Fractional CMO vs. Law Firm Marketing Agency: An Honest Comparison

You're paying an agency. Your case volume is flat, or you're not sure where it's coming from. You've been told things are performing but the numbers don't connect to signed cases. Before you fire the agency and hire a new one, read this.

I built and ran a legal marketing agency for over a decade and grew it to $7M in revenue. I know how agencies work from the inside - the incentive structures, the staffing realities, and the gap between what gets reported to clients and what's actually happening in the account. I'm not going to tell you agencies are the problem. Sometimes they're exactly the right solution. What I will tell you is that choosing between a law firm marketing agency and a law firm marketing agency vs consultant framework is not the right question. The right question is: what does your firm actually need right now - execution or strategy?

This guide gives you the honest answer to that question, including a real cost comparison and specific criteria for deciding which model fits your situation.

What a Law Firm Marketing Agency Actually Does (And What It Doesn't Do)

A good law firm marketing agency does specific things well. Understanding what those things are - and what falls outside their scope - is the key to evaluating whether an agency is the right fit for where your firm is today.

Agencies are built for tactical execution at scale. They have PPC managers who run hundreds of campaigns and know the platform mechanics. They have SEO specialists who build links and optimize content across dozens of clients. They have content writers, web developers, and account managers who coordinate deliverables. They have vendor relationships - media buyers, PR contacts, directory partnerships - that an individual firm can't replicate.

When you hire a digital marketing agency for lawyers, you're buying access to specialists you can't afford to employ full-time. That's the genuine value. For a firm that needs solid tactical execution on a defined set of channels, a well-run agency is often the most cost-effective answer.

Here is where agencies are genuinely limited, and this is not a criticism - it's just how the model works. An agency is not your strategic advisor. They don't sit inside your business. They manage your account as one among 20-50 clients, and the economics of their model require that they standardize their workflows. Your account gets the benefit of their process; it doesn't get a customized strategy built around your firm's specific economics and growth goals.

The staffing reality that most firm owners don't know: the person managing your account day-to-day is almost certainly 25-28 years old, has been in legal marketing for 2-3 years, and is managing 8-12 accounts simultaneously. The senior partner who sold you the contract is focused on the next sale. This isn't a knock on the people involved - they're often talented and hardworking. It's just the math of running an agency at a profitable margin.

Account turnover compounds the problem. Legal marketing agencies have notoriously high staff turnover. Every time your account manager leaves - and in many agencies, that's every 12-18 months - the institutional knowledge about your firm, your intake preferences, your past campaigns, and your competitive context goes with them. The next account manager starts close to zero.

There's also an incentive misalignment that's worth naming directly. Most agency models earn more revenue when you spend more. Whether it's a percentage of ad spend, a tiered retainer, or add-on services, growing your budget benefits the agency. That doesn't mean they give you bad advice - but it does mean they're not structurally positioned to tell you when you should spend less or reallocate budget away from a channel they manage.

Average legal marketing agency retainers typically run $3,000-$15,000/month for mid-tier agencies with defined channel scope. Top-tier agencies with multi-channel comprehensive management run $15,000-$30,000+/month. If you're paying below $3,000/month, you're likely getting templated deliverables with minimal customization.

The conclusion here is not "agencies are bad." Some agencies do genuinely excellent work. The question is whether execution-only is what your firm actually needs right now.

What a Fractional CMO Does - And Why It's Different

Before explaining what a fractional CMO does, start with the cost math - because this is what makes the model make sense or not make sense for your situation.

Full-time CMO cost reality:

• Average US CMO salary: $316,000/year
• Full salary range: $245,000-$550,000/year
• Benefits add 15-25% on top of base salary
• Recruitment fees: $15,000-$30,000
• Total first-year cost: often $295,000-$400,000+

Fractional CMO cost:

• Range: $2,000-$20,000/month ($24,000-$240,000/year)
• Full-scope engagement for a firm spending $50K+/month: typically $8,000-$12,000/month
• 40-65% cheaper than a full-time CMO hire

For a law firm that needs senior marketing leadership but can't justify a $316,000+ salary, a law firm marketing consultant or fractional CMO for law firms is the structural answer.

A fractional CMO is a senior marketing executive who works inside your business part-time - typically 20-40 hours per month. The key phrase is "inside your business." Unlike an agency managing your account from the outside, a fractional CMO sits on your side of the table.

What that means in practice: they evaluate whether your current agency is actually performing. They set strategy before execution - deciding which channels deserve budget, what the KPIs should be, and what a signed case should cost from each source. They are accountable to case outcomes, not to activity metrics like clicks or impressions.

A fractional CMO brings pattern recognition from running marketing at scale across multiple businesses. They've seen what works and what doesn't across dozens of firms in different practice areas and markets. They know what a realistic cost per signed PI case should be, what a normal SEO timeline looks like, and when an agency's explanation for flat results is legitimate versus a deflection.

