FRACTIONAL CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER FOR BRANDS
Fractional CMO helping brands accelerate marketing.
Kara Lineal is a fractional CMO with 20+ years of experience building brands and launching e-commerce channels. She grew a manufacturer from $46 million to $69 million while shifting it from 95% brick-and-mortar to more than 30% e-commerce. She also used AI-assisted SEO and content on a B2B website, increasing traffic 98% and doubling e-commerce revenue. Today, she helps B2C, D2C, and B2B brands modernize with digital transformation and AI automation in marketing.
No cost. No obligation.
PROVEN RESULTS
Business impact.
$5M
D2C launch; grew to 2.5M website visits per year
x2
annual revenue (+$23M) for B2C brand
+98%
website traffic lift, supported by AI-assisted SEO & content
$37M
+100% B2B ecom revenue growth
WHAT YOU GET
A fractional CMO who owns the strategy and the results.
Looking to hire a fractional chief marketing officer who scales to your priorities?
From product launches and new markets to repositioning and team rebuilds, Kara brings clear strategy, objective guidance, and hands-on support to help you move faster, make confident decisions, and build a marketing operation that scales with your brand.
STRATEGY AND BUDGET
Positioning, channel mix, and the full path from acquisition to retention, owned end to end. A budget tied to revenue targets and a 90-day plan.
PRODUCT AND RETAIL LAUNCHES
Go-to-market for new product lines and retail partnerships, from packaging to sell-through. Past launches include Jockey Spa into JCPenney and Belk ($7M first year) and a Therapedic sleep line refreshed at Bed Bath & Beyond ($20M first year).
E-COMMERCE AND DIGITAL SHELF
Your website, retailer dot com pages, and marketplaces: product content, search, and conversion every place shoppers buy. For large catalogs, AI-assisted content is where the return shows up first.
SEARCH AND AI VISIBILITY
Classic SEO, plus AEO/GEO. Start with a read on where your brand stands today when a shopper asks who or what to buy in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews.
PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT
Dashboards that pinpoint the metrics that matter, attribution that holds up in a board meeting, and monthly syncs. You always know what is working and where to accelerate.
TEAM AND AGENCIES
Hire, coach, and manage in-house staff and outside partners. The team, the systems, and the playbook are yours to keep.
THE RIGHT FIT
Where fractional CMO leadership works.
A GOOD FIT
Consumer products, B2C, D2C or B2B brands selling at retail, online, or both.
Large product catalogs, where content quality, search visibility, and the digital shelf drive sales.
Leadership teams that want responsible AI in the daily marketing workflow, with owners and approvals.
You see potential for AI to play a larger role in your marketing.
NOT THE RIGHT FIT
Pure B2B SaaS companies seeking a SaaS marketing specialist.
Companies that need a full-time CMO on site five days a week.
Leaders who want AI as a talking point rather than part of how the work gets done.
HOW IT WORKS
How fractional CMO services work.
Fractional CMO services provide experienced marketing leadership on a set schedule. It costs less than a full-time salary and goes deeper than a one-off consultant.
As your fractional CMO, I help set the marketing strategy, own the priorities, and help optimize your marketing engine, including automation and AI-assisted workflows where it pays off. Your team keeps producing the work and maintains the capability in-house when the engagement ends.
FRACTIONAL CMO
Scope of work.
As your fractional CMO, Kara focuses on your highest priority business outcomes. Most engagements center on one or two priorities:
Growth and demand.
The plan to grow revenue through the right channels, from acquisition to retention.The digital shelf.
Catalog and product content, on-site conversion, retail media, and the e-commerce operation across a large SKU count.Marketing operations with AI and automation.
AI-assisted content, GEO, AEO, SEO, and reporting systems that help lean teams scale while following best practices.Team and vendor leadership.
The right org chart and team structure, key hires, and agency selection and management.
Begin a fractional CMO engagement by defining the 90-day scope, setting clear measures of success, and establishing a regular review cadence.
AI IN MARKETING OPERATIONS
What AI in marketing operations covers.
Below are three examples of AI at work in marketing operations, from getting your brand endorsed by AI assistants to maintaining product catalogs at scale. Find more ways in the AI marketing blog.
Be the answer AI recommends.
TRY A FREE DEMO
A set of shopper questions, run each month across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Mode, to see whether your brand gets named, endorsed and cited.
Content and product catalogs at scale.
