Marketing Leadership Changes: Keep Growth on Track

Next’s group marketing director, Jane Shields, is retiring after 40 years. That’s not just a “big brand” HR update — it’s a reminder that marketing performance is often less about one brilliant campaign and more about continuity.

If you’re a UK solopreneur (or running a tiny team), a leadership change can look different: a freelancer you rely on disappears, you stop posting for a month because client work takes over, or the person “doing your marketing” becomes the person “doing your customer service” overnight. The mechanics are smaller. The risk is the same.

Here’s what Next’s transition tells us about how to keep digital marketing working when responsibilities shift, and how to build a setup that survives busy periods, staff changes, and the very real chaos of running a one-person business.

What Next’s change signals (and why it matters to small firms)

Answer first: Leadership transitions expose whether marketing is a system or a personality.

Next announced Shields will retire in May 2026, stepping down from the board later that month. Operational marketing responsibilities will move to Matt Barnes, currently the online customer service director — and notably, he won’t join the board.

For a retailer like Next, that kind of reshuffle matters because it changes:

• What gets prioritised (brand building vs. trading, retention vs. acquisition)
• How marketing and customer experience get integrated
• How budgets get defended when results are under pressure

For a solopreneur, this shows up in simpler forms:

• You switch from “posting to grow” to “posting to respond”
• Your email list goes quiet when fulfilment gets busy
• You stop tracking results because you’re wearing five hats

The stance I’ll take: your marketing should be designed to run during disruption, not only when you have time and headspace.

The most useful detail in the story: Next’s “hurdle rate”

Answer first: Next treats marketing like an investment, not an expense — and your small business should too.

One of the most practical lines from the reporting is how Next thinks about returns: it aims to generate at least £1.50 of incremental profit for every £1 spent on marketing. That’s a clear hurdle rate.

Most small businesses don’t have a hurdle rate. They have a feeling.

Build your solopreneur “hurdle rate” in 30 minutes

You don’t need perfect attribution to do this. You need a repeatable rule that stops you wasting money.

1. Pick one core conversion (booked call, enquiry form, checkout purchase, consultation deposit).
2. Decide your allowed cost per conversion.
   • If you make £300 gross profit on a job and can comfortably spend 20% to acquire it, your max CPA is £60.
3. Track one channel for four weeks (Google Search ads, Meta lead ads, SEO blog traffic, email).
4. Make a simple “continue / pause / improve” call.

A clean one-liner you can use internally:

If I can’t see a plausible path to profit within 30–60 days, I don’t scale spend.

This mindset is especially relevant in January. Many UK businesses are coming off the Christmas peak (or the pre-Christmas rush) and are staring at a quieter pipeline. It’s exactly when people either overspend in panic or disappear from marketing entirely.

When customer service takes on marketing, it can improve your results

Answer first: Combining customer service and marketing usually increases conversion because it forces you to fix friction.

Next is moving marketing responsibilities to someone leading online customer service. That’s a strong signal about where modern retail growth comes from: the overlap between acquisition and experience.

Solopreneurs often keep these worlds separate:

• “Marketing” = content, ads, social posts
• “Customer service” = inbox, DMs, refunds, delivery questions

In practice, they’re the same funnel.

Three customer-service-driven marketing wins you can copy

1) Turn questions into landing page copy
If people ask “How long does it take?” or “What’s included?” more than twice a week, that belongs:

• on the sales page
• in your booking confirmation email
• in your pinned Instagram highlight

2) Build a ‘reply library’ that becomes content
Save your best answers as snippets. Then:

• one snippet becomes a LinkedIn post
• three snippets become an FAQ page
• five snippets become an email sequence

3) Make response time a growth metric
If you sell services, speed-to-lead matters. A practical target for a one-person business:

• reply within 2 hours during business hours
• same-day reply at worst

If you can’t do that manually, this is where automation earns its keep.

A simple automation stack that doesn’t feel robotic

• Website form → instant acknowledgement email (“Got it — here’s what happens next”)
• Booking link → pre-call questionnaire (filters out poor-fit leads)
• Email tag → 3-email follow-up if they don’t book

Automation isn’t about pretending you’re bigger than you are. It’s about protecting your attention so you can do work that actually pays.

Succession planning for solopreneurs (yes, you need it)

Answer first: Your “marketing succession plan” is documentation plus a minimum viable routine.

The big lesson from a 40-year marketing leader retiring is not nostalgia — it’s that institutional knowledge walks out the door unless you capture it.

In a one-person business, your knowledge is always at risk because it lives in your head. When you’re sick, busy, travelling, or burned out, marketing stops.

The 1-page marketing continuity plan

Create a single document titled: Marketing Continuity Plan. Keep it in Google Docs.

Include:

• Positioning in one sentence: who you help + the problem + the outcome
• Top 3 offers: price range, typical lead time, best-fit customers
• Top 3 channels: (e.g., SEO blog, email list, Google Business Profile)
• Weekly routine (60–90 minutes total):
  • 1 post (repurpose a customer question)
  • 1 email (short, helpful, with a soft CTA)
  • 1 optimisation task (update a page, add reviews, tweak a form)
• Access list: website login, email platform, analytics, ad accounts
• What success looks like: 2–3 metrics you check weekly

This is what keeps your digital marketing strategy on track when life happens.

Budget shifts: don’t copy Next’s numbers — copy its discipline

Answer first: The real takeaway isn’t “spend more” or “spend less”; it’s “spend where you can prove profit.”

Next has been described as cautious with marketing spend, while still crediting marketing investment with serious results (including a reported 38.3% increase in international sales driven by “profitable” marketing investment). It’s also preparing to reduce its international marketing spend growth rate.

For a small business, the equivalent is deciding between:

• doubling down on Google Search because leads convert
• pausing paid social because it’s generating clicks, not customers
• investing in SEO content because it compounds over months

A practical small-business budget rule for 2026

Use a split like this (adjust for your situation):

• 70% proven channel (the thing that already brings leads)
• 20% retention (email, reviews, referral prompts, customer experience)
• 10% testing (new platform, new ad type, new lead magnet)

Most companies get this wrong by flipping it: 70% testing because they’re bored, and 0% retention because it isn’t exciting.

If you’re a solopreneur, retention is your easiest win. It’s also the cheapest.

“People also ask” (quick answers you can act on)

How do I keep marketing consistent when I’m busy with client work?

Set a minimum viable routine: one weekly post, one weekly email, one optimisation task. Consistency beats intensity.

Should customer service sit inside marketing for small businesses?

If you sell online or book calls, yes. Customer questions are marketing data and response speed affects conversion.

What’s the first thing to document in a marketing handover?

Your positioning statement and your top-performing channel (including what you post, where, and how you measure it).

How do I know if my digital marketing is profitable?

Define one conversion, set a maximum cost per conversion, track for four weeks, then decide: continue, pause, or improve.

What to do this week (a tight action plan)

Answer first: Protect your pipeline by making your marketing transferable.

If you only do three things, do these:

1. Write your 1-page marketing continuity plan (30 minutes).
2. Create an FAQ bank from your last 20 customer conversations (30 minutes).
3. Pick one metric to review every Friday (15 minutes): enquiries, booked calls, or sales.

That’s how you build a marketing engine that survives leadership changes — whether the “leader” is a marketing director retiring after 40 years, or you trying to do everything yourself.

If you’re working through the UK Solopreneur Business Growth series, think of this post as the “stability layer”: before you add more platforms, ads, or content, make sure your current setup won’t collapse the moment your week gets messy.

What part of your marketing would stop first if you took an unexpected week off — and what would need to be true for it to keep running anyway?