The Alternative to Hiring a Head of Marketing

An alternative to hiring a head of marketing is to buy the leadership or delivery capacity your business needs through a fractional head, an agency, an outsourced growth team or a fixed scope installation. A permanent hire still fits when you need someone to lead marketing every day.

What job are you about to hire someone to do?

Before choosing an employment arrangement, separate the responsibilities in the proposed role.

Setting commercial priorities requires different capacity from running campaigns, and neither automatically includes managing people or fixing how enquiries reach sales.

A head of marketing can own those responsibilities, but they will still need people and budget to deliver the work.

If your existing team can execute but competing requests keep changing its priorities, senior direction may be the missing piece.

If priorities are settled and campaigns keep slipping, more delivery capacity may be the better purchase.

If nobody can connect an enquiry to its source or confirm whether sales followed it up, the immediate work includes measurement and process design.

These situations can coexist, so write down which responsibility needs a permanent owner and which work has a defined end.

The preparation covered in what to put in place before you hire a marketing director helps separate the job you need filled from the unresolved work that could otherwise consume its opening months.

Which alternative to hiring a head of marketing fits your business?

The options differ in what they take responsibility for and how much management stays with you.

Compare the proposed scope before comparing fees, because a leadership retainer and a campaign delivery contract buy different things.

Route	What you are buying	Money commitment	Time required from your business
Fractional head	Senior direction on an agreed schedule	Retainer or contracted days, plus delivery costs	Decisions between sessions and enough team capacity to execute
Agency	Specialist delivery within a defined brief	Retainer or project fee, plus media and other excluded costs	Briefing, approvals and coordination with sales
Outsourced growth team	Several delivery disciplines under one agreed scope	Team retainer or project fee, plus excluded spend	Access to decision makers and coordination with internal owners
Fixed scope installation	Working processes and a handover	Project fee, plus any agreed account or channel costs	Staff involvement while the work is built and transferred
Permanent head	Ongoing leadership within your business	Salary, employment costs and a separate delivery budget	Recruitment, induction and continuing executive decisions

When does a fractional head make sense?

A fractional head suits a business that needs senior judgement without enough leadership work to justify a full time appointment.

They can set priorities and manage suppliers, provided the agreement gives them authority and access to the information they need.

The constraint is availability: decisions outside their contracted time still need an owner, and execution needs capacity somewhere in the team or supplier network.

Calculate the fee from the quoted retainer or day rate, then add the people required to carry out the plan.

Before signing, establish what remains when the engagement ends, including the planning documents and responsibility for supplier relationships.

The distinction between buying direction and buying delivery is explored further in fractional CMO versus marketing agency.

When is an agency the right answer?

An agency fits when you can define the work and give someone inside the business responsibility for its commercial performance.

That might be an established channel requiring specialist execution, or a project with a defined deliverable and approval process.

An agency can also provide strategy, but the contract needs to say whether its remit covers the whole marketing plan or only the services it delivers.

Your management time goes into supplying business context, approving work and resolving dependencies with the rest of the company.

Check whether the quoted fee excludes media spend, production or software charges, and establish how additional work is authorised.

At the end, account access and ownership of creative work depend on the agreement, so settle those terms before delivery begins.

What changes with an outsourced growth team?

An outsourced growth team can suit a business whose priorities span several disciplines but whose internal team cannot deliver the programme.

The label does not establish the service: ask which named roles are included and who can change priorities across the work.

A team delivering campaigns to your brief is different from one accepting responsibility for planning and coordinating them.

The money commitment usually follows a retainer or project scope, with exclusions for costs such as advertising spend.

Your time commitment depends on who handles coordination, although your business still needs to make commercial decisions and supply operational knowledge.

Agree what transfers at the end, particularly any work running through the provider's own systems, because access during an engagement does not establish ownership afterwards.

Where does The Growth Install fit?

The Growth Install is for founders about to hire a marketing manager, head of marketing or fractional CMO. Over 90 days we install three agreed growth workflows on your own accounts, with tracking and a live dashboard, next to the people who'll own them. It's one flat fee for three months, then it stops. If you still hire, your new hire has something to take over and improve from day one.

Founder Engine offers The Growth Install for this defined period of work, with the client owning its accounts and systems.

It fits when part of the proposed hire's remit is to establish how recurring growth work gets done and measured.

For example, a lead handling workflow needs a defined starting point, an owner and a way to check whether follow up happened.

