You've decided you need a marketing leader. You haven't decided what shape. That's the useful question, because the three shapes cost different amounts, take different lengths of time to start, and solve different problems.
A note on “rent a CMO,” since a lot of people arrive at this question through that phrase. It describes the same arrangements. We'd gently push back on the framing, because renting implies you get the thing while you pay and nothing after. A properly structured engagement leaves you with documentation, systems, and hires that stay. If what you're buying really is access with nothing retained, that's a warning about the arrangement rather than a feature of the model.
Start with the actual gap
Before revenue or budget, answer this: is your gap direction or capacity?
Direction. You have people who can do the work. They're busy. They ship things. But you can't articulate why they're doing what they're doing, campaigns feel disconnected, and nobody can tell you which activity produced last quarter's pipeline. You need a head.
Capacity. You know what needs doing. There's nobody to do it. The strategy is clear enough and it isn't getting executed. You need hands, and a CMO is an expensive way to get them.
Both. Common, and it means you need a leader who arrives with execution capability or a plan to build it fast. Say this out loud in the first call, because a provider who only sells strategy will nod through it and then hand you a document.
Most bad marketing leadership hires we've seen come from misdiagnosing this. A capacity problem treated as a direction problem produces an excellent strategy nobody runs.
The decision by stage
Under $3M revenue, or no repeatable sale
Probably none of the three. The constraint at this stage is whether the thing sells and to whom, and that's founder work. A good marketing generalist or a contractor beats an executive, and costs a fraction as much. Revisit when the sale repeats without you in the room.
$3M to $8M
Fractional, light. Ten hours a week of direction alongside contract specialists doing the work. You need someone senior to point the effort, and not enough executive-level decisions arise weekly to fill a full-time role.
The alternative worth considering is a fractional marketing director rather than a CMO. More hands-on, closer to execution, and cheaper. If your strategy is broadly right and the problem is that nothing ships consistently, that's the better buy.
$8M to $15M
Fractional, standard. This is where the model does its best work. The tactics that got you here have stopped scaling, the growth target assumes marketing carries more load than it does, and you've outgrown founder-led marketing without being able to justify a full package.
Fifteen hours a week, direction plus personal ownership of one channel. Six months minimum, because positioning takes a month to lock and demand channels need sixty to ninety days of data before the results mean anything. The timing signals are worth checking before you commit.
$15M to $30M
Depends on the team. With two or three marketing people, fractional still works. With six or more, the management load alone justifies a full-time hire, and a part-time manager over a team that size creates a vacuum the team fills with their own priorities.
A common and sensible pattern here: fractional CMO for six to twelve months to define what the function should be, then use that definition to hire the permanent person. You get a job description based on evidence rather than on a template, which is most of the reason the permanent hire succeeds or fails.
$30M and up
Full-time, usually. The internal management, the cross-functional load, and the board exposure are a full-time job. Fractional at this size tends to mean an executive who's rarely in the building at a company where being in the building is much of the role.
When interim beats both
Interim isn't on a revenue scale. It's a situation.
Take the interim route when your CMO has left and the search will take months, when a permanent search has stalled and the function is drifting, or after an acquisition where two marketing organizations need merging by someone with no history in either.
The distinguishing feature is that there's a defined end and a successor. If there's no successor and no plan to find one, you don't want an interim. You want a fractional arrangement, and calling it interim just means you'll have this conversation again in six months. The interim model is covered in full here.
The full-time case, made properly
Fractional isn't always right and it's worth stating the counter-case clearly.
Hire full-time when marketing is genuinely how you win rather than a support function for sales. When you need someone in the room for decisions that come up daily rather than weekly. When your team is large enough that management is the job. When the board wants an executive with equity and personal exposure to the outcome. Or when you've run a fractional engagement, learned what the function needs, and are ready to commit.
That last route is underrated. Six months of fractional leadership is cheap tuition for a hire that costs a great deal to get wrong. The full comparison is here.
A five-question version
If you want to shortcut all of it:
- Can your team execute without close supervision? No, and you need capacity before leadership.
- How many marketing people report into this role? Six or more, lean full-time.
- How fast do you need someone working? Under two months, fractional or interim by default.
- Is there a defined end point with a successor? Yes, that's interim.
- Is marketing the moat, or the support function? The moat, hire permanently and give them equity.
Most companies between eight and fifteen million answer their way to fractional. Not because it's fashionable, but because that revenue band is exactly where the need for executive judgment outruns the need for executive presence.