A fractional CMO for SMEs, no fluff.

My name is Massimo Gobbo and I do one thing: I help founders and small and medium businesses build marketing that is clear, easy to govern and brings in real customers — not vanity metrics. I do it as fractional marketing leadership, joining a company's team for a few days a month with responsibility for strategy and results, or through focused consulting projects on a single knot: positioning, channels, measurement, team organisation.

I work with companies that already have a solid product and a sales team, but a marketing function that grew in layers: a website rebuilt three years ago, an agency running the campaigns, someone internally posting on social, and nobody holding the whole picture or answering the simplest question — how much revenue did all of this generate. My work starts exactly there.

Behind that sit more than 10 years of experience and around 100 clients across 16 different countries: European businesses, B2B and B2C, from industrial products to software. That is why I recognise the recurring patterns quickly — and the few things that, in any market, actually make the difference.

How do I work with SMEs?

Every engagement begins with listening and an audit. I look at what the company really sells, to whom, at what margin and with what sales cycle; then at what has been done over the last twelve months, what it cost and what it produced. This is not an academic exercise: it separates the activities that move revenue from the ones that consume time and budget out of habit.

Out of the audit comes a quarterly roadmap: a few priorities, each with an internal owner, a deadline and an indicator. From there I stay alongside the team — recurring meetings, review of the numbers, coordination of agencies and suppliers, coaching of internal people. The stated goal is to make the company autonomous: if after a year the founder can read their own numbers and take marketing decisions without me, the work has succeeded.

What I believe

• Strategy before tools. No channel, platform or AI fixes a confused positioning.
• Fewer activities, done properly. An SME does not win by covering every channel: it wins by picking two or three and becoming excellent there.
• Every number must reach the P&L. Qualified leads, acquisition cost, conversion rate, customer value. Impressions are a signal, not a goal.
• Transparency, including when it is uncomfortable. If an activity is not working it gets stopped; if a project is not the right fit I say so before starting.

What you'll find here

Everything published on this site comes out of real work in the field: real clients, real budgets, real problems. No abstract theory, only things already tested inside companies.

• Operational articles — step by step, repeatable in your own business.
• Case studies — real examples of applied strategy, with numbers.
• Conversations — interviews with founders who have gone the distance.
• Scalability test — five questions to see how ready your marketing is to grow.

Who is this for?

For founders and marketing leads at SMEs who have stopped looking for the "magic formula" and want to work on solid foundations: positioning, messaging, the right channels, measurement. Typically companies between 5 and 50 million in revenue, in Italy or elsewhere in Europe, selling to other businesses or through a consultative sales process.

It is not for anyone looking for a shortcut, a growth hack or someone to publish posts on their behalf: that kind of work exists, but it is not this one.

Frequently asked questions