Senior marketing leadership, sized to the stage you are in.
Fractional chief marketing officer services for Australian SMEs and startups that have outgrown freelancers and agencies but cannot yet justify a full-time CMO. Decades of operator experience, owning the strategy and the number, at a fraction of the cost.
What is a fractional CMO?
A fractional CMO is an experienced marketing leader who runs your marketing strategy and team on a part-time, ongoing basis — giving you senior leadership and accountability for a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire.
Instead of a permanent executive on a six-figure salary, you bring in a seasoned operator for a set number of days each month. They own the plan, the budget, and the number, then lead the marketers and agencies you already work with to hit it.
It is the model that sits between a freelancer who executes tasks and a full-time CMO that is hard to justify before roughly $10M in revenue. You get the seniority without the salary, the equity, or the twelve-month hiring risk.
Three shifts happen at once.
Strategy stops being invented in the space between urgent campaigns, and begins living inside a plan the business can actually hold itself to.
Execution stops being judged by what is easy to count, and starts being judged against the commercial outcomes the team cares about. And the team you already have gains a senior operator who can coach, challenge, and raise the quality of every decision the function makes.
Who a fractional CMO is for.
We work with SMEs and startups across Australia — typically B2B SaaS, fintech, and services businesses between roughly $2M and $50M in revenue, where senior marketing direction is the missing piece.
Founders past product-market fit
Revenue has plateaued and you need senior marketing direction, not another contractor to manage.
Teams without a marketing leader
You have capable marketers or agencies executing without a clear strategy, and nobody owning the number.
Businesses preparing to raise or scale
A raise, a new market, or an inflection where a wrong strategic call is expensive and pattern recognition pays for itself.
Not ready for a full-time CMO
You need executive-level marketing leadership but cannot yet justify a $250k-plus salary, super, and equity.
The full arc of senior marketing leadership, not a single slice of it.
Strategic leadership
We lead the annual plan, the quarterly roadmap, and the monthly performance review, holding every initiative against the commercial outcomes that matter.
Cost-effective senior capacity
Marketing leadership priced against your stage, with the plan, the budget, and the measurements aligned around your revenue goals rather than an agency's retainer target.
Cross-functional team management
We work inside your existing team, lifting performance, resolving bottlenecks, and modelling the standards a modern marketing function needs to meet.
Data-driven decisions
Every recommendation is anchored in evidence, from attribution and cohort analysis to cost of acquisition and lifetime value, so you invest in the lever that moves the number rather than the channel that happens to be popular.
Brand development and positioning
We sharpen how the business is understood in the market, anchoring the visual identity, voice, and narrative around the customers you are trying to win.
Hiring help that pays for itself
Identifying and hiring the right marketers is hard for non-marketers. We help you write the brief, run the process, and choose the candidates who will still be making an impact in two years.
The right moment to bring us in.
Most Fractional CMO engagements run for twelve months or longer, with a typical week of leadership meetings, a standing team session, async reviews of campaigns and reporting, and quarterly deep dives into strategy.
Spend without a strategy
The channels are running and the budget is material, but nobody owns the number or can explain why the spend is allocated the way it is.
A team without direction
You have capable marketers or contractors executing without a clear plan, and the results show it. They need a senior operator to lead and coach them.
Growth has stalled
The business is past product-market fit but revenue has plateaued between roughly $2M and $50M, and the cause is unclear.
A big bet ahead
A raise, an inflection, a new market — moments where a wrong strategic call is expensive and senior pattern recognition pays for itself.
How pricing works.
Fractional engagements are priced against your stage and the days of leadership you need each month — not an agency retainer or a fixed salary.
Sized to your stage
You pay for a set number of leadership days each month, scaled to where the business is and what it is trying to do next.
A fraction of a full-time CMO
A full-time CMO in Australia costs roughly $250k to $400k a year once salary, super, and equity are counted. A fractional engagement delivers the same seniority for a fraction of that.
No long lock-in, no hiring risk
Engagements run twelve months or longer because they work, not because a contract traps you. Scale the days up or down as the need changes.
