Your Technical Marketer
Marketing co-pilot. Builder. Straight talker
Invested in your brand, finding what's actually holding your marketing back - and leaving your team more capable than I found them.
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, we should talk.
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Your "single source of truth" is three dashboards.
Your "single source of truth" is three dashboards that don't tie out. Your CFO has noticed.
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Every agency tells a different ROAS story.
Every agency tells a different ROAS story. You can't audit any of them properly.
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Tool sprawl with nothing connected.
You've bought three new tools this year. Two aren't integrated. One nobody uses.
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iOS and consent mode wrecked your tracking.
iOS, cookies and consent mode wrecked your tracking. GA4 doesn't match Shopify, Stripe or your CRM. Nobody trusts the dashboard.
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Your true CAC keeps moving.
Your true CAC keeps moving. 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 and ad accounts aren't connected.
CRM, email and ad accounts aren't talking to each other. Audience syncs break. Suppression lists fail.
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AI is on the board agenda.
AI is on the board agenda. You're nervous about brand, data and IP risk.
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Personalisation, CRO and retention are stuck.
Personalisation, CRO and retention are on the roadmap. None of them have shipped because dev keeps deprioritising them.
If you nodded at three or more of these, you’re exactly who I built this for.
I’m the person your team is missing.
I’m Rick Duncan. I’ve spent 26 years 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.
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.
Four Ways to Work With Me
Most engagements start with a Diagnostic. From there, we figure out what you actually need. Fixed scopes, outcome-based delivery, no day-rate billing.
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.
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 - Qbtech
26 years inside marketing teams. 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 two and a half decades 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.
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.
Who do you work with?
Primarily growth-stage brands with real marketing spend and a team that has outgrown what they have, typically £10m to £150m revenue with £1m or more in annual marketing investment. That is usually B2C and D2C businesses, but also B2B SaaS and commercial services where the problem is technology, measurement or go-to-market delivery. If you are not sure whether you are a fit, book a call and we will work it out in the first ten minutes.
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?
It depends on the scope, and I’ll always be upfront about it. Most engagements are fixed-fee rather than day-rate, so you know exactly what you’re investing before we start rather than watching a clock. The Diagnostic is the natural starting point for most new clients and is scoped based on the size and complexity of your business. Book a call and I’ll give you a clear indication of what the right engagement would cost within that first conversation.
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?
Most start with a Diagnostic: a fixed-fee audit of what is holding your marketing back, with a costed roadmap at the end. It takes two to three weeks, involves minimal time from your team, and gives you a clear picture of what needs fixing and in what order. From there you decide what happens next. There is no obligation to continue working with me after the Diagnostic.
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?
That is what the Focused Diagnostic is for. Rather than auditing everything, we go deep on one area: paid attribution, CRM infrastructure, reporting, AI readiness, whatever is causing the most pain right now. You get a clear answer and a costed fix in a shorter timeframe and at a lower investment than the full Diagnostic.
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?
Book a 30-minute call. Tell me what is going on. I will tell you honestly whether I am the right fit and what I think the right next step looks like. No pitch, no deck, no obligation.