Lead With Vision: Expert FCMO Leadership, Real Results

The first thing the Fractional Marketing Leader will do is evaluate your current marketing strategies and initiatives as well as create your 12 month marketing roadmap. They will guide your team through execution of marketing tactics such as: marketing automation, email marketing, organic search, paid search, branding, PR, and content marketing. The Fractional Marketing Leader will setup and monitor marketing KPIs in order to optimize campaigns.

Without a marketing leader, it’s likely you are conducting random acts of marketing. If you wonder if your team is executing on the best tactics that generate the highest ROIs, there is likely a need for a Fractional Marketing Leader. Companies of all sizes leverage Fractional Marketing Leader experts in order to optimize their marketing spend, focus on the right marketing channels and tactics and create a proper process for measuring marketing ROI.

The overall hourly rates vary wildly depending on the industry you’re in, the agency you work with and the specialized nature of your product. In general though, most Fractional Marketing Leader groups charge $250-$500 an hour. If you work in healthcare or fintech rates will be on the higher end.

A Virtual Marketing Leader is the same as a Fractional Marketing Leader. Different industries adopted different terms for the same function over time. These terms then made it into the public domain. That’s why you’re now stuck with Googling “virtual marketing leader”, “marketing leader for hire”, “fractional marketing leader”, “outsourced marketing leader” or even “fractional farketing director.” All these terms refer to the same function: a marketing executive who comes in to assess your current company, marketing efforts and technology stack and then creates a plan of action on how to optimize your marketing spend.

Fractional services refers to the practice of hiring an expert consultant to fulfill a specific need you have within your organization without the overhead of a full time resource. This is an executive that works with multiple companies on a part-time basis, usually for a few hours up to 20 hours a week.

An interim marketing leader is slightly different than a fractional marketing leader – even if a fractional marketing leader can fulfill an interim marketing leader role as well. An interim marketing leader is an executive brought in, usually full-time, for a short period of time (less than six months) to manage a marketing department while a company is searching for a permanent replacement. Generally, companies will either temporarily promote an existing resource into this role or contract a fractional marketing company to fulfil this role so that a marketing department can continue delivering on specific tasks while the search for a permanent replacement is ongoing.

A marketing consultant can help a company in a variety of ways over time. That includes go-to-market strategy, social media, SEO, PPC or content strategy. Marketing consultants will typically focus on a subject area, or division within a marketing department, and optimize their process, spend, and tactics in order to deliver a positive ROI for an organization.