In many companies with revenues of $5M and above, marketing is still treated like a patchwork quilt: pieces are handed to whoever is available, budgets are divided among multiple vendors, and internal staff fill gaps as best they can. On paper, it might look efficient. In practice, it weakens growth, dilutes accountability, and increases the CEO’s workload.
At its core, marketing is not a collection of tasks. It is a system. And like any system, it only works when the parts are integrated under one direction. Splitting responsibilities between your office manager, a junior staff member “with AI,” or a handful of disconnected vendors is not clever or lean. It is a leadership mistake that competitors are more than happy for you to make.
Why is marketing thought of as an admin task?
When companies assign growth to an office manager or a junior marketer with access to ChatGPT, they are not innovating, they are signalling to employees, investors, and competitors that marketing is an afterthought. Tools do not create strategy. A junior with AI is not a CMO any more than a calculator makes a bookkeeper into a CFO.
AI is powerful, but it multiplies what already exists. In expert hands, it accelerates results. In inexperienced hands, it multiplies mistakes. Believing that software can replace strategy is not just naïve, it is reckless. Prospects don’t care that your office manager was “trying.” They care about the impression your brand leaves, and they notice when it is inconsistent, amateur, or confused.
Does marketing accountability require ownership?
If your marketing partner is expected to deliver results, they must have ownership of the levers that drive those results. That means the website, the trade show presence, the content, the campaigns, all of it.
When leadership holds back certain pieces (“our in-house team handles the website” or “we already have someone who does events”), accountability fractures. Suddenly, no one owns the whole engine. If results fall short, who is to blame? The firm that didn’t control all the pieces? The staff member juggling marketing as one of ten responsibilities? Or the CEO who assumed the pieces would stitch themselves together?
Growth requires integration. Without it, you get silos, conflicting priorities, and a fractured brand voice. Prospects notice. Competitors capitalize. And the investment you thought you were saving disappears in wasted effort.
What is the CEO burden?
Splitting marketing also creates an invisible tax on leadership time. Every extra vendor, every siloed responsibility, every uncoordinated initiative is one more ball for the CEO to keep in the air.
Instead of freeing leadership to focus on growth, it drags them into project management and firefighting. The CEO becomes the glue holding disjointed pieces together. If you wanted to be the marketing manager, you wouldn’t have hired a marketing firm in the first place.
The companies that delegate growth to fragmented teams don’t just suffer weaker results, they also force their own leaders into unnecessary oversight. That time and energy is far more expensive than hiring a single accountable partner in the first place.
Why is ‘cheap’ marketing expensive?
Cutting corners in marketing never saves money. Companies that downgrade marketing to an admin function end up paying twice: once for the wasted effort, and again to undo the damage.
Reputation, once diminished by amateur execution, doesn’t recover easily. Prospects do not forget being unimpressed. Investors do not forgive missed opportunities. Competitors do not pause while you experiment with shortcuts. In markets where perception shapes reality, the company with the weakest marketing is treated as the weakest player.
What is the ideal marketing vendor integration?
Some companies genuinely believe they already have the right person or vendor for a specific piece of marketing. Integration is possible, but only if structured correctly. Here are the three paths:
1. Lead-and-Integrate (Preferred) Your marketing partner remains the strategic lead and central point of accountability. Other specialized partners, whether your web developer, PR agency, or event team, plug into the lead marketing partner’s framework. One partner is there to set the strategy, coordinate the calendar, and ensure consistency. This gives you the best of both worlds: specialized execution with unified direction.
2. Parallel Specialists (Riskier) You keep separate ownership. All marketing partners work alongside others, but results will be fragmented and accountability diluted. Expectations need to be realistic: with split ownership, there will be split results.
3. Full Ownership (Most Effective) One marketing partner leads strategy and execution end-to-end. One plan, one team, one accountable partner. This is how competitors who take growth seriously operate, and it delivers the strongest outcomes with the least strain on leadership.
Why does company leadership mean accountability?
As a CEO or CFO, ask yourself: when growth stalls, when the board demands answers, or when competitors pull ahead, will you be comfortable saying your office manager and AI were in charge of your marketing strategy?
Delegating growth to the least experienced hands, splitting execution across silos, and expecting unified results is not lean leadership. It is neglect disguised as cost savings.
Real leadership means consolidating accountability, giving your marketing partner both the mandate and the tools to execute fully, and holding them responsible for outcomes. Anything less is simply handing your competitors an advantage.
Why does company growth deserve the same leadership as IT, Finance or HR?
We believe your company’s growth deserves the same calibre of leadership as finance, operations, and technology. Marketing is not an expense to be minimized, nor an admin task to be delegated. It is a board-level function that demands unified direction.
Splitting marketing doesn’t lighten the load, it multiplies it. And the companies that win are the ones who treat marketing with the seriousness it deserves: one strategy, one team, one accountable partner.
