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Fractional CMO for 10–250 person businesses · Europe, North America & Asia

Your marketing is active.
Your sales pipeline isn't.

You have an agency. You have a marketing manager. You have campaigns running. But when you ask what's actually working, nobody gives you a straight answer, including the people you're paying for one.

That's not a budget problem. That's a missing commercial foundation. I find exactly where it's broken, fix it, and stay accountable for what the numbers show.

Every month the foundation is unclear is a month of budget amplifying the problem.
Request a diagnostic intake How this works

The problem is never who you hired. It's the upstream decisions nobody gave them.

Marc Wajsberg

Marc WajsbergFractional CMO · Westkapelle, BE

30+
Years at the intersection of buyer psychology, commercial strategy, and marketing decisions
150+
Businesses guided, from specialist manufacturers to international retail platforms
Max. 8
Clients at any time. When a slot opens, it goes to the next fit — not the next enquiry.
Why this works

Three decisions. In this order. No shortcuts.

The sequence is the mechanism. Skip step one: step two produces vague content. Skip step two: step three spends money amplifying a message that doesn't land. Every business that jumps to campaigns before clarifying the commercial core pays for it in cost-per-lead, sales cycle length, and the quiet frustration of a pipeline that never quite fills. The discipline is protecting the order.
Decision 01
Commercial core

Who is your best-fit customer: not who you can serve, but who you most want to win and keep? What specific tension does your offer resolve? What makes you defensibly better for them? Without these answers, every campaign amplifies uncertainty instead of converting it.

Decision 02
Visibility and source quality

Your website should function as a salesperson, not a brochure. Structured findability through SEO and AEO. Content that builds belief before the first conversation. If your site doesn't clearly answer why you, for whom, and why it's credible, the right buyers leave before they reach out.

Decision 03
Measurement that decides

No dashboard theatre. Numbers that answer one question: more of this, less of that, or stop entirely? The only metric that matters is qualified pipeline. Everything else is a distraction with a name.

Evidence

What happened when we fixed the foundation.

The product is usually not the problem. The translation is — between what the business already knows about its own capability, and what the buyer needs to hear before they'll trust enough to call. Each case below closed that gap.

Executive MBA, Belgium

An Executive MBA programme: 30 places at €30,000 each. Never sold out. A competitor was perceived as the prestige choice. Higher Financial Times rankings and stronger salary outcomes were already on the page. None of it shifted the decision.

Outcome: Repositioned around what was true and uncopyable: academic rigour combined with genuine personal development. All 30 places filled in the first season. Waiting list at intake close. Tuition today is above €49,000.

Aerial work platforms, B2B Asia

Website led with company history and equipment categories. Procurement teams arrived without context, asked basic qualification questions, and frequently chose the cheaper local competitor.

Outcome: Repositioned around overnight delivery and trained operators on-site. Qualified lead quality improved within six weeks. Sales team stopped re-answering the same objections.

Custom logo printing on chocolate, B2B

Strong traffic, excellent engagement data. Conversion rate 0.3%. A 16-field contact form asking corporate buyers to specify chocolate type, shape, size and quantity before they'd even decided if they were interested.

Outcome: Form reduced to what a sales callback actually requires. Conversion rate improved immediately. No new budget. No new campaign. Fewer fields.

Professional services, technical B2B

Three agencies over four years. Each one produced activity. None produced a clear commercial position the sales team could use in conversations.

Outcome: Commercial core defined in 30 days. Website rebuilt around buyer tension. Sales cycle shortened. The business stopped briefing new agencies from scratch.

In their words

"I wasn't supposed to tell him this, but a few years ago the CEO of Google Belgium said to me: if you ever need someone who truly understands how online marketing works, call Marc."

Jorg Snoeck, Founder RetailDetail

"Marc combines two worlds you rarely see together: old-school marketing, empathy and psychology, and extremely deep technical knowledge."

