Why the Right Marketing & eCommerce Leadership Matters More Than Ever in Retail
Retail has changed enormously. A customer might discover your brand on Instagram, research the product on Google, read reviews, visit your website, abandon their basket, walk into a store three days later and then finally buy through their phone at 10pm.
To the customer, that is one journey. Inside the retailer, it can involve Marketing, eCommerce, Digital, CRM, Brand, Trading, Buying, Merchandising, Stores and Customer Experience.
That is exactly why having the right senior people leading Marketing and eCommerce has become so important. Customers don't think in departments. They just experience your brand.
Marketing and eCommerce are no longer support functions
There was a time when Marketing could be viewed primarily as the team responsible for campaigns, advertising and getting people through the door, while eCommerce was effectively the online shop.
Not anymore.
For many retailers, Marketing and eCommerce now sit right at the centre of commercial strategy. They influence how customers discover the brand, how much it costs to acquire them, what they buy, how frequently they return and ultimately how profitable that relationship becomes.
A great Marketing Director isn't simply there to make the brand visible, and a great eCommerce Director isn't simply there to make the website work. Both should be helping the business grow.
What does a great Retail Marketing Director actually do?
The role can vary enormously between retailers. A Marketing Director within an established heritage business may be trying to modernise the brand and attract a new generation of customers without alienating the existing one. Someone joining an emerging challenger brand may be trying to build awareness almost from scratch.
Within a multi-site retailer, they may be balancing national campaigns with local store activity, while another Marketing Director could be leading a business where the majority of customer acquisition happens digitally.
That's why recruiting a Marketing Director shouldn't begin with a generic job description. It should begin with the problem you're asking them to solve.
Do you need to grow brand awareness, acquire new customers or improve customer retention? Are you trying to reduce reliance on paid acquisition, launch into new markets, increase store footfall, develop CRM and loyalty or reposition the brand? Perhaps you need somebody to build an internal Marketing team or turn Marketing into a much more commercial function.
Same title. Very different job.
What does a great eCommerce Director actually do?
The same principle applies to eCommerce. It's easy to look at online sales and assume that growth means the eCommerce team is doing well, but the headline revenue number only tells you part of the story.
What happened to conversion, margin and average order value? What is happening to customer acquisition cost, repeat purchase, returns, mobile performance, stock availability and customer lifetime value?
A business can grow online revenue while becoming less commercially healthy underneath. That's why the best eCommerce leaders aren't simply obsessed with traffic. They understand the economics behind it.
Revenue matters. Profitable revenue matters more.
Marketing can bring customers to the door. eCommerce still has to convert them.
This is where the relationship between the two functions becomes critical.
Marketing can create a brilliant campaign, generate attention and drive huge numbers of potential customers towards the business. Traffic can surge and social engagement can explode, but ultimately none of that matters enough if the experience falls apart when the customer arrives.
If the website is slow, difficult to navigate, poorly merchandised or frustrating at checkout, Marketing has effectively paid to introduce a customer to a bad experience.
Equally, you can have a fantastic website that converts brilliantly, but if nobody knows the brand exists, growth will eventually stall. The strongest retail businesses understand that these functions cannot operate in isolation.
Marketing creates demand. eCommerce captures it.
The numbers behind Marketing matter
One of the biggest changes in senior Retail Marketing has been the expectation of commercial accountability. Creativity, brand and storytelling still matter enormously, but so do the numbers.
Customer acquisition cost, return on advertising spend, conversion, retention, lifetime value, email revenue, organic traffic, paid traffic, store footfall and campaign profitability all help build a much clearer picture of Marketing performance.
A strong Marketing Director should therefore be comfortable discussing creative direction one minute and commercial performance the next. Ultimately, the CEO or Board is going to want to understand what the business is getting back from its investment.
That doesn't mean every element of Marketing needs an immediate measurable sale attached to it. Long-term brand investment doesn't always work like that. But senior Marketing leaders need to understand the relationship between long-term brand building and short-term commercial performance.
eCommerce shouldn't become a completely separate business
This is another trap retailers can fall into. Stores sit over here, online sits over there, and both have different teams, targets and priorities.
Customers don't see it that way.
They may research online and buy in-store, try something in-store and order it online later, return an online purchase to a shop or check store availability from their phone. They don't particularly care how the retailer's organisational chart is structured. They expect the experience to work.
That means senior eCommerce leaders increasingly need to understand Retail, not simply websites. Equally, senior Retail leaders need to understand digital. The businesses that successfully join those worlds together are far more likely to create a genuinely seamless customer experience.
Your website is one of your biggest stores
For some retailers, it is the biggest store. Yet businesses sometimes apply completely different standards when recruiting the person responsible for it.
Think about the questions you'd ask when appointing somebody to run a flagship store generating millions in revenue. Can they drive sales, improve conversion, understand customers, manage costs, deliver against targets and identify new opportunities?
Many of those questions are equally relevant to eCommerce leadership.
The mechanics are different. The commercial responsibility isn't.
Don't recruit an eCommerce Director based purely on the size of the website they managed
This is where CVs can be misleading.
Someone might tell you they managed a £100m online business. That's impressive context, but it doesn't tell us what they actually did.
Did they inherit £100m and leave it at £100m? Were they responsible for the P&L or did somebody else control acquisition? Did they own trading? What happened to conversion and margin? Did they build the team, lead a re-platform, enter new markets or improve customer retention?
Most importantly, what did they personally change?
