After a couple of rough months, I got tempted to bring in a fractional CMO.
I already have a sales and marketing director. Good one, with me for over a year. The idea was to add a senior marketing head on top, part-time, so growth would run with even less of me in it.
I haven’t done it.
Not yet.
Working out why taught me more than the hire would have.
The chicken and the egg
A good CMO costs real money every month. To carry that comfortably, I need more revenue. To get more revenue, I need better marketing.
That loop is where a lot of owners stall. Some hire on hope and fund it from the buffer. Some wait for the revenue the hire was supposed to bring in, and keep waiting.
Two jobs, one title
Before I could break the loop, I had to see what I was actually short of.
Marketing gets the right people to book a first consult. Sales, in a clinic, happens in the treatment room and at the front desk:
- Does the patient understand their plan?
- Do they book the next session?
- Do they come back?
Those are two different jobs.
A CMO mostly does the first. If enquiries are coming in and not converting, a CMO won’t fix it. You get three months of meetings where they explain the leads were good and the clinics didn’t close. And they might be right.
So the first question isn’t whether I need a CMO.
It’s which number is weak: is it people booking in, or people staying on.
Which gap is it, really?
If I don’t know which channels work, I need strategy. Someone senior to build the scoreboard.
If I already know, and the real problem is follow-through, I need accountability, not a bigger title. That’s usually cheaper. Sometimes it’s a job the person already in the seat can own, with a clearer number and a review I don’t sit in.
The title inflates the price. Decide which gap it is before you sign anything.
Breaking the loop
Fund the role from new revenue that has actually arrived, not from the buffer. A new fixed cost added in the middle of a thin stretch is the same anxious month again, with a fee attached.
And the fee counts.
Whatever the role brings in gets measured after its own cost, not before.
So the CMO isn’t a no. It’s a laddered or tiered gate. When the revenue is there to carry the fee without touching the buffer, the door opens. Until then, the job is to find the weak number and fix it with the team I have.