What Does a One-Day-a-Week Marketing Manager Actually Do?
When I say I work with businesses as a one-day-a-week marketing manager, people sometimes assume that means I pop in, write a few social media posts, maybe have a quick look at Google Analytics, and off I go.
And yes, sometimes social media is part of it.
But that is only one small piece of the job.
A proper one-day-a-week marketing role is much broader than that. It is about keeping the marketing moving when the business owner or team is too busy doing the actual work of running the business.
It is the website, the content, the ads, the SEO, the customer journey, the reviews, the reputation, the follow-up, the little fixes, the bigger picture, and all the bits in between.
A real example from one client day
To show what that looks like in real life, here is what one Tuesday looked like for one client.
Website maintenance
I updated plugins on the WordPress website, because glamorous or not, the website needs to work. There is no point sending people to a site that is slow, broken, outdated or vulnerable.
Content and SEO
I wrote a blog post and added internal links to the relevant service pages. This is one of those small SEO jobs that makes a real difference. It helps Google understand what the content is about, which services it connects to, and which pages are most important on the site. It also helps people move from useful information to the service they might actually need.
Visibility and social proof
I shared the blog across social media, LinkedIn and Google Business Profile, because publishing something on the website is only the first step. You still need to help people find it. Sharing it in the right places gives the content more visibility and adds social proof, because people can see the business is active, helpful and showing up consistently across the platforms they already use.
B2B outreach
I sent approx 50 LinkedIn connection requests with personalised notes as part of a B2B outreach push for a new service. LinkedIn is particularly useful for business-to-business marketing, because it lets you get in front of the right people in a professional context, without waiting and hoping they stumble across the service themselves.
Google Ads
I optimised Google Ads because ads are not a set-and-forget job. Search terms, budgets, assets, landing pages, policy issues and performance all need checking. Otherwise, money can quietly disappear on clicks that are doing very little.
Reputation management
I responded to Google Reviews, including a negative one, because reputation management is marketing too. People are not only looking at what customers say about you. They are looking at how you handle feedback when things are not perfect. A good response can do a lot to reassure the next person who is deciding whether to get in touch.
And that was one day.
Not a big launch day.
Just a normal Tuesday.
And this is the sort of work that often does not get done when nobody has clear ownership of marketing.
That is the bit people often miss. Marketing is not one single task. It is not just posting on LinkedIn, writing a blog or running ads. It is how all of those things join up.
A blog should help with SEO, but it should also send people towards the right service.
A service page should explain the offer, but it should also make the next step obvious.
A Google Ad should bring in the right traffic, but the page it lands on needs to do its job.
A review response should reassure future customers, not just answer the person who left the review.
A LinkedIn newsletter should not exist for the sake of being busy on LinkedIn. It should support the wider business goal.
That is where a one-day-a-week marketer (me!) can be useful. You get someone who can see the bigger picture, but also gets stuck into the practical jobs that need doing.
They keep the marketing moving. They join the dots. They spot the gaps.
They make sure the important jobs do not sit at the bottom of someone else’s to-do list for six months.
And for many small businesses, that is the difference between saying “we really should do more marketing” and having marketing that is actually working.
Need someone to keep your marketing moving without hiring full-time? I work with businesses as a one-day-a-week marketing manager, helping with websites, SEO, content, Google Ads, social media and the bits in between.
Book here and I’ll see you next Tuesday?!