About

A marketing practice that opens the systems.

RARE Marketing runs demand generation, builds the websites and the marketing technology underneath them, and puts AI to work on the recurring jobs that eat the week. The people you meet are the people who do the work.

What we are

Small on purpose. Senior all the way through.

We are a two-partner practice, and we are not going to dress that up as a department. What it buys you is specific: nobody is learning your business on your budget, nothing gets handed down to a junior after the pitch, and there is no account layer between you and the person changing the campaign. We take on the work we can do properly and we say so when something is outside that.

How we work

  • Start with the business problem, not the channel.
  • Prove it small before anyone commits a year to it.
  • Agree the definitions before the first report.
  • Measure the same way every month, including when it reads badly.
  • You own every account, asset and record outright.

What makes us different

Most agencies stop at the edge of the system. We built intranets and business applications before we ran campaigns, so when the lead never reaches sales, or two platforms count a conversion differently, that is our problem to fix rather than a ticket for your IT team.

Marketing technology

Capabilities

Four things in one practice.

We both work across the whole range. You are not handed a strategist and an executor, or split between a marketing person and a design person — the overlap is the point.

Demand generation

Paid and organic programmes run in businesses where marketing had to defend itself in pipeline terms.

Marketing technology

CRM, automation, lead delivery, integrations, analytics and the reporting that decides whether anyone believes the results.

Design and experience

What happens between a click and a conversion, settled by testing rather than by whoever argued most confidently.

AI implementation

Recurring reporting, administration and sales support rebuilt as workflows, plus the training that gets them used.

The partners

Who you work with.

James O’Brien

Partner

Came up through software — programming, web development, systems architecture and internal business applications — then into marketing technology, website replatforming, and running demand generation teams and budgets. Has been using generative AI in real work since early 2023, and served on PatientPoint’s technology and AI committee.

Previously led digital marketing in-house at PatientPoint, TeamDynamix and NextGen Healthcare. Those were employed roles, not RARE engagements.

Lisa O’Brien

Partner

Works on the part most marketing skips: how a thing is actually used once it exists. Design, user experience, and the testing that settles which version wins. A campaign can be correct in every respect and still lose at the form — knowing that difference is a large part of why this work gets judged on outcomes instead of output.

Also Senior Director of Design, Experience & Optimization at Cencora.

Clients

Selected engagements

McKesson · Foxen · AR RF/Microwave Instrumentation · ReddyPort · DICOM Systems

See the work

Engagement shapes

Ongoing monthly support, a defined project for a site or a system, or strategy and training when you want to run it yourselves. Engagements flex as the work changes, and the scope matches the problem.

Talk it through

RARE Marketing holds a 25% ownership interest in MJ Nester.

Worth a conversation?

Tell us what you are trying to improve. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right people for it.

Let’s talk