THE LIBRARY · A PLAIN GUIDE
What does a fractional CMO cost, and what does the price buy?
Picture an owner (call her Maria) who runs a 40-person IT services firm doing about $4 million a year. She has a marketing coordinator who's great at getting things out the door, and nobody above that person deciding what should go out the door in the first place. So she asks around for a fractional CMO, and three proposals land on her desk. One is $4,500 a month. One is $12,000. One is $30,000.
All three say "fractional CMO" at the top. So which one's the real price?
Short (and strange) answer? All of them.
Our research found published fractional CMO rates which run from about $3,000 a month to $45,000 and, believe it or not, that spread isn't a sign that somebody's overcharging.
It mostly comes down to two things: how much of the person's time you're buying, and what that time is for. Once Maria can see both in each proposal, the three numbers stop looking random.
Why are the prices so far apart?
Mostly, it's time. The providers who publish their rates tend to price by the hour or the day, and "fractional" covers anything from a couple of days a month to three days a week. Here's what three of them publish, sorted by how much time you get:1
| What you're buying | Published price, per month | Who publishes it |
|---|---|---|
| One to two days a month, advice only | $3,500 to $5,000 | A solo consultant |
| 15 to 20 hours a month, one area and a weekly call | $8,000 | Another solo consultant |
| 20 to 30 hours a month, two channels and your vendors | $10,000 to $12,000 | The second consultant |
| One day a week, owning the marketing system | $12,000 to $15,000 | The first consultant |
| 30 to 40 hours a month, the full role | $14,000 to $16,000 | The second consultant |
| Two days a week | $18,000 to $22,000 | The first consultant |
| One to three days a week, embedded with your team | $20,000 to $45,000 | A consulting collective |
One to two days a month, advice only
- Published price, per month
- $3,500 to $5,000
- Who publishes it
- A solo consultant
15 to 20 hours a month, one area and a weekly call
- Published price, per month
- $8,000
- Who publishes it
- Another solo consultant
20 to 30 hours a month, two channels and your vendors
- Published price, per month
- $10,000 to $12,000
- Who publishes it
- The second consultant
One day a week, owning the marketing system
- Published price, per month
- $12,000 to $15,000
- Who publishes it
- The first consultant
30 to 40 hours a month, the full role
- Published price, per month
- $14,000 to $16,000
- Who publishes it
- The second consultant
Two days a week
- Published price, per month
- $18,000 to $22,000
- Who publishes it
- The first consultant
One to three days a week, embedded with your team
- Published price, per month
- $20,000 to $45,000
- Who publishes it
- A consulting collective
The wider rate guides land in the same neighborhood. One marketplace's guide says a fractional CMO "costs $3,000 to $15,000 per month for most companies," and another rate guide puts most engagements at $5,000 to $15,000.
But look at the top two rows. One to two days a month costs $3,500 to $5,000 from one consultant and $8,000 from the other. Much the same time, up to double the price. That's the second thing you're paying for.
- One to two days a month: 8 to 16 hours$3,500 to $5,000
- 15 to 20 hours a month$8,000
At eight hours a day.
What does the time actually buy?
The published tiers mostly sort into three jobs, and the job matters as much as the hours:
- Advising. A standing meeting, a 90-day plan, and a review of what your team or agency is doing. The CMO advises, and your people do the work. That's the bottom of the table, and it's what Maria needs if her coordinator can carry out a good plan.
- Owning. Weekly meetings, the budget, your vendors and a channel or two. The CMO decides and directs, and the hands doing the work mostly belong to someone else. That's roughly the $10,000 to $15,000 range.
- Running the function. Managing a team, reporting to you or a board, several channels at once. At this level you're paying for a part-time executive. Depending on the time, it runs from about $14,000 a month to well past $20,000, and that's where the $30,000 proposal on Maria's desk sits.
What varies most between two providers at the same price is the work itself. Some include it. One solo practitioner sells tiers at $3,000 and $4,500 a month that come with social posts three times a week and a weekly email, and she promises it's all "Done by me. Not subcontracted. Not handed off." Others sell the work separately, and plenty leave it with you.
So before Maria compares any two of her proposals, she should ask each provider the same question: what will you do with your own hands, and who does the rest?
Which terms matter more than the monthly price?
The number at the top of the proposal is the easy part. These four are where an engagement goes right or wrong:
The minimum. Three months is the most common floor you'll see published, and some run longer. A 2020 post from one of the large firms says its engagements "range from 6 months to 12 months or more," and the collective above typically scopes "2-4 quarters." Do the multiplication before you sign. Maria's $12,000 proposal, with a three-month minimum, is a $36,000 decision.
The way out. The better terms let either side leave on 30 days' notice once the minimum's up. The collective lets either party exit "at quarter-end with 30 days written notice," and the solo practitioner says that after her minimum, "you can step away with 30 days' notice." If a proposal doesn't say how you leave, ask, and get the answer into the agreement.
