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Quick answer: Scope a fractional head of growth around one owned metric, explicit decision rights, a fixed number of days per month, a named team, a budget ceiling, a reporting rhythm, and a written 90-day exit condition. Anything vaguer becomes expensive advice.
Last verified: 2026-09-08
Decide whether you are buying leadership or advice
A fractional CGO is a part-time senior operator who owns an outcome. A consultant produces recommendations. An agency executes channels. The three are priced and managed differently, and most disappointing engagements are a leadership scope bought at advisory access, or the reverse. The senior marketing leadership role exists to make allocation decisions; if nobody has delegated any, you have bought a very well-informed observer.
Write the choice down in the first line of the scope: "this role owns X" or "this engagement recommends on X". A statement of work that cannot answer which of the two it is will be re-argued in month two, usually in front of the team.
Name one metric, and write down today's value
One metric, not a dashboard. Qualified pipeline per month, blended acquisition cost, contribution margin, retention at 90 days — the choice matters less than the fact that it is single and currently measurable. Record its value on the day the engagement starts, along with the definition, because a chief growth officer scope argued at month three almost always turns out to be a definition disagreement.
If the metric is customer acquisition cost or lifetime value, state which variant you mean and which system is the source of truth. Where reported conversions feed the number, check the conversion window and attribution settings before agreeing a baseline; a platform default change can move the baseline without anyone touching the business.
Delegate decision rights explicitly
Three buckets, written out: decisions they take alone, decisions that need you, decisions that need the board. Typical solo rights for growth leadership at this level are reallocating spend within a stated ceiling, pausing an underperforming channel, changing the testing roadmap, and hiring or replacing agencies within budget. Typical escalations are new headcount, pricing, and anything that changes a board commitment.
Also state what happens when a decision is urgent and you are unavailable — a default of "act and inform within 24 hours" inside the ceiling keeps a two-day-a-month engagement from becoming a queue. An objectives and key results frame is a reasonable way to hold the outcome without micromanaging the route.
Fix the days, and fix which days
Two to six days a month covers most engagements at this level. Fix the number, then fix at least one recurring slot in the calendar — a standing weekly with you and the team — because unscheduled fractional time gets consumed by whoever asks last. Say how overflow works: banked, invoiced, or refused.
Be honest about what the days cannot include. A two-day-a-month scope cannot also run daily channel operations, and pretending otherwise produces a leader doing execution work at leadership rates. If execution capacity is missing, scope it separately — our growth marketing and performance creative pages describe how we split the two.
| Scope element | Written as | Failure it prevents |
|---|---|---|
| Owned metric | One number plus today's value | Success argued in arrears |
| Decision rights | Three buckets | Leadership reduced to advice |
| Days per month | A number and fixed slots | Time consumed ad hoc |
| Budget ceiling | An amount they can move within | Weekly approval bottleneck |
| Reporting rhythm | Weekly written, monthly review | Silent months |
| Exit condition | 90-day definition of good | Indefinite retainers |
Price it against market ranges, not a feeling
Published third-party market commentary puts fractional senior marketing and growth leadership broadly in the four-figure to low five-figure monthly range depending on market, seniority and days committed, against a full-time equivalent that carries salary, bonus, equity and benefits. Median tenure for full-time marketing leaders is famously short — a widely cited executive search study of large-company CMOs has put it at roughly three to four years — which is part of why buyers test the function fractionally first.
Treat those as market observations to sanity-check a proposal, not as our rates; we quote after scoping. The comparison that actually decides it is cost per day of senior judgment against the cost of a mis-hire in a function you cannot yet specify.
Write the exit before the start
Define what good looks like at 90 days in one sentence, and what triggers ending early. Common triggers: the owned metric has no movement and no credible explanation, promised access or data never arrived, or the internal team never actually changed reporting lines. Naming these is not pessimism; it is the only way a part-time engagement stays accountable.
Also name the handover artefact — the plan, the measurement map, the hiring spec for the eventual full-time hire — so the engagement leaves something behind that is not in one person's head.
What goes wrong
The failure mode: a fractional leader is hired with a metric but no authority. They diagnose accurately, recommend correctly, and cannot move a budget line without a meeting. Three months later the metric has not moved and the conclusion drawn is that fractional does not work. Delegate a ceiling, in writing, on day one.
Second failure mode: scope creep into execution. The engagement quietly becomes campaign management because that work is visible and urgent, and the strategic mandate goes unstaffed.
Third: no baseline. Without the metric's value and definition recorded at kickoff, every later review becomes a debate about measurement rather than performance. More on that in analytics and across the help library.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a fractional head of growth?
A part-time senior operator who owns a growth outcome and the team that moves it, usually two to six days a month, sometimes titled fractional CGO or chief growth officer.
How many days a month should the engagement be?
Two to six for most companies. Fix the number and fix at least one recurring calendar slot, or the time gets absorbed by whoever asks last.
What decisions should a fractional CGO be allowed to make alone?
Reallocating spend within a stated ceiling, pausing weak channels, changing the test roadmap, and managing agencies within budget. Headcount, pricing and board commitments escalate.
When should you hire full-time instead?
When the function needs daily presence, when the role is well enough understood to write a real job spec, or when the owned metric requires continuous operational management rather than periodic direction.
Sources: Chief marketing officer, Statement of work, OKR, Customer acquisition cost, Customer lifetime value (Wikipedia); Google Ads conversion windows; Harvard Business Review; Spencer Stuart CMO tenure study. Verified 2026-09-08.
