Marketing Agency / Consulting

Two business models, one buyer decision: build it for them, or advise them on it

The gap left after SMMA and Ad Agency: a general, broader-service-mix marketing agency for SMB/mid-market clients, and marketing consulting — most often fractional CMO work — as a genuinely different, advisory-only business. Real 2026 rates for both, the named failure mode where advisory work quietly becomes unpaid execution, and a direct decision guide back to SMMA, Ad Agency, Marketing, and Consultancy. Two fabricated statistics (a claimed McKinsey cost-savings figure, a claimed HBR fractional-CMO growth figure) were checked directly against both organizations' own sites, found untraceable, and named rather than repeated. Six modules, thirteen lessons.

51 min of reading