Which costs less, a fractional head of growth, a growth agency or a first marketing hire?

Over six months, a first full-time marketing hire is the most expensive of the three: in the worked example below, a US head of growth costs $108,500 to $126,000 once the recruiting fee and benefits sit on top of half a year of base salary. A small agency comes to about $49,000 to $84,000 before ad spend, and a fractional head of growth to $48,000 to $120,000. The figures come from the public pricing benchmarks linked in each section. The judgement on when each one pays off comes from more than ten years in growth across 30+ clients, and from the first marketing seat at Fangage.

A fractional head of growth is a senior growth lead who works for one company part-time, one to two days a week, for a fixed monthly fee over a set number of months. The role picks the channel, builds the pipeline and measurement that run it, and hands both to a full-time hire or an agency at the end.

What does each option cost per month and per year?

In the US, a fractional head of growth costs about $8,000 to $20,000 a month, a small agency $2,500 to $10,000 a month plus media, and a full-time marketing manager a median salary of $166,790 a year before any employer costs. European salaries are lower, and most published fractional and agency benchmarks are US figures, so the Europe column has gaps I left open instead of filling them with estimates.

The BLS figure covers marketing managers at companies of every size, so it runs higher than what a seed-stage company pays. The Dutch figure was last updated in November 2024.

Each monthly number leaves something out. For an agency it is the media: Searchlab puts ad spend at 2 to 10 times the retainer on performance engagements, with $10,000 to $50,000 a month in budget under a $5,000 PPC retainer. Tools get passed through at $200 to $1,500 a month on top (Searchlab).

For a hire it is everything an employer pays beyond the salary. Searchlab takes a US generalist marketing manager at $85,000 to $120,000 base, adds 25 to 30% in benefits, and lands at $130,000 to $160,000 fully loaded, or $11,000 to $13,500 a month. Webtonic quotes recruiting fees at 15 to 25% of first-year base (Webtonic). In the Netherlands, the government business portal lists 8% holiday pay, employer insurance premiums, the income-related healthcare contribution and a pension premium where there is a scheme, on top of gross pay, plus recruiting and equipment (Ondernemersplein). It gives no combined percentage, and I didn't find a sourced total for Dutch or German employer on-costs, so I add none to the European figures.

A fractional fee leaves out the least. There are no benefits or recruiting fee on top, and Webtonic describes a retainer with a 30-day notice period as "a cheap option on being wrong".

What do you get for the money in the first 90 days?

In the first 90 days, a fractional head of growth should hand you a chosen channel with live conversations in a pipeline, and an agency should have campaigns running in the one channel it sells. A first hire can still be onboarding at day 90, because recruiting happens before day one and the first weeks go to learning the product and the buyer.

I sat in the third row: at Fangage I was the first marketing hire, and I stayed through the acquisition by Triller. Across the companies I've worked with since, a first hire who starts before any channel is proven spends the first months on discovery: who buys, what they compare you to, which objections come up on every call. They do that knowing less than the founder, and can't change the offer when the answers come back.

When is a fractional head of growth the right choice?

A fractional head of growth is the right choice when you still have to find the channel that produces customers and you want a senior person on it without a year-long salary commitment. It is the wrong choice when the channel is known and the job is daily execution volume, because one to two days a week doesn't cover that.

My decision rule. Pick fractional when all of these hold:

1. No channel has produced paying customers in two consecutive quarters.
2. You cannot yet write a job ad that names the channel the hire would run.
3. The founder still takes the sales calls and can give four or so hours a week to the work.
4. You want the option to stop within a month if it is not working.

On cost, the fractional option overlaps with a hire more than founders expect. Webtonic's range of $8,000 to $20,000 a month has a low end below the $11,000 to $13,500 loaded monthly cost of a US generalist manager in Searchlab's numbers, and a top end above it. At the top end you pay for someone more senior than that salary would hire, for two days a week.

Founders also search "fractional CMO" for the same role. In the job specs I see, a CMO title leans toward brand and managing a team, and a head of growth title toward channels and pipeline. The price sits in the same band: GoFractional's average of $12,000 a month falls inside Webtonic's head of growth range, and GoFractional gives day rates of $1,200 to $2,500 (GoFractional). At seed stage I'd ignore the title and read the scope of work in the contract.

Where this option runs over budget is execution. A fractional lead who designs an outbound system still needs someone to send, enrich lists and update the CRM. Budget for a contractor or for tooling under the lead, and ask in the first call who does that work.

When is a growth agency the right choice?

An agency is the right choice when one channel is already proven, that channel is the agency's specialism, and you have the media budget and an in-house person to judge the work. Its fees are the lowest per month in the cost table above. Hired to pick the channel, it spends your media budget finding out.