That scope should be agreed before delivery starts, including what your people will operate afterwards.

The commitment from your team is participation in building and taking over those workflows, so it needs space in their workload.

The offer covers three agreed workflows and does not replace a marketing department or provide continuing executive leadership after the engagement ends.

Where daily leadership is already needed, a permanent appointment may still be the appropriate decision.

How should you compare the money and time commitments?

Ask each provider to cost the same written scope over the same comparison period, with ongoing costs shown separately from setup work.

For a fractional leader, calculate contracted days multiplied by the quoted day rate, or use the proposed retainer, then add delivery capacity.

For an agency or outsourced team, include the service fee and all excluded expenditure, as well as any internal resource needed to manage the relationship.

For a fixed scope installation, include the project fee and the cost of operating the agreed work afterwards.

A permanent hire requires a salary budget plus employer costs, recruitment expenditure where applicable and the resources needed to execute their plans.

HMRC's employer rates for 2026/27 set standard employer National Insurance at 15% on earnings above the annual £5,000 secondary threshold, with eligibility for allowances or reliefs affecting the amount payable.

Pension contributions and benefits also belong in the employment budget.

Compare your time separately: ask who writes briefs, who resolves competing requests, who approves expenditure and who intervenes when delivery stalls.

The right alternative to hiring a head of marketing depends partly on whether it removes work from your diary or leaves you coordinating a different set of people.

What should your business keep when an engagement ends?

A completed engagement should have an agreed handover, with ownership terms established before the work starts.

For externally delivered work, distinguish access to an account from ownership of it, and confirm who controls billing and administrator permissions.

Ask what happens to creative files and campaign history, including any restrictions on their continued use.

Where a provider builds a process, the handover should explain how your team runs it and what to do when something fails.

Reports also need enough documentation for someone else to understand the measures and maintain them.

A presentation of recommendations can be a valid contracted output, but it leaves a different amount of work behind from an operating process your team has already used.

For a permanent employee, continuity still requires documentation and company controlled access, because a full time appointment does not remove the risk of knowledge leaving with one person.

When is a permanent head of marketing still the right call?

A permanent hire fits when the business has sustained leadership work requiring daily involvement and authority.

That can include managing an internal team, allocating spend across competing priorities or working closely with sales on a changing commercial plan.

It also fits when decisions depend on detailed knowledge of your products and customers that someone needs to build through regular involvement in the business.

The role needs enough authority to act, and the founder needs to be willing to delegate the decisions assigned to it.

Budget for delivery alongside the salary, since a senior appointment cannot personally supply every specialist skill the plan might require.

Hiring may also be the right choice when your existing agency performs well but nobody internally has the time to direct its work and evaluate its contribution.

External support can remain alongside a permanent head, with the employee owning priorities and suppliers delivering defined parts of the plan.

A vacant role or an agency contract alone says little about which arrangement your business needs.

What should you check before choosing?

Use the proposed job description and supplier scopes to answer the same questions.

• Does the work require leadership every working day, or can decisions follow an agreed schedule?
• Who has capacity to execute once priorities are set?
• Which decisions can the appointed person or provider make without your approval?
• What expenditure sits outside the salary or quoted fee?
• Who will own the accounts and operate the work when the arrangement ends?

Any unanswered question belongs in the scope or job description before you commit.

A candidate and a supplier should both be assessed against the work your business needs done, including the responsibilities that remain with you.

What else should you know before making the appointment?

Do I need a full time head of marketing if I already have an agency?

You may need one if the agency requires daily direction or the business has wider marketing responsibilities that need a permanent owner. If your internal commercial lead can provide that direction and the agency has a defined remit, another senior appointment may add overlapping responsibility.

Should I hire a marketing manager instead?

A marketing manager can fit when priorities are established and the role mainly involves organising delivery. If you need someone to set commercial direction and challenge budget decisions, give the role the seniority and authority those responsibilities require. Assess the remit before choosing the title.

What's the difference between a fractional head and an outsourced growth team?

A fractional head primarily supplies senior leadership for an agreed amount of time. An outsourced growth team primarily supplies delivery capacity across its contracted disciplines, although some teams also include leadership. The scope must identify who sets priorities and who does the work.

Will I still need to hire after The Growth Install?

You may still need a permanent leader if the business has ongoing leadership and people management work. The Growth Install provides three agreed workflows with tracking and a handover on your own accounts. A subsequent hire has work to take over and improve from day one.