A fractional CMO:
senior leadership without the full-time hire.

A fractional CMO (fractional chief marketing officer) is one senior marketer who owns your marketing direction part-time. That covers strategy, budget, channel choice and what gets reported upward. An agency retainer buys work against a brief someone else wrote. A fractional CMO often writes that brief and holds the agencies to it.

It's agreed upfront and named in the proposal. Usually it's a fixed number of days a week, or a block of hours around your regular leadership meetings. Being in the room is most of the point. It isn't unlimited on-call help, and it isn't a quick hour a month either.

Yes, and it's a sensible way to lower the risk of that decision. You see their judgment in the room before committing to a six-figure salary. Some clients use the time to define the role they'll hire for. No exclusivity clause stops you hiring the person or someone else.

Fractional leadership is at CMO level. One senior person owns the direction of all your marketing and sits where decisions are made. Extended specialist capacity is narrower. A senior performance marketer, content lead or brand strategist joins your team to cover one area. If you're unsure which you need, the first call sorts it in ten minutes.

The same named person. A changing cast makes fractional leadership hard to trust, so ask any fractional CMO agency about it first. Continuity is most of what you pay for. Good direction depends on one person knowing the full picture, month after month.

There's no fixed minimum term. But a dedicated leadership arrangement has a notice period agreed in the proposal, because senior people can't be switched off overnight. That period is always written down before you sign. A fractional CMO with only a few hours a month rarely has enough time to do the job, and we'll say so.