What It Really Means to Be a Fractional CMO for a Small Company

A coaching client asked me about positioning himself as a fractional CMO, and I thought some thoughts here because it is a question I’ve heard a lot in recent years: How different is fractional CMO work from freelance work?

I’ve never been the CMO, fractional or otherwise, for a large company, so I don’t pretend to speak with authority about that role. All of my experience since 2018 has been with smaller companies, so that’s my frame of reference here.

What is a fractional CMO and what does one do?

To start with, when you think about being a fractional CMO, remember that term “fractional” used to imply part-time executive leadership.

A CMO is the chief or executive-level marketing leader who works directly with the CEO, makes decisions about growth and marketing, allocates resources, drives strategy and planning, and takes the blame when things go wrong. A CMO would be over however many VPs of marketing who are over however many marketing directors, managers, and coordinators.

Some organizations are large enough and have multiple business units and can justify a marketing function and org chart with all of these roles.

Most, however, aren’t large enough, and so having a full-time CMO doesn’t make sense. That would be like having one general and two infantry or one head coach and three players.

So small companies hire a fractional CMO when they need some leadership, strategy, planning, and decision-making, either because the founder has too much going on or because she doesn’t have all the marketing expertise the company needs to keep growing.

I’ve been hired in both situations, not enough bandwidth or not enough expertise, and for a third reason: A solo founder wanted a growth-minded peer to serve as a sparring partner.

Fractional CMO work differs from freelance work in that the work focuses less on deliverables, such as writing, design, or code, and more on the key responsibilities I already mentioned.

There is some overlap. As a fractional CMO, I have come up with fresh ideas and have led rebranding efforts. I’ve crafted copy when budget or time constraints made it necessary. I have helped to move big projects forward by managing them myself and recognized that I was acting like both the head coach and the quarterback.

Though I pride myself on doing what needs to be done without being too fussy about titles or pay grades, I know that the more time I spend in the weeds of implementation, the less value the client is getting from me.

One client, a CEO, knew that, which is why he said, “I want you to spend more of your time thinking.”

The most discerning founders and CEOs will know that they need a marketing leader to keep one eye on the horizon and ask questions like these:

• What are we doing?
• Why are we doing it?
• How does this fit into the bigger business strategy?
• How do we keep it moving? Who all needs to be involved?

Speaking of who, fractional CMOs may help vet and onboard freelancers, consultants, or agencies, and let me tell you, it’s illuminating to be on the other side of the hiring equation and learn firsthand why some marketing leaders do not want to rehire certain people and agencies, even if they’re talented. (Check out my conversation with Matthew Fenton for more on that “what makes a freelancer re-hireable” topic.)

This role involves leadership, not just deliverables or diagnosis.

If you are a creative and have some experience freelancing, then you may think being a fractional CMO is mostly about moving upmarket.

I don’t think that’s quite right. You’re not just a creative defining and producing deliverables—creativity plus deliverables. You’re also not just a consultant defining problems and proposing a path forward—diagnosis plus solutions.

Being a good fractional CMO requires switching between the responsibilities that fall under the umbrella of growth, judging when to do something yourself or delegate it, and making calls—that is, leadership.

To provide that leadership, you have to be in the thick of it, and that is one of the tensions of the role. Sometimes you need to be at 30,000 feet: What is our lead domino, the one thing that would make everything else easier? Sometimes you need to be on the ground: Why is the homepage not converting?

A fractional CMO who isn’t embedded will struggle to be effective, because without that embeddedness, you lose situational awareness. You will say, “Hey, we ought to… “ and that recommendation will be smart in theory. But it will be ridiculous to the folks in the trenches who already tried that four months ago.

CMOs at large organizations may have strong leaders underneath them who enable them to stay out of the fray, but the smaller companies I work with need a fractional CMO who can hold a lot in his head and maintain situational awareness in order to provide strategic direction and oversight and make good decisions.

Few things are worse for team morale—and results—than a clueless leader.

That’s why a fractional CMO role involves a different kind of burden than simply producing good creative work.

This role requires discipline.

Marketing goes better when you focus and double down on fewer strategies and tactics that are already working, conduct and measure new experiments, and improve over time.

In most respects, more effective marketing is subtractive rather than additive. You grow by subtraction, which necessarily means pruning.

Growth by subtraction is simple in theory but not practice.

The nature of marketing is that it is very easy to drift from your commitment to a specific strategy or defined plan.

To fight that drift, fractional CMOs must have discipline.

If you can’t manage the tension of being both a leader and occasional doer and then wrap that tension inside a disciplined commitment to less but better, then you will struggle in this role.