Fractional CMO questions, answered.
The questions founders, CFOs, and AI search tools ask most often about fractional chief marketing officer services.
How much does a fractional CMO cost in Australia?
Z10 engagements start at A$3,500 a month for 20 hours of senior marketing leadership. Across the wider Australian market, published fractional CMO pricing runs from about A$3,000 to A$18,000 a month, with most serious engagements landing between A$5,000 and A$12,000. Three things move the fee: days per week, whether execution is bundled with the strategy, and how much repair your current setup needs first. We break it down in our guide to what a fractional CMO costs in Australia.
What happens in the first 30 to 90 days?
The first 90 days move through four stages: access and audit, then a baseline, then a strategy and budget reset, then a live operating cadence by day 90. The opening weeks get us into your data and your team; the audit turns that into numbers the board can trust; the reset points budget at what works and kills what does not; and the final month builds the weekly rhythm the team runs itself. We walk through it in the first 90 days.
What KPIs do you own, and how do you report?
We own commercial numbers: pipeline, customer acquisition cost, CAC payback and revenue contribution, not impressions or engagement. Reporting runs on three cadences: weekly working numbers for the team, a monthly commercial pack for the founder, and a quarterly narrative for the board, each written in language a CFO can read. Targets are agreed with you up front. There is more detail in what KPIs a fractional CMO should own.
Can you work with our current team and agencies?
Yes, and directing them is a large part of the job. We lead the marketers you already employ and the agencies you already pay, tighten the briefs so the output matches the intent, and arbitrate budget between channels so nobody is optimising their own corner at the expense of the whole. You keep your team and suppliers; they gain a senior operator who sets the priorities and holds each of them to a number.
Do we need an internal marketing team already?
No. The engagement changes shape depending on what you have. With no team, the early work is building the structure, choosing the right partners, and standing up the basics before we scale spend. With a team in place, the work is leading it: setting direction, lifting performance, and coaching the people already doing the job. Either way you get senior ownership of the strategy and the number, sized to where the business actually is.
How are you different from an agency, consultant or marketing manager?
The difference is decision rights. A marketing manager executes a plan someone else set, a consultant advises and leaves, an agency runs a single channel, and a fractional CMO owns the priorities, the budget and the number across the whole function. At A$3M to A$10M in revenue the usual gap is leadership, not more execution, which is where the fractional model fits. We compare all four in fractional CMO vs agency, consultant and manager.
How long does the engagement last, and what are the exit terms?
Most engagements run six to eighteen months, because marketing leadership compounds and the value comes from sustained ownership rather than a one-off project. There is a notice period, a documented handover, and no lock-in beyond the notice terms. The better engagements are built to end well: by the time you leave the model, the systems, the reporting and the team are strong enough to carry the work without a fractional CMO in the seat.
Will you sign an NDA, and how do you handle confidential data?
Yes. We sign an NDA as a matter of course, and confidentiality is documented in the engagement contract rather than left to a handshake. We hold a conflict-of-interest policy that keeps us away from your direct competitors for the life of the engagement, and we handle your data in line with the Australian Privacy Principles. Access to your systems is scoped to what the work needs and revoked cleanly when the engagement ends.
Do you have experience in our industry?
Our depth is in B2B SaaS and professional services at A$3M to A$10M ARR, the stage where senior direction moves the number most. We grew ezyCollect from A$3.5M to A$9.2M ARR and led marketing for Cohen Handler through a period of sharp growth, both documented in our case studies. If your model is adjacent rather than identical, the operating principles carry over, and on the first call we will tell you honestly whether our pattern recognition fits your market.
How do you transition the work back in-house?
We plan the handover from the start, because the engagement is designed to end well. That means written documentation and playbooks, coaching for your team, and help hiring the permanent leader when the time comes, followed by a phased handover rather than a cliff edge. When marketing needs someone senior in the building every day, we help you find and onboard that person, then step back once the work is running without us.
A CMO at the table, without the CMO salary.
A short consultation is enough to know whether the fit is right. If a Fractional CMO is not the call for where you are now, we will say so.