The job, week by week
What a Fractional CMO Actually Does: One Month in the Seat and the Paper You Should Demand
Ask what a chief marketing officer does and the word strategy arrives within seconds. Strategy is not a task. Here is what a part-time one should be doing on a Tuesday, what should land on your desk, and what to ask if nothing does.
November 5, 2026 · 8 min read
The short answer
A fractional CMO owns the marketing plan and budget, decides which channels get money, holds agencies and vendors to numbers, sets up lead and revenue tracking, writes the offer and reports to the owner in dollars. At DataCram that person is Casey Kinnison. Demand a written plan and one monthly page, whoever you hire.
On this page
- Four weeks in the chair, from the invoice pile to the owner's desk
- The line between what they own and what stays yours
- Six deliverables to demand, in writing, with your name on them
- Why the owner's report fits on one page
- A sample monthly page, with every number made up
- The AI line in the budget, and who is allowed to say no
- Leadership and labor belong on separate bills
Four weeks in the chair, from the invoice pile to the owner's desk
The first thing a good one reads is not your brand guidelines. It is your invoices. Casey Kinnison, who holds this seat at DataCram, worked as a trader at Wells Fargo and Charles Schwab (past employers, unconnected to our services), and a trader wants to see the open positions ahead of any theory about the market. Your open positions are whatever you paid for last month. After that, the month has a rhythm. The hours differ with the engagement, so treat this as the order of the work and not as a timesheet.
- 1
Week one: mark last month to the real number
Pull spend from the ad platforms and invoices, leads from the tracking setup, and sales from the CRM or job system. Reconcile the three. They will disagree, and the disagreement is often the most useful finding of the month.
- 2
Week two: the vendors
A call with each agency and freelancer. What did you do, what did it produce, what do you need from us, and what would you stop? Good vendors enjoy this conversation. It tells you something about the ones who do not.
- 3
Week three: offers and people
Rewrite the weak offer. Sit in on sales calls or listen to recordings. Coach the marketing coordinator. Interview the candidate. Fix the landing page headline that still describes the company's founding instead of the customer's problem.
- 4
Week four: the decision meeting
One page goes to the owner. Each line ends in a decision: keep, cut, change or test. Anything that hit its exit number gets cut without a eulogy. The plan gets updated in writing, and next month's budget gets moved to match.
The line between what they own and what stays yours
Trouble starts when nobody writes this down. An owner assumes the new lead handles the Facebook page. The lead assumes the owner approves every price change. By month three, both are quietly annoyed. Here is the division with Casey in the seat. Whoever you hire should agree to something this specific in writing.
| Casey Kinnison | You, the owner | |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing plan and budget | Writes it, owns it, moves money inside the agreed total | Sets the total and approves the plan |
| Channels | Decides which get money and which stop | Hears the reasoning; overrules it if you choose, on the record |
| Vendors | Holds them to numbers | Signs contracts and owns the accounts |
| Tracking | Sets up lead and revenue tracking | Gives access to sales data |
| Offer and positioning | Writes them and tests the language | Decides prices, guarantees and what the company will do |
| Staff | Helps hire and manage marketing staff | Makes the final hire and handles pay |
| Legal review | Flags the question | Takes it to your attorney; we are not lawyers |
Notice what is missing: writing every post, building the website, sitting in your building every day. Some of that can be bought, from anyone. Marketing strategy is a different job from content production, even if a sales page claims both. If you need someone to produce work and no one to direct it, consider hiring a freelance writer or a good agency and save yourself the fee.
Six deliverables to demand, in writing, with your name on them
- A written marketing plan. Short, dated and specific, with an exit number beside every line. If you want to see the shape, here is a one-page marketing plan.
- A budget by channel. Every dollar, including ad spend and tools, in one sheet you can read without help.
- A vendor scorecard. Each vendor, what it costs, what it produced, and the decision. DataCram appears on it like anyone else when we do work.
- A tracking map. Where each lead comes from, where it gets recorded and how it reaches a sale. Where the chain breaks, the map says so.
- An offer page. What you sell, to whom, the reason to choose you, and the objections you hear most. One sheet, usable by a salesperson tomorrow.
- A monthly page of numbers. The next section covers it in detail, because it is the one that keeps everyone honest.
Why the owner's report fits on one page
Length is where bad reporting hides. A 30-page PDF implies a lot of work and asks for no decisions. One page forces the author to pick. Think of it as the mark on the book, and a mark is only useful if it uses the real price. Casey's has a row for each vendor or channel, and four rules: dollars come first; every vendor uses the same columns; a number that cannot be measured is labeled unknown, not estimated into good news; and each row ends in a decision. Ranking data and traffic can sit underneath as evidence. The SEO numbers worth tracking explain how a channel earns its row.
Expect the first page to be embarrassing. Many companies cannot connect a lead to a sale on day one, so early pages contain the word unknown more than anyone would like. That is progress: the old report had no unknowns because it never asked a question. The marketing tracking problems guide lists the usual breaks.
