Marketing consultant, agency, or external executive? Who actually delivers what in B2B

B2B companies in technology, software or professional services often cycle through marketing suppliers. Agency after agency, consultation after consultation. Each of them does a piece of the work, but hardly anyone thinks about the whole ecosystem and how it connects to the business.

The problem is usually not the quality of the supplier. It is that the company buys only work and "hours", even though what it often lacks is the right leadership. According to a survey of Czech B2B companies that Lakmoos conducted for fractional.cz (2026), 8 out of 10 B2B companies have no real leadership of marketing or sales.

In this article we compare three paths companies take to get marketing going: a marketing consultant, a marketing agency and an external executive in two forms, fractional and interim. For each one we describe what it actually delivers, where it stops and when it makes sense.

What are you actually buying: a recommendation, output, or accountability

Before you start comparing offers, one simple question helps. What do you actually want to get from the supplier?

• A consultant sells recommendations. They tell you what to do and why. Delivery is then often up to you, or they do only part of it and you have to do the rest.
• An agency sells output. Campaigns, content, ads, a website. Based on the brief it gets from you - and that brief has to be good.
• An external executive sells accountability. They set the direction, assign the work, approve the output and manage people and suppliers so that it all makes sense together. They sit close to leadership and know where the company's marketing should head and which goals it has to hit.

None of the three is better than the others. Trouble starts when a company buys one and expects another. It expects delivery from the consultant, strategy from the agency and leadership from both.

Marketing consultant: what they deliver and where they stop

A marketing consultant is an experienced specialist who looks at your marketing from a distance and tells you what to do with it. A marketing consultation is usually one-off or short-term and has a clear brief.

What you get from a consultant

• An outside view. They see things you stopped noticing inside the company because you got used to them.
• An answer to a specific question. Positioning, channel selection, entering a new market, choosing a CRM, setting up measurement.
• An analysis or audit. Where marketing is stuck and what to fix first.
• A plan or strategy document. Often with a workshop or training for the team.

Where a consultant stops

A consultant is not accountable for the plan actually happening. They do not lead your people or manage agencies. Once the recommendations are handed over they leave, and the strategy stays with people who either do not know how to execute it or do not have the time. A good plan easily turns into a good document in a shared folder.

When it makes sense: you have a specific question and someone in the company who will take the answer and act on it. As a diagnostic, a consultation is an excellent first step.

One note on terms. Many experienced people who actually lead marketing in companies call themselves marketing consultants on their website or LinkedIn. What matters is what they do in practice, not what they are called. Ask whether they only recommend, or also execute and lead.

Marketing agency: what it delivers and where it stops

A marketing agency is a team of specialists who do execution for you in one or more channels. In B2B most often performance advertising, SEO, content, social media or campaigns.

What you get from an agency

• Execution in channels. Campaigns, ads, content, account management.
• Specialists you would not pay for full-time yourself. PPC, SEO, designer, copywriter, analyst under one roof.
• Capacity and speed. An agency can jump in quickly and scale as needed.
• Tool expertise. Ad platforms, analytics, automation.

Where an agency stops

An agency works from a brief. Someone has to write it, and when the agency writes it itself, you get a plan that makes sense mainly for the agency. An agency also typically has no view into sales. It measures clicks, conversions and leads, but does not know which of them turned into a deal. And when you have two or three agencies, none of them sees what the others are doing.

When it makes sense: you know what you want to do and you lack hands or specialists. It works best when someone on your side manages it.

External executive: two forms, fractional and interim

An external executive, often called an external marketing director, does not just advise or just run campaigns. They take over the leadership of marketing. They set the direction, assign work to the team and agencies, approve the output and run the whole thing so that it makes sense and leads to business goals. They are a partner to the CEO, not a supplier.

External leadership comes in two forms. They differ in how much time the company needs and whether it is building marketing or keeping it running.

Fractional CMO: leadership on part-time capacity

A fractional CMO is an external marketing director for a few days a week. They come to build or kick-start something: strategy, systems, team and processes. They work for several companies in parallel, so they bring experience from elsewhere. The engagement has a start, a plan and clarity about what happens after it ends.

A fractional CMO does not do execution. They do not write copy or set up ads. They lead the people and suppliers who do. That is why it only works where there is someone to lead, even if it is one junior or one agency.

When it makes sense: you are just building marketing or want to take it to the next level, you have someone to lead and a full-time senior director would not have enough meaningful work.

Interim manager: leadership for most of the week

An interim manager is in the company most of the week and acts like a permanent director, even though they are external. They run the team daily, keep operations going and bridge the period until the company finds a permanent person. Interim management typically comes up after a marketing director leaves, during a transformation or in a period of rapid growth.

When it makes sense: you have an established marketing team, you have lost its leader and you need someone to run it every day.

A simple rule of thumb: do you need someone to set the direction, lead the team and hand it over? You are looking for fractional. Do you need someone in the company every day running operations? You are looking for interim. A detailed comparison of both models is in the article Fractional CMO vs. interim CMO (in Czech).