It's the same principle we apply across Retail Head Office recruitment. The size of the business somebody worked for matters, but understanding what they actually achieved there matters much more.
Scale provides context. Impact provides evidence.
Marketing Directors need to understand the customer – not just Marketing
The best Marketing leaders tend to be relentlessly interested in customers. Why do they buy? Why don't they buy? Why do they come back? Why do they leave? What do they think of the brand, and is that different from how the business thinks customers see it?
Data can answer some of those questions, but stores can answer others. Customer research, reviews and Customer Service can tell you even more.
That's why Marketing Directors shouldn't disappear into Head Office and only look at dashboards. They should go into stores, talk to Store Managers, watch customers, read reviews and understand what people actually experience.
Sometimes the most valuable customer insight isn't hiding in a spreadsheet.
Do Marketing and eCommerce need one Director or two?
There isn't a universal answer. For some retailers, one senior leader can successfully own Marketing, Digital and eCommerce. For others, the scale and complexity of the business justify separate Marketing and eCommerce Directors.
A smaller growth business may need a broad commercial leader capable of building both functions, whereas a larger omnichannel retailer may require deep specialists leading substantial teams.
The mistake is deciding your organisational structure based purely on what another retailer does. Start with your own business. Where does revenue come from? Where will future growth come from? How sophisticated are the existing teams? What capability is missing? What does the CEO need from this appointment?
Then decide what the role should be called.
Benchmark the size of the job – not simply the job title.
Should you only recruit Marketing and eCommerce leaders from Retail?
Not necessarily.
Retail experience can be extremely valuable, but Marketing and Digital are two areas where adjacent consumer sectors can sometimes provide exceptional candidates. Hospitality, travel, leisure, FMCG, consumer brands, subscription businesses, marketplaces and technology can all produce people with highly transferable experience.
A candidate from outside traditional Retail may bring expertise in customer acquisition, loyalty, digital transformation or CRM that the business doesn't currently have. Equally, there are appointments where deep Retail knowledge is essential.
The skill is knowing the difference.
Instead of automatically asking "Do they already work in Retail?", ask "Have they solved the problem we're trying to solve?"
That's a much stronger starting point for a search.
When is it time to recruit a Marketing or eCommerce Director?
Often the signs appear before the job title does. Online revenue may have grown rapidly but nobody truly owns the channel. Marketing spend may have increased without enough commercial visibility, or the founder may still be making too many of the Marketing decisions.
Perhaps customer acquisition is becoming more expensive, the website needs major investment or re-platforming, CRM and customer retention aren't sophisticated enough, or stores and online are operating too independently. Sometimes the business has simply outgrown its existing Head of Marketing or eCommerce Manager structure.
International expansion or significant growth can create another trigger. The capability that got the business to its current size isn't always the capability required to take it through the next stage.
That's when the conversation changes. You're no longer recruiting somebody simply to manage a function. You're recruiting somebody to help shape the future growth of the business.
What should you look for when recruiting a Marketing or eCommerce Director?
Start with outcomes rather than responsibilities. What do you need this person to have changed after 12 or 24 months?
For a Marketing Director, look beyond the campaigns they've worked on. Did they grow awareness, improve acquisition, develop CRM, increase retention, reposition a brand, successfully enter new markets or build a high-performing team? More importantly, what evidence can they give you of the commercial impact?
For an eCommerce Director, understand whether they grew online revenue profitably, improved conversion or average order value, increased margin, reduced customer acquisition costs, improved retention, delivered a successful re-platform or expanded internationally.
A CV will tell you where somebody has worked and what they were responsible for.
Our job is to understand what they can do for you.
The best Marketing and eCommerce leaders may not be looking for a job
This becomes particularly important at Director level. Some of the strongest people in the market are already doing well, delivering results and valued by their existing employer. They're probably not spending their evenings applying to job adverts.
That doesn't necessarily mean they wouldn't consider the right opportunity. A bigger challenge, a growing brand, greater autonomy, international expansion, a Board position, equity or simply the opportunity to build something can all start a conversation.
Sometimes the person you most want to meet doesn't know your vacancy exists yet.
That's where Executive Search and proactive recruitment become particularly valuable.
Advertising asks: "Who has applied?" Search asks: "Who should we be talking to?"
Recruiting a Marketing Director or eCommerce Director?
C2 Recruitment has specialised in Retail recruitment since 2008. We recruit across the functions behind successful Retail businesses, including Marketing, eCommerce, Digital, Brand, Buying & Merchandising, Finance, HR & People, Supply Chain, Commercial, Operations and senior leadership.
Our Marketing, Digital and eCommerce recruitment covers roles including Marketing Director, eCommerce Director, Digital Director, Head of Marketing, Head of eCommerce, Head of Digital, Brand Director, Head of Brand, CRM & Loyalty, Performance Marketing, Digital Trading, Customer Acquisition, Content & Social and eCommerce Management.
For senior and business-critical appointments, we can combine our established Retail network with proactive sourcing, market mapping, direct approaches and Executive Search.
Because recruiting a senior Marketing or eCommerce leader isn't really about filling a vacancy. It's about deciding who you want influencing how your business grows next.
Your customers are changing. Your competitors are changing. Technology is changing, and the way people discover, research and buy products continues to change with it.
Make sure the people leading your Marketing and eCommerce functions are capable of changing with them.
Looking for your next Marketing or eCommerce leader? Talk to C2 Recruitment on 01743 770 280 and let’s find the right person to drive your next stage of growth.