible for
| Number | Threshold | Check date |
|---|---|---|
Cost per new online customer from search ads | under $45 | day 60 |
Email signups at the two checkouts | 400 a month | monthly review |
Online customers who buy again within 90 days | over 25% | day 90 |
Online and phone inquiries answered within one business day | 95% | every Friday |
If cost per new online customer is still above $45 at day 60 after the day-30 changes, we recommend pausing search ads and putting that budget into email to the in-store list.
Every Friday note reports against a table like that one (there’s a sample note on the Marketing Monthly page, if you want to see the format). How many rows it has, and how much of the work behind them is ours, depends on the tier.
The two tiers, and the third.
Direct
$5,000a month
Owner-led, roughly $1M to $5M, with people who can carry out the work
We set direction. Your people do the work.
2 days a month
Lead
$10,000a month
Roughly $3M to $10M, with a team or vendors to direct
We run the marketing function.
4 days a month
The third tier.
On the call
For a business that wants one accountable head of marketing with execution included, six reserved days a month, two channels, the campaigns and the writing done by us, there’s a fuller arrangement. We scope it on the call rather than on this page, because the people who deliver it are named in the scope.
Compare everything in Direct and Lead
Three months, then 30 days’ notice
Three months, then 30 days’ notice
Replies within two business days
Replies within one business day
Every two weeks
Weekly
A 90-day plan, reviewed quarterly
The same, plus ownership of the budget
Reviewed and advised
Directed weekly; hired and replaced as needed
One
Two
Reviewed
One channel managed, no spend limit
Designed by us, run by your people
One a month, run by us
Reviewed
One email a month
Ad spend is always yours, paid to the platform directly. We never pay it and never take a cut of it.
Whichever tier it is, the first month runs the same way.
Your first thirty days.
By the end of the month you can see what you paid for, before any campaign has returned anything. And three months in, when someone asks what you bought, you can hand them the scope, a dozen Friday notes, the log and three monthly reviews, each one saying what moved and what didn’t.
Week one
Interviews with you and your team, access to the accounts and the data, and the success criteria agreed in writing, so month three is judged against what we said in week one.
Week two
The review: channels, spend, vendors, tracking, and what each is actually producing. One quick win gets started if we find one, and it’s often something that’s been wasting money.
Week three
The tracking baseline, so later numbers mean something, and the findings so far, including anything to stop now.
Week four
The written 90-day plan: three priorities at most, each with its number and its date.
The standard, and what happens if we miss it.
The six commitments every monthly plan of ours carries:
A one-page scope before you pay.
A log you can open any time.
A Friday note: done, doing, blocked, what we need from you.
A number on every piece of work, with the stop written next to it.
A monthly review in plain English, including what failed and what to stop.
Everything in your name.
If a Friday note doesn’t arrive, or a week goes by with nothing in the log, a quarter of that month’s fee is credited back, and you don’t have to ask. And at any monthly review, if you can’t say what we did and why it mattered, that month’s fee comes back.
Here’s how that works:
- You claim it at the review or within seven days of it.
- It covers our fee only.
- You keep the month’s work.
- A refunded month ends the three-month minimum.
Term and exit.
- Three months to start
- Then 30 days’ notice
- Extra work written before it’s billed
Three months to start, then 30 days’ notice. Work beyond the tier’s limits either moves you up a tier or becomes a written add-on, and you see it before it’s billed.
Compare that with what others charge, and how much of it they write down.
What it costs elsewhere.
Published on their own pages, read November 4, 2026:
- $7,500
Marketri takes no engagement under $7,500 a month and says most run $10,000 to $20,000.
- $8,000
MarkCMO’s entry tier is $8,000 a month for 15 to 20 hours, and its full tier is $14,000 to $16,000 for 30 to 40.
- $12,000
A one-day-a-week retainer with Kamyar Shah runs $12,000 to $15,000.
- No price
The larger firms publish no price at all. You learn it after the discovery call.
- $5,000or $10,000
Ours are on this page: $5,000 for two reserved days and direction, $10,000 for four and the function run.
- Full lifecycle
- Small tests
Devlands
“Wabbit doesn’t just guess whether something will work… they come up with ways to generate data to support their hypothesis.”
The founder, in a verified client review
Read the case file →What we’ve done before.
Wabbit has been in business since 2017, and the marketing talent behind it goes back decades, agency-side and in-house, with Addy and MarComm awards for campaign creative along the way. At a national nonprofit one of us led, media revenue rose a third while the budget was cut in half, lapsed donors came back, and traffic quadrupled.
One engagement we can describe in numbers was a fractional CMO role for an online store selling licensed collectibles, for two months: conversion went from 0.9% to 3.0% across 18,459 sessions, and a restock announcement, three posts and one email to the waitlist, produced the store’s second-highest sales day on record.
You won’t find a client’s ad spend anywhere on our site, which is why the scope above is a sample and the store isn’t named. In this case we’ll make one exception, because the number is zero: the store’s ad spend during those two months was nothing.
Who it’s for.
- Real revenue and the margin to act
- Marketing people or vendors
- Nobody senior accountable
A business with real revenue and the margin to act on advice, with marketing people or vendors and nobody senior accountable for whether it works. The “usually for” line on each tier is a guide, not a rule. If what you need is a set list of work done every month, and not someone leading the whole function, that’s Marketing Monthly.
A smaller advisory arrangement also exists; ask on the call.
Questions.
Days of our working time held for you each month, across meetings, the plan and the work the tier includes. We don’t bill by the hour, and we don’t publish an hourly rate.
The same person every time, the one who signed the scope.
Strategy, direction and the review are ours. The campaign and the email each month are done by us. Anything beyond the tier is a written add-on.
No. You pay the platform directly. The fee is for the leadership and the work.
Say so at the monthly review or within seven days of it. The month’s fee comes back, you keep the work, and the three-month minimum ends.
You move up, or the extra work becomes a written add-on. Nothing is added to the invoice that wasn’t written down first.
Which tier, or whether at all.
Fifteen minutes about your business, who does marketing today and what you can’t currently account for. We’ll say which tier fits, whether Marketing Monthly would do, or whether a head of marketing isn’t what you need.
Book the call