Amrita Gurney’s LinkedIn feed is a working stream of questions, examples, and standards.
In one post she breaks down a B2B homepage for what earns a click. In another she looks for the right community for a marketer she is supporting. She flags Canadian salary data so teams can hire on facts, runs a quick poll on ownership in account-based work, and shares a practical tools piece while narrowing client focus to a couple of high-impact projects tied to pipeline.
Gurney is a Toronto-based fractional chief marketing officer. She works with two or three companies at a time, a day or two a week with each, and she begins by defining the customer, shaping the story, and designing the team that can carry both.
She brings 15 years as a founding marketing leader, helping startups scale from $1 million to more than $30 million in annual recurring revenue.
Today her best-fit clients are B2B startups from seed to Series B that need a hands-on leader to drive short-term growth and long-term brand value, build the team, and create breakout brands.
Gurney’s story opens a window into how fractional leadership works inside Canadian startups. For founders, it serves as a benchmark: when to use it, what to expect, and how to know if it fits your stage and budget.
According to Statistics Canada, more than 50% of firms outsourced work in the past year, with sales and marketing support among the functions they bought. Business use of AI is also increasing, reshaping how smaller teams operate.
Put together, those signals explain why fractional leadership has become a normal, practical choice, and why Gurney’s model meets the moment.
So what should founders expect when they hire a fractional CMO? Gurney’s own approach offers a benchmark.
What to expect from a fractional CMO
Gurney’s clients don’t get a consultant with a deck. They get a part-time executive who sets strategy, designs the org, and compresses a full-time role into a focused schedule.
“The ideal client is someone who is really looking to build and scale their marketing team,” says Gurney. “I typically come in, build out a very high level annual plan, assess if we have the right people, and then we do quarterly road maps with objectives and work streams. I’m part of the team with weekly check-ins and monthly reporting. Essentially everything I would do if I was full time.”
For founders, this is the benchmark. A fractional leader should not sit outside the business. Expect them to set an annual plan, build quarterly road maps, and hold weekly check-ins.
Hiring is also part of her deliverables.
“Deciding on the org structure is kind of step one… scope, level, comp, the job description and scorecard, the interview guide. I’m often part of the hiring panel.”
That support keeps founders from wasting months on misaligned roles or underpowered teams. In many cases, fractional support begins with structure before campaigns, so founders should look for someone who can balance both.
Her method starts with positioning and brand credibility, which determine whether later tactics pay off.
At Float, a Canadian fintech where she served as VP of marketing before going fractional, the team had already invested in defining their brand pillars before she joined. That experience reinforced her view that early brand clarity pays off, a lesson she now applies in fractional roles.
“We were marketing to finance leaders and business owners,” she says. “[Float] made a serious investment to develop their brand pillar. It was a huge part of how we got traction. Most companies tend to underinvest in brand in the earlier days.”
That foundation shaped the campaigns she later helped deliver and stands as her case for why early brand clarity pays dividends.
That experience also shapes how she works today. Gurney helps companies build a strong foundation early, then makes sure her own role stays finite.
“I’m doing fractional for a reason… my goal is for them to build out their team… for what you can pay me for a day a week you can get a full-time person in certain roles.”
The model is designed to scale a company past the gap. She’s explicit about capacity, working with no more than two or three clients at a time and making clear from the start that her goal is to build the team that replaces her.
For founders, the signal of a strong fractional leader is someone who defines their limits and measures success by becoming unnecessary.
When fractional leadership makes sense
Gurney’s approach fits a wider shift in how Canadian companies buy capability.
Outsourcing is now a normal operating choice, and more than half of firms (52%) reported outsourcing work in early 2025, and sales and marketing support is one of the named functions.
The expanding independent talent pool makes it easier to plug in senior help for short, part-time executive mandates
Cost is part of the equation, as full-time senior marketing leaders in Canada earn well into the six figures.
