The plumbing under the marketing
Most marketing problems that look like strategy problems are plumbing problems. The tracking is wrong, the site cannot ship a page without a sprint, and nobody agrees what a lead is. Campaign work can’t fix that, because it runs on top of it.
- Digital transformation work for marketing teams covers website and platform migration, measurement and attribution, CRM integration, and the planning and testing process the team runs on.
- Digital transformation suits teams whose marketing plan is broadly right but whose execution is blocked by a legacy CMS, untrusted data or an undocumented stack.
- A digital transformation engagement starts with a fixed-fee diagnostic, and build work is quoted once the diagnostic shows what is needed.
- Migrating a marketing site to a new platform typically takes two to three months from decision to launch.
- In a current engagement with a regulated digital-asset firm, replatformed from legacy WordPress onto Next.js, the website conversion rate went from 0.67% to about 1.5%.
Why the plan keeps failing at the same point
These are the four blockers I find most often. They are unglamorous, they are rarely on anyone’s roadmap, and they quietly cap everything else you do.
- The website is a bottleneck
- Every change needs a developer, a ticket and a sprint. Marketing cannot ship a landing page, so eventually it stops trying and the site ossifies.
- The numbers do not agree
- Three tools give three different answers. The monthly report gets produced, nobody trusts it enough to act on it, and decisions get made on instinct anyway.
- Last-click is still deciding your budget
- Attribution that credits the final touch and hides everything that did the actual work. You end up defunding the channels that are working.
- The process lives in someone’s head
- No planning cadence, no test log, no definition of done. Quality depends on who happens to pick the work up, and none of it survives that person leaving.
Who is digital transformation for?
Teams where the marketing plan is broadly right and execution keeps hitting the same wall.
Teams blocked by their own site
Every page change is a developer ticket. Marketing has no control of the conversion funnel it is measured on.
Companies on a legacy CMS
Slow, awkward to secure, and holding back both SEO and the team’s ability to move.
Post-raise teams
Building the marketing function properly for the first time, and wanting the foundations right before the headcount arrives.
Regulated businesses
Where Legal and Compliance are genuinely in the loop and the process has to work for them too, not around them.
Teams that do not trust their data
Reporting exists but nobody acts on it. Usually a tracking and definitions problem rather than a tooling one.
Teams inheriting a stack
You did not choose any of this, the person who did has left, and nothing is documented.
What does digital transformation include?
Each workstream is designed to move a specific metric, not to pad a report.
Website and platform migration
Moving off a legacy CMS onto something the marketing team can actually operate: faster, more secure, better for search, and editable without a sprint. I have led this end to end, including the front-end build.
Measurement and attribution
Tracking standards, GA4 and Search Console configured properly, attribution that reflects how people actually buy, and dashboards that surface the handful of numbers worth looking at. This is the work that stops last-click quietly misallocating your budget.
CRM and lifecycle plumbing
Connecting marketing activity to the pipeline: CRM integration, lead definitions everyone agrees on, and the reporting that lets you see which activity produced revenue rather than which produced clicks.
Operating rhythm
Planning, testing and governance frameworks: how work gets prioritised, how a test is judged, what “done” means. Boring, and the difference between a team that compounds and one that stays busy.
How does the work run?
Four phases with real durations. Nothing here is a proprietary framework. It is the order the work has to happen in.
Diagnose
Audit the stack, the tracking, the site and the way the team works. I map what is actually broken as opposed to merely irritating, and what each fix would make possible. You get the findings whether or not you go further.
Sequence
A prioritised plan. Not everything is worth fixing, and the order matters. Measurement usually has to come before anything else, because otherwise you cannot tell whether the rest worked.
Build
The actual work: migration, tracking implementation, CRM integration, process. I do this hands-on rather than briefing it, which is generally faster and always cheaper than a translation layer between the strategy and the build.
Hand over
Documentation, training, and a team that can run it without me. The test of this work is whether it still functions six months after I stop invoicing.
How much does digital transformation cost?
Most work starts with a fixed-fee audit. Scope moves the number, not seniority: you get me either way.
Audit and roadmap
From £3,000
I look at what you are running now, find what is structurally broken as opposed to merely underperforming, and hand back a prioritised plan you could execute without me. Most engagements start here.
Ongoing retainer
From £4,000
Strategy plus execution across the channels that matter for your stage. Two or three disciplines working together rather than all five at once.
Advisory
£450 per day
For teams with people in place who need someone senior to pressure-test the plan, review the work, and say the unpopular thing.
What results has digital transformation produced?
This is the least glamorous work I do and the most reliably valuable. Two published examples, plus a platform migration I can describe but not name.
- Website conversion rate, from 0.67% to about 1.5%
- 2.2×
- Share of sessions from organic search, taking it to the site’s number-one channel
- 43%
- Site traffic after rebuilding measurement and moving a team off last-click attribution
- +30%
Questions people actually ask
Including the ones about money.
Written by
Oliver Carding
Marketing consultant in Manchester. Previously Head of Marketing at Improbable and Senior Digital Marketing Lead at eBay; founded CoinJournal and CryptoKaiju. Career, press and references.
Other services
Most engagements use two or three together. A strategy sets the direction; the rest do the work.
Digital marketing strategy
Audience research, channel planning, go-to-market, and measurement frameworks. The decision-making layer that tells you what to do, in what order, and how you’ll know it’s working.
Search engine optimisation
Technical SEO, keyword strategy, content optimisation, and authority building. I fix the structural problems that stop search engines finding you, then build the visibility that compounds over time.
Content marketing
Content strategy, thought leadership, newsletters, and distribution. The aim is content that answers the questions your buyers actually have, in places they’ll actually find it, rather than volume for its own sake.
Social media management
Channel strategy, community management, content publishing, and paid social on the channels your audience already uses: X, Discord, Telegram, and LinkedIn.
Paid advertising
Google Ads, Meta advertising, tracking, and bid optimisation. Paid media in crypto is tricky: platform policies shift, audiences are sceptical, and most budgets leak. I stop the leaks.
AI consultancy
Where AI genuinely improves a marketing team’s work and where it is theatre. Workflow design, tooling, quality standards, and the judgement to say when the honest answer is “don’t”.
AI search visibility
Answer engine optimisation. Being the source an AI cites when someone asks it a question in your category. That is a different job from ranking, and increasingly the one that decides whether you get considered at all.