Real operators, not retitled freelancers
Ours have run a marketing function, owned a revenue number, and sat in a board meeting where it missed. Ask for the receipts on the first call. We bring them.
Senior marketing leadership
The fractional CMO market has a quality problem.
About 120,000 people on LinkedIn now call themselves fractional CMO. Two years ago most were SEO leads or copywriters. This page is the vetting kit you came here for.
why a fractional cmo
Why a Fractional CMO
The question has changed. Most providers have not.
Two years ago, you would have asked what a fractional CMO does. You are not asking that. You are deciding between a full-time hire, a fractional, a head of marketing, and carrying on yourself. You want criteria more than category education. This page gives you criteria, then introduces ours.
See the differenceExecution stack, not a slide deck
The specialists who deliver the work sit next to the leader who set the direction. Same house. No handoff. Nothing out of scope when the quarter gets hard.
Built for the awkward middle
This is too big for founder-led marketing and too small for a full-time executive hire. The fractional model pays back at the stage where neither of those works.
our approach
Our Approach
Direction first. Then delivery.
S&P 500 CMO tenure is 4.1 years and falling (Spencer Stuart, 2025). The full-time hire you are weighing has a four-year half-life. Fractional is the structural answer, not the stopgap.
First 30 days. We pressure-test positioning, ICP, funnel, attribution, team, and agency stack. You get a written verdict that names what is broken, what is wasted, what is working, and what to stop paying for.
Your marketing leader takes the seat. They run the weekly, prep the board, align the AEs, manage the agencies, write the hiring plan, and reallocate the budget. The strategy is not a deck. It is a calendar.
The execution stack runs underneath. Paid, content, SEO, ABM, creative, and AI-assisted research are wired to one plan and one number, and briefed by the same leader.
When the full-time hire makes sense, we say so. We brief the candidate, write the role, sit in interviews, and step back. The exit is in the engagement letter, not buried in the renewal.
What Your
CMO Owns
This is not advice and not a deck. It is a working marketing function with a person whose name is on the result.
Marketing Strategy
Positioning, ICP, channel mix, budget reallocation, and a 12-month plan that survives the CFO. Written down. Pressure-tested. Costed.
Team & Agency Leadership
Manages your in-house marketers, your agencies, and the seam between them. Ends the finger-pointing. Runs the weekly. Owns the number.
Board & Investor Narrative
Builds the marketing case your CEO takes to the board and your CFO trusts on the call. Pipeline, payback, and progress in plain English.
UK, MENA & ANZ Go-To-Market
One marketing leader who can credibly direct a UK launch, a Dubai expansion, and an Auckland market entry. No US competitor delivers across all three.
We do not deliver decks. We ship the work.
Most fractional CMOs leave you the strategy and the invoice. We leave you the strategy, the system that ran it, the team that built it, and the report that proves it worked. The difference is who owns the number when the quarter closes. The answer is still us.
why MxD
Why MxD for Marketing Leadership
A bench network is not a team.
The dominant model is matchmaking. A network finds you a CMO. You find an agency. The agency finds the work. That leaves three contracts, three loyalties, no integration, and a strategy-execution seam where most engagements fail. We run a single house. The leader who sets the strategy directs the specialists who deliver it. One accountability line.
Common
Questions
How do I avoid hiring a bad fractional CMO?
Ask three questions on the first call, of us or anyone else. What number have you owned, in writing, that you missed, and what did you do about it? Who, by name, will I meet with each week? What in our brief tells you we should not hire you yet? Vague answers, or a LinkedIn title younger than two years, are your cue to walk.
How is this different from a strategy consultant?
A consultant owns the advice. We own the number. The deliverable is not a deck. It is a running marketing function with weekly evidence that it is working. We are AI-fluent by default, so the agentic work that is quietly ending careers (Gartner names it a top-three reason CMOs lose jobs by 2027) does not blindside you. If the strategy does not get executed, it does not count.
What does this cost? And how does IR35 work?
We publish three engagement tiers covering strategic oversight, full leadership, and full leadership plus integrated execution. Each is quoted against scope, fixed for the engagement, and published in the proposal. There are no day-rate surprises and no out-of-scope invoices. We contract through MxD, so IR35 sits with us, not with your finance team. It is cheaper than a full-time hire that does not work out.
What if we already have a marketing manager?
Most clients do. Your manager runs campaigns. Your fractional CMO sets direction, defends the budget, and manages the agencies. The two roles are not competitive. They are sequential. We coach your manager into the role they were hired to grow into, which is also how you avoid replacing them in nine months.