Bionic: Powering Britain’s Everyday Heroes

The 5,100,000 small businesses in the UK form the cornerstone of our economy. Behind each one is someone who pours themselves into their craft every day. They are the hairdresser who remortgaged their house to realise the dream of opening their first salon. The baker who’s up before dawn so their shop smells of fresh bread by 7am. The plumber who is building their business one referral and one late night call-out at a time.

These people are genuine everyday heroes. They’ve staked everything to put their names above the door, turn their craft into a livelihood for their families, and carry the risk on their shoulders. Every day, they make decisions that determine whether the lights stay on, both literally and figuratively.

Bionic’s customers are experts in their own professions. They do not generally describe themselves as entrepreneurs or SME owners. They describe themselves as hairdressers, mechanics, shopkeepers or builders. They rely on Bionic to help them make the important decisions that they never trained for, such as which insurance policy provides them with the protection when it really matters, which finance option lets them grow without gambling on the future of their business, which mobile contract keeps them trading, or which energy deal suits both their immediate and longer-term needs.

These aren’t domestic decisions with domestic consequences. For Britain’s everyday heroes, getting them wrong isn’t an inconvenience, it’s existential. They’re complex, high-consequence choices, and Bionic makes them simple.

Bionic exists to make the lives of Britains small business owners radically easier by cutting through the jargon, complexity and the sheer faff surrounding the business essentials that keep a business alive: energy, insurance, finance and connectivity. Small-business owners never wanted to become experts in energy procurement or insurance underwriting. They want access to experts who are on their side. Bionic takes care of these business essentials, so business owners can take care of business.

Human, enhanced by technology

The name is the proposition: Bionic literally means humans enhanced by technology, and that combination of smart data and real expertise sits at the heart of everything the business does.

Customers can interact with Bionic through digital channels, but approximately 90% of sales journeys still involve talking to one of Bionic’s experts. Refreshingly, Bionic does not see that as a cost to strip out, but as a distinct source of competitive advantage that it is sharpening by using technology.

AI is considered an accelerant, not the replacement to the human touch. Bionic’s investments in tech will sharpen efficiency and make every interaction more personal. By doing so, they are freeing up human experts to spend even more time where they create the most value.

Bionic’s culture is down to earth, direct, customer focused, fast moving, collaborative and low ego. The Executive Leadership Team describes itself as “healthily dissatisfied”: willing to recognise progress but remains instinctively focused on how performance can be improved further. Bionic combines a strong customer ethos with an ambitious performance culture. There is little appetite for politics, functional agendas or abstract strategy. Straight conversations are valued because “honesty is efficient.”

The next chapter: building a unicorn

This is a business with real momentum behind it. Founded in 2007 and rebranded from Make It Cheaper, Bionic has spent nearly two decades earning trust with British business owners. Seven years ago, when CEO Paul Galligan joined, it served around 40,000 customers, leaned almost entirely on partnerships for revenue, and had limited digital capability. Today, Bionic employs 600 highly motivated colleagues in offices in London, Chester, Corby, Luton, and Chelmsford. who serve more than 200,000 customers. It has invested significantly into technology and digital infrastructure, built a direct distribution engine, maintained its leadership position in the energy category, launched an insurance platform, landed an exclusive partnership with Confused.com, built a genuinely strong finance proposition, and grown through acquisition, most recently the acquisition of Utility Bidder.

Despite serving 230,000 customers and generating EBITDA of £20m, awareness is still low relative the size of the addressable market, which leaves huge headroom for growth.

Piece by piece, Bionic has assembled the components of something big. The next chapter is connecting them, and that’s where the real value gets unlocked. A clear plan exists to deliver £100m EBITDA.

The ambition is audacious and achievable in equal measure: make Bionic the household name that small business owners across the UK instinctively turn for all their business essentials.
The infrastructure is built, the business is already highly commercially successful, and the market is both significant and underserved. Bionic has an opportunity to transform from a strong platform into the default destination for small business owners.

In addition to the huge organic growth opportunity, Bionic will continue to scale through category expansion, strategic acquisitions, deepening its customer relationships to drive more value per customer, launching a loyalty/rewards programme, and in time, international expansion. Add AI-driven efficiency, and the kind of scale, network effects and defensibility that results in a credible, visible path to unicorn status.

This is an opportunity to join a business at a unique time, when it is substantial enough to be low risk, but you’re early enough to leave a defining mark.

As Chief Marketing Officer, you will be the principal architect of Bionic’s marketing and customer-growth strategy. Your mission is to transform the approach to marketing to support the business’ ambitious growth plans.

Reporting to the Chief Executive Officer, Paul Galligan, as an integral member of the Executive Leadership Team, you will play a pivotal role in transforming Bionic from a collection of successful product businesses to an integrated, category-defining platform.

Customer growth is the immediate commercial priority, but the opportunity is more sophisticated than simply increasing lead volumes for individual product categories. Your mission is to establish the go-to brand for SMEs, and build an integrated growth engine spanning acquisition, conversion, retention, and loyalty, creating more value from every customer interaction.

