By the time a business hits around £1m turnover, marketing should feel easier.
You’ve got customers.
You’ve got a team.
You’re spending real money on marketing (not just getting customers from word of mouth).
And yet, this is often when the doubts creep in.
It doesn’t feel joined up.
It’s harder to see what’s actually working.
You start wondering whether you’re overspending - or just not being strategic enough.
So someone suggests bringing in a marketing consultant.
It makes perfect sense! You don’t think you need a big overhaul. You just want things to work better.
What’s less obvious is that, at this stage, the question isn’t really who has the best ideas.
It’s who’s going to make sure the right things actually happen.
The point where marketing changes shape
This is the awkward middle stage a lot of growing businesses hit.
Marketing isn’t scrappy anymore.
But it’s not properly led either.
Typically, you’ve got:
- A marketing admin or coordinator
- One or more freelancers or agencies
- Plenty of activity
- And the MD still making the final calls
Everyone’s busy.
Everyone’s well-intentioned.
But no one is really pulling the whole thing together.
So marketing feels expensive, messy, and slightly underwhelming - even though, on paper, you’re doing “all the right things”.
What a marketing consultant is genuinely brilliant at
Let’s be clear. There’s nothing wrong with marketing consultants.
A good marketing consultant will:
- Diagnose what’s going wrong
- Clarify your positioning and messaging
- Sense-check your strategy
- Help you think more clearly about priorities
That kind of input is hugely valuable.
Especially when:
- The business is earlier stage
- The problem isn’t well defined yet
- Decisions haven’t been made
- Or you need an outside perspective
When a business needs clarity, consulting works.
And that’s why “marketing consultant” is still the label most people use when they ask around for help.
Where consulting quietly stops being enough
The challenge is that, at around £1m turnover, marketing problems are rarely just thinking problems.
They’re execution problems.
Not because the ideas are bad.
But because no one is overseeing the whole system.
This is what I see time and again:
- A sensible plan that doesn’t quite get implemented
- Freelancers working hard but in different directions
- Lots of activity, not much prioritisation
- Reports about metrics going up, that don’t really tell you what to do next
So the MD stays involved.
Decisions still bottleneck at the top.
And marketing never quite becomes the engine it should be.
At this point, more advice doesn’t change much.
What’s missing is ownership.
Where the idea of a fractional CMO comes in
This is where the term Fractional CMO starts to appear - often without people fully realising why it feels different.
A fractional CMO isn’t just someone senior with a fancier title.
It’s a different type of support.
A fractional CMO:
- Oversees the marketing function, not just the thinking
- Sets direction and priorities
- Manages and briefs the marketing team
- Makes trade-offs and says no
- Measures performance using commercial, board-level metrics
In other words, they don’t just help you decide what to do.
They take responsibility for making it work.
So where do I actually fit?
This is where the label can get confusing.
Yes, I still use the term Marketing Consultant.
Because that’s the language people recognise.
It’s how peers make introductions.
And it’s often what businesses think they need when marketing feels off. (There are a LOT more Google searches for "Marketing Consultant" than"Fractional CMO"!)
But the way I work has never been “here are some ideas, good luck and let me know how it goes”.
When I'm working with a client, I:
- Measure results
- Deliver board-level metrics
- Manage marketing teams
- Stay involved long enough to see things through
Clients don’t treat me like an outsider who pops in with advice.
They treat me like part of the team - because I take responsibility like one.
You can work with me in a purely consultative way if that’s genuinely the right fit.
But most businesses at this stage don’t want more thinking.
They want someone to come alongside them and help turn marketing into a properly functioning system.
The simplest way to think about the difference
Here’s the cleanest distinction I know:
Marketing consultants are brilliant when a business needs clarity.
Fractional CMOs are needed when a business needs accountability.
Neither is “better” in all situations.
But confusing the two is often why marketing feels stuck.
The question worth asking
So rather than worrying about titles, here’s the question that actually matters:
Who is responsible for making your marketing work right now?
If the answer is unclear…
Shared…
Or still sits with you by default…
That’s the thing to solve.
Because once someone genuinely owns marketing - direction, delivery, and results - everything else gets a lot simpler.
And that’s when marketing starts to feel easier again, just like it should at this stage.
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