Fractional CMO
Senior marketing leadership for UK businesses, without the full-time hire
A Fractional CMO embedded in your business for a number of days a week, owning the strategy and reporting against the outcomes that matter.
Expertise Since 2008
Honest advice. Websites that work. Still here six months after launch.
Why a Fractional CMO?
You have built a business that needs senior marketing leadership without yet needing a full-time CMO on the payroll. A Fractional CMO is the answer when that gap shows up, and the gap shows up for several common reasons. Sometimes the previous CMO has left and a permanent replacement is months away. Sometimes the founder has been running marketing personally and the business has outgrown that arrangement. Sometimes the business is preparing for growth, a fundraise, or a market expansion, and the marketing function needs to be in shape before that growth lands.
What you get is a senior marketing leader embedded in the business on a part-time basis, owning the strategy, making the channel and budget calls, and reporting against the outcomes you actually care about. A few days a week on a monthly retainer, scope flexed to what the business needs.
I have been doing this work since 2008. The Fractional CMO at Cosmik Carrot is me, Ben Bradley, not a junior account manager wearing a senior job title.
What a Fractional CMO Actually Does
A Fractional CMO is your part-time marketing director. The job is to own the marketing function in the same way an in-house CMO would, except they are in the business two or three days a week rather than five.
In practice, that means setting the marketing strategy and writing the plan against your business objectives. Deciding which channels make sense for your business right now and which do not. Allocating the budget across those channels. Working with your in-house team or external suppliers to deliver against the plan. Reporting back to the board, the founder, or whoever owns the P&L, against the metrics that matter: revenue, qualified enquiries, customer acquisition cost, pipeline.
That gives you something most growing businesses do not have. A senior person who owns the marketing outcome rather than just the marketing activity. The difference between “we ran three campaigns last month” and “we generated forty-two qualified enquiries against a target of forty” is a Fractional CMO sitting in the strategic seat.
Who This Is For
This is for mid-market and larger UK businesses where the marketing function needs senior ownership and the numbers do not yet justify a full-time hire at that level.
A few situations where it usually fits:
Founder
The founder has been running marketing personally and the business has outgrown that arrangement.
Strategist
A marketing team is in place but there is no senior strategic owner above it.
CMO Replacement
A previous CMO has left and a permanent replacement is six to twelve months away.
Growth
The business is preparing for growth, fundraising, or a market expansion and the marketing function needs to be in shape for it.
Accountability
The board wants accountability against marketing investment and the current setup does not provide it.
This is probably not the right fit if you are a very small business with limited marketing budget. The economics work better at the point where there is meaningful budget to allocate and meaningful outcomes to report against. If you are already running a mature marketing function with a senior team in place, you probably need a permanent hire rather than a fractional engagement, and I would certainly tell you that on the discovery call.
How the Engagement Works
The default engagement is a few days a week on a monthly retainer, flexed to whatever scope of work the business actually needs. Some clients run lighter, some heavier. The shape gets agreed in the scope of work before any contract is signed.
The first thing that happens is a discovery conversation. You tell me what the business is trying to do, what the marketing function looks like now, and where the gaps are. I look at what is in place: the website, the analytics, the channels you are running, the team and the suppliers you have. From that, you get a written scope of work that sets out what I will own, what I will deliver, the cadence we will work to, and what you need to give me access to. Data, stakeholder time, decision rights. Nothing starts without that document.
From there, the work runs to whatever cadence the scope of work agrees. Most engagements settle into a rhythm of regular check-ins, recurring reporting against the metrics the business is tracking, and a periodic step back to review whether the plan is still the right plan or whether priorities have shifted. The specifics depend on the business. A founder-led company with a small in-house team needs a different rhythm to a mid-market business with a dispersed marketing function and several agencies in the mix.
Execution gets handled by whoever is best placed to do it. Sometimes that is your in-house team. Sometimes it is your existing suppliers. Sometimes it is the Marketing Engineer side of Cosmik Carrot, which is the technical delivery arm that builds and runs the actual marketing systems. Either way, the plan and the execution stay connected.