What a fractional CMO is not a substitute for: they don't write your blog posts, run your ads, build your links, or execute the day-to-day marketing work. They direct the vendors who do those things, hold those vendors accountable, and make the strategic decisions about where money should go. The execution still happens through agencies or in-house specialists.

The most common structure in my engagements is what I'd call the co-existence model. The fractional CMO doesn't replace the agency - they manage the agency relationship. The agency keeps doing execution. The fractional CMO ensures the strategy is right, the KPIs are correct, and the agency is being held accountable to outcomes that actually matter to the firm.

Firms that move from ad-hoc tactics to a structured fractional CMO engagement see 25-35% higher marketing ROI within 12 months on average. That ROI improvement almost never comes from finding magic new channels - it comes from stopping the spend that wasn't working and concentrating resources on what is.

Side-by-Side Comparison - Agency vs. Fractional CMO vs. In-House

This table covers the full decision framework. The three models are not mutually exclusive - a fractional CMO managing a PPC agency and an SEO agency is a common and often optimal structure. For firms considering the third path, see the in-house SEO team for law firms guide.

The table makes the structure clear, but context matters. A fractional CMO managing an agency is better than a fractional CMO alone - you still need execution capacity. An agency working within a clear strategy performs significantly better than an agency operating without strategic direction.

When an Agency Is the Right Call

I want to be direct about this, because this page only works if I'm honest: an agency is the right answer for many law firm situations.

If your firm is spending less than $10,000-$15,000/month on marketing, you probably don't have enough complexity to justify a strategic layer. An agency running a focused set of channels - PPC, SEO, GBP optimization - with clear deliverables and performance benchmarks is often the most cost-effective structure. Adding a fractional CMO at $8,000-$10,000/month when you're only spending $8,000/month on marketing is not good math.

If you know exactly which channels are working and just need execution, an agency with clear deliverables and benchmarks can do that very well. The agency model works best when the strategic decisions have already been made and the job is executing against defined parameters.

If you're in your first 12-18 months in business, an agency provides the infrastructure and expertise you don't yet have. Building an in-house capability from scratch while also running a law firm is a significant operational challenge. Starting with a solid agency relationship makes sense.

If you have an existing team member who can provide strategic oversight - a seasoned operations director, a managing partner who genuinely understands marketing economics, even a well-qualified marketing coordinator - that internal oversight can substitute for a fractional CMO on smaller budgets.

The key diagnostic question is this: do you know your cost per signed case by channel? If the answer is yes, an agency executing against those benchmarks is likely the right structure. If the answer is no, that's the first problem - and whether it's a strategy problem or a measurement problem determines what you need to fix it.

Warning Signs It's Time to Move On From Your Agency

If three or more of these describe your current situation, the issue isn't your budget or your agency's effort. It's a structural problem. You need someone on your side before you try a new vendor.

Warning sign 1: Reports full of impressions, clicks, and traffic - but you can't tie any of it to signed cases. If you asked your agency what your cost per signed case was last month and they gave you a click report instead, that's not an answer. Clicks don't pay your overhead. Cases do.

Warning sign 2: Your account has turned over twice in the last 18 months. Every transition means lost context. The new account manager doesn't know which ad creative performed for your market, doesn't know your intake team's close rate, and doesn't know the case types you actually want. They're starting close to zero while billing you as if they have full context.

Warning sign 3: The agency keeps recommending more budget as the answer to flat results. Budget is a lever. It amplifies a working strategy or accelerates the waste on a broken one. If case volume is flat and the solution is always "increase the ad spend," you don't have a budget problem - you have a strategy problem.

Warning sign 4: You asked about ROI and got a vague answer about "brand building" or "long-term investment." Brand building and long-term investment are legitimate concepts. They're also the default deflection when someone can't show you real ROI numbers. There's a difference between "we're building brand equity that will compound over 18 months and here's what that means for this specific metric" and "brand awareness is hard to measure." Learn to tell them apart.

Warning sign 5: The PPC team and the SEO team don't talk to each other, and neither talks to your intake team. Channel silos are one of the most common efficiency problems in law firm marketing. The keywords performing in organic search should inform the paid ad copy. The landing pages for PPC should be informed by what intake says converts best. If your vendors operate in isolation, you're not getting the compounding return you're paying for.

Warning sign 6: Your agency has never asked what a signed case is worth to your firm. This one is significant. An agency that doesn't know your average case value cannot optimize for your actual business outcome. They're optimizing for the metrics they can see - clicks, leads, calls - without knowing whether the math at the bottom of the funnel works for your firm. That's a fundamental strategic gap.

If several of these apply to your situation, the starting point is a marketing audit - not a new agency. The audit tells you whether the problem is executional (agency can fix it) or strategic (you need different oversight before you change vendors).

How Casey Works - The Fractional CMO Model for Law Firms

I'll be direct about when I'm the right fit and when I'm not, because this is the part of the page where honesty matters most.

