An objective view of what's actually working
Marketing consultancy for B2B, retail and SaaS businesses. Consultancy is the right starting point when you need clarity before commitment. I audit what you're doing, tell you plainly what's working and what isn't, and leave you with a prioritised plan — whether or not you continue working with me.
Diagnose → plan → hand over
- Diagnose01
- Plan02
- Hand over03
Everyone inside the business is too close to it
Marketing decisions in an SME accumulate. A website built three years ago, an agency inherited from a previous manager, a channel that once worked and is now running on habit. Each individual decision made sense. Together they've stopped adding up.
An internal review rarely fixes this, because the people conducting it made most of the decisions. What's needed is someone with no stake in defending the current setup, who understands the commercial context and can be direct about it.
Consultancy engagements are deliberately finite. You get a clear diagnosis and a plan, with defined recommendations you can act on immediately.
What changes for your business
- A written diagnosis of where your marketing is losing money and where it's under-invested.
- A prioritised roadmap: what to do in the next quarter, and what to stop.
- Clarity on your proposition and target segments, in language your sales team can use.
- A realistic budget allocation across channels, with expected enquiry volumes.
- A measurement framework your leadership team can interrogate monthly.
Typical consultancy engagements
Marketing audit
A structured review of positioning, channels, website, CRM, reporting and spend, benchmarked against your commercial targets and your competitors' visibility.
Growth plan
A prioritised twelve-month plan with named initiatives, sequencing, budget and expected outcomes — written so your team can execute without me in the room.
Channel diagnosis
Deep review of a single channel — paid search, SEO, email — where spend and results have stopped correlating, with specific remedial actions.
Measurement review
GA4, CRM and attribution reviewed end to end so the numbers your board sees actually reflect what marketing is contributing.
Agency review
An independent assessment of whether your current suppliers are delivering value, and what a better brief or a better provider would look like.
Leadership workshop. A facilitated session with your leadership and sales teams to align on target customers, proposition and what marketing is being asked to deliver.
Consultancy or Fractional CMO?
- Choose consultancy when you need a diagnosis, a plan or an independent second opinion.
- Choose consultancy when you have capable delivery resource but no strategic direction.
- Choose a Fractional CMO when the gap is ongoing ownership and accountability, not knowledge.
- Choose a Fractional CMO when your team needs managing, not just briefing.
- Many clients start with an audit and move to a retainer once the priorities are clear.
How this works in practice
The detail behind the headline: how the work is structured, what it depends on and how progress is judged.
How a marketing audit is structured
The audit works front to back through the commercial funnel rather than channel by channel. It starts with the numbers — revenue target, average order value or contract value, sales cycle length, win rate — because those determine how many qualified enquiries marketing has to produce and what one is worth.
From there I review positioning and proposition, target segments, the website's structure and messaging, organic visibility, paid activity, content, email, CRM data quality and reporting. Each finding is graded by commercial impact and effort, so the output is a prioritised list rather than an inventory of everything that could theoretically be improved.
Consultancy for B2B, retail and SaaS
In B2B the constraint is usually clarity and pipeline quality: too many segments, a proposition written for the industry rather than the buyer, and enquiries that sales does not rate. The work concentrates on sharpening the offer, building technical content that answers real buying questions and aligning marketing to sales' definition of qualified.
In retail and ecommerce the constraint is unit economics: contribution margin after ad spend, repeat purchase rate and lifetime value. In SaaS it is efficient acquisition and retention: activation, trial-to-paid conversion, churn and payback period. Same discipline, different scoreboard — which is why the audit always starts with your numbers rather than a template.
What you receive, and who executes it
Deliverables are written, not verbal: a diagnosis document, a prioritised twelve-month roadmap with sequencing and budget, a proposition and messaging summary your sales team can use, a channel plan with expected enquiry volumes, and a measurement framework with named owners.
Execution can run three ways: your internal team, your existing agency working to a proper brief, or specialists from my network coordinated by me. Consultancy engagements are deliberately finite — you should be able to act on the plan whether or not you continue working with me, and that is the test of whether the document is any good.
Independence and incentives
Because I do not resell media, build websites for a margin or take commission from suppliers, there is no structural reason for me to recommend more spend, a rebuild or a retainer. If your current agency is doing good work with a bad brief, the recommendation is a better brief.
That independence is the point of consultancy. You are buying an outside view from someone who has run marketing inside a business, understands the commercial context and has nothing to defend — including the decisions your team made last year.
Marketing thinking in short form
Strategy, SEO and paid search explained in a couple of minutes on Instagram and TikTok.
Where to go next
A few things worth reading — and the pages most people move to from here.
Related insights
- Marketing StrategyWhy Your Marketing Isn't Working (And It Probably Isn't the Tactics)The positioning and priority problems that make good execution look like bad marketing.
- AnalyticsThe Five Marketing Numbers Your Board Actually WantsThe reporting set that turns marketing activity into a commercial conversation.
- AIAI in SME Marketing: Where It Genuinely Helps and Where It Wastes MoneyA practical view of where AI earns its place in a small marketing function.
Frequently asked questions
Start with an honest audit
A 30-minute discovery call to understand your targets, your current marketing and whether I'm the right partner for the next stage.