Director of Marketing - Social Care's Leadership Gap.

Why marketing can’t drive impact effectively without a seat at the top table.

Social care organisations are navigating some of the most complex challenges in their history - from funding pressures and workforce crises to regulatory strain and rising demand for services. And yet, there’s a glaring omission in many leadership teams that could help organisations to address these factors head on: strategic marketing expertise.

In my research into the perceptions and positioning of marketing within UK social care, just 12.8% of organisations reported having senior-level marketing leadership – meaning the other 87% have no-one with actual marketing expertise represented on their senior leadership team, driving the organisation forward.

This gap is troubling.

And the marketing professionals who were interviewed described their roles as limited to tactical tasks - design, social media, events - rather than contributing to strategy, and reported frustrations with their roles being undervalued and underutilised.

Yes, you could say this is a missed opportunity – it absolutely is. But the reality is, it becomes an organisational risk. One that providers feel willing to take again and again.

The Director of Bananas, Elephants & Marketing

Many social care organisations do have someone responsible for marketing - maybe a Marketing Executive, a Marketing Manager, even a Head of Marketing. And on the surface, that might seem enough.

But I happen to disagree. Because in the absence of a Director of Marketing or Communications, that function almost always sits under someone else’s remit. It’s just tacked on. HR. Sales. Business Development. Quality. Heck, why not Bananas and Elephants while we’re at it.

And that’s where the disconnect begins.

Because those leaders - however capable in their own specialist roles - aren’t marketers. They can’t advocate for marketing’s potential. They’re not there to ask the right questions, spot opportunities, challenge assumptions, or represent the department’s voice when strategy is being shaped. HR is focused on HR. Sales on sales. Quality on quality. As they should be. But marketing? It ends up squeezed into someone else's portfolio - rarely championed, rarely understood.

So, the updates get filtered down. The nuances get lost. Strategic conversations happen without a communications lens. And marketing becomes reactive - engaging too late, with incomplete context, to ‘make something look nice’ rather than help shape what the thing even is.

There’s a big misconception here that marketing is just unimportant fluff. I’ve tried to push for more integration with leaders, but it’s hard when you’re the only marketer, and you’re reporting into someone, who reports into someone who is sat in the Director meetings. It’s frustrating because I see how much more marketing could contribute if it was better positioned here.

A Marketing Manager reporting into Head of Business Development.

It's structures such as this that turns marketing into a service function: useful, but passive. Not a strategic function: insightful, influential, and aligned to business growth.

That’s the difference a senior marketing leader makes.

Someone who understands the audiences. Someone who connects brand, people, culture, and value. Someone who can take all the moving parts of an organisation’s story - and communicate them with clarity, intention and impact. Because without that voice at the table, what could be a powerful strategic engine gets reduced to a sixth form graphic design class.

The Case for a Director of Marketing

If you don’t want your person in charge of marketing to be acting as a post-box for disconnected internal requests – then consider giving marketing a seat on the leadership table.

A Marketing Director will:

• Spot opportunities others don’t see - translating service innovation, quality ratings, or employee experiences into compelling stories that build trust and drive engagement – or into campaigns that will set you apart as a leader in the sector.

  
  

• Shape culture and reputation - internally and externally - by embedding values through consistent, intentional communication. Not slapdash campaigns, but intentional activities designed to enhance your brand reputation.

  
  

• Fuel recruitment with employer brand strategies that resonate with purpose-driven people, not just job seekers. Positioning your organisation as an employer of choice and somewhere you truly want to build your career. Recruiters aren’t trained in that.

  
  

• Influence strategic planning - because they bring insight into market trends, audience behaviour, and brand positioning that inform better decisions across the organisation. They’ll know what’s going on around the company, and can join the dots effortlessly.

This isn’t about hierarchy - it’s about impact.

Marketing can’t lead from the sidelines – they need a presence in the leadership meetings, leadership email groups, leadership updates of any kind, to know and understand what’s going on.

A thought: Would you entrust your Director of Facilities with a significant company restructure potentially affecting hundreds of employees? No? So why would you assign responsibility for developing and managing the Brand Communications Strategy to the Director of Compliance?

The Communicator and the Connector

Social care organisations are complex, with operations, HR, service delivery, many departments often working in silos where projects or planning are concerned. Strong marketing leadership has the unique ability to bridge these gaps. Supporting every department in their communications and positioning, they can bring together projects that will work in harmony, they can ensure the goals for each are aligned with the brand, they can make communications consistent and be confident that everyone - from frontline workers to senior management - is on the same page. Because a good marketing director, and marketing department, will be intertwined within the entire organisation.

In organisations without senior marketing representation, marketers are often brought in too late to influence strategic decisions. One participant in my research described their role as “executing what’s already planned,” leaving little room to shape the strategy itself. With leadership in place, marketing can move from being reactive to proactive, driving initiatives that support the entire organisation.

The Risk of Ignorance

There are some consequences you may not have noticed if you have an absence of marketing expertise at the top. And there are some risks for future business development and service delivery if you continue to ignore this requirement into the coming years.

You’re missing out on:

• Strategic alignment: Without marketing representation in senior decision-making, initiatives may lack the cohesion needed to succeed.

• Stakeholder trust: Marketing ensures consistent, transparent communication with families, regulators, and employees - key to building trust.

• Long-term growth: Marketing leaders focus on the bigger picture, ensuring strategies are sustainable and aligned with the organisation’s vision.

• Differentiation: How do you stand out from the crowd of social care providers? Could an associate clearly define what makes your organisation a great place to live and to work? (A challenge to set your new Marketing Director, maybe!)

Even well-meaning organisations can find themselves stuck in a loop - no senior marketing voice means no strategic input from this specialist area. So marketing stays operational, and its strategic value remains unseen. A self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Cue for Change

My research showed a direct link between the presence of a Marketing Director and the strategic contribution marketing makes to an organisation.

• 100% of people working for a provider with marketing representation on the senior leadership team stated that marketing contributed to organisational strategy

• Just 11.8% without marketing leadership said the same.

That’s not a coincidence.

People working within the organisation day to day are witnessing the impact of marketing as a leadership role. Managers are seeing the contributions that are being made through brand, marketing and communications - they’re understanding it’s value to the organisation’s strategic approach.

Whereas that’s only the case for around a tenth of people working within company’s where marketing is led at a more junior level. This is proof that non-marketing Directors are acting simply as line-managers for their marketing teams. As suspects, they aren’t always able to fully understand or advocate for marketing and communications at that senior level in a way that fully supports the organisation.

To unlock the full potential of marketing, those leading these organisations must:

1. Create senior marketing roles – not just marketing managers reporting into ops or HR. Real leadership, with a seat at the table.

2. Embed marketing into planning cycles – so messaging is not an afterthought, but part of how decisions are made and shared.

3. Invest in cross-functional collaboration – so marketing can help shape outcomes, not just narrate them.

The Long & Short of it

Social care isn’t short on purpose. It’s not short on impact. But too often, it’s short on visibility and proactivity - and that’s a leadership issue.

Strategic marketing isn’t about selling. It’s about belonging, believing, and building something people want to be part of - whether as colleagues, families, funders or regulators.

Done well, it builds bridges between brand, culture, and growth. But the research suggests that only happens when marketing is part of the leadership conversation - not just the inbox that receives the briefing afterwards.

The question isn’t whether social care can afford to have marketing leaders at the top.It’s whether it can afford not to.