A sample monthly page, with every number made up
| Spend | Leads | Booked sales | Revenue | Cost per sale | Decision | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads, Vendor A | $6,000 | 64 | 19 | $38,000 | $316 | Keep. Cut two campaigns with no sales. |
| SEO, Vendor B | $2,000 | 31 | 9 | $17,500 | $222 | Keep. Ask for the next three service pages. |
| Facebook posts, freelancer | $800 | 3 | 0 | $0 | None | Stop at month end. |
| Local marketing, Vendor C | $575 | 9 | 1 | $900 | $575 | Second warning. Cancel next month unless calls rise. |
| Total | $9,375 | 107 | 29 | $56,400 | $323 | Move $800 to the page that is producing. |
Read the last vendor row twice. That is the point of the page: a vendor on notice, in plain dollars, with a date. Also note what the sample leaves out. Revenue is not profit, so a real page may add margin, and a lead that closes in month three will flatter a later page. Those caveats belong in a footnote the owner actually reads.
The AI line in the budget, and who is allowed to say no
A new line now shows up in every marketing budget. Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey, released May 11, 2026, reports 15.3% of marketing budgets going to AI initiatives, while 70% of respondents say internal processes are not mature enough to scale it. That panel is 401 leaders at large companies, not small businesses. The sentence still travels: money is arriving faster than the process.
The job here is dull and useful. Decide which AI tools get paid for, which tasks they may touch, who checks the output, and how the result shows up on the monthly page. It also means looking at what AI engines say about you, which the free AI visibility check shows at no cost. If AI touches your systems as well as your copy, that crosses into the fractional CTO's work, a seat Casey also holds at DataCram, and the same month in that seat looks rather different.
Leadership and labor belong on separate bills
Leadership and labor are separate purchases here. The fractional CMO service covers direction. If you give the labor to DataCram, SEO, local marketing and PPC start at $575 a month, depending on complexity, setup and budget, and the rest is on our pricing page. A monthly bill for one should never quietly absorb the other.
Before signing with anyone, ask for the six deliverables by name and ask what the fee covers. Our cost guide covers the budget side, and the free site audit is a useful outside check on a website. When you are ready, send us your vendor list. A person will read it and tell you what the first month would look like.
Questions owners ask about a fractional CMO
Mostly direction, with some hands-on work where a senior person is faster, such as rewriting an offer or a key headline. Do not expect the fee to cover daily production. At DataCram, hands-on work is a separate purchase. Ask any candidate which tasks sit inside the hours, then get the answer in writing.
An inventory of vendors, accounts, tools and spend; an honest read of what tracking can and cannot show; early decisions on anything clearly wasteful; and a first version of the written plan and monthly page. Expect some numbers to be marked unknown. Be wary of a first month that produces only a brand questionnaire and a meeting schedule.
A consultant usually advises and leaves. A fractional CMO stays, holds the budget and answers for the result month after month. The practical test is authority: can this person stop a channel, move money and hold a vendor to a number? If everything they produce is a recommendation you must carry out alone, you bought a consultant, whatever the proposal says.
The owner or general manager, in most companies this size. Reporting anywhere lower usually means the seat cannot move budget or settle a dispute with a vendor. At DataCram, Casey Kinnison works with one named contact on your side, meets on a standing weekly or biweekly schedule and delivers one monthly page of numbers directly to the owner.
Yes, that is often the first job. The lead sets the targets, reads the reports and grades the results, while the agency keeps doing the work. An agency doing good work may welcome clearer direction. If yours is the right vendor, a lead's job is to say so. Our comparison of the two roles describes how they split the work.
Spend, leads, sales, revenue and cost per sale for each vendor or channel, plus a decision on every row. Traffic, rankings and impressions can support those numbers but should never replace them. A report with no dollar on it describes activity. It cannot tell you whether to keep paying, which is the question the owner needs answered.
Keep reading
- Budgeting for the seatHow Much Does a Fractional CMO Cost? Published Ranges, the Hours Math and the Bills That Come AfterFractional CMO pricing: vendor ranges, why they disagree, the hours math, a budget table and our own price, from $3,500 for 15 hours a month.
- Marketing planHow to Write a Marketing Plan: One Page, Nine Boxes and a Worked ExampleA one-page marketing plan template with nine boxes, a worked example for a home service business, a monthly budget table and a half-hour monthly review.
- The job, itemizedWhat a Fractional CTO Does: One Month in the Seat and the Paper It Leaves BehindWhat a fractional CTO does in a real month, what the role owns, five documents a buyer should demand, a made-up sample, and what a good one refuses.
- Salary or seatFractional CMO vs Full-Time CMO: The $238,000 Question and the Day a Salary WinsShould you hire a CMO? BLS pay, the benefits math, tenure data, a side-by-side table, when full time is right and how a part-time seat hands off to a hire.
- Referee or playerFractional CMO vs Marketing Agency: Who Grades Whom, and Why That Decides ItDo you need a CMO or an agency? What each is paid to do, why an agency cannot audit itself and when an agency alone is plenty.
- Ready, or too earlyWhen to Hire a Fractional CMO: The Warning Signs, the Too-Early Signs and a Ten-Minute Self-TestSigns you need a CMO, signs you are too early, a self-test table, what to have ready, what to ask a candidate and one FTC rule that tests their judgment.
- Everything in Fractional CMOSee the section
See what the first month would look like for you
Send your vendor list and what worries you most. A person at DataCram reads it and replies with what Casey would look at first, and whether this seat fits at all.
Which of these sounds like you? (pick any)
Rather talk now? Call (210) 346-0848.