Most founders in this spot have already paid for a plan
By the time the founder of a freight, insurance or advisory firm gets on a call with me, he has bought marketing before. There's a brand audit or a plan with a channel strategy and a content calendar in a drawer, paid for and never run. Some also hired a marketer who spent a year on brochures and booth graphics.
When I ask founders in these markets why they're looking, the most common answer is an agency or freelancer that never understood the niche. In practice that means articles explaining captive insurance to owners who already use the term 831(b), or freight posts any broker in the country could have published.
What these firms lack is someone to build the plan and run it, week after week, on the two hours a month the founder can give. In a 30-person firm with two reps and a founder who is still the best salesperson in the building, nobody has that job. The plan assumed a marketing department the firm doesn't have.
I know how those plans get made. I learned this work inside agencies and ran client accounts as an agency's accounts director before I started Kung Pow in 2021. Across more than ten years I've helped 123 businesses, including four Fortune 500 brands, and managed more than $11M in Google Ads spend. From the inside, a plan is the easiest thing an agency sells, because it has a due date. Running it for a year in a market the agency is still learning has no due date, and the work drifts.
Price the help off one client
Before you compare one fee against another, compare it against what one of your customers is worth. If one new client covers a year of the fee, the fee is easy to defend to your partners. If it takes five, you're buying the wrong thing or paying too much for it.
Founders in these markets already think this way about their own business. The co-founder of an LTL freight provider we work with did the math in his first email: "if we're paying $500 to $1,000 per qualified lead and closing at 33%, that's an easy trade we'd make every day." A shipper running 50 LTL shipments a month at $65 gross profit each is worth about $39K a year to that firm, and in the firm's own words, "Once they see the difference, they don't leave." At a captive insurance advisory firm, one signed client pays back $15,000 to $20,000 of marketing spend on its own. The president of an independent wealth management firm, whose new clients each bring $1M or more in assets, put it in one line: "I don't need volume. I'm not a dentist."
I use the same math to decide who we take on. Here is my filter, word for word: "If they don't want to talk about acquisition costs or they don't know what their lifetime value is, or they can't compare that to our fees, we're just not even speaking the same language." Acquisition cost is what you spend to win a client. Lifetime value is what that client is worth to you over all the years they stay. A founder who can't put a number on either isn't ready to hire anyone yet, us included, because he has no way to judge whether the work paid off.
What one client covers
Put in what one of your clients is worth and a monthly fee you've been quoted by any of the options on this page.
One client worth $100K a year who stays 5 years brings in $500K, which covers 63 months of fees at $8,000 a month. One new client a year covers the fee from first-year revenue alone. If the help lands 3 best-fit clients, a year of fees comes back 15.6 times over.
The $8,000 fee is a placeholder. Replace it with a real quote from any option on this page. Use gross profit per client if that's how you think about value. The return counts the full years those clients stay against one year of fees and leaves out the referrals they send.
In these markets one good client covers years of help, so the question to put to any option is whether it's built to produce best-fit clients. Take a firm that had 60 qualified meetings last year. With the founder's name in front of the right buyers before the first call, those 60 could have been 120, and 3 to 6 best-fit deals over the life of the work pay for it many times over.
We price our own work the same way, off the value of one of your customers, and quote after the first call once we know your deal size and sales cycle. If one new client wouldn't cover a year of the work, I'll tell you so on that call.
Six kinds of help, compared fairly
Marketing help comes in six forms, and each one is the right answer for somebody. The right one for you depends on which gap you have.
A fractional CMO (chief marketing officer) is a senior marketing executive you hire part-time, for a few days a month, to set the strategy and budget and direct the people doing the work. The CMO decides what gets done, and someone else has to do it.
A marketing hire
The catch with a hire is who you can afford and what one person can do. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the median pay for marketing managers at $166,790 a year in May 2025, before benefits. A 30-person firm hires below that, a coordinator or a generalist, and the office turns that person into its production desk. Even a strong hire can't be the strategist, the writer in your voice, the list builder and the ad buyer at once. A marketing hire becomes a good buy once there's a program for them to run.
A fractional CMO
For some firms a fractional CMO is the right call. If you already have people or vendors (an in-house coordinator, an ads agency, a PR firm) and nobody senior deciding what they should do and in what order, a fractional CMO fills exactly that seat.
A fractional CMO sells senior judgment. An agency sells production, meaning the posts, ads and pages made to a brief someone else wrote. A founder with a team and no direction is short on judgment. A founder with nothing running is short on both, and buying only the judgment leaves him paying a senior person to write the next plan for the drawer.
