Use Case
Fractional Marketing Team
A senior marketing team that costs less, adapts faster and comes with less risk than building your own.
Fill Skill Gaps
Several senior disciplines in one team.
Save Hiring Costs
One monthly fee instead of several salaries, recruiter fees and employer costs.
Change Course Faster
Change the scope by agreement. No hiring time, no notice periods.
Reduce Employment Risk
No employment risk for you. The people are ours.
Money back if we are not the right fit in the first 30 days.
The flexible, cost-efficient way to build, scale and stabilise your marketing.
Your marketing team might be capable and still too small for the work in front of it. Sometimes nobody senior sets the direction. Sometimes nobody covers positioning, content or paid media. We fill those gaps as one senior team.
In short
A fractional marketing team is a senior team you share with a few other companies.
A fractional marketing team gives you experienced marketers for a monthly fee instead of salaries. A strategic lead sets the direction, an operational lead runs the work day to day, and specialists produce the content, campaigns and paid media. The team works alongside any marketers you already employ and takes responsibility for the marketing function with them.
- Who it suits: companies with no marketing team, a team that has left, a period of change such as an acquisition, or one junior marketer with nobody setting the strategy.
- How it differs from an agency: the team works inside your business and owns the delivery, instead of working from a brief.
Who it is for
A fractional team suits four situations in a growing B2B company.
No marketing team yet
You have a product and customers, and nobody owns marketing. A team gives you strategy and delivery from the first month, without building a department first.
Your team has left
Your marketers resigned or moved on, and the work has stopped. A team picks it up and keeps it running while you decide what to build next.
A period of change
After an acquisition or a restructure, a team can bridge 6, 12 or 18 months until the business settles or is absorbed.
One junior marketer
Someone handles social media and content, and nobody sets the strategy. The team adds the senior direction and works with the person you already have.
It might not suit you if a website is the only thing you need. We build standalone websites as one-off projects. When you sign the team for six months or more, a website rebuild is included if your growth plan shows you need one.
What the team covers
Nine marketing disciplines in one team.
| Discipline | What it does for a B2B company |
|---|---|
| Marketing strategy | Sets the plan, the budget split and the priorities, and reports to your leadership team. |
| Product marketing and positioning | Defines who you sell to, why they buy, and how you describe your product against the alternatives. |
| Brand and creative | Keeps one look and one message across the website, sales material and campaigns. |
| Content | Writes the articles, guides, case studies and emails that answer your buyers’ questions. |
| Demand generation | Runs the campaigns that turn interest into sales conversations, and the follow-up that keeps enquiries moving. |
| Paid media | Plans and manages advertising on search engines and LinkedIn against the sales results you agree with us. |
| Website build | Builds or rebuilds your website so it explains what you sell and turns visitors into enquiries. |
| Customer relationship management | Sets up and maintains your customer relationship management (CRM) system so enquiries are recorded and your sales team can follow them up. |
| Marketing automation | Sends the right email or task after a download, a form or a sales call, so nobody has to do it by hand. |
Your plan decides which disciplines get the most time in a given month.
How it works
The team works inside your business with the people you already have.
A strategic lead
A senior marketer sets the direction and stays accountable for results. They cover the role of a marketing director, with the hands-on experience to do the work as well.
An operational lead
Runs the plan day to day, keeps the specialists on schedule, and is your first point of contact.
Weekly meetings and daily check-ins
We meet every week if you want to, check in daily on Slack, and join your own meetings where marketing needs a voice, including product, sales and customer reviews.
Artificial intelligence with a senior check
Artificial intelligence (AI) does the groundwork, which makes us fast and reliable. People check all of the work, back and forth, before it reaches you.
When you start hiring your own marketers, the team can stay on as a long-term partner and work alongside them.
Fractional team or agency
Clients leave agencies over delivery and value. A fractional team is set up around both.
61%
of clients ended an agency relationship over delivery.
Setup, 2025
61%
of clients ended an agency relationship over value.
Setup, 2025
44%
of clients said the agency did not understand their business.
Setup, 2025
Agencies read it differently. In the same survey, 75% of agencies thought budget cuts were the main reason clients leave, and 18% named delivery. The survey is small, with about 100 responses from companies and agencies in the United States, so treat it as a signal rather than a measurement.
A fractional team answers both points in how it is set up. The same senior people work on your business every week, they learn it from inside your meetings instead of from a brief, and they take responsibility for results as well as activity.
