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Services · Step 03 · Run · Retained

A fractional marketing director. 2 to 4 days a month.

Senior direction and hands-on execution across everything that attracts and converts, owned by one person and engaged for the hours that match your actual need. Customers, candidates, or both: it's the same machinery underneath, and we're deepest in the candidate half.

Book a call What it covers

The maths

The director, without the full-time hire.

A full-time marketing director runs £80,000 to £120,000 a year before employer NI, pension and benefits, and most organisations don’t have a full-time job’s worth of the work. A fractional arrangement gives you the same strategic input and execution capability, sized to the need. Weighing a hire against an agency or tools? See outsourced versus in-house recruitment marketing, costed side by side.

  • EngagementRetained · 2 to 4 days/mo
  • CommitmentMonthly · cancellable
  • ScopeStrategy through execution
  • ReportingNumbers you can take to the board
  • Team capabilityTraining & handover in scope
  • FeeScoped on the call · in writing first

What it covers

Every part of how you attract and convert.

Not a narrowly scoped advisory service. Strategy through to execution, measurement and optimisation, and your team gets more capable every month it runs.

  1. Strategy

    Roadmap & channel strategy

    Mix planning, audience targeting, budget allocation and a clear roadmap for how you reach the people you need, built around your markets, your margins and your hiring volumes.

  2. Brand

    Brand & proposition

    What makes you worth buying from and worth working for, articulated so it lands with the people you're actually trying to reach, not left in a PDF. Employer brand and EVP is the deepest version of this we do.

  3. Content

    Campaign & advert copy

    Copy that converts, from a paid search advert to a job advert, written to earn the right response rather than the biggest number. Includes tone-of-voice guidance and templates your team can run independently.

  4. Execution

    Channel management

    Management and optimisation of your active channels: paid search and social, LinkedIn, programmatic, job boards and Google for Jobs. Performance reviewed against cost-per-acquisition and cost-per-application targets.

  5. Measurement

    Performance & analytics

    Tracking and attribution that says what's working, in numbers everyone trusts. Reviewed monthly, acted on monthly. The measure-iterate-grow loop, run for you.

  6. Capability

    Your team, more capable

    Training and handover are part of the scope, not an extra. The aim is a function that runs well without us, and an internal hire, if that's where this ends, that we help you define.

3 ways to engage

Retained, project, or a mix of the two.

01 · Retained

The standing arrangement.

An ongoing monthly engagement, typically 2 to 4 days per month. For organisations that need consistent strategic direction and hands-on support across the full mix.

02 · Project

A defined scope.

A fixed deliverable: a campaign launch, an EVP refresh, a channel strategy rebuild. Clear start, clear end, clear output. No open-ended commitment.

03 · Hybrid

Start one way, finish another.

Start with a project and move to retained as the relationship develops. Or retain for a fixed period to stabilise the function, then hand over to an internal hire we have helped you define.

Who it's for

A real gap, not a one-off campaign.

This is for organisations where marketing is operationally critical and the internal capability isn't keeping up with the demand. Most often that demand is candidates. Sometimes it's customers. Often it's both, and the same person should be holding both.

In-house TA teams

Strong on process, thin on marketing.

You need someone who can own the channel strategy and make the spend work harder, without adding headcount to do it. If the gap is the TA operating model rather than the marketing, that's talent acquisition consultancy.

HR directors

Accountable for outcomes.

You carry the hiring numbers but don’t have the recruitment marketing depth on the team to diagnose why results are declining. This fills that gap with senior judgement, not another report.

Marketing functions

Handed recruitment as a side quest.

Your team knows marketing but not this market. We bring the recruitment-specific layer (the channels, the benchmarks, the candidate behaviour) and leave the capability behind.

Where this sits in the ladder

Fractional engagements start with a conversation about the pain points, and often a fixed-price audit whose findings become the first quarter’s plan. If something needs building first, that's a Workforce Engine project, and this is what keeps it improving afterwards. See all 3 steps.

The work behind it

The work behind it, measured.

£130m→£290m Revenue growth supported over 5 years
107% Application growth · no increase in media spend
2× Available workforce in 12 months

Start here

Tell us what's not working.

The easy first move

20 minutes, no pitch deck.

Tell us what's in front of you. You'll come off the call with a straight answer on whether fractional support is the right shape, and what it would cost, in writing, before you commit.

Book a call

If you'd rather write first

Send a message.

Tell us the pain points in writing and we'll come back inside 1 working day with our read on whether fractional support is the right shape.

Send a message

See the ladder

Where this fits.

Step 03 of 3: the retained loop that keeps what was built getting better, month after month.

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