Every vendor’s report is green. Revenue is flat.
Impressions up, rankings up, engagement up — and the phone rings the same amount. Channel metrics were never the point.
01Strategy · Fractional CMO
Someone who owns the number. Not the channel.
You can hire five vendors and still have nobody accountable for cost per booked job. A fractional CMO sits on your side of the table — sets the plan, runs the vendors (ours and yours), and reports the same numbers you’d ask a full-time marketing director for.
From $2,000/mo3-month minimum (six on CMO + Pod). Month-to-month after that.Try it first: a $250 strategy call, or a fixed-fee 4-week sprint.
Who you get: a senior lead from our team, or Valerii Fedorov directly.Today · Five SlicesEvery Report Is Green
- AdsThe ads guy
- SEOThe SEO guy
- WebsiteA cousin
- InstagramA VA
- Everything elseYou, between calls
One OwnerFractional CMOSets the plan · runs the vendors · reports the number
The ScorecardMonday Morning
- Spend
- Leads
- Booked jobs
- CPBJ
- Pipeline
02The Problem
Five vendors. Zero owners.
Every owner-operated business we audit has the same shape: an ads guy, an SEO guy, a cousin who does the website, a VA posting on Instagram, and a founder trying to hold it together between service calls. Everyone reports on their own slice. Nobody reports on the business.
You can’t answer “what does a booked job cost?”
Not by channel, not blended, not this month versus last. The data exists in four dashboards and none of them talk.
Budget moves on gut feel or whoever pitched last.
The next dollar goes where the most recent conversation pointed, not where the last ninety days of data pointed.
Marketing is your third job, and it shows.
You’re reviewing ad copy at 11pm because there’s nobody senior enough to review it for you — and junior enough to actually do it.
03Self-Assessment
Who owns this?
Ten things a marketing director is responsible for. Assign each one honestly. Nobody sees the answers — this runs in your browser.
Ownership CheckTen responsibilities. Three answers each.
- Me
- the founder
- A Vendor
- agency or freelancer
- Nobody
- it just doesn’t happen
- Cost per booked job, by channelNot leads. Jobs on the calendar.
- Which channel gets the next dollarAnd the reason it does.
- Website conversion rateMeasured, reviewed, and improved on a schedule.
- Speed-to-leadHow fast a new inquiry gets a human on the phone.
- Lead quality feedback to marketingSales telling marketing which leads were junk.
- Monthly marketing budgetSet deliberately, not inherited from last month.
- Vendor performance reviewSomeone grading the agencies and freelancers.
- Brand consistency across channelsOne voice on ads, site, social, and trucks.
- Marketing hiring and onboardingWriting the role, interviewing, ramping them up.
- The revenue number itselfOne name next to the target.
Every “Nobody” is a job a channel vendor can’t fix, because none of these items belong to a channel.
04Straight from the Founder
What you’re actually buying.
A named senior person with a mandate, a budget ceiling and a scorecard — not a deck, and not another account manager. The five questions most discovery calls spend an hour on are answered on this page.
Founder — your fractional CMO on the top two tiers
Valerii Fedorov
Operates as your marketing director: sets the plan, holds the budget within an agreed ceiling, manages every vendor — ours and yours — and answers for cost per booked job. On the Embedded Lead tier he is the escalation path above the director who owns your account.
| The question | Where it’s answered |
|---|---|
| Why five vendors still leaves a gap | The problem — five vendors, zero owners |
| What a fractional CMO decides that an agency can’t | Four ways to fill the same gap |
| The first ninety days, honestly | The first ninety days |
| Working alongside vendors you already have | What actually comes under management |
| Who shouldn’t buy this | When this is the wrong buy |
05The Comparison
Four ways to fill the same gap.
