I have been helping ambitious companies to grow for the last 27 years. It is what I love to do, taking a data-led approach to marketing that is rooted in the latest SEO expertise.
In short
I am a fractional CMO. I sit inside leadership teams part-time, usually three days a month, and I start from the commercial question rather than the marketing one.
- Based in Yorkshire, and a good deal of the work is here. I also sit in leadership teams at national groups run from London and elsewhere, and work with businesses internationally.
- In search and visibility since 1999. I still do the technical work myself rather than describing it.
- Longest client relationship: 15 years, through three changes of ownership.
- Most recent embedded seat: 23 months inside a private equity backed roll-up.
- Public bodies, universities and business support programmes commission the training. I have never paid to be on any of those lists.
Why am I so passionate about it?
Because I have been there myself.
I set up my first e-commerce website in 1999, selling sunglasses. It worked, and it kept working, right up until it did not. In 2004 the Google rankings went, and the sales went with them, more or less overnight. Not a slow decline. A cliff.
So I did what most founders do. I paid people who said they could fix it. I spent countless hours in meetings with highly paid SEO experts telling me how they were going to get my business back onto page one of Google, with zero results.
It was frustrating and annoying. But it also fired my passion to get out and help other businesses to grow by optimising their content for SEO, in a way that actually delivers results.
The part that stayed with me was not the money. It was how little any of them would explain in plain English. I had been the client who could not get a straight answer, so I decided not to be the supplier who would not give one.
It is why I am so obsessed with giving my own clients good value for money. And it is why I am always challenging the industry, in everything I do.
What happened next
Twenty-seven years, three businesses, one idea.
By 2005 I was doing search work for other people. In 2010 I founded Fleek Marketing, which still does the delivery work and which I still own.
By 2019 the shape of the work had changed. Businesses kept asking me to do the thinking rather than the doing, to sit in the room where the budget gets decided rather than present into it. That is the fractional CMO seat, and it is where I spend my own hours now.
Everything I run comes back to the same idea, which is that you should be more capable when I leave than when I arrived. A strategy that only holds while I am in the room is not a strategy. It is a dependency.
Three doors, one approach
01
Done with you
The fractional CMO seat, under my own name. Embedded in your leadership team, holding my own objectives alongside everyone else’s. This is the one most people are here for.
02
Done for you
Fleek Marketing. Websites, SEO, hosting, campaigns. Built and run by a team, product-led, priced accordingly.
03
Do it yourself
90 Day Marketing Mastery, created with Pascal Fintoni. Workshops, a programme and the book, for founders who want to run it themselves.
The common thread is that all three put me in front of the challenges businesses are actually struggling with, every day. That is what keeps the thinking current.
What I do
Five ways in, all of them mine.
Fractional CMO
As a marketing consultant, I help businesses of all sizes to figure out their goals, bring in more leads and deliver impactful marketing. I advise them on everything from optimising their digital content for SEO, to social media, website design and development.
Training
As a coach and trainer, I work with them to build their internal teams too, honing the marketing skills they have in-house.
Speaking
I run and produce regular webinars, masterclasses and online events, as well as sharing my own insights through talks and expert panel appearances.
Event production
And if you would like me to run and produce your online event, you can do that here.
Podcast
I am a regular blogger and podcaster on all things digital marketing, SEO, social media and web development.
What the work has actually produced
Three engagements. Three different things proved.
The longer version of each of these is on the fractional CMO page.
Hometree, from 2024
Bought as a three month go-to-market contract across four acquired installer businesses. It became a 23 month embedded fractional CMO role inside a private equity backed roll-up, in the weekly senior leadership meeting with full access to group financial data.
Across FY26 against FY25 on those four businesses: sales up 28.2%, volume up 38.2%, lead volume up 69%, and customer acquisition cost held to a 4.9% rise while all of that scaled.
A West Yorkshire housing association
They came to me with a lead generation problem and a senior team member who had already decided the answer was bus advertising. Within a few weeks it was clear the problem was not awareness at all. Applicants were sitting on a waiting list for more than a year before anyone contacted them, and housing themselves elsewhere in the meantime.
More leads would have poured straight through a leaking bucket. Two years, embedded, and most of the work was operational rather than marketing.
DCS, since 2011
A Leeds cloud hosting and disaster recovery business. It started as a one-off SEO workshop for their in-house marketer and it has run continuously ever since, through three ownership eras including a private equity acquisition in March 2025.
A rebrand and full website rebuild went live in January 2026, with the AI and answer-engine structure built into the templates at build time rather than retrofitted. In the first quarter after launch, clicks were up 115% and engagement rate up 55%. Fifteen years is the point of that one.
“Jonny is growth focused, not marketing focused. He embeds in the team rather than sitting off to the side, and no task is beneath him. I have not often worked with senior people willing to roll up their sleeves and just get things done.”
Pran, Chief Commercial Officer, Hometree
When I am not the answer
Worth saying plainly, because it saves us both a meeting.
If the strategy is settled and the campaigns just need running, you need a doer or an agency, not me. Put the money there instead.
And if the bottleneck is not marketing at all, which happens more often than you would think, a fractional CMO is an expensive way to find that out. The housing association above is exactly that case. I would rather tell you on a fifteen minute call than after an invoice.
The route here
1999. Set up my first e-commerce website, selling sunglasses.
2004. The rankings go, and the sales go with them.
2005. Start doing search work for other people.
2010. Fleek Marketing founded.
2011. First workshop for DCS in Leeds. Still working with them today.
2012. Top trainer, ILM train-the-trainer course, University of York.
2015. The White Cross Vets website I built wins the Digital Award at the Veterinary Marketing Association Awards.
2016. Named in Insider Media’s 42 under 42, Yorkshire.
2019. First fractional CMO seat. The work moves from doing to deciding.
2023. 90 Day Marketing Mastery launched with Pascal Fintoni.
2024. Hometree begins. Three months becomes 23.
2026. DCS relaunch goes live. Fifteen years with the same client.
Who commissions me, and who has recognised the work
I have not paid for a single one of these. Public bodies, universities and business support programmes commission the training, and the recognition below came from other people’s judging panels.
Named in Insider Media’s 42 under 42, Yorkshire 2016.
The White Cross Vets website I built won the Digital Award at the 2015 Veterinary Marketing Association Awards.
Top trainer, ILM train-the-trainer course, University of York, 2012.
Where you will find me
I write long-form on this site, I am on LinkedIn most days, and I run a podcast at podcast.jonnyross.com.
I also publish how I use AI in my own work, because anyone selling visibility advice should be willing to say what they do and do not hand to a machine.
Start a conversation
I would love to talk with you about how I can help you and your organisation to grow. Fifteen minutes, in my diary, with me rather than an account manager. Bring the commercial problem rather than a brief. If a fractional CMO is not the right answer for where you are, I will tell you, and tell you what I think is.