External Marketing Lead | Head of Marketing for Hire

When you need an external Head of Marketing

Your marketing lead has resigned. The search for a successor takes months. Someone has to run the team, the channels and the agencies in the meantime.
Parental leave or a sabbatical is coming. You need a replacement for a defined period, and a clean handover back at the end.
The team is there, the lead is not. Capable people without direction. I lead them, train them, and give the department structure.
The position has never existed. Marketing sits on the founder's desk. I set up the department and the people to run it.

What I do when I take over

I take over as your marketing lead. Remote, part-time or close to full-time, for as long as the mandate requires. What happens next depends on what you want:

Keep it running. Campaigns, budgets, agencies and reporting continue without interruption.
Fix and improve. Weak channels get rebuilt, contracts get reviewed, the team gets trained on real campaigns.
Build from scratch. Structures, processes, channels and people, for a company that never had a marketing department.
Prepare my own replacement. I hire and train your permanent marketing lead, hand over, and leave.

All of it in online marketing and e-commerce: SEO, Google Ads, social media, email & CRM, shop and marketplaces. I do not do PR, press or TV.

Availability

I take on a maximum of two external-marketing-lead mandates in parallel. Currently accepting inquiries for new mandates.

Request a call

Fit

Who this is for

An honest filter is cheaper for both of us than a wasted first meeting.

This is for you if

Your head of marketing is leaving, on parental leave, or the role has never been filled.
The team needs direction now and a permanent hire is months away.
You want somebody to own the numbers, the agencies and the budget, not to advise from the side.
You would rather build a department properly once than patch it repeatedly.
You want AI-native delivery without hiring for it separately.

This is probably not for you if

You need broad execution capacity rather than leadership.
You want the role filled full time and on site every day.
The mandate has no authority attached, which makes owning the outcome impossible.
You are looking for the cheapest available option.

Credibility

Who takes over

Seventeen years of marketing and e-commerce work, including holding this role before rather than only consulting on it. That distinction matters here more than anywhere else in the menu: leading a department is a different job from advising one.

AI-native delivery is the difference in practice, not in the job title. The same mandate gets discharged with materially less overhead because the research, production and reporting layers are automated where it is safe to automate them.

Capacity is deliberately capped so that no mandate gets the leftovers of another. Availability is worth asking about early.

What is not on offer: guaranteed results, a full-time presence, and a handover that leaves your team dependent on me.

Placeholder

A real client example belongs here: the situation on arrival, what was taken over, and the state of the function at handover. Left empty on purpose rather than filled with an invented story.

Hiring an external marketing lead: the questions I get asked

How fast can you take over?

As fast as the situation requires. The best case is a short, structured handover with your departing lead. Where that is not possible, I work my way in through the accounts, the data and the team. Ongoing campaigns do not stop in either case.

Can you lead a team that is used to someone else?

That is the core of the job. I have led marketing teams for 17+ years, across several industries and mostly remotely. Your team keeps its structure and its routines; my job is to keep it performing, not to reinvent it.

Will you restructure everything?

Only if you ask for it. The default in an interim mandate is continuity: keep things running, fix what is demonstrably broken, and hand the department back in good order. Rebuilding is a separate conversation, and it is your call.

How flexible is the engagement?

Monthly retainer, days per week agreed to fit the workload, notice measured in weeks. If the parental leave extends or the successor search takes longer, the mandate extends with it.

What happens when the mandate ends?

A documented handover: to your returning lead, to a newly hired successor, or to the person on your team I trained for the role. Everything I set up stays with you. Then I leave.

Need an external marketing lead?

Tell me your situation in a call and you will get a straight answer: what I would take over, from when, and what it costs.