Most job descriptions for Head of Marketing positions in B2B SaaS are written by founders who aren't sure what they need.
They know they need someone good at marketing. They know they've been managing it themselves, or delegating it to someone who wasn't hired for it. They know the current approach isn't scaling. Beyond that, the spec is vague.
So the job goes up. And stays up. Weeks pass. The candidates coming through don't feel right. The profile gets adjusted. More weeks pass.
After 18 years, I've seen this pattern enough to know what's usually happening when a marketing leadership role sits open for more than three months.
The obvious diagnosis vs. the real one
The obvious diagnosis is: the company hasn't found the right person yet.
Sometimes that's true. B2B marketing leadership talent is genuinely scarce, and a Series B SaaS company with €5M ARR is competing for candidates with public companies, better-known brands, and US-funded startups offering more equity.
But more often, the vacancy is open because the company doesn't have consensus on what they actually need. The marketing strategy is unclear. The founder has one picture of the role. The CEO (if different) has another. The VP Sales wants demand gen. The product team wants brand. Nobody agrees on what success looks like in month six.
Hiring into that environment is hard, because every candidate who gets far enough to ask the right questions eventually senses the ambiguity and backs out. Or they accept the offer, start, and leave after eight months once the strategy conflicts become too expensive to navigate.
The open vacancy isn't the problem. It's the symptom.
What three months usually costs
A marketing leadership role that's been open for three months means three months of:
- No marketing strategy owner. Whoever was doing it before is still doing it, with the same constraints.
- No new channel testing. The team runs what they know.
- Sales doing their own outreach without marketing air cover. Close rates stay flat.
- The content backlog growing. The SEO gaps widening. The competitor who just hired their Head of Marketing six months ago is now ahead.
The cumulative effect isn't dramatic. It's quiet and compounding. By month six, the pipeline looks the same but the gap to competitors is real.
The open vacancy isn't the problem. It's the symptom.
What the smart companies do
Some companies use the vacancy as a forcing function.
Instead of hiring in ambiguity, they bring in a Fractional CMO for 60-90 days to do three things before the permanent hire: define the strategy, document what good looks like, and give the incoming Head of Marketing a playbook instead of a blank slate.
The incoming hire then joins a company with a clear position, a defined ICP, a running content and demand gen engine, and documented performance benchmarks. Their first 90 days are execution, not discovery.
That's a fundamentally different onboarding environment than "here's the password to our HubSpot, figure it out."
The other option most companies don't consider
The other path is to question whether the permanent hire is the right structure at all.
A Head of Marketing at €80,000-€110,000/year in the Netherlands (total employer cost €110,000-€155,000/year) is a significant bet on a specific skill profile at a specific point in time. If the company's strategic direction shifts in month four, that hire is now misaligned but too expensive to reverse quickly.
A Fractional CMO at 2-4 days/month delivers senior strategic judgment at €3,500-€6,500/month, without the employment commitment. For a company that's still resolving its product market fit or go-to-market direction, that flexibility has real value.
It's not a permanent substitute. But it's the right structure for the phase between "founder-led marketing" and "first full-time marketing leader."
See how the Fractional CMO model compares to a traditional hire, including the actual cost comparison.
When the vacancy is the right call
To be clear: there are situations where the permanent hire is obviously right.
If you have a defined playbook that needs execution, a stable product-market fit, and clear KPIs for the role, hire. The Fractional CMO as a permanent structure doesn't scale well beyond about €5M ARR. At some point, marketing needs full-time ownership.
The signal that a permanent hire is premature: if you can't write a six-month success criteria that everyone in leadership agrees on, you're not ready to hire. You're ready to do the strategy work first.
The practical question
If your Head of Marketing role has been open for more than 8 weeks, here's the question worth asking before the next round of candidate interviews:
Do we know what success looks like in month six?
Not "we need someone good at content and demand gen." Specific. "By month six, organic leads account for 30% of pipeline. The sales team has a defined ICP and three buyer personas. We have two case studies from Dutch reference customers." That level of specificity.
If the leadership team can't align on that in 30 minutes, the issue is upstream of the hire.
That's the conversation I typically start with. If you want to have it, book 30 minutes here. No commitment. Honest assessment of where the real problem is.
You can also see what the Fractional CMO engagement looks like in practice before deciding.
Sources & References
- Robert Half Salary Guide Netherlands 2024: Head of Marketing / Marketing Director compensation ranges in the Netherlands. Used for salary benchmarks (€80,000-€110,000 gross annual salary range).
- Own client data (2018-2026): Patterns described (open vacancy duration, strategic misalignment, incoming hire onboarding dynamics) are derived from Fractional CMO engagements where Bart was brought in during or after a marketing leadership vacancy. Not statistical research.