Fractional CMO vs Marketing Agency: Which Does Your Business Actually Need

Hosted by Rebecca Lloyd, Founder, Growth Architect and Co-hosted with Simon Dell, CEO of Cemoh.

When marketing isn’t delivering what the business needs, the instinct is often to hire an agency, add another marketer or simply increase activity.

But what if the real problem isn’t execution?

A Fractional CMO and a marketing agency solve fundamentally different problems. One provides senior marketing leadership, commercial direction and accountability. The other provides specialist execution capacity. Both can be valuable — but only when they’re solving the right problem.

In this practical session, Growth Architect founder and Fractional CMO Rebecca Lloyd will explore how CEOs can determine what marketing capability their business actually needs.

We’ll cover how to recognise whether you have a strategy and leadership gap or an execution gap; when an agency is the right investment; when a Fractional CMO makes commercial sense; when it may be time to bring marketing leadership in-house; and why the strongest model can sometimes combine senior marketing leadership with an internal team and specialist agencies.

You’ll leave with a practical framework for assessing your current marketing structure and five questions to answer before making your next significant marketing hire or agency investment.