PROJECT: OCTOBER 2025
Created AI-assisted SEO and product content system for an 80,000-SKU catalog at a distributor running a $102M e-commerce operation. Website traffic rose 98% and e-commerce revenue doubled, a gain of +$37M.
Research systems that replace manual work.
PROJECT: AUGUST 2026
Research that took 10 hours a month now takes 30 minutes. An AI grant-research system finds and scores grants for a nonprofit, and emails volunteers one-click approvals under $15 a year.
FRACTIONAL CMO SERVICES
Who owns what.
What your Fractional CMO owns
Strategy and positioning.
Define where the brand competes, who it serves, and the message that sets it apart.
Priorities.
Focus on the opportunities that matter most and align on what can wait.
Measurement.
Prioritize the metrics that matter, define what success looks like, and establish a clear reporting rhythm.
Senior-level decisions.
Guide budget allocation, channel strategy, and the selection of vendors and agency partners.
Automation.
Design practical automation and AI-assisted workflows (content, SEO, research, reporting) so a lean team can do more.
Team direction.
Coach the team in place and identify the roles that will add the most value as the brand scales.
What your team owns
Day-to-day execution.
Campaign production, content, publishing, and creative.
Channel management.
Running the channels hands-on once the plan is set.
The systems, after handoff.
Your team operates the workflows Kara builds, so the capability stays in the building.
Reporting inputs.
Data and updates that feed the monthly sync.
WHAT TO EXPECT
The first 90 days.
DAY 1 TO 30
Assess
Kara audits the current state (data, channels, team, tech, catalog, and pipeline), talks to the people doing the work, and finds where revenue is being made or lost. No large changes yet.
DAY 31 TO 60
Prioritize
Kara sets the strategy, identifies the opportunities to proceed with, defines the metrics, and fixes the quick wins.
DAY 61 TO 90
Operate
Stand up the operating cadence, build the AI-assisted workflows, hand the day-to-day to your team, and show early results against the baseline set in month one.
What you get, day 90: A strategy, a working rhythm with playbook, a measurement framework, and at least one AI-assisted workflow your team can run and own.
WHAT YOU GET
Cadence.
Fractional marketing leadership works best with a clear, predictable rhythm. Agree on the time commitment, priorities, and measures of success upfront.
TIME
A set number of days each month, agreed on in advance.
WEEKLY
A standing meeting with your team to set priorities, review progress, and remove blockers.
MONTHLY
Leadership review against the agreed-upon metrics. Discuss the plan for the next month.
QUARTERLY
Strategy check, what worked and what didn’t, and scope sync.
FROM STRATEGY TO RESULTS
Brand stories, real results.
MARKETING EXECUTIVE
Portfolio gallery of Kara’s work.
Kara has launched consumer product lines for national retailers, tested store-within-a-store concepts at regional chains, built a beauty-kit e-commerce startup, and managed a wholesale catalog of 80,000+ SKUs. Kara has also launched three mobile apps, designed Champion bags for Target and HUMMER luggage for JCPenney, led luggage, clock, and cooking-thermometer categories at Walmart, and owned thermometer planograms at Home Depot and Lowe’s.
Her work covers e-commerce, digital experience, digital-shelf merchandising, displays, packaging, product and UX/UI design, customer research, photo and video direction, websites, and the digital transformation (AI, CRMs, PIMs, DAMs) behind them.
Try free AI tools for marketers, engineered by Kara.
See where AI fits in your marketing operations. The free tools asses your brand voice, product data, and team's readiness for AI, then provide direction on next steps.
RECOMMENDATIONS
What clients and colleagues say.
“Kara is a skilled marketing strategist and leader. She has proven results at driving revenue through a wide range of marketing channels and led the company to exceed revenue goals year after year. Kara has the knowledge and vision to successfully lead new product launches and marketing campaigns with a strong understanding and focus on the consumer.”
— LISA, Primex
ABOUT KARA
Meet the human behind the work.
Kara Lineal is a marketing executive with 20+ years leading growth and digital transformation across B2B, B2C, and D2C. She recently built an AI grant-research system and shared calendar for a nonprofit board, replacing a manual process and freeing the team for work that needs human judgment.
She holds a Johns Hopkins Certificate in Agentic AI and volunteers on the board of Hannah Center, a nonprofit for women and children facing crisis.
MBA, UNC Charlotte · BS Graphic Design, UW-Madison · Johns Hopkins Certificate in Agentic AI · Nielsen Norman NN/G UX Certified
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