I get it. You've been running marketing yourself for years, with a freelancer for the website, an agency for the ads and you in the middle holding it all together. You're not bad at it. You just can't give it the time a proper job deserves. Now you know you need help, and everyone has an opinion about what kind.
Here's the short version. Hire a marketing manager when the plan exists and you need hands, bring in a fractional CMO when nobody owns the plan or you don't even have a plan, and hire a full-time CMO only when there's enough team and budget to keep a senior leader busy every single day. Most companies between $1M and $20M in revenue end up with the middle option plus a manager or a small team doing the work.
Not sure whether you're missing the plan or the people to do it? We cover that test in fractional CMO vs agency. This article picks up from there and compares the three hires you're probably thinking about.
Three hires, three different jobs
You're running a pretty successful business, with a good team and strong revenue. Sales mostly come from referrals and from you. Marketing is a freelancer who updates the website now and then, an agency running a few ads, and you chasing both between meetings, which is why the site still says what it said in 2023. You want growth to come from somewhere other than your own network.
Each of the three options fixes a different part of that picture.
A marketing manager adds hands
A good marketing manager runs campaigns, keeps the newsletter going, briefs the designer, updates the website and reports on what happened. They turn a plan into weekly output. What most of them haven't done yet is decide the plan from scratch, set the budget or tell a founder that their favorite idea won't work.
A fractional CMO adds direction
A fractional CMO is a senior marketer who works with you part time. They decide who you're going after, what you say to them, which channels get the money and which numbers prove it's working. Then they make sure somebody does the work, whether that's a manager, freelancers or a small outside team.
A full-time CMO adds daily leadership
A full-time CMO does what the fractional one does, every day, as part of your leadership team. They build and run a marketing department, sit in on every big decision and own the numbers year after year. That's exactly what a bigger company needs.
What a full-time CMO costs
Let's talk money, because this is where the decision usually gets made.
Salary is only the start
PayScale puts the median base salary for a chief marketing officer at $192,000, before bonus or profit sharing. Then add benefits. For full-time workers in US private industry, benefits make up 31.5% of total employer compensation costs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Do the math on a $192,000 salary and you're at roughly $280,000 a year before your CMO has spent a cent on actual marketing.
The budget they need to lead
A CMO without a team or a budget is an expensive person writing plans for themselves. To be worth the salary, they need people to lead and money to spend on campaigns, tools and content. For a business your size, the CMO's pay alone can eat a big chunk of what you were planning to spend on marketing in the first place. That's the part most comparison articles skip.
Senior hires move on
Spencer Stuart found that the average CMO at a Fortune 500 company stays 4.3 years, against 4.9 years for the C-suite overall. A big senior hire is a big bet, and you'll probably be hiring for the role again sooner than you'd like.
Why a manager alone often stalls
So the obvious move is to skip the CMO and hire a manager. Sometimes that's exactly right. Often it isn't, and here's why.
No plan to execute
A marketing manager is not a cheap fix either. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median annual wage for marketing managers at $166,790. That's a serious salary for someone who walks in on day one and asks, very reasonably, "What's the plan?"
If the honest answer is "grow," they'll fill their days with activity. And the result? A refreshed brochure, 40 LinkedIn posts and a trade show booth with a lovely banner. No flood of inbound leads, no sales team asking you to please slow down, no thank-you card from your accountant. 🙃
The founder becomes the plan
When there's no plan, the manager does whatever you have time to direct. That means marketing moves at the speed of your free afternoons, which, let's be honest, is not very fast. You hired help to get marketing off your plate, and it's still on your plate, now with weekly check-ins. You can see it on the board too. Work gets finished, then piles up in a "Ready to review" column, waiting for the one person who has to sign it off, and that person is busy running the company.
How the two work together
This is the setup most growing companies land on, and for good reason. A fractional CMO owns the plan and a manager, or a small team, does the work.
Who reports to whom
The manager reports to the fractional CMO on marketing and to you on everything else (holidays, payroll, the usual). The fractional CMO reports to you on results. You stop being the person who reviews every LinkedIn post, and you start getting one clear update on what's working and what's next.
Where the work comes from
The doing can come from an in-house manager, freelancers, an agency or a small outside team. At Growth Experts we play that role ourselves. Your senior growth marketer owns the plan, the strategy and the numbers, and does the parts of the work they're an expert in. The rest of the team comes in when a campaign or project needs their skills. What matters is that the person who owns the plan can see the work and change it fast.
One of our clients, a healthcare practice in the US, had nobody leading marketing, and the founder was already working about 80 hours a week on operations. Instead of hiring a manager or a CMO, they brought us in, and we became the practice's marketing lead.
