Straight answers for founders.

A fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader who works with your business part time, usually a set number of days a month. You get board-level marketing strategy, budget ownership and team leadership without the cost of a full-time executive hire.

When your marketing lead has left and the search will take months, when nobody senior has ever owned marketing, or when spend is rising but you can’t link it to results. A fractional CMO gives you senior leadership now, and helps you decide what permanent role you actually need.

An agency executes a brief. A fractional CMO sets the brief, owns the strategy and budget, holds agencies to account and reports to the leadership team on results. Many businesses use both, with the fractional CMO directing the agency.

Most broden.ai engagements run for five to six months, at four to five days a month. Every engagement is shaped around what the business needs, so the scope is agreed after the diagnostic call and the month-one review.

Yes. Part of the role is working out what marketing structure the business needs, then shaping the job, supporting the search and onboarding the new hire so they inherit strong foundations.

Used well, AI increases efficiency and output from the same team, makes it practical to measure which activity drives leads and revenue, and speeds up decisions. The key is senior oversight, so quality holds and AI spend goes where it pays back.

Start with repetitive, rules-based work: reporting, lead routing and follow-up, campaign set-up and first drafts of content. Keep strategy, positioning, final editing and client relationships with people.

Not if it is managed properly. AI handles volume and speed; experienced people set direction, edit and check accuracy. That combination usually raises quality, because the team has more time for the work that needs judgement.

Treat AI like any other budget line. Know what each tool costs, what work it replaces or improves, and what result it drives. Cut anything that can’t show a return.

Start by connecting spend to outcomes: leads, pipeline and revenue by channel. broden.ai’s month-one marketing review does exactly this, showing what is working, what isn’t and where the budget should move.

Attribution shows which marketing activity contributed to a sale. SMEs don’t need enterprise software for it, but they do need a consistent way to link spend to leads and revenue, or budget decisions are guesswork.

AEO is the work of getting your business named in answers from AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews. It builds on SEO, with a focus on clear answers, consistent information about your business and mentions on sites AI tools trust.

Publish clear, direct answers to the questions your buyers ask, keep your business details consistent across the web, and earn mentions on credible third-party sites. broden.ai’s free AEO framework sets out the full method.

Yes. AI tools draw heavily on content that already ranks and is well structured. Good SEO is the foundation; AEO adds the extra steps that make your content easy for AI to quote.

A conversation with Patrick Lynch about your business, your marketing and what’s holding it back. You leave with an honest read on where things stand and the one thing worth fixing first. No pitch.

Founders, CEOs and managing directors of UK B2B businesses, including PE and VC-backed companies, across sectors such as SaaS, fintech, professional services and ecommerce.

broden.ai is based in Teddington, south-west London. Patrick works with clients across London and the UK, in person and remotely.