A £2,000 monthly retainer, once the account is set up, is often two or three hours of actual work. I will tell you that upfront.
I don't take commission from platforms like Klaviyo or Shopify. I won't tell you that you need more marketing technology when what you have isn't being used properly. And if your CRO programme is running on traffic volumes too small to produce statistically significant results — which most are — I'll say so.
Not because it makes me popular. Because it's the only honest way to actually fix the problem.
My name is Phil McKeith. I'm a fractional Chief Marketing Officer based in Faversham, Kent. I work with DTC and ecommerce brands who want to understand what's actually happening in their business — and what to do about it.
01 — Cutting the noise
Most ecommerce dashboards are telling you what you want to hear
The signal is in there. It's just buried under the noise — the vanity metrics, the attribution models built to flatter the agency, the performance figures that look better than they feel.
Performance Max and Advantage+ have automated most of what agencies used to charge to do manually. The platform does it now. You should know that when you review your next invoice.
Your paid social spend may be optimising for the wrong outcome. Your email revenue figures almost certainly include orders that would have happened anyway. Your CRO programme may be producing test results that are statistically meaningless — not because anyone is doing it wrong, but because the traffic volumes don't support the conclusions being drawn.
These are not comfortable things to say in a room full of agency partners. But they are the things that change the P&L when you act on them.
02 — Your strategy, your pace
There is no standard playbook here
Every brand I work with has a different commercial model, a different customer, a different set of constraints. The approach is always the same — diagnosis first, strategy second, execution third — but what the strategy looks like is specific to you.
I embed in your business one or two days a week. I attend your meetings, talk to your people, and direct your agencies and in-house team so the effort is pointing in the right direction. I am not here to do the doing. I am here to make sure the doing is the right doing — at the right pace, in the right sequence, for your business.
Some engagements need to move fast. Some need to slow down and rebuild the foundations first. Part of the job is knowing which one you're in — and being honest about it even when the answer is the slower one.
03 — What careful untangling looks like
What I left behind on the way out
One of my largest engagements ended abruptly when the client hit a serious cashflow problem — nothing to do with the work, everything to do with events outside anyone's control. They needed to stop quickly and hand over to a junior team with no experience of the platforms we'd built together.
They asked for an hour's handover. I suggested three sessions instead — a proper deep dive on each channel, what to watch, what to ignore, how to keep the business stable while they found their footing.
They were expecting defensiveness. Possibly a minimal handover, or an invoice for the extra time.
I wanted them to be okay after I left. That was still the job — it just happened to be the last part of it.
I tell this story because it is the clearest example I have of what I actually believe: the measure of an engagement is what the client can do without you when it ends. Not the revenue you generated while you were there.
04 — Calibrated to your business
Who this is for — and who it isn't
You have a strong product and a real customer base. You have been trading for a few years. Your ecommerce channel exists but is either not growing or not profitable — and you have already tried the obvious solutions. Agencies. Platforms. Possibly an in-house hire.
You are commercially sharp. You are not afraid of detail. And you are ready to understand how the engine actually works, not just watch someone else drive it.
This works well when:
Your business is a DTC or omnichannel consumer brand — fashion, food and drink, home, lifestyle, beauty, consumer goods. Typically £2m to £50m turnover. Your leadership team has a strong retail or product background and wants a senior strategic voice in the room, not a cheap pair of hands.
This is not the right fit if:
You want quick wins or growth hacks. You need results faster than the data can honestly support. You want an agency to take marketing entirely off your plate. Or you want someone who will tell you what you want to hear.
| Marketing Agency | Phil McKeith — Fractional CMO | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | £5k–£15k/month retainer | Senior strategic leadership at a fraction of a full-time hire |
| Strategic direction | Rarely. Agencies execute, they don't lead | Yes. Diagnosis, strategy and direction — that is the whole job |
| Ecommerce depth | Channel-specific, not whole-business | 25 years in DTC and ecommerce — no generalism |
| What they actually do | Does the doing — your brief, their process | Leads your strategy, directs your team and existing agencies |
| Commercial accountability | Low — accountable to the retainer, not your margin | Accountable to your P&L, not a service contract |
| Commitment | Typically 6–12 month lock-in | Rolling monthly or project-based — no long-term lock-in |
| Time to impact | Fast to start, slow to understand the business | In the room and contributing from week one |
| Hard truths | Rarely — they need to protect the retainer | Always — that is where the value is |
05 — Based in Kent
Faversham, Kent — and the value of being in the room
I live and work in Faversham. The coast, the marshes, the estuary — the edges of things. It is where I think clearly and where I work best.
Kent has a growing ecosystem of consumer brands built on strong retail foundations that are now navigating the step into DTC ecommerce. That gap between what retail taught you and what ecommerce requires is exactly where I work.
I have spent 24 years working with DTC brands across twelve countries — London, Singapore, Frankfurt and beyond. That experience is now available locally, without the London overhead or the London commute.
If your business is in Canterbury, Maidstone, Whitstable, Ashford, Thanet, Sevenoaks, Folkestone or anywhere across the county — I can be in the room with your team regularly. Not over a video call. Actually there.
If this resonates, let's talk
Every engagement starts with a conversation. No pitch, no deck, no proposal until we both know it makes sense.
Book 30 minutes directly, or fill in the form below and I'll come back to you within one working day.