Fractional CGO for Agencies

Build an agency that grows itself

Stop trying to handle operations, delivery, sales, and marketing alone. As your Fractional Chief Growth Officer, I’ll help you build the systems, teams, and strategy that drive predictable demand and profitable growth, without burning you or your agency out.

Let's work, together Start with operations

Step into the true CEO leadership

Get the operational and marketing leadership you need to step out of the weeds. Focus on vision, growth, and high-value decisions, not daily tasks.

Build a growth engine, not just an agency

Develop strong operational foundations, consistent delivery, and a marketing system that brings in qualified leads every month.

Make growth predictable again

Use clear data, simple processes, and aligned teams to improve margins, increase revenue, and scale with confidence.

You can’t scale an agency when you’re doing everyone’s job

Without unified leadership across operations and marketing, growth becomes stressful, inconsistent, and dependent on you:

Marketing falls through the cracks

You know you need consistent content, campaigns, and positioning, but delivery fires always take priority.

Sales becomes unpredictable

You’re relying on referrals or luck because no one owns demand generation or pipeline health.

Operations pull you back in

Every week repeats the same pattern: firefighting, context-switching, and trying to “just get through.”

Tom Wardman delivering a workshop to agencies

Owning growth alongside you

Build the agency you always intended to run

As your Fractional Chief Growth Officer, I’ll lead both sides of your agency’s growth, operations and marketing, so your business scales intentionally and profitably.

Let's work together

Focus on leadership, not firefighting

Step away from daily operations knowing delivery, processes, and team accountability are handled.

Get a real marketing function

Build trust-driven content, campaigns, and positioning that generate consistent, qualified demand.

Create predictable, profitable delivery

Strengthen your operational foundations so margin, capacity, and utilisation become clear and manageable.

Build a team that leads without you

Develop leaders, managers, and specialists who own their roles and grow with the agency.

Scale with clarity

Make decisions based on clean data, not guesswork, and build a sustainable path to controlled, profitable growth.

What's included

Growth services that provides holistic leadership and builds independence and clarity

Strategic leadership spanning operations, marketing, and revenue generation, built around three core pillars:

Growth direction

Holistic growth strategy combining operations, marketing, and revenue

Positioning and differentiation that build market trust

Leadership frameworks that turn agency vision into practical execution

Integrated planning across delivery, sales, and marketing

Budget and pricing decisions that maximise margins

Clear leadership that aligns your agency around predictable, profitable growth

Marketing execution

Hands-on support to build the internal marketing engine your agency has never had

Content systems that generate inbound leads and build authority

Channel oversight across content, SEO, and paid media

Sales enablement and pipeline support

KPI dashboards to measure marketing’s contribution to growth

AI-driven workflows, automation, and MarTech implementation

Team enablement

Delivery workflow optimisation and SOP development

Team structure, hiring support, and progression frameworks

Capacity and utilisation modelling

Client delivery QA and account health monitoring

Transparent reporting you can act on

Knowledge transfer that makes your team more self-sufficient over time

How we'll work together

Your path to predictable agency growth

A clear process that moves you from reactive operator to strategic CEO:

Start with strategic mapping

Share your agency’s goals, constraints, team structure, and current pains. I’ll assess your operations, delivery, marketing, and revenue systems to identify where growth is getting blocked.

Build your growth framework

You'll get a unified operational and marketing roadmap, build around the goals and priorities, whatever they may be.

Lead with confidence

Watch your agency stabilise, grow, and trust itself again. I'll work beside your team to implement systems, guide marketing and build leaders, while you step fully into CEO mode.

Let's work, together

Pricing

How much does a Fractional Agency CGO cost?

Choose from flexible leadership packages that cover operations, marketing strategy, and growth management. All packages are based on a 6-month minimum commitment.

Starter

For agencies that need marketing and operational clarity, stronger processes, and part-time support across strategy, team, and delivery.

Recommended

Advanced

For agencies that want deeper CGO involvement: operational oversight, marketing direction, sales enablement, and team development.

Ultimate

For agencies that want fully integrated CGO partnership across growth strategy, operations, sales, delivery, team capability, and leadership.

Monthly fee

No separate onboarding fees

Standard pricing

Level 1 price break

Get more services for your investment

Level 2 price break

Maximise what you get for your spend

4 days

5 days

6 days

Monthly

Bi-weekly

Weekly

Not available

Marketing team only

All departments where required

Not available

Available if needed

Not available

Priority support

Not available

Available if needed

Not available

Available if needed

Not available

Available if needed

Let's talk

Meet your Agency CGO

Real agency experience. Real growth results.

