TL;DR: Most small businesses and startups don't need to build an internal marketing department. A fractional marketing agency or freelancer gives you experienced talent, diverse skill sets, and flexibility at a fraction of the cost. With AI tools in the mix, one good marketer can now do what a team of three used to.
If you're looking to hire marketing talent, there are now more options than ever for small businesses and startups to explore. It's an exciting time. Hopefully, you're seeing meaningful demand and you're looking for someone to help take things to the next level. Or maybe you're just starting out and looking for someone to help build the brand and lay the foundation.
Whatever stage you're at, there are a lot of benefits to hiring a fractional marketing agency or freelancer versus bringing on a full-time team member. I've worked in both capacities and want to share my honest thoughts about why I think fractional is the way to go, specifically for SMBs and early-stage companies.
Hiring fractionally or outsourcing to a marketing agency is often the most affordable way to access experienced marketing expertise. Bringing on a full-time marketing leader can easily cost over $100K in total compensation annually, and that's just for a marketing manager. A senior director or VP of marketing? You're looking at $250K or more when you factor in salary, benefits, and overhead.
Leveraging that skill set and experience on a part-time basis means you gain a really valuable team member with diverse expertise, without the hefty salary and benefits package. And here's what's changed in the last couple of years: with AI marketing tools, the right talent can be incredibly impactful for a small business even while on a part-time schedule. The math on marketing headcount has shifted.
Hiring a marketing agency can also help add diverse skill sets to your team that you may not get with one individual hire. Many full-stack agencies employ the right creative talent so that you can bring on one vendor and have all the skills you need. This means you don't have to invest in building out your own internal marketing department, which in addition to talent requires systems, SOPs, collaborative software, and management overhead.
It's easy for an agency to delegate video work or website work to the appropriate people, preventing your team from needing to build a team of specialists in-house. At a company with fewer than 50 employees, that's a huge advantage. You're not just hiring one person and hoping they can do everything. You're hiring a team that already knows how to work together.
Many fractional marketing agencies offer flexible services that can be scaled up or down as needed. This is an especially important benefit for startups where things are always changing and the marketing function needs to adjust accordingly.
I've worked for a number of startups where the amount of work fluctuated pretty drastically depending on the company's priorities at a given time. One quarter you're ramping up for a product launch and need all hands on deck. The next quarter, things slow down and the budget tightens. Flexible plans give you more control over costs and services rendered than full-time in-house resources would.
At MKM, we offer both all-inclusive subscription-based billing and one-time project-based billing because we recognize the needs of every emerging business are different. We want our services to be able to flex and adapt to what our clients actually need right now, not lock them into something that made sense six months ago.
Emerging companies often get stuck between DIY marketing and a big agency retainer. They've outgrown the "founder does everything" phase, but they're not ready to commit to a $10K-per-month agency or hire a full marketing team. That middle ground is exactly where fractional marketing shines.
According to recent industry data, companies working with fractional marketing leadership see an average of 29% revenue growth, compared to 19% for those without. And they're spending a fraction of what a full-time hire would cost. For SMBs with revenue between $1M and $30M, this model just makes more sense.
If your business is generating demand but struggling to capture it, or if your marketing efforts feel scattered because nobody is driving the strategy, that's usually the right time to bring in fractional support. You don't need a full department. You need one good marketer, or a small agency that can act like one, who can build the foundation and grow with you.
Overall, I think outsourcing marketing to a contractor or agency is the easiest way for small businesses to get started with content marketing. It helps reduce costs, expands the diversity of expertise on your team, and provides more flexibility in terms of when and how you scale.
If you're thinking about making your first marketing hire soon, I'd love to learn more about your business and provide some suggestions or things to look for. Feel free to book some time to meet with me here.