Marketing Leadership Model

Marketing Leadership Model

Three things make a spreadsheet comparison of a marketing hire, a fractional leader and an agency wrong, and they are the same three every time. Ramp: every option costs full price before it produces full output. Search time: a hire you start looking for in January is not working in January. Your own hours: the cheapest option on paper is often the one that eats the most of the founder's week.

This skill counts all three, divides by productive months rather than calendar months, and then asks the question the cost comparison cannot answer: does the company need judgement, hands, or both? Two of the options give you judgement; one can give you judgement and hands.

When to use

The user is making a first marketing leadership decision, replacing someone, or reviewing a retainer at renewal. It applies from pre-seed to Series B; only the numbers change.

Do not use it to set the marketing budget itself; marketing-budget-planning does that. Do not use it to plan the work; campaign-orchestrator sequences the work once someone owns it.

Before you start

1. Get real quotes and a real salary band. Every figure in the comparison is one you enter; the engine has no benchmarks and its demo numbers are starting assumptions only.
2. Count the execution you would still have to buy under a fractional arrangement. A strategy-only retainer does not write the emails.
3. Estimate the hours a week the work is, split into leadership (planning, deciding, reviewing) and execution (writing, building, running). Ask the last person who did it.
4. Put a value on your own hour, roughly. It is the scarcest input you have.

Method

Fully loaded cost per option. In-house: salary for the months after the search, load (payroll, benefits, bonus, equity), recruiting fee, tools, and your management hours at your own rate. Fractional: retainer, execution you still buy, tools, your hours. Agency: retainer, setup fee, tools, your hours. Percentages are whole numbers.

Productive months, not calendar months. A month before anyone starts counts for nothing; a month in ramp counts as half (an engine rule); a month after ramp counts fully. Cost per productive month is the number that compares.

The crossover. Built from each option's real monthly rate and real one-off cost, so it does not move when the horizon changes. The engine reports the first month, after the hire has actually started, where the in-house line falls below the retainer and stays below; or says it never does and by how much a month.

The exit. Two numbers at month six (or the horizon if shorter): what has already left the bank, and what leaving still obliges you to pay. A hire assumes no severance; a fractional leader owes the notice period; an agency owes the rest of the minimum term. The exit table prices the sunk cash. It cannot price the months of momentum, which is usually the larger number.

The fit. AAJ's rules, labelled as such: thirty or more hours a week of leadership is a full-time role, so hire; twenty or more hours of execution with nobody in-house to do it needs hands, so a strategy-only retainer will not do; hands in channels you lack point at an agency or specialist contractors; part-time judgement with execution covered is what a fractional arrangement is for. Deciding for under six months rules out a hire on time alone. A founder with under two hours a week is warned off the option that needs the most of them.

Workflow

Step 1 - Shape. Run the fit check on the hours. It says which options are even in the frame.

Step 2 - Price. Run the comparison on real quotes over the horizon you are deciding for, then again at 24 and 36 months.

Step 3 - Read the crossover. If the hire never becomes cheaper, check the load and the execution line before believing it. If it crosses inside the horizon, the question is whether you can wait through the search and ramp.

Step 4 - Read the exit. Decide which wrong outcome you can afford.

Step 5 - Decide, and write down the review date, usually the crossover month or the end of the minimum term.

Run the tool

node resources/leadership-model.js --demo

run({ compare, fit }) returns each option's lines, total, productive months, cost per productive month and your hours; the cheapest; the crossover against the fractional (or agency) option; the exit table; and the fit verdict with notes. Any of the three options may be omitted.

Present the result

1. The three totals and cost per productive month, with the founder's hours beside each.
2. The crossover month, or that there is none, and the monthly gap.
3. The exit table: spent and still owed at month six.
4. The fit call, and what it rules out.

Guardrails & common mistakes

• Never compare on salary against retainer. Compare fully loaded cost per productive month.
• Never leave out ramp and search. It is why in-house looks cheaper than it turns out to be.
• Never treat a strategy retainer as a marketing team. Count the execution you still buy.
• Do not quote a benchmark. Every figure here is one the user entered.
• Seniority is not interchangeable. Whether you need judgement or hands is the actual question; price comes second.

Related AAJ resources

• The same model in a browser: https://aajconsult.com/tools/marketing-leadership-cost-comparator
• What fractional arrangements cost and include: https://aajconsult.com/blog/fractional-cmo-cost-guide-2026
• The fit question at length: https://aajconsult.com/blog/fractional-cmo-vs-inhouse-marketing-team
• Choosing the person once the shape is decided: https://aajconsult.com/blog/how-to-hire-marketing-consultant-startup

Related skills

• marketing-budget-planning - the budget the leadership cost sits inside
• campaign-orchestrator - the work the leader will run
• ai-marketing-governance - the policy a new leader inherits
• content-calendar-planning - costing the execution hours in the first place