Starter — €2,490/mo
Senior oversight and a compliance gate over a team that already executes.
A buying guide for the founder holding two proposals — what each one actually sells, what it costs, and which one your situation needs.
An agency sells production capacity behind an account manager. A fractional CMO sells the seat above it — strategy, priorities and the brief, held by one senior operator inside your company. If what you are missing is output, buy an agency. If what you are missing is judgement, buying more output will not fix it.
This is the buying page. For the long-form decision tree behind it, read the essay Hire an agency or hire a fractional crypto CMO.
Both line items look like a monthly fee. They are not the same purchase. We compare categories, not named firms — we cannot verify another provider’s scope or pricing to a standard we would defend.
| Crypto marketing agency | Fractional CMO | |
|---|---|---|
| Who holds the strategy | You do — the agency executes the brief you write. | The operator does, inside your company, with you. |
| What arrives each week | Deliverables: posts, placements, creative, reports. | Decisions, plus whatever execution the decisions require. |
| Who writes the brief | An account manager translating your context second-hand. | The person who set the strategy writes it first-hand. |
| Compliance | Usually out of scope, or a paid add-on reviewing its own output. | A pre-flight gate on everything before it ships. |
| Ramp | Fast on production, slow on context. | Fast on context — a senior operator arrives knowing the category. |
| Ceiling | The depth of the brief the account team can write. | The depth of the operator you hired. |
| What remains when it ends | The output. Tooling, data and process usually leave with the vendor. | The operating model, the briefs and the documentation stay with your team. |
We publish our prices rather than quoting on request. Ask any provider you are comparing to do the same, in writing, with the scope attached — the answer to that request is itself information.
Senior oversight and a compliance gate over a team that already executes.
The CMO seat filled one day a week: campaigns owned, board reporting included.
The whole function — team, budget, roadmap — scoped to your situation.
The number to compare is not the retainer. It is the retainer plus the cost of the brief being wrong for a quarter — which is where most agency engagements actually lose money. See the full plans and what each includes →
We do not sell compliance. We sell growth that survives being read by a regulator — and a finding is how you verify that claim instead of trusting it. Everything is checked against published rule packs before it ships: 267 rules across nine packs, with the triggered line quoted back and the rule cited.
FAIL · MiCA Article 88(1)(b) — fair, clear and not misleading Triggered line: “Earn up to 24% APY. Your capital works while you sleep.” Why: A benefit claim with no capital-loss risk statement of comparable prominence. Rewrite: “Earn up to 24% APY. Crypto-assets are volatile and you can lose the amount you put in.”
An illustration of the format, on sample copy — not a finding about any company. Run the same check on your own page: the free checks take seconds, no signup. The rule quoted above is published in full at Article 88 — misleading marketing communications.
This is information, not legal advice. We say “checked”, never “compliant” — and we cannot approve a UK financial promotion. Who can actually sign off →
One operator: an ex-CMO of two international crypto exchanges, fifteen years in international marketing, five of them running exchange marketing and answering to regulators across the EU, Asia and MENA. With an agency you buy a company and are assigned a person. Here the person is the product, and you meet them before you sign. The full background →
Three cases where you should not hire us.
Someone who has shipped at your stage is in the seat. They will brief an agency properly. A second strategist is expense and politics.
KOL distribution, paid social, a PR push. That is a production problem, and a production line solves it better than an operator does.
No new market, licence, listing or raise in the next twelve months. A brief written today will still be right in September.
The common middle case — a function to build, a shifting context, and real regulatory surface area — is a fractional CMO with one or two agencies underneath, commissioned and briefed by the operator. The two purchases are not exclusive.
Last reviewed 11 August 2026.
Two lines about your situation — what you are shipping, where, and what is missing. A straight answer within 24 hours, including “hire an agency instead” when that is the honest one.