What Fractional CMOs Get Wrong About Growth
Hint: It’s not your funnel. It’s your positioning.
Every week, we listen to dozens of marketing podcasts and extract the top actionable ideas. (For more context on these ideas, give the podcasts a listen)
In this issue:
Mindset shift: Companies hire fractionals as coaches, not implementers
The 6-month transition plan: from corporate CMO to Fractional
Your job is to connect marketing to commercial goals (and show a quick win)
1. Mindset shift: Companies hire fractionals as coaches, not implementers
The Fractional CMO Show with Casey Stanton, Episode: The Minimum Tech and Talent Stack for a Fractional CMO Practice (Oct. 14, 2025)
TLDR
You can run a profitable fractional CMO practice with just 4 tools costing < $100/month
The "Single Pringle" model (solo practice, no employees) can generate $10K-15K monthly revenue with 70-80% margins
If you can't operate your entire business from your phone, you've built the wrong business
Casey Stanton cuts through the noise around what it takes to build a successful fractional CMO practice.
After years of trial, error, and rebuilding, he's distilled it down to a simple truth: most fractional CMOs overcomplicate things. The path to six and seven figures isn't about more tools or bigger teams. It's about keeping things lean and focusing on leadership.
Two models, two very different businesses
Stanton lays out two core approaches. The first is what he calls "Single Pringle": you, a laptop, and zero employees. This is perfect if you want high margins and low complexity. You charge premium rates, stack 3-5 clients at $3,000-5,000 monthly retainers, and keep almost everything you make.
The second model is the "Scalable Model" where you become the rainmaker who sells fractional CMO services but hires other CMOs to do the delivery. You might collect $10,000 monthly from a client and pay your CMO $5,000 to service them, keeping the difference. Stack a few CMOs with two clients each, and you're building real enterprise value. But you're also taking on payroll, management complexity, and the risk of covering salaries during slow months.
The simple tech stack
For a Single Pringle practice, your entire tech stack costs less than your morning coffee. You need a domain name for $15 per year. Google Workspace for $8-20 monthly. ChatGPT Plus for $20 monthly (Claude or Perplexity work too). And a Zoom license because you need to look professional.
No CRM unless you're juggling tons of leads. No fancy project management tools. No expensive marketing automation. If you're spending more than $100 monthly on tools as a solo fractional, you're over-engineering.
Stanton's rule of thumb: if you can't run your business entirely from your phone, you've built the wrong business.
What you're really selling: leadership, not labor
The biggest mindset shift Stanton pushes is understanding what clients actually buy. They're not hiring you to be a do-everything marketing person. They're hiring you to be the strategic leader who guides their team, spots opportunities others miss, and makes the tough calls. Think of yourself as a coach or advisor, not an implementer.
This changes everything about how you price and position yourself. When a "unicorn" client (someone doing $5-15 million annually with strong margins) hires you, they don't want you writing blog posts. They want you at the table helping them make smart decisions about market positioning, channel strategy, and how to allocate their marketing budget. That's worth $5,000-10,000 monthly, not $2,000.
2. The 6-month transition plan: from corporate CMO to Fractional
Clarity Digital Agency podcast with Al Sefati, Episode: From Corporate CMO to Fractional CMO With Diane Haines (Oct. 5, 2025)
TLDR
Large companies are hiring fractional CMOs not just for strategy, but as executive mentors and sounding boards for their heads of marketing
Build your business development pipeline 6-9 months before you go fractional, not after you leave your corporate job
Teaching graduate courses and community involvement are underrated client acquisition channels that position you as a thought leader
Diane Haines spent 25 years climbing the corporate marketing ladder before making the jump to fractional work. Her transition wasn't impulsive, it was methodical, planned during the six months after her company was acquired. And what she learned in her first year as a fractional CMO challenges some common assumptions about who hires fractional leaders and why.
Large companies are hiring fractional CMOs too
Most people assume fractional CMOs only work with small companies that can't afford full-time leadership. Haines discovered the opposite. Yes, she works with startups that need strategic guidance without the full-time salary. But she's also landed several clients that are larger, established companies with heads of marketing already in place.
These larger clients hire her for different reasons. In some cases, their head of marketing is drowning in day-to-day execution and needs a strategic sounding board, someone who can offer perspective without being part of the internal politics.
In other cases, they're tackling specific projects like integrating AI into their marketing team, which requires new skills and organizational design. It's hard to re-engineer the plane while you're flying it, so they bring in someone with experience to guide the transformation.
Plan your exit while you still have a paycheck
The biggest mistake Haines sees people make is quitting their corporate job and then trying to figure out the fractional thing. She did the opposite.
During her last six months at her acquired company, she worked with an executive coach to deliberately plan what her fractional practice would look like.
How many hours per week did she want to work?
Half-time or full-time?
Did she want to travel or work remotely?
What types of projects and clients excited her?
More importantly, she used that time to build her business development pipeline. She reached out to her network, had coffee conversations, joined relevant communities, and started positioning herself. By the time she officially went fractional, she already had interested prospects in her pipeline. This is the move: build the bridge before you cross it.
Community involvement pays compound interest
Haines found two unexpected client acquisition channels that have paid off significantly: teaching graduate marketing courses at a local university and getting involved in community organizations.
