Fractional CMO
The team is capable. The results are inconsistent.
The problem is not below the strategy level. There is no strategy.
$6,000/month · Rolling · 30-day notice
For businesses between $2M and $20M · Part-time leadership, full strategic accountability
You are making marketing decisions that should belong to someone else.
The agency is executing what you ask. The junior team is working. The monthly report arrives. The numbers show activity. The quarterly goal is still not landed.
Between the activity and the outcome, there is a gap that no amount of better execution is going to close - because the execution is already adequate. What is missing is the decision above it: what are we trying to make people do, in what sequence, with what logic, and how do we know when it worked?
That question belongs to a Chief Marketing Officer. You are answering it at ten o'clock at night between other things.
The team is not the problem. The strategy above them is absent.
This is the distinction that most marketing consultants do not make clearly enough: there is a difference between the absence of a good strategy and the absence of any strategy at all.
Most businesses between $2M and $20M do not have a bad marketing strategy. They have a collection of channel decisions, agency relationships, and campaign briefs that have accumulated over time and are held together by the founder's preferences. Nobody has authored the document that says: this is the single behavioural outcome we are trying to produce this quarter, this is the audience decision we are building against, this is what success looks like, and this is why these channels were chosen over those ones.
That document does not exist. So the team executes against whatever was asked of them last. The agency delivers what was briefed. The report shows what was measured. And the quarterly goal - the one that requires a coherent direction across all of these moving parts - is not landed.
The people are fine. The architecture above them is missing.
Pipeline doubled in 90 days. The team was already there.
A professional services firm, $6M ARR. No marketing strategy had been authored in two years. The team of three was briefing themselves against a loose set of founder preferences. Two agencies were running against briefs that had not been updated since the previous CMO left.
The first engagement deliverable was a 90-day marketing strategy - one document, one agreed metric, clear channel allocation and team responsibilities. The agencies were given new briefs against the strategy. The team had a direction for the first time.
Pipeline doubled in 90 days. No new budget was introduced. No new hires were made. The capability had been there all along. It had nowhere to point.
Embedded. Not advising from the outside.
The distinction between a fractional CMO and a marketing consultant matters operationally.
A consultant advises. They attend meetings, produce recommendations, and send reports. The execution remains your problem.
A fractional CMO leads. They own the strategy, direct the team, write the agency brief, review the output, and are accountable to the agreed quarterly metric - not to the quality of the advice.
NOVI embeds. Stefan attends your team sessions. He sets the brief. He reviews the work. He makes the calls that require a senior head. He is in the room - not sending a deck from outside it.
Every engagement ends with a brief for the permanent hire. The goal is not a permanent fractional arrangement. The goal is a function that runs coherently enough that it can be handed to someone permanent - and the strategic memory to write the job description for who that should be.
Most fractional CMO arrangements are advisory - a senior person who attends meetings, reviews strategy, and sends recommendations. NOVI is operational. Stefan sets the brief, reviews the work, manages the agencies, and is accountable to the quarterly metric. The distinction is between someone who advises on the play and someone who calls it.
$6,000/month. Here is what lands on your desk.
MONTH 01
Foundation
- →Marketing audit - current strategy, spend, team structure, agency relationships. What works, what does not, what is absent.
- →90-day strategy - one document, one agreed metric, channel allocation, team responsibilities.
- →Agency re-briefing - every existing agency given a new brief against the strategy.
- →Team direction - every team member knows what they are accountable for at quarter end.
MONTH 02+
Ongoing
- →Weekly strategic session - team and agency direction, brief-setting, work review.
- →Campaign oversight - agencies managed against the metric, not the activity.
- →90-day game plan - reset every quarter against what has moved.
- →Monthly board pack - one page. Spend, return, next quarter. Written for a non-marketing audience.
- →Slack + email - responses within 1 business day. In the room, not sending a deck from outside it.
2–3 days per week. Rolling monthly. 30-day notice. Every engagement ends with a brief for the permanent hire.
The founders who engage fractional leadership are not the ones who couldn't figure it out.
They are the ones who figured out that solving it themselves was the most expensive option available.
The business is at $2M–$20M because the founder is capable. The marketing function is not keeping up with that capability. Bringing in the right senior head - on a fractional basis, at a fraction of the full-time cost - is not a concession. It is the same operational logic that applies to every other part of the business where specialisation is more effective than the founder doing it themselves.
The person you tell this to can be told: we brought in a fractional CMO to build the function to a standard where it could support a permanent hire. That is a logical business decision. It is also what happened.
Fit check.
This is right for you if
- ✓You are between $2M and $20M revenue and growing faster than your marketing capability
- ✓You have a team or agency in place and need someone to lead them
- ✓You are making marketing decisions that should belong to someone more senior
- ✓You want strategic accountability - someone who owns the number, not just the activity
- ✓You are open to the function being restructured if the structure is wrong
This is not right for you if
- ✕You want someone to execute rather than direct
- ✕You are pre-revenue or in the first year of operation
- ✕You need a specialist in a single channel (PPC, SEO, social)
- ✕You are not prepared to give the fractional lead genuine decision-making authority
The team was capable. It had nowhere to point.
"We had run sixty creative variations over fourteen months. The conversion rate did not move. Stefan rebuilt the decision sequence - not the ads - and the rate tripled inside forty-seven days. No new creative was produced."
Name and company withheld · NDA
"Stefan is the only outside hire I have made in five years I would make again without a second meeting. The 55:1 was not a spike - it was the floor for four months."
Name and company withheld · NDA
"We are a trades business. Stefan did not give us a creative refresh - he rewrote the path a lead walks down before the quote. We doubled our booked jobs without lifting the ad budget."
Specialist trades business (reference available on request)
"The decision Stefan identified was not the one we had been optimising against. We were selling certainty. Patients were buying trust. Once the page met the actual decision, the cost per acquisition came down forty percent and stayed there."
Wellness & aesthetics clinic (reference available on request)
What another quarter of undirected execution costs.
The team will continue working. The agencies will continue executing. The monthly report will continue arriving. The quarterly goal will continue not being met.
The compound cost of operating a capable team without strategic direction is not just the missed goals - it is the drift. Agencies develop habits against inadequate briefs. Team members make assumptions that calcify into process. The longer the function operates without direction, the more work the first 90 days of the engagement has to do.
$6,000 / month · Rolling · 30-day notice
55:1 avg ROAS · 600 strategies · 12 years · 8 clients at a time
gday@novistudio.com.au