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You're doing $5M in revenue. You have 15-30 employees. You know you need marketing but you're not ready to hire a full-time CMO at $200K+ salary plus equity. So you keep hearing this term: outsourced CMO. But what does that actually mean for a company your size? What does the day-to-day look like? And how do you know if you need one?
A full-time Chief Marketing Officer costs $180K-$250K in salary. Add benefits, equity, and a marketing team to execute their strategy, and you're looking at $400K-$600K annually. For a $5M company spending 5-10% of revenue on marketing ($250K-$500K), hiring a CMO means your entire marketing budget goes to people — with nothing left for actual campaigns, tools, or media spend.
That's the trap. You need strategic leadership, but you can't afford to make it your only marketing investment. An outsourced CMO breaks this equation.
Here's a typical month with ABMG functioning as your outsourced CMO + marketing department:
An outsourced CMO engagement with a team that also executes typically costs $3K-$8K per month depending on scope. That's $36K-$96K per year — compared to $400K+ for a CMO hire plus team. And you get strategic leadership AND execution in one package, not a strategist who still needs a team to implement.
“The question isn't whether you can afford an outsourced CMO. It's whether you can afford to keep operating without one. Every month without marketing strategy is a month your competitors are building systems that compound against you.”
— Steve Burk, ABMG Co-Founder
Not every 'outsourced CMO' service is the same. Some agencies use the title but really just run your Facebook ads. When evaluating, ask: Do you provide strategy AND execution, or just a plan I have to implement? How do you measure success — revenue or vanity metrics? What's your client retention rate? How many services can you execute in-house versus outsourcing?
We wrote a detailed breakdown of the outsourced CMO model — what it costs across different providers, what to look for, and who it's right for. If you're a $3M-$20M company evaluating this path, it's worth reading before you make a decision.
Read The Outsourced CMO Model Explained for the full breakdown, or take the Growth Score to see if your marketing actually needs strategic leadership or just better execution.
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