Fractional CMO for home-service companies
You're spending thousands on marketing.
Who actually owns the result?
Constructo acts as the marketing leadership layer for growing home-service companies that have outgrown disconnected tactics but aren't ready to hire a full-time CMO.
Who owns what
- Your SEO companyowns SEO
- Your ad agencyowns ads
- Your website companyowns the website
- Your coordinatorowns tasks
- Your CRM companyowns software
But who owns the number?
Senior marketing leadership without adding another full-time executive.
Self-check
Do you actually need a Fractional CMO?
You probably don't need one simply because marketing feels frustrating. You start needing marketing leadership when the marketing operation itself becomes difficult to manage.
Check everything that's true today
0 / 11
Checked 3 or more? You may not have a lead-generation problem. You may have a marketing leadership problem.
This isn't an automated diagnosis. It's a way to see whether your constraint is execution or direction.
The multi-vendor stall
Every vendor owns a channel. Nobody owns the number.
Your SEO company thinks you need more SEO. Your PPC company thinks Google Ads deserve more budget. Your social company wants more content. Your software company wants another automation.
That’s not necessarily because they’re dishonest. They’re being paid to solve one specific problem, and they’re answering the question they were hired to answer.
Somebody still has to sit above all of them and ask: which one actually deserves the next dollar? That’s what marketing leadership is supposed to do.
Nobody owns the outcome
Every vendor can report green on their own metric while booked revenue stays flat.
Budget by habit
Money keeps going where it went last year instead of where the economics say it should go today.
The owner is the bottleneck
You're still approving campaigns, reviewing vendors and making marketing calls between everything else required to run the company.
Marketing and sales live in different worlds
Marketing reports leads. Sales reports bad leads. Nobody reconciles the two.
Money, out loud
What does a Fractional CMO cost?
We're not going to make you read fifteen sections before we talk about price. Here's how this is actually priced, and what we can't quote until we've talked.
Constructo Fractional CMO
Custom engagement
Scoped after a diagnostic conversation. It sits well above an execution retainer, and we’ll tell you plainly if you’re not ready for it.
Advertising spend, software, outside vendors and execution services may be billed separately.
Pricing depends primarily on
- Company revenue and complexity
- Number of locations
- Size of the marketing budget being directed
- Number of vendors to coordinate
- Internal marketing staff to lead
- Meeting cadence
- Reporting requirements
- Leadership only, or leadership plus execution
Anyone quoting a Fractional CMO price before seeing your numbers is quoting a package, not leadership.
Fractional CMO pricing
Why can one Fractional CMO cost $3,000 and another cost $15,000+?
Because the job isn't the same job. Higher cost isn't automatically better — it usually reflects scope, spend under management and how deep into the company the role sits.
Company complexity
One location is a different job than twelve locations across four states.
Marketing spend
Overseeing $15K/month is a different level of responsibility than making decisions about $250K/month.
Team size
Advising an owner is different from leading an internal marketing department.
Number of vendors
More agencies and specialists means more coordination, more scorecards, more accountability work.
Execution included
Strategy alone prices differently than strategy plus running the campaigns.
Leadership involvement
One monthly meeting is different from weekly leadership meetings and quarterly planning sessions.
Fractional CMO vs the alternatives
Do you need a Fractional CMO — or something else?
Five real options. We're including the ones that don't involve paying us, because pretending they don't exist would waste both our time.
| Option | Best for | Advantage | Tradeoff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owner manages marketing | Smaller companies with simple marketing — one or two channels, one vendor. | No additional executive cost. | Owner time becomes the cost, and it's the most expensive hour in the company. |
| Marketing coordinator | Companies that primarily need execution: posting, scheduling, content, vendor wrangling. | Full-time internal attention on the work. | Usually not senior enough to set overall strategy or challenge an agency's numbers alone. |
| Traditional marketing agency | A clearly defined execution problem — “we need someone to run Google Ads,” “we need SEO.” | Specialized execution, usually cheaper per channel than leadership. | The agency owns one channel, not the whole marketing operation or the budget across it. |
| Full-time CMO / marketing director | Larger organizations with enough complexity to keep a senior executive busy every day. | Dedicated internal leadership, in every meeting, all the time. | Salary, benefits, recruiting cost, ramp time and management overhead. |
| Fractional CMO | Growing companies that need senior leadership but can't yet justify a full-time executive. | Senior strategy, budget ownership and vendor accountability at a fraction of the commitment. | Not inside your company 40+ hours a week. Requires you to share real numbers. |
Sometimes the answer is not hiring us. If what you really need is better Google Ads execution, hire a good Google Ads manager. If you need someone publishing content all day, hire internally. If you’re large enough to support an excellent full-time marketing executive, hire one.
