The dawn of fractional marketing teams in B2B (and why you need one)

We’re entering the dawn of the fractional marketing and design team. Instead of hiring one person or an in-house team, it’s about bringing on an outsourced group of specialists who slot into your business where you need them most.

What is a fractional marketing and design team?

A fractional marketing and design team is an external group of professionals who work with your business on a part time-basis, such as for a single project or a retainer. You’re not hiring them full-time. You don’t have to provide office space, benefits, or deal with payroll. Instead, you get access to a full set of skills on a flexible basis.

It’s a new way of thinking about something many businesses have already been doing for years: partnering with agencies. That’s just what the kids are calling it these days, I guess. Fractional teams aren’t embedded in your business the same way in-house staff are or with the same level of availability, but they do align with your goals and execute at scale without the overhead. You might meet weekly or biweekly while working asynchronously in-between.

You may have noticed a boom in folks seeking fractional executive leadership like fractional chief marketing officers, chief financial officers or even chief technology officers. This isn’t limited to strategic business leadership. You can think of it as having support staff alongside a Fractional CMO. Fractional marketing teams can supplement your marketing efforts from strategy to project management to execution. There’s a lot of ways to structure fractional teams.

Marketing agency, in-house marketers or a fractional CMO—what’s the best fit for your company?

We’ve even seen flexible workforce models pop up within IT for project needs or skills gap in software development or data. For example, maybe you want extra hands to make platform migration go smoother, you need to clean up your data and centralize it or want to build something faster. Fractional teams aren’t limited to marketing—they can support almost any department.

Why fractional teams matter now: scaling smart

We’re in a business environment where demands are higher than ever, but budgets and headcount don’t always keep pace.

• 41% of marketing leaders say hiring top talent is their biggest challenge and low compensation is a barrier in getting the right talent.
• 62% of CMOs feel there’s a shortage of next-generation marketing talent with respect to data and technology.
• 7/10 marketing leaders say their company is behind in adopting new technologies.
• Fractional business models save 30-40% of the cost of full-time hires.

Fractional marketing teams and fractional design teams let you move faster, experiment more, and access deep expertise without the risk of over-hiring. They can also complement your full time team, providing additional expertise and support when internal resources are stretched. If you’ve been holding off on building a full department, this is a way to fill the gap and keep things moving. But how do you involve them in your strategic plans or know when to invest in building your fractional team?

When should you consider a fractional marketing or design team

There are many moments where a fractional team makes sense. Here’s why you should embrace the era of the extended team:

• You’ve got a skills gap. Your team is strong, but there may be a skills gap. Whether that’s in design leadership, content strategy, tactically, technologically or navigating a particular challenge. Let’s face it, digital marketing is changing at a rapid pace. Keeping up or expecting your in-house team to know it all is an impossible task. BWXT engaged a fractional team to support the UX design of an internal tool since that wasn’t their area of expertise.
• Your team is at capacity. Internal teams are already juggling too much and there’s no capacity for new initiatives while supporting all existing initiatives with quality. A fractional team can add capacity by leading new projects, allowing your team to stay focused on business as usual. Sentinel worked with their fractional team to create high value sales collateral requiring information design, story-telling and graphic design so their team could focus on trade shows.
• You’re in transition. Maybe you’re rebranding, launching a product, covering an extended leave, or managing a key initiative such as a product launch. Instead of pausing, hiring on contract, or pushing through with uncertainty, a fractional marketing team gives you continuity for unique transition periods. For example, EUNA turned to their fractional marketing team to lead the relaunch of their website as they underwent a M&A and rebrand.
• You want to experiment. You’re not ready to have an initiative become a full-time part of your ongoing strategy so you want to test it first. A fractional marketing team can launch and learn quickly. That’s what we did with Hybrid Turkeys who needed to pivot their business towards more digital initiatives in the wake of COVID.
• You have a specific project. Something big that needs dedicated attention, like a new website or updating tons of collateral after a rebrand. A fractional design team can handle that project without pulling your people off their day-to-day responsibilities. Syngenta engaged their fractional marketing team to create a calculator tool for their rewards program because it required UX, graphic design, and website expertise.
• You’re on a budget. Hiring full-time senior-level talent, skilled marketing generalists or designers in-house is expensive. Fractional models get you access to expertise without the overhead.
• You need leadership. Whether it’s a strategist to set vision or a design lead to establish creative direction, fractional teams bring in senior-level talent as needed. You can find specific leadership whether you need an innovator, a change catalyst or a shepherd, your fractional team can give that jolt of leadership.

What fractional teams can provide: agile business growth

Flexibility

The beauty of the fractional team is flexibility. Maybe you want a fractional marketing team on a 100-hour monthly retainer to handle campaigns, reporting, and strategy. Maybe you only need a fractional design team to supplement your in-house marketers with high-quality creative. You can scale up as needed, prioritize different projects each month, and shift focus as your business evolves. For example, maybe one month you’ll focus on making website optimizations so then the next month, you feel great about driving more traffic via paid efforts.

Processes and tools that turn ideas into reality, quicker

Your fractional team can often bring in frameworks, cross-industry insights, and access to the latest tools. That’s the kind of perspective you don’t always get when you’re locked inside your own four walls. For example, we have a framework for creating content, launching campaigns, and the tech-stack to go from brainstorming, wireframing to MVPs in market quickly.

Specialized expertise and variety

Your fractional marketing team can consist of a senior-level lead like a Director, a mid-level manager along with specialists and coordinators. On the design side, it can look like a Creative Director alongside a Senior and Junior Graphic designer. How we structure our teams is a mix of both depending on what the client anticipates needing. We typically always have a senior lead with a coordinator along with a senior design lead and junior designer. This gives our clients a mini-marketing department where there are thinkers, doers, visionaries, project managers and a variety of skills from analytically-minded to creative-minded.

Why partner with an agency as your fractional team

Again, this isn’t anything new or ground-breaking. Agencies like ours are already operating this way with clients. When you sign a retainer, you’re essentially engaging with a fractional marketing team or a fractional design team. We work with you on strategy and execution. We scale when you need to move quickly. And we give you immediate access to a bench of specialists that would take high investment to seek, interview, hire, onboard, and maintain in-house.

The pace of technology and market change is faster than ever, and keeping your brand ahead requires skills that can be hard to hire for full-time. That’s where a fractional marketing team comes in. Our role is to stay on top of the market, anticipate shifts, and continuously upskill so your company doesn’t just keep up—it stays ahead. There’s no reason to feel any hesitation about outsourcing or working with a fractional team.

The way we think about teams are evolving. Fractional teams aren’t about about replacing your team. It’s about augmenting them. Filling in the gaps. Acting as your partner when you need extra hands or extra brains. It’s a modern support structure designed to match the unprecedented speed at which the industry is evolving.