A few years back, I ran an agency with my partner Marc Glazer. We had a rule: no single client could exceed 50% of our revenue. It was a smart constraint, until Defiant broke it.
Defiant makes Wordfence, now the dominant player in WordPress security. They came to us as a referral looking for marketing execution. Capability and throughput. They needed stuff done, and done well. What they got was that, plus two experienced marketers who could make strategic calls about what to do, when to do it, and why it mattered. Marc came from the creative side, I came from the analytical and technical side. We delivered the work and the judgment about which work to deliver.
They didn’t know they were hiring fractional CMOs. Neither did we, honestly. That wasn’t the language back then.
Over two years, they kept increasing their investment. Not because anything was broken. The opposite. Results kept compounding, so they kept wanting more. Eventually they hit our ceiling. When we told them we couldn’t take on more work, they didn’t find another agency. They hired me full-time.
By that point, the decision was completely de-risked. Two years of results. No guessing about fit or capability. They weren’t gambling on a CMO. They were scaling what already worked.
That journey from scrappy startup to market leader didn’t happen because they waited until they could afford a full-time executive. It happened because they got strategic leadership at the moment they needed it, in the amount they needed, and scaled it as the business grew.
Most founders think marketing leadership is binary. You’re either doing it yourself or you’re hiring a full-time CMO. But there’s a critical phase in between where the right fractional leadership doesn’t just save money. It changes your trajectory entirely.
Phase 1: The Founder Does Everything
Every software company starts the same way. The founder does everything.
You’re writing blog posts at midnight. You’re figuring out Google Ads by watching YouTube tutorials. You’re designing landing pages in Canva because you can’t justify hiring a designer yet. Marketing isn’t a department. It’s whatever you can squeeze in between building the product and talking to customers.
This is fine. More than fine, actually. It’s necessary. At this stage, marketing is about survival. You’re trying to find something that works. Any traction at all. You don’t need a strategy deck. You need customers.
But at some point, things start to shift. You’re spending real money now. Five, ten, fifteen thousand a month on ads, content, maybe an agency. You’ve hired a contractor or two. Maybe a full-time marketing person.
And that’s when something strange happens. Everyone starts looking at you for answers. What should we prioritize this quarter? Should we spend more on paid or organic? Is this landing page good? What’s our message? You’ve gone from doing everything yourself to being the bottleneck for every marketing decision. The work has scaled. Your capacity hasn’t.
This is where most founders get stuck.
Phase 2: The Leadership Void Emerges
So you do what seems logical. You hire help.
A freelance writer for content. Maybe an agency to run paid ads. A designer on Upwork. Perhaps a junior full-time person to manage social and email. You’re finally not doing everything yourself.
But here’s what nobody tells you: a collection of executors is not a team.
Your content writer doesn’t know what your ad agency is saying. Your designer is working from messaging you wrote eight months ago. The agency is optimizing for metrics that look good in their reports but don’t actually move your business. Everyone is working in their own silo, with their own briefs, toward their own interpretation of what success looks like.
And you’re still the hub. Every decision flows through you. Should we write about this topic or that one? Is this headline good? What’s our budget for next month? Should we test a new channel? Your contractors are waiting on answers. Your agency is waiting on feedback. Your full-time hire is waiting on direction.
You’re spending $10K, $15K, maybe $20K a month on marketing. And you have no idea if it’s working. Things feel scattered. There’s a lot of activity but no momentum. You’re paying for execution, but what you’re getting is chaos.
This is the leadership void.
It’s not that your people are bad at their jobs. Most of them are probably fine. The problem is that nobody is connecting the dots. Nobody is deciding what not to do. Nobody is making sure the content strategy ladders up to the business goals, that the ad spend is allocated to the right channels, that everyone is working from the same playbook.
And often, there is no playbook. No messaging strategy. No clear articulation of who you are, what you do, and why it matters. Your positioning was written by whoever was available at the time. Your logo came from a 99designs contest. Your homepage copy has been Frankensteined together over three years by four different people. This is normal. Every startup does this. But at some point it starts holding you back.
Getting messaging right unlocks everything else. Suddenly the content has a point of view. The ads have a voice. The team knows what they’re building toward. Without it, you’re just producing stuff.
You need brand guidelines, but you don’t have them. You need a messaging strategy that everyone works from. You need a budget framework, but you’re winging it quarter to quarter. You need a priority matrix that tells the team what matters and what doesn’t. You need someone to wrangle the vendors and contractors so you don’t have to.
Most of all, you need someone who can answer the question your team keeps asking: what should we be doing, and why?
Research backs this up. A CMO Council survey found that 86% of businesses attributed missed revenue and growth opportunities to a lack of marketing resources or capabilities. That’s not about headcount. It’s about leadership.
Phase 3: Enter Fractional Leadership
This is where a fractional CMO comes in.
Not as a luxury. Not as a stopgap until you can afford the “real thing.” As the right solution for this specific phase of growth.
A fractional CMO brings experienced marketing leadership without the full-time commitment. But more importantly, they bring pattern recognition. They’ve seen your situation before. Probably five or ten times. They know what’s going to work and what’s going to waste your money because they’ve already made those mistakes on someone else’s dime. This isn’t a guess. Research from Insight Partners found that 60% of marketing leaders who drove results at top-performing startups had prior early-stage experience. Pattern recognition wins.
