Marketing leadership changes can stall growth. Learn a simple marketing succession plan to keep your digital marketing consistent and profitable.
Marketing Succession Planning: Keep Growth on Track
A big brand can change marketing leaders and still keep the machine running. A one-person business can change one role (yours), and everything stalls.
That’s why the news that Next’s long-serving marketing leader Jane Shields is retiring after 40 years matters beyond retail gossip. Next isn’t just swapping a name on a org chart: it’s handing a wide operational remit—e-commerce, brand marketing, stores, customer service—to a new leader, while also signalling a stricter view of what counts as profitable marketing.
If you’re a UK solopreneur trying to grow through online marketing, this is the useful bit: marketing strategy continuity isn’t a “big company” concern. It’s a survival skill. When the person who “knows how we do marketing” steps away—whether that’s an employee, a freelancer, an agency partner, or you—it’s painfully easy to lose momentum, waste budget, and confuse customers.
What Next’s leadership change really shows
Answer first: Next’s transition highlights that marketing leadership is now tightly tied to operations, data, and customer experience—not just ads and brand campaigns.
Next announced that Jane Shields (group sales, marketing and HR director) will retire in May 2026 and step down from the board on 21 May 2026. Matt Barnes, currently online customer service director, will take over as group sales and marketing director, covering e-commerce, brand marketing, retail stores and online customer services.
That combination matters. It’s a clear signal that modern retail marketing isn’t a “comms” function sitting to the side. It’s deeply connected to:
- E-commerce performance (conversion rate, basket size, returns)
- Customer service (response times, satisfaction, complaint handling)
- Store experience (availability, promos, staff training)
- Brand consistency (how it all feels as one story)
For a solopreneur, you’re already living this reality. Your Instagram posts, your website checkout, your email replies, and your delivery times are all marketing. The risk is that it’s all in your head.
The hidden threat: “marketing memory” walking out the door
When someone leaves after a long run, the danger isn’t just losing skills. You lose context:
- Why you stopped running Google Ads in 2023
- Which offer converted best in January vs September
- Which customer segments complain most—and why
- Which partnerships produced sales vs “nice exposure”
Big firms call this organisational memory. Solopreneurs should call it my ability to take a week off without revenue dropping 40%.
A practical definition: marketing succession planning for small businesses
Answer first: Marketing succession planning is documenting how you attract, convert, and retain customers so growth continues even when the person running marketing changes.
This isn’t corporate HR theatre. For one-person businesses, succession planning can mean any of these real-life scenarios:
- You’re ill for two weeks.
- You hire a VA and want them to run your email newsletters.
- You switch from one freelancer to another.
- You finally hand ads to an agency because you’re at capacity.
The reality? If marketing only works when you do it personally, it’s not a system yet. It’s a heroic effort.
The “minimum viable marketing playbook” (what to write down)
If you only document one thing this month, make it this. Keep it in a shared Google Doc or Notion page.
- Positioning in one paragraph
- Who you help, what problem you solve, what you’re known for.
- Your core offers + pricing logic
- What you sell, what’s included, common objections, the simplest upsell.
- Your customer journey
- Where leads come from → how they enquire → how they buy → how you follow up.
- Channel owners (even if the owner is you)
- Website, email, Instagram/LinkedIn, Google Business Profile, ads.
- Weekly marketing rhythm
- What gets done on Monday/Wednesday/Friday, and what “good” looks like.
- Your top 10 assets
- Best-performing blog posts, lead magnet, case study, top 3 emails, top 5 reels.
- Your “do not break” rules
- Brand tone, response times, refund policy wording, what you never promise.
This is how you protect continuity when your marketing changes hands.
Profitable marketing isn’t about spending less—it's about standards
Answer first: Next’s approach shows that the smartest marketing budgets aren’t fixed; they expand and contract based on a clear profit hurdle.
Next has a reputation for being cautious with marketing spend, while still investing when returns are there. The source article notes a specific standard: the business aims to generate at least £1.50 of incremental profit for every £1 spent on marketing. That’s not “vanity metrics”. It’s a line in the sand.
Solopreneurs rarely set a clear hurdle rate. The result is predictable:
- You keep paying for “brand awareness” that doesn’t lead to enquiries.
