For portfolio company CEOs
Fractional CMO for Private Equity-Backed Companies
Marketing strategy, execution, and board reporting.
When a PE-backed CEO calls me, the story is usually some version of this: The board isn’t aligned on where the company is going. An agency was hired to handle marketing, but their scope is expensive and behind on delivering results. Plus the company is accountable for the growth plan, which the marketing function as it stands today will deliver late or never.
That’s where I come in.
I’m Jessica Kelley, founder of HPZ Marketing. I step in as your fractional CMO, build a strategic marketing plan that connects to revenue, and lead your team and vendors until the results show up in your board deck. Most of my clients are under $25M in revenue.
The Fractional CMO Model
You Need Marketing Moving Before the Next Board Meeting
Portfolio companies do not have six months to wait for marketing to gain traction. Marketing delays cost more inside your hold period.
I step in within weeks, assess the current state, build the plan, lead the team and vendors, and give the CEO board-ready progress results for reporting.
A full-time CMO may make sense later. First, the company needs senior marketing leadership that can produce now.
First Week Priorities
I Start Where Marketing Meets Revenue
In the first week, I look for the gap between what the board expects, what the growth plan requires, what sales needs to hit the number, and what marketing is equipped to support.
That usually shows up in three places: the plan, the pipeline, and the people doing the work.
The Growth Plan
I do a deep-dive on whether the growth plan has enough marketing support behind it. If the company needs more revenue, better pipeline, faster conversion, or stronger retention, I look for the strategy, budget, message, target audience, and capacity to make that realistic.
The Pipeline Reality
I review lead sources, conversion points, sales cycle, CRM data, customer satisfaction, win/loss patterns, handoff issues, and where deals slow down. This shows whether the problem is product, demand, lead quality, sales alignment, follow-up, messaging, or measurement.
The Marketing Function
I assess the people, vendors, processes, tools, budget, reporting, and AI use across marketing. My goal is to determine if marketing has the leadership, bench strength, strategy, and funding to achieve the plan. Candidly, is the marketing department built to do the job, or not?
What it’s like to work with me
Clarity for multi-stakeholder companies
Three partners, a million half-formed ideas about who we are and what we’re building — Jessica is the one who brings the structure that lets us actually figure it out.
JD, Associate General Counsel, Enterprise Technology
AI Fluency
Your Growth Plan Gets a Working AI System
AI is now a requirement of modern marketing. For a portfolio company, the question is whether someone senior can build AI into the marketing function before another quarter is gone.
Zapier CEO Wade Foster grades employee AI fluency on four levels. I hold myself to the same scale I tell CEOs to use on their teams, and I grade out at Adoptive, the second highest level of AI expertise.
Adoptive AI fluency means AI is part of how I run marketing from insight to strategy to execution. It shapes how I assess the market, optimize CRM, build content systems, improve sales tools, and pipeline for stronger board reporting results.
For your company, that means AI has an owner from the start. I decide where AI can replaces manual hours, which tools are worth their cost, where the team needs a repeatable process, and where human review protects the brand.
Your team gets practical and performative AI results inside the marketing function instead of disconnected tools and scattered experiments on company time.
Bring in a CMO Before the next board meeting.
If your growth plan depends on stronger marketing, I can help. In 30 minutes, I will assess what is missing, what needs to change, and if a fractional CMO is the right fit for your portfolio company.
My Story
What is HPZ Marketing?
The HPZ marketing name has a deep personal meaning for me.
I named my company after my beloved grandfather.
Jessica Kelley
Founder and CEO
Jessica Kelley has more than two decades of experience in marketing and finance, with a focus on B2B and B2C channels. She has worked extensively within the healthcare, consumer, commercial, and software industries in diverse environments ranging in size from a $200 billion corporation to a startup firm.
Jessica is the founder of HPZ Marketing, an interim CMO and fractional CMO company and is certified by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) as a Women’s Business Enterprise and Women Owned Small Business (WOSB). They provide interim and fractional executive marketing services to help businesses achieve marketing ROI with executable strategy and a relentless focus on customer acquisition and retention. Learn more about hiring a fractional CMO for your business.