Growth Activated | The B2B Marketing Leadership Podcast
Growth Activated is a podcast for B2B marketing leaders who want to elevate their marketing strategies, lead confidently, and drive real business results. Each episode offers actionable insights and proven frameworks to help you activate growth for your team, your company, and your career.
Growth Activated | The B2B Marketing Leadership Podcast
Mastering Your Fractional Marketing Game: Lessons Learned from Top Fractional Leaders
#15: Fractional leadership is rapidly reshaping the B2B marketing landscape, offering ambitious marketing leaders a powerful path to scale their impact, revenue, and influence—without burning out. But what separates a thriving Fractional CMO from those who struggle to gain traction?
In this episode of Growth Activated, I’m revealing game-changing insights and hard-earned lessons from successful Fractional CMOs and other fractional marketing leaders who’ve mastered the art of building profitable, fulfilling careers on their own terms.
We’ll dive deep into the three most effective fractional work models—Project-Based, Retainer, and Advisory—sharing the strategies and pitfalls you need to know to avoid burnout and maximize your revenue. From setting the right pricing structures to crafting contracts that protect your business and scaling your services for sustainable growth, this episode is packed with actionable takeaways.
Whether you’re a marketing leader looking to make the leap to Fractional CMO status or simply curious about building a flexible, high-impact career, this episode will help you fast-track your success.
If you’re ready to elevate your expertise, command higher rates, and create a thriving B2B marketing business on your own terms, grab a notebook and hit play!
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00:00 - Introduction to Growth Activated & Fractional Marketing Leadership
Welcome to Growth Activated. I'm Mandy Walker, your host with 15 years of experience leading marketing teams ranging from small startups to large service organizations. I've built high performing teams of all sizes and have seen firsthand how fast the landscape is evolving, making marketing leadership more complex than ever. Today, I help marketing leaders elevate their strategies, lead with confidence and build careers they love. If you're ready to drive impact,
00:29 - The Rise of Fractional Leadership & Benefits for B2B Marketers
and unlock growth for yourself and your company, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hey everyone, welcome to Growth Activated. I'm your host, Mandy Walker, and today I'm pulling back the current on a topic that's been a game changer for me. How to successfully transition into fractional work. Fractional leadership is on the rise. According to Forbes, it's actually increased by 57 % since 2020.
00:55 - Why I Chose Fractional Marketing Work: Key Drivers & Motivation
The way that businesses are deciding to employ their employees is fundamentally changing. And when I first considered going fractional, because it was a huge interest of mine, I was particularly overwhelmed by all the unknowns. You had no idea what should I charge? How should I approach the work? How do I build something sustainable that isn't just another demanding job disguised as a consulting gig? And so I reached out to mentors and peers from all corners of life.
01:25 - Consulting Mentors & Experts: Lessons from Fractional CMO Peers
from fractional C-suite leaders to subject matter experts, agencies and coaches, to really understand what works, what doesn't, and how to avoid the most common pitfalls that they were experiencing. And whether you're considering fractional work for the flexibility, the freedom to pick your projects, or the chance to build your own business, there's a lot to navigate. And I wanna help you avoid the mistakes I made when I first started.
So in today's episode, I'm breaking down the most valuable tips and learnings I've gathered along the way. We'll cover how to choose the right work structure, whether it's project-based advisory work or retainer, plus tips on how to create your hourly rate, how to price your projects, how to set up your contracts, and how to scale your business without burnout. So whether you're brand new to the fractional game or looking to take your practice to the next level, I've got you covered.
