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Marketing Advisor, Mentor, & Educator

Kevin C. Whelan

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Video

June 25, 2025

The difference between Fractional CMO and Interim CMO

Fractional CMO positioning can be a great way to earn six figures with even a couple clients.

But as you try to scale it, things can often… break down.

Clients want more work done, responsibilities build up, you become more of a set of hands than an impartial expert, and eventually, you become part of the problem.

If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ll know things get a little nuanced around here when it comes to the best way to deliver your marketing expertise.

My core DMAT framework (Doing → Managing → Advising → Teaching) is all about creating leverage around your expertise so you can earn more in less time, with less cognitive load.

And there are lots of ways to approach this.

So what if you could have the best of all worlds?

What if you could drop in, be a fractional head of marketing for a while, then phase into a more profitable and less cognitively demanding role as an advisor later?

Enter: the Interim CMO.

An Interim CMO is a short-term version of the Fractional CMO role. It lets you own your clients’ biggest marketing channels, get things under control, then move into a lighter-tough advisory capacity later on (if you want).

I recently recorded a video on this topic, describing the differences between Interim and Fractional CMO—and how to leverage them depending on your unique goals and situation.

Give it a watch over on YouTube and let me know in the comments what you think!

—k

May 26, 2025

Is the future of marketing services fractional?

Over the years, I’ve done it “all”.

I’ve freelanced, run an agency, did training, paid speaking, coaching, mentoring, memberships, digital products—you name it.

Each of them have their own merits. But when it comes to selling marketing services, one general category stands out above the rest for me.

Let’s call it fractional services.

Freelancing generally means high labour and dealing with a lot of minutiae.

Agencies can scale but… who really wants to do that? Not me.

But then there’s fractional work.

And I break these down into two general buckets: fractional leadership (think fractional CMO or fractional head of content, for example) and advisory work or consulting.

The commonality between these models is leadership. Whether I am advising on or managing people’s marketing, the through-line is that I am leading the direction of their marketing (formally or informally).

It ends up being like a deconstructed agency.

We work with individual specialists who comprise small parts of a whole. Easily interchangeable parts. Parts that scale up or down as-needed.

And the best part? It’s actually aligned with the clients’ best interests.

In my experience, if something works better and is in the best interest of the buyer, it’s going to be a leading business model long-term.

Curious what I mean?

Learn more on my latest YouTube video.

—kevin

December 13, 2024

The secret to getting clients with content marketing

As marketers, our goal is to have more inbound leads than we can handle.

Ideally, we don’t want to rely on outbound or word-of-mouth to find new clients.

Those things can work, but you ideally want to drive people to you, letting you maintain your posture as a credible expert and peer, not just a marketing “supplier” looking for work.

So how do you do that using organic content as the primary means of inbound lead generation?

In this video, I explain the one small mindset that can be the difference between content that attracts customers vs. content that collects (or doesn’t collect) likes.

It’s subtle, but it’s important.

Give it a watch here and be sure to like, comment, and subscribe to the channel if you’re into that kind of thing!

—k

November 22, 2024

Why you don’t need LinkedIn to get clients

I’m able to be continually booked solid with consulting clients without doing the LinkedIn song and dance.

It’s true, the gurus will tell you to be there. To publish daily. To engage, comment, like, share, and support people there.

And while LinkedIn is definitely the place to be if you want to show up for B2B clients, it’s not necessary if you have other ways to achieve the same end.

In my latest YouTube video, I explain what I focus on and how I get clients consistently—without using LinkedIn very much.

Tune in and let me know in the comments what you think.

—k

P.S. Be sure to like/subscribe to the channel as well!

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