Fractional CMO / Head of Paid Media — UK E-commerce (Heating & Interiors)

We don't need a strategist who'll send us a deck and disappear. We don't need an agency middleman. And we definitely don't need someone whose last "growth win" was a 14% lift in CTR on a campaign nobody can attribute to revenue.

We need an operator. Someone who has personally taken a real e-commerce business from one revenue level to the next, owned the P&L impact, and knows the difference between turnover and profit at 2am when the cash flow forecast doesn't lie.

If that's you, keep reading. If it isn't, this one isn't for you, and that's fine.

About the business

We're an established UK e-commerce group in the heating and interiors space, across several niche brands. We sell radiators, heating products, and related accessories through a portfolio of sites, each with its own positioning, customer profile, and quirks.

The business has historically been built on paid acquisition, Google Shopping, Google Ads, Meta, plus a meaningful SEO footprint. It works. It also leaks. We know there's wasted spend, attribution gaps, channel decisions that need challenging, and a Shopping setup that almost certainly isn't doing what the dashboards claim it is.

We've got the volume. We've got the inventory. We've got the brand foundations. What we want now is sharper commercial leadership over paid acquisition and growth.

The role

This is a fractional engagement, not a full-time hire, at least initially. You'll work directly with ownership and leadership. You'll have access to the data, the agencies, the platforms, and the decisions.

You'll be expected to:

Audit the current paid media estate (Google Ads, Shopping, Performance Max, Meta, plus SEO and CRO touchpoints) and tell us what's actually working, what's vanity, and what's quietly burning cash.

Identify wasted spend and hidden opportunities across brands, channels, products, and geographies.

Improve paid acquisition efficiency, blended CAC, MER, contribution margin, GPAM, properly, not by chasing ROAS in a vacuum.

Challenge agencies, attribution models, reporting, and channel mix. If something doesn't stand up to scrutiny, we want it called out.

Build a scalable growth roadmap that respects seasonality, stock position, cash flow, and margin reality.

Bring commercial accountability and operational clarity to marketing decisions.

Over time, help us build an internal performance marketing function so we're not perpetually dependent on outside agencies.

You'll be hands-on where it matters and strategic where it counts. Both, not one or the other.

The ideal person

You've personally scaled paid acquisition for a real e-commerce business. Ideally in home improvement, interiors, bathrooms, kitchens, furniture, flooring, heating, building products, or another considered-purchase category with meaningful AOVs and longer customer journeys. If your background is fast-fashion impulse buys or SaaS demand gen, the playbooks don't translate cleanly and we'd rather be honest about that upfront.

You speak fluent contribution margin, MER, blended CAC, GPAM, and cash flow impact. You don't confuse revenue with profit. You know that a 6x ROAS can still be a losing campaign once you factor in returns, COGS, fulfilment, and the fact that the customer was going to buy anyway.

You've managed meaningful ad budgets, not £20k a month, more like meaningful six and seven figures annually, and you know how budgets behave differently at scale.

You understand Google Shopping at a level deeper than "we should optimise the feed". You know what's broken in most setups because you've personally fixed it.

You understand seasonality and inventory-led businesses. You've made the calls about when to push, when to hold, and when to protect margin instead of chasing top line.

You've worked inside founder-led businesses. You know how to operate when there isn't a 40-page brand guideline, when decisions get made in a WhatsApp message, and when the owner is the one signing the invoices.

You've worked with Shopify, WooCommerce, or similar stacks. You understand the relationship between paid traffic, landing page experience, CRO, and analytics, and you don't treat them as separate problems owned by separate people.

You're comfortable being challenged and comfortable challenging back. No politics, no posturing, no agency-speak.

What success looks like

First 30 days: A clear, honest audit of current paid acquisition performance across brands. Specific findings on wasted spend, attribution problems, account structure issues, and the real picture beneath the reported numbers. A working hypothesis on the two or three biggest commercial levers.

60–90 days: Measurable improvement in blended efficiency. Concrete fixes shipped, not just recommended. Agency relationships either properly accountable or replaced. Reporting that reflects commercial reality, not platform-flattering vanity. A growth roadmap the owners can actually read, challenge, and back.

120–180 days: Demonstrable improvement in contribution margin and acquisition efficiency at the group level. Clarity on which brands and channels deserve more investment and which don't. The foundations of an internal performance function, hiring plan, tooling, processes, taking shape.

We're not looking for hockey-stick promises. We're looking for compounding, defensible, profitable growth, and someone honest enough to tell us when something isn't working.

Why this is worth your time

You'll work directly with ownership. No layers, no committees, no political theatre. Decisions get made quickly.

The business is profitable, established, and has real product, real customers, and real inventory. You're not being asked to manufacture growth from nothing, you're being asked to sharpen a business that already works.

There's genuine commercial impact available. A few well-placed decisions across paid media at this scale move the P&L in ways that get noticed.

The brands have room to grow, the category has structural tailwinds (energy efficiency, heat pump compatibility, renovation cycles), and the digital estate is meaningful enough to matter.

Compensation

This is a fractional engagement and we're open on structure. Sensible options include:

A monthly retainer reflecting the seniority and commercial weight of the role, in the range you'd expect for a genuine fractional CMO with this kind of e-commerce track record.

A performance component tied to defined commercial outcomes (contribution margin improvement, efficiency gains at scale, not vanity metrics).

We're not interested in the cheapest option. We're interested in the right one.

Before you apply

If you've never personally owned acquisition for an e-commerce business at this scale, please don't apply. If your experience is primarily agency-side managing client accounts rather than operating inside a business, this isn't the right fit. If you describe yourself as a "growth hacker", we're probably not aligned.

If you've actually done this, scaled a real e-commerce business profitably, in a considered-purchase category, with budgets and stakes that mattered, we want to hear from you.

Send a short note (no decks, no templates) covering:

The business you scaled, the category, and roughly the revenue range you took it through.

One specific commercial result you're proud of, with the actual numbers and what drove it.

One thing you'd want to understand about our setup before committing to an audit.

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