02:21 - Project-Based Work: Scope, Structure & Best Practices
Let's dive in. So when I first decided that I wanted to try fractional work and I started asking around one of the key questions that a fractional CFO who's a really dear friend and close mentor of mine had asked me was, how do you want to work? What is your work preference? And I wasn't even sure what the different options were. I didn't know how to answer this question. All I was thinking about at the time was
What do I charge and what do I offer? What do my offerings look like? What kind of work do I want to do? And so she really brought me through a few different work styles and work types that I could set up and pitch to clients. And over the past year, I've tried a variety of all of these and I've got some thoughts to share. And so the first type of work is really project-based work. And so this is something where a client will typically bring you in to solve a specific problem.
provide very clear recommendations and then step away. And the client themselves will typically implement or it's on them to deliver the outcomes or the results based on the project you've delivered. And so there's limited accountability to results a lot of times when you're doing project-based work. For me, one of the projects I've done a lot over the last year, as an example, has been conducting a 360 degree marketing assessment
or, and 12 month strategy and roadmap for the marketing team. And so within this type of work, there's very clear timeline. Like there's a very clear start and stop to when the project is expected to be completed. There's very clear deliverables that the client knows exactly what they're getting at the end of the project. And really, as opposed to doing this as an hourly rate, you're likely doing a project based cost.
You're charging for the deliverables and the outcomes at the end as opposed to charging for your hourly rate. Now I have personally loved this model, especially when I'm delivering the same thing over and over again. At this point, I've done probably, gosh, 10 to 15 different 360 degree marketing assessments. And so for me, I know exactly how to approach the work. I have very clear frameworks that I follow and methodologies that I adhere to.
I know exactly how much time it's gonna take me. I know exactly what the deliverable is gonna look like. And so I'm able to clearly communicate that with the client and set expectations early and often. And so this type of work has been really fun for me. I've really enjoyed it. I think that what's interesting is that from a project-based perspective, you're not really tied in to the results and the outcomes. And so it can be tough, I think, from...
05:13 - Challenges of Project-Based Work for Fractional Marketing Leaders
You know, as someone who worked in-house for over a decade, I'm used to being on an in-house team and being accountable to results and being able to sort of control the outcomes. And in a project-based environment, that's been a learning curve for me of, you know, I hand everything over and just hope that the client is going to do something meaningful with the work that's been done. But I would highly recommend.
project-based work. I think from a consulting perspective, it can be really, really valuable, a lot of fun if you're choosing the right projects that fit within what your interest is, and certainly very profitable. So the second type of work that you could deliver to a client in a fractional or a part-time capacity is a fractional leadership role, where you are actively playing a role within the broader organization. It's just that you're part-time as opposed to full-time.
06:07 - Fractional Leadership Roles: Structure, Accountability & Impact
And so in this type of environment, you are very much accountable to the results and you are very much a part of the team and the organization. may be even managing the team, the in-house team that is there. And so an example of this in my world is certainly being a fractional CMO. I've done this for several different clients over the past year and
It's fun in that you really get to embed yourself with the company and feel like you are very much a part of the team, the broader business vision and goals. Um, and then you have an impact on it. You're just not sitting at that company for 40 hours a week. So in this type of situation, you're typically on a retainer. So you've got a set amount of hours that you work for that client for a week. Now I would share that.
from a fractional C-suite leadership perspective, if that's something that you're interested in. I did receive a tip once, I think it was a very valuable tip, that in order to be a productive, effective fractional leader, try and get a commitment of at least 10 hours a week within the client. If it's less than that, if a client really only wants you available for a couple hours a week or a couple hours a month,
07:22 - Tips for Fractional CMO Success: Time Commitment & Retainers
It's likely that they're more interested in the advisory based type of work that I'm going to cover here in a minute. But in order to really be an effective C-suite leader or leader in whatever type of fractional role you're stepping into, really aim for 10 hours minimum. Now, some things to keep in mind with this type of scope is that in my perspective, the longer the retainer, the more impactful and effective you're going to be in this type of environment.
And as we all know, it's a lot of work to take on a new role, whether you're starting at a new company or whether you are picking up a new client. And so if they really only want you to step in to be a fractional leader for 30 days or 60 days, it's going to be hard for you to really make a difference. In a lot of instances that may actually make sense for you to actually pitch.
what they're looking for as a project so that you've got very clear deliverables. One of the tips though that I have heard over and over again is that if you are going to go the retainer based and be a fractional leader, make sure that even though you may not have very clear deliverables as a part of that retainer or agreement, try and make sure you get some very clear wins in the first 30 to 60 days so that the client sees your value and wants to keep you on retainer longer.