Your options compared
Four ways to get marketing done and what each one costs you.
| Fractional marketing team | Traditional agency | In-house hires | Single fractional leader | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who sets the strategy | A senior strategic lead in the team | Usually you, through a brief | Your marketing leader, once hired | The fractional leader |
| Who does the work | The team’s specialists | Agency staff, who often work across many clients | Your employees | Your staff, or suppliers the leader directs |
| How well they know the business | Works inside your meetings | Learns from briefs and reports | Best, over time | Well, at leadership level |
| Range of skills | Several disciplines in one team | Varies by agency | One person per role | One person |
| Changing course | Change the scope by agreement | Contract terms and notice | Hiring, notice periods and employment law | Change the days or hours |
| Main risk | Attention shared with a few other clients | Delivery and understanding of the business | Fixed cost and time to hire | Strategy without the people to do the work |
Fractional team or a hire
A marketing hire costs more than the salary and takes weeks to fill.
$166,790
median annual pay for marketing managers in the United States, May 2025.
Bureau of Labor Statistics
31.5%
of total pay goes on benefits for management and professional roles in United States private industry.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026
39 days
median time to fill a non-executive role, from approval to accepted offer, before any notice period.
Society for Human Resource Management, 2026
In the United Kingdom, employers add National Insurance at 15% on pay above £5,000 a year and a minimum pension contribution of 3%. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development puts the median cost of hiring a senior manager or director at £3,500 in 2026.
Employment law also decides how quickly you can change course once someone is hired.
| Country | When protection against unfair dismissal starts |
|---|---|
| United States | Employment is generally at will, with exceptions for discrimination, retaliation and contracts |
| United Kingdom | After two years of service today, falling to six months from 1 January 2027 |
| Ireland | After 12 months of service |
| Germany | After six months, in workplaces with more than ten employees |
| France | No qualifying period: dismissal needs a real and serious cause from the start |
With a fractional team, the people are employed or contracted by us, so changing the scope is a contract matter rather than an employment one.
Against hiring the same roles in-house, our fee is 78% to 83% lower in the United States and 66% to 76% lower in the United Kingdom, every year, before any recruiter fee. The comparison uses national salary guides (Robert Half 2027 in the United States, Ashdown, Payscale and Michael Page in the United Kingdom) and published employer costs.
What we commit to
What we commit to when we take on your marketing.
Address the issues we find
We deal with the problems our first analysis uncovers, instead of working around them.
Build or rebuild your growth foundations
If the foundations your growth depends on are missing or weak, we build or rebuild them first.
Put the right campaigns and channels in place
We set up and run the campaigns and channels your growth needs.
Tangible deliverables and meetings
You get dashboards, website performance results, and an overview of your search engine optimisation and answer engine optimisation (AEO) results. Weekly meetings whenever you want them, and daily check-ins on Slack.
What we cannot do
We do not run cold email or other outreach that uses personal data from our own platforms. The tools we run on our own accounts, such as Semrush, store no personal data. We do not take part in live events, though we can help you organise them.
What we need from you
Access to your wider go-to-market, product and customer teams. We are a fractional team, so we work with your people directly to get the information we need and to collaborate.
A plan that names people and departments
After the first analysis, a written plan that names who on our side works with whom on yours, from leadership to sales and product, and how often.
Where artificial intelligence is used
AI prepares the groundwork. A person checks every piece of work, so nothing reaches you on AI alone.
Choosing a provider
Five warning signs when you choose a fractional marketing team.
- A promised number of leads. Nobody can know in advance how good those leads will be.
- No plan for compliance. Data protection and email consent rules apply to every campaign, and a provider might not mention them until something goes wrong.
- Too little experience across the work. A team that has only done one kind of marketing might struggle with the range a B2B company needs.
- Meetings limited to less than once a week. A team that runs your marketing should be available to meet every week.
- Full delivery at a price that cannot cover it. A provider offering every discipline for far less than £5,000 / $6,000 a month is very likely underpricing the work, and something will give.
Starting, changing and ending
An engagement can bridge a gap, scale down, or stay for the long term.
Bridging a gap
An engagement can cover a defined period of 6 to 18 months, for example after an acquisition or while you hire.
Scaling down
When you hire your own team, you can reduce the scope and keep us on lighter work, so the knowledge of your business stays available.
Measuring return
We report the total revenue uplift from the start of the engagement, and the revenue from deals that touched marketing we built.
Preparing for investment or sale
The team gives an investor a working marketing function they can see, and that a buyer can keep or wind down.
The minimum term and the notice period are agreed at the start of each engagement.
Money-back guarantee, and you keep the plan. Your first month is a growth plan. It covers who your best clients are now, which groups you are not reaching yet, 50 named companies that fit, and how to win them over the next 90 days. If you decide within the first 30 days that we are not the right fit, we refund what you have paid, and the plan is yours to keep.