What companies looking for external marketing leadership are dealing with

So we do not stay abstract, here are two situations that CEOs and founders of B2B companies have described to us repeatedly lately. Neither will be solved by a consultant or an agency. What is missing in both is leadership.

A promotion the marketer does not want

A mid-sized marketing team, a great specialist and executor. The head of marketing left and leadership wanted to fill the role from within, so they promoted the specialist. A few months later it became clear they were drowning in the role. They realized that leading people, carrying accountability and dealing with leadership is not what they want to do.

The company now faces two things at once. How not to lose a quality person who was excellent in their original role. And how to add senior, business-minded leadership when hiring a full-time senior is a big step it is not ready for.

They want the role, the results do not come

The second variant looks similar, it just ends differently. The internal person wanted the management role, got support and people value their work. But it does not show in the results, and leadership expected a completely different impact from the promotion.

The fault does not have to lie with that person. It is often a combination of things:

• The new manager does not know what leadership expects. Nobody told them exactly what the role is expected to deliver and how success will be judged.
• There is no regular reporting and no 1:1s. Without feedback they have nothing to steer by.
• They stay a specialist. In their own eyes and the company's, they keep doing execution, just with a different title.

And sometimes they simply do not have the aptitude for a management role. That is fine. An excellent specialist and a good head of marketing are two different jobs.

How we handle it at fractional.cz

There are several paths, and they differ depending on whether the person wants to grow into the role and whether the company has time for it:

• Mentoring the marketer. The person grows into the role, but not alone. They have someone next to them who teaches them to think in context. More about mentoring.
• External CMO. Leads the marketer and the marketing activities and at the same time is the CEO's partner on business goals. The specialist goes back to what they do best.
• A combination of both. Company goals are set with leadership and the marketer is mentored against them long-term. Less than an external CMO, more than mentoring alone.
• A sparring partner for the CEO. A long-term partner for company leadership on marketing and business questions. Deeper mentoring for managers.

The most expensive option is losing a good person just because they sat in the wrong chair.

Who delivers what: a comparison

All four options summarized in one table:

What to watch out for in B2B technology, software, SaaS and professional services

In B2B companies that sell software, technology or professional services, the differences between the three paths show even more sharply. Here is why:

• A long buying cycle. The lead comes today, the deal in several months. An agency you measure only on leads optimizes for something that may have nothing to do with revenue.
• More people in the decision. The CEO, CTO and finance all decide on the purchase. Each needs to hear something different, and someone has to keep track of what you tell whom.
• A technical or specialist product. An agency needs a lot of input, and someone has to translate the product into the language of the customer and their business.
• Sales relies on the founder or partners. Typical in professional services. Marketing should support business relationships here, not produce anonymous leads.
• Marketing and sales live separately. Marketing measures leads, sales measures closed deals and nobody sees the whole funnel.

That is why in B2B tech a combination works best: external leadership on top, an internal team or agency for execution and a consultant for specific questions that require narrow expertise. We describe in more detail what this looks like for software companies on the Fractional CMO for SaaS page.

The principles apply to e-commerce too. There, however, a different performance marketing economy decides, and if you run an online store, it pays to look for leadership with e-commerce experience.

How we do it

At fractional.cz we provide external leadership of marketing and sales for B2B companies, startups and SaaS. We are not an agency and we do not sell packages of hours. Working with us looks like this:

1. Intro meeting. We meet, talk through your situation with no commitment and find out whether we click as people.
2. Workshop at your place. Four hours in one room. We define where things are stuck and what needs to change. The output is a concrete plan for 3 to 6 months.
3. Implementation. We lead your marketing and, if you want, your sales. We assign, approve and manage the internal team and agencies so that it all makes sense together. Regular meetings, aligned expectations.
4. Reporting. Clear reporting against the goals we agreed on. As automated and clear as possible, every week you see concrete steps.
5. What next. We hand leadership over to an internal successor, continue working together, or move to Partnership, a long-term strategic partner for CEOs and founders. We can keep developing your people through mentoring.

We lead marketing and sales together, because in B2B they are two sides of one funnel. When only marketing sets the strategy, sales will not take it as its own. And vice versa.

And if we find out at the first meeting that you need something else, say just a good agency or a one-off consultation, we will tell you.

When each option makes sense

• A marketing consultant, when you have a specific question and someone in the company who will take the answer and act on it.
• A marketing agency, when you know what you want to do and lack hands or specialists.
• A fractional CMO, when you are building marketing or want to take it further, you have someone to lead and you do not need a full-time director.
• An interim manager, when you have lost the leader of a working team and need someone to run it daily.
• A combination, when you want strategy, execution and leadership. In B2B most often external leadership over an agency or an internal team.

And when will none of these paths help? When there is nobody to lead and you do not want to hire anyone. Then the first step is an agency or a first marketer, and leadership comes only after them. We write more about how to decide in the article Full-time director, promotion or the fractional model?

Frequently asked questions

Before you sign the next contract

Before you sign a contract with another agency or consultant, try to answer one single question. Are you buying a recommendation, output, or accountability?

If the third one is what you lack, get in touch. We will talk through your situation, no slide decks and no commitments. And if external leadership does not make sense for you, we will tell you straight.