CMO

Fractional Chief Marketing Officer

Executive marketing leadership from an operator who has actually built one. Shay Berman steps into your business as the marketing leader you have not hired yet, sets the strategy, runs the team, holds the vendors accountable, and stays in the work until it produces revenue.

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Most Companies Do Not Have a Marketing Problem. They Have a Marketing Leadership Problem.

You have people running ads. You have someone handling social. Maybe you have an agency, a web developer, a video team, and a few tools nobody has logged into since onboarding. Money is going out every month.

What you do not have is one person who owns the answer to a simple question: is any of this actually working, and what do we do next?

That is the gap a Fractional CMO fills. Not another vendor doing another piece. A marketing executive sitting at your table, accountable for the whole picture, at a fraction of the cost and commitment of a full-time hire.

An Account Manager Runs Your Campaigns. A Fractional CMO Runs Your Marketing.

Here is something most agencies will not say out loud.

Every Digital Resource client already gets close to an outsourced marketing department. A dedicated account manager, specialists in paid, SEO, web, creative, and social, and a real strategy behind it. For most businesses, that is enough.

But an account manager operates inside the scope you signed. They optimize what is in front of them. They are very good at that, and it is a different job than the one you are reading about right now.

A Fractional CMO operates above the scope. Shay sits in your business, not just on your account.

Your Account Manager

Your Fractional CMO

Executes and optimizes the marketing you have bought

Decides what marketing you should be buying in the first place

Reports on channel performance

Ties marketing performance to revenue, margin, and capacity

Manages the Digital Resource scope of work

Manages every vendor and internal resource touching growth, including the ones we do not control

Communicates with your point of contact

Sits with your leadership team, your sales team, and your front desk

Owns marketing output

Owns the operational systems that turn marketing output into booked, closed, retained revenue

Works within your approved budget

Tells you which line items to cut and which to double, and defends the answer

One is a specialist running your program. The other is an executive running your growth. Most companies scaling past their first plateau need both.

You Are Not Buying a Title. You Are Buying Fifteen Years of Operating Experience.

Anyone can print "Fractional CMO" on a LinkedIn profile. The question you should ask is what that person has personally built.

Shay Berman is the Founder and CEO of Digital Resource. Over 15 years, he has:

Built a digital marketing agency from a one-person operation into a team of more than 100 across the United States and international offices
Grown that agency to serve 700+ active clients and more than 800 businesses since inception
Earned six Inc. 5000 recognitions as one of the fastest growing private companies in America
Hired, trained, and managed hundreds of employees across marketing, sales, operations, creative, and support
Built and run the sales, onboarding, retention, and reporting systems behind a multimillion dollar recurring revenue business
Served as Fractional CMO for a dental support organization with 200+ locations, plus operators in home services, veterinary, professional services, and multi-location franchise brands

That is the difference. When Shay tells you a channel is not worth the spend, it is because he has spent it. When he tells you your intake process is bleeding leads, it is because he has fixed that exact leak in hundreds of businesses. When he tells you what to pay a marketing coordinator or how to structure a commission plan, it is because he has done it, been wrong once, and corrected it.

You are hiring judgment. Judgment is expensive to build and cheap to rent.

What Shay Does Inside Your Business

This is not a monthly strategy call and a slide deck. A Fractional CMO engagement is hands in the work.

Leadership and strategy

Builds the marketing strategy, positioning, and messaging your team executes against
Sets the KPIs that matter to your business and kills the vanity metrics that do not
Sits in your leadership meetings and represents marketing at the executive level
Builds the annual plan, the budget behind it, and the accountability structure around it

Team development

Meets with your internal marketing staff on a recurring cadence
Trains your people. Coaches them, raises their ceiling, and makes them better whether or not the engagement continues
Helps you hire correctly, or tells you the hire you are about to make is the wrong one
Aligns marketing with sales and operations so leads do not die in the handoff

Vendor and agency oversight

Manages and holds accountable every vendor touching your growth, including agencies that are not Digital Resource
Reviews the work, audits the reporting, and asks the questions your team does not know to ask
Identifies duplicate spend, unused software, and retainers that stopped earning their keep
Runs vendor evaluations and transitions when someone needs to be replaced

Operational depth

Digs into the numbers behind the numbers: cost per acquisition, close rate, show rate, average ticket, lifetime value, capacity
Separates the signal from the fluff, then reallocates the budget accordingly
Builds the reporting rhythm so you always know where you stand without chasing it
Works alongside your Digital Resource account manager when we are your agency, and independently of any agency when we are not

This role sits at the intersection of marketing and operations. That is on purpose. Marketing that ignores operations produces leads nobody can service. Operations that ignore marketing produces capacity nobody is filling. The job is to run both sides of that equation.