- $4,500 a month$13,500
- $12,000 a month$36,000
- $30,000 a month$90,000
If all three ask for three months.
The time, in writing. Most providers who publish tiers say how many hours or days each one buys. If a proposal just says "part-time," that's the first thing to ask about, because part-time isn't a number.
What happens if it isn't working. Refunds on a retainer are rare in this market. What you'll find instead:
- trials, like one marketplace's "No-Risk Trial, Pay Only If Satisfied," or the two-week trial the first marketplace offers
- a short diagnostic up front, which the collective says lets you "keep the diagnostic value without committing to the retainer"
- a promise to swap in a different person
So the protection that actually matters is the exit clause, plus a point you both agree on in the first month where you'd call it. A CMO who won't name that point is selling an engagement with no end built in. (Our piece on choosing a marketing agency asks agencies the same question.)
How does it compare with hiring someone full time?
The providers' own comparisons put a full-time CMO anywhere from "$175,000 to $300,000+" in total compensation before benefits (the first marketplace) to "$350K-$500K loaded annually" (the collective), which tells you about as much about who's selling as about CMOs. Take the low end anyway. A day a week at $12,000 to $15,000 a month comes to $144,000 to $180,000 a year, close to a full-time salary for a fifth of the time.
That's the wrong comparison for Maria, though. A $4 million firm doesn't have a full-time CMO's worth of decisions to make. Her real alternative is a marketing manager, on a manager's salary, plus her own time managing them. Against that, a day a week from someone who has run the function before can be the cheaper way to get the decisions made well, and the more expensive way to get the work done. So the question she's really answering is which of those two she's short on.
Then there's the agency. An agency sells work, and a fractional CMO sells direction. If you have no agency, no marketer and no plan, a fractional CMO on their own will hand you a very good plan and nobody to carry it out. Our piece on what a marketing agency does in a month covers the other side of that.
When don't you need one?
Sometimes the answer to all three proposals is no. Here's when:
- There's nothing to direct yet. If no marketing is happening, the first money should go to the work itself: a website that turns visitors into calls, a current Business Profile, reviews and an email list. The plan can come from a fixed-price project instead of a retainer. The second consultant above, for example, publishes an audit and strategy plan at $8,000 to $12,000.
- The retainer would cost more than the marketing it directs. At $5,000 a month, that's $60,000 a year before a dollar goes to the work. If your whole marketing budget is smaller than that, start with the work. Our piece on how much a small business should spend on marketing walks through setting that number.
- What you need is hands. If the plan exists and nobody's doing it, a fractional CMO is the most expensive way to get it done. Hire the work, and buy a few hours of senior advice a month to check it.
- You can't give them an hour a week. A fractional CMO runs on your answers: your prices, your margins, what you'd stop selling tomorrow, which customers you want more of. Without that hour, they'll fill the gaps with guesses, at a day-a-week rate.
So which of Maria's three proposals is right?
It comes down to two answers, and she can get both from each provider before the first invoice. How many days a month is she buying, and what are those days for? And what's written down: the minimum, the way out, and the point where they'd both say stop?
If her coordinator can carry out a good plan, she probably needs the $4,500 one, as long as it says what the time buys. If she wants someone to own the budget and the vendors, it's the $12,000. The $30,000 one only makes sense if she's ready to hand over the whole function, and at $4 million, she probably isn't. Whichever way she goes, a provider worth hiring will have both answers ready before she asks.
Where we fit
We sell fractional CMO work too, so here are our own answers to those two questions. Fractional CMO comes in two fixed tiers:
- ADirect
- Price
- $5,000 a month.
- Days a month
- Two, reserved for you.
- What they're for
- We set direction, and your people do the work.
- BLead
- Price
- $10,000 a month.
- Days a month
- Four, reserved.
- What they're for
- We run the marketing function, including the budget and your vendors.
Both start with a one-page scope you see before you pay. It covers the days, the meetings, what gets delivered in the first 30 days, the numbers we're responsible for, and the point where we'd tell you to stop. A Friday note reports against it every week, and there's a log you can open any time. It's three months to start, then 30 days' notice. And since refunds are rare in this market, here's ours: if at any monthly review you can't say what we did and why it mattered, that month's fee comes back.
If you're in Maria's spot but there's nothing to direct yet, or what you need is hands, we'll tell you so on the fit call. It's 15 minutes, and we'll say which tier fits, whether Marketing Monthly would do the job, or whether a head of marketing isn't what you need. If you'd rather get that answer in writing first, that's what the Marketing Plan is for.
Which tier, or whether at all.
Fifteen minutes about your business, who does marketing today and what you can't currently account for. We'll say which tier fits, whether Marketing Monthly would do, or whether a head of marketing isn't what you need.
