Field Notes · Note no. 02 · Pricing

What a fractional CMO costs in Australia.

The typical numbers, the six factors that drive them, and how the cost compares with the alternatives. Including our own rates, because a pricing article that hides its own pricing is not much of a pricing article.

By Lara Galvin · DirectorFiled April 202610 minute read

Book the call

$fractional cmo services pricing Australia codify consulting$

/ 01The short answer

Most Australian businesses pay between $4,000 and $16,000 a month for a fractional CMO. The single biggest driver is time: how many days a month you are buying. Two days a month of senior marketing leadership typically costs $4,000 to $6,000. Four days sits around $7,000 to $10,000. Eight days, which starts to look like an embedded executive, runs $12,000 to $18,000. Day rates for experienced operators fall between $1,800 and $2,500, and usually taper as the commitment grows.

A note on interest before we go further: Codify sells fractional CMO services, so we are not a neutral party on this question. Our rates are published in full on the services page, and they appear below alongside the market ranges so you can see exactly where we sit.

The more useful question than “what does it cost” is “what drives the number”, because two engagements at the same price can buy very different things. That is what the rest of this paper covers.

/ 02The three ways fractional CMOs charge

Monthly retainer. The most common model. You buy a set number of days per month, usually between two and eight, for a fixed monthly fee. Retainers suit ongoing leadership: owning the strategy, running the plan, directing agencies and coaching the team. Most run month to month after an initial minimum term of three to six months.

Day rate. Senior marketing leadership bought by the day, typically for a defined piece of work: reviewing a strategy, pressure-testing an agency recommendation, sitting in on planning. In Australia, day rates span roughly $1,300 to $2,500. Marketplace averages sit at the bottom of that span: Cemoh, an Australian marketplace with 840 vetted marketers on its books, publishes an average of $1,275 a day across its consultants ($1,339 in Sydney). Averages across a marketplace cover a wide spread of seniority and work type, from hands-on campaign delivery through to leadership, because marketplace pools span all marketing services; executive-level operators who have run the function cluster between $1,800 and $2,500.

Fixed-fee project. A defined piece of work with a defined finish line: a marketing audit, a marketing strategy, a brand strategy. In the Australian market these typically range from $10,000 to $40,000 depending on depth. The advantage is certainty: you know the price, the timeline and the deliverable before you start.

Some providers also quote hourly rates (roughly $170 to $400 an hour). Treat hourly billing with caution for leadership work. Strategy does not arrive in tidy hourly increments, and an hourly meter creates the wrong incentive on both sides of the table.

/ 03What the Australian market charges

Published Australian pricing is thin outside the marketplaces, which is part of why the range you will be quoted is so wide. Pulling together the published guides and our own view of the market, the picture looks like this:

Indicative ranges · August 2026

What the market charges.

Market ranges are indicative, drawn from published guides. Codify’s rates are as published.

Indicative AU market range

Advisory (about 2 days a month): $2,500 to $6,000 a month
Marketing leadership (about 4 days a month, one day a week): $5,000 to $10,000 a month
Embedded (about 8 days a month, two days a week): $10,000 to $18,000 a month
Day rate: $1,300 to $2,500
Marketing audit or diagnostic: $8,000 to $25,000
Marketing strategy project: $15,000 to $40,000

Codify’s published rate

Advisory: $4,000 a month
Marketing leadership: $7,600 a month
Embedded: $14,400 a month
Ad hoc day rate: $2,200
The Diagnostic: $12,000 fixed
Marketing strategy: $20,000 fixed

Two things stand out in the wider data. First, the spread is enormous: published guides put the full range anywhere from $3,000 a month for a junior consultant to $20,000 or more at the enterprise end. Second, per-day pricing falls as commitment rises. At our published rates, advisory works out at $2,000 a day and embedded at $1,800 a day. That shape is standard across the market. Check it in any quote you receive: if the per-day price does not improve with volume, ask why.

On where Codify sits: our rates reflect a solo practice with low overhead, priced for the $2 million to $100 million businesses we serve. The top of these ranges generally belongs to capital-city firms, team-based delivery models and enterprise scope. Expect to pay it when that is what you are buying.

/ 04What drives the number

Six factors explain most of the variation between quotes.

1. Time commitment. The dominant driver, as above. Be precise about what a “day” means in the proposal: hours, availability between days, and whether phone calls and email sit inside or outside the count.

2. Seniority and evidence. A fractional CMO who has actually run marketing functions inside significant businesses, with results they can name and numbers they can defend, will charge more than a consultant who has advised on the sidelines or someone who has worked at marketing manager level. The gap is real and it is usually worth paying. You are buying judgement, and judgement is built by having carried the accountability.

