01
Focused sessions
Marketing Readiness
Sharp, strategic sessions to answer the big questions: are you ready, and what marketer do you need?
£150–£200
For SaaS and tech founders about to make their first marketing hire
Most founders think they’re ready because they have a marketing problem.
I help you determine whether you’re actually ready to make a marketing hire successful — before you write the job ad.
Because even the perfect marketer will fail in a business that isn’t ready for them. And the right one, in a business that is, will get further than you expected — sooner.
25
years seeing marketing hires from both sides
80%
of first marketing hires fail within 12 months.
The uncomfortable truth? It’s often the environment that fails the marketer — not the other way around.
The readiness gap
Talent cannot compensate for foundations that aren’t there.
Most SaaS founders think hiring a marketer works the same way as hiring sales, ops or dev.
It doesn’t.
A marketer’s success depends on the systems and clarity in place around them, not just their talent. Without the right conditions, they’re stepping into chaos, with no map, no compass and no way to show progress.
- Clear business goals
- Realistic budgets
- Defined responsibilities
- Collaboration with sales, product + CS
- Feedback loops
- Measurement tools
- A 30/60/90 onboarding plan
And then founders blame the hire, when the environment was the problem.
Your business needs to be ready before your marketer arrives. That’s what I fix.
A problem is not the same as readiness
Urgency can make hiring feel like the obvious next step.
Growth has slowed. Sales are doing all the heavy lifting. Competitors seem more visible. The pressure to “do more marketing” is growing — perhaps from investors.
But a marketing problem and marketing readiness are two different things. One is urgency. The other is whether your business can actually support someone succeeding in the role.
It’s a natural assumption. In sales or engineering, “we need this function” and “we’re ready to hire for it” are usually the same moment. In marketing, they’re not.
Not because of capability. Because of readiness.
The question everyone else skips
Recruiters, job boards and most hiring advice start with:
“What marketer do you need?”
I start earlier:
“Is your business capable of supporting one?”
That’s a different conversation — about decision-making, clarity and what you’re actually ready to hand over.
Are you ready?
Are you set up for a marketing hire… or a £100k mistake?
Before you write a job description, speak to recruiters or start interviewing, find out how prepared your business is across five critical areas.
- 01Clarity & Strategy
- 02Role Definition
- 03Revenue & Customer Alignment
- 04Systems & Infrastructure
- 05Onboarding & Measurement
Get your personalised readiness score.
In just a few minutes, you’ll see where your foundations are strong and where your future marketing hire may need more support.
A low score isn’t a verdict, it’s a list, and most of it takes weeks. A high score is a forecast of how much you can get back from the hire you’re about to make.
£40k
to
£150k
What if you’re not ready?
A failed marketing hire costs more than a salary.
It costs 6 to 12 months of momentum, recruitment, onboarding and lost opportunity. It can quietly convince you that no one else can do this but you.
When the next hire inherits the same unstructured environment, you’re down two hires and further from ever stepping back.
The cost isn’t just financial. It’s the growth you never achieve, and the control you never get to hand over.
What if you are?
A ready business doesn’t just avoid a failed hire. It gets more out of the one it makes.
Picture two businesses hiring the same marketer, on the same salary, in the same month.
In the first, they spend eight weeks working out who owns what, hunting for numbers nobody keeps, and building a plan that gets stopped because nobody agreed what it was for.
In the second, they have the business goals on day one. They know what they own, what they don’t, and what success looks like at ninety days.
They start marketing in week one.
Same person. Same cost. The difference isn’t talent — it’s four months you didn’t lose, and everything that got built in them.
That’s what readiness actually buys: considerably more from a good hire.
What I do
I create the conditions for someone else to succeed at what you’ve been carrying alone.
Recruiters fill roles. They don’t prepare your business to make that role successful.
I partner with agencies rather than compete with them — they place the person, I make sure the person can thrive.
01
Define the marketing outcomes your business actually needs
02
Translate business goals into practical marketing objectives
03
Identify the right type of marketer for your business
04
Set budgets, expectations and KPIs
05
Build cross-department collaboration
06
Develop a clear onboarding + 90-day success plan
How we can work together
Choose the depth of support your business needs.
Every price is set against what it changes, not the hours it takes.
02
Flagship offer
1:1 Marketing Hire Sprint
A focused day building the complete foundation your marketer needs — for a fraction of a recruiter fee.
£3,500
03
Hands-on partnership
6-Week Integration Program
Tailored support to build your infrastructure properly over six weeks, with support throughout.
£7,500
04
Already hiring?
Recruitment Support
Advisory support through final interviews and the critical first 90 days.
£3,500
A mis-hire typically costs £40k–£150k. A recruiter can charge £18k+ simply to place someone, with no readiness guarantee. And a marketer who joins a ready business starts working in week one instead of month four — on the salary you were going to pay anyway.
UK based · globally experienced
Why me
I’ve been the marketer walking into the chaos. And the consultant called after it broke.
With nearly 25 years in marketing, as a PAYE hire, a department-builder and a consultant, I see nuances others overlook, particularly in fast-moving SaaS and tech businesses.
I’ve worked in five countries, run teams, integrated marketing into unprepared organisations and repaired dysfunctional setups. Most people offering hiring advice have only sat on one side of that desk.
Direct
Practical
Clear-eyed
Human
“People don’t fail in isolation. They fail inside systems that weren’t designed to support them.”
That’s not a theory I hold, it’s what 25 years on both sides of this has shown me.
“Annique was pivotal in helping us navigate the 2008 crash. She repositioned our offering, implemented systems to nurture client growth and internal efficiencies, and brought about interdepartmental collaboration. This enabled us to hold steady during the crash and recover quickly.”
Colin BrayManaging Director, Window Designs
tdc
A free 30-minute discovery call
You’re not just hiring a marketer. You’re deciding whether to let go.
And you shouldn’t work that out alone. We’ll talk through your situation, what to fix first if you’re not ready and whether working together makes sense. No pressure either way.