How to choose a fractional CMO in the US

A fractional CMO is senior marketing leadership for a few days a month. You are hiring judgment and management, not a team that also makes every asset, unless the contract says they will.

The job is to decide what marketing is for, hire or direct the people who do it, and sit with the numbers. If what you need is posts, pages or a campaign produced, hire the firm that does that and keep the leadership question separate.

Write these down before you talk to a fractional CMO. A vague brief produces a vague price.

• Write the decisions you need made in the first ninety days.
• Say how many days a month you actually have budget and appetite for.
• List the agencies and employees this person would direct.
• Decide what they will do personally and what they will only review.

Ask each firm the same list. The useful part is the difference in the answers, not a polished version of the question.

• What will you do yourself, and what will you hand to an agency or an employee?
• Which decisions do you expect to own, and which stay with the founder?
• How many other clients do you have on the same days?
• What does a bad-fit client look like for you?
• How do we end the engagement if the fit is wrong?

This is a short list of fractional CMOs that do the work at a national scale. It is not a directory of every firm in the United States. State and city pages show where the listed firms are based, and only where the list has enough firms to say something.

Hiring across states is normal for this work. Ask which time zone the account runs on, who attends your meetings, and where the people doing the work sit.

14 fractional CMOs are on this list in the US, re-checked September 28, 2026. Nobody pays to be ranked. They are based in Atlanta, GA (1); Chicago, IL (1); Dallas, TX (1); Houston, TX (1); Irvine, CA (1); Kirkland, WA (1); Los Angeles, CA (1); Minneapolis, MN (1), and 6 more cities.

Where a team size is stated: 2 are 1–10 people, 5 are 11–50 people, 1 is 201–500 people, 2 are 51–200 people. 4 do not state a size.

10 of 14 state a founding year. The earliest stated year is 2003 and the latest is 2018.

13 of 14 name a leader. 9 of 14 name at least one client. 2 of 14 publish a price. If a profile leaves a line out, no source stated it.

Specialties named by more than one firm: fractional CMO (10); mid-market B2B (2); private equity portfolio companies (2); SaaS (2).

In the list's order: Chief Outsiders, TechCXO, Marketri, Moving Minds, Hawke Media, Authentic, Digital Authority Partners, Kalungi, yorCMO, CMOx, Cerius Executives, NoGood, Fractional CMO, LLC, Josh Ramsey, Fractional CMO.

Write the job in one paragraph. Keep the two or three firms whose reason for being here matches that job.

Open each profile. It says who leads the firm, work they can show, and a price if they published one. If they did not publish a price, the profile shows a typical estimate and says it is not a quote.

Then ask each firm for one piece of work like yours, and the name of the person who would do it.

The order weighs how long the firm has done the work, clients it can name, its size, and how clear its specialism is. Nobody pays to be ranked.

One card is marked Featured. It is paid placement for Fracs, which shares this list's publisher. It sits outside the ranking.

If a profile leaves out a leader, a price, or a founding year, no source stated it.

• Editorial standards
• Fractional CMO cost guide
• FAQ

Open a firm for who leads it, work it can show, any price it published, and why it made the list.

• 01 Chief Outsiders — Houston, TX
• 02 TechCXO — Atlanta, GA
• 03 Marketri — Philadelphia, PA
• 04 Moving Minds — West Palm Beach, FL
• 05 Hawke Media — Los Angeles, CA
• 06 Authentic — Minneapolis, MN
• 07 Digital Authority Partners — Chicago, IL
• 08 Kalungi — Kirkland, WA
• 09 yorCMO — Omaha, NE
• 10 CMOx — West Conshohocken, PA
• 11 Cerius Executives — Irvine, CA
• 12 NoGood — New York, NY
• 13 Fractional CMO, LLC — Scottsdale, AZ
• 14 Josh Ramsey, Fractional CMO — Dallas, TX

These pages group firms that share a city or a state on this list. A place with one listed firm links from the comparison page straight to that firm's profile.

• Where they are based
• California (2)
• Pennsylvania (2)
• Texas (2)