A fractional marketing director is a fractional executive you can hire to upgrade your marketing department at a fraction of the cost of a full-time employee. These experts can bring success to a business by providing much-needed guidance and leadership to its marketing activities.

Still, before you post any job ads, you should familiarize yourself with the role and the implications of the fractional employment model. To help you decide whether a fractional marketing director is what your business needs, we’ll explain what these professionals do as well as why and when you should consider hiring one.

We’ll also walk you through the traditional process of hiring a fractional marketing leader and introduce you to a platform that makes recruiting fractional talent a breeze.

What Is a Fractional Marketing Director?

A marketing director is a senior executive who reports to the CMO or, sometimes, directly to the CEO. They participate in the development of marketing, communications, and branding strategies within a business, often focusing on a particular area like digital marketing or advertising. More importantly, they oversee the execution of these strategies, working with marketing managers to ensure day-to-day operations reflect high-level plans and objectives.

A fractional marketing director shares many of the duties of the in-house, full-time director but works for you only a fraction of the hours of a full-time employee. While fractional work is similar to part-time work, fractional employees can work full-time for a single employer when needed. 

Like freelancers, fractional employees are contractors by law and may work for multiple employers. Still, they:

• Aren’t self-employed but employed by companies
• Are engaged with employers continuously, not only on a project basis
• Are part of the company and more involved in its operations than freelancers
• Have a more structured salary arrangement

The table below compares full-time, part-time, fractional, and freelance employees:

Key Roles and Responsibilities of a Fractional Marketing Director

The duties of a marketing director vary across organizations and industries. This is even more true when it comes to fractional directors, who are engaged ad hoc to meet the company’s specific needs.

In general, a fractional marketing director crafts the marketing strategy alongside other executives to ensure growth and secure revenue for the business. They’re aware of the big picture and responsible for communicating it to the rest of the marketing department. They structure the marketing team, coordinate managers, and oversee operations.

Some of the specific duties a fractional director may take on include:

• Conducting market research, forecasting results, and analyzing competitors and trends
• Analyzing KPIs to evaluate campaign results
• Developing the strategy based on research and past results, often for specific marketing channels
• Advising in the branding development process
• Planning the implementation of strategy and communicating it to lower levels
• Overseeing marketing budget management
• Managing and training marketing managers
• Reviewing marketing activities across the team
• Guiding and developing marketing teams

A fractional marketing director has similar duties to an in-house director, but their scope of work is narrower. They often focus on a specific area of marketing, so a company may have multiple specialized fractional directors, such as a fractional director of programmatic advertising, a fractional director of influencer marketing, and a fractional creative director.

Key Benefits of Hiring a Fractional Marketing Director

Fractional recruiting opens many doors for small businesses with tight budgets. For example, an upcoming startup may have technical prowess but lack the business know-how to market and sell its product or service. Since it can’t afford to hire a full-time marketing director, it can employ a fractional one and get expert advice to make the most of its available marketing budget.

Meanwhile, some organizations may not need full-time marketing direction. More often than not, a full-time director ends up doing the work of a junior marketer but at a much steeper price. Such companies would benefit from the fractional model, saving money to invest in other departments and activities while engaging with a marketing director only when necessary.

The cost-effectiveness isn’t the only advantage of the fractional model. Learn about the other ones below:

1. Hiring scalability: Since fractional directors are more affordable, you can hire more of them. You can get access to a wide range of experts or specialists and combine their expertise for maximum impact
2. Faster hiring: With lower hiring costs, you don’t need to obsess over funding or negotiate salaries extensively. Fractional experts are also usually more readily available and flexible with scheduling, so they can start work quickly
3. Fresh perspective: A full-time director offers stability, but a fractional one may have more diverse knowledge and experience since they work with various companies. They can bring in innovation and assess your marketing efforts more objectively

When To Hire a Fractional Marketing Director

A fractional marketing director’s guidance is always valuable, but some situations call for it more than others. Here are some scenarios to consider:

1. Leadership gaps: If your in-house marketing director or CMO is on leave, you can hire a fractional director to take over their key tasks and make sure operations continue as planned
2. Crucial periods: New product launches and busy seasons can be hectic, requiring all hands on deck. In such situations, a fractional marketing director can help bring order to chaos or lead a marketing team that’s struggling the most
3. Low performance: Sometimes, a campaign achieves subpar results, and you can’t pinpoint the reason. In that case, you can hire a fractional director who specializes in that area to identify the problems and devise solutions
4. Specific initiatives: A fractional director can play a pivotal role in helping you achieve success with specific initiatives. For example, if your business needs to host its first event, you can seek the services of a fractional director who specializes in event marketing. Also, some directors specialize in marketing automation and can help you discover and use tools to streamline your workflows

How Do You Know If You Need To Hire a Fractional Marketing Director or a CMO?

