The Case for Hiring a Fractional Performance Marketing Strategist

There's a hire that sits between "we have a coordinator and an agency" and "we've brought in a full-time CMO", and a lot of B2B scaleups in the £5M to £30M ARR range walk straight past it. That's a shame, because for that stage of company it's often the right move, and it's usually the cheapest way to work out what kind of full-time leader you'll eventually want to hire.

The hire most scaleups don't make

A fractional senior performance marketing strategist works two days a week for you, owns the strategy, attribution and budget allocation, manages the agency, and reports directly to the CEO or commercial director. They cost a third of a full-time CMO. They are senior enough that the agency cannot bullshit them and the CFO will trust them in the room.

Most scaleups never make this hire because the org chart does not have a box for it. The same scaleups will then spend twelve months and £400K hiring a full-time CMO who turns out to be a brand person without performance chops.

When a fractional strategist beats a full-time hire

Three conditions. You are between £5M and £30M ARR, below that, you cannot afford the full-time senior; above it, the workload exceeds two days a week. Your bottleneck is judgement, not capacity, you have execution hands (in-house or agency), but nobody senior to grade them. You don't yet know what kind of full-time CMO to hire, a brand CMO and a growth CMO are different animals; running fractional first reveals which one you actually need.

What two days a week actually buys

The math surprises people. Two days a week is roughly 80 working days a year. Used well, that is enough to: rebuild your attribution model in the first quarter, run two incrementality tests, redesign your channel mix, manage the agency relationship weekly, and hand the CFO a defensible budget every quarter. Anything beyond that, daily campaign optimisation, creative ops, BDR enablement, sits outside the role and stays with the team or agency.

What it doesn't replace

A fractional strategist does not replace a full-time CMO long-term. They buy you 12-18 months of senior judgement while you scale to the point a full-time hire makes sense, and while you learn what kind of full-time hire you need. The good ones tell you when to convert, and recommend the full-time replacement themselves.

How the engagement should be structured

Two days a week, monthly retainer, quarterly review against a written scope. Direct reporting line to a CEO or commercial leader, not buried under a marketing manager. One specific named deliverable per quarter (attribution rebuild, EMEA reallocation, agency review, full-funnel measurement plan). And a written handover deliverable each quarter so that the work survives if either party walks.

The honest pitch

This article is also, transparently, what I do for a small number of clients. If your scaleup has the shape described above and the description fits, the contact form is below. If it doesn't, the framework still applies, hire someone, just don't accidentally hire neither.