What I Did as a Fractional CMO When My Client's Marketing Agency's Advice Felt Off

As a Fractional CMO, I work with companies that outsource different pieces of their marketing to outside agencies and contractors. More than once, I've gotten advice from a client's agency that felt off — even when I wasn't a specialist in whatever channel they were running.

Here are three real examples from my work with ClinicMind, a healthtech client. In each case I knew something was wrong before I could fully articulate why — which is probably true for a lot of business owners reading this, too.

Example 1: Sending Everyone to the Same Page

One thing that felt wrong to me was that people clicking on very specific ads were all being sent to general website pages.

To me, that felt like advertising a vegan restaurant, then handing people a 20-page menu with steak, sushi, and pizza on it and expecting them to figure it out themselves.

I pushed for dedicated landing pages based on what people were actually searching for. Once we did that, conversions improved and lead costs dropped significantly.

After the changes:

• The campaign in question increased from 6 leads to 27 leads
• Conversion rates improved from roughly 2% to 5.7%
• Cost per lead dropped from about $169 to $64

What regular business owners should watch for: If you feel like the agency is trying to cut corners, push back. In this case, someone who clicked an ad had to "hunt" for the thing they were promised, which is wrong.

Example 2: "More Traffic" That Didn't Feel Like Real Buyers

The advice was focused heavily on getting more clicks from more countries. On paper, the numbers looked good, but instinctively it felt like we were paying for attention instead of paying for real opportunities.

It reminded me of owning a luxury ski shop and celebrating that people in tropical countries are visiting your website, even though they'll probably never buy skis.

I pushed to focus only on regions where the business realistically sells its offering. That shift helped reduce wasted spend and improved lead quality. During the same quarter, our brand campaign cost per lead dropped from roughly $62 to $34, while overall lead volume increased.

What regular business owners should watch for: Ask yourself, "Would my sales team actually get excited about this lead?" If the answer is no, the traffic may not be helping your business, even if the numbers look impressive.

Example 3: Reports That Looked Good but Didn't Answer Simple Questions

The reporting initially had lots of charts and numbers, but I still couldn't answer very basic questions clearly:

• Which campaigns were producing actual opportunities?
• Which industries were converting?
• Which countries were wasting money?

That felt wrong to me. I pushed for cleaner tracking and simpler reporting that connected ad spend to actual business results.

Once we cleaned up the reporting structure, we identified tracking issues, recovered missing leads, and finally had visibility into which campaigns were actually producing results instead of just generating clicks.

What regular business owners should watch for: If your agency shows you a report full of metrics but you still can't confidently explain where your money is working, you probably need better reporting — not more data, and not necessarily a new agency.

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None of this required specialized paid-ads expertise. It required someone senior enough to trust the instinct that something felt off, and to keep asking questions until the answer made sense. That's a lot of what a fractional CMO actually does day to day — not running the campaigns myself, but making sure the people who do stay accountable to results that matter.