Fractional Marketing: The Key to Turning Ambitious Growth Goals into Reality

Fractional marketing is a model that enables growth-minded companies to obtain precisely the marketing skills and expertise needed to meet aggressive goals. It’s a flexible, scalable, and cost-effective approach to structuring the marketing function, using an outsourced team that delivers a high ROI on the marketing spend. 

Fractional marketing is based on the same successful model that enables organizations to tap highly experienced professionals for functions like finance, operations, and technology. A fractional marketing program enables you to get just the right slice of just the right marketing skillsets and resources, without tying up finite budget on full-time positions you likely don’t need. Instead, a fractional marketing agency applies the appropriate resources at any given point in your marketing journey, based on your goals and objectives. 

Fractional marketing is especially effective for mid-sized companies that can’t devote a disproportional amount of the marketing budget on FTEs. The fractional model allows you to allocate more of your budget to marketing execution, driving better results.  

Some companies choose to staff a complete marketing team in-house, investing in full-time, salaried employees with fixed roles. This model is less common in mid-sized companies because they find it cost-prohibitive to build and sustain an internal marketing team with all the skills, expertise, and experience to engage in modern marketing that generates results. It’s also an inflexible model, locking you in to permanent hires when your marketing needs are likely to evolve over time.  

Other companies choose a hybrid approach, combining a small in-house team with freelancers and other subcontractors who bring hyperspecialized skills in areas that align with the company’s needs at a particular time. For example, in a hybrid model you might hire a web development professional to create a website that works hard 24/7—a place where buyers can learn all they want about your company and your services and engage in meaningful interactions before they’re ready for a sales touch.  

A fractional marketing model brings unique advantages over the in-house and hybrid approaches. It eliminates the high overhead of maintaining a full internal team, and it avoids the time and wasted effort of attempting to coordinate many different subcontractors. Instead a fractional marketing agency delivers all the resources you need under one roof—taking care of everything from strategy and plan development to flawless plan execution, measurement, and optimization.  

Several persistent trends across the business ecosystem are fueling demand for fractional marketing, especially among mid-sized B2B companies.  

Your buyer’s journey has forever changed.

As today’s B2B buyers move from awareness to purchase, they spend much of that time interacting with your marketing—NOT your sales team. Their journey is now longer, more complex, and almost entirely digital. Attracting and nurturing the right buyers through this revenue funnel requires a marketing function with the hyperspecialized skills to develop and flawlessly execute a strategic marketing plan. But it’s not viable to staff specialties like digital marketing, SEO, paid search, marketing automation, and analytics and many more in house.  

In this new environment, marketing drives growth.

It’s clear that buyers want more information about your business and services before they engage with sales. Gartner research reveals that 75% of B2B buyers prefer not to deal with a sale rep at all! If you want their business, your marketing needs to attract, engage, and nurture them through a complex decision process. Simply put, marketing drives growth in our new normal. And that recognition is driving more companies to take the fractional marketing route. 

The digital transformation demands marketing agility.

Technology is changing rapidly, and it’s impacting every aspect of your business—including what customers expect of the company and its services. You need to employ marketing strategies that are grounded in research, yet agile to adapt to evolving conditions and expectations. A fractional marketing model gives you much more agility than a fully in-house team. 

Staffing an in-house marketing department has become cost-prohibitive.

It’s too costly for a mid-sized company to staff an in-house marketing function with all the skillsets, capabilities and expertise it takes to engage in effective marketing that drives growth. The cost of marketing talent keeps rising, with even mid-level marketing managers commanding six-figure salaries and big bonuses. For every $100,000+ staffer you add, you have that much less to spend on marketing execution. Meanwhile you’ve spent much of your budget on full-time salaries…even for some functions you don’t need full time. 

Fractional talent has become easier to find.

The shift to remote and hybrid work environments, the rise of the gig economy, and the growing acceptance of outsourcing all make it easy for a fractional agency to access top-tier marketing talent. No matter where your business is located, or how much of a particular marketing specialty you need, the fractional model allows you to tap the best of the best. 

The fractional model has proven its value across many functions.

From accounting to operations to technology, many mid-sized businesses hire fractional executives in lieu of full-time employees. Fractional CFOs, COOs, and CTOs are common, and these roles demonstrate the viability and value of the fractional approach for specialties that are critical to your business. And that makes more B2B companies more open to adopting the fractional marketing approach. They recognize they can obtain just the right slice of marketing talent allows you to achieve your goals without tying up FTE overhead unnecessarily. 

