Fractional marketing agency vs fractional CMO: what is the difference?

“Fractional” has become one of the most-used words in marketing services. Fractional CMO, fractional marketing agency, fractional marketing team, fractional marketing department. The labels overlap so much that owners often end up comparing proposals that are not for the same thing at all.

Here is a clear way to tell them apart, and to work out which one your business actually needs.

What “fractional” means

Fractional simply means part-time and shared. Instead of hiring a full-time person or department, you get a share of someone's time and expertise, usually on a monthly retainer. The question that separates the options is not how much time you get. It is what kind of work that time is spent on: leading or doing.

What a fractional CMO does

A fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader. Their job is the thinking and the steering:

• Defining your ideal client, your message and your marketing strategy
• Choosing the few priorities that matter this quarter, and saying no to the rest
• Directing the people who do the work, inside or outside the business
• Owning the scorecard and changing course when results call for it

A fractional CMO is accountable for whether marketing works. On their own, they usually do not produce the content, ads or website.

What a fractional marketing agency does

A fractional marketing agency, sometimes sold as a fractional marketing team or department, provides people who do the work: writers, designers, campaign managers, SEO and paid media specialists. You get a share of their time each month instead of hiring each role yourself.

That is genuinely useful when you know what needs doing. The risk is the same as with any agency. Without a strategy from someone senior on your side, the team tends to produce what it is good at producing, and the work turns into random acts of marketing.

Side by side

Where they overlap: the fractional CMO agency

The weaknesses of each option are the strengths of the other, so a growing number of firms combine them. A fractional CMO agency pairs a senior fractional CMO with a team that can execute, so the same firm writes the plan and carries it out.

That is how The fCMO Agency is set up. A fractional CMO leads every engagement, and the retainer is tiered by how much of the work our team takes on: you run it, we lead your team, or we run it for you.

What a fractional marketing team usually includes

The mix varies by provider, but most fractional teams draw on some combination of these roles:

• Content and copywriting: articles, emails, website copy and social posts
• Design: graphics, presentations, ads and landing pages
• SEO: technical fixes, on-page optimization and search-focused content
• Paid media: setting up and managing search and social ad campaigns
• Marketing operations: email platforms, CRM, automation and reporting

Notice what is usually missing from that list: someone who decides which of those things your business should be doing, in what order, and why. That is the fractional CMO's job.

How the two work together in practice

When a fractional CMO and a fractional team work well together, the handoff is simple. The fractional CMO sets the quarter's priorities and writes a brief for each campaign: the audience, the offer, the message and what success looks like. The team produces the work against that brief. Every month, the fractional CMO reviews the scorecard with you and adjusts the plan, and the team's next month of work changes accordingly.

When it goes badly, it is almost always because nobody wrote the brief. The team guesses, produces something reasonable, and reports on activity because there was never an agreed result to report on. If you hire both separately, make it explicit that the fractional CMO directs the team, and that the team reports against the fractional CMO's scorecard.

Which one do you need?

Choose a fractional CMO if

• You do not have a written marketing strategy, or the one you have is out of date.
• You already have people or vendors producing work, and nobody senior directing them.
• You cannot say which marketing activities bring in customers.

Choose a fractional marketing agency if

• You have a strategy you trust and a leader who owns it.
• Your bottleneck is capacity: there is more work than your team can produce.

Choose a fractional CMO agency if

• You need both the plan and the people, and would rather have one accountable partner than two.
• You have tried an agency before and got activity rather than results.

Questions to ask any fractional provider

1. 01Who sets the strategy, and what is their experience?
2. 02What method do you follow, and can you show me what the output looks like?
3. 03Who does the work once the plan is written?
4. 04How do you measure whether the marketing is working?
5. 05What will I have in hand after the first 45 days?

Our full list is in how to choose a fractional CMO: 12 questions to ask.

Frequently asked questions

Stephen Conley

Founder of The fCMO Agency and Gisteo, and a Certified Duct Tape Marketing advisor.

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