If your marketing has outgrown running on instinct, you have four real options: hire a full-time CMO, hire a coordinator, retain an agency, or take a fractional CMO seat. Most owners only ever price out the first two, decide both are wrong, and go back to doing it themselves at 11pm.
Here is the honest comparison, costs and trade-offs, no sales spin.
Option 1: The full-time CMO
A real chief marketing officer runs $200,000 or more per year before benefits, bonus, and equity. For that, you get senior strategy and full ownership — but you also get a fixed cost, a hire to manage, and, for most $1M-20M companies, more executive than the business can keep busy. It is the right answer above a certain size. Below it, you are buying a seat you cannot fill.
Option 2: The marketing coordinator
A coordinator runs closer to $65,000. Affordable, and genuinely useful — for execution. The catch: a coordinator executes a plan, they do not set one. If nobody senior is handing them strategy and priorities, you have paid $65K for someone to guess, and the guessing shows. This is the most common expensive mistake we see: a junior hire asked to do a senior job.
Option 3: The agency retainer
An agency gives you a team and production capacity. Good ones deliver real work; the trade-off is that you are often one account among many, sometimes handed to junior staff after a senior pitch. Retainers make sense when you need volume — content produced, campaigns run, paid managed. We run those too, from $3,000/mo. But a retainer is production. It is not the same as having senior judgment that owns your strategy.
Option 4: The fractional CMO seat
A fractional CMO seat runs $4,000-$6,500 per month, scoped to the business and how much oversight it needs — roughly a third of a full-time CMO’s salary. It is an advisory relationship, not embedded production: a monthly strategy session, a written brief on what moved and what is next, one prioritized recommendation scoped and ready to execute, and direct text access in between.
The point is not that it is cheaper. It is that it is the right shape for a company that needs senior direction without needing — or being able to fill — a full-time executive. You are buying judgment, not headcount. Hands-on execution is priced separately, so the seat stays strategic instead of quietly turning into another vendor bill.
The comparison, side by side
- Full-time CMO — $200K+/yr. Full ownership, fixed cost, a hire to manage. Fits companies past roughly $20M.
- Coordinator — ~$65K/yr. Executes, does not strategize. Needs senior direction to be worth it.
- Agency retainer — from $3,000/mo. Team and production capacity. Best when you need volume shipped.
- Fractional seat — $4,000-$6,500/mo, month to month. Senior strategy on call, no body to manage. Fits $1M-20M owner-operators.
Which one fits you
If you are doing $1M-20M, built the business on referrals, and the gap is direction rather than hands — nobody senior owning where marketing goes next — the fractional seat is usually the tightest fit. If you already have execution handled and just need more of it, an agency retainer. If you are past $20M with the budget for a full team, hire the CMO. And a coordinator is a fine addition to any of these, as long as someone senior is telling them what to do.
None of these are mutually exclusive. The most common setup we see work: a fractional seat setting strategy, a coordinator or agency executing it, and the owner finally out of the 11pm marketing shift.
Not sure which fits? The first conversation sorts it out. See how the seat works → or compare it against our retainers →
How much does a fractional CMO cost vs. a full-time CMO?
A full-time CMO costs $200,000 or more per year before benefits and equity. A fractional CMO seat runs $4,000-$6,500 per month — roughly a third of the cost — on a month-to-month basis, because it provides senior strategic direction rather than a full-time executive hire you have to manage.
Is a fractional CMO better than an agency?
They solve different problems. An agency provides a team and production capacity — content, campaigns, paid media. A fractional CMO provides senior strategy and direction without embedded execution. Many companies use both: the fractional seat sets strategy and an agency or in-house coordinator executes it.
What size company should hire a fractional CMO instead of a full-time one?
Owner-operated companies doing roughly $1M to $20M in revenue are the best fit. Below that, the founder can usually still hold marketing themselves; above roughly $20M, a company typically has the budget and workload to justify a full-time CMO and in-house team.