A fractional CMO isn’t a consultant with a nicer title, and it isn’t an account manager with a bigger retainer. The difference is what happens after the plan is written.
| Option | Typical cost | What you get | Answers for | Reach | Execution | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Consultant | $5k–$25k · project | A strategy deck | The document, not the outcome | No access to your ad accounts | Leaves before execution starts | You still have to hire someone to run it |
| Agency account manager | Included in retainer | One channel, owned well | That channel’s metrics | Can’t touch your other vendors | Escalates decisions back to you | Structurally can’t say “cut this budget” |
| Fractional CMO | $2k–$10k+ · monthly | The plan, written and run | Cost per booked job across all channels | Manages our team and your existing vendors | Makes the call, then reports the result | Will tell you to cut a channel we sell |
| In-house CMO | $160k–$220k · salary + benefits | Full attention, full cost | The whole function, once hired and ramped | One person’s channel experience | Needs a team under them to execute | Three months to hire, three to ramp. Correct once you’re past roughly $10M. |
06The Mandate
What actually comes under management
You decide how wide the mandate goes. Some clients hand over marketing entirely. Others keep their existing agency and bring us in above it. Both work — but the engagement only earns its price when the mandate includes budget authority.
Budget & allocation
Where every marketing dollar goes, and where the next one goes. Reviewed monthly against channel P&L.
All paid channels
Google, Meta, Local Services Ads, retargeting — run by our team or audited if run by yours.
Organic & content
SEO, local visibility, AI answer engines, review velocity. The compounding half of the plan.
Website & conversion
Landing pages, forms, call tracking, speed. Traffic you already pay for that isn’t converting.
Your existing vendors
Briefs, scorecards, quarterly reviews. They report to us; we report to you.
Your in-house marketer
If you have one, they get a manager. Weekly 1:1, priorities, and someone to escalate to.
The sales handoff
Speed-to-lead, routing, call scoring, follow-up sequences. Most leaks live here, not in the ads.
Reporting & the number
One dashboard, one scorecard, one person answering for it. That person is the deliverable.
Your Existing Vendors
We don’t require you to fire anyone.
If your SEO guy is good, we manage him and keep him. If he isn’t, you’ll see it in the numbers within a quarter and the decision will be obvious — to both of us.
07The First 90 Days
The first ninety days.
Every engagement starts the same way, because you can’t allocate a budget against numbers you haven’t verified. Each stage needs the one before it.
Days 1–90 · Drawn to ScaleFour stages, one quarter
- Days 1–14
Baseline
Full access: ad accounts, analytics, CRM, call tracking, invoicing. We rebuild your unit economics from source data rather than from what the dashboards claim — average job value, close rate, true cost per booked job by channel. Every current vendor gets a short interview.
Outputs- Verified baseline
- Channel P&L
- Vendor map
- Tracking gaps
- Days 15–30
The plan
A 90-day operating plan with a budget attached: what each channel gets, what it’s expected to return, and what happens if it doesn’t. Scorecard goes live — five numbers, updated weekly, visible to you without asking. This is where we tell you which line items to stop paying for.
Outputs- 90-day plan
- Budget allocation
- Live scorecard
- Stop-doing list
- Days 31–60
Fix the leaks
Execution starts with the cheapest wins: conversion paths, speed-to-lead, wasted spend, broken tracking. New channels wait until the existing ones stop leaking.
Outputs- CRO fixes shipped
- Waste cut
- Lead routing rebuilt
- First monthly review
- Days 61–90
Scale what pays
Budget moves toward whatever survived the first sixty days of scrutiny. The quarterly review sets the next 90-day plan and answers the only question that matters at renewal: did the engagement return more than it cost, and can we show the arithmetic?
Outputs- Reallocated budget
- Quarterly review
- Next 90-day plan
- Renew or don’t
In most owner-operated businesses the first 20% of revenue lift comes from traffic you’re already paying for. New channels wait until the existing ones stop leaking.
08The Rhythm
The operating rhythm
Fixed cadence, published in the contract. If a call doesn’t happen or a report is late, that’s a breach of the engagement — not a scheduling issue.
