What is a fractional CMO?

Why a CMO at all, and why it is expensive

A CMO is the head of marketing. A serious company wants a seasoned one: ten years at least, three companies or more, different kinds of campaigns behind them and results you can point at. In Israel today that person costs between 40 and 60 thousand shekels a month, before benefits and everything else that rides on a salary. For a small company or a startup at the start, that is an expense without a case: you do not need the person full time, and you cannot pay for full time.

The familiar alternative is a junior marketer, two or three years out of school, at 25 to 35 thousand a month. Half the cost, none of the strategy. And if all you want is someone to point the ship in the right direction, why buy the cow when you want a glass of milk?

A fractional CMO is both worlds: the strategy, the planning and the management of a seasoned CMO, in a dose you can turn up or down as the company needs. In Israel the role is known by its English name even in Hebrew conversation; the nearest Hebrew is an external marketing director, or a marketing strategy consultant who also runs the execution.

What I do, and what I do not

I do the strategy, propose a plan, get it authorised, and then oversee the implementation: with the marketing and sales people inside the company, or with external vendors. Content I read and check. I do not write it. My hour is too expensive to spend on content creation, and spending it there wastes the client's money.

Said plainly: a fractional CMO is not a one-stop shop. Some companies want one person who takes care of everything. That is not what I offer. I offer senior management of the marketing and most of the strategy. Content, paid campaigns and the website are done by a third party or by internal people, and every vendor engagement is directly between the vendor and the client. I am not a funnel of funds. I do not hire vendors and bill for them. I bill only for my time.

One more thing: a fractional CMO does not do emergencies. He is not the person who drops everything and runs at whatever just happened. He is a strategic overseer. A full-time CMO can do everything and react fast; that is a different approach to the same position.

How many hours, for how long

The minimum is one or two days a week, and inside them at least two or three hours for a client. The maximum is around ten hours a week. Beyond that the benefit against the cost starts to erode, and it is time to think about a full-time hire. A full-time job in Israel is about 186 hours a month; you buy a fifth of that or less, because you do not need more.

Engagements come in two lengths. Strategy work, laying the go-to-market, sharpening the differentiator, working on the brand, is a short project, sometimes a month. Campaigns and ongoing marketing maintenance need three to six months at least before results show: the efficacy of an online campaign cannot be measured in a single month. My contract can be ended on 30 days' notice.

Who it fits

• A startup after a funding round, with no revenue yet to carry a running expense, that wants someone seasoned for the brand, the logo, the tagline and the corporate identity, as a project with an end date.
• An established company whose marketing director has gone on maternity leave or a sabbatical, and wants the train to keep running without paying for the extras.
• A small company with big ambitions that wants a first-rank CMO beside it and does not have the cash flow for one.

For the maternity-leave case the model that works is a pairing: someone inside the company running the marketing day to day, not especially senior, at 20 to 30 thousand a month, coupled with a fractional CMO for two to four hours a week for the strategy, the quality control and the hard decisions about what to do and what not to do. That is where the seniority goes.

Most of this work is B2B. The number of customers is smaller, so the focus can be account-based marketing, aimed at named companies rather than a crowd. Every position I have held was in a B2B company, and that is where I am strong.

Against an agency, a consultant and a full-time hire

An agency and a fractional CMO are basically the same thing: an agency also has someone leading the strategy. An agency is usually slightly more expensive, and it brings flexibility and redundancy, several people and more vendors. What a fractional CMO brings is a closer relationship with the company, and a slightly smaller budget. I say this having run an agency.

A consultant advises and leaves. A fractional CMO decides, gets it authorised, and stays accountable for the execution.

A full-time CMO is the right answer once the weekly hours cross the threshold, and when the company needs someone who responds to emergencies. It is not unheard of for an exceptionally good fractional CMO to be offered the full-time job and take it.

What it costs

I am flexible. Hourly on actual hours, which is a bank of hours. Or a retainer: a discount on the hourly rate for a fixed number of hours, and if I run over, the client does not pay more unless the scope of the work changed.

Strategy I do not bill by the hour. Fixed price, because strategy has nothing to do with how many hours it takes. As with a doctor, you are not paying for the time. You are paying for twenty-two years of marketing experience, compressed into the moment of the decision. Can a language model produce a strategy? Partly, yes, and it may be good enough. But it will not make the right real-world decisions, because of how such models work. I work with models; the decisions I take are based on experience, not on a model. Seasoned CMOs are not guessing less because they are cleverer. They have simply failed more times than other people, so their decisions are, on average, better ones.

What it needs from the CEO

The work divides in two: strategy and implementation. In the strategy phase I help translate the vision into a go-to-market strategy and a working plan. Once that exists the implementation is clear, and nobody turns the whole ship every month. There is a guiding star, and the decisions are made against it again and again. You can still change your mind on the data you collect and pivot, but from a plan.

A CEO whose vision and business strategy are not crystallised will struggle with any head of marketing. The division of labour that works: the CEO sets the business strategy; I translate it into a few possible marketing strategies and hand them over; the CEO chooses; I implement. I prefer bold CEOs, willing to take a risk on creativity, because a campaign that looks like everyone else's is a copy of someone else's campaign.

What hurts most is backseat driving: the strategy, the brand, the website and the funnel are designed, and then the CEO steps into the colours of a presentation or the wording of an email. CEOs who trust their head of marketing do better than CEOs who drive from the back seat.