A monthly retainer for founders who want a strategic advisor without hiring one. Decisions made together. Execution stays with you.
If you want someone to manage your team, hire a CMO. If you want someone to run your campaigns, hire an agency. If you want someone to make decisions with you when the channel choices and the hiring questions and the strategic trade-offs land on your desk, that is what this is.
Who this is for
Founders who do not fit any of the standard marketing-leadership shapes.
You do not have an in-house CMO and you are not ready to hire one. The full-time salary does not make sense at your current revenue, and the role is too operational for what you actually need. You do not want an agency, because you have been burned by execution-without-strategy before. You do not want a fractional CMO, because the engagement is too operational and too expensive for the stage you are in. You are past freelance, and you are not yet enterprise.
What you want is a strategic advisor. Someone you call when a real decision needs to be made. Someone who sees the whole picture, makes pattern-matched recommendations, and gives you a defensible answer instead of a list of options to consider. Someone who is available without becoming an employee.
That is what Monthly Marketing Strategy is.
What you get
Four cadence elements, working together to keep you out of strategic drift.
Monthly strategic session
A 90-minute call each month with an agenda set together. We come prepared with priorities, you come prepared with questions, and the time is spent making decisions, not surveying options. Output is always specific: this month, we are doing X. Next month, we will revisit Y.
Weekly async strategy
Email or Slack between sessions. Questions in, decisions out, within 24 hours during business days. Most weeks involve two or three exchanges: a brief from your side, a pattern-matched response from ours, and a decision you can act on.
Quarterly review
A deeper session every three months that zooms out from in-flight decisions to look at what is working, what is shifting, and where the next quarter’s priorities should sit. Also the natural moment to evaluate whether the engagement is still the right shape.
On-call decision support
When something urgent comes up between sessions, you can reach us. A bad agency proposal, a hiring question, a competitive move, a new opportunity that was not on the radar. You are not stuck with a decision until the next monthly session.
What’s included
A broad strategic surface, with decisions instead of options.
The strategic surface is broad. We work with you on positioning, content, search, measurement, hiring marketing roles, agency selection, channel choices, and any other strategic question that lands in front of you during the month.
We review materials directly. Decks, content drafts, hiring briefs, agency proposals. If you have a document that needs strategic eyes before you commit to it, send it over. The review is part of the retainer.
We pattern-match across our other engagements. Without naming clients or revealing details, we bring what we have seen work and what we have seen fail in similar situations. Pattern matching is one of the highest-leverage things a strategic advisor does, and it is the reason ongoing relationships compound in value over time.
We give you decisions, not options. The output of strategy work is not a menu. It is a recommended path with a clear reason behind it. You can override our recommendation, and sometimes you should, but the default is a defensible answer you can act on.
What’s not included
Strategic, not operational. The exclusions are explicit.
The retainer itself does not include campaign execution. Running ads, managing your social presence, and overseeing paid acquisition are not part of the monthly strategy engagement. If a retainer client needs execution support on a specific piece of work, we will scope it as a separate add-on rather than fold it into the retainer.
The retainer does not include content production. We shape it, review it, and tell you when it is not working, and the writing normally stays with your team or your freelancer. If you would rather we take on a specific piece of writing, that is an add-on we will consider case by case, separate from the retainer.
We do not act as a fractional CMO. We do not manage your team, attend your standups, or sit inside your operational rhythm. The engagement is advisory, not embedded.
We do not run weekly status meetings. The work is async between monthly sessions because status meetings consume the time the actual strategic work needs.
If you need any of those things, we are not the right fit, and we will tell you so directly.
Scope, price, timeline
$5,500/mo. Three-month minimum. Month-to-month after that, with 30 days’ notice.
The minimum exists because strategic shifts take a quarter to compound. One month is not long enough to know whether the work is landing, and the first month is always the heaviest, because we are calibrating cadence and getting full context. Two months in, the rhythm is established, and by month three the work is producing visible compounding.
After the three-month minimum, the engagement runs month to month. Some clients stay on for a year. Some shift to quarterly check-ins after six months. The structure is designed to flex around what your business actually needs.
Process
Audit-first. Onboarding. First month heavy ramp. Ongoing cadence.
Audit first.
The Marketing Audit is a gate. Both sides need to know whether ongoing advisory is the right shape of engagement before we commit to a quarter together. The audit produces that answer in 10 days for $2,500.
Onboarding session.
Once the audit confirms ongoing advisory is the right next step, we run a 60 to 90 minute onboarding session to set the first month’s priorities. This is more involved than a typical kickoff because the first month sets the tone for the rest of the engagement.
First month.
Heavy ramp. We are calibrating cadence, getting full context on the business, and shipping the first round of strategic decisions. Most engagements include at least one extra session in month one beyond the contracted cadence, because the front-loading is necessary.
Ongoing.
Monthly session, weekly async, quarterly review, on-call decision support. The rhythm becomes predictable, and the work shifts from establishing context to compounding strategic moves.
Common questions
FAQs
How is this different from a fractional CMO?
A fractional CMO is operational. They manage your marketing team, attend your standups, oversee execution, and act as the senior marketing leader inside your business. The role is embedded.
Monthly Marketing Strategy is advisory. We make decisions with you and review the work your team produces, but we do not manage anyone, attend operational meetings, or sit inside your day-to-day rhythm. The engagement is external by design, which means we cost less than a fractional CMO and we apply across a wider strategic surface, but we do not replace one. If you need someone running marketing as a function, hire a fractional CMO.
Can you write content or run ads for us?
The retainer is strategic, not production. We review the content your team writes, shape what they produce next, and tell you when the messaging is off. We review the ad strategy your media buyer is executing and recommend shifts. Production itself, the actual writing or ad management, is not part of the monthly fee. For the right client we will take a specific piece of execution on as a separate add-on, scoped and priced on its own. What we will not do is quietly become your agency through the back door of a strategy retainer. The strategic clarity is the point, and that stays protected.
What if we already have an agency?
That is often the ideal setup. We work alongside the agency, not against them. We make the strategic decisions about what to work on and why. The agency executes the work. The two roles are complementary, and most engagements where this dynamic exists produce better outcomes than either role would produce alone.
The agency also benefits from the clarity. Most agencies are operating without strategic input from the client side, and they end up making strategic decisions by default while pretending they are only executing. Bringing in strategic clarity from a separate consulting practice removes that ambiguity and lets the agency focus on execution.
Why the three-month minimum?
Because strategic shifts take a quarter to compound. One month is not enough to know if the work is landing. The first month is always heavy ramp, the second month is when rhythm establishes, and the third month is when the compounding becomes visible. Cutting the engagement short before month three usually means cutting it short before the ROI shows up.
Can we cancel?
Yes. After the three-month minimum, the engagement runs month to month with 30 days’ notice. There is no annual commitment, no termination penalty, and no hard-sell retention process. If the work is not producing what you need, ending the engagement is the right call, and we will help you transition out cleanly.