One Quarter · 13 WeeksFour cadences, one score
- Daily
A channel, not an inbox
- Shared Slack or WhatsApp thread
- Reply within one business day
- Same-day on anything spend-related
- No ticket system, no account portal
- Weekly
Scorecard + 45-minute call
- Five numbers, sent Monday morning
- Spend, leads, booked jobs, CPBJ, pipeline
- Call covers decisions, not status
- No slides
- Monthly
90-minute business review
- Channel P&L: spend in, revenue out
- Cost per booked job by source
- What we’re stopping and why
- Next 30 days, with budget
- Quarterly
Strategy reset
- Full re-audit against the baseline
- Vendor performance review
- Budget rebuilt from zero
- New 90-day plan
What You Keep
The dashboard is built in your Google account, not ours.
If the engagement ends, it keeps working — along with your ad accounts, your tracking setup, your documentation, and your vendor contracts. Nothing about this model requires you to stay.
09Pricing
Three tiers. One difference.
The tiers aren’t about how many hours you buy. They’re about how senior the person is, and how much of your marketing they’re allowed to decide.
Media spend is separate and paid directly by you to the platforms · Execution quoted separately from the CMO retainer
Embedded Lead
$2,000–3,500USD / monthA senior specialist from our team. One of our directors — SEO, paid, or social, matched to where your growth actually sits — takes ownership of the plan and the reporting. The cheapest and simplest version of this service.
- Owns strategy for one or two primary channels
- Weekly scorecard and 45-minute call
- Monthly business review
- Manages the Point Higher execution team
- Advisory only on your outside vendors
- Escalation path to Valerii included
3-month minimumDiscuss Embedded Lead
Fractional CMO
$5,000–7,000USD / monthValerii Fedorov, directly — most common. The founder operates as your marketing director. Full mandate across every channel, authority over budget, and management of every vendor — including the ones you already have.
- Owns cost per booked job across all channels
- Budget authority within an agreed ceiling
- Manages your existing agencies and freelancers
- Manages your in-house marketer, if you have one
- Sales handoff, routing, and speed-to-lead
- Can appear as your CMO to vendors and staff
- Quarterly strategy reset with full re-audit
3-month minimumDiscuss Fractional CMO
CMO + Pod
$8,000–10,000+USD / monthValerii plus parallel specialists. A marketing department, assembled: the fractional CMO mandate plus several of our specialists working in parallel on your account — for multi-location operators or aggressive expansion.
- Everything in Fractional CMO
- Named specialists assigned to your account
- Multi-location or multi-brand structure
- New market and new service line launches
- Hiring support: JDs, interviews, onboarding
- Twice-weekly operating cadence
- Board-ready reporting for investors or partners
6-month minimumDiscuss CMO + Pod
Strategy Call
One hour with Valerii on a specific problem: a channel that stopped working, a vendor you’re unsure about, a budget decision you keep postponing. You get a written summary with the recommendation the same day. No pitch attached — if the answer is “keep doing what you’re doing,” that’s what you’ll hear.
Strategy Sprint
The first thirty days of a fractional engagement, sold on its own: verified baseline, channel P&L, vendor assessment, and a 90-day operating plan with budget attached. Run it yourself, hand it to your current agency, or convert into a retainer — the fee credits toward the first month if you do.
Ranges reflect scope — number of channels, number of locations, and how much of your vendor stack comes under management. Execution work delivered by our team is quoted separately, so you always see what you’re paying for strategy and what you’re paying for production.
10Not a Fit
When this is the wrong buy.
This service fails predictably. Here’s how — so you can disqualify yourself before you spend $250 finding out.
You want ads run, not marketing led.
Buy the channel service. It’s cheaper, faster, and you’ll be happier with it.
You’re under roughly $500k a year.
At that size a paid audit plus one channel executed properly beats a strategist. We’ll tell you that on the call.
