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Marketing Consulting Services

Strategic Marketing Consulting Without the BS

Over the last decade, I have been fortunate enough to work with some exceptional clients. I’ve worked at all levels and been exposed to multiple layers of leadership. Having started, run and sold numerous times over, I’ve learned the value of listening and asking the right questions. Frequently, businesses miss the ‘Why’ when building their marketing strategy and then make the ‘How’ harder to do and rarely consider the ‘Now what’. It isn’t because they are bad at running their business or department, it’s because there isn’t an impartial ear in the room.

What I do is different from other Marketing Consultants. I embed myself in with the team, listen and ask the right challenging questions. When things become clear, I join the dots between people, concepts, channels and technologies and work with the business to build an intelligent strategy.

My style of coaching people to think critically and build an integrated picture, generates better buy-in, accountability and traction. All translating into a better bottom line, happier teams and customers.

What sort of things can I help with?

  • Building a strategy and getting the long-term buy in from your team;
  • Fulfilling an interim CMO role to build a strategy and team;
  • Auditing your strategy and approach to maximise returns;
  • Integrated marketing strategy and governance;
  • 1-2-1 leadership coaching;
  • Technology and approach reviews;
  • Interviewing and resourcing support;
  • Marketing agency due diligence;
  • Tell me your story. There’s lots more I can help with.

Tell me more…

In a world where Digital Transformation is no longer an option, my support allows you to better plan your resources, understand what technologies to build or buy and what the best approaching to “Get Sh*t Done” is. – Do you outsource in the short-term to build capability or do you buy in through new hires? Let’s find out!

My focus is on working with small and medium-sized businesses and potentially fast-growing start-ups. These are the people I know well, I am and have been one! I’ve fought the fight you are fighting and understand that, from my experience, with the right strategy, business plan and mentorship, we’ll be flying in no time!

We work across all areas of your business, obviously with a focus on marketing, to uncover the real opportunities you have for growth. Sometimes we need to work on management, other times we might need to integrate with another team during new product development to support any market research advise their department.

By knowing your target market intimately we’ll have the best of breed marketing plan in place. With the right plan, we’ll know where the best to utilise you internal resources, what budgets are needed for outsourcing, technology and advertising. Do we put more time and resource into brand awareness or driving web traffic through search engine optimisation? Is it a longer-term route to growth working on content marketing right now in the place of defining your corporate identity? Only a really deep dive into the purpose of your business will define the best approach.

The process is defined, the activities identified are not. The outcomes are yours!

I don't enter awards, I JUDGE them!

What might we work on?

As I said above, the activities aren’t set but by working to a top-down and then bottom-up approach to your strategy, we’ll know the core pillars as well as the specific activities that will get you what you need. I like to “Start with the End In Mind” so that we can work backwards, make mistakes on paper, get messy building a business model that builds your reputation and trust. – All planned out in stages with the right leading and lagging metrics to manage traction and accountability. We’ll work on the basics as well as the difficult stuff. Ensuring you have your web tracking in place so we can fully measure your customer lifetime value (CLV or CLTV) down the line. By performing real competitor analysis and marketing research we’ll know whether you need to spend time on an advertising campaign or a traditional direct marketing or email campaign. Social Media is an exceptional tool for brand awareness but it’s not for everyone! Potentially, it works better for a subscription business model more than it will work for a business-to-business organisation that needs market share rather than likes and shares. – Digital Marketing is such a rich and multi-faceted discipline and really difficult to get the ideal mix of time and spend without an outside eye.

Data is at the heart of Digital Transformation and innovation. Knowing the numbers will be a key driver of traction and accountability in a long-term strategy. You need to see a return on marketing investment but knowing where the end of the roadmap is, you’ll be able to sleep easier at night because you can attribute a leading or lagging number(s) to actions and the overall impact on the big picture. With the right initial evaluation of the challenges and what you want to do with your company, we’ll fully uncover the ideal business opportunity for the best use of time and money.

Implementation of the plan, with my professional approach to maintaining accountability with a healthy dose of clear communication and a feeling of a real business partnership you won’t bother worrying about the concerns you used to have in your business. We’ll marry up the right mix of creativity and quality time doing the appropriate ‘How-To’ support for your team, whether it be face-to-face advice in a meeting or over a video call. – We’ll get the fullest performance for your spend however we execute the time!

Any questions?

Having worked with many, as well as being one, the distinction is clear to me. A great marketing consultant should be much closer to a coach than in most cases they are. I find that embedding in a team, listening and asking challenging questions before delivering anything is critical. If your organisation are coached into a strategy, it is a lot less abrasive and a lot easier to adopt.

Typical consultants come in with a book’s worth of tactics and methodologies they’ve delivered over and over. Shoe-horning the process into every requirement. Doing that makes things feel awkward to build internal buy-in, challenging to keep traction and in some cases creates inter-team friction. My approach is more like a business growth therapist who focuses on marketing than a consultant who checks off boxes.

There is much more info in my article on the subject of finding a Good Marketing Consultant.

My consulting focuses more on thinking than doing. In a nutshell, my coaching-based approach is deeply considered and well ordered, so that your teams or outside agencies can execute the strategy.

A marketing agency is typically more focused on the execution than the planning. The reason behind this is that agencies are usually very bottom-heavy. They drive in business with their expertise and ability to scale, but the scaling is almost entirely execution-focused.

There is much more info in my article on the subject of Consultancy v Agency differences.

Pricing is based entirely on a day rate that I agree on a case by case basis. Fees range from between £500 and £1,000 per day. Usually, fees depend on the scale of the requirements and I’m always up-front about what to expect when we first talk.

There are never hidden fees or additional add-ons. That’s the sort of thing typical consultants or agencies do. I much prefer a single, clearly layed out Scope of Work and agreed fees. When we’re in the discovery phases we can talk about any tools, technologies or people you may need to consider bringing on but that decision is internal to your business and based on your available budget.

There is much more info in my article on the subject of Marketing Consultant Fees.

Realistically speaking, the most significant consideration in whether to bring in a marketing consultant should be “Are we prepared to listen and be challenged to change our approach?”. If the answer is ‘Maybe’ or ‘No’, it may not be the right time for you. Being challenged is critical to the success of the engagement.
A business also needs to be ready to make the changes agreed on; in most strategy, there is room for flexibility. However, there are usually essential requirements to overcome challenges that can’t be ignored.

There is much more info in my article on the subject of when the right time to hire a mrketing consultant may be.

There are a couple of ways to see this:

  1. You lack the internal resource or skillsets to get your marketing on the right path. You might have tried, with some success but feel there is possibly something missing;
  2. It would be best if you had the top-down, big-picture perspective that came from the outside. Having that allows the entire business to buy into the purpose and maintain traction. A fully committed team who are coached into a perspective they wouldn’t have seen builds much more accountability; &
  3. You don’t want to hire a full-time member of staff to fill this requirement when a project-based approach is much more productive and cost-effective.

There is much more info in my article on the subject of why you might want to hire a Digital Marketing Consultant.

Do you want to work with me?

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