Strategic Marketing Consultation
Experienced marketing judgement before you make an important decision
Some marketing decisions are too important to make without challenge.
You may be considering a significant increase in marketing spend, appointing a new agency, recruiting a senior marketer, changing direction or investing in a new system or website.
The problem is that when there is no experienced marketing leader in the business, those decisions can be difficult to test properly.
A Strategic Marketing Consultation gives you 90 minutes of focused time with an experienced senior marketer before you commit.
I review the context beforehand, then we work through the decision together. I will challenge the assumptions behind it, identify information that may be missing and give you an honest view of whether the proposed direction makes sense.
This is not a presentation or a generic strategy session. It is a focused working conversation around a specific marketing decision or problem.
Duration: 90 minutes
Online: £595
In person: £795, including travel within the North West
Location: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet or in person
Travel outside the North West can be arranged, with any additional costs agreed beforehand.
When a Strategic Marketing Consultation can help
Marketing decisions often involve more than the immediate cost.
Recruiting the wrong person can set the function back months. Increasing agency spend without understanding the underlying problem can simply increase waste. Changing CRM, rebuilding a website or committing to a new campaign can create further complexity if the original assumption is wrong.
Sometimes the best decision is to proceed.
Sometimes it is to change the plan.
And sometimes the most valuable outcome is deciding not to spend the money at all.
The purpose of the consultation is to introduce experienced, independent judgement before the decision becomes a commitment.
Who is it for?
The Strategic Marketing Consultation is designed primarily for founders, CEOs, managing directors, board members and senior marketing leaders who have a specific decision they want to examine.
It can be particularly useful when you are:
- Considering a significant marketing investment
- Preparing to recruit a Head of Marketing, Marketing Director or CMO
- Reviewing an agency recommendation or proposal
- Deciding whether to replace or invest further in your CRM
- Considering a new website or digital project
- Questioning whether the current marketing strategy is still appropriate
- Trying to decide whether Fractional CMO support would be useful
- Facing conflicting opinions about what marketing should do next
You do not need to have reached a final decision before the session. In many cases, the purpose is to help establish what the decision actually needs to be.
What happens before the consultation?
When you book, I will ask you for enough information to understand the issue you want to discuss.
Depending on the subject, that might include your website, current marketing approach, an agency proposal, recruitment brief, performance information, budget assumptions or details of the decision you are considering.
I review this before we meet so that the 90 minutes can be spent discussing the problem rather than using the first half of the session establishing the basic context.
You do not need to prepare a polished presentation.
I would rather see the information you are actually using to make the decision.
What we can cover
The session is shaped around the specific issue you bring to me.
We may look at whether the proposed investment is proportionate, what assumptions are being made, whether the available evidence supports the decision and what else needs to be understood before proceeding.
We can also examine whether the problem is being diagnosed correctly.
For example, poor marketing performance does not automatically mean you need another agency. A recruitment problem does not automatically mean you need a more senior marketer. Weak lead generation does not necessarily mean you need to spend more on advertising.
Sometimes the visible problem is only a symptom of something happening elsewhere in the marketing function.
My role is to challenge the decision from that wider perspective.
What you receive
Following the session, I provide a concise written summary covering the main observations, risks, priorities and recommended next steps.
That could result in a clear decision to proceed with the original plan.
It could identify changes that should be made first.
It could highlight information that needs to be gathered before a responsible decision can be made.
Or it may become clear that a broader review is required.
The consultation is valuable whether further work with me follows or not.
What this service does not include
A Strategic Marketing Consultation is deliberately focused.
It does not include a full review of your marketing function, detailed analysis of every channel, extensive CRM or customer data analysis, implementation planning or ongoing marketing leadership.
Where the underlying issue is broader than one decision, a Marketing Function Review may be more appropriate.
Where you need somebody to take ongoing responsibility for marketing, Fractional CMO support may be the better route.
Where the decision relates specifically to appointing a senior marketer, Marketing Recruitment Advisory can provide more comprehensive support through the recruitment process.