Fractional CMO for law firms: one senior owner for the whole plan

A fractional CMO from Probative is our founder, working with your firm every week as head of growth. The role owns the plan: how much to spend, where, on which vendors, and when to hire, all judged on signed cases and set against what your intake team can handle. It is included from $100k a month of managed ad spend, and can be added to any package or to independent measurement below that.

Why firms need one

Most law firms make marketing decisions without a senior marketing owner. 68% of firms with fewer than 50 lawyers have no written marketing strategy (Best Law Firms), and 88% of attorneys say law school taught them nothing about marketing (Martindale-Avvo). So budgets follow the loudest vendor, renewals roll over by default, and nobody adds up what the whole program signs.

A full-time marketing leader solves that, at a cost: the median pay for advertising, promotions and marketing managers is about $167,000 a year before benefits (BLS). Fractional CMOs for law firms are commonly quoted at a few thousand to about fifteen thousand dollars a month (Lawyer Marketing Experts). Ours differs in one way that matters: the same person who sets the plan reads your Monday signed-case report every week, so the advice rests on your records, not on vendor reports.

What the role owns

Signs your firm needs one

• Three or more marketing vendors, and no one who adds up what they sign together.
• A renewal coming up, and no clear view of what the current contract delivered.
• Partners who argue about marketing from different numbers.
• A plan to open an office, add a practice or add Spanish, with no model of what it would take.
• Ad spend that grows each year while intake staffing stays the same.
• A marketing director who wants a senior counterpart, or a seat no one has filled.

The first 30 days

A quarter with a fractional CMO

• Every week: a working session with your marketing lead or managing partner, the Monday report reviewed together, and decisions logged.
• Every month: the monthly report, vendor scorecards updated, and the forecast refreshed against the month’s results.
• Every quarter: a review with the partners, a check of last quarter’s forecast against what happened, the next quarter’s plan, and the tests to run.
• As needed: contract and renewal reviews, hiring help, and answers to “what if” questions within 3 business days.

TV, billboards and everything clicks can’t see

Over 90% of injury claimants report seeing attorney ads, mostly on TV (Insurance Research Council). Yet a TV spot never gets a click. So TV, radio and billboards are judged three ways, side by side:

1. Their own phone numbers, used only by that medium, so a call to the TV number is a TV call.
2. What callers say. Intake asks “How did you hear about us?” and codes the answer to a fixed list.
3. Fair tests by area. Spend steps down or up in some markets while similar markets stay the same, and we compare signed cases. Tools such as Meta’s open-source GeoLift (GitHub) and Google’s geo-based lift studies, which can use a firm’s own offline conversions (Google), make this practical at the budgets TV runs at.

Attribution gives TV no credit at all, and that’s wrong. Giving it credit for every brand search is also wrong. A test is the only fair judge.

How the role is judged

• Signed cases and cost per signed case, across every channel and vendor, from your own records.
• Forecast accuracy. Each quarter we compare the last forecast with what happened, and report the error. About 8 months in 10 should land between the low and high forecasts; if they don’t, the forecast is wrong and we say so.
• Decisions kept. Every material decision goes into a dated log, with who made it and why, so the partners can review the calls, not just the results.

When we also run some of your channels

If Probative runs part of your marketing, the fractional CMO is grading our own work. The Probative Standard sets the rules for that:

• Every channel we manage shows its latest test result beside its cost per signed case, or the words “no test yet.”
• Before we suggest raising a budget we run by more than 30%, we show the evidence, or say there isn’t any and propose a test.
• Our fees are never a percentage of spend, so a bigger budget doesn’t pay us more.

Ethics notes

• We advise on marketing, never on law. Decisions about fees, case selection and client communication belong to your partners and your attorney.
• Vendor contracts are reviewed for marketing terms such as ownership and exit. Their legal terms are for your counsel.
• We never take a referral fee or commission from a vendor we oversee without telling you in writing first, and we choose vendors on fit.

How it changes by practice

• Personal injury: TV, billboards and lead vendors are common, so cross-channel judgment matters most here.
• Criminal defense: staffing for nights and weekends is often the first budget decision.
• Employment law: long timelines mean the forecast and fee-shifting math drive the plan.
• Immigration: language staffing and office hours shape everything else.

From $100k of managed ad spend, the role comes with your plan. See the pricing page, or read how we work.