FRACTIONAL CMO
Fractional CMO leadership, measured in leads, jobs and revenue.
Senior marketing leadership from Derek and Courtney Burden, for businesses that have outgrown ad hoc marketing but don't need a full-time executive yet. Strategy, budget, suppliers and reporting, owned by people accountable for the number.
Built for businesses with 20 to 100 staff and $3M+ in revenue.
What a fractional CMO does for your business.
A fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader who works part of the week inside your business. They set the strategy, control the budget, manage your agencies and staff, and report to leadership on leads, jobs and revenue. You get chief marketing officer judgement, scoped to what your business needs, without a full-time executive salary.
SOUND FAMILIAR?
If you're spending serious money on marketing and nobody can tell you what it returned, keep reading.
01
Three suppliers, no owner.
The SEO agency, the ads agency and the web developer each report their own wins. Nobody is accountable for the total, so the total never gets reported.
02
Suppliers marking their own homework.
Every monthly report says things are going well. None of them is written by someone who would lose anything if they weren't.
03
A marketing coordinator doing a strategy job.
You hired someone capable to execute, and they've ended up deciding the budget too. That's not their role, and it's not fair on them.
04
A leadership meeting with no marketing number.
Finance reports a figure. Sales reports a figure. Marketing reports activity. At your size, that gap costs more every quarter.
None of this means your marketing is broken. It means nobody senior owns it, and that's the part a fractional CMO fixes.
Most fractional CMOs arrive with a playbook.
We start with your numbers.
HOW IT RUNS
Diagnose. Construct. Bank.™ Applied to your whole marketing function.
The DCB Method: Diagnose, Construct, Bank
01
Diagnose.
Every engagement starts with a strategy project. We look at what you spend, who you spend it with, where enquiries actually come from, and what happens to them once they arrive. You get a written plan whether or not you keep us on.
02
Construct.
The plan becomes a working system: a budget split by channel, a clear brief for every supplier, and a pipeline that tracks an enquiry from first click to signed job.
03
Bank.
Every month, leadership sees leads, jobs and revenue against the plan. When a channel stops earning, it gets cut or fixed, and you hear it from us first.
You deal with Derek and Courtney, the co-founders of DCB. Not a junior account manager reading from our notes.
WHAT YOU GET
Six things a fractional CMO from DCB takes off your plate.
A marketing strategy and 12-month plan.
What you're trying to win, who from, through which channels, and what it's worth. Written down, costed, and reviewed against actual results.
Budget allocation and channel mix.
Where every marketing dollar goes, and why. Spend moves to what's producing enquiries and away from what isn't. That includes paid ads reported as cost per enquiry.
Management of your agencies, freelancers and staff.
One senior person briefing, reviewing and holding every supplier to the same numbers. Your team gets direction instead of guesswork. That includes SEO that's reported in leads.
Leadership and board reporting on revenue.
Leads, jobs and revenue, reported in the format your leadership meeting already uses. Rankings and traffic appear as inputs, never as the headline.
Sales and marketing alignment.
CRM, pipeline stages and speed to lead, set up so marketing can see what sales did with every enquiry, and sales gets fewer that go nowhere.
Positioning and offer development.
What you sell, how it's described, and why a buyer should pick you over the business next door. Most marketing problems at your size start here.
It starts with a strategy project, and you decide what happens next.
01
Strategy project.
A fixed-scope piece of work that ends with your plan, your budget split and your reporting framework. It also sets how much of our time your business actually needs.
02
Choose your ongoing support.
A fixed-term project to put the plan in place, or a monthly retainer for ongoing leadership, 30 days at a time.
03
Monthly review.
Leads, jobs and revenue against the plan, with one recommendation.
Scope, time commitment and fees are set in the strategy project. We don't quote a CMO engagement against a business we haven't looked at.
FRACTIONAL CMO FAQ
The questions worth asking before you hire a fractional CMO.
What is a fractional CMO?
A senior marketing leader who works with your business part-time, owning strategy, budget, suppliers and reporting. Fractional means you pay for the share of a CMO your business needs, not a full-time executive package.
How much does a fractional CMO cost?
It depends on scope and time commitment, so we set it in the strategy project once we've seen your business. It's quoted as a fixed fee, not a percentage of your marketing spend.
Is a fractional CMO the same as an outsourced marketing manager?
Not quite. An outsourced marketing manager usually runs campaigns. A fractional CMO decides which campaigns are worth running, controls the budget and answers to leadership for the result. We do the second job.
When does a business need a fractional CMO instead of a full-time hire?
Usually between 20 and 100 staff: marketing spend is significant and has several suppliers, but the business doesn't yet need, or can't yet justify, a full-time executive. If you need a full-time CMO, we'll say so.
Will you replace our current agency?
Not automatically. Depending on what we find, we'll work alongside your existing suppliers, provide strategy only, or take over execution where that's the better option. That decision comes out of the strategy project.
How much time will you spend in our business?
It's scoped per client in the strategy project, based on what your marketing actually needs, rather than a standard number of days.
Who is the fractional CMO?
Derek and Courtney Burden, DCB's co-founders. They're the people in your leadership meetings, and they own the result.
Are we locked in?
No. The strategy project has a fixed scope and a clear end. After that, a project runs for its agreed term and the retainer runs 30 days at a time, in line with the Glass House Standard.
START WITH THE NUMBERS
Find out what your marketing is actually returning.
Run your free Baseline for an SEO, AI-visibility and competitor audit, or talk to Derek or Courtney about a strategy project. No obligation either way.
Rather call? (07) 3060 9111