What a fractional growth team actually costs in Singapore

The short answer

Our Run starts at S$6,000-S$8,000 a month for up to 20 hours. A marketing manager in Singapore earns a median S$10,069 a month in gross wages, before employer contributions and bonus. The hours differ, so compare capacity, not only price.

If you are a founder with every role on your own desk, and you are weighing outside help against your first marketing hire, this page sets out both sides. Our prices come from our own Run page. The salary figures come from the Ministry of Manpower (MOM). The employer contribution figures come from the Central Provident Fund (CPF) Board. CPF is the mandatory contribution an employer pays on top of a Singapore resident's wage.

You may have seen this kind of help sold as a "fractional CMO" (a part-time chief marketing officer) or a "fractional marketing team". Buyers search for those phrases, so we name them here. Run is not a part-time chief marketing officer, and it is not a leadership role. It gives you ongoing access to senior designers, developers, analysts and digital specialists through a predictable monthly engagement.

What Run costs, tier by tier

Run is our ongoing senior support that operates and improves your growth engine each month. It comes in four tiers. Each tier states its price and its capacity:

• Essential: S$6,000-S$8,000/mo, up to 20 hours/month.
• Growth: S$12,000-S$16,000/mo, up to 40 hours/month.
• Scale: S$22,000-S$32,000/mo, up to 80 hours/month.
• Dedicated: from S$38,000/mo, custom capacity with a service level agreement (SLA), which is a written commitment on the level of service.

The hours on Essential, Growth and Scale are caps. Essential covers up to 20 hours a month, Growth up to 40 and Scale up to 80. Those three tiers are a fixed monthly service, and a calculator sets the price. Dedicated is a dedicated team with custom pricing.

Each month you get continuous delivery that keeps your roadmap moving. You also get clear priorities, regular updates and transparent reporting.

What an in-house marketing manager costs

The benchmark we can source is the MOM Occupational Wages 2025 tables. Table 1 gives median monthly wages for full-time resident employees in all industries, with a reference period of June 2025.

The wage

The median gross wage for a marketing manager is S$10,069 a month. It is the median for the whole occupation, which means half of marketing managers earn more and half earn less. It is not a senior-level wage.

MOM's gross wage covers basic pay plus overtime, commissions, allowances and other regular cash payments. It excludes employer CPF contributions, bonuses and other lump-sum payments.

Two nearby rows in the same table give context. The median gross wage for a marketing strategy or planning professional is S$9,000 a month. For a digital marketing professional it is S$5,623 a month.

The employer contribution

From 1 January 2026, the CPF Board sets the employer contribution at 17% of wages for employees aged 55 and below who earn more than S$750 a month and are Singapore citizens, or permanent residents from their third year. Contributions stop at the Ordinary Wage ceiling, which is S$8,000 a month from 1 January 2026.

The median marketing manager wage is above that ceiling. So the employer pays 17% of S$8,000, which is S$1,360 a month.

The total we can source

• Median gross wage: S$10,069 a month.
• Employer CPF contribution: S$1,360 a month.
• Together: S$11,429 a month, or S$137,148 a year.

The CPF figure, and so the total, applies to a Singapore citizen, or a permanent resident from their third year, aged 55 and below. A foreign hire carries no CPF contribution but has other costs, and we do not estimate them here.

What the total leaves out

The S$11,429 is a floor, not the full cost. It does not include:

• Bonus.
• Recruitment fees.
• Benefits.
• Tools the person needs to do the job.
• Your own time spent managing them.

We hold no reliable figure for these, so we leave them unpriced. Each one adds to the cost of a hire.

Price versus capacity: "Too expensive. Why not hire in-house?"

This is the right question to ask, and the figures above answer it better than a sales pitch would.

The hours are not the same

A marketing manager is a full-time employee. Every Run tier has a cap on hours, apart from Dedicated, which is custom. Put side by side:

• A median marketing manager: S$11,429 a month in wages and employer CPF, before the costs listed above, for a full-time person.
• Essential: S$6,000-S$8,000/mo for up to 20 hours a month.
• Growth: S$12,000-S$16,000/mo for up to 40 hours a month.

Essential costs less each month than the hire, but it buys up to 20 hours, not a full working month. Growth's price sits above the hire's wage and CPF, and it still covers up to 40 hours. We do not claim Run is cheaper hour for hour. It is not the same thing as a full-time employee, so the monthly price alone will mislead you.

What each option buys

A hire gives you one person's skills, in your business, every working day. You carry the employer costs, the management and the gaps in whatever that one person cannot do.

Run gives you a set number of hours with access to senior designers, developers, analysts and digital specialists. It is a team that knows your business and moves with you, within the hours of your tier.

So the useful comparison is not "which costs less". It is "what work needs doing each month, how many hours does it take, and how many skills does it need".

When a hire is the better answer

If you need one person inside the business full time, or someone to own marketing as a role and lead it, hire. Run does not replace marketing leadership. If that is your route, our guide to building an effective growth marketing team covers the in-house side.

Run is more likely to fit when the work spans several skills, such as design, development and analytics, and the hours it needs fit within a tier's cap.

How to pick a tier

Choose the level of ongoing support that matches your team's operational needs. The Run page describes each tier in these words:

• Essential: teams needing steady optimisation and maintenance.
• Growth: growing businesses requiring ongoing experimentation.
• Scale: mature teams needing significant execution capacity.
• Dedicated: enterprise teams requiring dedicated resources.

If you have come through a Build, each Build tier names a recommended Run. That is Essential after Foundation, Growth after Growth, Scale or Dedicated after Scale, and Growth or Scale after Market.

If you have no growth engine yet

Run is best taken straight after a Build. It operates and improves a growth engine, so it needs one to work on. If you do not have one yet, there are two ways in:

• Blueprint: a paid diagnosis that ends with a costed plan. Ideal when you know something is wrong, but not yet what to fix.
• Sandbox: a one-week paid proof on a single problem, so you can see the result before committing. It credits in full towards a Blueprint within 30 days.

After the Blueprint, a Build is where we build your growth engine end to end, in phases, and you own it on completion. Run then keeps it going.

Where to start

If you have a growth engine and a fair idea of how many hours of work it needs each month, match those hours to a tier. Essential covers up to 20 hours, Growth up to 40, Scale up to 80, and Dedicated is custom. See the Run packages for the full terms.

If you do not yet know what to fix, start with a Blueprint.