Most small and mid-sized companies I talk to aren’t short of marketing. They have an agency running ads, someone who does the newsletter when there’s time, a website rebuilt two years ago and a CRM nobody fully trusts. What they’re short of is someone who owns the whole thing: the path from the first search to the signed order.

Everyone owns a piece

The agency owns the campaigns. The web developer owns the site. Sales owns the follow-up, in theory. The founder owns the decision, when there’s time. Each piece is handled by someone competent, and still enquiries get lost, because the gaps between the pieces belong to nobody.

I wrote recently about an account where forty-six live ads had no page to land on. Nobody had done anything wrong. The destination simply had no owner. I see that pattern over and over, and it rarely shows up in a report.

Agencies deliver campaigns. Consultants deliver slides. What’s missing is someone who owns the enquiry.

What owning it looks like

It’s less glamorous than strategy. You trace once how an enquiry actually travels through the company: where it comes in, who sees it, how fast someone answers, what happens when nobody does. Then a plan with three priorities instead of twelve, a steering meeting every month, and a report in plain language: what did it deliver, what did it cost, what do we change.

And doing the work, not just pointing at it: writing the follow-up emails, setting up the CRM so it’s used, briefing the agency properly and checking what comes back. Sometimes the right answer isn’t another campaign at all, but a small tool that makes sure every enquiry gets an answer the same day. With today’s AI tools I can build that in days.

Why fractional

A full-time head of marketing is a big step for a twenty-person company. An agency is easier to hire, but it’s paid to deliver its piece, not to question the whole. A fractional lead sits in between: senior enough to own the outcome, part-time enough to be affordable, close enough to notice where things leak. I’ve written about fractional leadership before. What’s changed is how much one experienced person can now execute alongside the leading.

What I’m doing with it

That’s the idea behind the marketing and sales packages at Marketing March: a fixed monthly price, one point of contact, and someone who takes responsibility for the enquiry from first search to signed order. If that’s what your company is missing, here’s how it works: Marketing and sales.