Marketing succession planning for small UK businesses

Next’s group marketing director is retiring after 40 years. That’s not just a big career milestone—it’s a reminder that marketing continuity is a leadership issue, not a “nice-to-have” process.

If you’re a UK solopreneur or small business owner, you might be thinking: I don’t have a board. I don’t have a marketing director. True. But you still have the same risk: when the person who “knows what works” steps away—whether that’s you, a freelancer, or a long-time admin who posts to Instagram—your pipeline can wobble fast.

This matters even more in January. Q1 is when many small businesses set budgets, commit to platforms, and decide whether they’ll run consistent campaigns or “see how it goes”. A marketing leadership transition (planned or accidental) is one of the easiest ways to lose momentum right when you need it.

What Next’s leadership change really signals

A senior marketing exit isn’t just a personnel update. It’s a stress test for how a business makes marketing decisions and protects performance when responsibilities shift.

Marketing Week reports that Jane Shields will retire in May 2026 after joining Next in 1985 and rising from sales assistant to group sales, marketing and HR director. Next is handing marketing responsibilities to Matt Barnes, currently the online customer service director, whose new remit spans e-commerce, brand marketing, retail stores, and online customer services. (Source: https://www.marketingweek.com/next-group-marketing-director-retirement/)

Here’s the bit small businesses should pay attention to: Next is effectively reinforcing that marketing, e-commerce, and customer service are one system. If you treat them as separate, you’ll measure the wrong things and optimise the wrong work.

The handover is about execution, not just ideas

Most companies get this wrong. They assume marketing leadership is about vision and creativity, so succession becomes a “brand” question.

The reality? The scary part is execution:

• Which campaigns are profitable and why
• What your “always-on” activity is (email, search, retargeting)
• Which numbers are trusted (and how they’re calculated)
• What customers complain about, and how that changes messaging

When marketing is tied closely to online customer service—as Next’s org chart now suggests—feedback loops shorten. That’s an advantage.

For a solopreneur, the equivalent is simple: your marketing messaging should reflect real customer questions and real objections, not what you wish people cared about.

The “profitable marketing” standard small businesses should copy

Next has been unusually explicit about how it thinks about marketing spend. CEO Lord Simon Wolfson has described marketing investment as something that can increase as long as returns stay above a hurdle rate. Marketing Week notes that Next looks to generate at least £1.50 of incremental profit for every £1 spent on marketing.

That sentence is doing a lot of work.

Small businesses often run on vibes:

• “Instagram feels quiet lately.”
• “Google Ads are expensive.”
• “Email doesn’t work for my industry.”

A better approach is to adopt your own version of Next’s rule—without overcomplicating it.

A practical ROI rule for solopreneurs

You don’t need perfect attribution. You need a decision rule you’ll actually use.

Try this:

1. Pick one primary growth channel for 90 days (usually: local SEO, Google Ads, Meta ads, or email + content).
2. Define a “profitable” target you’ll commit to. Examples:
   • For lead gen services: Cost per qualified lead ≤ £X
   • For e-commerce: Contribution margin ROAS ≥ 2.0 (or whatever fits your margins)
   • For high-ticket: Cost per booked call ≤ £Y
3. Review weekly, but only make changes on a set cadence (e.g., every two weeks).

Snippet-worthy truth: If you don’t define profitable marketing, you’ll end up funding whatever platform shouts loudest.

Why Next can cut spend and still be “pro marketing”

Marketing Week also reports Next is preparing to halve its international marketing spend in 2026, despite crediting marketing investment with driving a 38.3% increase in international sales. It also previously increased international marketing spend by 50% in Q3 and later suggested growth may be more like 25%.

This isn’t contradictory. It’s discipline.

For small businesses, the lesson is:

• Don’t idolise spend.
• Idolise repeatable returns.

If your ads worked in November/December but struggle in January, that’s normal seasonality. The mistake is insisting on the same spend level when buyer intent has changed.

Succession planning when you don’t have a “marketing team”

If you’re a one-person business, succession planning sounds dramatic—until you get sick, lose access to an account, or your freelancer disappears mid-campaign.

Marketing leadership transitions impact brand strategy execution because the strategy often lives in someone’s head. Your job is to get it out of your head and into assets, systems, and routines.

