What is a Fractional Marketing Director?

A fractional marketing director is an experienced marketing leader who works with your firm part-time, usually one or two days a week, as part of your leadership team. They own the marketing strategy, manage the marketing team and report to your CEO or managing partner, without the cost of a full-time senior hire. Fractional CMO means the same thing.

Signs you need one

You’ll probably recognise a few of these:

• Your marketing team is busy but you couldn’t say what it’s building towards.
• Marketing decisions keep landing on the managing partner’s desk because there’s nobody else senior enough to make them.
• You’ve got a marketing executive doing good work with nobody to develop them.
• You’re about to do something significant, a rebrand, a merger, a new office, and there’s nobody in-house who’s done it before.

• You know you need senior marketing input but a full-time director is more than you need and more than you want to spend.
• Your marketing agency is producing work, but nobody inside the firm is deciding whether it’s the right work.

What I do as your fractional marketing director

Strategy and planning. I set the marketing direction and write the plans that sit underneath it, tied to your firm’s business goals rather than to what’s easy to measure.

Leadership team input. I sit with your leadership team, managing partners or heads of marketing and bring a marketing perspective to business decisions, which is usually where marketing goes wrong when it’s absent.

Managing and mentoring your team. Day-to-day management of your marketing people, including developing them so they can take on more over time.

Building the team. If you haven’t got a marketing team yet, or you’ve got the wrong shape of one, I’ll work out what you need, write the roles, and help you recruit.

Process and infrastructure. Putting in place the marketing and business development processes that mean things happen consistently rather than when someone remembers.

Major projects. Heading up the big pieces of work like rebrands and brand refreshes, where the cost of getting it wrong is high.

Service, sector and office plans. Marketing and business development plans for each part of your firm, so partners know what applies to them.

Content, thought leadership and campaigns. Setting the strategy for how your firm shows up and what it’s known for.

Why fractional rather than full-time

You get someone who’s done this in magic circle and silver circle law firms, top ten accountancy practices and large consultancies, for a fraction of what that experience costs full-time.

There’s no National Insurance, no pension contributions, no holiday pay and no recruitment fee. You get a senior person who’s used to walking into a firm and being useful in the first fortnight rather than the first quarter.

You also get an outside view. Someone who sits close enough to the business to understand it but far enough out to say the thing your team might not.

How I work with you

1. Discovery. I start by understanding your firm, your goals and what marketing looks like now. That means talking to your leadership team and your marketing people, and looking honestly at what’s working.

2. Direction. I set the strategy and the plan, and agree with you what success looks like and how we’ll know.

3. Delivery. I run the marketing function day to day, manage the team, and keep the plan moving. You’ll see me in your leadership meetings and your marketing meetings.

4. Building capability. Throughout, I’m developing your people and putting in the processes that mean the firm gets stronger rather than more dependent on me. The goal is that you eventually need me less.

How engagements usually work

I typically work with clients one to two days a week, on a minimum engagement of three months.

In practice, most fractional relationships run considerably longer than that. I was Spencer West’s marketing director for two and a half years. Firms usually start with a defined piece of work and it becomes ongoing once the value’s obvious.

Days can flex as things change. A rebrand or a merger might need more time for a period, then settle back down.

Why work with me

I’ve been running Helen Cox Marketing since 2016 and have worked with clients across professional services and B2B. Before that I was in-house, in the corporate world, for magic circle and silver circle law firms, top ten accountancy practices and large multi-matrixed consultancies. So when I say I’ve seen a version of your situation before, I usually have.

I’m a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (FCIM) with Chartered Marketer status, which means you’re working with someone fully qualified and still doing this work every week.

In a fractional role I’d usually have full accountability for the marketing function, report directly to the managing partner or CEO, and focus on building capability as the firm grows.

Who this is for

This works best for professional services firms and B2B businesses somewhere between having no marketing leadership and being ready for a full-time director. Law firms, accountancy practices, consultancies and B2B organisations, typically with a leadership team that knows marketing matters and hasn’t yet got anyone senior owning it.

It’s less useful if what you need is someone to write the copy, run the campaigns and post to LinkedIn. A fractional director sets the direction and manages the people doing that work. If you need the doing rather than the directing, marketing project management or an agency will serve you better and cost you less.

I’ll tell you on the call if that’s what I think.

Get in touch

If your marketing is busy but not going anywhere in particular, it usually isn’t a resource problem. It’s a direction problem, and those are fixable.

Book a discovery call and let’s work out whether a fractional marketing director is what you actually need. If it isn’t, I’ll say so.

I work with professional services firms and B2B businesses across Kent, London and the UK, and remotely worldwide.