Why Cosmik Carrot
Three things make this different from how most agencies and most fractional consultants run their version of this offer.
First
You deal with me directly. I have been running Cosmik Carrot since 2008. There is no junior team behind a senior pitch. The person who writes the strategy is the person who shows up to the weekly call.
Second
Strategy and execution stay under one roof. Most consultants do strategy and hand the execution to someone else. Most agencies do execution and hope the strategy you brought them is the right one. Cosmik Carrot covers both, which means the plan and the delivery never disconnect. If the Fractional CMO side needs the Marketing Engineer side to build something, that conversation happens internally rather than across a contract boundary.
Third
The work is plainly explained. Reviews of Cosmik Carrot repeatedly highlight that I explain SEO, analytics, and Google Ads to non-technical owners and directors without making anyone feel patronised. That matters at board level. A Fractional CMO who cannot translate marketing performance into language the rest of the leadership team uses is not adding much.
The proof for that runs to eighteen years and a public record. Cosmik Carrot won the Cannock Chase Chamber of Commerce President’s Award in 2025, has been shortlisted for Business of the Year in 2024, 2025, and 2026, and was shortlisted for Best Use of Data at the Midlands Marketing Awards in both 2024 and 2025. SEMrush Certified Agency Partner. Google Analytics Certified.
What a Fractional CMO Costs
Fractional CMO engagements at Cosmik Carrot start from £3,000 a month.
That covers a few days a week cadence on a monthly retainer, with the specific cadence and deliverables agreed in your scope of work. Where the scope is larger, like a multi-brand business, a complex channel mix, or an aggressive growth target, the retainer flexes up accordingly. Where it is lighter, the retainer flexes down. Obviously, the exact number gets agreed in the scope of work, not picked from a price list.
That gives you genuine senior marketing capability at roughly the cost of a junior marketer or a mid-level agency retainer, without the recruitment risk and without the agency markup on what is essentially execution support.
Frequently Asked Questions
Got questions about a Fractional CMO. Here are the answers we share most often with clients before they begin their project.
A Fractional CMO is a senior marketing officer working with your business on a part-time, retained basis. They own the marketing strategy and plan in the same way a full-time CMO would, except they are in the business two or three days a week rather than five. You get the seniority and accountability without the full-time salary, recruitment process, or notice period.
At Cosmik Carrot, Fractional CMO engagements start from £3,000 a month for the default few-days-a-week scope, with the figure flexed up or down based on the actual scope of work. Compared with the full cost of a senior marketing hire once you add salary, NI, pension, and bonus, the economics work for any business below the genuine in-house threshold.
The moment to bring one in is the moment the marketing function needs senior ownership and the business does not yet justify a permanent senior hire. That is usually one of four situations. The founder has been running marketing and has run out of capacity for it. There is a team in place but no strategic owner. A previous CMO has left and a permanent hire is months away. Or the business is preparing for growth and the marketing function needs to be in shape before that growth lands.
An agency executes against a brief you give them. The Fractional CMO sits one level up. They write the brief, set the strategy, and decide what to give to which agency. Most growing businesses do not need more execution. They need someone deciding what to execute against. Cosmik Carrot does both sides of that work, but the Fractional CMO role is specifically the strategic seat.
The lead generation focus is UK, particularly mid-market businesses across the country. The capability is global. Cosmik Carrot has served international clients for years. If you are a non-UK business looking for a senior fractional marketing lead, get in touch and we can have a conversation about whether the fit and the time zones work.
Talk to Ben About a Fractional CMO
Most businesses end up needing this kind of help one of two ways. They run marketing themselves until it becomes obviously too much, and then they look for someone senior to take it over. Or they make a hire that does not work, lose six to nine months, and then look for an interim fix that buys them time to hire properly. Either way, the moment you are reading a page like this, something is telling you the current setup is not quite what the business needs.
The contact form goes straight to me. Tell me where the business is and what the marketing function looks like now, and we will arrange a conversation to see whether a Fractional CMO is the right next step.
