---
title: "Why Fractional CMOs Need a Second Budget"
url: "https://cmotimes.com/insight/why-fractional-cmos-need-a-second-budget/"
author: "Lilach Bullock"
published: "2026-09-25"
updated: "2026-09-25"
---

# Why Fractional CMOs Need a Second Budget

### **The scope creep that stalls a fractional CMO engagement**

One SaaS client hired me at 12 hours a week. The brief covered demand generation, a brand refresh, three campaigns and mentoring a junior marketer, while I was also running two other client accounts with their own overlapping deadlines. By month three they had been waiting two weeks for copy feedback, the brand refresh had not been touched, and the mentoring sessions kept sliding to the following week because whichever campaign was live took priority. The list on paper had never shrunk to match the 12 hours it was meant to fit inside.

### **What I renegotiated instead of trimming the task list**

I do not drop items off the list and hope nobody notices. With that client we renegotiated the scope down to two core projects plus the mentoring, and parked the brand refresh. That is when progress started again, not because the strategy changed but because the hours finally matched what was in front of us.

### **The second figure most contracts leave out**

A fractional CMO fee typically runs GBP 2,000 to 5,000 a month depending on scope. What catches people out is that you then need another GBP 2,000 to 5,000 on top of that for paid media, tools and execution. That second figure is not padding; it is where the work gets built. For one ecommerce client in Melbourne, that budget went toward a three-step automation pipeline pulling product data from Shopify, running it through a Claude prompt trained on a four-page brand voice document, then pushing the drafts into Klaviyo for human approval. Content production on seasonal campaigns dropped from about 11 hours a week to 2.5. That is what execution money buys, not another strategy slide but the plumbing that turns the strategy into output. My rule is that if a line item cannot be tied to a measurable output, it does not get funded, and that applies to the tools budget as much as the media spend.

### **The sequencing mistake that eats whatever is left**

I have sat in enough client meetings to know the mistake before the sentence is even finished. Someone says they will run paid ads until the SEO kicks in, as though the two happen one after the other rather than at the same time. I hear that line often enough that I now stop the conversation as soon as it starts, because it is usually the moment a client is about to overspend on ads while organic sits untouched, or starve the content and technical work that would have built search visibility because the media line already used up what was there. It is the single sentence I have seen do more damage to a marketing budget than any one bad campaign.

### **How I structure engagements now**

Every contract starts with two figures, not one. There is the fee for my time, and there is a separate line for execution, media spend and tools, usually matched roughly in size rather than added as an afterthought, somewhere in that same GBP 2,000 to 5,000 range on each side. Hours or project count get fixed at the start, and if the workload grows I renegotiate the container rather than absorbing more work into the same hours, the way that SaaS engagement drifted before anyone stepped in and named it. Paid and organic both get a line in that second budget from the first month, so neither one is waiting on the other to prove itself before it gets funded.

Two budgets on paper, both signed before the work starts. That is the whole change.

---

[Lilach Bullock](https://www.lilachbullock.com) is an AI implementation consultant and fractional CMO with 21 years in marketing. She helps business owners put AI to work across content, SEO, social media, email marketing, automation and lead generation. Her work has been featured in Forbes, the BBC, The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, WIRED, HuffPost and the Content Marketing Institute, and she has worked with Twitter, IBM, Dropbox, monday.com, Hootsuite and Greenpeace. Forbes named her a Top 20 Social Media Power Influencer worldwide. Based in Israel, she works with US, UK and international clients.