SOCIALLY FORMAL
CONSULTANCY
Senior marketing judgement on your team without carrying a senior marketing salary. Built for engineering, construction and industrial firms, by a former structural engineer.
A fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader who owns your marketing function part time. Not a consultant who advises and leaves, and not an agency that runs campaigns on your behalf.
The role carries the strategy, the standard and the decisions, at a day or two a week rather than a full-time salary.
You have outgrown ad-hoc marketing, revenue depends on shortlists and referrals, and nobody currently owns the direction.
You need volume lead generation, or you already have a marketing director and what you actually need is execution capacity.
The positioning has never been settled. That comes first, and it is a fixed scope engagement rather than a standing commitment.
Drawings, RFP language and project delivery culture do not need translating first.
Senior marketing judgement on the team, at the level of commitment the work actually needs.
The playbook assumes a considered sale and a shortlist, because that is how the work is won.
A fractional CMO is an experienced marketing leader who runs your marketing function part time, usually a day or two a week, rather than as a full-time hire. They own the strategy, the priorities and the spend, and they answer for the result.
For a technical firm the job is narrower and more useful than the category suggests. It is deciding what to stop, what to scale and what was never worth doing, then making sure the firm is understood by the people who award the work.
Marketing costs keep rising and nobody can say which part is working. The first job is usually deciding what to stop.
Principals end up approving logos and captions between site visits. That is expensive attention spent at the wrong altitude.
The work is strong and the firm still is not the obvious choice. That is a positioning problem, and more activity will not fix it.
You need the judgement now and the salary later. Fractional buys the first without committing to the second.
We look at what marketing exists, what it costs and what it has actually produced. Most firms find a small number of activities carry all the value and the rest is habit.
Priorities, budget and positioning get settled and written down, so the next twelve months are a plan your team can follow rather than a run of one-off decisions.
We stay close enough to keep it moving: reviewing the work, steering live pursuits and key accounts, and making the calls that would otherwise land on a principal's desk.
Almost every fractional CMO comes out of software or consumer brands. That is where the category grew up and it shows in the language: demand engines, acquisition cost, pipeline targets. Useful vocabulary, aimed at a different kind of business.
Socially Formal is run by a former structural engineer. Drawings, RFP language, prequalification and project delivery culture do not need explaining, so the engagement starts at the level your buyers already operate at rather than three months in.
The right shape depends on how much is in flight. These are the three that come up most.
Enough to hold the strategy, run the cadence and keep the standard. The most common shape.
For firms in a bid-heavy stretch, or carrying a rebrand alongside live pursuits.
Six months to establish the function properly, then a handover to whoever runs it next.
What actually happens, and in what order.
Read the pipeline, the proposals and the last three pursuits. Establish what is actually being decided on, and when.
Settle positioning, then build the material and the visibility plan on top of it rather than beside it.
Hold the standard, run the cadence, and report against shortlists reached and named accounts moved.
Typically a day or two a week, agreed up front and adjusted as the work changes. Enough to own the function and stay close to live pursuits, not so much that you are paying for a full-time executive you do not yet need.
Yes. A consultant advises and leaves you the decisions. A fractional CMO makes them and answers for the result, including what to stop and what to spend. The work is owned rather than recommended.
Often yes, and usually a more junior one than you expected. Part of the job is working out what the right in-house role actually is and helping you hire it, rather than defending the engagement.
Long enough to be judged on results, which in this sector means months rather than weeks. Your buying cycles are long, so a fair look is two or three quarters.
A monthly retainer, scoped to the time and the work rather than sold in tiers. Because the client list is deliberately short, pricing is set in conversation once the scope is clear.
Often that is the point. Part of the role is working out what the permanent hire should actually be, and building the function far enough that a first marketing employee walks into something that already works rather than a blank page.