A fractional CMO owns strategy, budget, and the revenue number. Your agency owns execution inside a written brief. The CMO sets targets tied to pipeline, approves spend, reviews a monthly scorecard with the agency, and decides whether to expand, fix, or replace them. The agency reports to the CMO, not the other way around.
If you are still deciding which of the two to hire, that question is covered in our fractional CMO vs. full-time CMO vs. agency comparison. This post assumes you already have an agency, or plan to keep one, and want to know how the two should operate together.
Key facts
- Agencies take 20.7% of the average marketing budget in 2025, per Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey (Chief Marketer).
- 39% of CMOs plan to cut back on agency budgets, with eliminating unproductive relationships among the stated priorities (Gartner).
- 87% of B2B marketers say it is getting harder to measure the long-term impact of a campaign, and nearly half must justify marketing spend to the C-suite every month (LinkedIn).
- The average client-agency relationship now lasts about seven years, and a formal agency pitch costs clients an average of $408,500 (ANA).
- The Geisheker Group is marketing leadership, not an ad agency. We direct the agencies our clients already use and hold them accountable to pipeline.
Who owns what: strategy vs. execution
The combined model only works when the lines are written down. Most agency problems I see are not talent problems. They are ownership problems. Nobody senior on the client side owns the strategy, so the agency fills the gap with its own channel plan and grades itself on activity.
Here is the split I put in place at the start of every engagement:
| Decision or task | Fractional CMO | Agency |
|---|---|---|
| Ideal customer profile and positioning | Owns | Gives input from campaign data |
| Revenue and pipeline targets | Owns, with the CEO | Commits to channel targets that roll up to them |
| Channel mix and budget split | Decides | Recommends |
| Campaign plans and creative | Approves | Builds |
| Day-to-day optimization (bids, tests, copy) | Sets guardrails | Owns |
| Tracking, CRM fields, attribution rules | Defines | Implements |
| Reporting | Defines the scorecard | Produces the data |
| Vendor performance decisions | Decides | Has no vote |
The point is not to micromanage the agency. A good agency should have full freedom inside its lane. The point is that the lane is drawn by someone who answers to the CEO for revenue, not by the vendor being paid to work in it.
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How the CMO briefs the agency
Agencies underperform when they get vague direction. A one-line request like “we need more leads” produces cheap leads that sales ignores. A proper brief closes that gap before any money is spent.
Every brief I send an agency covers these items, in this order:
- The business goal. Pipeline dollars or sales-qualified opportunities needed this quarter, not impressions or clicks.
- The buyer. The ideal customer profile, the job titles involved in the decision, and the accounts we want and do not want.
- The message. The positioning, the core claim, the proof behind it, and the language sales already uses on calls.
- The offer. What the prospect gets for responding. Every placement carries a response mechanism. If an agency proposes awareness spend with nothing to measure, the answer is no.
- The budget and limits. Total spend, the cost per qualified opportunity we can afford, and the point at which spend pauses for review.
- The definition of a good lead. Agreed with sales in writing, so the agency is not rewarded for volume sales will not work.
- Tracking requirements. UTM rules, CRM source fields, and offline conversion uploads, so every dollar can be traced to pipeline.
- The test plan. What we are testing first, what result would make us scale, and what result would make us stop.
- Deadlines and approvals. Who signs off, and how fast.
When a brief is this specific, the agency can do its best work. It also removes every excuse when the numbers come in.
The monthly agency scorecard
The scorecard is the center of the relationship. I build it with the agency in the first 30 days and we review it every month. It is tied to pipeline, because that is what the CEO and the board care about.
| Metric | What it tells you | Who supplies the data |
|---|---|---|
| Spend vs. budget | Is the agency staying inside the plan | Agency |
| Qualified leads, as defined with sales | Volume of leads sales will actually work | CRM |
| Lead-to-opportunity rate | Whether lead quality is real | CRM |
| Cost per sales-qualified opportunity | The true cost of what the agency produces | CRM plus agency spend |
| Pipeline created, in dollars | Marketing’s contribution to the revenue target | CRM |
| Pipeline-to-spend ratio | Return on the agency’s portion of the budget | Calculated by the CMO |
| Closed-won revenue from agency-sourced deals | Lagging proof, reviewed quarterly | CRM |
| Tests launched and results | Whether the agency is learning or coasting | Agency |
| Brief commitments delivered on time | Execution discipline | CMO |
Two rules make the scorecard honest. First, pipeline and revenue numbers come from your CRM, not from the agency’s dashboard. Second, the CMO calculates the ratios. The agency supplies spend and activity data, and that is all.
Meeting rhythm
A fixed rhythm keeps the agency accountable without burying everyone in meetings. This is the cadence I use:
- Weekly working session (CMO or marketing manager plus agency account lead). Campaign status, test results, blockers, and approvals. Short and tactical.
- Monthly scorecard review (CMO plus agency leadership). Walk the scorecard line by line. Agree on what scales, what gets cut, and what gets tested next month.
- Monthly sales and marketing check-in (CMO plus sales leader). Is sales working the leads, and are they any good? The agency hears the outcome through the CMO.
- Quarterly business review (CEO, CMO, agency leadership). Pipeline and revenue against plan, budget for the next quarter, and an honest conversation about whether the relationship is working.
The CEO should not be in the weekly meeting. That is the CMO’s job. The CEO should be in the quarterly review, because that is where budget decisions get made.
