A founder told me last month that they could not afford fractional help because they were saving for a real CMO at $280K. I asked what they had budgeted in total. They said $280K. That is the conversation I have most often, so let me do the arithmetic in public.
The line items nobody writes down
- Base salary: $250K–$320K for a credible operator at $10–50M revenue.
- Bonus and equity: 20–30% of base in cash, plus 0.5–1.5% equity. Call it $60K–$95K in cash-equivalent terms in year one.
- Payroll taxes and benefits: 20–25% of base. Another $55K–$75K.
- Recruiting: 25–30% of first-year cash comp for a retained search. $75K–$95K.
- Ramp: three to six months before the role produces a decision you could not have made yourself. At a $400K loaded run rate, that is $100K–$200K of paid learning.
Fully loaded year one lands between $540K and $785K before they have spent a dollar of media. That is the number that belongs in the board deck, and it almost never is.
Then there is the cost of getting it wrong
Executive mis-hire rates sit somewhere near a coin flip, and marketing is worse than average because the interview rewards presentation skills and the job rewards operational judgment.
A bad CMO hire is not a $600K mistake. It is $600K plus twelve months of strategy you have to unwind, plus the two good people who left because they did not respect the leadership, plus the second search. Call it a year and a million dollars.
The expensive part of a CMO hire is never the salary. It is the twelve months you cannot get back.
When a full-time CMO is absolutely the right call
- You have a marketing team of 10+ that needs daily management, career development and internal politics absorbed.
- Marketing is your primary competitive moat and requires constant senior presence in product and pricing decisions.
- You are past $50M and the role is 60% organisational leadership, 40% marketing.
If two of those three are true, hire. Pay properly, run a real search, and stop reading.
When it is not
If your team is three to nine people, your problem is almost certainly that nobody owns the plan — not that nobody manages the people. Those need different solutions and cost different money.
Senior judgment two days a week costs a fraction of a loaded full-time seat, arrives without a ramp, and can be ended in thirty days if it is not working. That last part is not a caveat. It is the entire value proposition. Optionality is worth real money when you are not yet sure what shape the role should be.
And here is the honest ending: the right fractional engagement should tell you what to hire, when, and at what level — then hand the job over. If someone is selling you permanence, they are selling you their retainer, not your outcome.