Ziv Knoll, Board Member, Antwerp Diamond Bourse

"Working with Marc is like driving with a V12 on kerosene. A virtuoso in digital marketing, much better than most digital natives."

Erik Saelens, CEO Brandhome and Unbox
Honest about fit

Not every business is the right fit.
This is how you tell.

The filter is not arrogance. It protects the quality of the work — for both sides. Read both columns honestly before you reach out.

This fits
  • Mid-sized business, 10-250 people, with a real commercial ambition
  • You have marketing activity but doubt the foundation underneath it
  • You want someone who tells you what's wrong before you finish explaining the situation
  • You're willing to ask hard questions about positioning and offer design
  • You measure success in qualified pipeline and margin, not reach or followers
  • You're looking for a long-term working relationship, not a one-time audit
  • You have budget for senior-level strategy — my retainer is €3.900/month minimum
This doesn't fit
  • You're pre-revenue or haven't yet proven product-market fit in real conversations
  • You've already decided what the solution is and want execution only
  • You want someone to produce social media content or manage posting calendars
  • Your measure of marketing success is follower count, reach, or brand awareness
  • You want the senior pitch but expect a junior team to do the actual work
  • You need someone to present to your board, not fix the actual system
  • You're not willing to hear that the current approach needs to change

"Over the course of my career, I've come across plenty of marketing specialists. Marc is the first who actually sounds like a businessman, not a vague consultant full of empty talk."

Philippe Criel, CFO Centre Belgium
The process

No free discovery call.
A real intake.

I work with a maximum of eight clients at a time. That means every engagement gets full attention, and every intake gets honest evaluation.

1
Diagnostic intake: seven specific questions (10 minutes)
You answer seven questions about your situation, your marketing history, and what you've already tried. I read every response personally. This gives me enough to evaluate honestly, and gives you enough to decide if this is worth your time. Vague answers get an honest reply: not enough to work with.
2
60-minute strategy session: not a sales call
I analyse your situation before we speak. In the session, I tell you specifically where the commercial logic is breaking down and what I would fix first. You leave with a clear diagnosis, regardless of whether we work together. If there's no fit, I'll say so directly and tell you why.
3
Engagement or honest referral
If the fit is right, we start. If it isn't, you get a clear explanation and a direction for what would actually help. Both outcomes are useful. Neither costs you anything beyond the time you've already invested in the intake.

This is not a project with a start and end date.

Agencies sell deliverables. Deliverables don't close deals. Most marketing managers get absorbed by execution and never reach strategy. What I provide is the senior commercial thinking that sits above both: someone who owns the question of whether the system is working, and changes it when it isn't. That function is usually the missing one.

When this fails

This works. Unless one of these is true.

  • Leadership won't choose. Postponed positioning decisions mean execution drifts permanently. I can show what the diagnosis says. The decision is yours to make.
  • No one owns implementation. Strategy without an internal owner becomes a document. Good documents do not close deals.
  • Data is politically protected. If measurement is treated as status rather than truth, nothing improves. I measure what the numbers say, not what the room prefers.
  • The work gets validated, then ignored. Clarity is uncomfortable when it requires changing something leadership has already committed to publicly. I can show what the diagnosis says. I cannot override the instinct to protect a prior decision.
Investment

Transparent about cost.
No reason to make you ask.

Most consultants make you ask. Here's what this costs, what's included, and when the fit doesn't exist. The diagnostic is the shortest path to knowing exactly what needs to change.

Starting point
€2.900

Fixed price · no retainer required

Commercial Diagnostic + Roadmap

For businesses that want to know exactly where the commercial logic is breaking down, before committing to ongoing work.

