Fractional CMO Services: Your Marketing Budget, Run the Way a Trader Runs a Book

Size it, set the exit, cut the loser, mark it to the real number

Casey Kinnison worked as a trader at Wells Fargo and Charles Schwab. Casey also scaled web development companies with customers across the globe, and is the founder and lead developer of DataCram, an Arizona State graduate building for the web from San Antonio since 1999, which comes to 27 years. The pitch is the combination: the discipline of a job where a wrong number costs money by lunchtime, joined to a working knowledge of how a website, an ad account and a lead form connect.

A marketing budget is not a trading account, and a small company's sales do not settle overnight, so the mark here comes monthly and not daily. The discipline transfers. The instruments do not. Compare it with how most budgets run: sized by last year's number, no exit, losers kept because canceling is awkward, and valued at whatever the vendor's report says.

Four invoices, four reports and nobody who can pick one to cancel

Picture a 30-person company, invented for this page, that pays four marketing vendors: an SEO agency, a Google Ads manager, a website company and a freelancer who posts on Facebook. Every month four reports arrive. Every report has a line going up. Ask the owner which vendor to cancel if the money had to come from somewhere, and the honest answer is a long look out the window.

That is the gap this job fills. The word is fancier than the idea. A fractional chief marketing officer, also sold as a part time CMO or an outsourced CMO, is one senior person who holds the marketing job for part of the month. Not an agency with more hands. Not a consultant who leaves behind a 40-slide brand deck and a color palette with a philosophy. An accountable person with a budget, a plan and a standing appointment to explain both to you.

Every vendor reports on its own work. Nobody reports on the vendors.

Your marketing may not be bad. That is the annoying part. It may be fine, or half of it may be wasted, and the reports you get today cannot tell you which. If you want the buying details first, the fractional CMO cost guide lays out published ranges and the hours math.

Why a company your size leaves the marketing seat empty

Because the math for filling it full time is rough. A median marketing manager earned $166,790 in May 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Private employers paid 70% wages and 30% benefits in June 2026, also per BLS, so that salary implies about $238,000 in total cost. The estimate is ours, and the split covers all private workers, not executives. The BLS category is also broader than CMO, and a chief-level title usually runs higher than that median.

So the seat stays empty and the work lands on someone anyway. The owner does it on Sunday nights. The office manager does it between payroll and the copier. Or the agency does it, which means the party paid to spend the money also decides how much to spend. Our comparison with an agency takes that arrangement apart, and the comparison with a salaried hire covers the day a full-time CMO becomes the better buy.

How much money is at stake? Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey, released May 11, 2026, found marketing budgets at 7.8% of company revenue. Its 401 respondents lead large companies, so read that as context and not as a target. Still, run a $5 million company through the ratio and you get $390,000 a year, by our arithmetic. Even a fraction of that deserves an owner.

Seven jobs Casey Kinnison takes off your desk

Casey holds the seat part time. The week-by-week version is on the page about what a fractional CMO does. The short list:

• The plan and the budget. A written marketing plan with dollar amounts beside it, owned by one person and changed in the open.
• Which channels get money and which stop. Stopping is the job vendors never volunteer for, and our SEO strategy for 2027 shows the test. SEO, paid search, local marketing and email each have to earn next month.
• Vendors held to numbers. Agencies, freelancers and software, graded on one page.
• Lead and revenue tracking. Conversion tracking that follows a lead past the form to a sale, so the report can finally contain a dollar.
• The offer and the positioning. What you sell, to whom, and the reason to pick you, in words a customer would use. No brand archetypes.
• Reports in dollars. One page a month for the owner, built on the numbers that show whether marketing pays and not on impressions dressed for church.
• The people you already have. Help hiring and managing your marketing staff, including the questions that sort an SEO hire from a talker.

The seat, the hands-on work and the published prices

Hands-on work is a separate purchase. If you choose DataCram for it, the prices below are published. The seat itself starts at $3,500 a month for 15 hours. More hours cost more, and Casey sets the exact figure once you have talked.

From the first call to the first page of numbers

1. 1

   The opening call

   Bring the bill, the vendors and the worry. Casey asks what you spent last year and what it produced. If the seat does not fit, Casey says so here, and you have lost an hour.

2. 2

   Hours and a contact, set ahead of any work

   Fifteen hours a month to start, or more if the work calls for it, in writing, and one named point of contact on your side, so decisions do not wait for a meeting about the meeting.

3. 3

   An inventory of what you already pay for

   Every vendor, login, ad account and invoice. The free site audit, local visibility check and AI visibility check add an outside read at no cost.

4. 4

   The written plan

   Budget by channel, what stops, what starts, the exit number for each line and who owns it. It is short enough to be read and specific enough to be wrong.

5. 5

   The meeting that keeps its slot

   Weekly or biweekly at a fixed hour, with a short agenda. Decisions get written down, and so do the ones postponed.

6. 6

   One monthly page

   Spend, leads and revenue by vendor, in dollars. If tracking cannot produce a number yet, the page says that too, and fixing it becomes next month's job.

One name, one shop and software you can go and check

You can inspect the record yourself. DataCram works with businesses across the US from San Antonio, Texas, and its founder's background is on the About page. The shop has shipped its own software, run ad accounts and been the one to answer for the results, and you can read the work itself.

Casey Kinnison is also DataCram's fractional CTO. One person can hold both seats for a company, so the marketing plan and the systems beneath it live in one head. The lead form, the CRM, the ad account and the website stop being four arguments between two departments.

What this seat refuses to promise, and four buyers we would talk out of it

Unsure which side you are on? The warning signs and self-test take ten minutes. To talk it through instead, send us a note or call (210) 346-0848. Telling you to wait costs us nothing, and it is a common answer.

Find your question on this map of the CMO section

Many DataCram clients are home service businesses, and our marketing plans by industry show how the channels differ from one trade to the next. Those pages describe the hands-on work. This section is about the person who decides how much of it you need.