FRACTIONAL CMO · B2B MARKETING

Most fractional CMOs grow your revenue.
I grow your multiple.

Predictable pipelines. Lean operations. Exit-ready businesses.

A fractional CMO partnership for founder-led B2B service businesses doing $1M–$10M who want a marketing engine that runs without them and a business worth selling when they’re ready.

Schedule a Conversation Twenty minutes. No pitch deck.
HOW THE WORK GETS DONE

Strategy first, tactics second, growth that compounds.

The strategy work comes first: ICP, positioning, and the case for marketing as enterprise value. Then I build the infrastructure that delivers on it. From there, the engagement continues as your ongoing fractional CMO partnership, for as long as it keeps serving the business.

01

Strategy Before Tactics

Every engagement opens with research and positioning before anyone touches a channel. The method, the ICP, and the case for enterprise value get nailed down before a dollar moves on tactics.

02

Marketing as Enterprise Value

Founders thinking about exit need more than impressions and form fills. I build the work around the metrics a buyer actually underwrites: pipeline predictability, retention, customer concentration, and how transferable the marketing function is when due diligence shows up.

03

An Operator in the Seat

Once the system is built, the work continues as your ongoing fractional CMO partnership: strategy and oversight, channel and vendor management, quarterly reviews tied to the multiple, and tactical execution when that's the fastest path. The function gets sharper the longer the same operator runs it.

SELECTED ENGAGEMENTS

What the work has looked like in practice.

All engagements anonymized at client request.

Home Exterior Renovation

Inherited a Struggling Program Days Before COVID Lockdowns

A strategy-first rebuild across SEO, paid search, and content, launched into a pandemic. Organic traffic climbed 545% year-over-year, and the company hired additional crews to keep up with inbound demand.

545%

Organic Traffic Growth, YoY

+ 54% drop in lead cost

Luxury Pool & Spa

Six-Figure Projects Lost to a Free Website and an Off-Brand Presence

Repositioned as a premium outdoor-living brand with a new identity, website, and lead-capture process. Five to six qualified leads per month for major construction projects.

1 Year

Project Calendar Booked Out

Building Materials Manufacturing

Tactical, Ad-Hoc Marketing. A Website That Didn’t Reflect the Brand.

Integrated strategy across web, social, SEO, and partner marketing. Around 5,000 monthly visitors. Ten sales-qualified leads per month. Year-over-year profitability held straight through the pandemic.

80

Monthly Inbound Inquiries

THE RONIN METHOD

Four stages, one operator, and a marketing function that compounds over time.

01

Map

Define the ICP and map the competitive terrain. Audit what exists, what’s working, and what won’t survive a buyer’s scrutiny. Strategy gets clarity before tactics get budget.

02

Build

Install the foundation: brand, content engine, AI-powered asset library, and the marketing infrastructure that runs without the founder. The asset is transferable, documented, and the kind of thing a buyer can actually underwrite.

03

Grow

Run the full customer journey: lead generation, nurture, conversion, retention, referral. Pipeline stops depending on what the founder personally generates each month and starts behaving like a system.

04

Multiply

Sharpen and automate the system, leaning spend down where the technology can carry the load. Margins climb, the pipeline gets more predictable, and the valuation case becomes one you can defend on a balance sheet.

WHO THIS IS FOR

Built for founders thinking about what the business is worth.

“Some have a clear exit timeline. Others haven’t said the word out loud yet, but their wealth advisor has, and it stuck.” — Justin Smith, Founder
Professional Services
IT & Managed Services
Healthcare Services
Engineering & Technical Consulting
Industrial-Adjacent Sectors

If what comes next is on your mind, that’s the conversation Ronin is built for.

THE FOUNDER

Justin Smith

Founder, Ronin Communications

Justin Smith founded Ronin in 2025 after twenty years in marketing leadership. He also runs an M&A advisory practice that shapes Ronin’s perspective: every engagement centers on enterprise value, and “I grow your multiple” is at the forefront of every partnership. Justin works with founders of B2B service businesses whose growth means something to a buyer, a board, or themselves, and that relationship is measured by whether the marketing function gets sharper, quarter over quarter.

Justin Smith, Founder of Ronin Communications
WHY RONIN

How I work.

Senior at the table You work directly with the operator who runs the strategy.
Plain answers If I don’t know, I say so. If I do, I explain it without jargon.
Independent No holding-company quotas, no service menu I need to upsell.
In the seat for the long arc A fractional CMO partnership is meant to be ongoing: the person who designs the strategy keeps running it quarter after quarter.
Tied to enterprise value If a tactic doesn’t help the multiple, it doesn’t make the plan.
GET IN TOUCH

If the timing is right, the calendar is open.

Twenty minutes, no pitch deck. Just a conversation about where the business is and where you’d like it to go.

Or write directly: justin.smith@ronincomms.com