A permanent Head of Marketing looks straightforward on paper. In practice, it's a 9-12 month lag, a £10-20k recruitment cost, and an unknown risk at the end of it. Fractional marketing leadership exists because that cycle is broken.
Most manufacturers model the salary. They don't model the recruitment fee, typically 15-20% of first year salary, or £12-24k. They don't model the 3-6 month search. They don't model the 3 month onboarding period before the hire is operational. And they don't model the cost of getting it wrong: statutory redundancy, performance management time, and starting the whole process again. By the time you account for all of it, a permanent Head of Marketing hire is a 12-18 month, £100k+ commitment before you see a single qualified lead.
The manufacturers who have solved this aren't waiting 12 months for commercial momentum. They're using fractional leadership to get there in weeks.
Fractional does not mean part time. It means director level marketing strategy, delivered by someone who has already done it in your sector, without the recruitment lag. In manufacturing, that distinction matters. Your buyers have specific language: RFQs, specification led selling, distributor channels, multi stakeholder buying committees. A generalist marketer takes a year to learn that. A manufacturing specialist walks in knowing it, and is building campaigns around it from week one.
Map the gap. If your last Head of Marketing left six months ago, calculate what that has cost in stalled pipeline, paused campaigns and leads that were never followed up. That number is your real case for fractional, not a comparison with a salary, but a comparison with the commercial cost of doing nothing.
Book a free discovery call. No recruitment lag. No onboarding curve. Manufacturing specialists, operational immediately.
20+ years of manufacturing marketing experience. We speak your sector's language before day one.