08:46 - Advisory-Based Roles for Fractional Marketing Leaders
And so the third type of work that you can do that I mentioned earlier is an advisory based role. And so this is for clients who really just want to tap into your level of expertise, possibly on an ad hoc basis, or again, in a lower amount of hours. I have a lot of clients that leverage me in this advisory based capacity where they've got me for five hours a week and it's not enough substantial hours to be their fractional CMO.
but they're getting CMO level advisory on projects and initiatives and on questions that they need me to influence or weigh in on. And so in a lot of these instances with advisory based work, could be, you you could also call it coaching, you could call it executive mentoring, whatever it is. But oftentimes you're not necessarily accountable to results because really the value add is your decades of experience or expertise and having a really strong point of view.
09:43 - Setting Boundaries & Minimum Viable Work for Fractional CMOs
that others can learn from. And so this is a really nice way to get introduced to a client in a lot of ways. There's not much prep work you have to do. It's more of a passive role that you play within the organization, in my opinion. And it's a great way to break in and potentially work your way up to more of a fractional leadership based role. This probably sounds like a lot of fun. It totally can be. One thing that I've personally learned is that it can be really draining to have
multiple clients, so upwards of six or seven or even eight that are strictly advisory based because it's a lot of context switching to have to go back and forth and add the most value you can to that organization when they're asking you, you know, project based questions or whatever it may be. And so as you were thinking about which type of work.
structure works best for you. One of the things I would just encourage you to think about that I'm constantly thinking about and iterating on is what is the minimum viable work that I'm willing to do within each of those buckets to make it worth it? So let me give you an example. Are you willing to take on a project where the project is only going to pay you $1,500 or does the project minimum have to be at least 10K for it to be worth it for you?
Now I'm sort of throwing out arbitrary numbers to make a point here, but you know, each of these types of roles takes mental capacity to go in, learn a new client and be able to deliver work product that is going to be of the quality that we all want it to be. And so that's been something I've really had to think about over this year is what am I, how, what is the minimum amount of advisory hours I'm open to doing on a weekly basis? Well, as an, as an extreme example,
I don't want 40 different clients and advising them each hour a week, right? Not that we need to be billing 40 hours, which I'll cover here in the next section. Um, but it's something to think about how many clients are you willing to have at once? How many hours do you really want to be investing in each client? You know, how many projects can you handle at one time, especially if you're, if your minimum viable project are large projects.
These are all questions to ask yourself and there are no right answers. It's really going to be based off of you and your comfort level. Um, but I would encourage you to be thinking and asking yourself those questions. Now, as an example, I've had fractional C-suite leaders that have recommended to me to take on no more than three clients, because if you're really going to get in there in a fractional level, it's a lot to try and keep straight. Maybe even two is the sweet spot.
Um, whereas on project-based work, I know for myself, my projects are rather large. And so it's almost easier for me to take on one project a month and really submersed myself into that client and stay dedicated to that client. I'd rather accelerate the project timeline rather than trying to do three projects at once and take three times as long. It's a lot of context switching for me personally to go through. So lots of learnings here.
But really think about what would match your, your personal style and your personal preference. Okay. Awesome. And so once you've started to think about what type of work approach you really want to lean into, which you don't have to just lean into one, by the way, you can lean into as many as you want. The next thing to really think about is your billable hours. How are you going to manage your time? How are you going to bill your time? What's your time worth? Right.
13:26 - Pricing Models & How to Set Your Fractional CMO Rate
And so when I first started thinking about going fractional, I had no idea what to a charge. Honestly, I assumed that it was a slightly higher rate than the hourly rate I was making when I was salary. And so my initial thought was, okay, if I'm making this amount, I probably would do a 30 % markup to account for healthcare costs and things like that. And I imagined I would try and find 40 hours a week of work. Right. And so.