Think about it like this: would you rather have a surgeon who’s done your procedure 500 times, or one who’s done it 50? When it’s your company on the table, experience isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s everything.
And here’s what makes this phase so critical. The difference between a company growing at 50% and one growing at 100% isn’t just “better.” It’s a different future entirely. The 100% company raises at better valuations. It attracts stronger talent who want to ride the rocket. It builds a moat while the 50% company is still fighting for positioning.
The leadership void doesn’t just cost you efficiency. It costs you half your growth. And growth compounds.
A good fractional CMO does more than hand you a strategy deck. They roll up their sleeves. They figure out whether your agency is actually good or just good at presenting. They find the right contractors when you need them. They manage the people you’ve already got so you don’t have to. The ability to find, vet, and manage great marketing resources is half the job.
Let’s be honest. Would you rather have a full-time A-player running your marketing? Of course you would. Can you afford one? No. Not yet.
That’s the point. Fractional gives you access to A-level talent years before you could afford them full-time. What you need isn’t 40 hours a week of marketing leadership. What you need is the right number of hours from someone who’s been here before. Maybe that’s 8 hours a week to align your contractors and set quarterly priorities. Maybe it’s 15 to rebuild your messaging and overhaul your funnel. It scales with your needs and your budget.
This isn’t the discount option. It’s the only option that makes sense at this stage.
The Journey: When to Scale Up (and When to Transition)
So when does fractional make sense? And when do you outgrow it?
Bring in a fractional CMO when:
You’re spending real money on marketing but it feels scattered. Your team or contractors keep asking what they should prioritize. You’re the bottleneck for every marketing decision. You’re hiring executors but you’re not sure what roles you actually need next.
You feel pressure to maintain your growth rate, and you have the means to invest more, but you’re not confident that spending more will actually help. You want to double down but you don’t have a marketing engine that scales reliably.
This is the leadership void. You’re in it.
Scale up your fractional engagement when:
The initial frameworks are working and you need more strategic capacity. You’re preparing for something big: a rebrand, a new product launch, expansion into a new market. Your marketing team is growing to four or five people and the coordination is getting more complex.
More hours, same person. The relationship deepens, the impact compounds.
Transition to full-time when:
Marketing has become a primary growth lever that requires daily strategic decisions. Your team has grown to six, eight, ten people and needs consistent leadership. You’ve de-risked the hire because you know exactly what great looks like. And your budget supports a full-time executive without strain.
This is what happened with Defiant. By the time they hired me full-time, there was no guesswork. They’d seen two years of results. They knew the leadership style, the strategic approach, the working relationship. They weren’t gambling on a CMO. They were doubling down on what was already working.
That’s the real unlock. Fractional doesn’t just save you money in the short term. It de-risks the eventual full-time hire. When you’re ready to make that commitment, you’ll know exactly what you need.
It’s a Journey
Defiant didn’t become the dominant player in WordPress security because they figured it all out themselves. They didn’t wait until they could afford a full-time CMO to get strategic leadership. They got it the moment they needed it, in the amount they needed, and scaled it as the business grew.
That’s the move. Not fractional versus full-time. Fractional then full-time. You’re not choosing between them. You’re sequencing your growth intelligently.
The companies that win at this stage aren’t the ones with the biggest marketing budgets. They’re the ones who close the leadership void before it costs them years of momentum. They get A-level thinking into the building early. They build the marketing engine while they’re still growing, not after they’ve stalled.
And when they’re finally ready to hire a full-time CMO, the decision is easy. They’ve already seen what great looks like. They’re not gambling. They’re scaling.
If you’re feeling the void right now, if your team keeps asking questions you can’t answer, if your marketing spend feels scattered, if you’ve become the bottleneck, it might be time to talk.
Sources and Further Reading
When Is A Fractional CMO The Right Choice For Your Business? How To SaaS (Shiv Narayanan) A comprehensive overview of the fractional CMO model for SaaS companies, including data from a CMO Council survey showing that 86% of businesses attribute missed revenue to a lack of marketing resources or capabilities.
Your First Marketing Hire: A Guide for Startup Founders Productive Shop (Anna Gladkaya) Research-backed guide on hiring marketing leadership, citing Insight Partners data that 60% of marketing leaders who drove results at top-performing startups had prior early-stage experience.
Why Fractional CMOs Are Ideal for Growing Early-Stage SaaS Companies Simon Fractional Analysis of how strategic leadership impacts growth, referencing OpenView data showing a 27% improvement in revenue growth rate for early-stage SaaS companies prioritizing efficient growth through strategic leadership.
A Marketing Team for Every Startup Stage Prasid Pathak Framework for how marketing team composition should evolve from pre-seed through Series A+, emphasizing the importance of avoiding premature specialization.
Startup Lessons: Hiring a CMO (Part 1) Patrick Mork, Medium First-hand perspective from a four-time CMO on the triggers that indicate a company needs marketing leadership, including team size indicators and common pain points.