The Cheeky Rooster is a fractional marketing agency for technology startups, B2B tech companies, and the funds that back them. Senior marketing leadership and hands-on execution, without the full-time headcount. We build the engine, we run it, and we scale as you grow.
Results from Sondra Connor's in-house leadership roles. Pipeline and forecasted revenue are not booked revenue. See the details.
You built the product. You found the first customers. What's left is the part most founders put off: deciding who this is really for, why it wins, and how anyone hears about it.
Most early teams don't have a marketing problem. They have a bandwidth problem. Nobody has the time, the energy, or the playbook to start the engine, so marketing turns into a pile of half-finished tactics that never compound.
Most of our clients sell something that takes a minute to explain. Beyond that, they come in every shape: two founders and a prototype, a company with a sales team and no marketing, a marketing lead who needs backup, or a fund looking after a whole portfolio.
You're pre-revenue or just past it, and marketing is the job nobody has time for. We're the whole department until you're ready to build your own. We work with women-founded companies on purpose, and with any founder who wants straight answers.
You're past the first customers and selling to engineers, IT, security, or operations leaders who read the spec sheet. Sales is carrying the story alone, or marketing exists but isn't moving pipeline. We bring the senior direction and the hands to run it.
Maybe you're the first marketing hire and doing it all. Maybe a small team needs extra capacity for a launch, a rebrand, or a big event. We work alongside you, not over you, and leave the plan with your team when we're done.
Your seed and Series A companies need marketing long before they can afford to hire it. We give the fund one team that already knows the thesis and can drop into any company you point us at.
Strategy, positioning, website, social, campaigns, and the budget behind them. One team, one plan, one invoice. No coordinating five vendors who've never spoken to each other.
Start with positioning and a website. Add demand generation, press, and analyst relations when the company is ready for them. You're never paying for more marketing than the stage you're in.
One point of contact, one plan, one monthly report. You approve, we run it. That's the entire overhead on your side, which matters when you're also building the product.
Take all of it or take the pieces you're missing. AI runs through every piece of it, from research and content to campaign operations and reporting. That's how a small team covers a full department's worth of work.
Who it's for, why it wins, and the words your whole company uses to say so.
Launch plans, messaging, and the materials sales actually needs in the room.
The accounts worth chasing, the ones worth ignoring, and how to tell them apart.
Copy, structure, and build. A site that explains the product without you on the call.
Voice, cadence, and content that sounds like you rather than like a brand account.
Paid, search, email, and the funnel underneath. Built for the sales cycle you have.
The plan for the year, tied to the revenue number and reviewed every quarter.
What to spend, where to spend it, and what it should return. In writing, with dates.
Announcements, embargoes, and the plan behind them. We run the plan and bring in the team to support earned media, from pitching to placement. Useful when there's something real to say and expensive when there isn't, so we'll tell you which one it is.
Briefings, inquiry, and getting onto the maps your buyers read before they ever call you.
For a founder running marketing themselves, or a first marketing hire who needs a sounding board.
Sondra runs the plan alongside your team, reporting to the CEO or founders.
Strategy through execution, plus the add-ons when you're ready for them.
Before The Cheeky Rooster, Sondra led marketing inside technology companies with complex products and long sales cycles. These results come from those in-house roles, and they are the experience every client engagement draws on.
Feature-led materials were not helping buyers with their business problems. Sondra owned a $700K+ campaign budget, built Ricoh's first ABM and go-to-market playbooks, added a product demo program, and rebuilt content around what customers needed. The program became the model for other product lines.
The company needed a brand that explained identity and cyber protection, and a broker channel that could tell that story as the business expanded internationally. Sondra led the rebrand to CyberScout, ran campaigns on a $400K+ budget, and produced 40+ videos.
Utility engineers and executive buyers needed different stories, and investors were watching ahead of a Series A. Sondra built the go-to-market plan and brand launch, ran dual-audience campaigns, built analyst relations with Gartner and S&P Global, and created an industry event designed for direct buyer conversations.
Enterprise and mid-market deals were sitting still. Sondra built a deal acceleration program aimed at stalled opportunities, along with ABM programs, competitive research, battle cards, and industry content for sales.
Every fund watches the same thing happen. A company raises, the product is good, and then six months go by while the founder tries to figure out marketing between board meetings.
Runway gets spent on an agency that never understood the product, or nothing happens at all and the story never lands.
A standing arrangement across your companies. They get senior marketing from day one at rates that make sense at their stage, and you get one team that already knows the thesis and doesn't need re-briefing at every company.
We look at positioning, category, and go-to-market before you write the check, and tell you plainly what marketing will cost to fix and how long it will take. No consultant theater, just the number.
Positioning sprints, messaging clinics, and launch support for the cohort. Real deliverables the founders keep, rather than a platform perk nobody redeems.
I've spent about twenty years doing marketing for companies whose products are hard to explain.
I grew up in manufacturing, oil and gas, and aerospace. Engineers as buyers, long approval chains, and zero tolerance for a claim you can't back up. That led to telecom, government, and cybersecurity, then employee benefits, which led to HR technology and HRIS, and most recently to nuclear energy, where regulators read every word. Every one of those rooms was hard to explain and slow to buy. If a marketing engine holds up there, it will hold up in your industry.
