The Problem Isn’t “Fractional vs. Consultant vs. Agency”

Saw a post recently from a CEO talking about why they’d hire a fractional CMO before an agency if they were getting serious about marketing.

They referenced a conversation with Grant in which he broke it down pretty simply. Start with diagnosis. Understand the business. Build the plan. Then decide what actually needs to be executed and who should do it.

Nothing groundbreaking. Just a different starting point than jumping straight into campaigns.

Then a comment underneath pushed back and stirred the pot.

The argument was that “fractional” is mostly just a new label for consulting. Someone comes in, gives advice, and moves on. Agencies execute. Consultants don’t. The rest is just packaging.

Grant responded and made a fair distinction. A fractional role, at least the way he approaches it, doesn’t stop at advice. It stays in the work, helps manage it, and carries accountability alongside the team.

But then he noted something else, there isn't a one-size-fits-all, and the underlying problem and place folks are stuck isn't typically the label or the work, it's the lack of a singular owner for a marketing function.

That exchange stuck for a different reason.

There's obviously a huge variable in who/what the "marketing owner" may look like, depending on the business size and their market. A $1M business certainly looks much different than $50M one. 

Most companies that struggle with marketing aren’t really stuck on definitions and output.

They’re stuck on ownership.

The strategy gets built (sometimes). The direction is clear enough. Marketing starts producing. Sales keeps moving. Service and product do their thing. Finance and HR keep humming busily along.

But no one is actually responsible for whether the whole thing works together. 

If marketing, sales, product development, service, operations, finance, HR, and other key departments are all operating in separate rooms without an intentional feedback loop, things start to drift. 

So the business ends up in a place that feels familiar. There’s a plan in one place, execution in another, and a gap in between where expectations live. People see work "being done" but nobody has a confident feel that it was the "right work" or how it impacted the organization as a whole. 

And, the same can be said for the efforts of those departments, too, but today we're focused on marketing.

This ownership gap is where things start to slip and fall apart. 

At some point, someone has to own the number(s), make the decisions, connect marketing to the rest of the organizational goals, and stay close enough to adjust things when they’re not working (content, people, process, tools, etc).

It doesn’t really matter what title is sitting on top of that ownership role. 

If you feel want to feel real momentum and see results show up in your bottom line, this is a must.