Fractional marketing can be effective for any mid-sized company that wants to grow consistently and profitably. The following are clear signs that your business could benefit from the fractional marketing approach.  

You’re in the early stages of your marketing journey. 

If you haven’t engaged in a comprehensive modern marketing effort before, it can be tough to know how to structure your marketing function for the optimal results. Jumping in with a lot of full-time hires typically isn’t the best decision. A Fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) can help you structure the ideal marketing function for your needs and develop a research-based strategic marketing plan that becomes your execution roadmap. 

You’re moving away from a sales-driven culture. 

Many companies are recognizing their buyers spend most of their journey engaging with marketing. If sales has called the shots on your marketing in the past, you’ve probably gotten bogged down in a lot of ineffective, arbitrary marketing tactics. A fractional marketing agency focuses your efforts where they’ll count—on strategic marketing that generates predictable revenue. 

You want to scale fast. 

Growth-minded businesses have aggressive goals. And for private equity-backed companies in particular, there’s no margin for error. If you intend to scale quickly, you can’t afford to have the wrong marketing strategy, team, technology, infrastructure, or processes. Nor can you afford to waste budget on full-time marketers that don’t match your evolving needs (or worse, sit idle sometimes).  

Your in-house team isn’t getting results. 

If your in-house marketing team’s efforts aren’t moving the needle on revenue growth or other important objectives, it’s time for a change. The fractional marketing model is proven to deliver strong results—especially when it comes to generating predictable revenue. 

Your in-house team is too costly to maintain. 

The overhead to staff an effective internal marketing department often gobbles up much of the total marketing budget, especially for mid-sized companies. Add in the cost of turnover and it becomes even more challenging financially. A fractional marketing model gets you the same skills and expertise at a lower cost.  

You consistently fall short of your growth goals. 

Relying on the same methods to drive revenue won’t get it done in a fast-changing world. If you’re not achieving your growth goals, you need the strategic expertise and flawless marketing execution that a fractional team can provide.  

An agency that adopts the fractional model provides four crucial elements that any mid-sized business needs to drive revenue growth. 

Access to Specialized Expertise 

A single generalist can’t do it all anymore, but it’s challenging to hire a full team of specialists. A fractional marketing agency enables you to tap the full spectrum of experts you need for effective modern marketing. You get access to a pool of highly talented professionals, often with experience in your industry, and always with deep expertise in their area of specialty. This virtual brain trust brings best practices gathered over many engagements and a fresh perspective on how to tackle your marketing challenges. 

Greater Flexibility 

Rather than hire full-time employees who don’t match your changing needs, the fractional model allows you to tap different specialists within the agency in sync with evolving demands. Your fractional marketing team always aligns with your strategic marketing plan to maximize efficiency, avoid the high cost of underutilized talent, and help you capitalize on emerging opportunities. 

Better Scalability 

As market conditions change and your business evolves, you might need to scale your marketing up or down. Whether your business experiences seasonal fluctuations, your buyer expectations and needs begin to shift, or you want to ramp up to take advantage of new market opportunities, a fractional marketing model gives you more versatility than an in-house team with fixed overhead costs. It’s often the best way to get further, faster. 

A Cost-Effective Approach 

Mid-sized B2B companies typically find it costs less to hire a fractional marketing agency than to establish an in-house marketing team. High demand for specialized marketing skills is driving up the price of talent, making it prohibitively expensive to build and retain the right team internally. Based on industry averages, even a very lean, three-person in-house marketing department could chew up at least $250,000 of your budget, or more. Hiring a fractional marketing agency enables you to tap a broader range of skills and expertise than you could staff internally, at a comparatively lower cost, while avoiding the high overhead and the potential waste of an underutilized FTE. 

A fractional marketing team gives you just the right slice of each specialist’s time and expertise, matching the available resources to your dynamic needs.  

Your team will be led by a Fractional CMO, a senior-level strategist with deep experience leading the marketing function. It’s their job to lead the development and execution of a research-based, strategy-driven marketing plan designed to achieve your specific business goals. Some mid-sized B2B companies also hire a Fractional Chief Growth Officer (CGO) to lead and execute a coordinated growth strategy across all the functions that contribute to revenue.  

