Most businesses aren't struggling because people aren't working hard enough.
They're struggling because no one is responsible for making it all work together.
Fractional CMO • Founder, Emerge Marketing Consultants
Kim Laurence Salser
Kim works with established, expert-led service businesses across Greater Houston — bringing them the senior marketing leadership that makes every piece of their strategy function as a system, not a collection of separate efforts.
Book a Discovery CallThe Background
Kim did not arrive at marketing through a corner office. She arrived through a career spent in the field — selling, building relationships, watching small business owners work harder than anyone in the room and still struggle to grow. That path turned out to be a better education than any CMO title could have provided.
A native of Cypress, Texas and a proud Aggie, Kim earned her degree in Industrial Distribution from Texas A&M University — a program where engineering and business overlap, producing graduates equally comfortable with systems thinking and human relationships. She built a career spanning electrical components, electronics and telecom, and pharmaceutical sales.
Working closely with small business owners, she started seeing the same pattern everywhere: capable people running good businesses, stalled not by lack of effort but by the absence of a coherent marketing strategy. Social media treated as a sales tool when it is a trust-builder. Websites untouched for years. Email lists collected and ignored. Nothing working together because no one was responsible for making it work together.
She founded Emerge Marketing Consultants to close that gap. What began as social media support evolved, as her eye for the whole system sharpened, into a fractional CMO practice — senior marketing leadership that used to be reserved for companies with seven-figure budgets, brought to the businesses that need it most.
"Kim's gift was not execution alone. It was seeing the whole system, diagnosing what was broken, and building the structure that let everything function as it should."
- Texas A&M University — Industrial Distribution
- Background in pharmaceutical, telecom, and electrical component sales
- Founded Emerge Marketing Consultants, now in its fifth year
- Serves clients across Greater Houston and statewide
How She Works
The problem is almost never what a business owner thinks it is. Before a single tactic is added or a dollar is spent, Kim maps the whole system — what exists, what connects, and what is quietly working against growth.
Diagnose First
The audit comes before the answer
The first conversation is never about what to add. It's about what isn't working and why. Every engagement begins with a strategic audit of the full marketing picture: brand, website, content, lead flow, and customer experience.
Build the Architecture
Every piece has to serve something
A website without a content strategy is a brochure. Social without lead capture is entertainment. Kim's role is to design the system that makes every piece serve a purpose and feed the next stage of growth.
Stay at the Table
The work is ongoing because growth is
Unlike a consultant who delivers a deck and departs, Kim remains embedded — in strategy sessions, watching the numbers, adjusting as the business moves. She is a strategic partner, not a vendor with a deliverable and a contract.
If This Is Your Business
The Patterns She Sees Every Day
Kim's clients are established, expert-led businesses that have outgrown what got them here. The marketing that worked in year one doesn't work in year four. These are the patterns she has built a practice around fixing.
- A strong local reputation, but no predictable way to generate new leads outside of referrals.
- A website that exists — but hasn't been updated in years and doesn't reflect where the business is now.
- Active on social media, but not converting — because it was never designed to.
- Tried ads, a content person, an agency — and nothing stuck because there was no strategy holding it together.
- You know marketing needs to change, but you're the expert in your field, not in this one. And you shouldn't have to be.
- Ready to scale. What's needed is a senior strategic partner, not another vendor with a deliverable.
Client Results
What Happens When Marketing Works
These are not marketing wins. They are business transformations — made possible because marketing was finally working as it should: quietly, systematically, building the conditions for growth.
Care Services · Greater Houston
From Home Office
to Brick-and-Mortar
A Houston-area care services firm scaled its client base, elevated staff into leadership roles, and moved from a home office into a commercial location — with a marketing strategy that built visibility, captured leads, and systematically nurtured them to conversion.
Nine months
Family Law · Greater Houston
Associate Hired. Second Location Opened.
First Building Purchased.
A family law firm added an associate attorney, opened a second location, and acquired its first building — growth that required a marketing foundation strong enough to generate the caseload to support it.
