A fractional CMO. Without the full-time price tag, or the wrong-time hire.
Hiring a full-time CMO too early is the fastest way to burn £200k. Hiring too late is the slowest way to scale. Fractional CMO sits between: senior strategic leadership for 1-2 days a week, embedded in your business, accountable to your numbers, until either you outgrow it or you find your full-time replacement.
When fractional makes sense
And when it really does not.
A full-time CMO at scale-up stage costs £150k-£250k loaded. They take 6 months to ramp. They need a marketing team to manage. If you are between £1M and £10M ARR, you almost never have the volume of work to keep them busy, and you almost certainly do not have the team for them to lead.
Fractional CMO is the bridge. A senior person who has done this 4-5 times before, embedded for 1-2 days a week. They run your marketing function: strategy, positioning, hiring decisions, agency oversight, board-level reporting. They leave once you can justify the full hire, or once you decide you do not need one.
It does not work below £1M ARR (you need product-market-fit work, not a CMO). It does not work above £25M ARR (you need full-time leadership). The window in the middle is where this earns its keep.
What a fractional CMO actually does
Six functions, run remotely with embedded weekly cadence.
Strategy and planning
Annual marketing plan, quarterly OKRs, channel mix, budget allocation. The work that gets skipped when there is no senior person owning it.
Positioning and messaging
ICP definition, differentiated positioning, message house. The upstream work that makes everything downstream cheaper.
Agency and vendor oversight
Selecting, briefing, and managing the agencies you already use. Stops you paying for stuff that is not working.
Hiring marketing roles
Job descriptions, candidate calibration, interviews. We help you build the team you will eventually hand the function to.
Board and exec reporting
Weekly written summary, monthly review, board-meeting deck. Marketing reported the way the rest of the business reports.
Coaching the marketing manager
If you have a junior marketer in-house, the fractional CMO becomes their coach. They level up faster than they would alone.
What you get with ORRJO
Specifically what is different about doing this with us.
You get a senior strategist who has run marketing in B2B for 8+ years, supported by the rest of the ORRJO team. That means when the strategy says "we should run a Demand Generation programme", we can run it. When it says "we need a market research sprint", we can deliver it. When it says "we need cold outbound at scale", we have the SDR pod.
You are not paying ORRJO for the team capacity, you only buy what you need, but the option to scale into our services without re-onboarding a different agency is the unfair advantage. Most fractional CMOs send you to other vendors for execution, then take a finder fee. We do not.
When this is not the right call
Specific signals you need something else.
Fractional fits when
- You are between £1M and £25M ARR.
- You have 0-3 marketing hires in-house.
- You can afford £8k-£15k/month for 6-12 months.
- You want strategic leadership not just execution.
- You want to hire a full-time CMO eventually.
It does not fit when
- You are pre-£1M ARR (founder should run marketing).
- You are above £25M ARR (full-time hire).
- You need 100% of the CMO time, every day.
- You only need execution, not strategy.
- You expect the fractional to also be the operator running campaigns daily.
FAQ
1-2 days, typically Monday and Wednesday or whatever cadence works. Embedded in your team Slack, attending your leadership meeting, available for ad-hoc within reason.
Typically £8,000-£15,000 per month depending on scope and seniority. Lower end for newer-stage companies, higher end for more complex GTM situations. 6-month minimum.
Most engagements run 9-18 months. Either you grow into needing a full-time CMO, or you decide the fractional model works long-term and we extend.
Yes. One named senior strategist owns the relationship from start to handover. They do not get swapped out.
30-day cancellation after the first 30 days. We would rather you find the right fit than be locked in.
Hire: yes, with you. Fire: no, that has to be your call. The fractional makes the recommendation but the legal employer is you.
Want to talk through your situation?
Thirty minutes with the team. We will pressure test your numbers, not pitch.
Book a strategy call →