- You post daily on social because it feels productive, not because it converts.
- You treat a busy month as proof your marketing worked, when it might be seasonal.
Your solopreneur version of a hurdle rate
You don’t need perfect attribution. You need a decision rule.
Try one of these:
- Paid ads rule: “I’ll keep spending £X/week only if I can track at least Y qualified leads/month and close at least Z sales.”
- Content rule: “A blog post must drive at least 100 visits/month within 90 days or it gets updated, merged, or replaced.”
- Email rule: “If open rates fall below 30% for 4 sends in a row, I’ll rewrite the subject line formula and resend to non-openers.”
Pick standards you can actually measure with the tools you have (GA4, Search Console, Meta ads manager, Mailchimp/Klaviyo).
January timing: why this matters right now
It’s Monday, mid-January 2026. For UK small businesses, this is when people either:
- set a marketing plan and stick to it, or
- drift until Easter and then panic.
Marketing succession planning is a strong January job because it forces clarity. Once it’s documented, you can hire help faster, brief agencies properly, and avoid the “start from scratch” tax.
How to keep digital marketing consistent during a handover
Answer first: A smooth marketing handover comes from stable messaging, stable measurement, and a 30-day transition plan with clear ownership.
Whether you’re replacing a freelancer or shifting work from “you” to “someone else”, here’s a practical approach that works.
Step 1: Freeze the basics (don’t redesign everything)
During a transition, most businesses do the worst possible thing: they change strategy, visuals, and tools all at once.
Instead, protect continuity by freezing these for 30 days:
- your core offer and pricing
- your website navigation and main CTAs
- your top 3 lead sources
- your reporting (same numbers, same cadence)
Changes can come later. First, keep the engine running.
Step 2: Make reporting stupidly simple
If you only track 5 numbers weekly, make them these:
- Website sessions (by channel)
- Enquiries/leads (forms, calls, DMs)
- Conversion rate (leads → sales)
- Cost per lead (if running ads)
- Revenue (and ideally gross profit)
One sheet. One page. Every week. Continuity loves routine.
A marketing handover fails when the new person can’t tell what “good” looks like.
Step 3: Build a 30/60/90 day handover plan
- First 30 days: maintain what’s working, learn the audience, don’t break tracking.
- Next 60 days: test 1–2 improvements (new landing page, new ad creative, new email sequence).
- By 90 days: decide what to scale and what to stop.
The stance I take: if someone wants to change five things in week one, they don’t understand your business yet.
People also ask: quick answers solopreneurs need
Answer first: These are the most common questions that come up when you’re trying to protect marketing momentum through change.
What happens to growth when a marketing lead leaves?
Growth usually dips for 4–12 weeks because campaigns pause, decisions slow down, and performance history gets lost. Documentation shortens that dip.
Should a small business hire a “marketing manager” or outsource?
Outsource first if you need execution (ads, email builds, design). Hire in-house when you need day-to-day ownership and tight cross-functional coordination.
What’s the one asset that protects continuity most?
Your email list and email automation. Social platforms change; your list is an owned channel you can hand over with clear sequences and reporting.
A simple succession checklist for your marketing system
Answer first: If you can tick these off, your marketing can survive a handover without losing momentum.
- Admin access stored securely (password manager, shared access)
- Tracking set up (GA4, Search Console, ad pixels) and documented
- One-page positioning statement
- Offers and pricing documented
- Weekly marketing rhythm written down
- Monthly reporting template
- Top-performing content list
- Brand voice notes (what you do and don’t say)
- A “stop doing” list (tactics that waste time)
If you’re reading this as part of the UK Solopreneur Business Growth series, this checklist is one of those unglamorous foundations that makes everything else—content marketing, social growth, automation tools—work better.
Where to focus next
Next’s story is a reminder that even well-run businesses treat marketing leadership as a continuity risk—and plan for it. The interesting part isn’t the retirement announcement. It’s the operational scope and the disciplined focus on profitable marketing.
For you, the next move is straightforward: turn your marketing from “stuff you do” into a system someone else can run. That’s how you keep lead flow stable, even when life gets busy.
If you had to hand your marketing to someone for 30 days starting tomorrow, what would break first—your lead generation, your follow-up, or your reporting?