Executive Marketing Leadership + An Expert Team to Make It Happen.
Get an experienced Chief Digital Marketing Officer without building an entire marketing department. Scott Orth helps you define the strategy, prioritize your investment, and connect marketing to business growth – with Thrive’s specialists ready to implement the plan.
Your Business Needs Someone Leading the Whole Picture
You may already have a website, advertising campaigns, an agency, or someone managing social media. But who is deciding how those efforts should work together?
A fractional Chief Digital Marketing Officer provides ongoing executive leadership on a part-time basis. Scott works with your leadership team to understand your goals, evaluate performance, set priorities, and guide the people responsible for delivering results.
With Thrive, that leadership comes with access to specialists who can carry out the agreed strategy. Your business gets a clear direction and a practical path to execution, with an engagement built around the support you need.
Four Ways Fractional Leadership Strengthens Your Marketing.
More marketing activity doesn’t automatically create more growth. Experienced leadership helps your business choose the right work, coordinate its execution, and understand what it produces.
A Clear Plan for Growth
Turn business goals into marketing priorities. Scott helps define your ideal customers, competitive positioning, channel strategy, and next steps so your team knows what to focus on and why.
Better Decisions About Your Budget
Evaluate where your marketing dollars are going and what they are contributing. Focus investment on opportunities that fit your goals, while addressing weak campaigns, disconnected tools, and gaps in measurement.
Experts Ready to Execute
Move from recommendations to implementation. Thrive’s specialists can manage the agreed work across search, advertising, websites, content, CRM, and automation under Scott’s strategic direction.
Accountability You Can Understand
Know what is being done, who owns it, and how it is performing. Connect reporting to qualified leads, sales opportunities, acquisition costs, and revenue where tracking allows.
Invest in Leadership Without Building an Entire Department
Hiring an internal marketing leader is a significant investment. Building the team that supports that leader adds another layer of salaries, benefits, recruiting, and management.
For context, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a $166,790 median annual salary for marketing managers in May 2025. That is a marketing-management benchmark, rather than a salary estimate specifically for a Chief Digital Marketing Officer. (BLS)
Benefits also matter. In June 2026, benefits represented 31.5% of total employer compensation for full-time private-industry workers. Applying that broad benchmark to the marketing-manager salary produces an illustrative employer compensation cost of approximately $243,500 annually for the leadership role alone. (BLS)
A fractional engagement lets you purchase the leadership and implementation capacity your business needs, with a defined scope and budget.
What Could a Small Internal Team Cost?
| Illustrative internal role | Annual salary benchmark |
|---|---|
| Marketing leader (marketing-manager benchmark) | $166,790 |
| Marketing research and analysis specialist | $78,760 |
| Web developer | $92,650 |
| Combined salaries | $338,200 |
| Estimated benefits (broad full-time compensation benchmark) | $155,523 |
| Illustrative annual employer compensation | $493,723 |
| Monthly equivalent | $41,144 |
Illustrative scenario: $373,723 less in annual staffing expenditure
An engagement priced at $10,000 per month would total $120,000 annually, compared with approximately $493,723 for the illustrative internal team above—a difference of about 76%.
This is a hypothetical budget comparison, not Thrive’s quoted price or a comparison of identical staffing capacity.
Advertising spend, software, and additional services must be compared separately.
A Marketing Leader With the Team to Deliver.
Scott provides the strategic direction. Thrive brings the specialist support needed to put that direction into practice.
Your engagement defines which services are included, who is responsible for delivery, and how progress will be measured. We can support your existing staff, coordinate with established partners, or handle agreed implementation directly.
SEO & AI Search Visibility
Strengthen your visibility through technical improvements, useful content, and a search strategy that considers both traditional search engines and emerging AI discovery experiences.
Paid Advertising
Plan and manage campaigns around your audiences, offers, budget, and acquisition goals. Connect advertising decisions with landing-page performance and lead quality.
Websites & Conversion
Improve how your website communicates value and turns interest into action. Address messaging, usability, landing pages, and the steps visitors take to contact you.
Content & Brand Messaging
Develop clearer positioning and coordinated content that helps prospective customers understand your expertise, evaluate your business, and move toward a decision.
CRM, Automation & Follow-Up
Connect lead capture with timely follow-up and organized sales processes. Use CRM systems and appropriate automation to reduce manual work and missed opportunities.
Reporting & Performance Analysis
Bring key marketing data into a useful view. Track agreed measures, identify gaps, and help your leadership team make informed decisions about what happens next.
One Strategy. Coordinated Execution. Fewer Loose Ends.
A strong strategy needs people, deadlines, and ownership behind it.
Scott helps translate your priorities into an actionable roadmap, then coordinates the agreed work with Thrive’s specialists and your internal team. Campaigns, website changes, content, and follow-up improvements are considered together so each supports the broader business goal.
You gain a central point of strategic accountability, regular performance discussions, and clearer decisions about where to invest next.
Whether you need help leading an existing marketing function or building one, the engagement starts with your business needs and the resources required to address them.
Meet Scott Orth, Your Fractional CDMO
Scott Orth is the founder of Thrive Business Marketing and creator of Surge by Thrive and CaseFlow™. His experience spans agency leadership, corporate marketing, and hands-on digital strategy for growing businesses.
Scott began his career leading digital marketing teams at a Portland agency before working within PPG Industries. His portfolio has included brands such as Ryonet, Carrier, Samsung, OHSU, and Venus Williams, alongside local and regional businesses. He is also an author and speaker on SEO and digital marketing.
Today, Scott brings particular depth in law firm and professional-services marketing, including the connection between visibility, lead generation, intake, and business growth. He also teaches CLE courses through Lawline on AI, ethics, and cybersecurity in legal marketing.
When you hire Scott, you gain an experienced leader who understands both strategy and implementation – with Thrive’s team available to help deliver the work.
Founder, Thrive Business Marketing · Author · Lawline CLE Instructor
Fractional CDMO Services: Your Questions Answered
Understand how fractional leadership works, what Thrive can implement, and how an engagement fits your business.
What does a fractional Chief Digital Marketing Officer do?
A fractional Chief Digital Marketing Officer (CDMO) provides executive-level marketing leadership without the cost of a full-time hire. Scott Orth works directly with your business to evaluate existing marketing efforts, develop growth strategies, manage resources, and guide your team toward measurable results. The goal is to bring experienced leadership and accountability to your digital marketing without adding another full-time executive to your payroll.
How is this different from hiring a marketing agency?
Is fractional leadership right for our business?
Can Scott work with our existing marketing staff or agencies?
Does Thrive implement the strategies Scott recommends?
Yes. While Scott focuses on strategic leadership and oversight, Thrive's digital marketing team can help execute the strategies developed for your business. From SEO and paid advertising to content marketing and website optimization, Thrive offers the resources to support your marketing initiatives. You can also continue working with your existing providers, giving you flexibility in how your strategy is implemented.
How much does a fractional CDMO engagement cost?
What happens when we get started?
How will we measure success?
Give Your Marketing a Leader—and a Team Behind the Plan
You have a business to run. Your marketing needs clear priorities, experienced oversight, and people who can move the work forward.
Talk with Scott about where you want to grow, what is getting in the way, and the support your business needs. We’ll explore whether fractional CDMO leadership and Thrive’s implementation team are the right fit.
Let’s discuss your goals, your current marketing, and the next steps that make sense.