You won’t share revenue and CRM data.
Without closed-loop numbers we’d be optimizing for leads, which is what your current setup already does.
You want approval rights on every decision and accountability for the outcome.
Pick one. If every call routes through you, you’re still the CMO and you’re paying twice.
You need someone in the building daily.
This is a senior part-time role. If the job genuinely requires full-time presence, hire full-time — we’ll help you write the job description.
You want a quick turnaround before a sale or a season.
Ninety days is the minimum honest timeline to a verified result. Anything faster is a promise, not a plan.
A twelve-month fractional engagement is written up and waiting on the client’s sign-off before we publish the figures. Ask on the call and we’ll walk you through it privately in the meantime.
11FAQ
Questions we get asked first.
Who shows up, what you keep, and where the conflicts are — answered the way we’d answer them on the call.
01Who actually shows up — you, or someone junior?
Whichever you paid for, named in the contract. On the Embedded Lead tier it’s one of our directors — Alex on technical SEO, Valerii on paid, Veronika on social — chosen for where your growth actually sits. On the Fractional CMO and CMO + Pod tiers it’s Valerii on every call, with specialists brought in around him. We don’t do the thing where a founder sells the engagement and disappears into a Slack channel.
02Do I have to fire my current agency?
No, and we’d rather you didn’t on day one. Your existing vendors come under management: they get briefs, a scorecard, and a quarterly review. Some turn out to be good and stay for years. Some turn out to be expensive and the numbers make that obvious within a quarter. Either way it’s a decision made on data, not on a new agency’s opinion in week one.
03Why a minimum term at all?
Because two weeks go to establishing a baseline and two more to writing a plan against it. Cutting the engagement at month two means paying for the diagnosis and skipping the treatment — the worst possible version of this purchase. Ninety days is the shortest window where you can look at a result and say whether it was worth the money — which is the minimum on the first two tiers. CMO + Pod runs six, because a team being stood up needs a second quarter before it has produced anything to judge. After the minimum, it’s month-to-month with 30 days’ notice. No auto-renewing annual terms.
04I already have a marketing manager. Does this conflict?
Usually the opposite — it’s one of the better reasons to buy this. A capable marketing manager without a manager of their own tends to drift toward busywork, because nobody senior is setting priorities or reviewing the work. They get a weekly 1:1, a clear list, and someone to escalate to. We’ve had engagements where the main deliverable was making an existing hire twice as effective.
05Can you appear as our CMO to staff and vendors?
Yes, on the Fractional CMO and CMO + Pod tiers. Company email address, title on the org chart, presence on internal calls, direct contact with your vendors. Most clients find it removes friction — vendors respond differently to a marketing director than to another agency. We sign your NDA and any non-compete you reasonably need.
06Isn’t there a conflict when you recommend your own services?
There is, and pretending otherwise would be worse than naming it. Three things keep it honest: strategy is priced separately from execution, so recommending more work doesn’t change the retainer; the channel P&L is built from your revenue data, not our reporting; and you’re free to take any recommendation to an outside vendor. We’ve told clients to cut services we sell. It’s in the monthly review either way.
07What happens to everything if we stop?
You keep it. Ad accounts are in your name, the dashboard lives in your Google account, tracking is on your property, and documentation is in your Drive. We run a handover session with whoever takes over — your next hire, your next agency, or you. Retention should come from the numbers, not from holding your infrastructure hostage.
↗Your Next Step
Start with one hour. $250.
Bring the problem you’ve been postponing. You’ll leave with a written recommendation and a straight answer about whether a fractional CMO is the right purchase for your business right now — including if the answer is no.
01 / $250 · 1 hour
One hour with Valerii on the specific problem you bring.
02 / Same-day summary
A written recommendation, sent the same day. No pitch attached.
03 / Or a 4-week sprint
Fixed fee. Baseline, channel P&L and a 90-day plan — credited toward the first month if you continue.