Senior Marketing Leadership:
For Brands That Mean Business

A full-time Marketing Director or CMO in the UK typically commands a salary of £85,000 – £130,000+ or £130,000 – £250,000+ respectively, before employer’s National Insurance (an added 15%), pension (added 3-10%), bonus, benefits, recruitment fees and onboarding time.

In the US, these figures are $150,000 – $300,000 and $250,000 – $500,000 (before FICA, 401(k) match etc.)

For many businesses, that’s a commitment that either isn’t right yet, or isn’t right at all – or indeed necessary!

A fractional arrangement changes the maths. You only pay for the time and expertise you actually need, starting at as little as a 1-2 hours a month. There are no recruitment fees, no long notice periods and no permanent overhead.

For most of my clients, that difference gets reinvested straight back into the work that moves the needle even further – campaigns, content, tools, additional talent – so your budget works harder, and every marketing decision drives real results.

Let’s say you weren’t considering a full-time hire (or multiple full-time hires), but have been hiring multiple agencies instead.

Most agencies that are accessible to small and medium sized businesses only specialise in one type of marketing.

So you end up with one agency for SEO. One for social media. One for website development. One for paid ads. One for PR. Then another for strategy. I experienced this myself first hand when I was hiring and I was horrified!

So before long, you’re managing six suppliers who don’t talk to each other, paying six retainers, briefing the same business context and brand guidelines six times over… trying to review everything in between client meetings and stitch it all together, all while feeling like you didn’t actually take anything off your plate at all, in fact you added to it!

It’s expensive. It’s complicated. It’s overwhelming. And it pulls you away from what you actually do best, running your business, working on business development, being with clients and innovating.

A Fractional Marketing Director brings the strategy and senior leadership that makes the whole picture cohere. Whether your team sits in-house, across agencies, or somewhere in between, you’ve got one senior voice holding the thread, making the trade-offs, and keeping every moving part aligned to the outcomes that matter.

I bring two decades of marketing, brand strategy and leadership development experience, across:

• Financial services
• Professional services
• Legal services
• Tech and SaaS
• Coaching
• Health, wellbeing and transformation businesses
• And more — from early-stage founders to billion-dollar multinationals

That breadth is a huge strategic advantage to your business, especially if your own ideal clients are from varied industries or you don’t want your brand to be filled with industry normalised jargon and blind spots.

The messaging principles that power a law firm’s client acquisition often unlock exactly what a coaching or consulting business has been missing. The peaceful embodied positioning of wellbeing brands can translate beautifully into a professional services business, where client and prospect overwhelm is rife and all they really want is peace! Working across regulated and unregulated, B2B and B2C, deeply human and highly technical, I bring perspective that single-sector marketers simply can’t.

Whatever you’re building, there are almost always lessons from other industries that can accelerate growth further.

A structure that fits the business you’re building. 

When we work together, you get someone who genuinely feels like they’re working inside your business, not just on it. Someone with the commercial instincts of a Director and the focus of a leader working on what matters most.

What’s typically included?

Every engagement is shaped around your business and the stage you’re at. Most include a blend of:

• Brand and marketing strategy
• Positioning, messaging and communications
• Campaign direction and oversight
• Leadership of in-house teams, agencies and freelancers (with the ability to leverage my own network of tried, tested and trusted freelancers should you wish to do so)
• Reporting, measurement and commercial alignment
• Regular strategic sessions with you and your leadership team

If you have no in-house marketing resource at all and want execution as well as strategy, we can build that in too so nothing gets dropped between brief and outcome.

Who this is for

• Founders and CEOs who want senior marketing thinking integrated into their leadership team
• Businesses with execution capacity, in-house or outsourced, but no strategic direction holding it together
• Leadership teams who want a marketing voice in the room when the commercial decisions are being made
• Businesses in transition — scaling, repositioning, launching, or rebuilding

Investment

Ongoing engagements start at £1,000 + VAT per month for half a day focused on a single marketing channel. Additional channels, brands or full day intensives are priced accordingly. Always fully tailored to the pace, remit and ambition of your business.

While some clients start with a single half-day a month; others bring me in as an embedded member of their leadership team with almost daily contact. 

If you want to start small or you’re not sure what you need, support can be upgraded at any time. Reductions or cancellations require a minimum of 90 days’ notice.

We’ll define what the ideal arrangement looks like together before proceeding.