Freelancers for each channel
A good LinkedIn writer, a good ads person and a good designer each cost less than an agency and each do their piece well. Nobody owns how the pieces fit, so the founder becomes the project manager, the one job he has the least time for.
A channel agency
An shop, an ads shop or a PR firm goes deep on one channel and reports on it. When you know which channel you need, that depth is worth paying for. For a founder with nothing running, the agency learns your market on your money, and most channel agencies run a training firm selling $40,000 classes and a captive insurance firm through the same template.
An outbound appointment-setting firm
These firms book meetings by sending cold email and LinkedIn messages in your name to a list they bought or scraped. In a market of a few thousand decision makers, that list is your entire market, and the people on it already "get hit by 10 of these people every show," as a partner at a 3PL put it. I tell founders this plainly: "Authoritative, desirable people do not cold-pitch DMs on LinkedIn. Junior people do that. Hungry people do that." For the founder of a 3PL and eCommerce company we work with, people who had already liked or commented on his content accepted his connection request 81% of the time, against 21% for cold requests with a personal note.
A founder-led program
This is what we run. One owner handles the strategy and the production. Everything we publish comes from interviews with you, in your voice, and it's aimed at a short list we call the Sniper Sheet, which holds the companies you should be doing business with and the people inside them who sign or influence the deal. We warm up the people on that list by engaging with their posts, with no pitch, before anyone asks for a meeting.
My rule of thumb is that a firm under about $10M in revenue with nothing running should buy both from one owner. Above that, with a marketing team or vendors already in place, a fractional CMO directing them is the better buy, and I'll tell you so on a call.
| Option | What you're paying for | Who builds the target list | Who writes in your voice | Who protects your two hours | What you own when it ends | How it fails |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marketing hire | A full-time salary, benefits and tools. | The hire, if they know how to build one. | The hire, after months of learning the business. | You do, by managing them. | Whatever they documented. | The office fills their week with brochures and booth graphics. |
| Fractional CMO | Senior judgment a few days a month. | They define it. Someone else builds it. | Nobody. They direct the writers. | They do, if there's a team to direct. | A plan, plus whatever the team built. | Nobody executes, and the plan joins the others in the drawer. |
| Freelancers per channel | Production by the piece or the hour. | Nobody, unless you hire a researcher too. | A writer working from your notes, if you write notes. | Nobody. You become the project manager. | The files, if you kept them. | Each piece is fine and nothing adds up. |
| Channel agency (SEO, ads or PR) | Depth in one channel and a monthly report on it. | Their keyword or media list, built for their channel. | A junior writer on the account. | The account manager, inside their channel. | The ad account and site pages, if they're in your name. | Every problem gets their channel as the answer. |
| Outbound appointment setting | Meetings booked from cold messages sent in your name. | They buy or scrape one. | A template with your name on it. | They fill your calendar with cold meetings. | Very little. The sequences stop when the contract does. | Your market hears the same pitch from you as from ten other vendors. |
| Founder-led program (Kung Pow) | One owner for strategy and production, built from your interviews. | We build the Sniper Sheet with you. | We do, from your interviews and your written red lines. | We do. You give an hour every other week and a few minutes per approval. | The list, the content library, the newsletter and the network. | The founder can't give the interviews, or needs deals this quarter. |
Splitting the work across vendors fails
Many founders who've been burned build the next attempt from parts: a freelancer for LinkedIn, an agency for ads, a designer for the booth. I tell each of them the same thing. "You can't chop things up and distribute them across multiple freelancers or it's never going to work. You need one centralized strategy aimed at one very specific buyer."
Split vendors argue SEO against ads against LinkedIn because each of them sells one. When your whole market is a couple of thousand decision makers, what matters is the order things happen in, and that order depends on what's ready: the list, the content, the offer and the follow-up. Nobody who sells a single channel is paid to hold it.
We run no paid ads until three things exist: a proof asset worth sending people to (a guide, a case study, an offer with a guarantee behind it), the follow-up that catches them when they respond, and the tracking that shows which of them became pipeline. For the LTL freight provider, the proof asset was its booth offer: a free dimensioner, a review of the prospect's last 30 days of freight data and a no-reweigh guarantee, demoed live at the booth. The same offer also ran as a search ad campaign. We published 21 guides for the firm and sent a customer story to a furniture trade publication's list. In phase one, $11.5K in ad spend produced $336K in pipeline, and one $84K deal closed in 70 days at a 6.1x .
