What Not to Do If You're Hiring a Fractional CMO: 7 Mistakes SaaS B2B Founders Make Too Often

Startups have increasingly turned to hiring fractional C-suite seeking growth without the overhead of full-time hires. Crunchbase recorded a 2.5x increase of startups seeking fractional talents between 2022 and 2024, and forecasting this trend to continue to grow. This rise of the fractional C-suite provides early-stage companies access to senior-level talent in a flexible way.

This trend underscores a growing recognition of the value that fractional CMOs bring, offering high-level expertise and strategic guidance all while being cost-effective.

So you've decided to hire a fractional CMO for your SaaS business. Congratulations! You're halfway to marketing greatness... or halfway to a very expensive disappointment. The difference often comes down to avoiding these seven mistakes that I've watched founders make with almost impressive consistency.

1. Constantly Shifting their Priorities

You hire a seasoned marketing executive to work two days a week. Then, because you're paying premium rates, you frantically toss random marketing tasks their way:

"Could you tweet something clever?" 

"We need a white paper!"

 "The website needs... something?"

Look, I get it. You're busy putting out fires everywhere else, and it feels productive to assign whatever marketing emergency popped up in your inbox. But your fractional CMO isn't a marketing task vending machine. Your fractional CMO needs focused direction to drive meaningful results.

2. Expecting Immediate Marketing Impact

Spoiler: no, you can’t. And if you're expecting instant results, you're setting both yourself and your CMO up for frustration. Marketing, especially in B2B SaaS and enterprise markets, isn't a sprint but a strategic marathon.

Sure, there are quick wins, but many of the channels that truly move the needle (think SEO, thought leadership, brand building on LinkedIn, email nurturing) take months, not weeks, to show measurable ROI. 

We once worked with a SaaS founder who was ready to pull the plug on their fractional CMO after six weeks because “we haven’t seen any new customers yet.” Meanwhile, the groundwork being laid, customer research, messaging clarity, content strategy, was what would enable sustainable growth down the line. When those pieces clicked into place a few months later, the pipeline started filling up.

The takeaway? A fractional CMO isn’t a shortcut to instant revenue. They're there to build the machine, not just crank the lever. Be patient, stay engaged, and give your marketing strategy the time and resources it needs to work. 

3. Paying CMO Rates for Intern-Level Tasks

Nothing burns through budget quite like hiring a strategic marketing executive… and then spending their limited (and pricey) hours asking them to update your Instagram bio or format blog posts.

If what you really need is someone to write content, schedule social posts, or update your HubSpot tags, hire accordingly. Asking your fractional CMO to handle entry-level execution is like hiring Gordon Ramsay to make toast. Sure, he can do it, but is that really the best use of his time or your money?

That said, a good CMO won’t flinch at jumping into execution when it moves the strategy forward. But if you find them spending most of their time writing social media captions, you’ve got a staffing problem, not a leadership one.

The smartest approach? Pair senior strategic leadership with junior operational support. Let your fractional CMO focus on building the roadmap, while empowering others to help drive the bus. 

4. The "Figure It Out" Fallacy

Some founders seem to think fractional CMOs can decrypt your business model, customer pain points, and competitive landscape through osmosis.

"They're expensive, so they should just know what to do!"

Spoiler alert: They don't. Even the most brilliant marketing mind can't magically extract the knowledge locked in your brain. If you're not willing to invest time in proper onboarding, you're essentially paying someone to guess what might work for your business.

5. Confusing Marketing Activities with a Strategy

When your budget-conscious CMO suggests focusing on organic channels that require more time than money, resist the urge to respond with: “Great! Let’s do ALL of them!”

A blog, LinkedIn posts, and a podcast don’t constitute a strategy, they’re just a list of marketing activities. That’s like saying your fitness plan is “own gym equipment.” A real strategy requires making tough calls about what you won’t do, not just ticking off every shiny idea.

For example, instead of dabbling in sporadic social media posts and a half-baked website refresh and maybe launching a podcast (that dies after three episodes), a strategic approach would be: focus on consistently publishing excellent content on LinkedIn, and commit to personally following up with everyone who engages, while deliberately postponing the website redesign until the second half of the year.

Strategy is about focus and sequencing, not doing everything at once. Otherwise, you’ll burn budget, time, and goodwill and still wonder why nothing is moving the needle.

6. Isolating Them from the Rest of the Team

Some founders keep their fractional CMO isolated, nobody else in the company should know what they're working on or why, and they shouldn’t be talking to anyone else in the company.

To be fair, the logic behind this might make sense in some cases, to a degree, if you look at it sideways and squint really hard. We supported a team on a fractional basis once that had a strong internal culture of communicating through documents and briefs, so they wanted to gatekeep a little bit until they felt sure we would adapt to their communication style. However, my observation was that the loss of momentum from that initial gatekeeping far outweighed any benefit from cutting off communication with the wider team.

Here's a radical concept: Let your marketing team be a little bit disruptive. Let them have exploratory conversations with your sales team. Or your product team. Or anyone who interacts with customers.

Marketing doesn't happen in a vacuum (unless you're marketing vacuums, and even then… sorry, couldn’t resist.) Your CMO needs regular access to the rest of your go-to-market team, or you're paying for marketing that exists in a parallel universe to your actual business.

7. The Vendor Treatment

Nothing handicaps a fractional CMO faster than treating them like a vendor instead of a strategic partner.

If you find yourself saying things like "We don't need to involve you in product roadmap discussions," you've missed the entire point of hiring executive-level marketing talent.

Your CMO should be a thought partner who challenges your assumptions and brings fresh perspective, not just an order-taker for marketing deliverables you've already decided on.

The Bottom Line

Remember, you didn't bring on a fractional CMO to maintain the status quo. You did it because something in your marketing needs to change, and probably rather dramatically.

But here's the uncomfortable truth that nobody tells founders: the success of your fractional CMO relationship depends as much on you as it does on them. Give them the context, connections, and clarity they need, and they'll be worth every penny. The choice is yours: build a strategic partnership that transforms your go-to-market approach, or collect another disappointing marketing war story to share at your next founder happy hour.

A fractional CMO can be transformative for your B2B SaaS company, so let them be.

Your move, CEO.