Eighteen months
Client identities withheld to preserve confidentiality. Full context available during a discovery conversation.
View Fractional CMO ServicesLeadership & Community
Invested in the Region She Serves
Kim's community involvement reflects the same conviction that drives her client work: business grows in community. The relationships, accountability, and intelligence that come from being genuinely embedded in a region don't come from a distance.
Board of Directors • 4 Years, Executive Board 3 Years
Greater Tomball Area Chamber of Commerce
One of the Houston region's most active chamber communities for established small and mid-size businesses.
Alumni Board Secretary • 3rd Year • Class XXVIII
Leadership North Houston Alumni Association
A program designed to develop the next generation of community leaders across Greater Houston. Kim serves as Secretary on the Alumni Executive Board.
Board of Directors • Marketing Leadership
Tomball Farmers Market
The third largest farmers market in the state of Texas. Kim leads marketing initiatives and supports new community programming.
Active Community Member
East Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce
A growing presence in East Montgomery County — a community that has become an important part of Emerge's expanding footprint in Greater Houston.
Speaking
Bringing Clarity to Rooms That Need It
Kim speaks from the perspective of someone who has sat on both sides of the table — as a sales professional who watched marketing fail businesses, and as the strategist who came in afterward to fix it. Her presentations are direct, practical, and built for business owners, not marketers. No theory. No jargon. Just the honest picture of what's working, what isn't, and what to do about it.
Why Your Marketing Isn't Working — And It's Not What You Think
The real reason most small business marketing fails — and the architecture shift that changes it. Built for business owners who have tried the tactics and are still not growing.
The Fractional CMO Model: Senior Strategy Without the Full-Time Cost
What fractional marketing leadership actually looks like in practice, who it's built for, and how service-based businesses can access CMO-level strategy at the stage they need it most.
Building a Business as a Woman: What No One Tells You About the First Three Years
An honest conversation about founding and growing a female-owned business — the decisions, the pivots, the isolation, and the community that makes it sustainable.
Kim is available for chamber events, women's business networks, professional associations, and community leadership programs across Greater Houston and Texas.
Inquire About SpeakingSelected Insights
From the Field
Kim writes and speaks from a practitioner's point of view — what is actually happening in service-based businesses, what patterns keep showing up, and what to do with them.
Marketing Leadership • 4 min read
Not a strategist. Not an agency. Not a consultant. So what is a fractional CMO?
Most service businesses have already tried the strategist, the agency, or the consultant. Here is why none of them solved the problem — and what actually does.
Read the Post →Marketing Leadership • 3 min read
You don't have a marketing problem. You have a marketing leadership problem.
Misaligned marketing efforts don't get fixed by adding more tactics. They get fixed when someone is accountable for making the strategy work as a whole.
Read the Post →Ready for a Marketing Strategy That Actually Works Together?
The discovery call is a conversation, not a pitch. Bring your real questions. Leave with clarity on what's working, what isn't, and what a strategic path forward looks like for your business.
[email protected] • 832-979-1622 • Klein, Texas
Emerge Marketing Consultants serves businesses across Greater Houston and surrounding communities.
Common Questions About Working With Kim
Who is Kim Laurence Salser?
Kim Laurence Salser is the founder of Emerge Marketing Consultants and a Fractional CMO based in Klein, Texas. She brings senior marketing leadership to established businesses across Greater Houston and statewide, specializing in legal, healthcare, financial services, home services, technology, and care and support industries.
What does a Fractional CMO actually do day to day?
A Fractional CMO works directly inside your business on a part-time basis. That means conducting a marketing audit, building your strategy and messaging, setting priorities across your channels, leading your team or vendors, and tracking performance. At Emerge, Kim focuses on the decisions most business owners are too close to their own work to see clearly.
Can a Fractional CMO help a law firm or medical practice grow?
Yes. Emerge specializes in professional service firms including legal, healthcare and wellness, financial services, and care and support businesses. These practices often have strong reputations built on referrals but lack a clear marketing strategy for sustainable growth. A Fractional CMO builds that strategy and leads its execution without disrupting how you serve your clients.