The same client also showed what happens when one piece runs without the others. Ahead of a furniture market, the show's 16,600 exhibitors were filtered to companies doing $50M to $200M in revenue, which left 318 decision makers. LinkedIn connection requests went out to those 318 without the founder content that was planned to go with them. The co-founder summed it up: "Not great TBH ... 4.4% accept rate, only 5 total." The list was right, but with nothing published that those buyers had already seen, the request read like any other vendor's.
Split vendors also skip the channels that close deals in these markets, which are shows, reps and referrals. The captive insurance advisory firm got 75 to 85% of its business by referral through brokers and CPAs, and in one pipeline, 3 of 5 deals were stalled by the prospect's own CPA. The 3PL works 10+ shows a year with one business development lead at the booth, and between shows more than 1,000 contacts went cold. A program for either firm has to reach the CPAs and brokers as well as the owners, warm the show list before the doors open and follow up after.
Most agencies don't build that, because it's hard to bill against. A rebuild produces monthly deliverables whether or not it produces customers. A pre-show program produces booth meetings, which don't fit on a monthly list of deliverables.
How to judge anyone you're about to hire
Whatever form you pick, the first call tells you most of what you need. Listen for what they ask before they quote, then push on the questions below. Use them on us too.
Did they ask your deal size, close rate and sales cycle before quoting? Someone who quotes a package before knowing what a client is worth to you is pricing their own time.
Who on their team will learn your industry, and how? Ask who will write about freight claims or 831(b) elections, and what they'll read first. The captive firm's principal described what decided it for them: "From day one, Kyle took the time to deeply understand our industry, target audience, and business objectives. This wasn't just another contract for him." If the answer is a junior writer and an intake questionnaire, expect the same content your last agency sent.
What would make them tell you to stop? Anyone selling a monthly retainer has a reason to keep it going. Ask what result would make them recommend ending it, and by when. If they can't name it on the sales call, they won't say it in month nine.
What do they report? An agency that reports is counting leads by rules it wrote itself. Ask for the report they'd send in month three. Look for numbers your sales lead would recognize (meetings, conversations with named accounts, pipeline, signed clients), written so your least marketing-minded partner can tell in two minutes whether it's working.
Will it sound like you, and what's their interview process? In these markets, generic content is worse than none, because the buyers who matter will read it as you. The CEO of a consulting and training firm we've worked with held drafts to that standard: "You want to be able to protect the brand." Ask how they'll get your knowledge out of your head. Ours comes out in a recorded interview every other week, which that same CEO put at "probably 45 minutes of total work on our end."
How we work, month by month
Every engagement opens with a fixed-fee first step, a diagnostic or a first phase of about 90 days, so you see the work before you commit to the ongoing program. Every client works with me directly, and the client list stays short so that stays true.
The document pull
You send everything: sales decks, show handouts, proposals, email templates, reports. I read all of it before we talk, so the first interview's questions come from your own material.
The kickoff interview, and the Sniper Sheet started
A recorded interview built from that reading, then a follow-up. Your red lines (topics to avoid, confidentiality, claims you won't make) get written down once. The Sniper Sheet starts the same week and comes out shorter than most founders expect.
First content live
LinkedIn posts in your voice, built from the interview, each approved in a few minutes. The newsletter, articles and guides follow from the same interviews.
The warm-up running, and a written 90-day objective
We connect with people on the list after they've engaged with your posts, comment on theirs and start conversations, with no pitch. You get a written 90-day objective with the we'll report against.
The first conversations handed off
When someone on the list is ready to talk business, you or your sales lead take it. Before that call we can prepare a custom breakdown of the prospect's own numbers or a short custom video. If a show is coming, the pre-show program starts, so booth meetings get set before you fly.
A review written for your partners
What moved against the objective, what it cost and what comes next, written so a partner who isn't a marketer can read it in two minutes.
The ongoing program
An interview every other week, a monthly recap you can forward and a written plan each quarter. Search, press and podcasts come in once the core program is producing conversations, and paid ads run only behind proof assets that already work.
Each stage has its own guide in this series: the Sniper Sheet and the warm-up in account-based marketing for founder-led firms, the interviews and the content in founder-led marketing, and the pre-show program in trade show marketing. One idea sits behind all three. In my words, "We make you micro-famous with the 2,000 best customers for your business in your market."
Want to see what your first 90 days would look like? Bring your deal size and your sales cycle. I'll tell you on the call whether this fits.
