Most fractional CMOs grow your revenue.
I grow your multiple.
Predictable pipelines. Lean operations. Exit-ready businesses.
A fractional CMO partnership for owner-led businesses doing $1M–$10M, in home services, legal and professional services, who want a marketing engine that runs without them and a business worth selling when they’re ready.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What I do.
Fractional CMO
Ongoing senior marketing leadership: strategy, systems, team and numbers, from $2,500 a month.
Learn more →Exit Readiness & Due Diligence
See your marketing the way a buyer will, then fix what they’d find. Snapshot from $500.
Learn more →Marketing Strategy & Roadmap
A written strategy and 90-day roadmap built on the Ronin Method.
Learn more →Local SEO
A built-out Google Business Profile and a website optimized to outrank your local competitors.
Learn more →SEO & AEO
Rank in Google and get cited by AI search, with visibility a buyer can underwrite.
Learn more →Website Design
Fast sites built to rank and convert. From $1,000, or free with an SEO plan.
Learn more →What the work has looked like in practice.
Client names withheld.
No Consistent Leads
A strategy-first build across organic search and cold email turned an unpredictable pipeline into steady new business, sustained month after month.
New Booked Clients a Month
Invisible in Local Search
A local SEO rebuild took the company from obscurity to the top of Google’s results for “IT support near me” across a major metro.
In 5 of the 6 Largest Suburbs
Clayton Joyner, Mastermind Peer
“He views marketing through the lens of enterprise value and M&A readiness, not just clicks or impressions. He builds transferable infrastructure that reduces founder dependency and actually compounds a business’s valuation multiple.”
Tailored Communications Plans to Drive Your Brand Success
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
If what comes next is on your mind, that’s the conversation Ronin is built for.
Justin Smith
Founder, Ronin Communications
Justin Smith founded Ronin in 2025 after more than twenty years in strategic communications and marketing for the federal government. He holds an M.A. in Strategic Communications from American University. 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 owners of home services, legal and professional services businesses whose growth means something to a buyer, a partner, or themselves, and that relationship is measured by whether the marketing function gets sharper, quarter over quarter.
How I work.
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