Consulting

The hardest part usually isn’t the plan. It’s knowing what’s actually in the way.

Most companies I talk to already have ideas about what to do next. What they don’t have is agreement about which problem they’re solving.

I work with businesses on one defined marketing problem or initiative: finding what’s really causing it, deciding what to do about it, and staying close enough to the work that the answer holds up when the team builds it.

Tell me what you’re working on See how I diagnose

When it’s worth bringing someone in

Not because the team isn’t good. Usually because everyone is too close to it to see the shape of the problem.

  • Marketing is running and nobody can say clearly what it’s producing.
  • The team knows something needs to change but can’t agree on what.
  • A campaign, website, or launch needs a stronger strategy behind it than it currently has.
  • Tactics keep getting added while the underlying problem stays where it was.
  • You have real marketing capability in-house and need an outside read on it.
  • There’s one specific thing to fix, and it doesn’t warrant an ongoing leader.

A lot of marketing problems look tactical until you get close enough to see what’s causing them.

What we might work on

Engagements start from a business problem, so the work below is what the answer usually turns out to involve rather than a menu to pick from.

  • Strategy and positioning

    • Marketing strategy
    • Positioning
    • Messaging
    • Go-to-market thinking

  • Demand and campaigns

    • Demand generation
    • Campaign strategy
    • Content
    • Paid and organic

  • Websites and journey

    • Website strategy
    • Conversion
    • Messaging architecture
    • Lead paths

  • Systems and measurement

    • CRM
    • Reporting
    • Sales and marketing alignment
    • Marketing operations

Solve the right problem first.

The requested deliverable and the actual problem are not always the same thing.

Someone asks for a campaign because leads are down. Sometimes a campaign is the answer. Sometimes leads are down because the offer stopped being competitive, the follow-up takes four days, or the site never explains what the company actually does.

I’d rather say that early than build the campaign and watch it underperform for reasons that were there before we started.

If the answer is fixing the offer instead of launching another campaign, that’s where we start.

How the work goes

  1. Understand what’s happening

    The business goal first, then the marketing around it: what’s running, what it’s producing, what the team believes about it, and what the numbers say instead.

  2. Find the real constraint

    We name the thing actually holding the result back. Sometimes that confirms the original brief. Often it moves it.

  3. Build the answer

    Strategy, messaging, a plan, a campaign, a reporting structure, whatever the constraint calls for. Specific enough for the team to start on Monday.

  4. Stay close while it gets built

    I don’t hand over a deck and disappear. A recommendation that never meets a real constraint tends to stay on the page.

What should be different

Every engagement is scoped differently. This part isn’t.

Before
  • Too many priorities.
  • Marketing activity without a clear strategy.
  • A vague problem everyone describes differently.
  • Recommendations that stay in a document.
After
  • A decision about what actually matters.
  • Work that connects to a specific business goal.
  • A defined issue the team knows how to solve.
  • A plan the team can actually build.

This is probably a fit if…

  • You have a specific marketing problem or initiative that needs senior attention.
  • Your team can execute but needs clearer direction on what to execute.
  • You’re making a significant marketing decision and want an outside read on it.
  • Marketing is busy and you’re not sure the right work is getting done.
  • You want someone strategic who’s also comfortable close to the execution.
  • You don’t need an ongoing marketing leader inside the business.
It probably isn’t a fit if…

You need the whole marketing function led rather than one problem solved. That’s fractional leadership, and it’s a different arrangement.

The engagement

Consulting is scoped as a project, shaped around the problem rather than a set number of hours. That might be an audit and a recommendation, a strategy engagement, a defined build, or short-term advisory around one initiative.

Most of it involves some hands-on work. I’ve found that the recommendations that survive are the ones I helped put into practice.

Ask about a project

Problems, and what they turned out to be.

Two that started as one brief and became a different one.

  • Document technology

    Scan-Optics

    A repositioning the marketing hadn’t caught up with. Rebuilt demand generation from the foundation and grew pipeline from $1.3M to $2.8M.

    Read the case study
  • eLearning

    StormwaterONE

    Brand and demand generation pulling against each other, with paid spend outrunning its returns. More qualified leads on a smaller budget.

    Read the case study
See more of my work

If that isn’t quite it

Have a marketing problem you’re trying to untangle?

You don’t have to have it diagnosed before you get in touch. Tell me what’s happening and what you’ve already tried, and we can work out whether this is a project, an ongoing role, or something smaller.

Describe what’s going on