In modern B2B marketing, teams have been shrinking while expectations have ballooned. Campaigns need to land faster, content needs to be constant and measurement never stops.

Yet in thousands of smaller businesses, there is only one person tasked with doing it all. The solo marketer – part strategist, part designer, part copywriter, part data analyst – has quietly become the backbone of many B2B brands.

It is a role born from necessity. The economic uncertainty of recent years has hardened attitudes towards hiring. Many SMEs operate lean, seeing marketing as something that can be “covered” rather than to invest in.

When budgets tighten, one generalist can seem like a bargain: a single salary replacing what might once have been a team. With new tools, automation and AI promising to stretch human capacity, such decisions appear feasible. However, the day-to-day reality is much more complicated.

You’re a strategist one minute and a copywriter the next.

Amy Briggs, Justgood

In free text comments from Marketing Week’s State of B2B Marketing research, one lone marketer talks about being expected to be an expert in many different areas, as well as being required to cover for a non-existent sales team.

“This becomes more and more challenging as marketing channels become more and more fragmented, and technology moves at pace. It’s hard to know where to channel efforts,” they wrote.

This solo marketer is not alone. For one early career marketer, who asked to remain anonymous, the reality is “a constant juggle that never quite stops.” Despite only being in her 20s, she runs all marketing for a small recruitment company where, as she puts it, “everyone but me is sales”.

“I didn’t choose to be a solo marketer,” she says. “It was my first role out of university and I thought I’d be part of a small team. But it’s just me. I’m expected to do everything – content, SEO, campaigns, branding – and keep up with every new tool that comes out.”

Her week is filled with reactive tasks rather than strategy.

“It’s a lot of ‘Can you just?’ requests. Can you just make this brochure? Can you just update this? Can you just design that? None of it is quick, but there’s always the assumption that it is. It’s like playing whack-a-mole with priorities,” she explains.

“When it’s only you, you’re never really off. You can’t delegate and you can’t push back, because if you say no to a salesperson, it just doesn’t land well. So you end up doing everything, badly, just to keep the peace.”

B2B marketers on learning to say no in a ‘more with less’ world

Her company, a compact sales-driven organisation, prides itself on responsiveness.

“Basically everyone but me is a recruiter,” she says. “Fifteen salespeople and one marketer – it’s not a fair fight.”

The marketer explains the hardest part isn’t the workload, but the lack of understanding.

“You’re constantly having to educate people on what marketing actually does. They think it’s just about making things look nice or posting on LinkedIn,” she states.

“But that’s the easy bit. The hard part is planning, consistency, brand. And no one sees that because they’re not in it.”

The marketer has learnt to rely on tools to stay afloat, with ChatGPT becoming part of her workflow to write at speed, draft ideas and check tone.

“But it’s not a magic fix – it’s survival,” she admits.

Despite the grind, she has managed to find upsides in the amount she has been able to to learn early in her career.

“I’ve learned everything: SEO, analytics, content, event planning. That’s the upside – you become good at everything, even if you never stop. But would I choose it again? No. My next job will be in a team. You need people who get it,” she adds.

The balancing act

For others, the solo life is a deliberate choice because it offers freedom and flexibility.

Amy Briggs, who leads marketing at mid-sized manufacturing company Justgood, works part-time and relishes the autonomy.

“I went from a big team to being the first marketer they ever hired,” she says. “They’d used agencies before, but never had anyone in house. So I was building not just campaigns, but the concept of marketing itself.”

She describes her job as busy and varied.

“You’re a strategist one minute and a copywriter the next. I love the variety – it keeps things interesting – but it’s relentless. Most of my time is firefighting. There’s always something urgent, so there’s little space to step back,” she explains.

Unlike the anonymous solo marketer, Briggs’ colleagues are supportive even if they come from sales backgrounds.

“That’s a huge challenge in B2B. Leadership teams often think like salespeople. Marketing to them is just lead generation, not brand building. So the long-term stuff gets lost,” she notes.

Briggs, however, takes a philosophical view, pointing to the value of collaboration.

“It’s like trying to build a house with one wall and a roof, and hoping for the best,” she says. “You need all four walls working together – brand, comms, sales enablement, customer engagement – for it to hold.”

It’s a lot of ‘Can you just?’ requests…None of it is quick, but there’s always the assumption that it is. It’s like playing whack-a-mole with priorities.

Anonymous marketer

Still, she would not change her current situation given the choice, explaining she values the element of control and ability to clearly see the results of her work.

“There’s a pride in that and working part-time means I can balance it with family life. You learn to manage expectations and do what’s possible,” Briggs adds.

Head of marketing at law firm LMP Legal, Jen Green, shares this perspective. A veteran marketer of nearly 20 years, she left a corporate environment earlier this year for a smaller startup where she could operate solo.

“In my old job, we spent more time explaining what we were doing than actually doing it,” she says. “There were layers of sign-off and endless reporting. Here, I can make a decision in a day and just get on with it.”

For Green, the appeal is both personal and professional.

“I wanted more control over my time and fewer meetings that didn’t need to happen. Being solo gives me that. It’s flexible. I can work around my family and still deliver,” she explains.

Of course, autonomy does not mean ease.

“You have to be disciplined,” says Green. “If I don’t do something, it won’t happen. So you decide early what matters. You focus on the priorities and let go of the rest.”

Her first act upon joining her company was to cut. The business was posting across four platforms, “all inconsistently”. Green stopped three in order to focus on one. The ambition was to do less, better. In this sense, she describes her job as “half strategy, half doing”.