  • Full audit of commercial core, positioning and website
  • Buyer tension mapping against your actual offer
  • Prioritised 90-day implementation roadmap
  • One 90-minute debrief session
  • Written findings you can act on immediately, with or without me
  • AEO-readiness flagged where relevant. Full AEO audit is a separate engagement.
Ongoing engagement
€3.900–€6.500

Per month · variable based on complexity

Fractional CMO: monthly retainer

Strategic marketing leadership for businesses that have outgrown improvisation but haven't yet built the internal capability they need. The variable is complexity: number of products and markets, decision-makers involved, and how broken the current measurement is.

  • Ownership of the commercial marketing system
  • Positioning, offer design, message architecture
  • Channel discipline and spend accountability
  • Direct involvement, not a managed team beneath me
  • Minimum 6 months. Maximum 8 clients at any time.

If the investment level doesn't match your current situation, I'll say so directly and point you toward what would actually make sense. There's no follow-up sequence if you reach out and it doesn't fit. You get a straight answer, not a nurture campaign.

You are either running a commercial system, or you are running activity. One produces pipeline. The other produces reports. You already know which one you have.

Request intake

Most businesses lose six to twelve months before someone names the problem.

This is a screening intake, not a contact form. The more specific the answers, the more useful the response. Vague answers earn a one-line reply.

What happens after you submit

  • Every response is read personally before any reply is sent
  • Within 2 business days: a direct response on whether there's fit
  • If fit exists: one strategy session, at no cost to you
  • If fit doesn't exist: an honest explanation and a useful direction
  • No newsletter. No drip sequence. No follow-up pressure.
Current availability: One slot open. The intake takes ten minutes to find out if it's yours.

No newsletter. No follow-up sequence. You get a direct, personal response within 2 business days, or silence if the fit clearly isn't there. That's also an honest answer.

Common questions

What business owners ask most often.

What is a Fractional CMO and how is it different from an agency?
An agency executes. A Fractional CMO owns the commercial thinking that makes execution worth doing. An agency amplifies whatever message you give them. If that message is unclear, they produce polished confusion at your expense. I build the message first. Then we decide whether to amplify it.
What does the ongoing engagement actually look like month to month?
It depends on what the diagnosis finds. Some months the work is positioning: getting precise about who the business is actually for and what the offer should say. Some months it is channel discipline: stopping what is not working and directing budget to what is. Some months it is measurement: rebuilding the reporting so it answers commercial questions instead of producing activity logs. There is no fixed template because every business has a different upstream problem. What stays constant is the question I bring to every month: is the system moving the business forward, and if not, what changes next?
How much does this cost and what is the minimum commitment?
The Commercial Diagnostic is €2.900 fixed, no retainer required. It includes the full audit, debrief session, and prioritised 90-day roadmap. The ongoing Fractional CMO retainer ranges from €3.900 to €6.500 per month based on complexity, minimum six months, maximum eight clients at any time.
How do I know if this is the right fit before committing?
Start with the seven-question intake. I read every response personally and assess within 2 business days whether there is a fit. If there is, we do a 60-minute strategy session at no cost. You leave with something concrete regardless of whether we work together. If there is no fit, I tell you directly and suggest a better direction. Neither outcome costs you anything beyond ten minutes of your time.
Has Marc Wajsberg written a book on marketing?
Yes. Reports, Not Revenue: The marketing decisions your business keeps skipping — and what they cost is written for owners and senior leaders of mid-sized businesses. It identifies the upstream commercial decisions most businesses keep skipping — audience, positioning, offer, message — and shows what those decisions cost in pipeline, margin, and wasted budget. More about the book.
Where is Marc Wajsberg based?
Marc Wajsberg is based in Belgium and works with mid-sized businesses across Europe, North America, and Asia. His company is Clixreclame BV, Monnikendreef 5D, 8300 Westkapelle, Belgium, VAT BE 0433.733.817.

Every month this isn't fixed is a month of budget making it worse.

Commercial Diagnostic €2,900 · Fixed price · 90-minute debrief included · No retainer required

Request a diagnostic intake

7 questions · 10 minutes · Personal response within 2 business days