How Near Built a Million-Dollar Marketing Engine Using a Divisional Fractional Marketer

Near faced a problem that keeps bootstrapped founders awake at night: their entire business ran on cold outbound emails, and that channel suddenly stopped working. Here's how they partnered with Divisional to build the marketing engine that generated millions in new revenue and turned their fractional marketer into their third-in-command.

When Your Only Growth Channel Stops Working

Hayden Cohen and his co-founders had built Near's Latin American recruiting business on one acquisition channel: cold emails to US companies.

"Every single dollar that came in was from sending outbound emails to other businesses and maybe a few that were referrals within our network,"

— Hayden Cohen, Co-Founder of Near

Then the channel stopped converting. Not gradually—suddenly.

"We had every founder's nightmare," Hayden says. "Being dependent on one channel and that channel stopped working."

Near was a small operation helping US businesses hire remote talent in Latin America—from junior to senior positions across engineering, sales, marketing, accounting, and more. They'd built the business via a job board model, then transitioned to full-service recruiting. Now their primary acquisition engine had stalled.

As a bootstrapped company, they couldn't afford to experiment their way out. They needed a new acquisition engine that would work, and they needed to be strategic about where they invested their limited resources.

Hayden had seen content marketing and SEO drive growth at a previous startup. He knew what was possible. But hiring a full-time marketing leader would consume significant capital before showing results. Agencies wanted large monthly retainers with long commitments. Freelancers could execute tasks but couldn't build strategic infrastructure.

They were stuck in the classic bootstrapped founder trap: needing senior-level marketing expertise on a startup budget.

Why Fractional Made Sense (And What Almost Didn't)

When Near started evaluating options, the fractional model wasn't even on Hayden's radar initially. "It seemed kind of new to me at the time," he admits.

They considered four paths:

Full-time hire: Would provide dedicated focus and long-term commitment, but the cost and time to find the right person felt prohibitive. "The truth is that was going to take a while," Hayden says. "We weren't sure what to do. We didn't have the marketing chops to know who to hire."

Marketing agency: Hayden had seen agencies focus on vanity metrics that didn't drive pipeline. "I felt like they would be incentivized to just get us traffic, but that traffic might not result in anything," he explains. This wasn't a serious consideration.

Upwork freelancer: Good for clearly scoped tasks, but Near didn't have the formula—they needed someone to create it. "We needed that formula created for us," Hayden says.

Fractional through Divisional: Would cost less than full-time, provide hand-selected senior expertise, and help them scope the exact problem to solve.

"I looked at it as a resource and output problem," Hayden explains. The fractional model gave them strategic thinking and tactical execution with a defined investment ceiling—no severance risk, no long-term employment headaches.

When Divisional presented Andres Bahamon's profile, the fit was clear:

"He was able to convince me just through his pure technical knowledge that he would be able to solve that problem for us. It was clear during the first conversation, and we ended up signing on right away."

— Hayden Cohen, Co-Founder of Near

Building Pipeline, Not Just Traffic

The engagement started with 5-10 hours per week. Most marketing consultants would have focused on traffic growth and rankings. Andres took a different approach from day one.

"My motto has always been, I don't really care about traffic other than that's a leading metric," he explains. "I focus primarily on what revenue is that driving. What pipeline is that driving."

Instead of chasing high-volume keywords, Andres built Near's SEO strategy around content that would attract US companies actively looking to hire international talent. The content answered real questions these companies had about remote hiring, legal considerations, and talent quality across Latin American markets.

The framework included three core elements:

Pipeline attribution: Every piece of content was designed to generate qualified sales conversations. They tracked leads and revenue back to specific pages and topics—calls booked became the primary success metric.

Founder-led authority: Rather than generic corporate content, they leveraged Hayden and co-founder Franco Pereyra's expertise to create authentic thought leadership around remote hiring trends and Latin American talent markets.

Compound growth mechanics: Unlike outbound's linear effort model (more emails = more leads), SEO content would continue generating leads months or years after publication.

The results came faster than anyone expected. "Super early on, we started to see three to four calls per week from SEO," Andres recalls. "At the beginning it would fluctuate—one week, three the next, back to one, then four—but it started to stabilize and continue to grow very fast."