I am a good fit for: a law firm spending $50,000+/month on marketing with no strategic oversight and no clear picture of what each dollar is producing. A firm with 3+ marketing vendors - SEO agency, PPC agency, maybe a social media manager - and no single person making sure they're all working toward the same outcome. A firm that has been through 2+ agencies in 3 years and keeps getting the same results.

I am not a good fit for: firms under $500K in annual revenue, firms looking for someone to run ads or write content, firms that need their website rebuilt. If you need execution, I can refer you to execution specialists. What I provide is strategic leadership - that's only valuable when there's sufficient marketing complexity and budget to justify the oversight.

Here's what working together actually looks like. It's a monthly retainer with defined hours - typically 20-40 hours per month depending on scope. The engagement includes monthly strategy sessions, vendor management and accountability, KPI review against actual case outcomes, and quarterly recommendations on budget allocation and channel changes. This is not a staff augmentation model where I'm doing the work of a marketing coordinator. It's senior-level oversight over your entire marketing operation.

The cost for a full engagement typically runs $8,000-$10,000/month. That's a meaningful investment, and it's one that only makes sense when you have the marketing spend and complexity to justify it. Compare it to the fully-loaded cost of a full-time CMO at $245,000-$550,000/year in salary alone, and the math is clear for firms that need senior marketing leadership but aren't at the scale where a full-time C-suite hire makes sense.

The fastest way to know whether you need a fractional CMO or a better agency is a marketing audit. It shows exactly what's broken, what's working, and whether the problem is strategic or executional. Many firms that think they need to fire their agency discover in the audit that the agency's work is sound - the problem is upstream in strategy and measurement. Some discover the agency problem is real but isolated to one channel. The audit tells you what you're actually dealing with before you make a decision.

You can also read more about how the model works at fractional CMO for law firms.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between a law firm marketing agency and a fractional CMO?

An agency provides tactical execution - running ads, building links, producing content, managing media buys. A fractional CMO provides strategic leadership - deciding which channels to use, setting budgets, managing vendors, and measuring outcomes tied to cases signed. They're different layers of the same function. Most firms paying for one need the other more. The most common failure mode is a firm with plenty of agency execution and no strategic direction - and the opposite problem, a firm with a strategy and no execution capacity, is less common.

How much does a fractional CMO cost for a law firm?

Typically $2,000-$20,000/month depending on scope and engagement intensity. A full-scope fractional CMO engagement for a law firm spending $50K+/month on marketing typically runs $8,000-$12,000/month. Compare that to a full-time CMO at $245,000-$550,000/year in base salary, plus 15-25% for benefits, plus $15,000-$30,000 in recruitment fees. For firms that need senior marketing leadership but aren't at the scale where a full-time C-suite hire makes sense, the economics of a fractional engagement are clear.

Can a fractional CMO work alongside our existing agency?

Yes - this is the most common structure. The fractional CMO manages the agency relationship, holds them accountable to real outcomes (cost per signed case, not vanity metrics), and makes strategic decisions about channel allocation and budget. The agency keeps doing execution. The outcome is that the agency's work improves because they're now working within a strategy instead of inventing one.

How do I know if I need a fractional CMO or just a better agency?

If you know exactly what results each of your marketing channels produces and just need better execution on those channels, a better agency may be the right answer. If you don't know your cost per signed case by channel, if you have multiple vendors with no strategic oversight, or if you've cycled through two or more agencies and the results haven't changed, that's a fractional CMO problem. The pattern of cycling through agencies without improving results is almost always a strategy problem, not an agency quality problem.

Can't I just hire a better agency?

Yes, sometimes that's exactly the right call. If the problem is poor execution on a defined strategy - bad ad creative, weak link building, slow content production - a better execution partner solves that. But if the problem is that you don't know which channels are working, don't have attribution tracking in place, or have multiple vendors operating in silos with no coordination, hiring a better agency is like getting a faster car when the road is closed. Fix the strategic infrastructure first.

What does a law firm marketing audit tell me?

An audit shows you what's actually happening across your marketing channels - which ones are driving cases, which are wasting budget, and whether the problem is strategic or executional. It answers the cost per signed case question by channel, identifies attribution gaps, and gives you a prioritized list of what to fix first. It's the fastest way to know whether you need a fractional CMO, a different agency, or just specific tactical improvements to your current setup. Start with a marketing audit.

The Decision Is Simpler Than It Looks

Most of the complexity in this decision comes from not knowing what you actually have. You can't evaluate whether an agency is working without knowing your cost per signed case by channel. You can't evaluate whether a fractional CMO would add value without knowing whether your current challenge is strategic or executional.

The starting point isn't "agency or fractional CMO." It's getting clear on what your marketing is actually producing today. Once you have that data, the right structure for your firm becomes obvious.

Start With a Marketing Audit - Know What You're Working With Before You Decide

Or if you want to understand how the fractional CMO model works in more detail before deciding anything:

Learn How the Fractional CMO Model Works