A Fractional CMO makes sense when the missing piece is leadership — not effort.
When to hire a Fractional CMO
You're probably ready if…
These are guidelines, not requirements. Companies break every one of them for good reasons — but the more of these that are true, the more likely leadership is your constraint.
You're doing several million dollars or more in annual revenue.
You're spending $10K+ per month across marketing, media, vendors or staff.
You have multiple agencies or specialists.
You have an internal coordinator who needs someone senior above them.
The owner still functions as the unofficial CMO.
You're adding locations, services or markets.
You can't confidently state your CAC by channel.
Marketing and sales disagree about lead quality.
You have plenty of execution but no strategic direction.
Straight talk
You probably don't need us if…
We'd rather lose the deal here than six months in. Every one of these is a real reason we've told someone no.
You're still chasing your first reliable lead channel
You need execution, not executive leadership. Get one channel producing predictably first.
You're spending very little on marketing
Don't pay someone to manage a marketing machine that doesn't exist yet.
You won't share the numbers
Revenue, margins, average job value, close rates, capacity and spend. Without them, we're guessing too.
You want someone to agree with every idea
Part of this job is saying no — including to ideas we brought you last quarter.
You expect an overnight transformation
Complex marketing problems get fixed over quarters, not days.
Every current vendor is untouchable
We won't replace a vendor just to replace them. But if something isn't working, protecting that relationship can't matter more than protecting the business.
What the engagement covers
Leadership, with execution available — not the other way around
This is direction and accountability. We can execute too, but the reason to hire this role is that someone above the vendors decides where the money goes and reports on whether it worked.
- Annual and quarterly plan tied to revenue goals
- Budget allocation by expected return, not habit
- Service mix and margin analysis
- Capacity planning so demand matches crews
- Vendor management and performance review
- One KPI report everyone reads
- Marketing and sales reconciliation
- Hiring guidance for internal marketing roles
The engagement
What exactly happens after you hire us?
Three phases in the first quarter, each with a deliverable you can hold. Nothing here is 'ongoing strategy.'
Days 1–30
Find the truth
We audit the business, not just the marketing.
- Revenue and service mix
- Margins and average job value
- Capacity and crew utilization
- Lead sources and close rates
- Marketing spend by line item
- Every vendor and scope
- Ad accounts, SEO, website
- CRM, attribution, reporting
- Internal team and workload
Deliverable
Marketing Truth Report
What's working, what isn't, what you're actually paying to acquire an opportunity and a customer — and what we still can't measure yet.
Days 31–60
Build the plan
One plan everyone works from, in writing.
- Channel priorities
- Marketing budget by channel
- Quarterly objectives
- KPI definitions everyone agrees on
- Vendor scorecards
- Marketing calendar
- Named owner for each line
- Tracking fixes
- Recommended cuts
- Recommended investments
Deliverable
Written Marketing Growth Plan
Not a deck. A document your vendors, your coordinator and your sales lead all read from the same version of.
Days 61–90
Fix the machine
We start moving money and expectations.
- Reallocating budget
- Fixing attribution
- Resetting vendor expectations
- Improving reporting
- Aligning marketing and sales
- Correcting weak campaigns
- Setting the leadership cadence
Deliverable
Marketing Operating Rhythm
After the first 90 days the loop runs monthly: measure → decide → execute → review → reallocate.
Ongoing
What are we actually doing every month?
A Fractional CMO retainer isn't vague strategy. It's a recurring set of decisions with numbers attached. A typical month includes most of this.