That was my original perspective. And then the more conversations I had, realized that is not typical. So when you think about what to charge, one of the baseline recommendations I received that I thought was really helpful is to take your salary and divide it by a thousand. So if you make 150,000 a year, you would charge $150 an hour. If you make $250,000 a year, you would charge $250 an hour.
first that felt high to me because in my mind I was thinking, oh my gosh, I'm going to make double what I would make in a full-time role. Cool. And yes, if you work 40 hours a week, every single week of the year, sure you will. Um, and that's part of why people enjoy going after fractional because of the income potential. However, what I came to realize is certainly you're not going to work 40 hours a week, every single week, hopefully.
of the year, otherwise you'll burn out. So really doubling your hourly rate doesn't just account for things like healthcare costs and benefits and retirement and social security tax and all those things that your employers often provide for you that are additive. But it also accounts for things like PTO. It also accounts for the fact that your work is uncertain and unstable.
You could very quickly lose a client and go without work for a couple of weeks. And so the variability, the intense variability of being fractional also warrants a higher rate. Now, one of the areas of negotiation within your rate, I've learned can certainly come with either the length of commitment that a client signs on for or the amount of commitment. And so as an example, one of the fractional CFOs that is a close mentor of mine had shared,
her hourly rate on an ad hoc basis was $300 an hour. However, she would negotiate the price, the hourly rate down in $25 increments, depending on the length of contract or the size of the project. And then certainly she had a minimum level where she wouldn't go below. In her instance, I want to say it was like $200 an hour. And so she'd start at 300 and then if they wanted her on retainer for
six months for 20 hours a week, then she would take it down appropriately so that they're getting a deal and she's getting the consistent work. Right. The other thing that I learned about your hourly rate is to consider varying rates based on what you're doing. So certainly any type of strategy and or people management warrant higher rates, whereas execution might be lower rates. I actually just.
Mentored a friend of mine on this recently who started a content agency, but she's a solopreneur at the moment. And I had shared with her, Hey, when you're building content strategy, you should be charging more than when you're writing a blog for a client. And so your approach could be that you actually.
bill separately for those things at different hourly rates and you make your estimates if it's project based or you actually charge those different hours and you just track your time when you're delivering as a part of a retainer. But you can also use a blended rate as well. So if you think you're pretty much going to be half strategy, half execution, you could just blend the two rates and then that's your hourly rate. So start with the baseline of taking your salary and dividing it by a thousand. But from there, negotiate up or down.
based on some of these variables shared. Okay. So now you've decided how you want to approach the work and what to charge for your work. The next thing is how many hours should you actually bill? And one of the things, again, I came into not realizing I was planning to bill for 40 hours a week. That was my assumption to get the most squeeze out of the fractional hourly rate, right? And I actually have learned from many different people don't
18:03 - Billable Hours & Time Management for Fractional Marketing Leaders
plan to bill for 40 hours a week. Really try and plan to bill for 20 to 30 hours a week so that you can spend the other 10 to 20 hours working on your business. And when people say working on your business and all the things that go into being fractional or a consultant, what they're referring to is things or activities like business development, networking, invoicing, marketing, making sure your website is up to date, making sure you've got
very clear solutions that you offer, your personal branding and credibility, right? All of these things really matter to being able to secure new clients. And if you're billing 40 hours a week, then you have to do all of those other things outside of those 40 hours a week. And very quickly, you're now working 50 or 60 hours a week. And so this was something that I had to learn and especially getting started. I would
plan to spend more time building and nurturing your network to ensure that you've got inbound referrals down the road. But one of the tips I heard over and over and over again is you constantly need to be doing business development because clients will come and go. And sometimes we don't know when they will come and go. So just make sure you're looking out for the health of your business by saving some time to invest in those areas.
19:28 - Contracting Tips: Protecting Your Income & Getting Paid on Time
One last thing I want to share as it relates to billing and getting paid and how often to work is make sure that you charge in increments for small amounts of work. So one of the things that happened to me very early on when I was in these advisory and fractional type roles is that I would get
emails from clients where it would take me maybe five minutes to respond, or they'd quickly give me a call on the phone and we'd have a five minute conversation or someone would slack me from the team. And I really didn't know how to charge for things like that. Like on one hand, it felt silly to bill for five minutes, but on the other, it's absolutely a distraction, right? You have to context switch between client to client. You've got to stop what you're doing. You've got to refamiliarize yourself with the situation and the circumstance that they're asking about. And then you need to respond.
and then move on to the next task. And so when I was first getting going, and I had multiple clients that I was managing, I really didn't know. I was just feeling this exhaustion and fatigue, but it felt like I was barely billing for anything for these types of tasks. And so one of the fractional C-suite leaders shared with me to make sure that I'm billing in 15 minute minimum increments.