Pick an agency when all four of these hold:

1. The channel has a known cost per customer from your own data.
2. The agency's case studies are in that exact channel and a buyer like yours.
3. Your monthly media budget is at least twice the retainer, the low end of Searchlab's 2 to 10 times range for performance work.
4. Someone on your side owns the strategy and reads the monthly report critically.

The contract terms matter as much as the retainer. Searchlab reports 10 to 15% off list for 12-month contracts, a floor of about $10,000 a month for new clients at mid-size agencies, and 60-day notice clauses that can be negotiated down to 30 (Searchlab). Percentage-of-spend fees run 10 to 20% of the ad budget, which grows the fee as you scale.

I would take the shorter term and pay list price until the channel has held for a quarter under the agency. If the channel fails in month four, a 10 to 15% discount won't cover the eight months you still owe.

When should you make the first full-time marketing hire?

Make the first full-time hire when one channel has brought paying customers for two quarters running and you can write the job ad around it. You also need the runway to carry a year-one cost well above the base salary: Webtonic calls a $180,000 base "realistically a quarter-of-a-million-dollar year-one commitment".

Hire when all four hold:

1. One channel has produced paying customers for two consecutive quarters (the test I lay out in the first-channel guide).
2. The job is to run that channel harder every day, and the job ad names it.
3. You have at least 12 months of runway for the loaded cost, recruiting fee included.
4. A founder or a fractional lead can onboard the hire with a written channel guide.

Timing matters because a wrong hire is expensive. Webtonic cites an estimate that puts the direct cost of a senior mis-hire as high as 213% of salary (Webtonic).

In Europe the arithmetic shifts. StepStone puts the German head of marketing median at €67,300, about €5,600 a month in base, and the Dutch marketing manager average at Nationale Beroepengids is €77,760 a year including holiday pay, or €6,480 a month. Both sit close to or below the bottom of Webtonic's US fractional range of $8,000 a month. For a Dutch or German startup a fractional lead costs about as much per month as a salaried manager, or more. That fee buys the channel decision before you commit to a salary.

What does a worked 6-month comparison look like for a seed-stage B2B company?

For a US seed-stage B2B company with founder-led sales and no proven channel, six months of a first head of growth hire costs $108,500 to $126,000, against $48,000 to $120,000 for a fractional head of growth and about $49,000 to $84,000 for a small multi-channel agency. Media is excluded from all three, and in the agency case it is the largest number, at 2 to 10 times the retainer.

The assumptions: the hire is paid Webtonic's $140,000 median base, carries Searchlab's 25 to 30% benefits loading and a recruiting fee of 15 to 25% of base. The agency uses Searchlab's small-agency multi-channel retainer of $7,500 to $10,000 a month, its setup fee range and its tool pass-through range. The fractional lead uses Webtonic's $8,000 to $20,000.

The hire is the only line that costs the same in month seven whether or not the channel works, and its six months include the recruiting gap, when you have paid the fee and nobody has started.

A Dutch variant, using only the sourced salary: half a year of the Nationale Beroepengids average is €38,880 gross, or €6,480 a month, before employer premiums, pension and any recruiting fee.

This is the work GMS does with early-stage founders. Most start with the GTM Sprint, a fixed price from $3,500 for two weeks, which ends with the ICP decision, a channel plan and a 90-day roadmap, and tells you which of the three options you need next. From there it is either the Pipeline Build, six weeks with handover at the end, or a Fractional Head of Growth engagement of three to six months at about two days a week. Both are priced on request: I scope them after a call and send a fixed monthly or project fee, never hourly. The offers are on the pricing page, and the first step is a call where we go through your pipeline and your last lost deals.

How do you switch from one to the next without losing the work?

You keep the work by owning every account and every document in the company's name from day one, and by overlapping the outgoing and incoming party for a few weeks. Most of what founders lose in a switch is access: an ad account in the agency's name, a CRM seat on a contractor's email, a dashboard nobody else can edit.

What I would do, in this order:

1. Open the ad accounts, CRM, analytics, domains and outreach tool seats in the company's name and give the fractional lead or agency user access. Never the reverse.
2. Write the handover into the contract as deliverables: a channel guide, a metric dashboard, the target list with stages and lost reasons, and a hiring brief. Promised as goodwill, it gets squeezed into the last week.
3. Match the notice period to the overlap you want. Webtonic's guide uses a 30-day notice period as its example for a fractional retainer, and Searchlab says agency 60-day clauses can be cut to 30.
4. Have the fractional lead write the hiring brief and sit in the interview loop. The brief names the channel, last quarter's numbers in it and the targets for the next two quarters.
5. Overlap the incoming hire with the outgoing lead for the first weeks, then move the lead to a smaller advisory scope or end the engagement.
6. Before ending an agency, export the campaign history, audiences and creative files, and check the ad accounts still work without the agency's billing attached.