An interim CMO is a full-time marketing executive for a fixed period. A fractional CMO is a part-time marketing executive with no fixed end. The titles get mixed up in listings and job posts, so ask any candidate which one they mean.
The interim CMO
Interim CMOs fill gaps. The permanent CMO left, the search will take five months, and a product launch or a trade show season cannot wait. Or a company has decided to build a large in-house team quickly and needs someone in the building every day to hire it. Interims work four or five days a week, usually for three to nine months, and they are judged on keeping marketing running and handing over cleanly.
Expect roughly $15,000 to $30,000 a month, or $1,200 to $2,500 a day, often placed through an interim or executive staffing firm that adds a margin and may charge a conversion fee if you hire the interim permanently.
The fractional CMO
Fractional CMOs fill a role a company cannot yet justify full-time. At $2M to $20M in revenue, marketing leadership is roughly a one- to two-day-a-week job: setting positioning, owning the plan and budget, managing agencies and reporting to the CEO. Retainers run about $4,000 to $15,000 a month. The engagement lasts as long as it works, often 12 to 24 months, and frequently ends with the fractional CMO helping hire a full-time head of marketing.
Choosing between them
The useful question is how much marketing leadership time the company needs each week for the next six months. If the answer is a full week and the need ends when a permanent hire starts, choose an interim. If the answer is one or two days and the need is ongoing, choose a fractional. Cost follows from that: an interim at $22,000 a month costs $132,000 for six months, while a fractional at $8,000 costs $48,000.
The private equity case
PE buyers often want a marketing plan tied to the investment thesis within the first 100 days, and a mid-sized portfolio company rarely has a marketing leader who has built one. Two models are common. A fund-wide fractional CMO serves several portfolio companies, each for a day or two a week. Or an interim runs marketing full-time while the company recruits, typically after an add-on acquisition merges two marketing teams and two brands. Brand consolidation after an acquisition is one of the few marketing jobs that genuinely needs full-time hours for a few months.
The exit case
Buyers look at marketing in diligence: cost to acquire a customer by channel, the reliability of the pipeline, customer concentration and the strength of the brand. A fractional CMO brought in 18 to 24 months before a sale has time to clean up attribution, cut channels that do not return their cost and produce two years of comparable numbers. An interim brought in during the sale itself can help with the data room but cannot change the history.
Hybrids
Some fractional CMOs will go to three or four days a week for a launch or a rebrand, then scale back. If you expect a peak like that, write it into the contract with a day rate for the extra time.