According to Artemis Canada’s 2025 Marketing Salary Snapshot, the median total compensation for VP and C-level marketers in Canadian tech is about $275,000, with the top quartile above $330,000, plus equity.
Fractional roles give companies access to that calibre of experience for a couple days per week while leaving budget for program spend and junior hires.
The fit also depends on the company’s stage.
One of Gurney’s clients had already hired a VP of Marketing but needed a senior partner to coach her through the role for the first time. Another was pulling in $5 million in revenue and couldn’t justify a full-time senior headcount. These are two of the most common entry points.
Founders also use the model to stand up the marketing function from scratch, bridge a transition between leaders, or run a defined initiative without committing to a permanent hire.
Taken together, these examples shape a decision framework.
For startup CEOs, the question is whether you need fractional support to coach a junior leader, cover a gap, or carry the function until the business can support a full-time senior hire.
If you already have a junior marketing leader, fractional support can coach them through their first executive role. For earlier-stage companies that are not yet ready for a senior full-time hire, fractional can be a bridge until revenue and scope justify it.
For Gurney, that can mean designing the org, drafting scorecards, and then stepping aside once the team is in place.
In each case, fractional leadership is a normal, practical option in the Canadian operating mix. It sits alongside full-time hires and contractors, not as an experiment but as one more way to match capability with stage and budget.
How to use AI without losing the plot
For Gurney, the rise of AI has been one of the biggest shifts in her work this year. The technology has changed how small teams operate and how leaders think about capacity.
“For the first time I feel like we can get further with a smaller team,” she says. “You can go a lot further with a smaller headcount with some good tools and the right skill sets.”
She doesn’t use AI as a replacement for judgment, but instead as a way to remove friction.
One example is a custom model she built by uploading research, transcripts, and customer notes.
“I created a custom GPT for one of my clients where I uploaded a ton of information about our customers from different notes we had taken, transcripts of conversations, and research. Now we’re redesigning our homepage and I can share it with the custom agent and say, ‘Critique this from the lens of the person we’re actually trying to reach’. I think I’m a reasonably good marketer, and it still found some really nuanced things that would have been missed.”
That customer lens is where she sees significant value.
Rather than chasing production scale, she applies AI to sharpen insight and speed up review cycles.
“People could fall into a trap when they think the work of marketing is production. That’s downstream of upstream insights and strategy. If you don’t know who your actual customers are, what machine are you building?”
For founders, the benchmark is to ask how a fractional leader uses AI to improve upstream insight, not just output. The right guardrails make sure automation supports positioning and customers, not just volume.
Her experience points to three lessons for leaders deciding how to use AI in marketing today:
- Use AI to expand insight, not just output. Tools that generate content are everywhere, but the competitive edge comes from asking better questions of your customer data. Gurney’s custom model critiques content from the buyer’s perspective, a task that once required long interviews or favours from industry peers.
- Redesign team scope before adding headcount. With AI embedded in workflows, some jobs shift from execution to oversight. Leaders can staff smaller teams earlier, but only if they are deliberate about what gets automated and what stays human.
- Keep senior judgment in the loop. AI can scale production but can’t always set positioning or strategy. As more businesses embed AI into marketing and operations, leaders who conflate production with marketing strategy risk speed without direction.
For startup founders, the hardest call is when to hire senior leadership. Too early, and payroll gets ahead of revenue. Too late, and the team runs without direction.
Fractional leadership gives companies another option, one that buys judgment without overcommitting. A fractional CMO should set strategy, design the org, and keep momentum with regular check-ins. But they should also know when to step back, handing the system to a full-time team once the company is ready. If the scope, cadence, and exit are defined up front, the model can work.
Final shots
- Treat fractional leadership as a normal way to buy senior capability in Canada. Use scope and cadence as your benchmark when deciding what you need.
- Put positioning, brand, and customer clarity ahead of output. This is the first filter for whether your marketing spend will work.
- Use AI to widen insight and speed, but keep senior guardrails on what to automate and why.