What I kept running into was the same story. A good product, real customers, and a founder doing marketing at eleven at night because there was nobody else to do it. Agencies wanted a year and a retainer before they'd say anything useful. A full time marketing leader wanted a salary the company couldn't justify yet. So the work just sat there.
So I built the thing that was missing: a senior marketing team you can hire for exactly as much as you need right now, that grows when you grow, and that tells you the truth about what's working.
The other half of the answer is AI. I'm AI native and I've built this practice around it, across research, content, campaign operations, and reporting. It isn't a gimmick and it doesn't write your brand for you. It's leverage, and it's the reason a small team can carry a full department without thinning out the thinking.
I'm honest about what will take eighteen months. I won't sell you channels you don't need. And I leave your team better than I found it.
The rooster part is literal. We're up early, the work starts before the inbox does, and the plan is on your desk before the day gets away from you.
The cheeky part is the other half of the job. Every company needs somebody willing to say the slightly uncomfortable thing in the room, the one that saves you six months and a quarter of your budget. We're happy to be that person, kindly, and with the receipts to back it up.
The Cheeky Rooster is a full service marketing firm for technology companies. We do go-to-market, brand, and demand, and we do it as an extension of your team rather than a vendor you have to manage.
The model is simple. We start where the pain is, usually positioning or the website. We build the plan and the budget. We execute it with you and report on it every month. When you're ready to hire in house, we help you write the job description and hand it over clean.
Honesty, transparency, and accountability aren't values on a wall here. They're the reason clients stay. You'll always know what we're working on, what it costs, and what it's doing.
Companies where the thing being sold is genuinely complicated and the person buying it usually knows more about it than the marketer does.
Some of this shapes who we work with. Some of it is just true about us, and you may as well know before the first call.
There are dogs and cats under the desks here, and a permanent soft spot for anything with four legs that needs a hand. If your company does something good for animals, lead with it. We will happily help you say it louder.
Family comes first here, and we assume it does for you too. We plan the work so nobody has to choose between a launch date and a school pickup. Deadlines are real, but so are people.
We back women-owned and women-led technology companies, and we say so out loud. There should be more of them, they should be easier to find, and they should not have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously in a pitch.
Mentoring the next round of them matters more than almost anything else we do. Women [In] exists partly for that reason, so a young woman can hear what this job actually sounds like from someone who is doing it.
Sondra advises Native Nuclear, a nonprofit working on sovereignty, opportunity, and stewardship for tribal communities in the energy conversation. Native and Indigenous communities should be consulted first and benefit first, not told about it after the plans are drawn.
We believe nuclear energy is one of the honest answers to the climate problem, and that it will change the communities that host it for the better. That is part of why we work in the industry, and why we stay close to it.
One woman per episode, describing the field she works in, how she got there, and what it actually cost her. Career changes, entrepreneurship, leadership, and women in technical fields.
![Women [In] podcast cover art, hosted by Sondra Connor](/assets/img/women-in-cover.webp)
Short, specific, and written by us. Every figure is sourced and every source is listed at the bottom of the piece.
What a panel of founders said about the nos, the comparison trap, taking action without the feeling, and why rest is a strategy, not a reward.
Read the pieceGreater Phoenix startups raised well under 1% of US venture capital from 2020 to 2024. That is not a complaint. It is a map. Build here, raise everywhere.
Read the pieceHow do you know when to pivot? Open your ears, then write the terms before you test. A five-line template from the Women Founders Summit.
Read the pieceWomen-only startups got 1.1% of US VC dollars in 2025. The research on why, and six moves to use in your next pitch.
Read the pieceI almost talked myself out of the room. Five lessons from the Women Founders Summit in Tempe on money, pivots, confidence, and finding your voice.
Read the pieceWhat a CMO actually costs, why the statistics everyone quotes about bad hires are made up, and the signals that say it is finally time.
Read the piece
Tell us what you're building and where marketing is stuck. If we're the right fit we'll say so, and if we're not we'll tell you who is.
What founders and investors usually ask about us. For how fractional marketing works, what it costs, and how long it takes, see the fractional marketing FAQ.
Mostly companies whose product takes a minute to explain: founders who need a marketing department before they can hire one, growing B2B technology companies selling to technical buyers on long sales cycles, marketing leaders and small teams who need a senior partner or extra hands, and venture funds that want one marketing team for their portfolio. We work with women-founded companies on purpose. If you are not sure you fit, ask. We will tell you honestly.
Sondra Connor leads every engagement and stays on it. She brings in trusted specialists for things like earned media or design production when the plan calls for them, and she owns the plan and the measurement either way.
Anywhere in the United States. Engagements are fully remote, with a standing working session, a shared plan, and a monthly report. Your buyers are national, and so is the work.
Yes. Funds use us as a marketing bench for the portfolio: standing arrangements across companies, go-to-market diligence before an investment closes, and positioning sprints or messaging clinics for the cohort.
Send a note through the contact form or email sondra@cheekyrooster.com. The first conversation is thirty minutes. We talk about where marketing is stuck, what the first ninety days could look like, and rates. If we are not the right fit, we will say so.
Sondra hosts Women [In] with Sondra Connor, a podcast where one woman per episode describes the field she works in and how she got there. It is a separate show, and part of why mentoring women in technical fields matters so much here.
A few sentences is plenty. We reply to everything within a business day.
