Most small-company marketing job ads ask one person to do five jobs, which is why so few people fit. This issue gives you one number, a 30-minute way to split the job ad, and the pattern we see most often in our own work.
Who Owns Growth? Issue 3. By Sagar Pratap, Principal Consultant and Fractional CMO, Dizital Connect.
Welcome back to Who Owns Growth?, a short note every Monday from Dizital Connect for founders and leaders of growing businesses: one number worth knowing, one fix you can make in under an hour, and one thing we see in our own work.
The Number: 46%
In NFIB's April 2026 jobs report, 46% of US small business owners said they had few or no qualified applicants for the roles they were trying to fill. Marketing roles have an extra handicap: the job description. Most small-company marketing ads ask one person to be a strategist, a designer, a video editor, a copywriter and an ads manager. Very few people are good at all five, and the ones who are don't usually apply for a single salary.
The Fix: split the job ad (30 minutes)
Take your current or last marketing job description and sort every line into five columns: strategy, design, video, writing and paid ads. Then, next to each column, write how many hours a week that work really needs.
Most businesses find one or two columns are steady, full-time work, and the rest are a few days a month. Hire for the steady part. Cover the rest with specialists who do that one thing well, and put one person in charge of the whole plan.
From the Desk: the busy marketer
One of the most common situations we walk into is a capable first marketer who is busy all day and has little to show for it in the pipeline. They're posting on six platforms, redesigning the website, editing videos and running ads, each at half strength because there's only one of them. When we ask who sets their targets, the answer is usually the founder, when there's time.
The marketer isn't the problem. The job was designed for five people and handed to one, with nobody above it owning the plan. If you're deciding who should own that plan, we compared the options, and what each costs, in Agency, Freelancer or Fractional CMO: Who Should Own Your Marketing?
Get the 90-day plan
If you'd like the 90-day plan we run with clients, reply PLAN or comment PLAN on our LinkedIn post, and we'll send it.
Sagar Pratap and the Dizital Connect team
Who Owns Growth? is the Dizital Connect newsletter for founders and leadership teams who want growth they can measure. Previous issue: Issue 2: The Missing Owner.
Sources
- NFIB, NFIB Jobs Report, April 2026.