Teaching positioned her as an expert and thought leader while keeping her sharp on emerging trends and tools. Students became connectors, and the university network opened doors to consulting opportunities.
Community involvement worked similarly. She joined local business groups and marketing associations, not with a hard-sell mindset but to contribute and build relationships. Over time, these connections turned into referrals and inbound leads.
How AI is reshaping the fractional opportunity
One of Haines' most in-demand services is helping companies integrate AI into their marketing teams. Not in a superficial "let's use ChatGPT" way, but strategically rethinking team structures, skills, and workflows.
For example, UI designers can now use AI to generate prototypes in minutes instead of hours, freeing them to spend more time gathering customer feedback and iterating on designs – the human-centric work that AI can't do.
She's an "AI optimist" because history shows that technology typically augments human work rather than replacing it wholesale. When car factories introduced robots, yes, some jobs disappeared. But new jobs emerged: people who serviced, fixed, and trained the robots. Those jobs paid more and were less physically demanding.
The same pattern is playing out with AI in marketing. It's replacing mundane tasks and increasing productivity, allowing marketers to focus on strategy, creativity, and human connection.
The Bottom Line
Going fractional isn't about waking up one day and quitting your job. It's about deliberate planning, building your pipeline before you need it, and positioning yourself strategically. Work with a coach to define what you want your practice to look like. Start networking and building visibility months before your transition. Consider teaching or community involvement as long-term investment in your brand. And when you do make the jump, focus on projects where you can add unique value – like helping companies navigate AI integration – rather than competing on generic marketing execution.
3. Your job is to connect marketing to commercial goals (and show a quick win)
The Fractional CMO podcast with Simon Dell from Cemoh, Episode #6: Kelly Dimkovska from Tuesday Logic (Oct. 1, 2025)
TLDR
The first 30 days should focus on listening, learning the business, and identifying one quick win that demonstrates immediate value
Marketing often fails because it's disconnected from commercial goals: your job is to bridge the gap between marketing activity and revenue
Healthcare companies (and other regulated industries) are goldmines for fractional CMOs because internal teams lack strategic marketing expertise
Kelly Dimkovska built her fractional CMO practice, Tuesday Logic, around a simple insight: most businesses don't have a marketing problem, they have a strategy-execution gap. After 15 years spanning healthcare, agencies, and consulting, she's developed a framework for delivering quick wins that build trust and set up long-term success.
The first 30 days: listen, learn, win
Dimkovska's onboarding process is deliberate. The first 30 days aren't about making sweeping changes or implementing new systems. They're about three things:
listening to the team and leadership,
learning how the business actually makes money, and
identifying one quick win that demonstrates value.
The listening phase involves interviewing key stakeholders (not just marketing, but sales, product, and customer success).
She asks questions like:
What are your goals for the next 90 days?
What's working in marketing? What's not?
Where do you see opportunities?
This accomplishes two things. It makes people feel heard, which builds trust. And it surfaces the real problems hiding behind generic complaints like "marketing isn't working."
Finding the quick win that matters
The quick win is crucial. Dimkovska looks for something that's high-impact but relatively easy to fix. Often it's aligning messaging, fixing a broken funnel stage, or creating sales enablement content that helps the team close deals faster.
For example, at one healthcare client, she discovered that the sales team was losing deals in the late stage because they didn't have case studies showing ROI.
Marketing was busy creating top-of-funnel content, but the real problem was at the bottom of the funnel. She worked with the team to create three case studies with specific metrics.
Within 30 days, sales started using them in proposals, and two deals that had been stuck closed. That's a quick win that matters.
Bridging the strategy-execution gap
Dimkovska's core diagnosis is that marketing fails when it's disconnected from commercial goals.
Marketers get excited about tactics: let's run a social campaign, let's redesign the website, let's launch a podcast. But if those tactics don't tie back to business objectives like revenue, customer acquisition cost, or pipeline velocity, they're just activity for activity's sake.
Her job as a fractional CMO is to bridge this gap. She starts every engagement by aligning on goals with the CEO and leadership team. What does success look like in 90 days? Six months? A year? Then she works backwards to figure out what marketing activities will move those needles.
Why healthcare is a fractional CMO goldmine
Dimkovska specializes in healthcare marketing, and she's found it to be an ideal vertical for fractional work.
Healthcare companies have complex products, long sales cycles, and heavily regulated marketing environments. Their internal marketing teams are often junior or mid-level people who understand compliance but lack strategic marketing expertise.
These companies need someone who can translate clinical features into customer benefits, navigate regulatory constraints, and build demand generation engines.
They're willing to pay well for this expertise because the stakes are high. A successful product launch could mean tens of millions in revenue. But they don't necessarily need this expertise full-time, which makes fractional arrangements perfect.
Disclaimer
The Fractional CMO Brief extracts key insights from publicly available podcasts for educational and informational purposes only. It is not legal or financial advice; please consult qualified professionals before acting. We attribute brands and podcast titles only to identify the source; such nominative use is consistent with trademark fair-use principles. Limited quotations and references are used for commentary and news reporting under U.S. fair-use doctrine.