Leadership meeting
Review revenue by channel
Review qualified opportunities
Analyze customer acquisition cost
Compare budget to performance
Review sales feedback
Analyze lead quality
Vendor performance review
Campaign prioritization
Budget reallocation
Upcoming promotions and campaigns
Internal-team coaching
Marketing hiring decisions
Website, SEO and paid-media priorities
Quarterly planning
Reporting to ownership
Some months the most valuable thing we do is launch something new. Other months it’s stopping you from wasting $20,000 on something that isn’t working.
Scope, honestly
What you're not hiring
A lot of things get sold under this title. Here's what this role isn't, so you don't pay a senior fee for junior work.
A social media manager
We're not charging a senior-strategy fee to decide which photo goes on Instagram Tuesday.
A junior account manager
You shouldn't have to keep re-explaining the economics of your company to someone whose job is relaying messages.
Another agency protecting its channel
Our job isn't to make SEO win or make Google Ads win. The business needs to win.
Someone who automatically fires your vendors
If your existing agency is excellent, we want to keep them and give them clearer direction.
A magic lead machine
Sometimes the right call isn't another campaign — it's fixing lead response, sales, estimating, reputation or capacity before buying more demand.
Lead economics
A good cost per lead can still be bad marketing
This is the single most common reason a marketing program looks healthy on a dashboard and feels broken in the field. The numbers below are an illustration, not a client result.
What the dashboard says
$100
cost per lead
- Monthly spend
- $30,000
- Leads
- 300
Sounds excellent. Keep reading.
What actually happened to the 300
- Leads that weren't qualified120
- Leads that never got meaningful follow-up60
- Leads for work you don't actually want40
- Real opportunities80
- Customers20
$30,000 spent to acquire 20 customers.
$1,500
real cost per acquired customer — 15× the number on the dashboard.
Now ask the only question that matters: is $1,500 good? It depends. If the average customer produces $15,000 in profitable revenue, it might be fantastic. If the average customer produces $1,800 with thin margins, it’s terrible.
That’s why marketing leadership requires business numbers, not just marketing numbers.
Is a Fractional CMO worth it?
Sometimes, no.
If a company is doing $800K a year, spending $2K/month on marketing and still doesn't have a reliable source of opportunities, senior marketing leadership probably isn't the first investment it should make. It needs execution.
The other side
Now picture a company spending:
- Google Ads$15K / mo
- SEO$8K / mo
- Website & content$3K / mo
- Software$2K / mo
- Internal marketing coordinator$70K / yr
~$406K a year directed at marketing
If nobody owns how those dollars work together, leadership becomes a relatively small line item compared with the money being managed. That’s the honest argument for this role — not a promised return.
We don’t guarantee ROI. What we can commit to is that every dollar has a reason, an owner and a review date.
Proof, labeled honestly
What we can and can't show you here
We don't have a published Fractional CMO case study yet, and we're not going to borrow one from another service to fill this space.
What this role changes
- Multiple vendors, no shared planOne plan with named owners
- No unified reportingOne report everyone reads
- Unknown CACCost per customer by channel
- Owner approving everythingOwner out of routine decisions
- Spend allocated by habitSpend allocated by expected return
- Vendors graded by themselvesVendors graded on a scorecard
Verified proof lives elsewhere
Our published client results come from SEO, local SEO and paid-media engagements. Those are real, and they’re labeled by the service that produced them — you can read them on the results page. Implying that leadership produced an SEO outcome would be the exact kind of reporting we get hired to stop.
The number that matters
Booked jobs, cost per customer, and where the next dollar goes
Rankings, impressions and clicks are inputs. The job of marketing leadership is to connect them to estimates, closed work and margin — and to say so when a channel isn't earning its keep.
FAQ
The questions buyers actually ask
Sets the marketing plan, owns the budget across every channel, holds vendors accountable to numbers they didn't pick for themselves, and reports to ownership on what the marketing spend produced in booked revenue.
In practice that means deciding which channel deserves the next dollar, finding out why marketing says the leads are good while sales says they're terrible, and making sure you can trace which leads became estimates, jobs and revenue.
Find out whether you actually need a Fractional CMO
We’ll look at what you’re currently spending, who’s managing it, how you’re measuring results and where the biggest bottleneck appears to be. If you need leadership, we’ll explain why. If you really need better execution instead, we’ll tell you that too.