Fractional V Fractured: Why Small Business Growth May Demand a More Fractional Approach

For many small businesses, the conversation around changing legislation often starts with a focus on compliance in line with new or emerging rules and regulations. Typically, this encompasses the changes that need to be made to contracts, payroll, policies and processes. Whilst these are crucial, there is another question that also deserves attention: What does all this change mean for how a small business sustains growth?

The UK’s regulatory landscape is evidently becoming more demanding. Employment rights are changing, the cost of employing people continues to rise, business rates have been revalued and administrative requirements are increasing for many businesses. Individually, these should not determine a company’s strategy, however when taken collectively, they are changing the economics of running a small business. This raises a core challenge in that growth becomes more valuable, yet conversely, increasingly harder to prioritise.

This is particularly true for many small-business owners where the biggest constraint isn’t necessarily their ambition, but their capacity to grow.

A small business owner may be simultaneously responsible for sales, operations, finance, people, suppliers and customers. When time and resource also have to be allocated to changing employment legislation and wider compliance responsibilities, the time and resource to create future growth becomes more finite.

This is frequently seen in the context of marketing, where campaigns, posts, channel or CRM updates are held up as operational matters take precedent. Another visible indicator are a company’s LinkedIn posts which become occasional – even esoteric - rather than consistent. Strategic planning is subsumed by reacting to immediate requirement. The catch here is that as businesses become more operationally complex, the significance of effective marketing and communications becomes more acute. The need to create demand, strengthen market position and develop a stable and convertible pipeline of opportunities is dependent on ensuring sufficient skill and resource is in place. While investment in hiring a marketing executive, appointing an agency or recruiting a Marketing Manager with a larger advertising budget can be the right decision, the challenge for smaller businesses can be difficult yin finding the right direction for their marketing efforts. Whilst freelancers, agencies or social media execs focus on output, is there anyone to guide the activity against the main question (and the main point of distinction) - is this moving the business towards where you want it to go? The appearance of progress may not necessarily equate to creating commercial progress, and in an increasingly challenging cost environment, businesses need to become increasingly attuned to the connection between marketing activity and business outcomes.

This is where the growth of fractional leadership becomes interesting. Fractional marketing isn’t simply about hiring a marketer for fewer days a week. At its best, it is about giving a business access to senior strategic thinking without immediately taking on the cost and commitment of a permanent senior appointment.A fractional Marketing Director or CMO can provide an outside perspective on positioning, customer acquisition, proposition, channels, campaigns, budgets and measurement.

More importantly, they can bring focus and even constructive challenge in helping a business decide what not to do. Determining the right thing to do is far more effective - and cost-effective - than trying everything. Furthermore, businesses have traditionally viewed senior expertise as something that comes with a permanent employee and a high salary. However, workplaces are becoming more flexible and are drawing on external specialists for finance, HR, technology, legal support and other areas where they need expertise without necessarily requiring a full-time role. Marketing can work in exactly the same way. The question is no longer “Can we afford a Marketing Director?” but is becoming more focused to become

“What level of marketing leadership does the business actually need - and how often?”

A changing legislative environment may therefore be accelerating a broader change in how small businesses think about their resources. Viability and growth can be sustained by accessing the right expertise, at the right time, while remaining sufficiently agile to respond when circumstances change. New legislation may change the cost of running a company, but it shouldn’t change the ambition to grow. Fractional marketing offers an approach that is ideally suited to this evolving landscape.