Marketing 
Growth 
new post
Ginny Dwyer 
November 22, 2024
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5 min read
Share Many small to mid-sized businesses have a marketing ‘department’ that consists only of one person who is responsible for every aspect of the company’s marketing efforts. These individuals are usually highly talented and capable, but the company is left in a challenging position if they suddenly leave.
The departure of a lone marketer is a significant business continuity risk that is often overlooked. Companies frequently make plans for other disasters, but seldom plan what they’ll do if their only marketing person leaves.
This article will explore the dangers of the single-marketer model, how to assess your company’s vulnerability, and how to survive if your lone marketer leaves.
In today’s business landscape, the lone marketer is the marketing department’s equivalent of a Swiss Army knife. This individual is responsible for a wide range of tasks, including strategy, content creation, social media management, analytics, and design—often without the support of a team. Although this setup may appear cost-effective, it creates a vulnerable foundation for a company’s market presence. The danger lies in the centralization of critical infrastructure within one person.
When lone marketers leave, they take a wealth of knowledge and resources, including passwords, unwritten processes, media and vendor relationships, and an understanding of audience preferences and past marketing decisions. This can cause a significant disruption in marketing momentum, with unfinished campaigns, unexecuted content calendars, and a decline in social media engagement. This fragile arrangement is a significant business continuity risk many businesses fail to recognize.
The sudden resignation of your sole marketer can devastate and immediately impact your business. The seemingly well-oiled marketing machine abruptly stops, leaving critical tasks and initiatives incomplete. Planned email campaigns, social media content calendars, and ad campaigns are left in limbo, with no one possessing the knowledge or access to manage them. The carefully constructed marketing system quickly crumbles, leading to problems.
Organizations typically respond with initial shock, followed by escalating panic as the lack of a contingency plan becomes apparent. Leadership scrambles to assess the damage and understand which marketing efforts are at risk. Despite their best intentions, the departing marketer cannot effectively transfer years of knowledge in a short handover period. The consequences worsen daily: website updates are neglected, social engagement declines, and the sales pipeline dries up.
What Not to Do
If your only marketer suddenly quits, don’t rush to post a job opening. Hiring hastily without evaluating your needs often results in choosing the wrong candidate and setting unrealistic expectations for their replacement. Additionally, avoid assigning marketing tasks to someone in another department. Marketing requires specific skills and strategic knowledge that can’t be improvised.
What to Do Instead
Start by creating a complete inventory of all your marketing resources. Assemble all team members who have interacted with marketing and document every active marketing channel, campaign, tool, subscription, and recurring activity. Collaborate with IT to identify and secure access to all marketing-related accounts, ensuring passwords are recovered or reset before the departing employee’s credentials are deactivated. Then, prioritize these activities based on their direct revenue impact—which ones generate leads, nurture prospects, or directly drive sales? Assign temporary ownership of these high-priority items to appropriate team members, even if it’s only for basic maintenance.
Proactive and transparent communication across the organization is also essential. Inform your sales team about potential impacts on lead generation activities. Update executives on the temporary reduction in marketing capabilities and your plan to address it. This approach prevents frustration and sets realistic expectations while you work towards a permanent solution for your marketing needs.
When your only marketer leaves, it’s a chance to rethink and strengthen your marketing strategy. Consider if having just one person in charge of marketing was the best choice, or if it caused problems you didn’t see at first.
Think about other options that offer more stability. A fractional CMO who manages a team of specialized contractors can offer high-level strategy and ensure that if one person leaves, everything else won’t fall apart. Marketing agencies can offer advantages by providing specialized expertise across multiple disciplines, a team-based approach, scalability, and insights that can strengthen your marketing function beyond what any single individual could provide.
No matter what you decide, make sure your marketing operations have backups from now on. Train your team so that everyone has basic knowledge of different marketing areas. Your content writer should know a little about your email marketing platform, and your social media manager should be able to make simple changes to the website. Create standard operating procedures (SOPs) with step-by-step instructions for the most important processes.
Technology can also help your marketing stay consistent. Invest in good customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation platforms that organize customer data and campaign information.
To avoid repeatedly experiencing the crisis of losing your only marketer, take preventative measures now, even with your current marketing structure.
Develop an offboarding plan for your marketing function that includes a detailed transfer of knowledge document with platforms, passwords, campaigns, and strategies. Make updating this document quarterly, treating it as essential business documentation.
Conduct periodic audits of your marketing tech stack and workflows to identify single points of failure and documentation gaps. Ask questions like: Could someone else run your email campaigns if needed? Is your social media scheduling accessible to more than one person?
Finally, it’s crucial to maintain relationships with potential marketing partners like agencies, freelancers, or fractional CMOs who understand your industry. These connections can provide a safety net in case of emergencies, ensuring that you always have trusted partners who can step in with some familiarity with your business.
Implementing these preventative measures transforms marketing continuity from an overlooked vulnerability into a strategic strength supporting sustainable business growth.
The unexpected loss of your sole marketing employee is a frequently overlooked business continuity risk. This departure can abruptly disrupt your company’s market visibility, lead generation, and customer communications. However, this challenge presents a unique opportunity to restructure your marketing operations with increased resilience and strategic depth.
Losing a marketing employee does not have to mean losing marketing progress. Your business can turn this common issue into a strength by thoughtfully evaluating the situation, strategically adapting, and focusing on sustainable processes. This will ensure that when the next employee leaves—in marketing or any other critical area—your business will be ready and confident, knowing its success is bigger than any one person.
Responsify can help future-proof your marketing. Whether expanding your team, outsourcing key tasks, or leveraging automation, investing in the proper support ensures consistent growth, stronger branding, and better results. Get a fresh perspective on your marketing with a free assessment today.
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