What’s hot in January: is hiring permanent roles still a no-brainer for CMOs?

For a long time, the question wasn’t even up for debate. When a need emerged within the marketing team, the reasoning was straightforward: we hired on a permanent contract. Permanent roles felt reassuring. They stood for stability, long-term vision, and continuity. It was almost a professional reflex, sometimes even a marker of managerial seriousness. A healthy team was a team that grew and became more structured.

But this way of thinking is outdated. Not wrong, just incomplete. The role of the CMO has changed dramatically. And with it, the way teams are designed. Today, continuing to hire “the old way” is no longer a guarantee of strength. It can even become a source of rigidity. A permanent hire is no longer a given: it’s a strategic decision with long-term consequences, one that deserves to be questioned every single time.

Permanent hiring is no longer a reflex: it’s a strategic decision

In the past, hiring was about security. Securing execution, skills, and workload. A permanent role felt safe, almost protective. For the company. For the existing team. And, let’s be honest, for the CMO too.

But marketing no longer operates in a stable environment. Channels saturate quickly. Tools evolve. Business priorities shift. Board expectations sometimes move faster than roadmaps. Hiring on a permanent basis in this context means locking in an assumption:

This skill will still be central, relevant, and strategic in two or three years.

And that’s where the real risk lies. Not in not hiring, but in hiring too early, on a topic that is still poorly defined, immature, or unstable. The question we now need to systematically ask ourselves is simple:

Is this topic mature enough in my strategy to justify a long-term commitment?

If the answer is still unclear, a permanent hire is probably premature.

Freelancers as a marketing discovery tool

In marketing, we often confuse intuition with validation. We can sense that a lever has potential. We can believe a channel will perform. We can be convinced a tool will shape the future.

But between intuition and a truly scalable model, there is often a gap. This is where freelancers become incredibly valuable during the discovery phase.

They allow you to:

• test quickly, without organizational rigidity
• confront ideas with real-world execution
• access high-level expertise fast
• measure real, not theoretical, impact
• identify true friction points

It’s the exact same logic as an MVP in product strategy, applied to marketing.

You don’t internalize a hypothesis. You internalize certainty.

Permanent roles make sense when a topic becomes foundational

Conversely, some topics can’t remain in “test mode” forever.

When a lever becomes:

• cross-functional (product, sales, data, finance, etc.)
• structuring for the marketing roadmap
• critical to long-term performance

Then permanent hiring makes sense again. A permanent role isn’t an exploration tool, it’s a capitalization tool.

Some concrete examples:

• Paid acquisition
  As long as the framework is clear and goals are well defined, a strong freelancer can carry the topic sustainably.
• Data, CRM, lifecycle, attribution, funnel structuring
  These topics touch the company’s foundation, its memory, and decision coherence. Here, permanent hiring is no longer a comfortable option: it’s a necessary investment.

Accessing more senior profiles than permanent hiring allows

This point is often underestimated. Yes, senior freelancers are expensive on a daily rate basis. But what if we looked beyond the day rate?

When I work with a freelancer, I’m buying:

• immediate experience
• the ability to make fast decisions
• the ability to avoid costly mistakes
• an external perspective, often invaluable

On some topics, a few weeks with an expert are worth far more than months, or even years, of internal learning.

And I free myself from:

• a long-term career promise
• a learning curve to manage
• one more permanent headcount line (and we’ve all lived that moment when the board would rather lighten payroll for balance-sheet reasons, even if it means adding spend to the marketing budget)

The hidden cost of permanent roles: managerial energy

A permanent hire isn’t just a budget commitment.

It also requires:

• onboarding and ramp-up time
• managerial attention
• emotional energy
• strong human responsibility

During phases of testing or strategic uncertainty, this load can quickly become overwhelming.

Freelancers allow CMOs to preserve bandwidth, stay focused on vision, and avoid managing roles that are still poorly defined. It’s often a healthy trade-off, not a compromise.

Short-term reinforcement: marketing as a workshop

I owe this metaphor to an earlier chapter of my career in the automotive industry. In a workshop, when activity peaks, you bring in temporary labor: people paid for a specific task.

Marketing works the same way. Some marketing tasks are inherently temporary:

• configuring a tool
• auditing a funnel
• optimizing a specific lever
• supporting a transformation phase

Sometimes, you simply need expertise at a precise moment, when it creates the most value.

This approach leads to more modular, pragmatic marketing focused on impact rather than status.

Organizational freedom: a constraint—embraced

Working with freelancers requires a mindset shift. You need to accept:

• less hierarchical control
• greater rigor in briefing
• clearer objectives
• stronger mutual trust

What you lose in formal authority, you often gain in efficiency, accountability, and quality of collaboration. For a CMO, it’s also an excellent leadership exercise.

The real risk: a patchwork team with no vision

Of course, there are limits. Accumulating freelancers without a clear vision comes with risks:

• loss of coherence
• excessive dependency
• dilution of marketing culture
• difficulty capitalizing over time
• less control over deployed processes and assets

This is where the CMO’s role becomes central, not as a compulsive recruiter, but as the architect of the marketing organization. It’s their responsibility to define the framework. To decide what belongs to experimentation. To choose what deserves long-term anchoring. To carry the vision. To orchestrate everything. And to ensure externalized knowledge is properly documented (this is critical, really).

In conclusion

The question isn’t really permanent hire versus freelancer.

The real question is: how mature is my marketing strategy? Or, more bluntly: am I mature enough on lever X?

What matters isn’t the status: it’s the role it plays in the strategy.
Permanent hires structure.
Freelancers illuminate, accelerate, and challenge.

The CMO of 2026 (and honestly, of the past few years already) must be able to orchestrate both intelligently. It’s a strategic skill in its own right.