TL;DR
- A part time chief marketing officer gives you senior-level marketing leadership without a six-figure salary
- Most growing businesses need strategy more than execution, but they hire doers instead of thinkers
- Foxtown Marketing acts as your fractional CMO, embedded in your business, accountable to your goals
- You get the full brainpower of an experienced marketing team for a fraction of what one full-time hire costs
- No long-term commitments, no bloated retainers, and no guesswork
If you’re running a business between $2M and $20M in revenue, you probably don’t have a real marketing strategy. You have a website, maybe some ads running, and a vague sense that you should be doing more. You’re not alone.
The problem isn’t effort. It’s leadership. Specifically, the kind of marketing leadership that used to cost $200,000 a year or more.
That’s where a part time chief marketing officer changes everything.
What a Part Time CMO Actually Does
A part time chief marketing officer is exactly what it sounds like. You get a senior marketing executive, someone who has built and run marketing programs for real companies, who works with your business on a part-time or fractional basis.
This is not a freelancer who writes blog posts. This is not an agency account manager who sends you monthly reports. A fractional CMO sits inside your leadership team, understands your business model, and makes the strategic calls that determine where your marketing budget goes and why.
On a practical level, that includes things like:
- Auditing what’s working and cutting what isn’t
- Building a coherent marketing strategy tied to revenue goals
- Aligning your sales and marketing so they’re not working against each other
- Managing or selecting the right vendors and tools
- Holding your campaigns accountable to real numbers
If you’ve ever wondered why your marketing feels scattered, it’s usually because nobody is in charge of the whole picture. A part time CMO fixes that.
The Gap Most Growing Businesses Fall Into
Here’s a pattern we see constantly. A company hits $3M or $4M in revenue and realizes they need to get serious about marketing. They have two options in front of them:
Option 1: Hire a full-time CMO. The salary alone is somewhere between $175,000 and $250,000 before you factor in benefits, equity, and the risk of a bad hire. For most companies at this stage, that’s a significant gamble.
Option 2: Keep doing what they’re doing, or hire a junior marketing manager who doesn’t have the experience to set strategy.
Both options leave money on the table. A junior hire can execute, but they can’t lead. A full-time CMO is overkill if your marketing doesn’t need someone in the building 40 hours a week.
The smart move is a third option that most business owners don’t know exists.
Why Foxtown Marketing Works as Your Part Time CMO
At Foxtown, our fractional CMO model was built specifically for companies in this gap. You’re growing, but you’re not ready for a full marketing department. You need someone who can own the strategy, communicate it clearly, and make sure execution actually happens.
When you work with us, you get:
- Strategic leadership: We own the marketing function, not just a piece of it. That means we’re setting priorities, not just checking boxes.
- Cross-functional alignment: Your CMO works with your sales team, your operations team, and whoever is doing the hands-on execution. Strategy means nothing if it doesn’t connect to the rest of the business.
- Outside perspective: Internal teams are often too close to their own problems. We’ve worked across enough industries and business models to spot what you can’t see from inside.
- Accountability to results: We take a sales approach to marketing. The money being spent needs to come back to you at a ROI that actually makes sense for your business.
And because we’re fractional, you get all of this without the overhead of a full-time hire. No long-term commitments. No bloated retainers. We work at whatever level makes sense for your business, whether that’s 10 hours a month or leading your entire marketing function through a critical growth phase.
The Most Common Mistakes When Hiring Marketing Help
Before you make any decisions about marketing leadership, it’s worth understanding where companies go wrong. We wrote about the five biggest mistakes companies make when hiring a fractional CMO specifically because we’ve seen these patterns repeat across dozens of engagements.
The short version: most businesses treat a fractional CMO like a senior freelancer. They hand over a task list instead of a business problem. The whole value of the model collapses when that happens.
The companies that get the most out of a part time CMO are the ones that bring us into the leadership conversation. Not just the marketing meeting.
Is a Part Time Chief Marketing Officer Right for Your Business?
If you’re in a situation where any of these sound familiar, the answer is probably yes:
- You’re spending money on marketing but can’t explain what you’re getting back
- Your marketing and sales teams aren’t speaking the same language
- You’ve tried hiring agencies but feel like you’re getting activity without strategy
- You’re growing and need a plan, but don’t know where to start
- You’re in between marketing leaders and need coverage while you search
We’ve helped businesses across industries work through all of these situations. The model isn’t complicated. You need experienced leadership, you need it now, and you don’t want to pay a full-time salary to get it.
If you’re curious about what AI implementation looks like inside a fractional marketing setup, we’ve written about that too. It’s one of the areas where a seasoned CMO can move a lot faster than an inexperienced hire, because the tools are only as good as the strategy behind them.
Next Steps for Hiring a Part-Time Chief Marketing Officer
We keep things simple. If you think a part-time chief marketing officer might be the right fit for your business, reach out. We’ll ask you a few questions, get a sense of where you are, and tell you honestly whether or not we’re the right fit.
If we are, we’ll get to work fast. That’s kind of the whole point.
Contact Foxtown Marketing and let’s talk about what problems a part-time Chief Marketing Officer can solve for you.
Ethan Priest is a cofounder of Foxtown Marketing and the creative force behind everything visual. From digital ads and video to full brand refreshes, Ethan makes sure every piece of content looks sharp and fits the bigger marketing picture.
But Ethan’s not just a designer. He brings serious analytical chops to the table, with deep expertise in SEO, PPC, website optimization, and the data that ties it all together. He’s the guy who can build you a beautiful landing page and then tell you exactly why it’s converting (or not).
More recently, Ethan has become one of the team’s go-to specialists in AI marketing and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), helping clients show up not just in traditional search results but in AI-generated answers and recommendations. As the way people find businesses continues to shift, Ethan is already ahead of the curve, making sure Foxtown’s clients don’t get left behind.
His background spans graphic design, motion graphics, and multimedia production, and he’s known for turning complex ideas into visuals that actually land. He works closely with the entire Foxtown team to make sure every project hits the mark and looks great doing it.
While many dream of being digital nomads, Ethan proudly calls himself a “digital slow-mad,” taking his time as he explores the world one country (and coffee shop) at a time, currently based in Lisbon. When he needs to recharge, you’ll find him nose-deep in a fantasy novel, chasing mountain trails with his camera, hunting for local art scenes, or experimenting with new animation techniques just for the fun of it.
Ethan lives by the belief that creativity isn’t just a job. It’s a way of life, and every adventure feeds the next project.
