Growth Insights for CEOs
Advice for CEOs on Growth and Scaling
Recent Posts

Should I Hire a Fractional CMO?
Fri, May 8, 2026 | Posted by Vickie Sherman
Executive Takeaways
- A full-time CMO can cost $1M in year one — before the first campaign ships.
- Full-time CMOs optimize for tenure. Fractional CMOs optimize for outcomes.
- Fractional CMOs bring cross-industry pattern recognition that deepens with every engagement.
- Fractional leadership wins in specific, definable contexts. The next article maps exactly when.
Recent Posts

Are You Committing Marketing Malpractice? 4 Ways That CEOs Miss the Marketing Mark
Wed, Aug 27, 2014 — A prospective client recently reached out to me, having found me by searching for fractional chief marketing officers on the Internet. This C-suite executive, who shall remain nameless, dispensed with formalities and said, “I am interviewing 15 marketing firms, and I’d like a list of things that we could do for $20,000.” After I took a beat to absorb his “unique” approach, I responded as any ethical Chief Marketing Officer should – calmly explaining that there are many, many steps required before we could even begin to develop a budget to spend those $20,000 hard-earned marketing dollars – things like identifying goals, objectives, priorities and the like.
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