About
I run growth and retention as one job, because they are one job.
Tracy Hart
Fractional CMO & Client Success Leadership
Most fractional CMOs are hired to fix the top of the funnel: more leads, more traffic, a better campaign calendar. That work matters, but it answers half the question — and if you’ve watched new customers come in the front door while the ones you already won quietly walk out the back, you already know why half an answer isn’t enough.
This work goes by several titles — fractional CMO, fractional VP of Marketing, outsourced CMO, Revenue Operations leadership. The title changes by industry; the job underneath it doesn’t.
How I Work
One math problem, not two disciplines.
I don’t split it that way. What you can afford to spend to win a customer depends entirely on how long that customer sticks around, and how much they’re worth once they do. Treating acquisition and retention as separate disciplines, run by separate people with separate dashboards, is how businesses end up spending confidently on the wrong channel and guessing at the right one. I own both, so the math only has to get done once — and it gets done correctly.
That includes hands-on time in the platforms themselves, from Google Ads, Local Services Ads, and Meta/Facebook to LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and Nextdoor where they’re the right fit, plus organic search and Google Business Profile management. I’ve built the campaigns, audiences, and retargeting myself, not just directed someone else who ran them.
What is this business actually trying to become?
Every engagement starts with the question underneath the question — not which metric moved last month, but what growth is supposed to build toward. That framing shapes every recommendation that follows.
Where's the real gap?
What you say you want and what your numbers actually show are usually two different stories. The second step is finding the distance between them — in acquisition, in retention, or both.
Where can data surface it fast?
Once the gap is defined, the fastest way to see its edges is across every account and channel at once — more than one person could scan by hand. This is where data and AI tooling earn their keep: not watching people, but clearing the runway so the pattern is visible in days, not a full season.
Then judgment — the part a tool can't do.
Data shows you the shape of the problem. Deciding what to actually do about it — which contracts to renegotiate, which channel to cut, which account needs a different offer — takes judgment built from doing this work directly, not a dashboard.
The Discipline
A written record, not just a good quarter.
Every engagement produces documentation of what was asked, what the data showed, and what was decided — not because it looks thorough, but because a recommendation nobody can trace back to evidence is just an opinion with better formatting. That discipline is what turns a good quarter into a repeatable one.
Where this applies — eight industries today
Each has very different customers but the same underlying growth and retention math. The deepest engagement history so far is in the first few; the underlying approach — question, then the real gap, then data at scale, then judgment — travels well beyond them. That local-market knowledge is part of what travels with me from one engagement to the next: referral networks, review and reputation management, local search visibility, community and cross-promotional relationships. The specifics change by industry and by market, but knowing how to build and read them doesn’t reset with each new client, wherever that client happens to be.
Background
Credentials
A mathematics and fine arts background, plus formal training in project leadership, agile delivery, and growth marketing — built across agency leadership, client delivery, and growth strategy work.
- PMP
- CAPM
- DASM
- Google Ads Search Certified
- B.A. Mathematics
- M.A. Fine Arts
Curious if this is the right fit?
A 45-minute conversation is enough to tell.