Fractional CMO vs. full-time

Fractional CMO or a full-time hire? Here's the math.

A fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader who works with a company part-time, usually ten to twenty hours a week on a monthly retainer, instead of joining as a full-time executive. A full-time CMO or VP of Marketing is an employee who owns the marketing function, manages the team, and is accountable for pipeline and revenue targets.

I'm Neely Thomson. I spent twenty years as an in-house B2B marketing leader, most recently as VP & Head of Marketing at a fintech payments company, and I now work as a fractional CMO for B2B software companies. I've been on both sides of this decision. This page lays out what each option costs, when each one is right, and a third option I think most companies at this stage should consider first.

Side by side

Full-time CMO, fractional CMO, or a built engine.

The figures below are US market ranges for B2B software companies between roughly $2M and $30M in revenue, as of 2026. Your numbers will differ by city and stage, but the shape of the comparison holds.

	Full-time CMO	Fractional CMO (retainer)	The Marketing Engine
Year-one cost	$320,000 to $495,000 fully loaded: base, bonus, benefits, equity, and a recruiter fee of 20 to 30 percent of base.	$120,000 to $144,000 at a market retainer of $10,000 to $12,000 a month. Most retainers renew, so plan on year two.	A two-week Diagnostic at $7,500, then a fixed fee for the ninety-day build, scoped after the Diagnostic and written into the SOW before anything starts.
Time to start	Three to six months to hire, then three months of ramp before they change anything.	Two to four weeks.	Two weeks to the Diagnostic readout. The build starts the week after.
What you get	A leader who owns marketing, manages the team, sits in exec meetings, and is accountable for the number.	Senior judgment, a strategy, and an operator who runs marketing while they're under contract.	The engine itself: positioning, sequencing, scoring, routing, attribution, and a weekly cadence, built in your tools and handed to a named person on your team.
What's left when it ends	Whatever they documented. Usually less than you'd hope.	The strategy deck and the campaigns they ran. The systems tend to leave with them.	Six working artifacts, a trained operator, and four weeks of support after handoff. Nothing depends on me staying.
The ongoing bill	Salary every year, plus whatever team they hire.	The retainer, for as long as you keep them. The industry renewal rate is around 84 percent, which tells you how often that's a long time.	Nothing required. Some clients keep an Advisory Seat afterward, roughly ten hours a month, scoped per client.
Right when	You have a team of five or more to manage, a board that wants one throat to choke, and the budget to pay for a bench.	You need marketing run by a senior person for a defined stretch and you're fine renting that judgment month to month.	You have revenue, a dozen or so closed deals, someone on your team who can own the engine, and no marketing leader yet.

The cost math, written out

What a full-time marketing leader costs in year one.

Salary is the number everyone quotes and it's about half the bill. Here is the full-time figure the way a CFO would build it, for a VP of Marketing at a B2B software company in the US.

Full-time, year one

Base salary$200,000 to $275,000
Bonus (15 to 25 percent)$30,000 to $70,000
Benefits and payroll tax (~25 percent)$50,000 to $70,000
Recruiter fee (20 to 30 percent of base)$40,000 to $80,000
EquityNot counted here

$320k to $495k

Before the person has changed anything. Add three to six months of search and a quarter of ramp.

Fractional retainer, year one

Monthly retainer$10,000 to $12,000
Hours per week, typical10 to 20
Minimum term, typical3 to 6 months
Renewal rate, industry~84 percent

$120k to $144k

Per year, and most engagements run past one. The systems they build tend to leave when they do.

The Marketing Engine

The Diagnostic, two weeks$7,500
The build, ninety daysFixed fee, scoped after the Diagnostic
Support after handoffFour weeks, included
Ongoing requirementNone

One fixed number

Agreed in writing before the build starts, and priced to come in under six months of a market-rate retainer. The Diagnostic fee is credited in full.

The comparison people get wrong is fractional against full-time. The one that decides it for a company at this stage is fractional against an implementation partner, the agency or consultancy that would build your CRM, automation, and scoring for $25,000 to $75,000 and leave you the configuration without the strategy. A ninety-day engine build sits in that range and includes the strategy, the handoff, and the person on your team who knows how it works.

When to hire full-time

A full-time CMO is the right answer in three situations.

I'd rather tell you this now than after a Diagnostic. If any of these describe you, go hire the executive, and I'll happily build the engine they inherit.

Five or more people report into marketing

Managing people is a full-time job on its own. A fractional leader at ten to twenty hours a week can't do it well, and I don't offer people management at all. Once the team is that size, hire the executive.

The board wants a named owner of the number

Investors in a Series B and beyond usually want a full-time executive whose name is on the marketing plan. That's a governance preference, and it's a fair one. A fractional CMO can get you to that hire, but rarely replaces it.

Marketing is the company's main growth lever

If most of your pipeline comes from marketing rather than sales or partnerships, the person running it should be in the building every day. A product-led software company at $20M in ARR needs a full-time CMO, not a consultant.

When to go fractional

A fractional CMO is the right answer in four situations.

These are the companies I work with, and they have more in common with each other than with the product-led software company down the street.

You're between $2M and $20M in revenue with no marketing leader

There's a marketing manager or a small team, and nobody senior above them. The CEO is the de facto CMO. Marketing spend goes out the door every month without anyone able to say what it returned.

Sales sources most of the pipeline

Companies selling six-figure contracts into banks, school systems, hospitals, or state agencies usually get most of their pipeline from sales, conferences, and referrals. Marketing's job there is to feed and route the pipeline, not to be it. That's a systems problem more than a leadership one.

You just bought AI tools and nobody owns the process

Copy.ai, Jasper, Canva, HubSpot's AI features, whatever landed last quarter. The tools are live and the output looks the same as before, or worse. That's the state of most marketing teams in 2026, and it's fixable in weeks, not years.

You'll hire full-time eventually, but not this year

The strongest use of a fractional CMO is to build the function a full-time hire will inherit, so that person starts on day one with a working engine instead of a blank CRM and a shared drive full of old decks.

The third option

Build the engine first. Then hire the person to run it.

The Marketing Engine is a ninety-day, fixed-scope fractional CMO engagement that builds a B2B company's marketing systems and hands them to a named person on the client's own team. It covers positioning and messaging, lifecycle sequencing, lead scoring, CRM and marketing automation integration, routing rules, the marketing and sales SLA, attribution, and a weekly operating cadence. It doesn't include writing content, designing creative, or running paid campaigns; those stay with the client's team or a partner.

The difference from a retainer is that it ends on purpose. Every system goes through a three-rep handoff: I build the first version while your operator watches, they build the second and I review it before it ships, they build the third alone. When the ninety days are up, the engine is theirs, and the marketing leader you hire afterward, full-time or fractional, starts with something that already works.

Everything starts with a two-week Diagnostic at $7,500, credited in full toward the build. Start a Diagnostic, or read the questions people ask first.