You will find 20 fractional CMO pricing pages on the internet. You will find 20 ranges wide enough to be useless, none of them attached to a person willing to name their own number. We are going to do something different.
Your CPA prepares your financial statements for diligence. Your attorney reviews every contract. Your financial advisor models deal structures. Nobody is preparing your marketing. That gap costs sellers real money.
You are spending on marketing. You are not building marketing. That distinction is the difference between a business that scales and one that stays on the treadmill.
Most professional services firms have never needed marketing beyond referrals and reputation. That model works until it does not. When growth stalls, the answer is not a marketing coordinator or an agency. It is the same thing you would advise your own clients: get a qualified advisor in the room.
Your business has outgrown founder-led marketing, but a $350,000 executive hire feels premature. That tension is real, and the answer is not to keep delaying the decision. Here is a clear framework for choosing between a fractional CMO and a full-time CMO.
You are spending $8,000 to $15,000 a month on a marketing agency. Reports come in. Social posts go out. And yet revenue is flat, your pipeline is unpredictable, and you cannot draw a straight line from what your agency does to what your business needs.