Companies often find this work while searching for a Fractional CMO, Fractional Chief Marketing Officer, outsourced CMO, interim CMO, or marketing strategy consultant. Those are valid ways to structure an engagement. The work itself begins earlier.
Senior marketing leadership on a part-time basis, accountable for outcomes rather than activity.
A Fractional CMO sets the commercial strategy, decides what the business will be known for, builds the plan, leads the team or the agencies, and owns the numbers. The difference from a consultant is accountability: a consultant recommends, a Fractional CMO leads.
In my case the engagement starts with the Operating Promise™, because marketing cannot amplify a promise the business has not defined or cannot deliver.
Usually at the point where marketing has outgrown the founder but not yet earned a full-time executive.
Common moments: revenue between roughly five and seventy-five million dollars, a marketing team without senior leadership, a repositioning, an acquisition to integrate, a founder who is the bottleneck, or a business preparing for sale.
An interim CMO covers a gap. An outsourced CMO runs the function. A Fractional CMO does both, at a fraction of the cost of the hire, and leaves the capability behind.
A brand is not a marketing asset.It is an operational standard.
A consultant hands you a recommendation. I help build the thing the recommendation describes.
The engagement looks at the whole business, not only the marketing function, because customers do not experience departments. Leadership, sales, operations, customer experience, technology, AI, and measurement all either prove the promise or undermine it.