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Fractional Marketing Leadership

Fractional marketing leadership without the headcount.

The Cheeky Rooster is a full service marketing team for startups that need to make a splash, and a marketing bench for the funds that back them. We build the engine, we run it, and we scale as you grow.

Go-To-Market  |  Product Launch  |  Branding
Book a 30-minute call See what we do

Twenty years across nuclear energy, SaaS, cybersecurity, manufacturing, and industrial technology. Long sales cycles, technical buyers, small teams. That's the room we're used to.

The Situation

You have already done the hard part.

You built the product. You found the first customers. What's left is the part most founders put off: deciding who this is really for, why it wins, and how anyone hears about it.

Most early teams don't have a marketing problem. They have a bandwidth problem. Nobody has the time, the energy, or the playbook to start the engine, so marketing turns into a pile of half-finished tactics that never compound.

Who It's For

Two kinds of people call us.

Founders who need a marketing department and can't hire one yet, and the investors who watch that same problem play out across a whole portfolio.

For Startups

Women and tech founders

You're pre-revenue or just past it. You need to make a splash and you don't have the time, the energy, or the marketing playbook to get the engine going. We're the whole department until you're ready to build your own, and we work with women-founded companies on purpose.

  • Positioning and ICP before you spend a dollar on channels
  • A website that explains the product without you on the call
  • A plan and a budget you can put in front of your board
  • Senior marketing at a rate that fits the stage you're in
See what we do
For Venture Capital

Resources for your portfolio

Your seed and Series A companies need marketing long before they can afford to hire it. We give the fund one marketing team that already knows the thesis and can drop into any company you point us at.

  • Portfolio-wide arrangement and rates
  • Go-to-market diligence before you write the check
  • Positioning sprints and clinics for the cohort
  • One team your founders don't each have to vet
More for investors
What that looks like in practice

The whole department

Strategy, positioning, website, social, campaigns, and the budget behind them. One team, one plan, one invoice. No coordinating five vendors who've never spoken to each other.

We scale and grow with you

Start with positioning and a website. Add demand generation, press, and analyst relations when the company is ready for them. You're never paying for more marketing than the stage you're in.

Easy for you to manage

One point of contact, one plan, one monthly report. You approve, we run it. That's the entire overhead on your side, which matters when you're also building the product.

What We Do

Everything the engine needs.

Take all of it or take the pieces you're missing. AI runs through every piece of it, from research and content to campaign operations and reporting. That's how a small team covers a full department's worth of work.

Positioning

Who it's for, why it wins, and the words your whole company uses to say so.

Product Support

Launch plans, messaging, and the materials sales actually needs in the room.

ICP

The accounts worth chasing, the ones worth ignoring, and how to tell them apart.

Website

Copy, structure, and build. A site that explains the product without you on the call.

Social

Voice, cadence, and content that sounds like you rather than like a brand account.

Digital Marketing

Paid, search, email, and the funnel underneath. Built for the sales cycle you have.

Marketing Strategy

The plan for the year, tied to the revenue number and reviewed every quarter.

Budget

What to spend, where to spend it, and what it should return. In writing, with dates.

Add on when you need them

Press & Media Management

Announcements, embargoes, and the relationships behind them. Useful when there's genuinely something to say and expensive when there isn't, so we'll tell you which one it is.

Analyst Relations

Briefings, inquiry, and getting onto the maps your buyers read before they ever call you.

Engagements

Three ways to work together.

Move between them as you grow. That's rather the point.

Advisory

Two calls a month

For a founder running marketing themselves, or a first marketing hire who needs a sounding board. Direction without the overhead.

Fractional

A set number of days a month

Senior marketing leadership on retainer, running the plan alongside your team. Most clients start here and stay six to twelve months.

Full Service

We are the department

Strategy through execution, plus the add-ons when you're ready for them. For companies with no marketing team and no time to build one.

On pricing: rates come up on the first call, not after four of them. No packages, no surprise line items, and no minimum you'll regret in month three.
For Venture Capital

A marketing bench for your whole portfolio.

Every fund watches the same thing happen. A company raises, the product is good, and then six months go by while the founder tries to figure out marketing between board meetings. Runway gets spent on an agency that never understood the product, or nothing happens at all and the story never lands.

Portfolio-wide access

A standing arrangement across your companies. They get senior marketing from day one at rates that make sense at their stage, and you get one team that already knows the thesis and does not need re-briefing at every company.

Go-to-market diligence

We look at positioning, category, and go-to-market before you write the check, and tell you plainly what marketing will cost to fix and how long it will take. No consultant theater, just the number.

Value-add founders use

Positioning sprints, messaging clinics, and launch support for the cohort. Real deliverables the founders keep, rather than a platform perk that nobody redeems.

Talk about portfolio support Email us directly
A Word From The Founder
Sondra Connor, Owner and CEO of The Cheeky Rooster

Why I started The Cheeky Rooster.

I've spent about twenty years doing marketing for companies whose products are hard to explain.

I grew up in nuclear energy, which is about as tough a room as marketing gets. Long approval chains, engineers as buyers, regulators reading every word, and zero tolerance for a claim you can't back up. From there it was SaaS, cybersecurity, manufacturing, and industrial technology. If a marketing engine holds up in nuclear, it will hold up in your industry.

What I kept running into was the same story. A good product, real customers, and a founder doing marketing at eleven at night because there was nobody else to do it. Agencies wanted a year and a retainer before they'd say anything useful. A full time marketing leader wanted a salary the company couldn't justify yet. So the work just sat there.

So I built the thing that was missing: a senior marketing team you can hire for exactly as much as you need right now, that grows when you grow, and that tells you the truth about what's working.

