Why SMEs Struggle with Marketing Roles

Why SMEs Struggle with Marketing Roles

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK account for over 60% of private-sector employment and generate roughly 48–53% of UK business turnover .

Yet marketing in SMEs often receives minimal investment—typically just 18% of the UK’s total ad spend despite this significant economic contribution  

Against that backdrop, SMEs also face a tough choice: hire a “thinker” – a strategic senior marketer to guide long-term growth, or fill the team with junior “doers” to get everyday marketing tasks done.

The Thinker vs. Doer Dilemma

Strategic thinkers (e.g. fractional CMOs or senior marketers) are capable of translating business objectives into robust, measurable marketing plans. They often have years of proven success, have managed large marketing teams across multiple disciplines and sectors and can hit the ground running when it comes to getting marketing plans in place. 

CMO’s focus on positioning, messaging, multi-channel strategy, customer journeys, metrics, and ROI. Their value to leadership is clear—but they also need people on hand to execute their vision across a multitude of communication and marketing channels.

Doers (junior marketers, assistants, interns) are excellent at executing digital ads, social posts, email campaigns, content creation, SEO updates, and analytics tracking. They’ve often had 2-3 years of marketing training and are adept in the execution across the disciplines they have been taught. While essential for day-to-day activity, they might not be ready to provide strategic judgment, create alignment with broader objectives, and are often looking for leadership that are equipped to coach or grow them into senior roles.

SMEs with only junior team members often experience:

• Fragmented activity disconnected from business goals, or worse still, they work hard to serve many opinions and tasks from a plethora of leaders without a clear objective.
• Poor ROI measurement, because the team lacks understanding of tracking, attribution or strategic KPIs, or because no-one has set any measurable goals.
• No team development or coaching, so junior roles stagnate, and they often leave to join larger organisations where they have an opportunity to develop faster and further.
• Low morale: “doers” often feel they’re executing without real direction and feel the brunt of leadership who are frustrated that activity isn’t moving the business forward.

On the other hand, SMEs who invest heavily in a strategic senior hire without an executional team:

• Gain direction and vision but often lack the capacity to execute.
• See senior staff wanting to hire supportive roles—but the budgets already spent.
• End up with strategic plans going unimplemented—no activity, no momentum.
• Feel like they’ve wasted money on a senior hire who can’t physically execute all the agreed activity without more resource.

Why A Hybrid Support Model Might Work Best

A hybrid support model can help provide the best of both worlds: fractional marketing leadership—where a senior strategist works part-time, supported by a team of skilled marketers with executional experience across various disciplines, internal or external to the organsisation.

SME’s find that they gain:

1. Strategic vision without full-time cost: Access to senior thinking at a fraction of salary cost.
2. Executional leadership: Someone to oversee junior or underdeveloped teams, assigning and mentoring effectively. Juniors receive live mentoring, feedback, and growth pathways. They transition from “doers” into skilled contributors.
3. Scalable specialist support: An additional team of channel experts (SEO, PPC, content, brand) only when and for as long as needed—keeping the budget lean.
4. Building for succession: Development of a fully designed team structure, job specs, and completion of a hiring process, to recruit the permanent internal roles when budget allows. So, when you’re ready to build that internal team, a seamless handover takes place.

This hybrid approach provides SMEs with a full marketing function, from CMO to Marketing Execs and everything in between – all often for the cost of one good hire.

Benefits to SMEs: 

• Cost-effective leadership: You get CMO-level thinking at a fraction of the cost.
• Tactical delivery: You don’t lose momentum waiting to build your permanent structure.
• Team development: Juniors get mentorship, purpose, feedback, and growth opportunity and you get a team of specialists that can hit the ground running.
• Strategic alignment: Marketing activity ties directly to business objectives from day one.
• Hiring confidence: When you’re ready to recruit internally, everything’s defined and ready to go.

How we work at The SME Partners:

We tailor our engagement to each client’s needs—no two clients are the same. Whether you’re starting with zero marketing structure or have an existing team that needs direction, we scale our support accordingly. We cover everything from digital marketing to brand development, across all communication channels, CRM and lead nurture. We always ask, “how can we grow your business using everything in the toolbox?” not “we have a one size fits all approach to choosing your comms channels”

We become your internal marketing department: a CMO leading with a team of specialists delivering, all for roughly the same cost as a single full-time Head of Marketing hire.

In summary:

Running an SME is demanding. You’re often stretched across multiple functions, including HR, finance, growth—and marketing leadership usually isn’t your technical expertise. Without a strategy, junior marketers flounder. Without execution capacity, strategy stalls.

Our hybrid marketing model blends both thinking and doing. It gives your leadership support to achieve your business objectives, provides skilled execution specialists, teaches and retains your team, and scales to internal recruitment at the right time.

For the cost of one good hire, you get an entire marketing department – strategist-led, execution-capable, growth-focused—all customised to your business needs and budget.

If you’re ready to finally lock in marketing value, develop a thriving internal team, and see marketing become a growth engine—not a cost centre – let’s talk.