Fractional CMO vs. Marketing Agency: What’s Best for Your Business?

By Ros Conkie - Fractional CMO

A friend asked me recently: “How is being a fractional CMO, managing a team of freelancers, different from running an agency with staff? Why wouldn’t you just build an agency?”

On the surface, they look the same. Both provide external marketing support. But the reality is, the structures, incentives, and outcomes are very different. And those differences really matter when you’re deciding how to resource your marketing.

Why Businesses Often Default to Agencies

When marketing feels overwhelming, the obvious answer is to outsource it. Agencies make this easy: they’ll provide a ready-made team, clear deliverables, and the promise of results.

And sometimes that’s exactly what you need. If you already have a strong strategy and just want implementation, an agency can be a quick and efficient solution.

But there’s a risk too. Agencies have to keep their staff busy. That can create a subtle conflict of interest: recommending the services they have capacity for, rather than the activities your business really needs.

What a Fractional CMO Brings

A fractional CMO is different. They’re not there to sell you campaigns or deliverables. They step into your leadership team as a part-time strategic head of marketing.

Their role is to:

• Align marketing with your business goals.

• Decide whether to outsource, hire, or build capacity in-house.

• Assemble the right mix of specialists (freelancers, agencies, or employees) based on your needs.

• Measure success in terms of business outcomes, not just activity.

In other words, they behave like an internal marketing director - but on a flexible, fractional basis.

Pros and Cons of Each Approach

Agencies are great when you know what needs doing and you just need extra hands to do it. They’re scalable, broad in skillset, and quick to get started. But they can be less objective and more focused on “outputs” than “outcomes.”

Fractional CMOs give you strategic clarity and unbiased advice. They build long-term capability and accountability inside your business. But they do require closer collaboration, and they’ll often recommend additional investment in specialists or in-house hires.

When to Recommend Which

If a business has a clear marketing strategy but not enough resource to deliver it: you need an agency.

If you don’t have a clear strategy, keep spending on marketing without knowing what’s working, or need to build internal capability: a fractional CMO is best.

And often the best model is a combination: a fractional CMO sets the strategy and leads the function, while agencies and freelancers deliver under their guidance.

The Bottom Line

If you’re a business owner, choosing between an agency and a fractional CMO isn’t about which one is “better” - it’s about what problem you need to solve right now.

And if you’re another fractional leader, spotting the difference can help you point your client in the right direction. Sometimes what they need isn’t “more marketing,” it’s leadership in marketing.