The marketing leadership and specialist execution your growth plan calls for, at a fraction of what full-time hires would cost.
Fractional marketing means buying the marketing function in the proportions your business actually uses, rather than in whole headcount. The category covers three things:
Added one at a time as the plan calls for them. Most companies engage more than one.
A fractional leader sets direction and owns the number. The specialists behind that leader execute against it. You pay for the days each of them is actually working on your business, and the composition changes as your priorities do.
It is not an agency, because the leader sits inside your business and answers to your leadership team rather than to an account manager. It is not staffing, because you are buying a working function rather than a block of hours. And it is not consulting, because the plan and the execution of the plan are the same engagement.
A mid-market B2B company rarely needs a full-time anything in marketing. It needs two days a week of a CMO, half a demand generation manager, a designer for one week in four, and an analyst who shows up around the monthly numbers. Hiring rounds every one of those fractions up to a whole person. You pay for capacity you do not use, or, more commonly, you fill the first role and leave the other three gaps open because the budget is gone.
Here is what that trade looks like with a number on it. A senior marketing director costs $150,000 in salary, and closer to $195,000 a year once payroll taxes, benefits and bonus are counted. Add a recruiting fee and the first year runs past $225,000. That buys one person, and one person's depth. Every marketing director came up through a single discipline, whether that is demand generation, content or brand, and that is the discipline you will get done well. The rest gets done adequately, or gets outsourced anyway.
$150,000–$225,000+
one senior marketing director, first yearFigures as stated above: $150,000 base salary, ~$195,000 once payroll taxes, benefits and bonus are counted, and just past $225,000 in year one after a recruiting fee — for one senior marketing director, one discipline of depth.
And the salary is not the whole cost. Marketing budgets are finite, so a $195,000 hire is $195,000 not spent on the trade show, the ad program, the paid speaking slot, the outreach that actually puts you in front of buyers. Most mid-market budgets cannot carry both a senior hire and a program worth running. The hire wins, and the program moves to next year. That is the trade nobody names in the hiring conversation.
A fractional structure changes the ratio. The same money buys the leadership, the demand generation, the content, the analytics and the design, each at the level of engagement it actually warrants, and it leaves budget for the programs those people are there to run. It is not a cheaper version of the hire. It is a different shape.
One global client covers its entire marketing function with fractional roles, eight of them, from a fractional CMO down to a social media manager, each added as the plan called for it. The engagement costs less than hiring the CMO and the VP of marketing alone would have, fully loaded. It delivers all eight.
$225K+
for a first year senior marketing director
Marketing leaders are pausing full-time hires, and the reason is not the economy. It is that nobody is certain which parts of a marketing role will look the same in two years. Content production, campaign build, reporting and research have all changed shape, and they are still changing. Hiring a specialist into a role whose boundaries are moving means committing to a job description that may not describe the job by the time the person is up to speed.
A fractional structure does not ask you to make that bet.
Composition resets every quarter, so the function follows the work rather than the org chart. When a capability changes shape, the engagement changes with it, and the risk of having read it wrong sits with us rather than with your headcount plan.
There is a second reason the risk sits differently here. Automating part of a marketing role takes practices, tooling and governance most mid-market companies have not built yet, and building them is its own project. We already run AI through our production workstreams, so the work comes back faster and better without you having to develop that capability first. And when you decide you want it in house, we build it with you. It is a service we sell, not a threat we manage.
What the data says, what keeps going wrong, and how to design the next engagement to succeed.
The three services below are the same model applied to different gaps. Most companies start with one and add the others as the function matures.
| What you are dealing with | What you need | |
|---|---|---|
| You have people who can execute, but nobody senior enough to set direction, stop the wrong projects, or stand behind the forecast in front of the board | Marketing leadership | Fractional CMO → |
| Marketing hits its targets, sales hits its targets, and revenue still misses. Nobody owns the space between them, which is where the leaks are | Revenue leadership | Fractional CGO → |
| One or two generalists are running campaigns, content, the website and the reporting. Everything gets done and nothing gets specialist attention | Specialist capacity | Fractional marketing team → |
| Some of all three | The full function | Book a strategy call → |
If the last row sounds like your company, you are in the majority. Most mid-market marketing functions are short on leadership, short on specialist depth, and short on anyone who can turn the reporting into a decision. A fractional engagement is built to close all three gaps at once, and to close them in the order that produces pipeline soonest.
Adding paid media for a quarter does not require a new contract or a new agency relationship. Retiring it does not require a difficult conversation. Composition is reset at every quarterly planning session against what the next ninety days actually need, so you never carry a retainer for a capability you are not using.
What that looks like at full scale:
The global client above runs a complete marketing department without a single in-house marketing hire: a fractional CMO setting direction, a VP of marketing running the function day to day, and a digital marketing manager, creative designer, events manager, copywriter, publicist and social media manager beneath them. Each one was added when the plan called for that capability, not before.
Fractional CMO, fractional CGO, VP or director of marketing — providing strategy, accountability for the number, and someone running the function day to day.
Demand generation, digital and search, social media — delivering campaign architecture, nurture sequences, technical SEO, paid media and a pipeline dashboard your CFO will accept.
