Strategy & advisory
Fractional CMO & marketing retainer
Marketing gets an owner. An agreed number of days a month, a weekly scorecard of the same numbers every week, and a 90-day plan with a name and a date against every line.
The short version
Plenty of companies don't need a full-time marketing director. They need someone to decide what happens next, hold the freelancers to their numbers, and turn up to the meeting where budget is allocated. That's a few days a month, not five days a week. Arrangements like this work when the scope is written down, so this one is: agreed days, agreed decision rights, a fixed monthly fee and 30 days' notice on either side.
What is included
- An agreed number of days each month, written into the scope alongside which decisions we make on your behalf and which always come back to you.
- A weekly scorecard of 5 to 7 numbers, updated on the same day every week, so a bad month is visible in week 2 rather than at the invoice.
- A 90-day plan refreshed each quarter, with an owner and a date on every line, and last quarter's misses listed openly rather than quietly dropped.
- Management of the freelancers, agencies and tools you already pay for, including the awkward conversation when one of them isn't earning its fee.
- A monthly reporting pack written so a board can read it, plus a 30-minute readout where you can ask what the numbers actually mean.
- A handover file kept current from month one, so when you hire a permanent marketing lead they inherit a working system instead of somebody's inbox.
How we work
Our approach
The stages this work runs through, in order. Every one of them ends in something you can see or sign off.
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Step 01
Fix the days and the scope
First we agree the shape: how many days a month, which meetings we sit in, what we can approve without asking, and what always comes back to you. Spend authority gets a figure rather than a shrug. This is the part most retainers skip, and it's why they sour around month four when nobody can say whether something was in scope. Ours starts on a 3-month initial term, then runs monthly with 30 days' notice.
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Step 02
Run one weekly scorecard
The same 5 to 7 numbers, in the same place, on the same day of the week. We'd expect that set to be qualified enquiries, cost per acquisition, pipeline value, site conversion rate, and whatever else the quarter's plan turns on. Reporting that changes shape every month is reporting designed to be unfalsifiable. When a number moves the wrong way you hear about it in that week's update along with what we intend to do, not in a review three months later.
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Step 03
Own the quarter, not the tasks
The value is in deciding and sequencing, so most of the days go on the plan, the briefs, and holding suppliers to what they promised. We'll do hands-on work where that's genuinely faster, but a marketing lead billing days for social scheduling wastes your money and we'll say so. Each quarter closes with what was hit, what was missed and what we're stopping. Stopping things is a real part of the job.
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Step 04
Work towards your own hire
The aim is to become unnecessary at this level. That means documenting decisions as they're made, keeping every playbook and account in your ownership, and writing the job specification when it's time to recruit. We'll sit on the interview panel and hand over properly to whoever you appoint. A retainer that quietly becomes permanent because nobody else understands the account is a failure, however comfortable it is to keep invoicing.
Before you ask
Questions we get asked first
How long do we have to commit for?
A 3-month initial term, then rolling monthly with 30 days' notice either way. Three months is the shortest honest commitment, because month one goes on understanding the account and the first full quarter of the plan doesn't close until month three. We scope this at between 2 and 6 days a month. If the work genuinely needs more than 8, you probably need to hire someone, and we'd rather say that than sell you extra days.
How is it priced?
A fixed monthly fee in pounds for an agreed number of days, quoted after a scoping call. Media spend, software and any freelancers stay in your name and are billed to you directly, with no margin added by us. Unused days don't bank up indefinitely, and we'll tell you when the days are being under-used instead of taking the fee quietly. If the scope grows we reprice it openly at the quarter, rather than stretching the same days thinner.
What do you need from us?
A seat at the meeting where budget is decided, and honesty about the numbers including the unflattering ones. In practice: logins for analytics, the ad accounts, the email platform and the CRM, a named internal contact for anything we can't do ourselves, and an agreed budget envelope for the quarter. We also need permission to stop things. A marketing lead who can't pause a campaign or end a supplier relationship is a consultant with a better title.
How do we judge whether it's working?
Against the 90-day plan and the weekly scorecard, both of which exist before the work starts. At each quarter end you see what was committed, what landed and what didn't, with the misses named rather than reframed. There's also a slower test worth applying at the 12-month mark: could your team run this without us. If the documentation, the playbooks and the permanent hire are in place, the answer should be yes, and that's what we're aiming at.
Want this scoped for your situation?
Tell us the goal and the deadline. You get an honest read on whether this is the right service, a fixed price if it is, and a straight no if it isn't.
Or email [email protected] directly. We reply within one working day.