This was remarkable. Most SEO projects take three to six months minimum before showing meaningful results. Because every piece was strategically designed around buyer intent rather than search volume, qualified prospects started finding Near within weeks.

"What made it impressive is that a lot of SEOs and marketers focus primarily on the vanity metric of bringing organic traffic," Andres says. "Whereas we started to see calls book super early on."

From Fractional to Full-Time: The Inflection Point

Within two months, Hayden and Franco faced a new challenge: they wanted more of Andres' time.

"I remember I was in Buenos Aires with my co-founder Franco and we were talking, and we were like, it would be a lot easier if we could just get him to implement this," Hayden says. They reached out to increase Andres' hours, and progress accelerated.

But scaling hours still wasn't enough. They started considering bringing Andres on full-time.

When they first made an offer, Andres said no. He had a job he loved and wasn't looking to leave. Near came back with a better offer—one that represented a significant financial commitment for a bootstrapped company.

"We were scared. It was a lot of money—like all of our money at the time—to hire this expensive dude that we don't know that well," Hayden admits. They took the risk.

Three years later, the results:

• Revenue diversification: Near went from 100% outbound dependence to 0% (outbound has only recently started working again as a supplementary channel)
• Revenue impact: The marketing engine Andres built has generated millions in revenue
• Team scale: Andres now leads a seven-person marketing team
• Company growth: Near has grown to over 700 customers with 2,700+ successful placements and a talent pool of 45,000 pre-vetted candidates

"Home run, everything we could have asked for," Andres is now "effectively third in command in terms of all of the business development of the company."
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— Hayden Cohen, Co-Founder of Near

What Made This Actually Work

The success wasn't just about finding the right person—it was about how both sides approached the engagement.

Near's founder approach:

Hayden and Franco treated Andres like a full-time team member from day one, not a contractor. When they saw early results, they immediately asked to scale up rather than trying to replicate the work internally. They stayed involved without micromanaging.

Most importantly, they committed real resources to building a new growth channel rather than trying to fix their broken outbound system. "When you don't have unlimited funds, it forces you to prioritize the most important things and the highest value activities," Hayden explains.

Andres's embedded mindset:

Rather than thinking like a traditional consultant, Andres embedded himself in Near's business.

"The work should be more like think as if you were working full time for that other company, just with limited hours"

— Andres, Fractional CMO

He also aligned with Near's high-performance culture. "I don't think anybody can work at Near because the standard is extremely high. The pace is extremely fast," he explains. "That drive... it's just energizing to work with people that just want to crush it."

For Andres, the mission resonated personally. Originally from Colombia with Canadian citizenship, he connected with Near's goal of helping Latin Americans access better opportunities. But what ultimately brought him on full-time was the team dynamic—working with people who shared his drive for excellence.

De-risking the big bet:

The fractional model let both sides test the relationship before the full-time commitment. They'd seen the results, understood the strategy, and confirmed the cultural fit worked. When Near made their offer, the decision still felt scary—but the uncertainty had been dramatically reduced.

As Hayden puts it: "Fractional works really well because it's a one-time expense at the end of the day. You scope out the spend, you say I am willing to spend this much money on an experiment. You don't have the headache of severance or all this other stuff around employment."

The Bottom Line

Near's transformation from single-channel dependence to diversified growth engine happened because they made two critical decisions: they recognized their growth ceiling early, and they committed the resources needed to break through it.

The fractional marketing model worked because it matched their constraints perfectly. They needed senior expertise but had limited budget. They wanted to minimize risk while maintaining control over their investment. They got both strategic thinking and tactical execution through a model that let them test before fully committing.

Three years later, Near has built the kind of marketing engine most bootstrapped companies never achieve: systematic, predictable, compound-growth demand generation that works while the founders focus on other parts of the business.

As Hayden reflects on the decision: "I really think it's not just the fractional model. I think it's specifically what you guys offer—the expertise, the marketing experience that can help articulate what you want in marketer speak and then tap into a network of marketers and verify that they're going to be good for you."

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If you're facing similar channel concentration risk or struggling to build predictable demand generation as a bootstrapped company, learn more about how fractional marketing works or book a call to discuss your growth challenges.