The solo marketing team playbook that actually works in 2025

Being a small or one-person marketing team is exciting yet stressful. You control your company’s messaging and brand direction, but can’t do everything alone.

Digital marketing is complex, requiring mastery of many trades. Fortunately, we’ve identified effective strategies for budget-conscious business owners who can’t afford a full marketing team.

The key is strategic prioritisation and knowing when to use outsourced marketing for specific tasks. Our experience with small marketing departments shows that successful teams focus on results-driven channels and create delegation systems.

Whether you need a fractional team for specialised skills or a virtual team for routine tasks, this playbook will help you maximise your impact.

Build a simple but strong marketing strategy

The foundation of any successful marketing effort starts with a clear plan. Research shows that marketers who set goals are [377% more likely to report success] than those who don’t. As a small marketing team, your ability to create a focused strategy will determine whether you thrive or merely survive.

Set SMART goals aligned with business outcomes

SMART goals provide structure to marketing efforts, enabling measurable results. They are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Research shows 52% believe SMART goals enhance effectiveness, and 48% of goal-setters write their goals down, turning vague ideas into concrete plans.

Marketing goals should align with broader business targets. For example, if an organisation aims to increase revenue by a specific percentage, marketing objectives should detail how to generate qualified leads to support that growth.

Choose your core marketing channels

With limited resources, selecting the right marketing channels is crucial. 71% of small business owners manage their marketing, yet 49% struggle with budgeting and 47% with tactics.

Instead of being on every platform, focus on where your target audience is. The top marketing channels with increased investment in 2025 include:

• Website/blog/SEO
• Paid social media
• Organic social media
• Video marketing

For small businesses, cost-effective channels are organic search, public relations, co-marketing, organic social media, and email marketing. Master one channel before expanding to avoid spreading resources too thin and to build engagement methodically.

Create a quarterly roadmap

A marketing roadmap outlines your high-level plan and guides daily activities. Unlike annual plans that quickly become outdated, quarterly roadmaps provide flexibility for adjustments based on market changes. To create an effective quarterly roadmap:

• Define quantifiable goals aligned with company objectives
• Break down goals with specific tasks and channel-specific targets
• Set clear ownership and deadlines for each task
• Create a visual representation of your strategy
• Update your roadmap regularly as tasks progress.

Additionally, schedule monthly reviews to track progress and ensure alignment with business objectives. This structured approach helps avoid common pitfalls faced by solo marketers, such as lacking clear priorities or measurable outcomes.

Create a content and social media strategy

Content is the fuel that brings customers to your business, you cannot do marketing without creating one form of content or the other.

Creating effective content requires structure and organisation, especially when you’re handling marketing solo. Without a systematic approach, you’ll find yourself scrambling for ideas last minute or posting inconsistently.

Use templates to plan weekly and monthly content

Content templates streamline your workflow and ensure consistency across your marketing efforts.

Research shows that content plan templates make it possible to track ideas from brainstorming through publishing while aligning with business goals.

Using templates ensures you’re not recreating the wheel each week. Several effective template options exist for solo marketers:

• Editorial Calendar Templates – Help structure content themes and publishing schedules
• Content Mapping Templates – Connect your content to specific audience needs
• Social Media Calendars – Plan posts across multiple platforms simultaneously

These planning tools are particularly valuable for one-person teams since they reduce decision fatigue.

HootSuite’s social media content calendar, for instance, incorporates space for five popular platforms and features an evergreen content library tab for reusable content ideas.

Monthly content planning allows you to align with broader marketing objectives, whereas weekly planning helps you stay agile with timely topics.

Furthermore, planning in advance creates space for quality work rather than rushed, last-minute content creation.

Growth Bubbles helps Concierge clients bulk publish content to their social and web channels, saving business owners and marketers the hassle of tinkering scheduling tools every morning.

Include keywords, personas, and funnel stages

Effective keyword research identifies marketing trends and audience interests, removing guesswork about focus topics.

By analysing keywords for popularity, search volume, and intent, you can answer audience questions.

Buyer personas are vital, offering a validated sketch of your target market. Detailed personas form the basis for relevant content tailored to audience segments, enhancing engagement and conversion.

