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Fractional leadership

Let's solve
your biggest
Marketing problem

Fractional CMO Fractional Head of Marketing Fractional Growth Lead

Marketing leadership and AI-accelerated growth. Specialised in tech, apps, platform and digital products.

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15+
Years experience
B2C & B2B
Across markets
20+
Brands consulted
Julian Pankratz
Julian Pankratz Fractional CMO
References from leading tech businesses and global agency brands
BMW EasyPark JvM Brand Mercedes-Benz MINI BBDO Wholey Brand BMW EasyPark JvM Brand Mercedes-Benz MINI BBDO Wholey Brand
Problems

Is your company struggling
with marketing?

Do you have...

A leaky growth engine?

You see drop-offs, but don't know how to fix it, and the potential of AI automation is left unused

A great product, but no go-to-market?

Distribution lacks strategy, with unclear channels, weak brand fit, and no repeatable growth path

No message-market fit?

Your product marketing is off and you have slow conversion across your funnel

A brand that doesn't land?

And no vision of how to turn your purpose into a meaningful positioning

An empty sales pipeline?

Your funnel lacks stage clarity – prospects don't get the right next step at the right time

The wish to introduce AI workflows?

You want to set up agents and automations that do real work for your marketing

A team that needs guidance?

But no budget for a senior full-time hire who can impose structure and turn reactive tactics into an effective, coherent strategy

The goal to bring more marketing in-house?

You started reshaping your marketing but now need someone who professionalises the function

Essentially: do you have an urgent problem
and no one to take ownership?

I help B2C and B2B businesses sort out what they need, prioritise the biggest opportunity and execute until delivery.

Julian Pankratz Reach out now
Services

Fractional marketing leadership

Plugged in-house into your business, hitting the ground running. Guiding an existing team, executing myself or adding specialist freelance roles where needed.

Working on the biggest opportunity – and the next. When specialists are needed, I tap into a large personal network to build a fully functional freelance team – shifting from personal execution to project management and strategic oversight.

AI-accelerated workflows

My work is always hands-on, and by default augmented by AI – multiplying output without adding headcount.

The result: full marketing impact for a fraction of what a permanent role costs. For as long as you need it.

Kick-off to our long-term journey

The 90-day leap
Your individual growth motion
Days
0 – 30
To the bone
Analysis: Stakeholder intake and power download of your business situation
Goals: Clarify KPIs and targets for the 90d leap
Roadmap: Specify scope and deliverables
Action: Bring in the low-hanging fruit
Days
31 – 60
Gain momentum
Deep-dive into prioritised opportunities, run hypotheses-based testing, push key initiatives, depending on our defined targets and your most critical growth and marketing challenges
Days
61 – 90
Mark the leap
Deliver the first bigger project
Measure impact on bottom-line reality
Retro and feedback
Define our long-term working model
Profile

What makes my work unique

My special feature: I bring brand and creative firepower from my agency background, and growth system building and execution from tech companies and startup environments.

Brand foundation

I turn your brand into a clear strategic foundation – so every message, channel, and asset pulls in the same direction. Essential for launches, market entries, repositioning, or when your team needs alignment.

Brand strategy Marketing strategy Messaging Campaign concepting Creative production Social Web / App UX PR / thought leadership

Growth & commercial

I translate your product and brand into a go-to-market system that converts. This can cover product marketing, GTM strategy, acquisition tactics or lifecycle/CRM – supported by practical AI workflows that increase speed.

Product marketing Go-to-market strategy Demand generation Performance marketing Lifecycle / CRM AI workflow building Partnerships

Marketing leadership

As Marketing Director and Head of Marketing, I led teams up to 8 and owned budget, structure, and day-to-day leadership.

Budget / P&L OKR / KPI Structure / Processes AI transformation
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Testimonials

Success stories

Trusted marketing and growth leadership solving real problems

Way of working
An AI-based marketing
operating model
Julian Pankratz

Having senior marketing leadership in-house is expensive – and staying lean while covering creative and commercial work is hard.

Fractional marketing leadership is a pragmatic response to that. With a fractional lead like me, you get embedded senior direction for a fraction of the costs, plugging in specialist execution when needed.

Brand and funnel are no longer separate disciplines. Growth comes from systems that connect all the dots, and use data and creativity to inform meaningful uplift. My background fits this new reality.

Add AI to this, with agentic workflows multiplying the pace of any data-informed process, while keeping a human perspective, and you get the perfect conditions for a new fractional marketing function.