The duties of a marketing director and CMO sometimes overlap, making it challenging to decide which professional would better serve your business. The guidelines in the table below will help you figure out which fractional executive to hire:

How To Choose the Best Fractional Marketing Director

An exceptional fractional marketing director should have the following qualities:

1. Broad experience and knowledge: Your fractional director needs to have a track record that demonstrates their technical proficiency, particularly in areas such as lead generation, customer engagement, and research. The experience should also show that they can conceive and execute strategies successfully
2. Communication skills: The fractional model relies on effective communication as the time for collaboration is limited. Your fractional director needs to be an excellent listener, ask on-point questions, and articulate their ideas clearly
3. Leadership skills: A fractional marketing director needs to instill trust and command respect. They should also know how and when to delegate tasks
4. Accountability: As they’ll have to make many important decisions, the marketing director should be confident and determined. They must also take ownership of their choices, whether good or bad
5. Agility: Fractional directors must adapt to the dynamic marketing environment, manage resource shortages, and navigate shifting priorities. They must be receptive to feedback and excel as natural problem-solvers
6. Shared values: Your chosen fractional marketing director should be fitting for your company culture and share your core values

How To Find a Fractional Marketing Director

To recruit a fractional marketing director, you have two options:

1. Do it yourself
2. Use a recruitment service or platform

If you have the necessary resources and want to hire the director independently, you can start by:

• Posting ads on job boards
• Browsing freelance marketplaces like Upwork or Freelancer
• Networking and asking for referrals

In any case, you should first figure out what your director will be doing and why. Having a well-defined picture of their role and responsibilities will help you shortlist candidates. When advertising the vacancy or reaching out to talent, you should be clear about the amount and nature of the work you’re hiring for.

Screening fractional marketing directors requires an elaborate approach since the position is a high-stakes one. Reference checks are necessary to verify the candidate’s past achievements. You should also conduct multiple interviews to evaluate the candidate’s communication and problem-solving skills. An additional assessment in the form of a case study can be a valuable display of the candidate’s presentation skills and critical thinking.

Optimizing the Relationship With Your Fractional Marketing Director

To give your fractional marketing director the best chance to succeed in the role, follow the tips in the table below:

Pitfalls of Hiring a Fractional Marketing Director

With open communication, adaptability, and increased integration efforts, your collaboration with your fractional director is likely to succeed. The most challenging hurdle you’ll need to jump over lies in the recruiting stage. It’s essential to find an individual who is:

• Reliable
• Dedicated to your cause
• Motivated to do their best work
• Willing to improve

At the end of the day, their expertise won’t mean much if they’re unwilling to use it or decide to quit at the worst of times. If that happens, you’ll need to replace them, spending even more of your limited resources.

The best way to avoid this unfortunate situation is to delegate the recruiting process to a recruitment service or platform and save significant time and effort. To ensure success, it’s essential to choose a platform that:

• Specializes in hiring for marketing roles based on your requirements
• Vets candidates rigorously
• Offers quality assurance in the form of free trials and refunds

In the next section, we’ll present MarketerHire, a platform that checks all the boxes above to ensure you never make a bad hire.

Why Is MarketerHire the Best Choice for Hiring a Fractional Marketing Director?

MarketerHire takes the pain and risk out of hiring. It’s a matchmaking platform that connects you with pre-vetted expert marketers for any role within days, no matter whether you’re looking for a fractional marketing director or a full-time marketing assistant.

Since its launch in 2018, MarketerHire has made over 25,000 successful matches. Numerous renowned companies rely on it for their marketer hiring needs, including:

• Netflix
• Allbirds
• HelloFresh
• Lyft
• Forbes

The expert marketers in MarketerHire’s network have also worked with household brands, such as Uber, PayPal, and Sephora. They undergo a rigorous vetting process led by in-house marketing experts, which consists of in-depth skills tests, video interviews, and test projects. Only the top 3% pass the screening process, so you can rest assured that only the best of the best marketing talent is recommended to you.

Once you describe your needs, MarketerHire will take over the entire recruiting process. Its expert team will find you a match within days using the proprietary MarketerMatch system. You’ll also get a dedicated marketing manager who’ll support and guide you throughout the recruiting process. They’ll also check in on you even after you start collaborating with your fractional marketing director.

You can assess the fit of your new match during the free trial week. In case they’re not what you were hoping for, MarketerHire will rematch you for free.

How MarketerHire Works

Here’s what the recruiting process with MarketerHire looks like:

1. Intro call: Schedule a short call with your marketing manager to describe your company and hiring needs
2. Meeting your match: MarketerHire’s team will recommend a suitable fractional director within 48 hours
3. Project kick-off: Your new fractional marketing director can start leading your team in as little as three days

You can scale up, scale down, or cancel the service freely because of MarketerHire’s flexible short-term contract. The platform can be used to hire for any marketing role, be it an executive like a fractional CMO or a specialist like an email marketer or a social media manager. Besides fractional hourly contracts, the platform supports full-time and part-time employment.

In case your marketing, design, or sales team ever needs a hand, MarketerHire can match you with a full-time Expert Assistant. As carefully vetted as all other professionals in the network, the assistants can take over any rote tasks and let your teams focus on strategic work.

Hiring expert marketers has never been easier thanks to MarketerHire. Schedule your first call today and expand your marketing team with top-tier talent.

Other Fractional Hiring Resources To Check Out

If you’re looking to hire other fractional marketing experts, explore our entire collection of fractional hiring guides: