In-house, agency or fractional CMO: who should run your marketing?

Every growing brand reaches the point where marketing needs an owner. Most founders then choose between four options, often without comparing them side by side: building an in-house team, hiring an agency, running things themselves or bringing in a fractional CMO. Each of them works in the right situation, and each has a cost that does not appear in the first offer.

An in-house marketer or team

Many companies start with one person in marketing. In practice this becomes a one-person show: a single specialist expected to handle strategy, content, ads, SEO, design and reporting at the same time. Nobody can keep up with all of it. The closer this person works with the brand every day, the harder it also becomes to step back and see the wider market and the changes coming in the industry.

A full in-house team solves the capacity problem and knows the business from the inside. It also needs a serious budget - salaries, social contributions, tools, equipment and the time it takes to keep everyone's skills up to date. Unless the team is large enough to have a specialist for each discipline, some areas will always be covered by someone who is not an expert in them.

Above all, a team needs an experienced marketing manager: someone who manages the daily workflow, takes the big decisions and stands between leadership and the creative team. That is a senior monthly salary on its own.

An agency

Agencies usually specialise. Performance and digital agencies know the platforms and their algorithms very well, and for mass-market products they are often the right choice. Strong agencies have dedicated people for SEO, Google Ads, Meta Ads, content and design. That level of expertise has its price, and for the partnership to make sense for both sides, the fees are high. Lower prices usually show in the quality of the work.

The model has two more limits. To keep a large team busy, an agency needs a steady flow of new clients, often from the same industry. Working for competing brands in one market and staying fully neutral is very difficult, however professional the team is - there is a human factor in this work.

The second limit is depth. An agency works with a certain level of information about each client, and many processes are standardised so they can be repeated across accounts. Constant new ideas and a deep understanding of your business are hard to expect from that set-up. The large brands that receive this kind of attention pay for whole agency teams dedicated to them.

Doing it yourself

Small businesses often run their own campaigns. It can work for a while, but it is also where most budget is lost, and I cover the most common mistakes in a separate article. For a niche or premium brand, starting with ads before the brand itself is built almost never brings the expected result.

A fractional CMO

The fourth option is becoming more common, especially in Western Europe, the UK and the US. A fractional CMO, also called an external CMO, is a senior marketing lead who works with the company from the outside but goes into the brand in great detail. In practice this person operates as the head of marketing: builds the strategy, leads its implementation across channels, sets direction for partners and freelancers, and connects leadership with everyone who executes.

For the company, the difference is in the structure. There is no fixed salary and no employment costs. The engagement is agreed monthly and can have a stable base, adjusted when there is a launch, a campaign or a busier season.

A fractional CMO gives a brand senior marketing leadership in a structure that fits its size.

How to choose the right person

The choice of person matters more than the model itself. Leading a whole brand is very difficult for someone who has not done it before. Look for:

• experience with whole brands, not only with single campaigns;
• brands similar to yours in price level and audience;
• hands-on knowledge of the channels where you will advertise;
• a clear view of how strategy turns into monthly work;
• enough time - a fractional CMO with too many clients cannot go into the detail of yours.

Who it suits best

This model works best for niche and premium brands that need an approach outside the usual frame. It does not require a huge budget. It suits brands that could afford several marketing partners or an in-house hire, but see the value in one person dedicated to their brand, without the cost and commitment of a full-time executive.

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