Straight answers
Extra Medium is a marketing agency in Charlotte that also fills the fractional CMO seat: a senior marketing executive, embedded part-time, who owns strategy and makes every channel answer to it. It fits Charlotte companies too big to improvise marketing and too smart to hire the seat full-time before they need it daily.
The fractional CMO owns the things nobody can own part-time by accident: diagnosis of what is actually limiting growth, one written strategy the whole company argues from, the calendar and budget built on it, and management of whoever executes — agencies, freelancers, your internal team. They sit in the leadership meeting and answer for marketing in the language of revenue. What they do not do is produce decks and disappear. The seat is accountable for outcomes, including the outcome of telling you to stop something. The full picture of the role is on our fractional CMO page.
Charlotte grows companies fast, and marketing leadership is usually the last seat filled. A fintech scales on founder relationships and conference handshakes, then the pipeline needs to exist without the founder in the room. A professional services firm professionalizes everything except the marketing, which is still whoever has time. Meanwhile agencies are being paid real money with nobody senior on the client’s side of the table to aim them. Add a business culture where credibility is currency and buyers research silently before they ever call, and the gap stops being a marketing problem and becomes a growth ceiling. That gap is exactly the shape of the fractional seat.
Published market ranges put US fractional CMO retainers typically at $3,000–$20,000 a month depending on cadence and scope — a fraction of a full-time CMO’s salary, benefits and equity, and usually less than the agency spend currently being aimed by nobody. At Extra Medium the seat comes with the studio underneath it, so the strategy and the execution live in one company and nothing gets lost in the hand-off. Sizing and structure are worked out in the first exchange and put in writing before any work begins; our cost page explains what drives the number.
Key takeaways
An agency executes briefs. A fractional CMO writes the brief, chooses the channels, manages the executors and answers for the result. If work is not getting made, hire an agency. If nobody senior can say what work should be made, fill the seat first.
In line with national published ranges: typically $3,000 to $20,000 a month depending on how many days a week the seat is filled and how much function there is to run. The honest comparison is a full-time executive package, or another year of undirected agency spend.
In writing. Describe the company and where growth is stuck, through the contact page (/contact/), and we will reply with whether the seat fits, what the first phase would look like, and what it would cost.
Let’s talk
Don’t know exactly what you need? Good. That’s our job. Tell us where the business is headed and we’ll tell you honestly whether we can help — and if we can’t, who might.
Usually replies within one business day.
