What a Fractional CMO does in the first 90 days

Hiring a Fractional CMO is different from hiring an agency. An agency starts doing its service on day one. A CMO starts by finding out which work is worth doing at all. ZenFish Marketing’s Fractional CMO engagements follow a 7-step process: research, strategic planning, assignment of duties, guided execution, accountability and results tracking, course correction, and completion testing. Here’s how those steps fill the first 90 days with a new client, and what the owner should have at the end of them.

Weeks 1 to 3: in-depth research

Before anything is recommended, the research team looks at the business the way its customers and competitors see it:

• Search. Where the business ranks for the 6 to 10 searches its customers actually type, and who wins the ones it doesn’t.
• Competitors. The three businesses that show up most often where it should, with their ratings, review counts and ad activity.
• Customers. Who buys, where they come from and when, based on public data and the owner’s own records.
• Channels. Every place the business markets itself, with an honest verdict on each.
• AI search. What Google’s AI Overview, ChatGPT and Perplexity say when someone asks for a business like this one.

This is the same research that goes into a Marketing Health Report. Doing it first prevents the most common waste in small-business marketing, which is spending on a channel because a vendor sells it rather than because the business needs it.

Weeks 3 to 4: strategic planning and assignment of duties

The research becomes a 90-day plan with three parts:

1. Goals you can measure. For example: more calls from Google Maps, more booked appointments from the website, a better review rating than the top competitor.
2. A budget by channel. It shows where each dollar goes and why, including what to stop paying for.
3. An owner for every step. Website fixes go to whoever manages the site, review requests go to the front desk, and ads go to whoever runs them. Steps without an owner don’t get done.

Weeks 4 to 8: guided execution

This is when the right people get lined up. Sometimes that means your current staff and vendors with clearer direction. Sometimes it means replacing a vendor, or hiring a freelancer for a specific job. Work starts with the fixes that pay off soonest. These are usually Google Business Profile corrections, website pages that don’t answer the questions customers ask, and ads that run during hours when they never convert.

Weeks 8 to 13: tracking, course correction and completion testing

By the end of the first quarter you should have:

• One dashboard showing every channel’s results in the same place
• A monthly review of what changed and why
• Clear decisions about what to keep, cut or expand
• A completion test that confirms nothing was missed and the plan delivered
• The plan for the next quarter

What you shouldn’t get

You shouldn’t get a stack of reports nobody reads, a list of services to buy, or a promise of specific numbers before anyone has looked at the data. A good first 90 days should leave you clear about where your marketing stands, who is doing what, and whether it’s working.

If you’re weighing whether you need this level of help, the Fractional CMO page explains the packages, and the Marketing Health Report lets you see the research for yourself first.