Your Technical Marketer
Everyone in your team can plan it. I'm the one who can build it.
Does any of this sound painfully familiar?
Most marketing teams have everything they need. Almost. What’s usually missing is someone who sits across marketing, sales and technology: someone who listens to the problem first, then finds the right solution, whether that’s technology, reporting, process or something else entirely. If any of this sounds like your day-to-day, start with the free Health Check.
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Single source of truth
They don't tie out. Your CFO has noticed.
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ROAS story
You can't audit any of them properly.
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Tool sprawl
You've bought three new tools this year. Two aren't integrated. One nobody uses.
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iOS and consent mode
GA4 doesn't match Shopify, Stripe or your CRM. Nobody trusts the dashboard.
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Half your stack was built by a chatbot.
Tracking, workflows and dashboards are going live faster than anyone can review them. It all looks finished. Nobody has checked whether the numbers are right.
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True CAC
You're scaling paid spend across Meta, Google and TikTok, and every platform takes credit for the same conversion.
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CRM, email, ad accounts
Audience syncs break. Suppression lists fail.
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AI on the board agenda
You're nervous about brand, data and IP risk.
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Personalisation, CRO, retention
All on the roadmap. None have shipped because dev keeps deprioritising them.
I’m the person your team is missing.
I’m Rick Duncan. Since 1999, I’ve spent my time inside marketing teams at some of the most innovative consumer brands around – Glasses Direct, Castle Trust Bank, Discount Supplements, not as a consultant looking in but as the person doing the work. That background shapes everything about how I operate now.
What I actually do is get inside a business, understand it properly, and figure out what’s genuinely holding the marketing back. Sometimes that’s a technical problem. Sometimes it’s a process problem. Sometimes it’s a measurement problem that everyone has been too close to see. I find it, I say it plainly, and then I fix it – working with the team that’s already there rather than around them.
The tools have changed. The gap hasn’t. Your team can generate a tracking plan, a workflow or a dashboard in an afternoon now, and most of it looks right. Knowing which parts aren’t, and which of them actually matter, is still the job. That’s what my experience buys you.
That last part matters. I’m not interested in building things your team can’t run without me. Part of what I do is help the people inside the business get better at the things they need to get better at. I leave every engagement with the team in a stronger position than I found them.
You work directly with me. Where specialist resource is needed – development, data engineering, specific platform work – I bring in partners I’ve worked with for years. You always know who’s doing what. Not sure where to start? Start free.
Health Check
Three minutes. Free. No conversation required. A scorecard across five areas: measurement, reporting, technology, efficiency and AI readiness. You get a score, a breakdown by area, and a straight read on where you stand.
Surgery
Twenty minutes. Free. No pitch. Tell me what's going on and I'll give you an honest read on what's actually costing you money, what can wait, and whether it's worth paying anyone to fix.
Four Ways to Work With Me
The Diagnostic
A complete written audit of what's holding your marketing back: tracking, attribution, technology, data flows and reporting, with a costed roadmap to fix it. Available as a full audit or focused on a single area.
Foundation Build
Rebuild the foundations your marketing runs on: tracking architecture, attribution, reporting, CRM and data integration, tooling and governance. Built to enterprise standards and designed to last.
Embedded Fractional Operator
I become the technical operator inside your team, owning the technology, data and measurement layer of your marketing. Part of your team, invested in your success, without the full-time hire.
AI Enablement for
Marketing
Get your team using AI properly and safely. Tooling, workflows, training, brand and data risk assessment, all built on the right foundations rather than bolted onto a broken stack.
Real brands. Measurable outcomes
High Wycombe Escape Rooms, a franchise of Know Escape, faced significant challenges as the excitement around escape room experiences began to wane post-pandemic. While the business initially flourished due to pent-up demand following lockdowns, economic pressures such as inflation and rising cost of living began to impact discretionary spending on luxury entertainment.
Trusted by marketing leaders across these businesses
What clients actually say
Head Of Marketing - Glasses Direct
Inside marketing teams since 1999. Long before any of this had a name.
I started with a BBC Micro and a Spectrum 128k+2. Built my first commercial website during the infancy of web marketing. Worked alongside Lycos, Yahoo and Google as they shaped what digital became. Spent the last 25 years inside marketing teams at consumer brands, financial services and B2B businesses, leading the technical and commercial side through every major shift, from the first wave of SEO to the GA4 transition to today’s AI-first stack.
What hasn’t changed: every marketing team needs someone who can identify the real problem and build the right solution to it. That’s still the gap I fill.
→ Read the full story Honest answers to the questions you're probably asking.
Are you an agency?
No. I am a solo operator who works directly with you on every engagement. Where a project needs specialist resource, such as development work, data engineering or platform-specific expertise, I bring in trusted partners I have worked with for years. You always know who is doing what and why. No account managers, no juniors, no markup on third-party time.
Why wouldn't I just use AI for this?
Who do you work with?
Do you replace existing marketing teams?
No – and that’s an important distinction. I work alongside the team that’s already there, not instead of them. Most of the businesses I work with have good people in place who are being held back by gaps in infrastructure, measurement or technical capability that nobody inside has had the time or the specific experience to fix. My job is to close those gaps and, in doing so, make the people around me more effective at what they’re already good at.
Where a business doesn’t yet have a marketing team, or is in the process of building one, I can help with that too – defining the roles you actually need, helping you recruit for them, and making sure whoever comes in has the foundations they need to hit the ground running.
Either way, I’m not here to make myself indispensable. The measure of a good engagement is whether the business is stronger when I step back than it was when I arrived.
What does it cost?
How is this different from hiring a full-time person?
A senior marketing technology hire at this level typically costs £80,000 to £120,000 a year in salary alone, before benefits, employer NI, recruitment fees and the three to six months it takes to find the right person. With me you get senior expertise from day one, no recruitment risk, no notice period and no ongoing overhead once the work is done. For most businesses at this stage it is a significantly better use of budget.
How do engagements typically start?
How long does a typical engagement last?
It depends on the work. A Diagnostic is two to three weeks. A Foundation Build is typically around 90 days. An embedded Fractional engagement has a six month minimum, which is usually enough time to see real, measurable change. I do not do open-ended rolling retainers with no defined outcome.
What if we just need help with one specific problem?
How quickly can you start?
Usually within two to three weeks of agreeing terms. If something is genuinely urgent, ask. I will always be straight with you about what is realistic.
Do you work with businesses outside the UK?
Yes. Most of my work is delivered remotely so geography is rarely a barrier. I am based in the UK and work primarily with UK businesses, but I have worked with European and US-based teams where the engagement is the right fit.
What's the first step?
Take the free Health Check. Three minutes, no conversation required, and you get a score and a breakdown by area straight away. If you’d rather just talk, book a free Surgery instead: twenty minutes, tell me what’s going on, and I’ll give you an honest read on what’s actually costing you money and what can wait. No pitch, no deck, no obligation.