I was at a women’s retreat recently – Lochinvare Station, weekend away. Someone asked what I do.
“Fractional CMO,” I said.
Puzzled look.
Fair enough. Let me break it down, because even people well inside the business world haven’t always encountered this title – and if you’re an owner-led business wondering whether you need one, you deserve a straight answer, not a LinkedIn buzzword.
First, the name
Fractional: You’re buying a fraction of my time. Not a full-time hire. A fraction. Got it.
CMO – Chief Marketing Officer: A title you’ll find in corporates and large organisations, but rarely embedded in the kind of owner-led businesses I work with. That’s precisely the problem.
The gap most businesses don’t see
In most growing businesses I step into, nobody actually owns the marketing function. There’s activity – a social media post here, a campaign there, a website that needs updating – but there’s no leadership. No strategy. No one accountable for driving the function forward.
When I ask who’s running marketing, the answer is usually: the owner.
And what does “running marketing” mean for that owner? It means approving things. Answering supplier questions. Being the bottleneck when direction is unclear. It’s not strategic leadership, it’s babysitting. And marketing isn’t a child that needs babysitting. It’s a teenager that needs structure, strategy, and someone prepared to make the hard calls.
Meanwhile, the business keeps growing – or trying to – without anyone asking the fundamental question: what is marketing actually supposed to be doing for this business?
What a Fractional CMO actually does
There are three things a marketing function needs: strategy, leadership, and implementation.
A Fractional CMO owns the first two.
I set the strategy: Where we’re going, why, and how marketing will get the business there.
I lead the delivery: making sure the right people are doing the right things, suppliers are accountable, and the whole function moves with rhythm and momentum.
I don’t do everything. But I own everything.
The implementation: the ad management, the design, the technical execution – that gets done by specialists. An agency. A marketing technician. The right people for the right work. My job is to make sure it all connects to a strategy worth executing.
What a Fractional CMO is not
Not an agency. An agency is a brilliant partner for bringing a brand to life visually, running your social media, executing ad campaigns. They have specialists trained to deliver in those spaces. That’s the point – they do specific things really well.
Not a marketing unicorn. I hear business owners describe what they’re looking for: someone who can do the strategy, the content, the ads, the design, the SEO, the email, the events – to a high standard – all at once. That person doesn’t exist. And if they did, you probably couldn’t afford them.
A Fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader. Peer-level. Not a supplier. Not a generalist doing a bit of everything. A strategic partner who owns the function and drives commercial results.
What it feels like before and after
Paul Dickson from Cause and FX put it simply: “When Jacqui stepped in as Fractional CMO, I stopped waking up in the middle of the night worrying about marketing.”
That’s the shift. When the strategy is clear, when there’s genuine leadership in place, when you know someone capable has their hands on the wheel – trust forms. Things move. Marketing stops being the thing you’re vaguely anxious about and starts being the lever it’s supposed to be.
Why Fractional works at this stage
Most owner-led businesses in the $3–7m revenue range don’t need a full-time CMO. What they need is the thinking, the leadership, and the direction that a great CMO provides. Yes, without the six-figure salary, the employment overhead, and the very real risk of hiring someone who looks senior but has never actually owned a commercial outcome.
Fractional works because you get the strategic capability without the full-time cost. The scope is tight, the outputs are clear, and there’s no room for the work to quietly expand to fill a seat that didn’t need filling.
The question worth asking
Who is actually running your marketing right now?
Not doing it. Not approving it. Running it – with a strategy, with accountability, with a clear line back to your business goals.
If the honest answer is “me, kind of, when I have time” – that’s the gap. And that’s where a Fractional CMO earns their place.
Jacqui Gage-Brown
📷 The best business conversations happen when you least expect them. Someone asked what I do at a women's retreat, and the puzzled look when I said "Fractional CMO" sparked this article. Lochinvare Station, Taupō.
