Fractional Head of Marketing Jobs

15 minutes · video or phone

Book 15 minutes to hire a fractional Head of Marketing

Tell us the scope and the days a week. We come back with Head of Marketing candidates, their day rates and availability.

0115 minutes, video or phone
02We scope the role and the days a week
03A shortlist of 3–5 after the call
04Fractional, interim and permanent briefs

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On the board · last 3 months

Fractional head of marketing jobs on the board

0 Fractional head of marketing · 1 marketing leadership

No Fractional head of marketing roles on the board in the last three months. Showing marketing leadership roles instead.

Syndicated
Head of Growth Delivery
E.ON Next · London
Rate not statedLondon

Browse every role on the board →

Current fractional Head of Marketing opportunities

How fractional recruitment agencies compare is set out in one place, including how we work: a Head of Marketing brief and a shortlist of three to five.

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01/ the role

What is a Fractional Head of Marketing?

A fractional head of marketing leads the marketing function part-time: the plan, the team, the agencies and the campaigns, reported against agreed measures.

Companies hire a fractional head of marketing when they need someone senior running marketing week to week, but not a full-time salary or a board-level marketing seat.

Head of marketing vs marketing director.

The head of marketing mandate is usually more executional than strategic — delivering campaigns, managing agencies and leading the team against a brief set by more senior commercial leadership — while a marketing director sets the strategy and owns the budget with accountability for its return.

If you need that strategic ownership, look at a fractional marketing director; for board-level marketing, a fractional CMO.

Typical fits: a first senior marketing hire after the founder has run marketing, a team of specialists with nobody leading them, a business whose strategy is set at CEO level and needs someone to deliver it, and companies that want one channel — demand, brand, content or search — led by a senior specialist.

02/ scope

What a Fractional Head of Marketing Actually Does

The plan: turning the company's commercial goals into a quarterly marketing plan — channels, campaigns, content and how the budget is split between them.

The team and suppliers: leading in-house marketers, briefing agencies and freelancers, and setting the review rhythm that keeps work shipping on the days they are not in.

The measures: reporting on pipeline and the channel metrics that feed it, and telling the CEO what to stop as well as what to fund.

How to hire a fractional head of marketing

Decide first whether the gap is delivery or direction — a head of marketing delivers against a strategy; a marketing director sets one.

Then write the brief: the channels that matter, the team they will lead, the days per week and the budget.

Brief us and we come back with a shortlist of 3–5 candidates, each with day rate, availability and IR35 position set out.

03/ the week

How a week divides.

Part of a week is the point of the model: the days you buy are yours, the rest of the week goes to other clients. Move the days a week and the week redraws.

Days a week for your company2 days

Your companyAnother clientA third client

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thu

Fri

Illustration only: one way a fractional Head of Marketing’s week can divide at 2 days a week for you. Each block is half a day.

04/ the board

What the board holds.

A read of the roles on the board on this page, counted as they stand: how each is engaged, whether the posting gives the days and the rate, and where the work happens.

On this board, last 90 days · 1 role · marketing leadership

Engagement

Contract1

Days a week

Stated in the posting0
Not stated1

Day rate

Verified rate0
Estimated (est)0
Rate not stated1

Work arrangement (as the job feed classifies it)

Remote0
Hybrid1
On-site0

Newest posting on the board: 22 Oct 2026.

05/ the route

Fractional, interim or permanent?

Four taps. The answer names the route for the seat and the page that covers it.

How much of the week does the work fill?

Is there a fixed end or a programme?

Does the seat sit on the board for years?

Is the need now, or can it wait for a search?

The route · Fractional

A fractional head of marketing.

The work fills part of the week, so buy the days it needs.

A fractional head of marketing holds the seat on agreed days for as long as the seat is needed, and works for other clients on the rest.

The fractional head of marketing roles on this page Talk it through

06/ comparison

Head of Marketing vs Marketing Director vs CMO

Three levels of marketing leadership, each available part-time.

Head of MarketingMarketing DirectorCMO

MandateRuns the function and its outputSets marketing strategy and owns the budgetBoard-level marketing and commercial direction

StrategyDelivers against an agreed strategyWrites the strategySets direction with the board

Reports toCEO, MD or a marketing directorCEO or COOCEO; sits on the executive team

Best forA first senior hire or a channel-led planBuilding and leading the whole functionMarketing represented at board level

07/ timing

Hire a Fractional Head of Marketing — which situations it fits

Where a part-time head of marketing is the right hire, and where it isn't.

Scenario 01

First senior marketing hire

Take it off the founder

The founder has been running marketing alongside everything else and needs one person to own the plan and the output.

Scenario 02

Specialists, no lead

Someone to run the team

There are good channel specialists or freelancers, but nobody setting priorities, reviewing work or reporting on it.

Scenario 03

Strategy set, delivery missing

Execute the plan

The CEO or board has agreed the direction.

What is missing is a senior marketer to turn it into campaigns and results.

Scenario 04

One channel carries the plan

A specialist head

Search, brand or ecommerce marketing decides growth and needs a senior owner rather than a generalist.

