As a fractional CMO, it's your job to set your organisation's strategic direction and drive commercial growth. But when there's no one else to run your campaigns, who takes ownership of execution?
On Wednesday 9th September, Sarah Jones from our contract marketing recruitment team hosted our latest roundtable event for fractional leaders, discussing the challenge of execution. Joined by 10 fractional and interim CMOs in our London office, we discussed practical tactics to avoid becoming an overqualified executioner, real-world insights on capacity bottlenecks, and how to structure agile teams to maintain speed of delivery.
Here are the highlights of that discussion.
Key takeaways
- The title of ‘fractional CMO’ has become diluted.
- The length of a discovery or audit phase will vary depending on the size of the organisation.
- Approaches vary when it comes to resourcing execution work.
- While AI is speeding up execution, the need to monitor its output is also creating plenty of other work for organisations.
- The fractional and interim market has become so commoditised that pricing is much more complicated than it used to be.
What is a ‘fractional CMO’ in 2026?
At its core, a fractional CMO is a part-time Chief Marketing Officer, who's primary goal is to build and establish a company’s marketing team. Since they work part-time, fractionals tend to balance multiple clients at once.
How is the fractional job title changing?
More senior marketing professionals than ever consider themselves to be fractional. But is this changing the definition of the role? Sarah Jones, specialist in contract and interim marketing recruitment, argues that it is.
"It's diluting the term fractional CMO."
CMOs who have been made redundant and want to "keep their hand in" while they look for a permanent role, are now branding themselves in the same way as those with multi-client track records. There was a feeling among our attendees that the label has become a catch-all. Clients are now using it to describe part-time freelance work, often due to budget constraints rather than a deliberate resourcing model.
Interestingly, definitions even varied among the people in the room. Some use "interim" to describe a defined, often full-time stint for a set period, and "fractional" for a role splitting time across multiple clients concurrently, while others use the terms interchangeably depending on the assignment. One attendee has even rebranded themselves every couple of years – currently calling herself a "Growth Co-Pilot" – to reflect an evolved, outcome-based role rather than a time-based one.
So, what does this mean for the workload and responsibilities?
The discovery phase for fractional CMOs
There was a great deal of debate over how long a proper discovery or audit phase should take before you dive into strategy, with answers ranging from ten days to six weeks. But why the variation?
Companies can be resistant to the ‘discovery’ phase
Bigger organisations tend to see discovery as essential groundwork, while smaller businesses, who are more focused on survival, often want immediate answers without paying for an audit. At the same time, however, some large companies think they already know their problem, while startups are more receptive to being told what's actually going on.
People and politics can be one of the biggest blockers to audits. It can take weeks getting access to systems; reconciling conflicting accounts from founders, sales and customer success; and engaging all your stakeholders. These are problems you just wouldn't encounter with a pure data audit. Indeed, after six weeks of discovery, founders often realise that they're the blocker – not the product, team or market.
There was a consensus that it's critical to clearly define what an audit does and doesn't cover, and to ensure the stakeholders are aligned on this right from the start.
Resourcing execution work
When they're not carrying out execution work themselves, our attendees have various different approaches to resourcing. Some rely on their own trusted freelancer network, some use an agency as an outsourced marketing team, and others use a mixture of the two depending on the client's stage.
AI is speeding up execution, but at what cost?
Thanks to AI, execution is getting dramatically faster. One attendee noted that they can now complete "10 times more execution" than before, changing what kinds of assignments they're willing to take on.
But at the same time, quality control has become a bigger job than ever. Several attendees have spent a lot of time catching poor-quality, AI-generated work at the executive level, such as:
- Bloated reports
- Unsupervised AI-to-AI communications between organisations
- Flawed data submitted
As one attendee put it, "You can get this super powerful machine to do super powerfully bad things in an organisation."
AI debt
Our attendees were concerned about "AI debt" – the hidden costs of rushing AI systems.
- Many have discovered that automating processes without solid data foundations or governance will create expensive problems down the line.
- AI is also having a significant impact on junior talent. As it absorbs entry-level tasks such as data analysis, campaign builds and landing page optimisation, there are fewer junior roles to train the next generation of senior marketers.
- Individual contributors who manage AI agents still need to use their judgment and functional expertise to decide whether the output is any good.
There was a feeling amongst the group that their own value is shifting from pure execution to advisory work, judgment and training middle management. They're increasingly teaching teams not just how to use AI tools, but how to evaluate and improve what those tools produce.
Rewriting pricing models
With all of this change, fractional CMOs are assessing their pricing models to manage shifting expectations, priorities and responsibilities.
How to price yourself as a fractional CMO in 2026
In 2026, several CMOs have found the fractional and interim market to be so commoditised that first-time buyers are increasingly shopping by price. This can make it harder to win new clients without an established reputation.
As such, there are a number of different pricing methods. Some of our attendees hold firmly to day-rates, while others have moved entirely to outcome or retainer-based pricing. The latter argues that day rates undervalue years of refining their skills and level of efficiency.
"I don't sell a day rate," one CMO shared, "you're buying outcomes – I'm not selling you a number of days."
Another attendee has turned their service into a structured, step-by-step offering that they license to their clients, on top of a retainer.
Execution is more about people than ever
As execution becomes faster and cheaper, human judgment, trust and relationship building will become the real differentiators for fractional CMOs. Over the next few years, fractional leaders will need to combine deep functional expertise with the ability to train and calibrate both AI systems and the people working alongside them.
Many thanks to everyone who joined us for the discussion. 3Search Events are just one of the ways we bring people together to develop their careers. For marketing recruitment or leadership appointments, get in touch with the team to see how we can support your business growth.