Copywriting, creative design, PR and communications — building an editorial engine around the questions buyers ask before they call, and the assets and coverage that carry it.
Marketing operations, analytics and reporting, events — configuring HubSpot so attribution survives contact with sales, and the monthly read that says what to fund, fix and stop.
We audit what exists: pipeline data, positioning, channels, tech stack and the marketing your team is already running. You get an honest read on what is working and what is not.
We build the growth plan: where to compete, what to say, which programs run first and what each one should produce. You approve it before anything launches.
Programs go live, the operating rhythm starts, and reporting ties every activity back to pipeline. By day 90 you have a working marketing function and a dashboard that tells you what it is producing.
We are thrilled with the work that Marketri has done, and more importantly, the leads they have generated. From revamping our social strategies to building our website to producing media opportunities and brand videos, we’ve seen measurable results all around. We’re impressed with the team’s expertise, and we’ve really enjoyed working with them as well.
Gary Hutchinson
President, Modality
Scrubbed has worked with Deb Andrews, Trisha Gallagher, and the rest of the Marketri team for the past 3 years now. It won’t take much to research and compare what our brand looked like before Marketri, and how it looks like now. Spoiler Alert – a huge difference in look and feel. Marketri witnessed Scrubbed’s growth these past few years and it has been a fantastic experience working with them. I strongly recommend talking to Deb Andrews about your growth needs.
Vince De Leon
CEO, Scrubbed
B.F. Saul Insurance has worked with Deb Andrews, Katie Bergmann and the Marketri team for the last few years. Their expertise ranges from website/SEO, branding, ad campaigns, and events. I would highly recommend them – smart team with amazing ideas, proactive advice centered around the ROI, great listening skills, accountable, and a willingness to think outside of the box. Consummate professionals.
Jason Jones
President, B.F. Saul Insurance
73%
of the firm's marketing-qualified leads by 2025 — up from a business where three out of every four leads came through referrals five years earlier.
A referral-dependent accounting firm partnered with Marketri to build a measurable marketing function — replacing spreadsheets with HubSpot, shifting to sector-based demand gen, and growing marketing-qualified leads from 182 to 891 in three years.
Read the Full StoryFor more than twenty years we have built and run marketing functions for mid-market B2B companies, most of them with a lean team already in place. Let us talk about which parts you actually need.
Fractional marketing services give a company access to marketing leadership and marketing specialists on a part-time, ongoing basis, at the level of engagement each role actually requires. The category covers three services: a fractional CMO who leads the marketing function, a fractional CGO who owns revenue end to end, and a fractional marketing team of specialists across demand generation, content, digital, brand, marketing operations and analytics. Most mid-market companies engage a combination of the three.
A fractional CMO leads the marketing function and is accountable for the pipeline it creates. A fractional CGO owns the full revenue function, including marketing, sales enablement and the handoffs between them, and is accountable for revenue growth. A fractional marketing team is the specialist execution layer: the demand generation, content, digital, design, operations and analytics people who do the work the plan requires. Leadership without the team produces a plan nobody can run. The team without leadership produces activity without direction. Most engagements include both.
What you pay is set by the seniority of the leadership involved and the size of the supporting team you need — see each service page above for its specific range. Scope is agreed before work begins and reviewed quarterly, so you do not carry a retainer for a capability you are not using. For comparison, a senior marketing director costs $150,000 in salary and closer to $195,000 a year fully loaded, before recruiting fees. That figure buys one person rather than a leader plus a specialist team.
Most of our clients do. The two most common situations are a capable execution team that has no senior leader, which calls for a fractional CMO or CGO, and a lean team of one or two generalists carrying gaps in leadership, parts of execution, and analytics, which calls for leadership plus a small set of specialists. In both cases the fractional structure fills only the gaps. Your existing team stays, and the fractional leader manages them.
No. An agency executes campaigns against a brief you write, and reports to you through an account manager. A fractional team writes the brief, owns the outcome, and sits inside your leadership rhythm alongside your other function heads. You are buying a working function rather than a project, which is why the accountability is for pipeline and revenue rather than for deliverables.
You have a growth plan by week six and programs running by week eight. Pipeline impact in most mid-market B2B categories shows up in the second quarter, because the length of the sales cycle sets the pace and no marketing structure changes that. What you get sooner is visibility: reporting that ties activity to pipeline from the first month, which is often the first time a mid-market company has had it.
That uncertainty is one of the main reasons companies choose fractional right now. Nobody knows precisely which parts of a marketing role will be automated, and hiring full time into a role whose boundaries are moving commits you to a job description that may not hold. A fractional engagement resets composition every quarter, so the function follows the work. If a capability changes shape or stops being needed, the engagement changes with it rather than becoming a difficult conversation about somebody's job.
Yes, throughout. AI runs through our production workstreams, which means research, drafting, analysis and reporting come back faster and at higher quality than they otherwise would. You get that benefit without having to build the practices, tooling and governance that using AI well requires, which is a project in itself. If you would rather build the capability in house, our AI consulting practice does that too.
Yes, quarterly. Team composition is reset at each planning session against what the next ninety days require. Specialists are added one at a time as the plan calls for them and stepped back when it does not, without renegotiating the engagement.
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