After years inside agencies, from delivery to operations to strategic leadership, I’ve seen every pattern that stalls agency growth.

I don’t just lead your operations. I don’t just lead your marketing. I unify both, so your entire business grows as one system.

And every system I help you build is designed to remove dependency, not create it.
My goal is to help your agency run profitably and predictably, with or without me.

Connect with me

Testimonials

"From the start, Tom took the time to understand our business and proactively identified ways to make it better. I wanted to set high standards for our operations and deliverables, and Tom has certainly exceeded those expectations. As our fCOO, he has enabled us to implement positive changes that help us scale up and look forward to an exciting year ahead. "

Charleh Knighton - Managing Director, KUB

Frequently asked questions

What does a Fractional Chief Growth Officer actually do?

A Fractional CGO oversees the full growth engine of your agency, aligning marketing, sales, delivery, pricing, and operations to create predictable, scalable growth. It’s a unified leadership role covering strategy, performance, systems, and commercial direction.

How is a CGO different from a Fractional Marketing Director?

A Marketing Director focuses on marketing execution. A CGO aligns marketing and sales and delivery to ensure growth is sustainable, profitable, and operationally supported.

How is this different from a Fractional CMO?

A CMO leads marketing strategy. A CGO goes significantly further, shaping pricing, service packaging, sales processes, leadership capability, and operational delivery to support agency-wide growth.

How is a CGO different from a Fractional COO?

COOs focus on delivery and operations. CGOs integrate operations with commercial strategy, ensuring what’s being sold can be delivered profitably and consistently.

Who typically hires a Fractional CGO?

Agencies that have grown to £1M–£10M revenue and need cross-departmental leadership to scale without chaos, founder bottlenecks, or margin erosion.

Is a CGO a temporary or long-term leadership role?

It can be either. Many agencies bring in a CGO during rapid growth, leadership transition, restructuring, or to mature internal systems before hiring a full-time senior leader.

Do you replace existing leaders or work alongside them?

I work alongside them, strengthening your Marketing Lead, Sales Lead, and Delivery Lead so they become more capable, confident, and aligned.

Can a Fractional CGO help productise agency services?

Yes. Defining packages, pricing, scope boundaries, and delivery frameworks is a core part of building scalable, profitable growth.

Is this suitable for agencies moving into new markets or verticals?

Absolutely. I support positioning, messaging, GTM strategy, and the internal operational changes required to grow into new markets.

Does a CGO help reduce founder dependency?

Yes, by building leadership confidence, operational clarity, and strategic direction, the agency no longer relies on the founder’s constant involvement.

What problems signal we need a CGO?

Stagnant growth, inconsistent pipeline, pricing challenges, delivery bottlenecks, founder overload, unclear positioning, and strategy that doesn’t translate into results.

What size agency benefits most from a CGO?

Agencies earning £500k–£10M that want to scale sustainably without breaking operations or burning out the team.

Do we need an internal marketing or sales team?

Ideally yes, as the CGO role multiplies your existing team’s impact rather than doing day-to-day execution.

Does this work for creative, digital, and performance agencies?

Yes. The principles of alignment, clarity, and sustainable growth apply across all service-based agency models.

What if our agency has grown too quickly?

A CGO brings structure to the chaos, stabilising delivery, maturing leadership, and aligning commercial decisions with operational capacity.

Can this help if our margins are shrinking?

Absolutely, because pricing, scoping, utilisation, and delivery efficiency are core elements of CGO support.

What if our sales process isn’t consistent?

I build sales frameworks, messaging clarity, qualification processes, and follow-up systems to improve close rates and deal quality.

Is this suitable if we’re struggling with client churn?

Yes. Churn usually stems from misalignment, unclear expectations, inconsistent delivery, or weak communication rhythms, all within the CGO remit.

What if our agency hasn’t yet found a clear niche?

I help define positioning, ideal clients, category messaging, and differentiation frameworks rooted in real data and profitability.

Can you support agencies preparing to hire senior leaders?

Yes. I help define roles, structure, accountability, and onboarding paths for future permanent CMO/COO/Head of Growth hires.

What strategic areas does a Fractional CGO focus on?

Positioning, pricing, packaging, pipeline generation, sales enablement, delivery scalability, profitability, leadership alignment, and growth forecasting.

