Learn more about hiring a fractional CMO
Fractional CMO · Edina, MN
Senior marketing leadership for Edina businesses in the Greater Minneapolis area. One of minnesota's most affluent cities with a premium commercial district and dense professional services sector. Get the executive leadership your business needs without the full-time cost.
A fractional CMO is a part-time Chief Marketing Officer who provides full executive-level marketing leadership -- go-to-market strategy, demand generation, team management, and pipeline accountability -- on a monthly retainer at $8,000 to $20,000 per month rather than a $280,000 to $450,000 full-time hire. For growth-stage B2B companies at $1M to $20M in revenue, the fractional CMO model delivers the same strategic output as a full-time CMO with no equity dilution, no benefits overhead, and a first-results timeline of 30 days.
See if Mark can actually help your growth.
Check if you're a fit →Free, no obligation. If it's a fit, you'll pick a time to talk with Mark directly.Edina holds one of the Twin Cities' densest concentrations of consumer-brand and franchise headquarters. Regis Corporation, International Dairy Queen (Dairy Queen and Orange Julius), and Great Clips all run national operations from Edina, and Edina Realty operates Minnesota's largest residential brokerage from the same few square miles. These are multi-unit, franchise, and channel-driven businesses where marketing is the growth engine, not a cost center. A $1M to $20M challenger competing for the same consumers needs senior marketing leadership without the overhead of a full-time CMO.
The other half of Edina's economy is professional and office-based. The Pentagon Park campus off Highway 100 and I-494, the 48-acre Grandview district, and the Southdale office corridor along France Avenue house healthcare groups, financial and real-estate firms, and B2B service companies. M Health Fairview Southdale Hospital anchors a healthcare-services cluster off Highway 62. For growth-stage companies in these buildings, a fractional CMO supplies the positioning and demand-generation discipline that an owner-operator or a junior marketing team cannot build alone.
Edina's buyers split into two groups: consumers shopping the Southdale, Galleria, and 50th & France districts, and B2B decision-makers inside the Pentagon Park and Grandview office parks. A fractional CMO builds a marketing function that speaks to whichever the business actually sells to.
Southdale Center is the birthplace of the enclosed American shopping mall, it opened in 1956 as the nation's first, and retail remains central to Edina's identity through the Galleria's luxury tenants and the 175-plus shops and offices at 50th & France. Marketing to this environment is a consumer discipline: brand, merchandising calendars, local media, and foot-traffic conversion. A fractional CMO who understands Edina retail builds against seasonality and physical-location economics, not abstract funnels.
Franchise and multi-unit marketing is the other Edina specialty. With Regis, Dairy Queen, and Great Clips running franchise systems from here, the region has a deep bench of talent and vendors fluent in co-op advertising, franchisee enablement, and local-store marketing. Growth-stage brands with any multi-location component benefit from a CMO who has run that model.
Healthcare and professional services round out the picture. The Fairview Southdale corridor and the medical and dental practices along France Avenue are regulated, referral-driven, and reputation-sensitive, marketing here is about trust signals, review systems, and referral networks rather than aggressive direct response.
Edina sits inside the western-metro employment belt, minutes from downtown Minneapolis and the I-494 strip, so local companies compete for talent and customer attention against Minneapolis agencies and national brands. Agency density in the Twin Cities is high, and much of it is oriented toward large advertisers. Growth-stage Edina businesses often find those agencies too expensive or too junior in day-to-day staffing, a fractional CMO gives them senior ownership without a big-shop retainer.
Buyer behavior in Edina is affluent and research-driven on the consumer side, and relationship-and-referral-driven on the B2B and professional-services side. Sales cycles for the office-park firms in Pentagon Park and Grandview tend to be considered and multi-touch. That rewards a marketing leader who builds durable demand and brand equity rather than chasing short-term response, exactly the mandate of a month-to-month fractional CMO who stays accountable to pipeline, not vanity metrics.
Both. Edina's economy runs on consumer retail around Southdale, the Galleria, and 50th & France as much as on the B2B firms in Pentagon Park and Grandview. Engagements are built around the specific buyer, whether a shopper walking the Galleria or a procurement lead inside an office-park company, and the marketing system is designed for that buyer rather than forced into one template.
