Bespoke Marketing Teams: Lessons from Lloyds’ Move

Most startups assume “bespoke marketing” is a luxury—something only banks with massive budgets can afford. Then a big brand does something quietly telling: it reorganises.

Last week, Campaign reported that Publicis moved the Lloyds account into a bespoke team, drawing talent from across its network rather than keeping the work neatly inside a single agency brand (media had previously been handled by Zenith). Even with the scale, data, and buying power of a household-name bank, the answer wasn’t “pick one agency and stick with it.” It was build the right team shape.

For the British Small Business Digital Marketing series, this is a useful reality check. If a major UK advertiser is changing its operating model to match its marketing needs, UK startups and scaleups should feel completely justified doing the same—just at your size, with your constraints, and with a bias toward speed.

Why big brands still rebuild their marketing teams

Direct answer: Because channels, measurement, and customer expectations change faster than traditional agency structures.

Large organisations don’t reorganise for entertainment. They do it because the old setup stops producing the outcomes the business needs: efficient growth, brand consistency, better measurement, faster creative iteration, or stronger customer acquisition.

A bespoke team approach signals three things that matter to startups:

1. Specialisation beats generalism when the stakes are high. One “full service” team often turns into a handful of capable generalists juggling strategy, performance marketing, creative, CRM, and analytics. That’s fine early on. It breaks as soon as you need predictable acquisition and a brand people remember.
2. Integration is now the work. Paid social, SEO, email, and landing pages aren’t separate projects. They’re one system. When they’re managed in silos, costs rise and conversion rates stall.
3. The operating model is a growth lever. Your org chart and your workflow determine how fast you can test, learn, and ship improvements. That’s not “internal admin.” It’s performance.

If you’ve ever felt your marketing is “busy but not moving,” it’s rarely because you need more posts or more ads. It’s usually because your team structure can’t produce focused outcomes.

What “bespoke team” really means (and what it doesn’t)

Direct answer: A bespoke team is a deliberately assembled mix of specialists aligned to one business, with shared goals and clear decision-making.

People often hear “bespoke” and think “expensive.” I think “purposeful.” You don’t need a fancy name for it; you need the mechanics.

The three components that make a bespoke setup work

1. A single growth goal

   • Example: “Increase qualified demo bookings from UK SMEs by 25% in Q1 2026” beats “improve brand awareness.”
   • Startups win when marketing has a measurable aim tied to revenue.

2. Specialists who own a slice of the funnel

   • Creative that understands performance constraints.
   • Paid media that understands landing page conversion.
   • SEO/content that understands pipeline quality, not just traffic.

3. One decision-maker with authority

   • When every channel has a separate approver, speed dies.
   • A bespoke team works when someone can say “yes/no” quickly.

What it doesn’t mean

• It doesn’t mean hiring 10 people.
• It doesn’t mean a full rebrand.
• It doesn’t mean creating complex processes.

For UK small businesses, “bespoke” often looks like a small core team plus a tight bench of freelancers or specialist partners, all working from one plan.

The startup lesson: you don’t need a bigger team—just the right shape

Direct answer: Build your marketing team around your bottleneck, not around job titles.

Here’s what I’ve found working with early-stage and growing businesses: most marketing teams are built based on who’s available, not what the business needs. That’s understandable. It’s also why performance plateaus.

Step 1: Identify your current bottleneck

Pick the one constraint that’s actually limiting growth. For many UK startups, it’s one of these:

• Not enough demand: You’re not getting enough qualified traffic or leads.
• Weak conversion: Traffic is fine, but landing pages and offers don’t convert.
• Low-quality leads: Leads come in, but sales says they’re not a fit.
• No repeatable channel: Performance fluctuates because nothing is systematic.

If you don’t name the bottleneck, you’ll hire the wrong role—or you’ll brief agencies into a fog.

Step 2: Build a “mini-bespoke” pod around that bottleneck

You can do this without over-hiring:

• Core lead (owner): founder, head of growth, or marketing lead
• Channel specialist: paid search/paid social or SEO (choose one based on what will move fastest)
• Conversion support: a web/CRO person who can ship landing page improvements weekly
• Creative support: a designer/copywriter who can produce ad and page variants quickly

The trick: these people must share one goal and one dashboard.