A website rebuild is included with a retainer of six months or more. If your growth plan shows your website needs rebuilding, we rebuild it as part of the retainer, starting after your first 30 days, once the plan is done. If you end the retainer before six months, you keep the website, as long as what you have paid covers the build price we agreed with you before the rebuild started. If it does not, you pay the difference.
What it costs
A fractional marketing team at B2B Engine starts from £5,000 / $6,000 a month.
The fee depends on the scope your plan needs: how many disciplines are involved, and how much work each one does in a month. We set it after we have looked at your business, and we change it when the scope changes.
We only take on work we can deliver in full. A website for a company that needs nothing else, we take on as a one-off project.
Published offers from other providers in the United Kingdom and the United States start from about £1,700 a month for a small number of hours and go up to monthly minimums of $7,500. Those figures are published offers, not market averages.
The market
Fractional work is growing, mostly in small and medium companies.
34,000+
workers in the United States had “fractional” in their job title in 2025, up 265% on 2019.
Lightcast, 2026
97%
of fractional job postings in 2026 came from small and medium companies.
Lightcast, 2026
60%
of fractional engagements last six months or longer.
Fractional Jobs, 2026
In a survey of 1,015 B2B marketers, 19% named agencies and outsourcing as a top-three area for more spending in 2026 (Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs).
Two limits apply. Lightcast counts job titles, so it misses people who work fractionally without the word in their title, and Fractional Jobs surveyed workers rather than clients. No study yet measures the results of fractional marketing teams, as opposed to single fractional leaders.
Examples
We already work as a fractional marketing team for B2B companies.
A pre-seed startup in the United States
The company had no marketer. We became its marketing function, rebuilt the website, and stopped cold email when it brought no positive replies.
A sustainability software scale-up in the United States
The company had no marketing leader. We took over after it let a paid media agency go, and repositioned the company during the engagement.
FAQ
Fractional marketing questions, answered.
What is fractional marketing?
Fractional marketing means buying a share of experienced marketers’ time instead of hiring them full time. It can be one person, such as a fractional marketing director, or a whole team that runs the marketing function.
What does a fractional marketing team do?
It plans your marketing, runs the campaigns and content, manages paid media and reports on results. It works alongside your own staff and inside your meetings.
What is a fractional marketing department?
A fractional team that covers the whole marketing function for a company with no marketing department of its own, or only one or two marketers.
When should you outsource your marketing team?
Usually when nobody owns marketing, when your team has left, during a change such as an acquisition, or when one junior marketer has nobody to set the strategy. Our guide Should you outsource your marketing department? goes through each situation.
How does a fractional marketing team improve return on investment?
It puts senior people on the work from the first month, without the time it takes to hire. We measure the total revenue uplift from the start of the engagement and the revenue from deals that touched marketing we built. No independent study yet measures the results of fractional teams.
How does a fractional team help a business prepare for exit?
It builds a working marketing function an investor can see, and that a buyer can keep or wind down without redundancy costs.
What should you look for in a fractional marketing agency?
Clear deliverables and meetings, honesty about what they cannot do, a list of what they need from you, a working plan that names people and departments, and a clear account of where they use artificial intelligence and who checks it.
How does a fractional team work with an internal marketing team?
It adds the disciplines your team does not cover and works alongside the people you employ. When you hire more marketers, the team can stay on as a long-term partner.
How is a fractional team different from a fractional marketing director?
A fractional director sets the strategy and usually needs a team or suppliers to do the work. A fractional team includes a senior strategic lead and the specialists who do the work.
How much does a fractional marketing team cost?
At B2B Engine, from £5,000 / $6,000 a month. The fee depends on the disciplines and the amount of work your plan needs.
Find out which disciplines your marketing needs first
Tell us what your marketing covers today and where the gaps are. We will show you what we would add first, and what it costs.
Sources: Setup, 2025 Marketing Relationship Survey, published 27 January 2026, about 100 responses. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, advertising, promotions and marketing managers, May 2025; Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026. Society for Human Resource Management, recruiting benchmarking, 2026. HM Revenue and Customs, rates and thresholds for employers 2026 to 2027; GOV.UK, workplace pensions. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, Resourcing and talent planning 2026, 1,014 human resources professionals. Acas; GOV.UK, unfair dismissal changes; Workplace Relations Commission (Ireland); Kündigungsschutzgesetz sections 1 and 23 (Germany); Service Public (France); USAGov. Lightcast, The Rise of Fractional Leadership, August 2026. Fractional Jobs, The Fractional Work Report 2026, 1,733 responses from fractional workers. Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, B2B Content and Marketing Trends: Insights for 2026, 1,015 B2B marketers.