Founders usually arrive at this decision from frustration rather than strategy. Something is not working — spend is up and revenue is not, or campaigns are running with nobody able to say whether they should be — and the question becomes who do I bring in.
There are three real options. They are not interchangeable, and the common mistake is choosing on price rather than on what is actually broken.
What each one is genuinely for
An agency is execution capacity with specialist depth. You are buying people who run campaigns all day across many accounts, plus the tooling and process that comes with that. Agencies are good at doing the thing.
A full-time hire is ownership and continuity. Someone whose entire attention is your business, who accumulates context, and who is available for every decision. You are buying presence.
A fractional head of marketing is senior judgement without a full-time salary. Direction, prioritisation, budget logic, and accountability for whether marketing produces commercial outcomes. You are buying decisions.
Say that back as a diagnostic: if your problem is not enough execution, an agency. If it is nobody owns this, a full-time hire. If it is we are busy but I cannot tell if any of it is working, a fractional lead.
The failure mode of each
Agencies fail when there is no client-side owner. An agency optimises what it is asked to optimise. Without someone internally setting direction and challenging the reporting, you get a well-executed version of the wrong strategy, reported in a way that makes it hard to notice. This is the most common expensive mistake I see.
Full-time hires fail when the role is defined by title. Hiring a "marketing manager" into an undefined function usually produces a capable person absorbed by whatever is loudest. Hiring senior into a business with no supporting structure is worse — you pay executive salary for someone doing coordination.
Fractional leads fail when the business needs hands, not direction. If your actual constraint is that nobody is making the assets or running the campaigns, buying strategy is buying a better description of your problem. This is the case where I will tell you not to hire me.
The honest cost comparison
A full-time senior marketing hire in this market is not just salary — it is visa, benefits, recruitment cost, ramp time, and the risk that the hire is wrong. That risk is the underrated number. A senior mis-hire costs six months in lost momentum on top of the direct cost.
An agency retainer looks cleaner and often is, provided you have someone competent directing it. Without that, the retainer becomes an annuity you are afraid to cancel because you cannot evaluate it.
A fractional engagement is the lowest-commitment way to buy senior judgement and the fastest to reverse. It is also the least suited to volume execution.
The sequencing that usually works: fractional direction first to establish what should be happening, execution capacity — agency or in-house — against that plan, then a full-time owner once the function is defined enough that you can write an honest job spec.
Hiring the full-time owner first is the expensive path, because you are asking a candidate to define the role while doing it.
Questions worth asking before you commit
- What decision is currently not being made, and who would make it?
- If campaigns doubled tomorrow, would anyone be able to say whether that was good?
- Is the gap capability, capacity, or accountability? Each points somewhere different.
- Would I be able to write an honest job spec for this role today? If not, you are not ready for the full-time hire.
Where I fit
I work as a fractional head of marketing, so treat the above with appropriate scepticism — but the framing is the one I use when scoping, including when it leads to declining work.
If the diagnosis is that you need execution volume, an agency or in-house specialists will serve you better and I will say so. If the problem is that marketing activity is not connected to commercial outcomes and nobody senior owns that connection, that is the problem I am built for.
The services page sets out the five engagement models and what each one is scoped to solve. If the right move genuinely is not clear, the strategic advisory engagement exists to answer that question specifically — including when the honest answer is that you should not hire anyone yet.
Tell me what is actually going wrong and you will get a straight read on which of the three you need.