Marketing Strategy
Are You A Marketing “Inbetweener”?

This article explores the phenomenon of the marketing inbetweener. This refers to those companies who want to market themselves better but don’t want to invest significantly in the “dark art” that is marketing.
Running a business is tough. Unless you have set your own business up from scratch, you will have no idea how tough it is to build momentum. It can take a while (months or even years) before your income starts to match the comfortable salary you left behind. So when thoughts turn to growth, and scaling up your business to increase your income, it comes with challenges.
When should a business invest in marketing?
Ideally a business will invest in marketing from the start – after all marketing is about building your profile and attracting new enquiries that will hopefully convert into paying customers (and you need these from day one). And to a certain degree most start-ups will invest in marketing. They will get an online presence, create some literature, post some content on social media and do some networking. But then they get busy, and the activity slows….to a stop.
Most businesses don’t have much in the way of resources in the early days and it is only when they start to generate a regular stream of income that they can consider bringing in outside marketing resource to support them. However, this is when a company will either invest whole-heartedly in marketing, or they will become a marketing “inbetweener”.
What is a marketing “inbetweener”?
So most business will realise that they need a continuous and structured approach to marketing. Some will engage with a marketing consultant, marketing agency or freelance marketing support to help them. Others will inwardly invest and recruit a full time marketing position (at varying levels) to help them grow the business. Others, however, will recognise the need for marketing activity, but not feel it justifies a full salary within the business. So what will they do?
Well, typically they will do one of two things. They will either assign “marketing” to someone who is already working within the business – alongside their existing day job. This is usually an existing administrative role, or a very junior role within the business (as they are usually good at social media). It is also not uncommon for it to be given to a family relation of the business owner. Alternatively they will recruit someone into the business with a hybrid role, which includes marketing.
These two types of scenarios are the marketing inbetweeners. They are, in their mind, investing in marketing, but they are not fully embracing marketing as its own function within the business. So what is the problem with this?

Issues with being a marketing inbetweener
One of the key issues with being a marketing inbetweener is that although you may have a resource to carry out activity, the chances are that they have not been classically trained in marketing.
This is the main issue. Many business owners regard marketing as just a series of tasks or activities to carry out, when it is a lot more involved than that. Without a clear marketing strategy in place, activities undertaken could just be wasting resources and not delivering the levels of financial returns that they should. The business may not even be tracking performance from marketing activity to measure this.
This is no fault of the person who has been tasked to carry out the work. They have never been trained in how to think like a marketer, create a solid marketing strategy for the business, nor put the mechanisms in place to track performance.
What ends up happening is that the business creates a lot of “noise” – but is it the right noise that will resonate with and encourage the correct target audience to profitably engage with your business and become a long-standing customer? Some businesses can spend years in this state of flux – and if results are OK they may not even consider that there could be a better way.
How to improve a marketing inbetweeners performance
So, if after ready this article you have identified that your business is probably a marketing inbetweener, then what can you do about it to improve your marketing performance.
Well there are four main options.
- Restructure your marketing function to bring in an experienced marketing manager.
- Work with an outsourced marketing consultant to create a marketing strategy for your business to guide your existing marketing resource.
- Invest in some long term marketing mentoring for your existing member of staff.
- Invest in some marketing training to increase their awareness and improve their all-round marketing skillset.
The above options are listed in order of investment level – so an experienced marketing manager may set you back north of £40K, whilst a consultant delivering a strategy may be £2-5K, a mentoring programme £1-2K, and there are online marketing programmes available for under £1K.
There is no right or wrong – it is just what works best for you and the long-term vision for your business. Remember if “you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always got”. If you are not 100% happy with the results that your marketing efforts are currently generating then you need to change something.


Ian Kirk
Founder at Opportunity Marketing
Ian is the founder of Opportunity Marketing marketing, with over 18 years of experience in successfully setting up marketing departments, creating marketing strategies and implementing these strategies across a wide number of SME companies in both the B2B and B2C sectors through a variety of channels.