Your Technical Marketer
Everyone in your team can plan it. I'm the one who builds 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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AI on the board agenda
You're expected to have a plan. Nobody's checked if the data would support one.
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Single source of truth
They don't tie out. Finance, marketing and the platforms each report a different number.
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Nobody owns it
Three agencies, a dev team and a freelancer. Everyone reports success. Nobody's accountable.
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The board question
Someone asks what last quarter's spend delivered. It takes two weeks and three spreadsheets.
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Built by a chatbot
Tracking, workflows and dashboards built faster than anyone could review them.
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True CAC
You're scaling across Meta, Google and TikTok. Each claims the same conversion.
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iOS and consent mode
GA4 doesn't match Shopify, Stripe or your CRM, and nobody trusts the dashboard.
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Dev and marketing
Marketing asks, dev deprioritises, and each side thinks the other is the problem.
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Tool sprawl
You've bought three new tools this year. Two aren't integrated. One nobody uses.
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 an AI agent 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, and it’s why the AI enablement work starts with an assessment rather than a tool.
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
Twenty questions, plus a few quick ones about your business. Around five minutes. Free. No conversation required. You get a score out of 100, a breakdown across five areas including AI readiness, and a straight read on where you stand.
Take the Free Health Check →
Surgery
Twenty minutes. Free. No pitch. Tell me what's going on and I'll give you an honest read on what's costing you money, what can wait, and what's worth paying anyone to fix. Bring your Health Check score if you've taken it.
Book a free Surgery →
Three Ways to Work With Me
Most people start with a free Health Check or a Surgery. Once we know what’s actually going on, these are the ways we take it further. Fixed scopes, outcome-based delivery, no day-rate billing.
AI Enablement for Marketing
Three phases, starting with an AI Readiness Assessment of what your marketing setup can actually carry today. Then the foundations work to fix whatever is holding it back, then the AI itself, built on data you can trust. Start with the assessment and stop whenever it makes sense.
See how it works →
Fractional Director
I sit inside your team as the senior person accountable for the whole picture: your agencies, your developers, your data and your marketing technology, held to one plan. And where something needs building, I build it rather than briefing someone else.
Book a Surgery →
Build and Delivery
For teams who already know what they need. Tracking architecture, attribution, CRM and data integration, reporting, and website builds with GTM, GA4 and consent specified before a line of code is written. Documented properly, built to outlast whoever runs it.
Book a Surgery →
Real brands. Measurable outcomes
Ethical Angel faced a formidable challenge: introducing and establishing its unique service within the competitive corporate landscape with no direct competition. Our mission was to create a scalable, measurable, and cost-effective growth strategy that not only introduced but firmly established Ethical Angel in the market.
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 years since 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.
I still build. That’s not nostalgia — it’s why nobody in the chain can tell me something can’t be done when it can.
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?
I already have agencies and a dev team. What would you actually do?
Hold them to one plan. Most businesses at this stage don’t have a capability problem, they have an accountability problem: three suppliers each doing their bit competently, no single person responsible for whether the whole thing works, and a leadership team getting different answers depending on who they ask. I’m that person. I’m not there to replace anyone, I’m there so you only have to ask the question once.
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.
Why wouldn't I just use AI for this?
Why does the data need fixing before we do anything with AI?
What if the AI Readiness Assessment says we're not ready?
What does it cost?
Build and Delivery is quoted on the brief.
Everything is fixed-fee rather than day-rate, so you know exactly what you’re investing before we start rather than watching a clock. Book a Surgery and I’ll give you a clear indication in that first conversation.
How do engagements typically start?
Where it’s a Fractional engagement or a specific build, there’s no assessment. We scope it in the conversation and get on with it.
And if a Surgery tells us the problem is small and obvious, I’ll say so and you can go and fix it yourself.
Do we have to do all three phases?
What if we just need help with one specific problem?
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 long does a typical engagement last?
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. Around five 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.
Something isn’t working. Let’s find out what.
