Hey CMO! Building your GTM dream team? Don't forget about your PR pro

I’ve been a bit of a wandering PR pro in 2026. Web Summit, CES, Vancouver Startup Week and a whole shwack of coffee-meetups, networking events, etc. One trend I don’t think I’m hallucinating: is everyone a fractional CMO now? 

It seemed like 80 percent of the marketing executives I spoke to were fractional CMOs balancing work for 2 to 5 companies, leading their Go-To-Market strategy and hiring specialists like us to execute their vision. And that tracks with our most important internal metric: who is using Mind Meld PR’s contact form to hire us? 

These days, more than half of the people who reach out are now hyper-focused fractional CMOs looking for a results-driven public relations firm. And they’re all looking for help improving their GEO – helping these companies get discovered when AI search is the number-one marketing need. Earned media being the key driver for AI search right now, public relations is on more and more fractional CMO’s radar. 

A growing number of companies are eliminating the full time CMO role altogether. According to Marketing Week, 23.8% of companies cut their senior marketing leader in 2025 without a replacement.

Enter the Fractional CMO: part-time executives who manage high-level strategy, agency relationships, and results. They often work around 40 hours a month, and are laser-focused on driving growth and results. Fractional CMOs used to be a niche workaround, but LinkedIn profiles mentioning "fractional" jumped from 2,000 in 2022 to 144,000 in 2024, as startups see it as a more flexible option. 

When a company hires a fractional CMO, they rarely have a budget for a full internal team alongside them. The fractional CMO becomes the manager of agency relationships. Those agencies are the ones responsible for creating copy, posting on socials, and getting media coverage. CMOs need agency partners who can move fast, prove value quickly, and operate on shorter contracts. A three or six month agency contract is much easier to sell in the boardroom than 3 new full-time hires. 

GEO is the reason Fractional CMOs need PR agencies right now

PR agencies are fast becoming a CMO’s closest partner. That’s down to one factor in 2026: AI search. 

“We’re getting absolutely killed by our competitor because they show up in all of ChatGPT’s answers about our industry,” a CMO told us on a recent PR kickoff call. “I can see now that PR isn’t just a nice-to-have. We need this to stay alive.” 

Just to make sure we’re on the same page, here, what is AI search, or Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) all about?

This is what makes sure your brand gets cited by AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s AI overviews. 

When a potential buyer types “what’s the best cloud optimization company” into ChatGPT, for example, you want to make sure your cloud optimization company shows up in the list of half a dozen names included in the answer. 

• Earned media is the single most important input into AI visibility. Muck Rack analyzed more than one million links cited by leading AI models including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, and found that 82% of all AI citations come from earned media. 

• Non-paid sources account for 94% of citations overall. Owned content and paid placements that fractional CMOs used to focus on are now in a very distant second place. 

• Recency matters too. Half of all AI citations come from content published within the last 12 months. You need consistent media coverage every month, which is exactly what a PR agency (like ours!) provides for clients. 

That’s why results-driven fractional CMOs are rapidly partnering with PR agencies to build their AI search visibility with media coverage.  

Are you a fractional CMO looking for a PR agency partner who can deliver media coverage every month? Contact Mind Meld PR today.