We Do Not Have to Be Your Agency

Most agencies offer a fractional CMO as a way to sell you more agency. This is the opposite. Shay works with businesses where Digital Resource runs the marketing and businesses where a completely different agency does. He will manage that agency, evaluate their performance, and tell you honestly whether they are earning the fee.
If the right answer is to keep your current partner, that is the answer you will get. The value of an executive is only real if the advice is unbiased.

Speak to Shay

Man wearing a headset working at a computer with a dashboard, under a Dream Team sign

Industry Agnostic by Design

Marketing leadership is not vertical-specific. Diagnosing why leads are not converting, why a team is not executing, or why a channel has stopped scaling looks the same in a dental group, a home services company, a manufacturer, or a professional services firm. Shay has led marketing in all of them.
What changes by industry is the vocabulary and the buying cycle. What does not change is the discipline.

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Structured Around Hours, Not Vague Promises

Every engagement is built on a defined number of hours per week or per month, so you know exactly what level of involvement you are getting and exactly what it costs. No open-ended retainer, no mystery scope.

Tier 1: Advisory

Strategic oversight, monthly leadership session, budget and performance review, vendor accountability. Best for businesses with a functioning marketing team that needs direction and a check on the work.

Tier 2: Embedded

Everything in Advisory, plus weekly involvement with your marketing team, active vendor management, hiring support, and cross-functional alignment with sales and operations. Best for businesses scaling past their current systems.

Tier 3: Executive

Full fractional executive presence. Leadership meetings, team management, hiring and training, full vendor oversight, annual planning, and direct involvement in day-to-day execution. Best for businesses in a growth or transition phase that need a marketing executive now and are not ready to hire one full time.

Not sure which tier fits?

That is what the first conversation is for. We will scope it based on what your business actually needs, not what we would prefer to sell.

Book a Fit Conversation

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Fractional CMO and how is it different from hiring a full-time CMO?

A full-time CMO is a permanent executive hire with a salary, equity expectations, benefits, and a long ramp. A Fractional CMO gives you the same seniority and decision-making on a defined number of hours per month, with no long ramp and no long-term commitment. Most businesses under a certain size do not need a CMO 40 hours a week. They need the right 40 decisions a month made correctly.

How is this different from the account manager we already have at Digital Resource?

Your account manager executes and optimizes the marketing program you have signed up for, and they are excellent at it. A Fractional CMO works a level above that: setting the strategy, managing all of your vendors and internal people, connecting marketing to sales and operations, and deciding what the program should be in the first place. Many clients run both, and the two roles reinforce each other.

How involved is Shay with our team?

Directly involved. Depending on your tier, that means recurring meetings with your internal marketing staff, participation in your leadership meetings, training and coaching your people, sitting in on vendor calls, and being reachable between meetings when something needs a decision. This is not a quarterly check-in.

Do we have to use Digital Resource as our marketing agency?

No. Shay works with clients whose marketing is run by other agencies or entirely in house. In those cases part of the job is managing and evaluating those partners on your behalf. If Digital Resource is not the right fit for your execution, you will hear that from him directly.

What types of businesses benefit most?

Businesses doing enough revenue that marketing decisions carry real consequences, but not enough to justify a full-time executive at market salary. Typically companies scaling past a plateau, multi-location or franchise operators, businesses managing several vendors with no single owner, private equity or DSO-backed groups needing marketing leadership across locations, and founders who are still the de facto head of marketing and need their time back.

Is this only for certain industries?

No. The engagement is industry agnostic. Shay has led marketing for dental and DSO groups, veterinary practices, home services companies, professional services firms, and multi-location franchise brands. The diagnostic framework travels.

How do you measure success and ROI?

Against the metrics your business runs on, defined together in the first thirty days. That usually includes cost per acquisition, lead to close rate, revenue per channel, marketing contribution to total revenue, and return on total marketing investment including vendor fees. You get a consistent reporting rhythm so performance is never a mystery and never a surprise.

What happens in the first 30 days?

A full audit of your current marketing, vendors, spend, systems, and team. A clear read on what is working, what is wasting money, and what is missing entirely. Then a written plan with priorities, owners, and timelines. You will know exactly where you stand before you are asked to commit to anything long term.

What if we want to hire a full-time CMO eventually?

Good. That is often the goal. Part of the job is building the marketing function to the point where a full-time leader has something to lead, and helping you hire the right one when you get there.

Ready to Put a Real Marketing Executive in the Room?

If you are serious about scaling, the next step is not doing more. It is having someone accountable for whether what you are doing works. Let's have a conversation about where your marketing actually stands and whether this is the right move for your business.

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