A fractional CMO gives a Vancouver company executive marketing leadership part-time, without the cost or the commitment of a full-time hire. Point Média is based in Montréal and works with BC companies remotely, which matters for one specific reason: if your growth plan includes Québec, a Vancouver-based marketing lead generally cannot run that market in its own language.
What you are actually buying
Not campaigns. Direction. A fractional CMO decides what to do, in what order, with what budget, and then holds your vendors to it. The work usually looks like this:
- A plan with a priority order. Most founder-led companies have six marketing initiatives running at once and no way to say which one to stop. That is the first thing to fix.
- Someone directing the vendors. Your SEO freelancer, your ads agency, your designer. Each may be competent. If you are the one translating between them, you are doing a CMO's job in the margins of your own.
- Results you can read. A definition of success that lets you tell, from a report, whether to spend more or stop.
- AI search visibility. Buyers increasingly get an answer from ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI results instead of a list of links. Being the company those tools cite is a distinct discipline from ranking, and it is where Point Média concentrates. How that works.
If you want the role defined from scratch: what a fractional CMO is. If you are deciding whether you need one yet: when to hire one, and when not to.
Why a Montréal-based CMO for a BC company
Worth being direct about this, since you are likely comparing local options.
Fractional CMO work is direction, not daily presence. It happens in strategy sessions, vendor calls, written plans and results reviews. That is remote work even when both parties live in the same city, which is why most fractional engagements in Canada are run that way regardless of geography.
Two things do genuinely differ:
- The time difference works for you. Montréal is three hours ahead of Vancouver. A morning of work is finished before your day starts, and anything you send in your afternoon is picked up first thing. Meetings land in your morning, which is usually the easier half of a founder's day to protect.
- Québec is a market you can actually enter. This is the real reason to consider a Montréal-based lead. Québec is one of the largest provincial markets in the country and it does not respond to translated English marketing. If selling into it is on your three-year plan, hiring a marketing lead who works in French is a shortcut you cannot buy locally. Point Média runs both markets, and this site exists in French because that is the standard.
If neither of those matters to you and you want someone who can be in your boardroom on Thursday, hire locally. That is the honest answer.
Who this fits in British Columbia
The fit is narrower than most people selling the service admit. It works when all three are true:
- You are founder-led. Decisions still run through the owner, so direction can actually change when someone senior recommends it.
- Marketing matters to how you make money. If you grow entirely through referrals or a sales team's relationships, marketing leadership is not your constraint.
- You can fund execution. A strategy with no budget behind it produces a document and a bill.
In practice that means established, owner-operated businesses with a real reputation and a weak digital footprint: considered-purchase products, specialty retail, trades and construction, manufacturing, professional services. Businesses where the product is genuinely good and the problem is that the market cannot find it.
What it costs
Published market ranges for fractional CMO retainers run roughly $5,000 to $15,000 a month, with most engagements landing between $5,000 and $8,000. Point Média works on a flat monthly retainer with no minimum commitment, which means the engagement continues because it is working, not because a contract says so.
For the comparison against a full-time hire and against an agency, with sources: what a fractional CMO costs and fractional CMO vs agency vs full-time.
The proof
One documented engagement, stated plainly. Futon d'or is a Montréal furniture and mattress retailer. Over two years of the engagement, net sales grew approximately 85%, including +38% year over year in 2025. That is a specialty retailer with a strong offline reputation and a weak digital footprint, which is the profile this work suits.
There is no BC client yet, and no BC case study to show you. Point Média is a solo practice and says so. The full case study.
When not to hire one
- You need hands, not direction. If you know exactly what to do and need it built, hire a specialist or an agency.
- Nobody internally will own the work. Even a hands-on fractional CMO needs someone inside answering questions and approving things.
- You want a result in 30 days. Six months is the realistic window. Anyone promising faster is selling something else.
Point Média works with one client per vertical, on a flat monthly retainer with no minimum commitment. The first call is a conversation about whether this is the right purchase for you, including when it is not.
Sources
- Fractional CMO retainer ranges as published by providers and industry roundups, reviewed October 2026. See the cost page for the itemized comparison and its sources.
- Futon d'or net sales growth: client-reported figures over the engagement period, 2024 to 2026.