What is a fractional CMO?

A fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader who works with a company part-time — typically one to three days a week — instead of joining full-time. They own strategy, positioning, and marketing leadership without the salary, equity, or headcount cost of a permanent hire.

The model has quietly become the default for UK companies between £1m and £30m in revenue. Founders get boardroom-grade marketing judgement. Boards get accountability. And the CMO gets to work on the parts of the job that actually move the needle — strategy, narrative, and pipeline — instead of the parts that don't (managing thirty stakeholders and running the office snack budget).

What a fractional CMO actually does

The specifics vary, but a working fractional CMO usually owns four things:

• Positioning. Who you sell to, what you sell, why you are the obvious choice, and how you say it.
• Go-to-market strategy. Channels, offers, pricing, and the sequence in which you launch them.
• Team and vendors. Hiring the first marketing hires, briefing agencies, and killing the tools you should not be paying for.
• Board reporting. Translating marketing activity into pipeline, CAC, and revenue in a language the board understands.

What they do not do — at least not well — is execute every deliverable themselves. A good fractional CMO comes with a bench: designers, copywriters, media buyers, and analysts they can plug in. The CMO owns the thinking; the bench owns the making.

Fractional CMO services: what's typically included

• Positioning audit and repositioning workshop
• Quarterly marketing plan tied to revenue targets
• Weekly leadership sessions with the CEO or founder
• Monthly board updates and metrics reporting
• Vendor and agency oversight
• Hiring and interviewing marketing candidates
• Personal brand and thought-leadership support for the founder

How much does a fractional CMO cost?

Most UK fractional CMOs bill between £1,000 and £2,000 per day. A one-to-three-day-a-week engagement typically lands between £6,000 and £15,000 per month. That is roughly a third of a full-time CMO's fully loaded cost — and, crucially, comes without recruiter fees, notice periods, or equity dilution.

When to hire a fractional CMO (and when not to)

Hire fractional if:

• You are between £1m and £30m in revenue and marketing is under-owned.
• You have a full-time marketing manager but no one setting the strategy above them.
• You are preparing for a raise, an exit, or a full-time CMO hire in twelve to eighteen months.
• You keep making tactical marketing decisions that should be strategic ones.

Do not hire fractional if:

• You need someone in Slack every hour of every day.
• You already have a full-time CMO and want a consultant to grade their homework.
• Your problem is execution capacity, not strategic direction. Hire specialists instead.

Why LinkedIn is the fractional CMO's pipeline channel

A fractional CMO's buyer — a founder, an operator, a board member — is already on LinkedIn. Not on Twitter. Not on TikTok. Not reading trade blogs. LinkedIn is the only channel where the audience, the format, and the buying context line up.

The fractional CMOs who build durable pipelines do three things on LinkedIn that the rest do not:

• They publish a point of view, not updates. "Here's what I believe about pricing" beats "Excited to announce" every time.
• They run campaigns, not posts. A single opinion becomes five posts, one long-form piece, and a talking point in every sales call that month.
• They stay consistent for longer than feels reasonable. Inbound conversations start around month three. Compounding starts around month six.

The problem is that doing this well is a full-time job in itself. Writing, editing, designing carousels, scheduling, replying to comments — it eats the days the CMO is supposed to be spending on their clients.

How Silly's Authority Engine solves it

The Authority Engine is what we built for exactly this problem. It is a monthly campaign studio for UK fractional executives — CFOs, COOs, CTOs, and CMOs — who bill £1,000 a day or more and do not have time to run their own LinkedIn.

Eight campaigns a month. Ghost-written in your voice, designed on-brand, and posted for you. £1,000 a month. Ten clients maximum, because attention is finite and so are we.

If you are a fractional CMO reading this and thinking "I know I should be doing this and I am not" — that is the gap the Engine closes.

Frequently asked questions

What is a fractional CMO in one sentence?

An experienced chief marketing officer who works with your company part-time and ongoing, instead of full-time.

How is a fractional CMO different from a marketing consultant?

A consultant delivers a project and leaves. A fractional CMO is on your leadership team every week, accountable for outcomes, and stays for quarters or years — not weeks.

How is a fractional CMO different from an agency?

An agency executes. A fractional CMO decides what should be executed, briefs the agency, and holds them accountable. Many fractional CMOs bring their own execution bench so you do not need a separate agency at all.

What should a fractional CMO deliver in the first 90 days?

A written positioning statement, a quarterly plan tied to revenue, a working weekly cadence with the CEO, a clear view of which channels are and are not working, and — critically — one thing that is measurably better than it was on day one.