The makeup of the rest of your team will vary based on your marketing objectives and needs. Your fractional marketing agency will build a team of highly experienced professionals with the skills and expertise to execute your marketing plan flawlessly and measure and optimize your marketing for the best results. Your fractional marketing agency team could include additional specialists like the following. 

Once you’ve decided the fractional marketing model is the right fit for your business, you need to find the best agency for the job. Steps like these will help you select the fractional marketing agency best equipped to deliver the exceptional results you expect.   

Use your goals as your guide. 

First, articulate your objectives: what you hope to achieve with your marketing. Then identify any skill or expertise gaps within your current in-house team or outsourced providers, as well as your marketing infrastructure. This exercise will help you determine what you most need from a fractional marketing agency and find a partner whose specialties best align with your requirements.    

For example, if you don’t have a strategy-led, research-driven marketing plan, you need a fractional marketing agency with highly experienced Fractional CMOs who have deep expertise in strategic marketing planning. If you don’t have the technology needed to drive repeatable marketing that creates a predictable funnel, or the data to measure and optime your marketing, then an agency with deep experience in marketing automation and data analytics could be a good fit.  

Do your homework. 

Just as you would follow a thoughtful process to vet an internal hire, you should research potential fractional marketing partners diligently to develop a shortlist of contenders. While their website will tell you a lot about their expertise and capabilities, ask for client reviews and case studies that demonstrate the quality of their work, their clients’ satisfaction level, and their ability to generate a high ROI. Confirm if they have experience in the B2B space and your industry specifically. And learn how they use data to measure, optimize, and report on your marketing results.  

Ask about their process and team. 

Take time to understand how the fractional marketing agency works. For example, do they have a structured approach and framework for developing and executing a marketing plan that drives revenue? Do they only provide strategic marketing planning, or can they also take your plan through execution? How strong are the credentials of the team that will work on your account? 

Dig deep to check for fit. 

A single meeting isn’t enough to vet an agency that will become a vital partner in driving your company’s growth. Plan to spend a few sessions getting to know each other and ensuring it’s a good match. Make sure your values and working styles align and that you’re choosing a partner you’ll feel fully at ease working closely with. 

As a pioneer in the fractional marketing space, Marketri understands what mid-sized B2B companies need in a fractional partner. Our approach to fractional marketing is straightforward: We power up your marketing and optimize your budget, so you can achieve better results than competitors with much deeper pockets.

Marketri creates a world-class marketing function for your business by bringing together the right marketing talent, technologies, and processes to drive predictable, profitable growth. Our fractional marketing model gives you access to the precise skillsets and resources your marketing plan requires, without a major FTE commitment.

By applying the right resources at the right time, you devote more of your budget to marketing execution and less to overhead. Our model also allows makes it easy to flex or scale your marketing based on changing conditions and new opportunities.

Your Marketri fractional marketing team becomes an extension of your in-house staff, equally invested in your success. We focus on delivering everything that’s essential for strong results.

• Strategic Expertise:  Successful marketing is grounded in a sound strategy. Our experienced strategists get to know your business intimately through our Marketri Momentum Model—six steps proven to generate measurable results. By becoming embedded in your business, we develop on-target strategies that drive better outcomes. 

• Single-Source Execution:  Marketri can flawlessly execute every aspect of your strategic marketing plan, from content creation and lead generation to website optimization, social media management, and much more. 

• Measurable ROI: Marketri turns your marketing into a revenue generator and a growth driver. And we prove it through analytics that demonstrate how marketing is contributing to your growth. 

• Data-Driven Optimization:  Some agencies throw spaghetti at the wall. We leverage tools like advanced analytics and A/B testing to constantly iterate and optimize your marketing for the best return on your spend. 

• Well-Honed Processes: Our time-proven, efficient processes ensure we’re always allocating the right resources to deliver the highest quality on your desired timeline. 

• A Top-Notch Team: Marketri hires A+ talent with experience in the industries we focus on and expertise in their respective areas of specialty. You get a more talented team than you could afford to staff in house.  

• Alignment with Sales:  We work closely your sales team to ensure seamless lead handoffs, nurture buyers through their journey, and turn prospects into loyal customers. (When you add a Marketri Fractional Chief Growth Officer to your team, we go one step further: aligning and synchronizing all the functions that contribute to revenue growth but often operate in isolation—such as sales, marketing, customer service, and

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Fractional Marketing: Everything to Know Before Making a Hire 

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