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FAQ

Frequently
asked
questions

The first 30 days are diagnostic: stakeholder interviews, brand and funnel audit, KPI clarity, and a defined 90-day scope. From there I operate as an embedded team member – joining your Slack or Teams, contributing to planning cycles, and owning the marketing function. I bring my own structure (weekly rhythm, shared roadmap, monthly reporting) but adapt to your existing tools. Day-to-day I move between strategy and execution – writing briefs, reviewing creative, managing freelancers, analysing data. I report directly to the founder or CEO and am accountable for results.
The engagement covers the full breadth of marketing leadership: positioning and messaging, go-to-market strategy, campaign direction, channel ownership, team leadership, and reporting. This can extend to brand strategy and creative direction, performance marketing oversight, CRM and lifecycle implementation, PR, product marketing, and partnership development. Execution is part of the role – I'm not just an advisor. Where I don't execute directly, I source and manage specialists from my personal network. Not included: media spend, third-party tooling, or production budgets – handled separately and transparently.
The fractional model requires moving between diagnosis and delivery without dropping the thread. Strategically, I diagnose the root cause of your marketing problem, define priorities, build the messaging and positioning framework, and translate this into channel and campaign strategy. Hands-on, I write copy, brief designers, run ad accounts, analyse funnels, and lead CRM implementations. At Wholey I restructured an 8-person team and defined the 2025 strategy while directing a national Helene Fischer campaign. At PARK NOW I combined brand-building with direct accountability for customer growth, reaching 1M customers in one year. The strategy-to-execution ratio shifts with your situation, budget, and team.
The starting commitment is 3 months – enough for a proper diagnosis, early wins, and the first meaningful deliverable. After that, most engagements continue on a rolling basis. Scope and deliverables are agreed upfront. If your situation changes, we adjust. If things aren't working, there's a clear offboarding process. No long-term lock-in beyond the initial term.
Engagements run on a monthly retainer tied to a defined scope – significantly less than a full-time senior hire, which represents a significant investment before benefits and recruiting. I make progress visible rather than promising ROI upfront: KPIs and milestones are agreed at the start of each period and reported against monthly. Progress shows in clarity (positioning, messaging), speed (time to launch), and outcomes (leads, conversion, growth). Most clients see measurable results within the first 30–60 days. Reach out for a scoped proposal.
Brand: strategy, positioning, messaging, campaign concepting, creative direction, PR and thought leadership – built across 5+ years at Jung von Matt and BBDO on global campaigns for BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and DHL. Growth: product marketing, go-to-market strategy, demand generation, performance marketing, lifecycle/CRM, and partnerships – applied across Series A to Series D companies including PARK NOW, EasyPark, and Voi. Leadership: team structuring, OKR frameworks, budget ownership, P&L accountability, and cross-functional alignment with teams up to 8 people across B2C, B2B, and B2G. The agency creative background combined with in-house growth experience lets me hold brand and commercial thinking simultaneously.
I specialise in tech, apps, digital products, and platform businesses across B2C, B2B, and mixed models. Past mandates include micromobility (Voi), digital parking (PARK NOW/EasyPark), EdTech (Lernigo), audio travel tech (Guidable), and FMCG (Wholey). The common thread: digital products, growth ambitions, and a need to connect brand to commercial performance. I've worked from pre-Series A startups to Series D scale-ups with 800+ employees. Best fit: a founder or CEO who cares about marketing but can't lead it themselves, or a team that needs senior direction without a full-time headcount addition.
Very. I join your Slack or Teams, attend standups, contribute to planning cycles, and operate as part of the leadership team. I bring my own structure (weekly priorities, shared roadmap, monthly reporting) but plug into your existing process rather than creating a parallel one. Within two weeks, your team should feel like they have a marketing lead who's genuinely present, not a freelancer they're managing.
I adapt to whatever you have. My own stack: Notion, Miro, and Figma for strategy; Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Metabase, Looker, and Data.ai for analytics; Google Ads, Meta, Apple Search Ads, and Adjust for paid acquisition; Brevo and Klaviyo for CRM; Semrush and Searchmetrics for SEO; Webflow for web; Hotjar and VWO for conversion testing; Asana and Monday for project management; ChatGPT Pro and Claude.ai for AI-augmented work. If you're running tools I haven't used, I learn fast – I've onboarded into complex stacks across 10+ mandates.
Through a personal network built across 15+ years of agency and in-house work, covering senior freelancers in performance marketing, creative direction, copywriting, web development, CRM, SEO, PR, and social. I've worked with most of them directly and know their quality firsthand. When a specialist is brought in, I brief and manage them – you don't carry the coordination overhead. I can also work alongside your existing agency partners.
Remote-first, with a European focus. Occasional in-person time is possible. I cover European time zones across Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, the UK, and Scandinavia, and am fluent in German, English, and Italian. If your company is based outside Europe but runs marketing through a European team, we can discuss fit.
Teams and no-team situations both work. With a team, I step in as their lead, set direction, run the planning cycle, and give them the senior oversight they've been missing. Teams typically respond well – they've often been waiting for someone to take ownership. With no team yet, I define what you need, source and brief specialists from my network, and build the function from scratch. I've done both – leading an 8-person team at Wholey and building from near-zero at PARK NOW and Lernigo.
The first call is a free 30-minute intro covering your challenge, context, and fit. If we proceed, I send an engagement proposal covering scope, deliverables, timeline, and fee. Once agreed, we sign a mutual NDA and a short engagement letter. Day 1 starts with tool access and a stakeholder kickoff – usually two or three sessions in the first week. By the end of week two, you'll have a written diagnostic and initial priorities. By end of month one, a clear 90-day roadmap and first initiatives underway.
The number is intentionally limited. Running too many engagements at once is the failure mode of many fractional models – it produces thin advice rather than real leadership. I take on a small number of active mandates, scoped so each client receives genuine senior attention and meaningful hours per week. Current availability is discussed transparently on the intro call.
We adjust. A product launch, funding round, or major campaign can increase scope and hours for that period; quieter phases scale back. Changes to scope are agreed in writing and reflected in the monthly fee. The minimum is the baseline agreed at the start; adjustments below that are discussed case by case. The model adapts to the current situation.
fractpartner.ai is me, Julian Pankratz, combined with a loose network of specialists who support me on projects. The longer-term goal is to build fractpartner into a platform where specialists and senior marketers are organised together — offering a new kind of service that covers all relevant disciplines full-stack. Stay tuned!
Reach out

Reach out to talk about
your challenge

write to grow@fractpartner.ai