Choosing Between a Fractional CMO and a Marketing Agency: What Every SMB CEO Should Know

Published : July 22, 2025
By : Fanny Ramos
In: Uncategorized

Choosing Between a Fractional CMO and a Marketing Agency: Strategic Leadership for SMB Growth

The choice between engaging a fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and partnering with a marketing agency stands as a pivotal decision for small and medium-sized business (SMB) CEOs. This decision can shape the course of business growth, organize marketing alignment, and influence how marketing integrates with sales, product, and customer success. Fractional CMOs bring executive-level strategic thinking, uniting internal resources around business goals, while agencies are often the go-to for specialized execution. The right model emerges from a company’s readiness to delegate, its marketing maturity, budget flexibility, and its appetite for growth and transformation.

Defining the Situation: Fractional CMO Versus Marketing Agency

A fractional CMO is an experienced marketing executive who joins a company’s leadership team on a part-time basis, bringing the expertise and perspective of a full-time CMO at a fraction of the cost. This model is especially pertinent for SMBs that need strategic leadership but are not ready for—or cannot afford—the commitment of a permanent executive. As Marshall Poindexter highlights, “If you realize that you need the help of an expert in marketing, then you probably would want to gravitate toward somebody who is a fractional CMO, who has expertise in building a strategy as well as figuring out the resources to execute that strategy.”

In contrast, marketing agencies provide external resources to execute specific marketing tasks—such as digital advertising, SEO, branding, or content production. Agencies are strong at tactical project delivery and can lighten the internal load for SMBs that already have clear strategies in place. Joseph Frost clarifies this distinction: “If you really want a strategic leader that’s going to determine what the strategy and tactics should be and then they are the ones that go out and find the sources to get it done… you should be having a conversation about Fractional.” Agencies depend on client direction and rarely assume a strategic leadership position, leaving internal teams to connect the dots across business functions.

Flor Arballo brings in another layer of nuance, noting, “We are expecting or should we be expecting that CEOs have all this understanding?” This raises the challenge that many SMBs approach agencies believing the answer is purely executional, when the missing piece is often foundational strategy.

Benefits and Risks: Strategic Leadership or Tactical Execution?

Successful marketing hinges on the alignment between business ambitions and marketing delivery. Fractional CMOs shine when an organization requires someone who can harness insights across sales, product, operations, and customer success. As Marshall Poindexter observes, “To really have a true go-to-market motion and strategy, it’s not just marketing as a key piece of that. But it also means that you have to have good integration with the product organization, the sales organization, and the customer service or customer success organization.”

Marketing agencies, on the other hand, excel at ramping up quickly for new projects, campaigns, or technical needs. They give SMBs access to creative talent and executional bandwidth that may be hard to hire in-house. Yet, Joseph Frost cautions, “When you know what you know, hire an agency. When you don’t know what you don’t know, hire a CMO.” Agencies generally do not challenge CEO assumptions or interrogate the business deeply for missed opportunities, risking misalignment if a strategic foundation is absent.

Ken Acer addresses the internal mindset required for success: “Educating a CEO on what the role of marketing can be is… a question that I ask myself when I’m looking to talk to a CEO. Is he or she open to a broad view of marketing or is it going to be something that’s going to be very limited to just marketing communications?” With limited strategic leadership, agencies may deliver excellent work that does not move the growth needle if bigger business levers are untouched.

Fanny Ramos further emphasizes the leadership imperative: “Somebody that can integrate with different leaders of your company to find really what it takes to grow the business.” Without a strategic leader, marketing investments risk becoming fragmented or transactional.

Future Prospects or Impacts: Evolving Engagement Models

The world of marketing leadership for SMBs is increasingly hybrid. Many businesses now combine the strategic oversight of fractional CMOs with the depth and breadth of agency teams. This hybrid approach enables SMBs to establish strategic direction and coordinate execution across internal and external teams under a unified roadmap.

Flor Arballo recounts a growing trend: her agency actively recommends including a CMO in engagements, recognizing that campaigns are most successful when underpinned by strong strategic leadership: “One of the things that he mentioned was that as an agency he understands the value of a fractional CMO. And that’s why he always wants to pitch when he’s pitching his services to a client, including a CMO in the engagement.”

Some firms are expanding this model into Team-as-a-Service (TaaS), where a fractional CMO acts as the linchpin between the core business and a flexible network of specialists. This structure provides brilliance at both strategy and execution, scales quickly, and maintains institutional knowledge inside the client business.

Hybrid models are particularly adept at resolving common friction points—ensuring that creative development, campaign optimization, sales enablement, and customer experience pull in the same direction.

Takeaways and Lessons: Decision Drivers for CEOs

For SMB CEOs, the right decision begins with candid self-assessment:

Does the business have a clear marketing strategy, or is it reacting in the market? Where strategy is lacking, a fractional CMO offers crucial value. Where execution is the main challenge, an agency may be the smarter fit.
How integrated are sales, product, and marketing? When organizational silos persist, a fractional CMO is often needed to drive cohesion.
Does the CEO want a leader or an executor? As Joseph Frost warns, “If you’re not looking for a leader in the organization, shouldn’t even be—the fractional word should just be out of the complete conversation.”
What budget and appetite exist for agility? Fractional CMOs offer flexible involvement and can ramp engagement up or down as business needs change. Agencies typically tie services to project or retainer scopes and may require renegotiation to scale.
Are there blind spots in the organization’s assumptions? Fractional CMOs specialize in surfacing and addressing these, while agencies generally accept the direction provided.

All members of the conversation, including Ken Acer, Marshall Poindexter, Flor Arballo, Fanny Ramos, and Joseph Frost, reinforce the importance of matching leadership style, organizational maturity, and growth ambitions to the right marketing partnership structure. Foundational strategy, cross-functional leadership, and an openness to organizational transformation are the common themes supporting the case for fractional CMO involvement.

Conclusion

For SMB CEOs, the choice between a fractional CMO and a marketing agency is more than a budget line item—it is a statement about growth philosophy and organizational readiness. Fractional CMOs serve best when strategy, integration, and leadership are missing links. Agencies are invaluable for executing well-defined projects at scale. Increasingly, the most effective model blends both, placing fractional CMOs at the strategic helm with agencies supporting execution. Aligning the right mix to the business need ensures marketing investments deliver value beyond the sum of their parts.

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