Anytime you do a small task like that, whether you're responding to an email or answering a phone call or responding to a Slack. And so what she shared was, you know, certainly the more expensive you are, the lower the time increment. She was sharing that lawyers specifically, I think charged like more, most recently, like they're charging in six minute increments. Um, so if you get like a minute or two from them, they'll still charge you six minutes, but in their world, that's probably.
a couple hundred dollars, right? But for most business professionals, what I've come to learn is the norm is charging in 15 minute increments. So if you spend five minutes on something, you charge for 15. And figuring that out was honestly a game changer for me. And honestly, it made me less resentful when needing to respond and be agile to all of these inbound client requests that were coming in. That was something I wish I would have known coming out of the gates.
And would have wish I would have figured out sooner, but I'm glad at this point that I have, um, and I would recommend to you that you do the same. Okay, great. So now that we've talked about what you should be billing for, how to bill all of those things, certainly you'll want to be able to set up a lot of this stuff in your contract as you're setting up your work agreement with your clients. And so one of the.
Biggest risks we take on as fractionals and consultants is not getting paid or getting paid late, right? This is not your employer where you just know that you're going to get paid every two weeks and that paycheck is always coming in. And that is something that I've learned along the way as well and can be eye-opening when you're first making the switch. Cause you just assume that people are going to pay you when they say they're going to pay you, or at least I did. I always see sort of the glasses half full.
So a few different tips that I received around setting up your contract and setting up the expectations for payment is number one, have your clients pay upfront at the beginning of the month. So rather than putting yourself in a situation where you've worked for an entire month and then they don't pay you, we avoid that by flipping it and they pay you upfront and then you work them up.
Right now this can be tied to your advisory level if there's a commitment or your fractional leadership roles, really anything where you're on a retainer. For projects, I've seen payment get split up. So maybe half the payment is due upon the contract being signed for that project and then half the payment being due upon completion of the project.
So at least you're not completely vulnerable to not getting paid at all, especially for larger projects. And certainly you could also add more milestones depending on the depth of the project. So I've seen sometimes like there's three different milestones, one at the beginning, one in the middle of the project, and then one at the end. So just be thoughtful. Don't put yourself at too much risk where you are doing thousands of dollars of work prior to getting paid or compensated for that.
So that really helps lower your risk. The other tip I received when setting up contracts and particularly retainer contracts is to make sure that clients are required to give you 30 days notice when they end the contract. So that at least you have 30 days of cushion to go out and make sure that you hopefully you've been doing business development this time, but
at this time, but it gives you at least 30 days visibility to know that you can start picking up new work and signing on new clients because you now have that availability in your workload. So that's another good tip. And then last but not least, and I heard this from many different people is make sure that you are financially secure when you go into fractional type work and have enough money in the bank in case a client doesn't
pay or they pay late or you've got two weeks without clients because one came off and you didn't onboard your next one until four weeks later or whatever it may be. That's one thing I've learned and have heard over and over again that fractional work is kind of like a roller coaster. It comes in waves. And so we need to be thoughtful about that and plan for that uncertainty and variability so that you don't.
Obviously, so you can make your ends meet, but also so that you don't get panicked and stressed and immediately feel like you have to go back into a full-time role. I've learned with fractional work, those peaks and valleys are expected. Um, and just to be able to ride it out and make sure you're doing the right things to keep your workload stable. Okay. Awesome. So the last thing I wanted to be able to share is as you are growing your business and hopefully
taking on more and more clients. You may end up hitting a point where you were in such high demand that you can't do all of the work personally due to bandwidth, or you're receiving inbound work that you're not interested in doing and would like to pass off. And so I've learned some, some things here around managing resources and referral partners that I'd like to be able to share because it's a, it's a great problem.
