How much impact can a fractional CMO really have? 

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We get asked this question a lot. 

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When you’re building a business, finding the right marketing leadership can make or break your next growth phase. Whether you’re looking to bring your product to market, prepare for the next funding round or start scaling your customer base, having the right person at the helm is crucial.

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Bringing in a full-time, permanent CMO isn’t your only option to do this well. A fractional CMO can give you access to executive-level marketing expertise without the full-time commitment. And they get just as entwined in the details of your business. 

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We’re going to be looking at what some of the fractional CMOs on our platform get up to in their day to day, to lift the lid on everything they get up to. 

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Meet Rose… 

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Rose works primarily in D2C across a broad range of industries - from neurodiversity and mental health diagnostics to pet food and packing organisers. Recently she’s been enjoying working with early-stage startups - from pre-launch (working on everything from naming & branding) to launch and ongoing growth. 

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Mornings typically start with a bit of exercise to set the tone for the day, followed by a review of the news and social media - looking for any updates relevant to her clients and industries. 

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First meeting of the day is a bi-weekly check-in with the founders of one of the businesses she is working with. These catch ups might include reviewing budget allocations and acquisition targets, through to prioritisation discussions to balance short-term initiatives and long-term objectives.

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Then it’s straight into looking at the performance metrics - this sets the foundation for the day’s strategic discussions and tactical decisions. CRM and nurture campaigns have been a big focus, so time is spent specifically digging into the Zoho reports to identify opportunities for improvements. 

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Armed with that info, it’s time to catch up with the team, overseeing a mix of employees, freelancers, and agencies. Checking in on their plans and priorities for the day and week ahead working through any blockers.

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There’s some challenges with the PPC campaigns so it’s time for a deep dive with the agency - reviewing performance and reworking ad copy and landing pages. 

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Next it’s onto planning a workshop for next week, focused on how to communicate and position a product effectively in the market where the challenge is creating demand for a lesser-known offering that potential customers don't necessarily know exists, and so aren’t actively searching for it. 

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Finally, the last task of the day is working on long-term hiring plans, building out the job spec for a full-time marketing manager.

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Meet Emma… 

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Emma has 20 years of experience under her belt, with expertise across a variety of industries within the B2B tech sector. Her clients range from early-stage startups that need help building foundational marketing structures to scaling businesses that need more support optimising performance and building teams.

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Emma starts her day with a cup of tea in bed checking LinkedIn for updates and bookmarking any interesting content for later in the day. 

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The morning kicks off with an in-person strategy session with the newly onboarded Chief Growth Officer at the healthcare software company she’s working with. They’re working together on positioning and setting commercial targets for 2025. After the meeting, she shares the notes and action points ready to push the plan forward.

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Back at home for the rest of the day, it’s time to get to work on messaging. Some recent discussions with clients unearthed new insights which need to be integrated and tested. 

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After that it’s time for some team catch ups, first up is the junior marketing lead based in Egypt. The focus of the call is reviewing the recent persona development work and discussing how the new learnings can be applied to content that’s being created. 

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Then it’s time for a weekly 121 with the founder. Emma recently led the process of developing the business level goals, and this discussion is now centred around agreeing the marketing objectives needed to support those goals!

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Next it’s straight into a webinar on a topic Emma’s keen to keep upskilling on. Most days there’s some time set aside for personal development. Being a CMO requires a broad breadth of knowledge across a lot of areas, enough to know when certain strategies make most sense and to be able to effectively oversee specialists. 

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Last task of the day is finishing off a job description for a new marketing manager role for another company she’s working with, with a specific focus on managing their future trade show preparation and attendance - which is fast becoming a key channel. 

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The day wraps up with final checks on LinkedIn, responding to interactions on her posts, and organising any last-minute logistics (booking train tickets!) for the following day’s in-person client meetings.

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Meet Joe… 

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Joe started out in the consumer packaged goods world before moving into the energy sector and has spent the last 10 years working with scale ups like JustPark, XE and Zego. 

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Joe typically starts his day by checking in with the teams he’s working with—Slack for one, Teams for another—triaging messages, responding to pressing questions and mapping out the day ahead. He sets aside dedicated time blocks for deep work, making sure he’s got the headspace for strategic thinking.

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The first major task of the day involves creating a measurement and reporting framework for one of the businesses he’s working with to make sure they have the right data to drive the right conversations. This involves close collaboration with their finance lead to ensure reporting aligns with commercial priorities. Joe describes this as one of his most satisfying contributions: “When businesses finally have a measurement system that drives the right conversations, it’s a game-changer.”

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Later in the morning, Joe leads a customer-voice session - working closely with product and design teams to ensure the value proposition aligns with real customer needs, and making sure they’re all focused on what really matters to the customer and know how to articulate it. 

