Marketing without a marketing department · March · Lake Zurich · Linth

Marketing when nobody in your company does it full time

In most SMBs marketing is done by nobody — it is done by everybody on the side. The owner in the evening, someone at reception, someone from sales. It costs exactly the energy that is then missing with your customers.

What this looks like in practice

• The owner writes quotes in the evening and rebuilds the website at the weekend — instead of selling.
• The person at reception “also does social media”, because they know their way around and like to help.
• Someone from the shop floor handles photos and signage instead of serving customers.
• And nobody follows up last month’s enquiry — or asks the long-standing customer who is quietly ordering less this year.

None of these people is doing anything wrong. On the contrary: they step in because the business matters to them. But they do it on top of a job that is already full, and without the framework that turns individual actions into a system.

The real problem is not the work. It is ownership.

When nobody is responsible, everything happens reactively. The website gets touched when someone complains. The ad goes live when a month was bad. The newsletter appears when there is time — so, rarely. None of it is wrong, and still it never adds up to a result you can build on.

Hiring does not solve this for many businesses: there is not enough uniform work for a full marketing role, and the person you would actually need — someone experienced who also understands sales — is rarely affordable at this company size and even more rarely fully occupied.

What lands on your desk — and what I take over

From live engagements in the region, within a single week:

• The agency sends a report that nobody in the company can interpret.
• The supplier doing the vehicle lettering wants a design signed off — and nobody knows whether it is good or merely colourful.
• The new forecourt in front of the building is meant to say something about the company, but there is no concept, only an appointment with the landscaper.
• A long-standing customer has been ordering less for a year, and nobody ever asked why.
• An enquiry from last week sits unanswered because it is unclear who answers it.
• The website has shown the same photos for two years — of a team that now looks different.

These are very different tasks. That is exactly why a single-channel agency does not work here: a Google Ads agency has no opinion on your forecourt, and a creative agency will not touch your CRM. But the questions do not arrive sorted by who is responsible. They just arrive.

One contact, not one channel

I do not do everything. I take over the question — and make sure it gets answered properly. Sometimes that means I do it myself. Sometimes it means I give your supplier precise feedback so you do not have to guess. Sometimes it means I bring in someone from my network: photography, development, creative, marketplaces. After twenty years in marketing, media buying and sales I usually know who can do it — and who only says they can.

On top of that comes an AI toolset I have built over the past years for exactly this kind of work. For you that mainly means one thing: you stop paying agency hours for work that now takes a fraction of the time.

Three ways to solve this

	Hiring	Agency	Engagement
Response time	Immediate — if the person is there	Days to weeks, via account management	Direct, no intermediate layer
Level of experience	Whatever the budget allows	Varies, often junior in daily work	One person with twenty years of practice
Breadth	Limited to one role	Limited to the booked channel	Whatever question is on the table
Control over budget	Internal	With the agency	With you, with translation
Who is accountable	The person	Formally the agency	Me, by name
Commitment	Employment with notice period	Retainer, often with minimum term	Monthly, by scope

Which route is right depends on your size, not on my preference. The three scopes are under Services.