Dudley Peacock: Fractional CMO and the Skilful Pursuit Approach

Dudley Peacock is a fractional CMO and the founder of Skilful Pursuit, where he gives UK founders and managing directors senior marketing leadership without the cost of a full-time hire. He also trains marketers to step up into the CMO role through a structured course and curriculum.

If you searched his name, you probably want one of two things. Either you are weighing up whether to bring him in to run your marketing, or you want to learn the way he works. This guide covers both, and it is honest about where the model fits and where it does not.

Key Takeaways

• Dudley Peacock works as a fractional CMO, which means senior marketing direction part-time rather than a six-figure full-time salary.
• The model suits founder-led businesses that spend on marketing but have nobody senior owning the strategy.
• His work splits two ways: consulting for companies, and training for marketers who want to grow into the role.
• A fractional CMO owns strategy and results. An agency executes briefs. They are not the same job.
• The fastest wins usually come from fixing a broken growth system, not spending more on ads.
• You can start with a single call rather than a long contract.

Who Is Dudley Peacock

Dudley Peacock runs Skilful Pursuit, part of the LeverageFlo group. His focus is the gap that almost every growing company hits. The founder can no longer run marketing themselves, but the business cannot yet justify a full-time Chief Marketing Officer on £120,000 plus.

That gap is expensive. Spend goes out the door with no senior person deciding where it should go. Campaigns run without a plan behind them. The founder feels the drag but cannot name the cause.

His answer is to act as the senior marketing brain on a part-time retainer, then leave behind a system the in-house team can actually run. The work is practical and evidence-led. No vanity metrics, no theatre.

What a Fractional CMO Does Day to Day

People hear “fractional” and assume “lite”. That is the wrong way round. The fractional part refers to time, not seniority.

A good fractional CMO does the things a full-time CMO does:

• Sets the marketing strategy and ties it to a revenue number.
• Decides which channels get budget and which get cut.
• Builds a repeatable growth system instead of one-off campaigns.
• Directs the in-house team, freelancers, or agencies you already pay.
• Holds everyone to the figures, including themselves.

The difference is dosage. You buy a day or two a week of senior thinking rather than five days of presence you do not need. For most companies under £20m in revenue, that is the right amount. You can read more about how that engagement runs if you explore CMO consulting.

Fractional CMO vs Agency vs Full-Time Hire

These three options get confused constantly, and the confusion costs money. Here is the plain version.

| Option | What you get | Best when | Rough cost |

|—|—|—|—|

| Agency | Execution against a brief you write | You already know the strategy and just need hands | £2k to £15k per month |

| Fractional CMO | Strategy, direction, and accountability | You spend on marketing but have no senior owner | £3k to £8k per month |

| Full-time CMO | A senior executive, present every day | You are large enough to keep one busy and fund the salary | £120k+ per year plus on-costs |

The trap most founders fall into is hiring an agency to fix a strategy problem. The agency runs your ads beautifully and the wrong campaign still loses money. A fractional CMO decides what should run before anyone runs it.

When the Model Fits, and When It Does Not

I will be straight about this, because the people selling fractional services rarely are.

It fits when you have real budget moving but no senior person directing it, when your team is capable but rudderless, and when the founder wants out of the marketing weeds. In those cases the return shows up fast, usually because money stops being wasted.

It does not fit when your problem is execution capacity rather than direction. If you know exactly what to do and just need more hands, hire the hands. A strategist on retainer will not fill envelopes for you, and you should not pay senior rates for junior work.

It also does not fit a business with no budget at all. A fractional CMO can build you a plan, but a plan with nothing behind it is a document, not growth.

The Training Side: Becoming a CMO

The second half of what Dudley Peacock does is teaching. Plenty of marketers are good at their craft but have never been handed the strategic frameworks a CMO uses to make decisions.

That is what the Skilful Pursuit course and curriculum exist to close. The material covers the strategy, the numbers, and the leadership side that separates a senior marketer from a marketing manager. If you run the marketing function and want to grow into the top role, you can see the course or view the curriculum to check whether it maps to where you are stuck.

This matters for founders too. The cheapest senior marketing leader you will ever own is the one you build inside your own company.

How to Start

You do not need to commit to a long contract to find out whether this fits. A single call tells you most of what you need to know, because the first thing any honest fractional CMO does is diagnose the constraint before pitching anything.

If your marketing spends money without a senior hand on the wheel, that is the problem worth solving first. Book a call and bring your actual numbers. The conversation is more useful when it has something real to work with.

FAQ

Who is Dudley Peacock?

Dudley Peacock is a fractional CMO and the founder of Skilful Pursuit. He gives UK founders and managing directors senior marketing leadership on a part-time basis and trains marketers to grow into the CMO role.

What does a fractional CMO actually do?

They set the marketing strategy, build the growth system, and direct your existing team or freelancers, without the cost of a full-time executive salary.

How is fractional CMO work different from hiring an agency?

An agency executes the tasks you brief them on. A fractional CMO owns the strategy, decides what should get done in the first place, and holds the team to the numbers.

Can Dudley Peacock train an in-house marketer to become a CMO?

Yes. The course and curriculum are built to take a capable marketer and give them the strategic frameworks a CMO uses day to day.

Who is the fractional CMO model best suited to?

Founder-led businesses that spend on marketing without a senior person setting direction, usually between £1m and £20m in revenue.

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Senior marketing direction without the full-time salary starts with one conversation. Explore CMO consulting to see how the engagement works, then book a call when you are ready to fix the constraint.