Book a qualification callWhat your partners need to see
The founder hires us, but partners who weren't on the sales call, a coordinator who carries the reports upstairs and a sales lead who decides whether marketing gets credit all have to believe it's working. They need numbers to stand on.
The sales lead at the 3PL said it plainly: "I don't want to come back to [the founder] and the other owners and saying, 'Well, we got close.'" At a quarterly review, the partners asked the question partners always get to: "How are we getting that number?" When a deal can take a year or more to close, the answer starts with the leading indicators we write into the 90-day objective, then shows the pipeline as it arrives. Here is one client's report with real numbers.
The captive insurance advisory firm has worked with us since April 2024. Here are the retention numbers across our client list, and that firm's result.
That firm's outside marketing consultant put it this way:
We haven't worked with someone who's cared at this deep of a level and also is skilled.
The other thing partners watch is the founder's time. The 3PL founder told us that "the follow through is my downfall." Later he described the arrangement in terms his partners could weigh against the fee: "Kyle has absorbed a lot of that to offload from me." For a founder who is still the firm's best salesperson, hours handed back are part of the return.
Who we turn away
A short client list only works if I'm honest about fit on the first call. These are the cases where I'll tell you no.
One customer is worth under about $10K a year, with no long relationship behind it. At that value the math in chapter 02 breaks, because it takes too many new clients to cover any serious program. A good ads specialist running volume is the better buy.
You need leads this month, or closed deals inside a quarter, on a long sales cycle. The captive firm's buyers can take "three to five years" to decide. The program puts you in front of them well before they're ready, and it can't move their calendar to match yours.
You won't make time for the interviews. Everything we write comes from them. A founder who can't give an hour every other week gets content that sounds like everyone else's, and his buyers notice.
You want results before you commit anything. A defined first step on agreed terms works, which is why every engagement opens with a fixed-fee first phase. A prospect who won't commit anything until results appear is asking us to fund his marketing.
"Advertising is a nice to have." One founder told us exactly that, asked for a guarantee and stopped about a month after the ads launched. If marketing is optional to you, the first month without a signed deal will end it.
If none of that describes you, go back to the math in chapter 02. You already know what one of your clients is worth. Hire whoever will build the program and run it on two hours of your month, at a fee one new client from your market would cover.
Questions founders ask us about this
Is a fractional CMO cheaper than an agency?
A fractional CMO's fee buys a few days a month of one senior person's judgment. You still pay someone to build and run what the CMO decides, whether that's a hire, freelancers or an agency.
So compare totals: the CMO plus the people who execute, against one program that does both. Then run either number against what one of your clients is worth.
Should I just hire a marketer?
Hire once there's a program for them to run. In a firm with nothing running, a first marketing hire ends up as the office's production desk, turning out brochures, booth graphics and website edits.
A senior marketer who can own strategy is expensive. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the median pay for marketing managers at $166,790 a year in May 2025, before benefits. A coordinator hired later, once there's a list, a content library and a calendar to take over, has a real job from day one.
Can we keep our current ads or SEO vendor?
Yes, if they're doing good work in their channel. We set the target list and the order things happen in, and they keep running their channel inside that plan.
What doesn't work is two strategies aimed at two different buyers. If your vendor's plan and ours point at different people, we'll say so in the first month and you can decide.
What does it cost?
We price off the value of one of your customers and quote after the first call, once we know your deal size and sales cycle. Engagements start with a fixed-fee first step, a diagnostic or a first phase of about 90 days, so you see the work before you commit to the ongoing program.
If one new client wouldn't cover a year of the work, Kyle will tell you on the call.
How long is the commitment?
The first step is fixed and short, about 90 days, and ends with a review written for your partners. The ongoing program runs on terms we agree in writing once the plan is set, with a new written plan each quarter.
B2B clients in these markets have stayed with us a median of 328 days, and many sales cycles here run longer than a year, so give it at least two or three quarters to show up in pipeline.
What do you need from me each month?
An hour every other week for the interview, a few minutes to approve each piece, and you or your sales lead taking the conversations when someone on the list is ready to talk. At the start we also need your documents and one conversation about your red lines.
The CEO of a consulting and training firm we've worked with put the interview process at "probably 45 minutes of total work on our end."
What happens if it isn't working?
You'll see it in the leading indicators well before you'd see it in pipeline. If people on your list aren't accepting, replying or asking to connect by the second month, we change the approach and say so in the monthly recap.
If the problem is the market or the offer rather than the execution, Kyle will tell you plainly, including telling you to stop. The 90-day review is written so your partners can judge it for themselves.