Your content strategy should address different funnel stages:

• Awareness – Blog posts, infographics, videos to attract potential customers
• Consideration – Ebooks, whitepapers, case studies for evaluation
• Decision – Product demos, testimonials, FAQs to aid decisions
• Retention – Newsletters and success stories to engage existing customers

This structured approach ensures each content piece serves a purpose in your marketing strategy, keeping efforts focused on efficiently moving prospects through the customer journey.

Create a task planner

Effective task management separates struggling marketers from thriving ones. A well-structured task planner prevents important activities from falling through the cracks and helps you focus on what truly drives results.

Make a list of tasks to be completed weekly and monthly

Successful marketers break down their workload into manageable time frames. For weekly planning, focus on tasks that maintain momentum:

• Create new landing page for upcoming campaign
• Update automation sequence
• keep website content updated
• Track marketing spend against budget to fine-tune spending and extract maximum value
• Check in with sales teams to gather crucial customer insights
• Measure and analyse campaign performance to determine what worked and didn’t
• Update reports as campaigns progress rather than scrambling at month-end
• Review social media analytics and plan content accordingly

Monthly tasks typically involve more strategic thinking:

• Reassess your value proposition to ensure relevance as customer needs evolve
• Complete competitor analysis to identify market gaps
• Review your marketing plan and adjust as needed
• Dedicate time for training and up-skilling as marketing technology evolves
• Analyse monthly KPIs to determine performance
• One-one-one check with your marketing task managers to identify bottlenecks and process improvement

Set deadlines for each task

Once you’ve identified your tasks, prioritise them based on their impact on revenue and goals. A simple yet effective approach involves:

1. Brainstorm everything without judgment first—get all tasks out of your head
2. Categorise tasks as deadline-driven, revenue-oriented, or to be delegated
3. Organise deadline-driven tasks chronologically, with soonest deadlines first
4. Assign realistic timeframes—overly aggressive deadlines often backfire

For each task, clearly identify how it connects to your chosen KPIs. This mapping ensures you’re spending time on activities that actually move the needle rather than busy work.

Identify one-off, recurring, and on demand basis tasks

Understanding task types helps you create systems and potentially automate repetitive work:

One-off tasks include special campaigns, new product launches, or competitive research. These require dedicated planning time but don’t repeat regularly.

Recurring tasks form the backbone of consistent marketing. These might be daily (social media engagement), weekly (performance reporting), monthly (newsletter distribution), or quarterly (strategy reviews). Track these systematically using project management tools like Asana, Trello, or Basecamp.

On-demand tasks arise unexpectedly, like responding to market changes or promotion opportunities. Leave buffer time in your schedule to handle these without derailing planned work.

External support like Growth Bubbles is also a great fix for this kind of tasks.

Project management software with recurring task capabilities will transform your efficiency by automating reminders and tracking deadlines.

Delegate your task execution

As your task list grows, delegation becomes the secret weapon in your solo marketing arsenal. After all, even the most organised marketers can’t execute everything themselves while maintaining strategic focus.

Outsource task execution to platforms like Growth Bubbles

Delegation gives you freedom to focus on high-impact priorities rather than being trapped in an endless cycle of task execution. Growth Bubbles, for instance, provides specialised services across key marketing verticals at a fixed monthly cost. Our team handle everything from WordPress management and on-page SEO changes to marketing automation and design—all for less than hiring a single in-house specialist.

When outsourcing, prioritise tasks that:

• Don’t require your specific expertise
• Follow repeatable steps
• Consume valuable time
• Require expertise for precision
• Sets you apart from your competition

Importantly, outsourcing helps you work on your business instead of in it. Many solopreneurs find themselves simply “owning a job” rather than building a scalable operation when they attempt to handle every task personally.

Automate where possible

Tools like Zapier and IFTTT create automated actions between essential applications, eliminating repetitive manual tasks.

With Zapier, you might automatically save email attachments to Google Drive or tweet blog posts upon publication.

Marketing automation platforms like Keap can help you:

• Attract and capture leads
• Nurture prospects through sales automation
• Create service automation for customer retention

The best automation creates an end-to-end customer experience while connecting your tech stack through integrations, eliminating manual data entry across platforms.

Growth Bubbles can also help you setup and manage Zapier automations as part of your task management activities – all at a fixed monthly plan.

Set up recurring reports and dashboards

To begin with, identify which metrics truly matter to your marketing objectives. Then create dashboards to organise related reports into one centralised view.