You will inherit approximately 25 colleagues across the Bionic, Utility Bidder and BusinessComparison marketing teams. These currently operate with a significant degree of independence and bring different strengths, limitations and organisational histories. There is useful capability across the group, particularly in CRM, content and digital acquisition, but today they operate as three largely self-contained teams. As such, there are huge opportunities to share insight and learning across the group, deploy specialist capability far more efficiently, and coordinate brand and performance activity. You will need to define the operating model and ensure you have the capability to deliver the business’ ambitious plans.

Bionic delivers strong customer outcomes, benefits from deep sector expertise and valuable proprietary insight, but remains underdeveloped as a brand. There is a clear brand and audience opportunity to become the authority in the SME market, where today much of the available information is fragmented, technical or narrowly product-led.

You will lead the charge to make Bionic the champion for small-business owners. This will see you devising and executing an audience strategy that builds a community, and a creates brand halo effect that extends beyond immediate transactions. By creating content that establishes Bionic as consistently useful to SMEs, you will foster trust and engagement, so that customers turn to Bionic when a relevant need arises and recommend its services freely. The business has also invested significantly in its data infrastructure and holds approximately 1.6 million customer and prospect records. This creates a strong foundation for more sophisticated segmentation, personalisation, attribution, lifecycle marketing and AI-enabled communication.

While the strategic direction is credible, it is not fixed. As CMO, you will be expected to test, challenge and improve everything rather than simply implement a predetermined answer.

Your responsibilities will include, but not be limited to: 

• Growth Strategy: Build and deliver an integrated customer-growth strategy spanning acquisition, conversion, retention, renewal and cross-sell.
• Customer Acquisition: Increase new customer volumes, improve acquisition efficiency and reduce overdependence on lower-funnel activities.
• Brand and Audience: Define Bionic’s long-term brand strategy and establish the business as a trusted champion for the UK’s small-business community.
• Portfolio Architecture: Determine the appropriate future roles of the Bionic, Utility Bidder and BusinessComparison brand.
• CRM and Lifecycle Marketing: Develop stronger retention, renewal and cross-sell programmes, supported by more relevant and personalised customer communications.
• Effectiveness and Measurement: Establish clear commercial KPIs, improve attribution and create a stronger understanding of customer acquisition cost, lifetime value and marketing effectiveness.
• AI and Personalisation: Define Marketing’s role in Bionic’s AI strategy and use automation to improve customer engagement and operational efficiency.
• Organisation and Capability: Assess and reshape the current marketing structure, creating clear accountabilities and a balanced mix of performance, brand, CRM, content, social and insight capability.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Partner closely with Product, Technology, Data, Commercial and Operations to optimise customer journeys and commercial outcomes.
• Executive Leadership: Bring the customer, market and brand perspective to the Executive Leadership Team, adding creativity, emotional intelligence and commercial challenge.

Key Success Criteria: 

First 90 Days

• Build a deep understanding of Bionic’s strategy, economics, customers, products and distribution model.
• Establish strong working relationships with the CEO and Executive Leadership Team.
• Assess the capability, structure and culture of the three existing marketing teams.
• Understand the strengths and limitations of current agency relationships.
• Review the quality and consistency of existing performance measurement.
• Develop a clear view of the current customer acquisition portfolio and unit economics.
• Assess the Bionic, Utility Bidder and BusinessComparison brand architecture without imposing a premature conclusion.
• Understand the data platform, customer records and enrichment roadmap.
• Identify immediate opportunities to improve acquisition, conversion, retention or customer communication.
• Establish clear priorities and a credible operating rhythm for the function.

Six to Twelve Months

• A clear and agreed full-funnel marketing and customer-growth strategy.
• A recommended and substantially implemented marketing operating model.
• Greater clarity on the future role of each portfolio brand.
• Improved quality, consistency and transparency of marketing measurement.
• Stronger coordination between Marketing, Data, Product, Technology, Commercial and Operations.
• Demonstrable improvement in inbound customer acquisition.
• A more balanced acquisition mix, with reduced overdependence on PPC and other lower-funnel channels.
• A stronger CRM, retention and cross-sell programme.
• Meaningful progress in personalised and AI-enabled customer communications.
• A defined audience and content strategy for UK small-business owners.
• Clear capability-development and recruitment plans.
• Increased executive confidence in Marketing’s contribution to growth.

Twelve to Twenty-Four Months

• Delivered material growth in customer numbers.
• Improved customer acquisition efficiency and lifetime value.
• Increased retention, renewal and multi-product penetration.
• Established Bionic as a more recognised and trusted brand among UK SMEs.
• Built an engaged audience around useful, authoritative content and services.
• Created an integrated growth engine spanning acquisition, conversion, retention and cross-sell.
• Established a high-performing, appropriately structured marketing organisation.
• Embedded best-in-class measurement, experimentation and commercial accountability.
• Demonstrated that marketing is making a direct and measurable contribution to Bionic’s EBITDA and valuation ambitions.
• Become a trusted, influential and additive member of the Executive Leadership Team.

• The role offers flexibility, although Executive Leadership Team colleagues are typically in the London office at least three days per week.