Step 3: Run the work like a product team

A practical cadence for small business digital marketing:

• Weekly: choose 1–2 experiments (ad angle, landing page headline, lead magnet)
• Mid-week: ship, don’t perfect
• End of week: review results, keep winners, kill losers

This is how you get the upside of a bespoke team without the bureaucracy.

Where UK startups get tripped up: channel specialisation without alignment

Direct answer: Specialists only help if your message, measurement, and offer are aligned.

Startups love specialists. “We need a Google Ads expert.” “We need TikTok.” “We need SEO.” Fine. But if each specialist is operating on a separate brief, you’ll get disconnected outputs:

• Ads promise one thing
• Landing pages deliver another
• Sales pitches something else
• Email nurturing goes quiet for weeks

That mismatch is expensive. It shows up as:

• rising cost per lead
• falling conversion rate
• inconsistent lead quality
• a brand that feels “different” everywhere

Fix it with one-page alignment

Before you spend another pound on acquisition, write a one-page brief your whole team uses:

• Who: one primary customer profile (UK-specific if relevant)
• Pain: the urgent problem you solve
• Promise: the result you deliver
• Proof: 2–3 credibility points (numbers beat adjectives)
• Offer: the next step (demo, quote, trial, consultation)
• Friction: top 3 objections and your answers

If Lloyds-level advertisers are reorganising to keep marketing aligned, startups should treat alignment as non-negotiable.

Practical examples: “bespoke” setups that work on small budgets

Direct answer: The best small-business bespoke teams are modular: keep strategy and analytics close, outsource production and specialist bursts.

Here are three setups I’d back for UK startups and small businesses depending on stage.

1) Pre-seed/seed: The “single-channel sprint” team

Goal: find one channel that produces qualified leads consistently.

• Founder (strategy + positioning)
• Freelancer (Google Ads or paid social)
• Part-time designer/copywriter
• Web generalist (landing page changes)

Best for: B2B services, SaaS with a clear niche, local/regional businesses.

2) Series A-ish: The “pipeline + brand” team

Goal: grow demand while building a recognisable UK brand.

• Marketing lead (prioritisation + reporting)
• Performance marketer (paid + tracking)
• Content/SEO lead (category pages, comparison posts, thought leadership)
• Creative partner (ad creative + brand system)
• CRM/email support (nurture + retention)

Best for: companies where CAC is rising and trust matters.

3) Ecommerce: The “creative engine” team

Goal: win on creative velocity and landing page conversion.

• Performance lead
• Creative producer (UGC briefs, short-form variants)
• CRO support
• Analytics support (clean attribution and cohorts)

Best for: brands where meta creative testing is the growth driver.

These are all “bespoke” in the only way that matters: they’re designed around outcomes.

People also ask: do I build in-house or use an agency?

Direct answer: Keep strategy and measurement close to the business; use agencies or freelancers for specialised execution.

If you’re generating leads in the UK and you care about cost per acquisition, you should own:

• your positioning
• your offer
• your analytics definitions (what counts as a qualified lead)
• your reporting cadence

Outsource or partner for:

• paid media execution (especially if you can’t support daily optimisation)
• design and creative production
• SEO technical fixes
• advanced tracking/attribution projects

A good rule: if it changes your business model, own it. If it’s repeatable production, partner it.

What to do this week: a simple “bespoke team” checklist

Direct answer: Align your goal, assign ownership, and build a small specialist bench around your bottleneck.

Use this as a quick audit:

1. One goal: Can you state your next 90-day marketing goal in one sentence with a number?
2. One owner: Who can make decisions without a committee?
3. One message: Do ads, landing pages, and sales calls promise the same outcome?
4. One dashboard: Are you tracking leads → qualified leads → revenue (not just clicks)?
5. One bottleneck: Do you know what’s limiting growth right now?
6. One-week shipping: Can you ship at least one meaningful marketing improvement per week?

If you can’t tick at least four, your problem isn’t “we need more marketing.” Your problem is the system.

The bigger point for British small business digital marketing

Publicis moving Lloyds into a bespoke team isn’t just an agency reshuffle. It’s a reminder that marketing structure follows strategy—even at the very top end of the market.

For UK startups and scaleups, the opportunity is simpler: you can build a focused, specialist team model without the overhead, and you can do it fast. Sort the team shape, get the message aligned, and make your measurement honest. Then your SEO, paid media, and content marketing stop feeling like separate efforts and start acting like one growth engine.

What would change in your results if you stopped adding channels and instead built a bespoke team around the one thing holding your growth back right now?