A CRM consultancy in the UK came to us with a fractional CMO who didn't do any of the execution, and nobody else was doing the work either. Everything went back and forth between the founder and the CMO, and nothing ever went live, not even website content. We took over as their fractional CMO, and execution started almost immediately. We rebuilt the website, launched a new monthly newsletter, rebuilt all their email automations and started posting on LinkedIn, and within 3 months all of it was driving leads.
What you get out of it
You get senior thinking without a senior salary on the books every month, and a manager who knows exactly what they're doing on Monday morning. The manager also learns a lot faster with a senior marketer next to them. In a couple of years, that manager might be the person who runs your marketing. And the plan they work from can fit on one page, with the fractional CMO as its owner and the manager running it day to day.
Your first marketing hire
If this is your first marketing hire, the rule is simple. Does a plan exist that someone other than you could follow?
In my experience, the right marketing hire, early or late, starts by fixing what needs correcting and finding the work that moves their numbers and your brand, because there's always something worth doing. They're also realistic about budget and how long things take. So you get a few quick wins straight away, while the bigger pieces get built in the background and launched over the next couple of months.
When the plan already exists
If you already know who you sell to, what you say and which two or three channels bring in your best deals, a manager can run with it. You'll need to stay close for the first few months, but you won't be designing the whole thing from scratch.
When there's no plan yet
If the plan lives in your head, or nowhere, start with a fractional CMO. They'll write the plan, test it and then help you hire the manager to run it. That way your first full-time hire walks into a job with a clear brief, which does wonders for retention. 😊
The junior strategist trap
Plenty of founders hire a coordinator or junior marketer and quietly expect them to come up with the plan as well. It's not fair on them, and it rarely works. If you want someone to set direction, hire for that. If you want hands, give them a plan to follow.
When to hire a full-time CMO
A fractional CMO isn't forever, and we sell the fractional option.
Signs you've outgrown fractional
- Marketing has a team of several people who need a leader every day, not a few days a month.
- Your marketing budget has grown to the point where a full-time leader's salary is a small share of it.
- Marketing decisions are holding up the leadership team because your CMO isn't in the room often enough.
- You're heading into a fundraise, an acquisition or a new market where marketing needs a full-time seat at the table.
If most of those sound like you, it's time to hire full-time.
How to make the switch well
The best fractional CMOs help you replace themselves. They write the job spec, sit in on interviews and hand over the plan, the numbers and the team. If yours gets nervous when you mention a full-time hire, that tells you something.
When to stay fractional
If your team is still one or two people and the plan is working, there's no prize for hiring a full-time executive early. Keep the fractional setup, put the money into the work and revisit the question each year.
Side by side comparison
| Marketing manager | Fractional CMO | Full-time CMO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main job | Runs the plan | Owns the plan | Owns the plan and the department |
| Time with you | Full time | Part time | Full time |
| Best when | A plan already exists | Nobody owns the plan | A team needs daily leadership |
| Sets budget and priorities | Rarely | Yes | Yes |
| Does the hands-on work | Yes | Sometimes, or directs whoever does | Through their team |
| Cost on the books | A full salary plus benefits | Part-time fee, no benefits | The biggest salary plus benefits |
| Fits a $1M to $20M company | Often, with a plan | Often | Usually at the top of that range |
Questions founders often ask
Can a fractional CMO manage my marketing manager?
Yes, and it's one of the best setups for a growing company. The fractional CMO sets the plan and the priorities, and your manager runs the work week to week.
Can a marketing manager grow into a CMO?
It often happens. A strong manager who works next to a senior marketer for a couple of years can step up into the lead role, especially if your company grows with them.
Do I need a CMO at $5M in revenue?
You probably need CMO-level thinking, but not usually a full-time CMO. A fractional leader plus a manager or small team gets you the plan and the output for a lot less than a full executive salary.
How long should I keep a fractional CMO?
As long as the setup is working and your team is small. Once you have several marketers who need daily leadership, start planning the move to full-time.
The bottom line
Pick the hire that fixes the problem you actually have. If you need hands, hire a manager. If nobody owns the plan, bring in a fractional CMO. If a whole department needs leading every day, hire a full-time CMO.
Get it right and you'll finally have your afternoons back. Maybe you'll even update that website from 2023. 😄
Jason Bagley
Founder, Growth Experts
I'm a business builder, the founder of Growth Experts, sometimes public speaker, and a member of the Entrepreneurs' Organization. Mostly though, I'm just a dad to Eva & Cruz and a husband to Karina.
