Straight answers
Extra Medium is a marketing agency in Roanoke, Virginia, and its Lead practice puts a senior fractional CMO inside your company part-time. You get CMO-level strategy, vendor management and accountability for a fraction of a full-time executive hire — sized for Roanoke budgets, not Richmond or Charlotte ones.
A fractional CMO owns the marketing function the way a full-time CMO would, on a part-time cadence: diagnosis first, then one written strategy, then running the calendar, the budget and every vendor against it. In leadership meetings they translate — what marketing can deliver this quarter, what it cannot, and what the evidence says to fund. Our Lead practice is senior-only and founder-led, and the studio sits underneath it, so strategy and execution never live in different companies.
Roanoke’s economy is anchored by healthcare, with a growing biomedical and technology corridor, a serious outdoor-tourism trade and a long tail of professional firms and family businesses. Plenty of them have outgrown the founder doing marketing at midnight; almost none can justify a full-time chief marketing officer. The fractional model was built for exactly this gap, and the published market range reflects it: fractional CMO retainers typically run $3,000 to $20,000 a month depending on cadence and scope, a fraction of an executive package. Compare the shapes on our cost page before you talk to anyone, including us.
Most engagements run one to three days a week equivalent, weighted toward planning cycles and launches. The start is a diagnosis and strategy phase, priced on its own, so both sides see the size of the job before committing to a cadence. Then the rhythm settles: numbers first, calendar second, vendors held to outcomes, and a strategy that keeps working on the days the CMO is not in the room.
Key takeaways
Published market ranges put fractional CMO retainers at typically $3,000 to $20,000 a month, set by cadence and scope. That is a market range, not a quote: Extra Medium shapes each engagement in the first conversation and puts the number in writing before work begins.
Founder-led companies whose marketing has outgrown improvisation: practices and firms spending on agencies with nobody senior on their side of the table, tourism operators with real seasons to fill, and growing companies between marketing hires.
Start on the contact page with a few lines about the company and where marketing feels stuck. We reply in writing within one business day — no call required — with whether the seat fits and what a diagnosis would cover.
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.