Do you work directly with the leadership team?

Yes. CGO work is leadership-driven. Weekly or bi-weekly sessions ensure departments stay aligned and accountable.

How do you connect marketing, sales, and delivery?

Through shared dashboards, cross-team rhythms, capability development, and operational guardrails that ensure marketing sells what delivery can fulfil.

Do you help set KPIs and build reporting dashboards?

Absolutely. Clear measurement is essential for predictable growth. We build dashboards covering pipeline, delivery, profitability, and utilisation.

Will you guide campaign and content strategy?

Yes, at a strategic level. Your team executes; I ensure it aligns with positioning, the sales process, and growth goals.

Can you help fix inconsistent project delivery?

Yes. I align delivery systems with commercial strategy so your growth doesn’t outpace your operational capacity.

Do you bring structure to meetings and planning?

Yes, structured weekly, monthly, and quarterly rhythms ensure momentum, alignment, and accountability across the business.

How do you help improve decision-making?

By giving leaders clarity on priorities, trade-offs, capacity, and data-driven insights, reducing reactive, last-minute choices.

Can you help us define a long-term growth plan?

Yes. We co-create 12–36 month growth goals, supported by realistic hiring plans, pricing changes, operational improvements, and commercial strategy.

Do you help integrate new tools or systems?

Yes, but only when needed. The goal is simplicity, not adding more software for the sake of it.

How quickly will we see improvements?

gencies often feel clarity and alignment within weeks. Structural and behavioural change typically emerges over 60–90 days, with significant improvements in growth and profitability appearing within 3–9 months.

What results can we expect from a CGO engagement?

A clearer pipeline, stronger positioning, better margins, more confident leaders, improved delivery consistency, and reduced founder dependency.

How do you measure growth progress?

Through dashboards tracking revenue, sales quality, close rates, utilisation, delivery speed, profitability, and leadership performance.

Will this help improve agency profitability?

Yes, through pricing, scoping, utilisation, team structure, and better commercial decision-making.

Can CGO support shorten the sales cycle?

Often, yes. Improved messaging, qualification, content, and delivery confidence reduce friction in the buyer journey.

Will team performance improve?

Yes, because clarity, structure, and leadership development leads to more ownership, better decisions, and fewer bottlenecks.

Can this help reduce founder burnout?

Absolutely. Systems, leadership capability, and operational clarity allow the founder to step back without growth stalling.

Does this support scale with agency size?

Yes. CGO work adapts as your agency adds new team members, services, or divisions.

Can this improve client satisfaction and retention?

Yes. Consistency, clarity, and alignment across teams lead to smoother delivery and stronger client relationships.

What happens when we reach our growth targets?

We evaluate whether you should continue with fractional support, transition to a full-time CGO, or maintain a lighter strategic advisory role.

How much does a Fractional CGO cost?

Pricing depends on your team size, involvement level, meeting frequency, and complexity of your growth challenges. Standard, Advanced, and Executive tiers are available.

Is there a minimum commitment?

Yes, typically 6 months, allowing enough time for behavioural change, leadership development, and operational improvements to take effect.

How often do we meet?

Usually weekly or bi-weekly leadership sessions, supported by asynchronous communication and departmental check-ins.

Can the scope be adjusted as we grow?

Absolutely. Support can expand as your team matures or contract once you have strong leadership in place.

Do you work with agencies internationally?

Yes. CGO engagements are delivered remotely with optional on-site workshops for planning or leadership development.

Are there extra costs beyond your engagement fee?

Only optional items such as tools, training resources, or hiring support, all agreed upfront.

Can you help us hire a permanent Head of Operations or Head of Growth?

Yes. I help define responsibilities, screen candidates, and onboard them effectively.

Can we scale the level of support up or down?

We begin with a growth diagnostic, leadership interviews, operational review, and a 90-day plan that outlines priorities and milestones.

What if we’re not ready for a CGO yet?

If you need foundational work first, we can begin with Systems Consultancy, Marketing Leadership, or shorter diagnostic projects.

How do we get started?

Book a discovery call. We’ll identify your growth challenges, clarify your goals, and map out the right path for predictable, scalable agency growth.

Ready to scale your agency the right way?

Let’s discuss how Fractional CGO leadership can help you build a profitable, scalable, self-running agency, without relying on chaos, referrals, or constant owner involvement.

Let's work, together Start with operations