You know you need marketing help. What you’re not sure about is which kind: a consultant, an agency, or a full-time hire. Pick wrong and you waste money and months.

Here is how to tell which one your business actually needs, in plain terms.

The full-time hire

A full-time marketer is right when you have enough work to keep them busy and enough budget to pay them well. What you get is someone all in on your business every day.

The trap is expecting one person to be a strategist, a writer, a designer, and an ad buyer. Nobody is all four. Most single hires are strong at one thing and stretched thin on the rest.

The agency

An agency gives you a team and a lot of output, all under one roof. That is the upside. The downside is that an agency sells you its services, so its incentive is to keep you spending, not to tell you when to stop.

Agencies work best when you already know your strategy and just need execution at volume. They work worst when you need someone to figure out the strategy first, because that is not what they are built to do.

The consultant or fractional CMO

This is the middle path, and for a lot of growing businesses it is the right one. You get senior strategy and leadership without a full-time salary, and honest advice without an agency’s upsell.

A consultant helps you decide what to do. A fractional CMO goes further and leads the doing, directing your team and vendors. Either way, you are buying judgment, not just hands.

How to choose

• Plenty of steady work and budget for a senior salary? Hire full-time.
• Strategy is clear and you just need execution at scale? Use an agency.
• You need direction and a plan before you spend more? A consultant or fractional CMO.

Most businesses between $1M and $25M that come to me have the third problem. They are spending, but nobody owns the plan. That is the gap I fill.

Not sure which one you are? Start here.