The other half of the answer is AI. I'm AI native and I've built this practice around it, across research, content, campaign operations, and reporting. It isn't a gimmick and it doesn't write your brand for you. It's leverage, and it's the reason a small team can carry a full department without thinning out the thinking.

I'm honest about what will take eighteen months. I won't sell you channels you don't need. And I leave your team better than I found it.

Sondra ConnorOwner & CEO, The Cheeky Rooster
About the Name
The Cheeky Rooster logo

Up with the roosters, cheeky when it counts.

The rooster part is literal. We're up early, the work starts before the inbox does, and the plan is on your desk before the day gets away from you.

The cheeky part is the other half of the job. Every company needs somebody willing to say the slightly uncomfortable thing in the room, the one that saves you six months and a quarter of your budget. We're happy to be that person, kindly, and with the receipts to back it up.

About Us

A small team that acts like your marketing department.

The Cheeky Rooster is a full service marketing firm for technology companies. We do go-to-market, brand, and demand, and we do it as an extension of your team rather than a vendor you have to manage.

The model is simple. We start where the pain is, usually positioning or the website. We build the plan and the budget. We execute it with you and report on it every month. When you're ready to hire in house, we help you write the job description and hand it over clean.

Honesty, transparency, and accountability aren't values on a wall here. They're the reason clients stay. You'll always know what we're working on, what it costs, and what it's doing.

Who We Work With

Technical products, patient buyers.

Companies where the thing being sold is genuinely complicated and the person buying it usually knows more about it than the marketer does.

  • Nuclear Energy
  • SaaS & Software
  • Cybersecurity
  • Manufacturing
  • Energy, Oil & Gas
  • Technology Services
Most Recent Result
$1M to $2M
in forecasted revenue

From the last industry event we built and ran for a client. One event, one clear story, and a very specific list of people in the room. That is what a plan looks like when it lands.

What We Care About

The rest of it.

Some of this shapes who we work with. Some of it is just true about us, and you may as well know before the first call.

Animals

There are dogs and cats under the desks here, and a permanent soft spot for anything with four legs that needs a hand. If your company does something good for animals, lead with it. We will happily help you say it louder.

Family

Family comes first here, and we assume it does for you too. We plan the work so nobody has to choose between a launch date and a school pickup. Deadlines are real, but so are people.

Women-Owned Tech

We back women-owned and women-led technology companies, and we say so out loud. There should be more of them, they should be easier to find, and they should not have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously in a pitch.

Young Women

Mentoring the next round of them matters more than almost anything else we do. Women [In] exists partly for that reason, so a young woman can hear what this job actually sounds like from someone who is doing it.

Native Communities

Sondra advises Native Nuclear, a nonprofit working on sovereignty, opportunity, and stewardship for tribal communities in the energy conversation. Native and Indigenous communities should be consulted first and benefit first, not told about it after the plans are drawn.

The Earth

We believe nuclear energy is one of the honest answers to the climate problem, and that it will change the communities that host it for the better. That is part of why we came up in the industry, and part of why we stay close to it.

Also From The Rooster

Women [In]…

The women who actually do the work.

One woman per episode, describing the field she works in, how she got there, and what it actually cost her. Hosted by Sondra Connor.

Listen to the show Be a guest
Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeartRadio RSS
Women [In] podcast cover art
Insights

Notes from the work.

Short, specific, and written by us. Every figure is sourced and every source is listed at the bottom of the piece.

Let's Get Started

Thirty minutes, no pitch deck.

Tell us what you're building and where marketing is stuck. If we're the right fit we'll say so, and if we're not we'll tell you who is.

Book a 30-minute call Email us instead
What we'll cover
  • Where you are and what's actually stuck
  • What we'd do in the first ninety days
  • Which engagement makes sense, or none
  • Rates, timing, and how to start
Common Questions

Fractional marketing leadership, explained.

The questions founders and investors ask us before the first call.

What is a fractional marketing leader?

A fractional marketing leader is a senior marketing executive who works with your company part time, usually a set number of days each month. You get the strategy, the plan, and budget ownership of a CMO without the salary, equity, and benefits of a full time hire. Most startups use one until revenue justifies building an in house team.

What does a fractional marketing leader cost?

Considerably less than a full time CMO. The number depends on how many days a month you need and whether execution is included alongside strategy. At The Cheeky Rooster, rates come up on the first call rather than after four of them, and there are no packages or minimums you will regret in month three.

How is this different from hiring a marketing agency?

An agency executes tactics you have already decided on. A fractional marketing leader decides what should be done in the first place, then runs it. We do both, which is why founders with no marketing team use us as the whole department rather than as one more vendor to manage.

When should a startup hire fractional marketing leadership?

When the product is real, the first customers are in, and marketing has become the thing nobody has time to do properly. That is usually pre-seed through Series A. If the founder is writing website copy at eleven at night, it is already time.

Do you work with venture capital funds?

Yes. We work with funds that want a marketing bench for their portfolio: standing rates across companies, go-to-market diligence before an investment closes, and positioning sprints for the cohort. One team that knows the thesis and does not need re-briefing at every company.

What industries do you work in?

Nuclear energy, SaaS, cybersecurity, manufacturing, and industrial technology. Long sales cycles, technical buyers, and products that are genuinely hard to explain are the normal conditions for us rather than the hard cases.

Contact

Tell us what you're working on.

A few sentences is plenty. We reply to everything within a business day.

Email
sondra@cheekyrooster.com
Mobile
303.847.9409
Web
cheekyrooster.com
Based in
Arizona, working with clients anywhere.