“You’re always switching between big picture thinking and execution. You can’t afford to just think; you have to deliver,” she adds.

While product marketing manager at Matthew Syed Consulting, Ruth Cawdron, did not seek out solo marketing, she has found her rhythm after years in larger teams. What she loves most about being a solo marketer is the autonomy.

“You have full ownership. When things go well, it’s because of you. Your fingerprints are on everything,” Cawdron explains.

She is pragmatic, however, explaining it is not possible to do everything, which means choices need to be made.

“When something new comes in, I ask: ‘Who can help? Can AI do it? Does it need doing now? That’s my survival system,’” says Cawdron.

“You don’t have people to delegate to, so you have to find your own ways of staying sane. But you also learn fast. You become adaptable, curious, better at prioritising.”

Doing more with even less

Solo marketing is bound up with wider structural changes going on in B2B. The lean-business mindset has collided with digital acceleration. Technology has, in theory, democratised capability.

One person can now run analytics, automation, design and content with minimal external help. Hybrid work and cost pressures have made it logical to hire one marketer instead of five.

But the cultural shift is just as significant. Flexibility has become a defining value for a generation of marketers, especially women balancing work and family. Green explains being a team of one offers “freedom with structure”, however, there are still risks to contend with.

“Companies think they’re saving money, but one person can’t do everything,” Briggs warns. “You need agency support or freelancers. Otherwise, something breaks.”

The tension between independence and exhaustion defines the solo marketer’s experience, as the workload rarely relents.

“You’re always doing,” adds Briggs. “The thinking time disappears.”

You don’t have people to delegate to, so you have to find your own ways of staying sane. But you also learn fast. You become adaptable, curious, better at prioritising.

Ruth Cawdron, Matthew Syed Consulting

Green refers to it as a constant balance between “strategic clarity and survival mode”, which means if you don’t set boundaries, you risk burnout. Cawdron frames the challenge as pattern recognition.

“You learn when the busy seasons hit. Event season, product season – it all comes in waves. You have to pace yourself. Some things just have to wait,” she states.

For the anonymous marketer, however, the peaks and troughs are less predictable.

“There’s no pattern,” she says. “It’s just constant. I’ve got a plan on paper, but I barely look at it. Every week something new comes up and suddenly it’s the priority.”

Briggs agrees that beyond the daily workload, there is the metal load solo marketers carry – as they hold all the information, plans and deadlines in their head.

“You’re never really off duty,” she notes.

B2B brands on using AI as a ‘creative sparring partner’

The relationship with sales – and by extension the rest of the business – is another friction point. In many B2B firms, sales leads and marketing follows.

“Marketing is still seen as a cost,” says Green. “If it doesn’t deliver results within a month, people panic.”

Briggs has learned to expect it. She explains leadership teams from sales backgrounds “think in short cycles”, which means marketers have to keep explaining why brand building takes time.

For the anonymous marketer, her working life feels like a daily negotiation.

“I’m surrounded by salespeople who don’t really get marketing. They want leads now. If I say something’s not in my plan, it sounds like I’m saying no to revenue,” she explains.

Cawdron, however, has found a middle ground. Acknowledging everyone has ideas for marketing, the trick is knowing which ones to take forward and involving people early so they feel ownership.

“It stops being ‘marketing versus sales.’ It becomes ‘us,’” she adds.

Making it work

Technology, particularly AI, has emerged as both safety net and accelerant. Every marketer we spoke to uses artificial intelligence daily, albeit cautiously.

While the anonymous marketer describes ChatGPT as “essential”, Green uses a mix of tools from Canva for design, to Runway for imagery and ElevenLabs for voiceovers. While Cawdron has set up an agent in Microsoft Copilot to find relevant government tenders, Briggs is more measured in her approach.

“AI’s brilliant for speed, but it can’t think for you. It doesn’t know your audience. It doesn’t know your tone. It’s great for clearing the decks, but it’s not strategy,” she explains.

There is clear consensus, however. AI keeps solo marketers afloat, but it cannot solve every problem or replace.

“It buys time, but the to-do list doesn’t get shorter,” says Green.

You’re always switching between big picture thinking and execution. You can’t afford to just think; you have to deliver.

Jen Green, LMP Legal

If AI lightens the load, networking sustains the spirit. In place of office camaraderie, solo marketers build their own communities.

“I’m part of the Mums in Marketing [MiMs] group,” says Green. “It’s a lifeline. You see what others are doing, you get inspired, you don’t feel so alone.”

A member of the same group, Briggs describes MiMs as her “go-to network space” if she wants to sense check something or get an opinion from someone within the industry. She also relies on events for perspective.

“When you don’t have a marketing team, you find one elsewhere,” she says. “It’s not about selling yourself, it’s about having people who understand the challenges.”

Cawdron meets monthly with other solo marketers in similar roles.

“It’s not mentoring, it’s therapy,” she says. “You talk about what’s going wrong, swap ideas and leave feeling lighter. Sometimes that’s all you need.”

For the anonymous marketer, those networks are what keep her motivated.

“It’s the only place you can be honest,” she says. “Everyone else just thinks you’re moaning. Other marketers actually get it.”

B2B solo marketers are adaptable and pragmatic, often under-resourced and yet indispensable. They are strategists and executors, teachers and technicians, balancing creativity with constant output.

Reporting will continue from our State of B2B Marketing research over the coming weeks. Read all the content so far here.