The Minneapolis-St. Paul market has one of the deepest agency benches in the country, but most of it is built for large advertisers and staffs day-to-day work with junior people. A fractional CMO is a senior operator who owns strategy, hires and directs the right agencies, and stays accountable for results, typically for less than a full agency retainer and far less than a full-time CMO salary plus equity.
Yes. With Regis, Dairy Queen, and Great Clips headquartered in Edina, multi-unit and franchise marketing, co-op advertising, franchisee enablement, local-store marketing, is native to this market. Growth-stage brands with any multi-location footprint get a CMO who has run those playbooks and can standardize them across every unit without flattening what makes each location work.
Growth-stage Edina companies between $1M and $20M need flexibility, not lock-in. Month-to-month means the engagement is earned every month on results. It removes the risk that keeps owner-operators from bringing in senior marketing leadership in the first place, and it keeps the CMO focused on pipeline rather than protecting a contract.
Brand and foot-traffic marketing for companies selling through Southdale Center, Galleria Edina, and the 50th & France district.
See work →Co-op advertising and local-store playbooks in the market that headquarters Regis, Dairy Queen, and Great Clips.
See work →Referral and reputation systems for the practices clustered along France Avenue and the M Health Fairview Southdale corridor.
See work →Pipeline and demand generation for the B2B firms in Pentagon Park and the Grandview commercial district.
See work →Lead routing and lifecycle marketing in the home market of Edina Realty, Minnesota's largest residential brokerage.
See work →| Option | Monthly Cost | Strategic Leadership | Execution | Accountability | Time to Results |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fractional CMO (MarkCMO) | $8K -- $20K/mo | ✅ Full C-suite | ✅ Manages team & agencies | ✅ Revenue KPIs | ✅ 30-60 days |
| Full-Time CMO | $23K -- $42K/mo + equity | ✅ Full C-suite | ✅ Full ownership | ✅ Revenue KPIs | ❌ 6-12 month ramp |
| Marketing Agency | $8K -- $25K/mo | ❌ Tactical only | ✅ Campaign execution | ❌ Deliverable-based | 🟡 60-90 days |
| Marketing Consultant | $5K -- $20K/project | 🟡 Strategy only | ❌ No execution | ❌ Deliverable-based | ❌ You execute |
| VP of Marketing Hire | $15K -- $22K/mo + equity | 🟡 Director-level | ✅ Partial ownership | 🟡 Partial KPIs | ❌ 3-6 month ramp |
The single biggest mistake growth-stage companies make is hiring a marketing team before they have a marketing strategy. Execution without strategy is expensive noise.
MarkCMO serves businesses across every functional leadership discipline in Edina, MN. Click any service to explore how it applies to your specific growth challenge.
Read all client testimonials →
Mark Gabrielli is a Fractional CMO and COO with 19+ ventures across 12 industries and $50M+ in revenue built. He is not a consultant who delivers a slide deck and disappears. He is a working operator -- the kind of senior marketing leader who sits in your weekly leadership meeting, manages your team, runs your agency relationships, and stays until the results are real, repeatable, and yours to keep.
Mark serves growth-stage B2B companies across Edina and nationwide, with deep experience in the industries that define Edina's economy. He holds a track record that includes companies in healthcare, SaaS, aerospace, manufacturing, fintech, logistics, and professional services -- from pre-revenue startups to $50M+ businesses preparing for exit or Series B raises.
Learn more: About Mark | Results and Case Studies | Fractional CMO Services | How to Measure Fractional CMO ROI
From first call to compounding results -- here is exactly what the engagement looks like.
Book a 30-minute strategy call at no cost. We audit your current marketing, revenue gaps, team structure, and the single biggest lever holding back your growth. You leave with a clear diagnosis before spending a dollar.
We deliver your full GTM strategy, ICP definition, competitive positioning, messaging architecture, and a 90-day demand generation plan. Every deliverable is board-presentable and execution-ready from day one.
Campaigns go live. We manage your marketing team, agencies, and freelancers with clear KPIs at every level. Outbound sequences launch. Pipeline starts building. You get weekly check-ins and monthly board-ready reports.
Systems compound. Revenue attribution is wired to real numbers. The marketing engine runs without you managing every detail. You stay because the results justify it -- not because you are locked in.
