Senior marketing direction for B2B tech, without a full-time hire.
Value_CMO is a fractional CMO practice for B2B technology companies. It works with founders and lean teams that have marketing activity but no marketing direction, and it starts by diagnosing the constraint rather than proposing a campaign.
What Value_CMO is
A fractional CMO practice, not an agency.
Value_CMO provides senior marketing leadership to B2B technology companies on a part-time basis. The work is owning the marketing decisions a company cannot make without a senior marketer: who the buyer is, what the product is positioned against, which channels get funded, and what the team does first.
It is led by a senior B2B tech marketer with 20+ years of hands-on experience across startups, growth companies, and complex technology markets, spanning SaaS, AI, and long-cycle enterprise go-to-market. The work covers strategy through hands-on execution, because at this company size those are the same job.
Every engagement starts with a diagnosis. Marketing problems are usually misdiagnosed as channel problems, and buying more execution against a wrong diagnosis is the most expensive mistake a lean team can make.
Fit
Who this is for.
Fit is a real filter here. A diagnosis that ends in "no engagement" is a valid outcome and it happens.
A good fit when
- Marketing activity is increasing but clarity is not
- The founder is still the bottleneck on every senior decision
- Messaging could describe ten other companies
- Sales and marketing describe the buyer differently
- There is execution capacity but no senior owner
- A full-time CMO is not yet affordable or not yet justified
A poor fit when
- The need is one channel run well, not marketing leadership
- There is no team, agency or freelancer to execute anything
- The company wants a full-time manager at part-time cost
- The founder will not participate in strategic decisions
- Positioning and ICP are not open to being narrowed
How engagements work
Written scope, fixed price.
No hourly billing. Hourly rewards activity over outcomes, and marketing already has enough of that.
Marketing Diagnosis, free. A structured outside review of positioning, ICP, messaging and AI usage, a ranked list of gaps, a 30-day fix list, and a 30-minute review call. It ends with a recommendation, which may be a sprint, ongoing support, or nothing.
90-Day Marketing Alignment Sprint, $6,000 to $12,000 total. ICP and buyer pain map, homepage messaging teardown, campaign plan, AI workflow map, and a 90-day roadmap, delivered on a weekly cadence with written changelogs.
Ongoing fractional CMO support, $4,000 to $9,000 per month. Senior direction, team and vendor management, and accountability for marketing outcomes rather than deliverables.
Every engagement runs on a written scope letter that names deliverables, cadence, decision rights and exclusions. Monthly retainers end with 30 days notice. Fixed-scope projects end on delivery. The full breakdown is on the fractional CMO cost and pricing page.
Boundaries
What Value_CMO does not do.
Stated plainly, because the wrong engagement costs a company a quarter.
It is not an agency. There is no execution team, no media buying desk, and no production line. Where execution capacity is needed, the right structure is a fractional CMO directing one or two specialist agencies. That comparison is covered in fractional CMO vs marketing agency.
It is not advisory-only. An advisor comments and leaves the decision with the founder. A fractional CMO owns the call and is accountable for what follows from it.
It is not a recruiter or a staffing service. Value_CMO does not place marketers. It leads the ones a company already has, and it says when the right answer is an in-house hire instead.
It does not guarantee lead volume. Any marketer who guarantees pipeline before diagnosing the constraint is selling a number, not a plan.
Start here
Begin with the diagnosis.
It is free, it requires no commitment, and its output is useful whether or not it leads to an engagement.