Marketing on a Budget: Lessons from Next’s Shift

A 40-year marketing career ending at one of the UK’s most disciplined retailers is more than a business diary entry. It’s a reminder that marketing priorities change when leadership changes—and that the teams (or solo founders) who plan for that change waste less money and get results faster.

Next has announced that Jane Shields—its group sales, marketing and HR director—will retire in May 2026 after four decades at the company. Her successor, Matt Barnes, comes from online customer service and will take on sales and marketing responsibilities across e-commerce, brand marketing, stores and online customer service. Next’s numbers also tell a second story: it’s proud of “profitable digital marketing”, yet it’s preparing to be more cautious with international marketing spend in 2026, even after strong growth.

If you’re building a one-person business (or a tiny team) and trying to grow with online marketing, this is the bit to pay attention to: Next doesn’t treat marketing as “spend” — it treats it as an investment with a hurdle rate. That mindset is portable. You don’t need a FTSE budget to copy it.

What Next’s leadership change signals (and why it matters)

A leadership change doesn’t automatically mean a brand is “changing direction”. It does mean the organisation is likely to rebalance what it measures and what it rewards—especially when the new leader’s background is operational.

In Next’s case, the handover from a long-tenured marketing leader to someone running online customer service is a clear signal: customer experience, service operations, and marketing performance are being pulled closer together. For solopreneurs, that’s not corporate trivia. It’s a practical growth lesson.

The stance: marketing and customer service are the same system

Most small businesses treat marketing as “getting attention” and customer service as “handling problems.” The reality? They’re one loop:

• Marketing sets expectations (price, delivery times, quality, responsiveness).
• Customer service either confirms or breaks those expectations.
• The gap becomes your reviews, referrals, repeat purchases, and refund rate.

When a business puts a customer service leader closer to marketing, it’s usually because they want fewer leaky buckets: fewer mismatched promises, fewer complaints, higher repeat rate.

The long-tenure advantage you can copy

Jane Shields worked her way up from a sales assistant role in 1985 to the board in 2013. Whatever you think about big retail, there’s a lesson in that arc: consistent brand execution over time compounds.

Solopreneurs often change tone, offers, visual style, and messaging every few weeks because it “feels stale.” Customers don’t experience it that way. They experience inconsistency.

A better rule: keep your positioning stable; test your tactics aggressively.

Next’s “profitable marketing” mindset (the metric to steal)

Next has been explicit about how it thinks about marketing returns. The CEO has described marketing investment as something that increases carefully as long as returns remain above a hurdle rate, with an aim of generating at least £1.50 of incremental profit for every £1 spent on marketing.

That’s a grown-up way to run marketing because it forces clarity:

• What counts as incremental profit (not just revenue)?
• What time window counts (7 days? 30 days? 90 days)?
• What’s included in “marketing cost” (ads only, or creative/tools/time too)?

How to translate this for a UK solopreneur

You don’t need finance software to act like this. Use a simple version:

1. Pick one “North Star” commercial metric: contribution margin, not revenue.
2. Decide a “hurdle rate” you’ll stick to for 90 days.
3. Stop spending when you miss it, unless you’re deliberately testing.

Here’s a realistic solo set-up:

• Average order value: £80
• Cost of goods / fulfilment: £35
• Gross profit: £45
• Your target marketing efficiency: £1 spent should produce £1.50 gross profit

That means your allowable acquisition cost is:

• Max marketing cost per first order = £45 / 1.5 = £30

If your Meta ads are bringing first-time buyers at £42 per purchase, you’re not “bad at ads.” You’re buying customers at a price your model can’t support. Fix the model (increase price, improve margin, lift repeat purchase), or change channel/offer.

Why Next can cut international spend even after growth

The article highlights that Next credited “profitable” marketing with a 38.3% increase in international sales, yet it’s preparing to reduce the rate of increase in overseas marketing spend in 2026.

This is what disciplined marketers do: they don’t scale spend because they’re excited; they scale because the marginal return still works. At some point, extra spend hits audiences that are less ready to buy (or costs rise), and the return drops.