3. Scope. “Set the strategy and meet me monthly” is one price. “Own the strategy, run my coordinator, manage two agencies and report to the board quarterly” is another. The broader the operational scope, the more days it genuinely needs. A quote that promises broad scope on thin days deserves scepticism, because something in it will not get done.

4. Business complexity. Multiple brands, multiple sites, regulated categories and long B2B sales cycles all take more work per day of engagement. Guides put the premium for complex or regulated sectors at 10 to 20 per cent, which matches what we see.

5. Commitment length. Month-to-month flexibility usually costs 20 to 30 per cent more than a six or twelve month commitment. Reasonable minimum terms (three months is common) exist because marketing leadership compounds.

6. Capacity and demand. Fractional executives sell a fixed number of days each month, and a full book pushes prices up. The top of the range also carries other things: firm overheads, team-based delivery and enterprise scope. Price and quality are related in this market, but loosely. The five drivers above tell you more about a quote than its size does.

Notice what barely registers: your city. The marketplaces publish city-by-city rates, and the differences are real but small (Cemoh’s Sydney average runs about five per cent above its national figure). That variation is noise next to the six drivers above. A good operator in Perth or Brisbane costs what a good operator costs.

/ 05The comparison that matters

A fractional CMO’s cost only means something next to the alternatives.

A full-time CMO. In the mid-market, base salaries for a CMO or senior marketing director generally sit between $180,000 and $280,000 (Hays puts the typical NSW marketing director at $210,000). The true cost of the hire runs 35 to 50 per cent above base once you count superannuation at 12 per cent, a short-term incentive that is commonly 20 per cent or more at this level, payroll tax, workers compensation and leave coverage: roughly $250,000 to $400,000 a year all in. At the top of town the gap widens further: Glassdoor’s data puts the average Australian CMO package at about $430,000 before long-term incentives, and the largest companies go well beyond that. Businesses between $5 million and $50 million in revenue rarely need that much marketing leadership capacity. Four days a month of fractional leadership at $7,600 is $91,200 a year: about a third of the cost, sized to what the business actually uses.

A full-time marketing manager. SEEK’s published industry averages for Australian marketing managers sit between roughly $105,000 and $131,000, and Robert Half’s salary guide stretches the range to $150,000 in the capitals. A manager and a fractional CMO are different tools, not substitutes: one runs execution, the other sets direction. We cover that decision properly in a separate paper, fractional CMO vs a marketing manager.

A marketing agency retainer. Australian SME agency retainers typically run $3,000 to $10,000 a month depending on channels covered. Again, this is a different purchase: agencies sell execution capacity, not leadership of the function. The comparison that matters is covered in fractional CMO vs marketing agency.

Doing nothing. The comparison nobody runs. If marketing decisions are currently being made by whoever speaks loudest, the cost is not zero. It is showing up as an agency retainer nobody can evaluate, a media budget allocated by habit, and campaigns judged on whether the ad looks good. On any of those, one corrected decision can cover a year of fractional fees. That is the arithmetic to run, and it is why we would rather you judge the engagement on decisions changed than on hours logged.

/ 06What you should get for the money

At these prices you are entitled to be demanding. Whatever the tier, four things should be non-negotiable.

A strategy that exists in writing. Positioning, target market, budget logic, channel plan, measurement framework. If the strategy still lives in someone’s head, you are not buying marketing leadership, you are buying company.

Ownership of everything built. Documents, plans, dashboards, agency briefs. When the engagement ends, the thinking stays with your business. Ask about this before you sign, not after.

Reporting you can read. A monthly view of what was spent, what happened and what changes next, in language that does not need translating. If the report needs its author present to make sense, it is not a report.

A number they are prepared to be judged on. Not vanity metrics, and not a glib promise of revenue either. Marketing shares accountability for revenue with other functions; anyone claiming they will single-handedly deliver it is overclaiming, and anyone refusing any commercial yardstick is underclaiming. What you want is someone who will name the metrics marketing genuinely drives, connect them to the commercial outcomes the business banks, and accept being judged on both. Ask any prospective fractional CMO what they were judged on in their last role and what they would accept being judged on in yours. The quality of the answer tells you most of what you need to know. We have written separately on how that accountability should be structured in The Accountability Trap.

And one red flag worth naming: paying CMO rates for coordinator work. If the proposal is full of posting, publishing and producing, you are looking at execution dressed in an executive title. Execution matters, but it is bought at execution prices and negotiated separately.

/ 07The bottom line

Expect $4,000 to $16,000 a month for genuine fractional marketing leadership in Australia, driven mostly by days per month, seniority, and scope. Anchor any quote against the true cost of the full-time alternative ($250,000 to $400,000 a year), check that the per-day rate improves with commitment, and judge the engagement on decisions changed and results delivered, not hours attended. Our own rates are published on the services page. Hold every provider, us included, to the standard in section six.