Scenario 05

Honest caveat

When you need strategy

If nobody has set the marketing strategy yet, a head of marketing will be working without a brief — hire a marketing director or CMO first.

08/ vetting

How we vet fractional heads of marketing

What we undertake on every brief, before a candidate reaches you.

01
Qualification screen
Verify Head of Marketing tenure, sector context and stage fit.
SOURCING
02
Mandate fit
Match to your situation — stage, board dynamics, timing.
MATCHING
03
Reference deep-dive
We take references ourselves, from recent past clients — real outcomes, not titles.
VERIFY
04
Shortlist
Three to five candidates with day rate, availability and IR35 position set out.
SHORTLIST OF 3–5

09/ the title question

Hire a VP of Marketing — or a fractional head of marketing?

Businesses that set out to hire a vice president of marketing are often using a US title for a UK seat.

In most UK organisations the same job is advertised as head of marketing or marketing director; VP Marketing is more common in venture-backed and US-owned companies.

The title matters less than the mandate: does the role set the marketing strategy and own the budget, or run the function against a strategy already agreed?

If it runs the function, a head of marketing is the right brief, and a fractional one if the work fills only part of the week.

If it sets strategy and answers to the board, you are describing a fractional marketing director or a part-time CMO.

A fractional VP of marketing is usually one of those, under a different name — ask candidates which they have actually done, and take references from the people they reported to.

For an employed hire, the ordinary steps apply: Acas covers job descriptions, interviews and offers, and every employee needs a right-to-work check.

For a contracted one, status for tax depends on how the engagement runs in practice, not on the title; HMRC's CEST tool gives HMRC's view on a specific engagement.

10/ specialist heads

Fractional head of SEO — and other specialist heads of marketing

Some head-of-marketing briefs are really a channel brief.

A fractional head of SEO owns organic search as a managed channel: the roadmap, the order of technical and content work, the agency or freelancers doing it, and reporting in pipeline terms rather than rankings alone.

The same model applies to a fractional head of brand or of ecommerce marketing — one senior owner for one channel, on part of the week.

Hire a specialist when one channel carries the growth plan and nobody senior owns it; hire a generalist head of marketing when the problem is how the channels fit together.

A good specialist knows their channel's rulebook.

Google's Search Essentials and SEO Starter Guide set out what Google asks of a site, and state plainly that there is no guarantee any page will be indexed — so treat a promise of guaranteed rankings as a warning sign.

Brand and ecommerce heads work to their own rules: the UK Advertising Codes for claims, and the ICO's direct marketing and PECR guidance for email, SMS and cookies.

Whichever specialist you brief, we shortlist 3–5 against the channel, not the title.

For the wider market, see fractional marketing jobs.

11/ questions

Fractional Head of Marketing FAQ

The questions people ask before bringing in a fractional Head of Marketing.

Decide whether you need delivery against an agreed strategy (a head of marketing) or someone to set the strategy (a marketing director). Then define the channels that matter, the team they will lead, the days per week and the budget, and brief us: we come back with a shortlist of 3–5 fractional heads of marketing, each with day rate, availability and IR35 position set out, taken through the stages on our vetting page.

No source we can verify publishes a UK fractional head of marketing day rate, so we don't quote one. For the permanent salary spread across part-week days (our arithmetic, not a market rate), see fractional head of marketing salary. The nearest published benchmark is interim: Exec Capital puts an interim Head of Marketing at a growth-stage business at £400–£800 a day. What a fractional engagement costs depends on the days per week, the scope and the channels; every candidate on our shortlist comes with their own day rate set out.

A head of marketing runs the marketing function and delivers against a strategy agreed with the CEO or a more senior leader. A marketing director writes that strategy, owns the budget and answers for its return. In small businesses the titles blur; the useful question is which of those jobs you need done. For the strategic seat, see fractional marketing director.

They are often the same job under different titles — VP Marketing is more common in venture-backed and US-owned companies. Decide by mandate: if the role runs the function against an agreed plan, brief a head of marketing; if it sets strategy and reports to the board, brief a marketing director or a part-time CMO.

Full-time when running the function fills the week: a sizeable team, several channels in flight and decisions every day. We take permanent briefs as well as fractional ones. Fractionally when the plan needs a senior marketer on some days, not all of them — a first senior hire, a small team of specialists, or one channel that carries the growth plan. Either way the brief is the same: the channels, the team, the days and the budget, and we come back with a shortlist of 3–5.

A fractional head of SEO owns organic search part-time: the roadmap, the priority order of technical and content work, direction of the agency or freelancers, and reporting in business terms. Hire one when search carries the growth plan and nobody senior owns it. Google's Search Essentials are the baseline any candidate should work to.

It depends on how the engagement runs in practice, not on the title or the contract alone. Where the client is medium or large, the client makes the status determination under HMRC's off-payroll working rules; CEST gives HMRC's view on a specific engagement. Every candidate on our shortlist comes with their IR35 position set out — see our IR35 guide.