The question SMEs get wrong about fractional marketing

The pitch for fractional marketing usually goes like this: a full-time marketing director costs you a lot, and this costs you less. Which is true, and which is the least interesting thing about it.

The real difference is what happens when it is not working.

Hiring is a one-way door

A permanent senior hire in a small business is an enormous commitment. Recruitment, notice periods, the salary, and the political cost of admitting it was wrong. So businesses hesitate for a year, then hire under pressure, then spend another year not admitting the fit is poor.

A fractional arrangement can end in a month. That sounds like a downside if you are selling it. It is the whole point. It means you can test a marketing strategy without betting the company on the person delivering it.

Where it genuinely does not work

I would rather say this than pretend otherwise.

If you need someone in the building every day managing a team of five, you need an employee. If your product changes weekly and the context cannot be handed over in a written update, you need an employee. And if what you actually want is someone to execute campaigns rather than decide which ones to run, you want a marketing executive and an agency, not a fractional director at a day rate.

The honest test

Ask what you would want this person to have done by month four. If the answer is a strategy, a working set of channels, and someone junior trained up to run them, fractional is a good fit. If the answer is a list of tasks, it is not.