Results measured in pipeline generated, CAC reduced, and revenue compounded -- not reports delivered or hours billed.
"We hired our fractional CMO without ever meeting in person. Within 60 days we had pipeline attribution, a demand generation system, and $1.2M in qualified opportunities. Geography is irrelevant when the work is strategy, data analysis, and pipeline architecture -- all of which happen on screens and in dashboards. The results are what show up in the CRM.",
"The best fractional CMOs are not local -- they are experienced. Restricting your search to your metro area eliminates most of the operators who have built demand generation systems at companies your size and stage. We found the right person through a national search and the engagement has been transformational. CAC dropped 41% in 90 days.",
"Every week: a 60-minute strategy call with real numbers. Every month: a board-ready pipeline report. Every quarter: a commercial review that reallocates budget toward what is working and away from what is not. That cadence produces CMO-quality commercial leadership at a fraction of full-time cost -- and it works completely remotely.",
Edina, Minnesota is one of Minnesota's most affluent cities with a premium commercial district and dense professional services sector. Its economy leans on financial services, retail, healthcare. That mix shapes how companies here grow: Edina businesses compete for talent and customers against far larger marketing budgets, and generic tactics rarely move the number. What Edina growth companies need is senior marketing leadership that understands the Greater Minneapolis market, owns the strategy, and is accountable to revenue, without carrying a full-time executive salary.
| Metro area | Greater Minneapolis |
|---|---|
| Population | approximately 53,000 |
| Revenue range served | 1 million to 100 million dollars |
| Engagement | 5,000 to 15,000 dollars per month, month to month |
MarkCMO gives Edina businesses a fractional CMO who owns the marketing number: positioning built for Edina buyers, a demand engine tuned to the Greater Minneapolis market, and the reporting investors expect, without a full-time CMO salary.
Edina businesses need a fractional CMO once revenue depends on a repeatable marketing engine they do not have in house, usually between 1 million and 100 million dollars in revenue. In the Greater Minneapolis market, where Edina companies compete against larger budgets, MarkCMO installs the positioning, demand generation, and board-level reporting to scale, for 5,000 to 15,000 dollars per month. Choose the one where the person on the call does the work and you can leave month to month.
Book a free 30-minute strategy call with Mark Gabrielli or call 321-917-5738. You will get a straight read on your Edina marketing and the one or two things to fix first, whether or not we work together.
Reviewed by Mark Gabrielli, Fractional CMO and COO. Last verified July 2026.
Book a free 30-minute call with Mark. You will walk away with a clear, honest diagnosis and the one or two things to fix first, whether or not we work together.
Book a free strategy call →Every MarkCMO engagement is structured to protect you. You stay because the results are compounding -- not because you are locked in. Cancel any time. No fees, no questions.
No hidden scope. No surprise invoices. Every MarkCMO engagement includes the full fractional CMO capability stack from day one.
Full go-to-market strategy, ideal customer profile definition, competitive positioning, and messaging architecture tailored to your market.
Multi-channel pipeline engine -- SEO, content marketing, paid media, email nurture, and outbound -- built as compounding systems, not one-off campaigns.
C-suite management of your marketing team, agency partners, and freelancers with clear accountability and performance benchmarks at every level.
Weekly leadership check-ins, monthly board-ready pipeline reports, and revenue attribution dashboards that replace gut feeling with data.
CRM configuration, attribution modeling, marketing technology optimization, and performance dashboards wired directly to revenue KPIs.
No long-term contracts. No cancellation fees. Engage for as long as it drives results -- exit any time with zero friction.
Every MarkCMO engagement is structured to protect you. You stay because the results are compounding -- not because you are locked in.
Book a free 30-minute strategy call. No pitch deck. No sales pressure. An honest conversation about your Edina market, your current marketing, and exactly what it would take to build pipeline this quarter.
Month-to-month. No contracts. First results in 30 days. Serving Edina, Minnesota, and nationwide.
30 minutes with Mark Gabrielli. No pitch. A direct read on your biggest marketing gaps and what moves revenue fastest. Responds personally within 24 hours.
60 seconds. Mark responds personally within 24 hours.
Mark will personally follow up within 24 hours.
Or reach him directly: [email protected] · +1 (321) 917-5738