Guess whose job it is to tell the CEO or founder no? Yours.

• “No, we don’t need to do that new thing you heard about on a podcast. We need to stick to the plan.”
• “No, we don’t need to hire another consultant. We need to keep doing what is already working.”
• “No, we don’t need to pull the plug on this yet. We need to finish the experiment.”

Saying no takes discipline, especially when you’re working with a smart, opinionated, and visionary founder or CEO.

A good marketing leader must be okay with displeasing the CEO or founder. You must be okay with being temporarily disliked, with doing the not-so-glamorous work while the chosen strategies come to fruition.

The combination of embeddedness, strategic thinking, and discipline make this role hard to fake.

I have noticed a trend: Freelancers of all types putting the word “fractional” in front of their specialization and using it as a synonym for “part-time” or “contract.”

I understand the choice. No judgment here. “Fractional” sounds more senior and premium; it differentiates you from less confident peers.

That said, a fractional CMO is not simply a freelance marketer with stronger positioning. You steer the direction of the work more than you contribute to it. You decide what matters rather than execute what someone else decided. You help the CEO and rest of the team stay committed to the strategy, and you call out distractions and shiny objects for what they are.

A fractional CMO role is qualitatively different from creative freelance work. It is weightier because it carries more responsibility.

You have to be willing to hold up your hand and say, “I screwed up. That one is on me.” You have to bear the consequences.

Using the word “fractional” is easy, but fully delivering on the implied responsibility isn’t.

I know because I have lost the script at times. I lost touch with what was most important for growth. I did a disservice to my clients because I did too much when I should have been thinking about what not to do.

What if you are worried that you don’t have enough experience?

This is a legitimate concern. Your confidence won’t grow until you actually start doing the work, but how do you start doing the work until you’re confident—a chicken-and-egg conundrum.

The initial gap between your past experience and future capability is unavoidable. If you’re interested enough in being a fractional CMO to try it once, then you must start before you feel entirely ready.

Thankfully, you can shrink the gap with some artificial confidence based on tools. A lot of leadership and a lot of marketing come down to which frameworks you can reach for and which decision-making rubrics you can use. So read books about marketing and marketing leadership. Read posts and listen to podcasts about being a fractional CMO. Start collecting frameworks, rubrics, and mental models.

Then, when you find yourself in a situation where the stakes feel higher, you have tools or know where to find them. You can quickly answer questions:

• What is strategy? How do you know a good one from a bad one?
• What is positioning? What two or three frameworks can help me strengthen our positioning?
• How is messaging different from copywriting? What framework can I use to tighten our messaging?
• What’s the difference between growth and marketing? What’s the difference between scaling and growth?
• How should we hire a marketing coordinator? Who will lead that process?

And on it goes.

You don’t become confident because someone put a badge on your uniform or hung a medal around your neck. You become more confident as you do the work, make mistakes, and learn from them. You avoid future mistakes as you build a better set of tools and better models for thinking and testing.

Measurement is the ultimate Get Out of Jail Free card for fractional CMOs because you don’t have to have all the answers or always know what’s going to work in advance. Instead, you propose meaningful experiments, track the results, and improve over time.

Final thought

Fractional CMO work is different from creative work because it comprises leadership, expertise, clear thinking, embeddedness or situational awareness, ongoing judgment and discernment about what not to do, and a commitment to the principle of growth by subtraction.

You have to be comfortable telling other people what to do, and you have to be comfortable holding the team to a strategy even when it is more exciting—and potentially more rewarding!—to chase something new.

You have to manage yourself before you can manage anyone else, and I haven’t always succeeded in that department.

If after reading this, a fractional CMO role doesn't sound like something you’d be interested in, that’s a good sign. On the other hand, if you’re thinking, “I’m already doing most of that,” then it’s time for you to formally take the title, responsibility, and positioning. It’s time for you to graduate even if you’re scared.

When you’re ready, here are ways I can help you:

1. ‍Freelance Cake Community. Build the business you really want with people who really get it
2. Freelance Cake Newsletter. Subscribe to the must-read newsletter for freelancers and consultants
3. 1:1 Business Coaching. Gain clarity, confidence, and momentum in your freelance or consulting business.
4. Free Money. A pricing and money mindset guide for freelance creatives. If you’re unsure about your freelance pricing, this is the book for you.
5. Morning Marketing Habit. This course will help you build an “always be marketing” practice, become less dependent on referrals, and proactively build the business you want with the clients you want. My own morning marketing habit has enabled me to consistently make 6 figures as a freelancer.
6. Smart, Strategic Pricing Bundle. For setting freelance prices you’re really confident in - priced meant to be so laughably low that you think there must be some mistake.