For small businesses, the parallel is painful but useful:

• Your first £200 in Google Search might work brilliantly.
• Your next £2,000 might be average.
• Your next £10,000 might be unprofitable.

Scaling isn’t a personality trait. It’s an economics problem.

What to do when your “marketing leader” changes (even if that’s you)

In a solopreneur business, leadership changes show up differently: you hire your first freelancer, you bring in an agency, or you decide to “finally take marketing seriously” after a busy season. The mistake is treating that moment like a creative refresh.

Treat it like a systems refresh.

Step 1: Write the one-page “marketing operating policy”

This is the document that stops chaos when you’re busy.

Include:

• Who you serve (one sentence)
• Your primary offer and typical price points
• Your core channels (choose two, not six)
• Your measurement cadence (weekly 30 minutes)
• Your hurdle rate (e.g., “£1 should return £1.50 gross profit within 60 days”)

It should fit on one page. If you can’t make it short, it’s not clear enough.

Step 2: Link marketing to service—on purpose

If Next is blending marketing and online customer service responsibilities, you can do the same in miniature. The practical move is to align what you promise with what you can deliver.

Pick one of these “service-to-marketing bridges” to implement this month:

• Add a delivery expectations section to your product pages (plain English)
• Turn your top 10 customer questions into a FAQ page and 5 short social posts
• Create a post-purchase email: “Here’s how to get the best result”
• Track refund reasons and fix the top one

This improves conversion rate and reduces support load—a rare win-win.

Step 3: Build a tiny testing budget (and protect it)

Next increased international marketing spend sharply at points (including a 50% increase in Q3) when it saw profitable returns. The principle here isn’t “spend more.” It’s “separate testing from scaling.”

For a one-person business:

• Commit 5–10% of monthly marketing budget to tests
• Everything else goes to what’s already proven

A “test” must have:

• a single variable (new hook, new audience, new offer)
• a fixed time window (7–14 days)
• a pass/fail threshold

If it passes, scale cautiously. If it fails, document it and move on.

Practical digital marketing priorities for Q1 2026 (UK small business)

January is when lots of small businesses either panic (quiet inbox) or overreact (sudden rebrand). A calmer approach is to treat Q1 like a foundation quarter for UK solopreneur business growth.

Priority 1: Make your tracking credible (not perfect)

Your goal isn’t enterprise attribution. It’s avoiding self-deception.

Do this:

• Ensure you can see sales by channel (even if it’s rough)
• Use consistent UTM naming for campaigns
• Track one weekly dashboard: sessions, leads, sales, top content, ad spend

Priority 2: Choose one “demand capture” and one “demand creation” channel

This pairing keeps leads coming in now while you build longer-term growth.

Examples:

• Demand capture: Google Search ads for high-intent keywords
• Demand creation: short-form video showing product demos or case studies

Or:

• Demand capture: local SEO + Google Business Profile
• Demand creation: a weekly email newsletter built from customer questions

Stick with the pair for 90 days before judging it.

Priority 3: Lift conversion rate before you lift spend

Next’s caution with spend is a good prompt: before you pay for more clicks, make the clicks you already get work harder.

Fast conversion wins I’ve found work repeatedly:

• Put your price (or starting price) where people can actually see it
• Add 3–5 proof blocks (reviews, results, guarantees, delivery timelines)
• Replace vague headlines with specific outcomes
• Reduce choice: one primary call-to-action per page

If you raise conversion from 1.2% to 1.8%, your ads “get cheaper” without negotiating with Google.

The bigger lesson: consistency beats constant reinvention

A 40-year tenure at the top of a major retailer is unusual, but the underlying principle applies to solo businesses: you don’t need more marketing ideas—you need a clearer system for choosing which ideas deserve budget and time.

Next’s story also shows something small businesses often resist: it’s completely normal to be cautious with marketing spend even when growth is strong. If the return isn’t there at the margin, discipline is the right call.

If you’re building your way through the UK solopreneur business growth journey, consider this your prompt for the week: what would your marketing look like if you had to justify every £1 the way Next does? And if you’re not tracking well enough to answer that, what’s the simplest change you can make by next Friday?