The fractional CMO who builds the engine, not the deck.

What is a fractional CMO?

Short answer

A senior marketing leader who works with you part-time, owns the strategy and the results, and costs a fraction of a full-time hire.

A fractional CMO does the job of a Head of Marketing on a part-time basis. They decide who you sell to, how those buyers find and buy from you, and where your marketing effort goes – then answer for the numbers.

It isn't an agency. An agency runs the channels you pick. It isn't a consultant who leaves you with a deck. If nobody builds what's in the deck, nothing changes.

What does a fractional CMO do at a B2B SaaS company?

Short answer

Builds one marketing engine in four parts – in this order.

1. Motion

   How your customers buy: on their own, through the product, or through a salesperson. Who the buyer is and how big the deal is decide it – not preference.

2. Channels

   Two or three channels that feed that motion. Not ten. A self-serve product and a sales-led product need almost opposite channels.

3. Measurement

   Source, stage and time-to-close in one place, plus an open-text "how did you hear about us?" field. The metrics follow the motion.

4. Team

   Who runs the engine next – your team from briefs, a freelancer, or your first marketing hire, with a scorecard for what that person needs to be good at.

Most founders start at step 2. A few LinkedIn posts, some paid, a blog. That's why it doesn't add up.

Why does the GTM motion have to come first?

Short answer

Because every channel and every metric is a bet on how your customers buy. Get the motion wrong and good channels still produce nothing.

• Self-serve. Buyers sign up and pay without talking to anyone. Marketing's job ends at the upgrade, so traffic, trials, activation and paid conversion are the numbers.
• Product-led. The product is how people find and try you; the purchase can still go through sales. PLG is how you grow; self-serve is how people buy. They're not the same thing.
• Sales-led. A buying committee, a longer cycle, a salesperson in the middle. Meetings booked, pipeline and closed-won attribution are the numbers. Traffic barely matters.
• Hybrid. Most SaaS companies between €1M and €15M ARR end up here by accident. Without explicit lanes – which accounts self-serve keeps and which go to sales – self-serve eats into sales and sales wastes time on small accounts.

Which marketing channels feed which GTM motion?

Short answer

Fewer than you think – and different ones for each motion.

One shift affects all three: buyers now start in ChatGPT, not Google. Your site sees them late, when they're already comparing. Whatever the motion, the pages AI models quote – comparisons, pricing, "best for" – carry more weight than they used to.

What happens in the first 90 days?

Short answer

Judge the first 90 days on a working engine and an honest roadmap – not on dramatic growth.

1. Weeks 1–3: Diagnose the motion.

   Interviews with your best customers and the ones who left. How they found you, who signed, how big the deal was, what nearly stopped them.

2. Weeks 4–6: Choose the channels.

   Two or three channels that feed the motion, each with success criteria and a kill switch agreed up front.

3. Weeks 7–12: Build the first one.

   I build the first channel and the measurement myself – the pages, the scoring, the campaign, the dashboard – so there's something running, not something planned.

4. Day 90.

   A working first channel, a baseline, a roadmap for the next two, and a list of what didn't work.

Fractional CMO vs full-time CMO vs agency

Short answer

A fractional CMO decides and builds the first version; a full-time hire runs it day to day; an agency scales a channel that's already proven.

The common failure is the gap between the plan and the build. A fractional CMO plus an agency often means two invoices and a handoff where things get lost. Building the first version myself closes that gap – and gives whoever comes next something that already works.

How much does a fractional CMO cost?

Short answer

It depends on scope – and the right comparison is the hire, not other advisors.

What drives the price:

• Advisory or hands-on. Someone who reviews your plan costs less than someone who builds the channel.
• How much exists already. A team to brief and a working CRM mean less building from scratch.
• How many channels. One channel built properly beats four started.

A first full-time Head of Marketing costs €10K+ a month all-in – before a search that can take months. Whatever a fractional CMO quotes, ask what you'll own when they leave.

When should a SaaS founder hire a fractional CMO – and when not?

Short answer

When you know marketing has to start working but can't yet write the job description for the person who'd do it.

You're ready if:

• You're a B2B SaaS (or SaaS-like) company with real users and a segment that loves the product.
• Growth has gone flat, or the channels you tried produced activity but not pipeline.
• You still sell yourself, and someone on the team can ship what we decide.

You're not ready if:

• You have no revenue yet – you need customer conversations first.
• You already have a marketing team of four or more – you need a leader, not a builder.
• You're looking for a co-founder with equity – that's a job, not an engagement.

Three questions to ask any fractional CMO:

1. Which motion have you run yourself – self-serve, product-led or sales-led?

2. What did you build with your own hands, not delegate?

3. What will I own when you leave?

Who you'd be working with

I'm Ilia Markov. As Marketing Director at Toggl, I rebuilt the product-led engine – the ICP, site, signup, onboarding, upgrade prompts and measurement, together. At Meilisearch I built the marketing function from zero, for a technical product sold to developers. Before that, content and growth at ChartMogul, Hubstaff and Groove.

I've run self-serve, product-led and sales-led motions, and I still build things myself: the comparison pages, the account scoring, the attribution, the calculator.

MBA from Michigan Ross. Based in Sofia, working remotely since 2015.

Questions founders ask

Not sure which motion you're running? That's the first call.

30 minutes. You'll leave knowing your motion and the first channel worth building – whether or not we work together.