Tools like Looker Studio, Tableau, and Power BI help visualise your marketing data through charts and graphs.

However, before visualisation, ensure your data is properly aggregated and cleaned – this foundation determines the quality of your insights.

Repurpose and reuse your best content

Content repurposing multiplies your marketing impact without multiplying your workload.

For solo marketers, maximising every piece of content is essential to staying competitive without burning out.

Turn blog posts into videos or infographics

Visual content captures attention more effectively than text alone. According to research, turning blog posts into videos offers numerous benefits—videos simplify complex information and enhance the storytelling experience. To repurpose written content into video:

1. Identify high-performing blog posts with strong engagement
2. Create a video script from your written content
3. Develop a storyboard to map out visual elements
4. Record and edit your video
5. Add graphics, music, and subtitles for maximum impact

Likewise, infographics transform text-heavy information into digestible visuals. Almost every type of blog post can become an infographic. For effective transformation, condense your blog’s headers into sections and text into bullet points or icons.

Update old content with new data

Refreshing outdated blog posts can yield impressive results. In one case study, updating an old guide with new information and removing outdated sections increased traffic by 50% within just seven days. To effectively update existing content:

• Correct any spelling or grammar errors
• Improve keyword focus based on current search trends
• Add new research and data points
• Update broken links with better resources
• Enhance with multimedia elements

Bundle related posts into ebooks or guides

Your existing blog content contains the building blocks for comprehensive resources. By bundling related posts, you create valuable assets that educate customers and generate leads. This approach is both time and cost-effective—you’ve already done the research and writing.

When creating an ebook from blog content:

• Select posts sharing a common theme
• Edit for consistency in tone and flow
• Add new introductions and transitions between sections
• Include a table of contents for easy navigation
• Design a professional cover that captures attention

Ultimately, these repurposing strategies help your virtual marketing team extract maximum value from every piece of content you create.

See how Growth Bubbles can take care of your tasks to do list

Running out of hours in the day is the number one challenge for business owners running their own marketing.

That endless to-do list keeps growing while your strategic thinking time shrinks. This is where Growth Bubbles steps in as your marketing lifeline.

Growth Bubbles handles your everyday marketing tasks, letting you focus exclusively on high-impact priorities like strategy development and business growth.

Our solution tackles the common “operator mindset” trap—where you’re constantly stuck doing rather than directing—through three proven strategies:

1. Systematising
2. Delegating
3. Automating your marketing workload.

What makes outsourced marketing particularly valuable? During startup and high-growth phases, it’s often faster and cheaper to outsource staff or processes.

Business owners and solo marketers frequently face these common challenges:

• Stretching your team too thin risks costly employee turnover
• High-frequency, light-touch recurring projects often fall to the bottom of priority lists
• Technical marketing skills gaps create bottlenecks in execution

Growth Bubbles addresses these pain points by providing specialised experts across essential marketing domains—WordPress website management, marketing automation, design, content, and on-Page SEO—at a fraction of what hiring in-house would cost.

Our team effectively functions as an extension of your internal marketing department without the financial overhead.

What truly distinguishes our approach is flexibility. You can submit and manage tasks in different ways that work for most teams (email, dedicated client portal, or your existing project management tool. – like Asana, Trello, Monday etc), with 100% satisfaction guaranteed for each task.

Furthermore, our streamlined workflows with standardised technology stacks eliminate the time-consuming process of managing various resources and tasks.

Ultimately, this partnership transforms your marketing operations from reactive to proactive.

As a client noted after partnering with Growth Bubbles:

“It lifted a huge weight off my shoulders… I could finally concentrate on lead generation and new campaigns”.

Conclusion

Running a one-person marketing team presents unique challenges, yet success is achievable with strategic focus and smart delegation.

This playbook shows that a simple, effective marketing strategy is your foundation.

SMART goals aligned with business outcomes turn vague aspirations into concrete plans, while core channels prevent resource diffusion.

Task planning is the backbone of efficient marketing operations. Your weekly and monthly planning templates, with proper prioritisation, ensure nothing falls through the cracks, maintaining consistency in content creation and social media efforts.

Delegation is a powerful tool in your solo marketing arsenal. Automation, outsourcing, and efficient reporting systems multiply your impact without increasing hours, allowing you to focus on strategy and growth.

Use Concierge Bubbles to scale your marketing operations without burning through your budget.