I say problem in quotes, right? It's a great problem to have work that you don't want to do or that you're not able to do because you're so busy. And so the first way I've learned that you can make sure that your inbound business or referrals are still getting serviced is to leverage other agencies or other partners or other fractional leaders who may be better suited to take on that work or may have the bandwidth to take on that work and instead set up referral agreements between the both of you.
And so you could set up a mutual referral agreement where if you're transitioning business or handing off business to one of the people in your network that you trust, a lot of times referral agreements are set to about 10%, least the ones I've seen, to where you will make 10 % of what that partner bills back on your client. And so you're at least getting part of the pie, if you will.
27:02 - Scaling Your Fractional Marketing Business with Referral Agreements & Contractors
And vice versa, if they bring you business, you could then give them 10 % of the client profits. Now there's usually a clause to cap either the length of time or the amount. And so I've seen this where, um, as an example, you may only pay that 10 % or get paid that 10 % for up to a year. And then after a year, that is just their client and they're going to go from there. Um, or certainly the amount of referral dollars that is paid.
Right? So maybe it's a cap of 20 grand or 50 grand, depending on how big your projects are or 10 grand. Right? I think ultimately it depends on what type of work you do and it's a mutual referral agreement. So both parties should feel comfortable with it, but this is a great way where you can hand off business that is just not right for you or right for you at this time and still get a cut from it.
And so that's something that's really interesting. The second thing I've learned is that certainly you could be employing partners or other agencies as contractors, and you could be the quote unquote agency or the owner of the project or of the work, but bring on others to help you execute the work. And so a few tips within here that I've learned is that you should always add a markup to their rate.
The range of that markup has really varied. I've seen anywhere from 10 % to 50%. And what I've heard from others is that it really, the markup really should be directly related to how much value you are adding to that project by it being under you. And so if it's very limited value, let's say you're bringing in a very experienced partner and you are going to be pretty hands off on it. You don't really need to get super involved. Like they're just going to serve your client.
really, really well, it's just going through your name or through your agency, then you may do like a basic 10 % to cover markup, to really cover just your admin costs of billing and invoicing and payroll and all of those things, making sure that your partner gets paid, really the admin overhead. And then on the other end of the spectrum where if you're charging a 50 % markup, that's where perhaps you are offering a lot of strategic value and additional value on top of what that.
partner is delivering. So maybe you're providing them strategic guidance. Maybe you have a lot of intel on the client that you've worked and built over the past year or the past several months.
and are going to make sure that that gets worked into the work they're delivering. Maybe you are managing those resources directly and making sure, looking over all of their work and making sure it's perfect for the client. Whatever it may be, your markup certainly would be on the higher end in those instances. But either way, whether you decide to have contractors work for you or whether you decide to refer the work out, it's certainly an exciting time. I hope that you all hit that point where you've got more business than
You want to take on or that you know what to do with, and you're able to pull in others. It's I'm just now getting to that, that spot. Um, and it's a really fun, it's a really fun, uh, place to be in as a business. Awesome. And that about wraps up some of the tips. So just a few things to think about is one, determine which type of work approach you prefer, whether project-based, fractional leadership-based or advisory-based. Number two.
Determine what your billable hours and price is going to be and figure out how you particularly want to manage your time. How many hours do you want to bill versus how many hours do you want to invest in building your business? Number three, make sure that you have a really strong contract in place that protects you and ensures your financial stability. And number four.
When you get around to growing your business, make sure that you think about different ways on how you can bring in resources or lean on different resources, whether they're contractors that you work directly with or whether they're referring business. Um, there's lots of ways to grow your business. And so I hope today's episode gave you some helpful tips for navigating the world of fractional work.
whether you're just starting out or looking to refine your approach. I know we've covered a lot today, but I encourage you to just set yourself up for success by being intentional about your strategy, your structure, and your personal boundaries. And if this episode has you thinking about your broader marketing career journey, whether to go fractional, pursue full-time leadership, or something in between, make sure you check out episode four. I dive into four key considerations for figuring out your next big career move.
including whether fractional work or full-time leadership role is the right fit for you. Thanks for listening to Growth Activated. If you found this helpful, be sure to subscribe and share it with others who might benefit. And in the meantime, keep activating growth for yourself and your company. See you next time.
