CMO-on-Call
Senior marketing advice, an hour a week —
for founders who aren't ready to hire a CMO
What is "CMO-on-Call"?
If you’re running marketing on your own, you probably wish you had a seasoned ear to talk it through with. Someone to bounce ideas off, and get a read on your actions.
CMO-on-Call is a weekly live check-in, backed up with async access. Time with an experienced marketing leader, for founders and owners who are making the marketing decisions themselves.
Each week we take an hour. You bring whatever decision is actually in front of you — the positioning that isn’t landing, the channel that’s eating up budget, the spend you’re about to commit to — and we work it through until you know what you’re doing and why.
Between calls I’m on email and Slack, so you never have to sit on a decision waiting for Thursday.
What it isn’t is a delivery service. I don’t run campaigns, write the copy or manage your agency (that’s more of a “Fractional” relationship). Think of it as a CMO in residence: senior marketing judgment attached to your company, without the full-time salary.
OK. But do you need it?
As a founder or CEO, you have a pretty good idea of what your marketing approach looks like. What you lack is someone with experience who can tell you which of your ideas is going to move the needle – and which ones are a waste of your precious resources.
At seed stage or Series A – or as a privately held company looking to grow – marketing decisions arrive every week. And there’s usually nobody in the building who has made them before. So they get made on instinct, or postponed, or handed to someone with a vested interest.
The real cost of getting them wrong isn’t the budget. It’s the two quarters you spend finding out. At your size, six months heading in the wrong direction is a lot of ground to give away.
And when you’re ready to hire your first inhouse marketer, we work together to define the skills you need, and design an interview and onboarding process that gets you the right person, in the right role.
How this Works
- A weekly call. One hour, same time each week.
- Offline support. Async communication – email and Slack – answered within a business day (and usually quicker). On call means you don’t have to wait for the weekly hour to ask.
- You set the agenda. There’s no “standard approach”, no curriculum to follow. We talk about whatever’s in front of you, the key marketing thing you need to solve, that week, to keep moving.
- No decks, no reports. With CMO-on-Call, the output is a decision you understand well enough to act on, not a strategy document that rots in a folder. The thinking builds inside your business. And inside your brain.
- $2,000 per month. Three-month minimum, then month to month. We’re done when you’re ready to move on.
Solent Strategies' Approach
I’ve spent my career in B2B. I led marketing at Opengear through the years it went from a little-known technology company to a serious global competitor. I’ve built marketing teams at start-ups like Airtame in Denmark; and I’ve worked with founders and owners on positioning, go-to-market, and any-and-all issues that stand between them and growth.
Marketing guidance and advice is only as good as the judgment behind it. A general business coach can help you think more clearly, and that’s worth something. But they can’t tell you what a trade show is actually worth, what your win rate should look like at your deal size, or why your pricing page isn’t converting.
There’s no playbook. Your company isn’t the same as the last one I worked with, and the challenges you face are unique. The honest answer to most marketing questions depends on things a template can’t know.
Does this make sense for you?
- You’re a founder, owner or CEO of a B2B company
- Marketing is currently you — or you and one other person
- You have opinions about marketing and nobody credible to test them against
- You’d rather build the capability in-house than outsource it permanently
Maybe not, if
- You want campaigns run, copy written, or an agency managed*
- You already have two or more inhouse marketers, and you need direction for the team
- You want someone to actively drive the number for you
– Andy Smith, cofounder & CEO of Tracebit
* In that case, you might be ready to hire a mid-level marketing manager. Somewhere in between? A Fractional CMO engagement might work too.
Start for Free!
Neither of us wants to waste time with a “sales pitch” call. So let’s skip that step.
Instead, let’s put this in action. Book a 45 minute call. We’ll treat it as the first of many Marketing discussions. Bring me a problem you’re struggling with, and we’ll talk it through, live.
You’ll see how this works. Real time.
