# B2B marketing services: retainer, project, or fractional
> B2B marketing services are packaged ways to buy help: a monthly retainer, a fixed project, or a fractional person inside your team. The commercial model decides who sets priorities, how fast you can stop, and whether you are buying output or judgment.
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## Retainers buy a standing capacity

You pay every month for a mix of people and a promised volume (nurture programs, content, paid management). Good retainers have a backlog, a monthly plan, and unused-hour rules. Bad retainers are a vague "always on" that produces activity reports. Put a 90-day checkpoint in the SOW. The [ANA](https://www.ana.net) publishes buyer-side material on how advertisers work with agencies. Useful when you are the client writing the commercial terms.

**Retainer, project, fractional**

| Shape | Fits |
| --- | --- |
| Retainer | Ongoing programs, a named team |
| Project | A site, a launch, a teardown |
| Fractional | A senior person part-time, not a bench |

## Projects buy a finish line

A site rebuild, a launch, a research study, a positioning sprint. Projects are cleaner to judge: did the thing ship, and was it usable? They are a poor fit for work that never ends (always-on paid, weekly webinars) unless you like recontracting every month. Use a project when the brief is stable. Use a retainer when the brief will flex.

## Fractional is a person, not a department

A fractional CMO or demand lead sells judgment and a day or two a week. They should set the plan, hire the specialists, and sit in the pipeline meeting. They should not be your only designer and your only media buyer unless the company is tiny. If you need hands on keyboards five days a week, you need a hire or a retainer team, not a title.

## Switching models mid-year

It is normal to start with a project (positioning, site), then move to a smaller retainer for paid and content, then hire in-house and shrink the vendor. Write termination and IP clauses so you keep the assets. Switching without a handoff document is how you lose UTMs, ad accounts, and the CMS login in the same week.

## Related

- [B2B content marketing: thought leadership versus product pages](https://omentir.com/b2b-content-marketing.md)
- [B2B brand marketing is category work, not a campaign flight](https://omentir.com/b2b-brand-marketing.md)
- [B2B healthcare marketing: compliance, long cycles, and who you can email](https://omentir.com/b2b-healthcare-marketing.md)

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