Why pay you when I already have AI?

AI, and the low-cost automated tools built on it, sell you instructions or output and disclaim the result. Read their terms: they take no responsibility for whether it works. We do the opposite. We build and run the marketing and hold ourselves to defined outcomes, with our name on it. By our own rule, anything we produce that you could have generated yourself doesn't ship. You're paying for execution, judgment, and accountability, not answers you can already get for free.

How are you different from an agency?

Most agencies execute a scope and report activity. We own the outcome. We build the marketing, run it, and hold ourselves to a small number of real business measures agreed up front, not a list of tasks performed.

The Growth Diagnostic is $2,500, fixed scope, and it becomes your first month if you go on to the retainer. Done-For-You starts at $8,000 per month. Advisory, where we direct your own team, is $5,000 per month. Exact scope is set together once we understand your situation.

How long until I see results?

Meaningful marketing results take a quarter, not weeks. Engagements begin with a defined initial term and checkpoints at thirty, sixty, and ninety days, measured against the few numbers that actually matter for your business.

Am I locked into a long contract?

No. After the initial term you continue month to month with a clear notice period. We earn retention by continuing to deliver, not by trapping you in a contract.

What do you actually do, day to day?

We build and run funnels, paid acquisition, content, and the systems and measurement behind them. The strategy, documentation, and playbooks come with it as the record of the work, not as a plan for you to execute on your own.

Does a fractional CMO run the marketing or just advise?

In most engagements they advise. They set direction, prioritise channels, and guide your team, and they typically do not run the campaigns themselves. If nobody on your side can execute the plan, a fractional CMO alone will not close the gap.

Is fractional CMO a regulated title?

No. Anyone can use it. Roughly 110,000 people on LinkedIn identified as fractional in 2026, up from about 2,000 in 2022, so the title alone tells a buyer nothing. What tells you something is whether the person can show you the last account they diagnosed, the numbers they verified at source, and the recommendation they got wrong.

When should I hire a fractional CMO?

When the decisions are the bottleneck rather than the doing: your team can execute but nobody senior owns the direction, or a founder is running marketing as one of twelve jobs. If the bottleneck is execution capacity instead, a fractional CMO will hand you a plan you still cannot carry out.

Fractional CMO Services for Founders | Theory Media

Services · Fractional CMO

Anyone can call themselves a fractional CMO. Nobody can call themselves accountable.

The title is not a qualification and it is not regulated. What separates the real thing from the flood is not the label. It is whether the person setting your direction is still standing there when the numbers come in.

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Theory Media

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Direction, and the doing

01 · What happened to this title

In four years the word went from rare to meaningless.

People identifying as "fractional" on LinkedIn, then and now. Nothing was invented, no examination was created, and no bar was set. A market opened and a word was available.

2022

2,000

A specialism practiced by people who had done the job before.

55×In four years

2026

110,000

A title anybody can take, on a market worth $1.27 billion.

SOURCED · LinkedIn self-identification figures and market size as published by O-CMO, 2026. Not our data. More people picked up the title than learned the job. Which means the label cannot help you choose, and something else has to.

02 · What the role actually includes

A fractional CMO decides. Somebody else does.

That is not a criticism. It is the definition, and every honest guide on the subject says so plainly. The problem is what it leaves you holding.

The standard model

Fractional CMO

$5,000 – $15,000 / moPublished market range

Sets strategy and priorities
Chooses channels, defines the metrics
Directs your team and your vendors
Does not run the campaigns
Execution bought separately

You still need hands

Our equivalent

Advisory

$5,000 / moFixed, posted, no hourly

Diagnoses before directing
Sets strategy and holds it on a cadence
Reviews the work your team produces
Verifies your tracking at the source
Your team executes, not us

The same shape, at the floor of the band

When execution is the gap

Done-For-You

from $8,000 / moStrategy and execution, one firm

Everything in Advisory
We build and run the marketing
Paid media, funnels, content, search
One party accountable for the result
Campaign creative produced in-house

No seam between deciding and doing

SOURCED · the $5,000 to $15,000 range is the published market figure for fractional CMO retainers (Strategic Pete, Geisheker Group, 2026). A full-time CMO commonly runs $250,000 to $400,000 a year all-in. Our numbers are ours. Everything else on this page belongs to somebody we named.

03 · How to vet one, including us

Four questions. Ask them of everyone you interview.

If the title cannot tell you who is real, these will. We have written our own answers underneath, which is either useful to you or an invitation to check.

"Show me the last account you diagnosed, and what you found."

Not a case study with a percentage on it. The actual finding: what was broken, how they discovered it, and what nobody else had noticed. A strategist who cannot describe a diagnosis in specifics has not done many.

Ours is published, with the mechanism, on the research page.

"Who executes, and what happens if the plan does not get built?"

Most fractional engagements end at the handover. If your team cannot carry the plan, you have bought a document. Ask directly, before you sign, whose problem that becomes.

Advisory: your team, and we review it. Done-for-you: we build it, and it is our problem.

"What would make you tell me I should not hire you?"

Everybody has a shape they do not fit. A senior operator can name theirs in one sentence. Somebody who added the title last quarter will tell you they can help with anything.

If your channel is proven and you need volume in it, buy a specialist agency. If price is the deciding factor, we will lose and we should.

"Tell me a recommendation you got wrong."

The answer is the whole interview. Marketing is a field where confident people are frequently wrong, and the only ones worth hiring are the ones who noticed and said so.

We publish a case where we state plainly what we have not proven, and a study that would kill our own claim if the data went the other way.

Check our answers → Or compare us to an agency →

04 · Which one you need

The question is whether the bottleneck is deciding or doing.

If your team can execute and nobody senior owns the direction, you need the Advisory shape and a fractional CMO would also serve you. If the founder is the marketing department and the plan would sit in a drawer, more strategy is the last thing you need.

We will tell you which one you are on the first call, before you have paid us anything, and the answer is sometimes that you should hire neither yet. Every engagement starts with a Growth Diagnostic because the honest version of this conversation requires looking at your accounts first.

05 · Questions

What founders ask before hiring one.

What does a fractional CMO cost?+

Published ranges put it at roughly $5,000 to $15,000 a month, against $250,000 to $400,000 a year all-in for a full-time chief marketing officer. Most of that fee buys strategy and oversight. It does not buy execution, which you purchase separately. Our Advisory engagement is $5,000, at the floor of that band, and posted rather than quoted.

Do they actually run the marketing?+

Usually not. They set direction, prioritise channels, and guide your team, and they typically do not run campaigns. If nobody on your side can execute, a fractional CMO alone will not close that gap. It is the single most common reason these engagements disappoint.

Is the title regulated?+

No, and anybody can use it. Around 110,000 people on LinkedIn identified as fractional in 2026, up from about 2,000 in 2022. The word tells you nothing about whether the person has run marketing before. The four questions above tell you a great deal.

Are you a fractional CMO?+

We are a marketing firm, and our Advisory engagement is that shape: we set the direction, hold the strategy, and review the work while your team executes. The difference is that when execution is the bottleneck we do not hand you a plan and wish you luck. We build it and run it, and then the result is ours to answer for.

Can I start with strategy and add execution later?+

Yes. Advisory steps up to done-for-you when the work outgrows your team, and it steps back down when it does not. Both begin with the same diagnostic, and the diagnostic fee credits into your first month either way.

Start here

Ask us the four questions.

Twenty-five minutes, no obligation, and you should be interviewing us rather than the other way round. Bring the four questions above and any others you have. If we are the wrong shape for your business, that is a useful answer and it costs you nothing.

Book a free 25-min call See pricing →