About
I'm Liam McIlveen.
I've spent 12+ years in marketing, most of it in marine technology: Navico, BEP Marine, Vesper Marine and Garmin. Since 2023 I've run marketing part-time for a handful of businesses across New Zealand and Australia instead of one full-time.
Why fractional
One business was never getting the best of me.
In-house, most of a senior marketer's week goes on things that are not marketing: meetings about meetings, internal alignment, the politics of a budget. The actual judgement, the part you hired the seniority for, takes a fraction of the time and gets squeezed between everything else.
Working across several businesses inverts that. The week is the judgement and the work. The businesses get someone senior for a day or two, and they do not carry the overhead of a role they could not justify filling properly.
It also makes me better at the job. Five businesses a week is five times the pattern recognition of one, and the thing that solved a problem for a marine brand in March is frequently the thing a SaaS company needs in June.
Career
Where the experience comes from.
Marine technology, almost the whole way. Technical products, sceptical buyers, long cycles and a dealer network in between.
- 01
Navico
Product marketing for Simrad, B&G and Lowrance
Marine electronics across three brands, sold through dealers and boat builders. Where I learned to market technical products to buyers who knew the specification better than I did.
- 02
BEP Marine
Marketing, electrical systems
Electrical and digital switching systems sold to boat builders and OEMs. Pure B2B, long cycles, and a customer who is designing your product into theirs a year before anyone buys.
- 03
Vesper Marine
Marketing, through the acquisition by Garmin
A New Zealand company with a real technical advantage, acquired by Garmin. I went through that acquisition from the inside, which teaches you quickly which parts of a marketing function are real and which are decoration.
- 04
Garmin
Marine division, post-acquisition
Marketing inside a large, disciplined organisation after years inside small ones. The contrast is most of what I now bring to a small business: which of the big-company practices are worth copying, and which would sink you.
- 05
Deftly Growth
Fractional marketing, 2023 onward
Running marketing part-time for a handful of businesses across New Zealand and Australia, instead of full-time for one.
Proof
Brands I've marketed.
Clients
Brands marketed in-house
How I work
What you can expect, and what I won't do.
What you get
- A straight answer, including when it is not what you hoped
- Work that gets done, not just recommended
- Tool-agnostic advice: I take no referral fees from anyone
- A month of listening before anything changes
- Reporting you can argue with, because the numbers are traceable
What I won't do
- Promise a number I have no way to deliver
- Publish a claim I cannot substantiate
- Recommend a platform because I have a relationship with it
- Bill for a strategy document and disappear
- Take on work I am not the right person for
Elsewhere
Find me.
I write about this in the journal, including what startups get right and wrong about marketing, which covers the Vesper Marine story in more detail.
On LinkedIn, or by email at liam@deftlygrowth.com.
Talk to me
Half an hour, no pitch.
Tell me what's on your plate and I'll tell you straight whether I'm the right person for it.