Fewer than most lists suggest. Almost every business needs a website that sells rather than describes, somewhere to be found when people search, and one channel it shows up on consistently. Everything else earns its place when there’s a reason for it. A business turning over £2m with no website problem needs something very different from a start-up with no audience — which is why the strategy comes before the shopping list.

Yes — when it’s one marketer with sixteen years across all of it, rather than a specialist stretching into unfamiliar ground. I’m not designing a logo and building a Google Ads account in the same hour; I run them as one plan, in sequence, starting with whatever earns money soonest. Where something genuinely needs a specialist, I bring in someone I’ve worked with and manage them myself.

Whatever sits closest to the money. Usually that means fixing the page people land on before spending anything to send more of them there — there’s no sense buying paid traffic for a website that doesn’t convert. After that it’s whichever channel your customers already use. A limited budget means doing fewer things properly, not everything badly.

Together, almost always — and not because it bills better. Bought separately, your web designer, ad manager and social person all work from different assumptions about who your customer is, and you pay three times to solve the same problem badly. One plan, one person, one set of numbers everybody is judged against.

It depends which lever you pull, and be wary of anyone who answers this without asking about your business first. Paid search can produce enquiries the week it goes live. Fixing a website that isn’t converting usually shows inside a month. SEO and content are a three-to-six-month build that then keeps paying. I’ll tell you which of those you’re buying before you buy it.

I do — from Copnor in Portsmouth, covering anywhere within about fifty miles: Southsea, Fareham, Havant, Chichester, Winchester and across Hampshire and West Sussex. Strategy, web, SEO, paid, social, email, copy, content and design, all delivered by me rather than handed to an account team. £350 a day, and you can see exactly who you’re dealing with.