Hours are the easiest thing to compare across proposals and the least useful on their own. What you’re buying is judgment applied at the right moments.
How do hours map to scope?
Advisory
5–8 hours a week
Positioning, priorities, and coaching the marketing lead.
Early growth
8–12 hours a week
Owns the quarterly plan, budget, and one agency or freelancer bench.
Growth
12–20 hours a week
Leads an internal team across multiple channels. Where most engagements sit.
Scale or turnaround
20–24 hours a week
Interim ownership, a launch, or a reset. Open-ended at the top of the band.
Why does cadence matter more than hours?
Because marketing stalls between decisions, not during them. Twenty hours a month delivered in one block leaves your team waiting for answers for three weeks. The same twenty hours spread across weekly sessions keeps work moving. Before you compare hour counts, compare:
- How often you meet, and who attends
- How quickly the fCMO responds between meetings
- Which decisions the fCMO can make without waiting for a meeting
- When reporting happens, and to whom
How does Deep Quiver structure time?
Each tier is defined by cadence and by what we own. The scope of work spells out the time commitment.
| Tier | Cadence | Typical fit | Monthly retainer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essentials | Weekly check-ins | Founder-led teams and in-house marketers who need structure | From $7,500 |
| Growth Track | Bi-weekly strategy sessions, quarterly planning | Scaling companies running several channels | From $10,000 |
| Embedded Executive | Weekly executive syncs and team mentorship | Larger or changing organizations that need org-level leadership | From $15,000 |
Every tier runs month to month with no minimum term, so you can move up or down a tier as the cadence you need changes. See pricing for the full ladder.
The first month usually runs heavier, because the audit and roadmap take concentrated time. That is the Detect stage of our DRIVE method.
How do you know if the hours are enough?
Decisions wait for the next meeting
More than once or twice a month is a cadence problem, not a scheduling problem.
The roadmap falls behind
Nobody has time to update it, so the plan and the work drift apart.
Your team makes strategic calls alone
Because the fCMO isn't available when the question comes up.
The opposite signal matters too. If the fCMO’s sessions keep running short on agenda, the scope may be lighter than the retainer.
Bottom line
Expect 10 to 20 hours a week for most engagements, but buy cadence and ownership, not hours. Write the meeting rhythm, response times, and decision rights into the scope. What that scope should cover is in what’s included in a fractional CMO retainer, and how the week actually looks is in a day in the life of a fractional CMO.
