SaaS Fractional CMO
AI-native marketing leadership for B2B SaaS
I'm Corey Haines — and for B2B SaaS companies that need senior marketing leadership without the cost or risk of a full-time hire, I work as a fractional CMO.
Most founders don't realize they need a fractional CMO until founder-led marketing stops working. Leads slow down. Messaging drifts. The team is shipping content but not the right content. Acquisition costs creep up. The gap between "we should be doing marketing" and "we have marketing that works" starts to look like a chasm — and the next obvious hire is a $300K+ CMO you can't responsibly commit to before the motion is proven. That's the gap I fill.
Who this is for
I work best with B2B SaaS companies that look like this:
- Post-PMF — the product is working, customers are buying, but marketing has been founder-led and is starting to crack.
- Stage doesn't matter much — I work with everything from bootstrapped post-MVP companies through Series B SaaS. The flexible compensation (cash, equity, or profit-share) is what makes that range possible.
- You want an AI-native marketing leader — not someone who treats AI as a productivity hack, but someone who's rebuilt how the work gets done around it.
- You want craft, not hype — clear positioning, honest copy, measurable funnels, real pipeline. No growth-hacking theater.
What I own end-to-end
When I'm your fractional CMO, marketing reports to me and I report to you. Specifically, I own:
- Positioning and messaging — category framing, ICP, landing pages, sales enablement.
- Demand generation strategy — channel mix, budget allocation, testing roadmap, attribution.
- Content and AI search (GEO) — SEO, programmatic content, citation in ChatGPT / Perplexity / Claude / AI Overviews.
- Lifecycle and retention — onboarding, activation, expansion, churn prevention.
- Sales-marketing alignment — handoff, SLAs, pipeline reporting that sales actually trusts.
- Team, vendors, and tools — hiring, structuring, and managing the marketing org. Picking and replacing agencies, freelancers, and the marketing stack.
- Board and founder reporting — monthly leadership review, board-deck-ready pipeline numbers, clear narrative on what's working and what's next.
What "AI-native" actually means here
Most fractional CMOs use AI the way most people use a calculator — for the tedious bits. AI-native delivery is the opposite. The engagement is built around AI agents and tools doing the work that doesn't require senior judgment: research, first-draft copy, lifecycle automation, reporting, monitoring. The output is what a senior marketing leader running things solo would produce. The difference is throughput — more positioning iterations, more campaigns, more experiments, at the same retainer.
I'm the creator of Marketing Skills, an open-source library of AI agent skills for marketing tasks built for Claude Code and other AI coding tools. The same skills I open-sourced for the marketing community are what I use inside fractional CMO engagements every day.
How engagements work
Every engagement is structured around how much marketing leadership you actually need. I usually work in one of these shapes:
Strategy & leadership
I set the strategy, build the plan, manage whoever's executing (your team, freelancers, agencies), and run a weekly leadership rhythm with you and the team. You get a senior CMO in the room without the headcount.
Strategy + execution oversight
Everything in the previous tier, plus hands-on campaign oversight, copywriting passes, ad reviews, and 1:1 coaching for whoever on your team is doing the doing. Right when you have a small marketing function that needs senior attention to actually ship well.
Fractional CMO + Conversion Factory team
When you need execution muscle beyond what I can provide alone, I integrate Conversion Factory — my agency — into the engagement. I stay as the strategic lead and accountable owner; the Conversion Factory team handles positioning sprints, websites, content systems, lifecycle, and AI-driven growth.
Open to equity or profit-share. Compensation can be a straight cash retainer, a mix of cash and equity, or profit-share. For early-stage SaaS where cash is tight but the upside is real, an aligned structure usually beats a pure retainer for both of us. We'll figure out what makes sense on the first call.
Why hire me as your fractional CMO
I've worked with 100+ startups, run marketing at venture-backed SaaS companies, and bootstrapped my own products to revenue. I run Conversion Factory, a marketing agency for B2B SaaS, and write SwipeFiles, a newsletter read by 30,000+ marketers and founders.
Most "AI marketing" advice online is written by people who learned about marketing from AI. I learned about marketing first — then built the tools I wished existed. More about me here, or read what I've been writing. I'm also available as an AI marketing consultant for project work or as a keynote speaker.
Get in touch
I take on a small number of fractional CMO engagements at a time because the role is genuinely full-fat — not a logo on a deck. If that sounds like a fit, send me a message and we'll figure it out.
Common questions
What is a fractional CMO?
A senior marketing leader who runs your marketing on a part-time, ongoing retainer instead of a full-time hire. Same scope as a full-time CMO — strategy, team, funnel, board reporting — at a fraction of the cost and commitment.
When should I hire one — and when shouldn't I?
Hire one after product-market fit, when founder-led marketing is breaking down. Don't hire one pre-PMF — marketing leadership amplifies what's working, it doesn't substitute for the product work that determines whether anything is working yet.
Fractional CMO vs. marketing consultant?
A consultant gives recommendations and leaves the implementation to you. A fractional CMO owns the marketing function — strategy, team, funnel, and the outcome. Same person can do both, but the engagement is structurally different. I do both — consulting work lives here.
Fractional CMO vs. agency?
An agency is execution muscle. A fractional CMO is leadership. You usually need both — the fractional CMO sets strategy and hires/manages the agency; the agency does the work the strategy calls for. For my own engagements I can integrate Conversion Factory when execution muscle is what's missing.
Fractional CMO vs. full-time CMO?
A full-time CMO is right when the motion is proven, the marketing org needs a leader 5 days a week, and you can justify $300K+ in salary plus equity. Most B2B SaaS companies below $20M ARR aren't there yet. A fractional CMO buys you that judgment without the commitment.
How do you charge?
Pricing depends on hours, scope, and structure. The structure itself is flexible — a straight cash retainer, a mix of cash and equity, or profit-share. For early-stage SaaS where cash is tight but the upside is real, an aligned structure usually beats a pure retainer. We set the specifics on the first call once we know what the engagement actually needs.
What does "AI-native" delivery actually mean?
Every part of the engagement is built around AI agents and tools doing the work that doesn't require senior judgment — research, first-draft copy, lifecycle automation, reporting, monitoring. The output is what a senior marketing leader running things solo would produce. The difference is throughput, not vibe.
Do you work with companies outside B2B SaaS?
As a fractional CMO, B2B SaaS is the niche. For other models — services, ecommerce, consumer, or one-off projects — consulting is usually a better fit.