Inside the engagement.
A fractional CMO engagement is a weekly operating rhythm, not a retainer that produces a monthly PDF. Here is exactly who owns what, what happens each week, and how you tell whether it is working.
The short version of the offer is on the main fractional CMO page. This page is the long version, for owners who want to see the machinery before they buy it.
What you are actually buying.
A seat, not a bucket of hours. The work splits cleanly in two, and the split is the whole design.
The operator decides
What the budget is and where it goes. Which cities are worth fighting for and which are a waste of a click. What the offer says and what proof sits under it. When a channel has had a fair run and needs to be cut. Whether last month actually produced booked work.
Judgment does not scale by working later.The systems execute
Weekly rank and AI answer checks. Search term reviews on the ad accounts. Content written and published on schedule. Missed calls texted back in seconds. Quotes that went quiet chased without anyone remembering to chase them.
Repetition does not need a human.Most local marketing fails at the seam between those two columns. The strategy lives in one person's head and the execution lives with three vendors who never speak. Putting both under one accountable seat is the entire point of the arrangement.
What happens every week.
One standing review, same agenda, every week. It is a decision meeting about your business, not a status update. Four things get looked at, in this order, because the order is what keeps it honest.
1. The calls that came in
Every call and form, where it came from, and what it turned into. Not impressions. Not clicks. The actual conversations, and which ones your team failed to call back.
2. What each call cost
Spend against booked work, by channel and by city. This is the number that decides the budget for next week, and it is the one most local businesses have never seen.
3. Where you showed up
Map pack position across your service area, and whether ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google's AI answers named you this week. Checked on a schedule, reported as a trend, not a screenshot.
4. What changes next
Two or three decisions, written down, with an owner and a date. Budget moves, a page gets rewritten, a campaign gets cut. Next week starts by checking whether those actually happened.
The first ninety days, in order.
Foundation before spend. Every dollar that goes out before the plumbing is fixed is a dollar spent filling a bucket with a hole in it.
Week one: find the leaks
The visibility audit runs first. Where you stand in Google, in the map pack, and in AI answers. Then the harder pass: where calls are leaking right now. Unanswered forms, a phone number that goes to voicemail at 4pm, a quote page nobody can find on a phone. You get the findings and a written plan, yours whether you hire us or not.
Weeks two to four: fix the foundation
Website, Google Business Profile, call tracking, and follow-up automation. This is the unglamorous month. Nothing here is a growth tactic. It is the difference between spending money and being able to tell what the money did.
Days thirty to sixty: turn on demand
Ads go live against the jobs and cities worth having, not every search with your trade in it. Content and AI visibility work starts in parallel, because that side compounds slowly and needs the head start.
Days sixty to ninety: cut and concentrate
By now there is real data. The weakest channel loses its budget and the strongest gets it. This is the first month the engine is genuinely being steered rather than built, and it is the rhythm every month after this one follows.
How you tell whether it is working.
Four numbers. If these move in the right direction the engagement is working, and if they do not, no amount of activity makes up for it.
- Cost per booked job. Not cost per click or per lead. What it costs to put real work on the calendar.
- Lead response time. How long a new lead waits before somebody answers. The cheapest improvement available to most local businesses lives here.
- Share of the map pack across the cities you actually serve, tracked weekly rather than guessed at.
- Whether AI answers name you. Customers ask ChatGPT and Google's AI who to hire before they ever see a map. Being the answer is measurable, and it is tracked as citations rather than a rank position.
We do not promise rankings or revenue. Anyone who does is selling something they cannot control. What is promised is that these four numbers get measured honestly and acted on every week.
What this is not.
Worth being blunt about the edges, so nobody buys the wrong thing.
Not a full-time hire
You do not get somebody sitting in your office all day. If the job genuinely needs forty hours a week of marketing leadership, you are past this and should hire.
Not a salesperson
We fill the pipeline and make sure nothing leaks on the way in. Closing the job in the customer's kitchen is still yours.
Not a lock-in
Month to month. Cancel any time and you keep everything built: the website, the ad account, the content, the CRM setup. It is your business, not a rental.
Not a rankings guarantee
Nobody controls Google, and anyone promising a position is guessing with your money. What gets guaranteed is the method and the honesty of the numbers.
This was run on our own business first.
Wave & Ridge Rentals in Arizona started from zero revenue. Brand, website, online booking, Google Ads, and social media were built and operated exactly the way a client account gets operated, on the same weekly cadence described above, and a second location is opening now. Schrapper's Fine Cabinetry in Florida, 42 years of craft, got the wholesale version: a rebuilt site with an automated CRM behind it and the traffic to fill the pipeline.
The numbers behind both are on the case studies, along with what was actually built.
Questions owners actually ask.
How much of your time do we actually get?
Who does the work, the person or the software?
What actually happens in the first week?
What if we already have an agency or an ads guy?
How do you decide what to cut?
What do you need from me every week?
Tell us where to look.
Business name, trade, city, and a phone number. That is all we need to start.
Prefer to talk? Call (480) 605-4478 or pick a time:
Start with the audit, not the contract.
Fifteen minutes to see where you stand and what a CMO would do about it. Pick whichever path suits you.
Call Steve directly
Fastest path. If your day is run from a truck, this one is for you.
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