Your Marketing Set-up

You Didn’t Design Your Marketing Setup. You Inherited It – And AI Is Exposing the Cost

Leave a Comment / AI Marketing, Digital Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Martech & Tools /

“Most founders I speak to have never sat down and deliberately decided what their marketing structure should look like. It just happened.” An agency pitched well at the right moment. A marketing hire came recommended. A platform got added because a competitor was using it. A retainer got renewed because cancelling felt risky. And slowly, […]

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AI Marketing Automation

The 7 Marketing Workflows SMEs Should Automate First, and What to Keep Human

Leave a Comment / AI Marketing, B2B Growth, Marketing Automation, Marketing Strategy, Martech & Tools /

Most SME founders know they should be using AI in their marketing. The pressure is real: 77% of UK SME owners are targeting business growth, and 44% rank marketing as their single biggest priority. Yet the same research shows that only 38% are actually using AI for marketing on a weekly basis, and UK government

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What Is a Fractional CMO and Why UK Startups Are Hiring Them Instead of Full-Time Executives

Leave a Comment / Marketing Audits, Marketing Leadership, Marketing Strategy, Performance Marketing /

Your marketing is either growing the business or it isn’t. For most UK startups and scale-ups, the honest answer is somewhere uncomfortable in the middle: activity is happening, but nobody with the seniority to connect it to revenue is in the room. Hiring a full-time Chief Marketing Officer feels like the logical fix. Then you

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The People and Organisations Behind the Conversations

The People and Organisations Behind the Conversations

Leave a Comment / AI Marketing, Leadership, Marketing Leadership, Marketing Strategy /

Across 2025, I’ve spoken with leaders working at the intersection of technology, people, infrastructure and purpose. What’s stayed with me isn’t just what they’re building, but how they’re approaching it. In cybersecurity, conversations with Riverside Court Consulting Ltd and Bryan Altimas reframed how I think about security altogether. Less as a technical safeguard, more as

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Building a Movement, One Book at a Time

Building a Movement, One Book at a Time

Leave a Comment / Leadership /

Another brilliant conversation last week, this time with Liberty Venn, the founder of the Children’s Book Project’s. Within minutes it becomes clear why this charity has grown into one of the most effective literacy movements in the country. Liberty combines purpose with practicality. She is building something simple, scalable and profoundly needed. The challenge she

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AI Investment Is Surging

AI Investment Is Surging, but the Real Story Lies in What Could Slow It Down

Leave a Comment / AI Marketing, Leadership, Marketing Strategy /

AI investment is rising at extraordinary speed. Anyone watching the sector closely will have seen the same pattern across forecasts from Gartner, IDC, Deloitte and others. The world is not easing into the AI era. It is sprinting. Gartner expects global spending on AI technologies to reach roughly one point five trillion dollars in 2025.

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Adobe’s SEMRush Acquisition

Adobe’s SEMRush Acquisition: Strategic Vision or Expensive Misdirection

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Adobe’s agreement to acquire Semrush for 1.9 billion dollars has landed with a mix of surprise, curiosity and scepticism across the marketing and technology worlds. On paper, it is a straightforward deal. Adobe adds a well known SEO and digital visibility platform to its marketing suite. SEMRush gains a deep pocketed owner with enterprise distribution.

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The Wrong Kind of Lean

The Wrong Kind of Lean: How Companies Shrink Themselves Into Weakness

Leave a Comment / Marketing Leadership, Marketing Strategy /

Why cost cutting without operational improvement creates fragility, not strength. There is a version of being “lean” that makes an organisation sharper, faster and more focused. And then there is the version we are starting to see more often as we head towards 2026, the one where businesses quietly hollow themselves out while believing they

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