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Next up is a call with the founder of a marketplace platform to discuss fundraising strategy. Joe has been instrumental in crafting the pitch deck and narrative that secured their first round of funding. He says, “Supporting these early-stage businesses is where I feel I make the biggest impact—you can see the direct results of what you’re putting in place.”

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In the afternoon, Joe’s focused on putting a team structure together for one of the bigger businesses he’s working with. Working out what the marketing team needs to look like to deliver the strategy he’s been developing, what processes they’ll need in place to work effectively together and then what additional agency support will be required. 

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Joe wraps up his day finishing off a go-to-market strategy for a marketplace product launch. This involves not only tactical execution plans but also ensuring buy-in from the client’s small, cross-functional team. As Joe reflects, “It’s not just about creating plans—it’s about operationalising them in a way that sticks.”

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Meet Graeme.

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With over 25 years in B2B marketing, Graeme transitioned to fractional CMO work in 2021.

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One of Graeme’s current projects involves working with a tech company headquartered in France. Initially brought in to provide light touch air cover for a head of marketing on maternity leave (senior coverage and support for the marketing team), but since starting his role has expanded to include much bigger projects including restructuring the team and repositioning the company.

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Graeme's day often begins with team catch ups, he provides mentoring and support to team members across different regions, helping them align their tactical execution with broader company objectives - "Having the external perspective means I can be more direct and honest with feedback, without getting caught up in office politics."

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Mid-morning he’s running a positioning workshop with the CEO of the one of the companies he is working with at the moment - "In tech especially, companies often sound exactly the same as their competitors. My job is to help them find and articulate what truly makes them different" he explains. This involved quite a bit of prep work including deep analysis of competitor messaging, market positioning, and share of search data to develop unique value propositions.

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Later, Graeme dives into a customer insight session, analysing sales call transcripts and customer interview data. He's passionate about ensuring marketing teams stay closely connected to customer needs: "It's about demonstrating how close they actually need to be to the customer, really listening to them properly, and understanding why customers buy or don't buy."

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After lunch, Graeme continues working on a segmentation project for a US market entry strategy. This involves analysing market size, competitive landscape, and sales team capabilities to identify the most promising target segments.  

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The afternoon includes a marketing structure review session, where Graeme helps reshape how marketing integrates with the broader business - elevating marketing from being seen as just a sales support function to having strategic input into the company's direction. This involves working on team composition, reporting lines, and process improvements.

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Graeme ends his day working on strategic planning, helping clients balance long-term vision with short-term execution. Compared to in-house roles, fractional work allows him to maintain a very sharp perspective: It means I can think at 30,000 feet without getting caught up in the daily pressure of hitting immediate targets. It's about setting the right direction and empowering the tactical experts to execute effectively."

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Meet‍ Mumtaz.

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With deep expertise in affiliate marketing and a background in both B2C and B2B, Mumtaz has built a diverse portfolio career as a fractional CMO.

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Mumtaz starts her day by planning her time - time blocking her day to juggle multiple clients.

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First up is a strategic planning session with one of her UK based clients where she's helping them work toward specific commercial targets. "You have to think commercially, almost as if it's your own business. You can't think just as a marketer - you need to put yourself in their shoes and consider what's best for the business if it was your money."

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After lunch, she's working on roadmap development, creating detailed 3-month plans that balance ambition with reality. This involves mapping high-level business objectives into actionable marketing initiatives. 

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In tandem with this planning exercise, she’s also working on assessing potential partners, running vendor evaluation sessions, in order to find the right partners to support the company's goals. 

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The afternoon includes founder consultation sessions where Mumtaz acts as a strategic sounding board. "Often you're their first proper senior marketing hire, so they value having someone to bounce ideas off. And you need to be honest but tactful - if something isn't working, like a clunky transaction process, you have to be able to say it."

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Mumtaz ends her day with team development work, helping match specialists with clients and advising on future hiring needs. "Sometimes it's about pushing them to think longer-term," she explains. "They might be focused on immediate funding, but they need to plan for what happens after they get that investment."

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Throughout her day, Mumtaz maintains strict boundaries on what she spends her time working on as it’s easy to get pulled into the weeds on things that don’t necessarily need her expertise : "I keep a post-it note on my laptop that says 'Will this drive sales or reduce costs? If not, don't do it.' When you're working on fractional hours, you have to be disciplined about how you use that time."

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Her varied portfolio allows her to work across different sectors while maintaining deep involvement with each client. The key to success, she notes, is "thinking holistically and strategically, even if you're not a specialist in every channel. You need to be a generalist who can see the bigger picture."

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