Budget authority
The fractional CMO should control the marketing budget within limits the CEO sets. Without that authority, the role turns into advice, and advice does not move numbers.
In practice that means:
- The CEO approves the annual or quarterly marketing budget.
- The CMO decides how it is split across channels and vendors, and can move money between them inside the approved total.
- The agency recommends spend changes but cannot increase spend, add retainer scope, or sign new tools without CMO approval.
- Any change to the agency contract itself (scope, fees, term, termination) is approved by the CEO on the CMO’s recommendation.
This matters more than it sounds. Gartner reports that 59% of CMOs say they have insufficient budget to execute their strategy (Gartner). When money is tight, someone has to be able to pull dollars out of a channel that is not producing and put them where pipeline is. That someone should not be the vendor whose fee depends on the spend.
How to fix or replace an underperforming agency
Replacing an agency is expensive and slow. The ANA found that clients without mandatory agency reviews keep relationships much longer, 8.1 years on average, and that a pitch costs clients $408,500 on average (ANA). Your company will not spend that on a search, but the lost months are real. So fix first, and replace only when fixing fails.
The sequence I follow:
- Check the brief before blaming the agency. If the target, buyer, or definition of a good lead was unclear, that is a leadership failure. Rewrite the brief and reset the clock.
- Check the plumbing. Confirm tracking and CRM data are clean. Many “bad agency” verdicts turn out to be broken attribution.
- Name the gap in writing. Show the agency the scorecard lines that are short of target and by how much.
- Agree on a 60 to 90 day correction plan. Specific tests, specific targets, and the account team that will run them. Ask for senior people on the account if the team has drifted junior.
- Review monthly against the plan. No new scope or spend increases during the correction period.
- Decide. If the scorecard has not moved, end the relationship. Run a short, focused search for a specialist in the one channel that matters, rather than a long pitch for a full-service roster.
- Manage the handover. Make sure ad accounts, data, creative files, and tracking are owned by your company, not the agency, before you give notice.
Point 7 should be in place from day one. If your agency owns your ad accounts, fix that this month whether or not the agency is performing.
Red flags that your agency is grading its own homework
These are the warning signs I look for when I first review an existing agency:
- The monthly report leads with impressions, clicks, and reach, and pipeline appears late, if at all.
- The agency defines what counts as a lead, and sales has never agreed to that definition.
- Results come only from the agency’s platform dashboard, with no reconciliation to your CRM.
- The agency owns the ad accounts and your company has only viewer access.
- Every recommendation is to spend more, usually in the channel the agency sells.
- Cost per lead keeps improving while sales says lead quality is getting worse.
- Nobody can tell you what the agency tested last quarter or what it learned.
- The senior team that pitched you is no longer on the account.
- Fees are a percentage of media spend, so the agency earns more when you spend more, whatever the return.
One of these is a conversation. Three or more means nobody senior is holding the agency to account, and that is the gap a fractional CMO fills. When I was running programs that deployed up to $1 million per week in ad spend, the discipline above is what kept that money tied to results.
Frequently asked questions
Should the agency report to the CEO or the fractional CMO?
The agency should report to the fractional CMO. The CEO sets the budget and reviews results quarterly, but day-to-day direction from two people confuses the agency and weakens accountability. The CMO brings agency results to the CEO in the context of the full pipeline.
Will a fractional CMO try to replace our current agency?
Not by default. The first step is to brief the agency properly, fix tracking, and give it a fair chance against a pipeline scorecard. Many agencies perform much better once someone senior gives them clear direction. Replacement comes only after a documented correction period fails.
What should an agency scorecard measure besides leads?
It should measure lead-to-opportunity rate, cost per sales-qualified opportunity, pipeline created in dollars, and the ratio of pipeline to spend. Closed-won revenue from agency-sourced deals is the lagging proof. Tests launched and brief commitments met show whether the agency is still improving.
Who should own our ad accounts and data?
Your company should. Ad platform accounts, analytics, CRM data, and creative files should sit in accounts your company controls, with the agency given access. This protects you if the relationship ends and makes the agency’s results easy to verify.
How long before we know if the combined model is working?
Within the first 90 days you should have a written brief, clean tracking, and a working scorecard. Leading indicators such as lead-to-opportunity rate usually show direction within one or two monthly reviews. Revenue proof depends on your sales cycle.
Does a fractional CMO replace our marketing manager?
No. In the combined model, the marketing manager runs daily coordination with the agency, while the fractional CMO sets strategy, owns the budget, and runs the scorecard review. For what the role covers in full, see what a fractional CMO is, and for engagement models, see how fractional CMOs charge.
Get a written plan for your agency relationship
If you are paying an agency and cannot trace the spend to pipeline, Mike Pecora and I will look at it with you. Book a free 30-minute growth plan session on Google Meet. You will get a written growth plan within 3 business days, with no hard sell. We take 10 companies a month.
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Sources
- Gartner, Gartner 2025 CMO Spend Survey Reveals Marketing Budgets Have Flatlined at 7.7% of Overall Company Revenue
- Chief Marketer, Gartner: 39% of CMOs Plan to Reduce Labor Costs and Cut Agency Allocations
- LinkedIn, Helping B2B Marketers Prove Campaign Performance with New Features
- ANA, New ANA and 4As Report Reveals Client-Agency Relationship Tenure Has Doubled Since 2016