The 10-asset “marketing continuity kit”

If you build only one thing this quarter, build this.

1. Positioning one-pager: who you help, what you do, what you don’t do
2. Offer sheet: packages, pricing logic, boundaries, FAQs
3. Lead tracking sheet/CRM: source, status, value, next action
4. Analytics checklist: what you check weekly (and where)
5. Channel playbook: your rules for ads, email, social, content
6. Top 20 objections (real ones) + your best answers
7. Creative library: best-performing ads/posts/emails and why they worked
8. Campaign calendar: seasonal promos and launch windows (UK-specific)
9. Access doc: logins, admin permissions, domain/DNS owner, ad accounts
10. Handover note: “If I disappear for two weeks, here’s what to keep running.”

This is what continuity looks like for a small business. Not a 40-page brand book—something usable.

A quick warning about “single point of failure” marketing

If your marketing relies on one person, one platform, or one tactic, you’re one bad week away from a revenue wobble.

I’ve found the safest setup for solopreneurs is:

• One demand capture channel (SEO or paid search)
• One demand creation channel (content or social)
• One retention channel (email)

That trio makes leadership transitions survivable because performance isn’t dependent on a single moving part.

Why customer service is becoming the new marketing (and what to do about it)

Next’s incoming leader has a customer service background. That’s not random. Retail is finally admitting what small businesses learn the hard way:

Every customer interaction is marketing—especially the messy ones.

In 2026, digital consumer behaviour is shaped by speed, reviews, and low tolerance for friction. People will forgive a premium price faster than they’ll forgive a confusing checkout or a slow reply.

Three ways to turn customer service into lead generation

1. Write your website copy from support tickets

   • Add an FAQ section based on actual queries.
   • Use the exact phrasing customers use.

2. Create “response-time” marketing

   • Publish your service standards (e.g., “Replies within 2 working hours”).
   • Then meet them. It’s a differentiator in crowded local markets.

3. Use post-purchase emails as a review engine

   • Ask for feedback first, then ask for a review.
   • Route unhappy customers to you privately, not to Google.

For local UK businesses, this is gold because reviews still heavily influence local SEO visibility and conversion.

A simple transition plan you can run in 30 days

If you’re planning to hand marketing to a new hire, a VA, or an agency—or you’re just trying to make your business less dependent on you—run this 30-day transition.

Week 1: Audit what’s actually working

• Pull the last 90 days of leads/sales.
• Identify the top 3 sources.
• Write down what you believe caused them (campaign, referral, seasonality, offer, etc.).

Week 2: Document the “how”

• Record 3 short Loom videos (15 minutes each):
  1. How you publish content / run ads
  2. How you follow up leads
  3. How you check results

Week 3: Set rules and guardrails

• Define what “profitable” means for your business.
• Define what can be changed without approval (e.g., creative) vs what can’t (e.g., pricing, targeting, budget caps).

Week 4: Run a controlled test

• Keep one channel stable.
• Test one variable elsewhere (new landing page, new email sequence, new offer angle).
• Measure and decide.

Answer-first summary: A marketing transition succeeds when you stabilise measurement, document execution, and only then change strategy.

People also ask: marketing succession planning for small businesses

What is marketing succession planning?

Marketing succession planning is preparing your business to keep generating leads and sales when the person running marketing changes, by documenting strategy, assets, access, and decision rules.

Do solopreneurs need succession planning?

Yes—because the risk isn’t retirement, it’s disruption. Illness, burnout, lost accounts, or a contractor leaving can pause marketing overnight.

What should be documented first?

Start with offers, tracking, and access. If you can’t see what’s working, can’t sell consistently, or can’t log in, nothing else matters.

Where this fits in UK Solopreneur Business Growth

This post sits right in the middle of a bigger truth about UK solopreneur business growth: consistency beats intensity. Your marketing doesn’t need heroic bursts; it needs a structure that survives real life.

Next’s story is a big-company version of the same challenge—keeping marketing effective through a leadership change while staying disciplined on spend. The small-business version is making sure your ads, email, content, and follow-up don’t vanish when someone changes.

If you want 2026 to be the year your marketing feels calmer and more predictable, start with continuity. Then build performance.

What part of your marketing would break first if you stepped away for two weeks—and what would it take to make it resilient?