Discovery
- Category, brand and user review
- SWOT with key leaders
- One on ones with the team
- Audit of positioning, media, site and sales materials
- Brand research and customer interviews
- Agree on annual and quarterly targets
Strategy
How I step in and get growth unstuck.
Building a brand and a marketing program isn't one campaign. It's a plan that runs in order: understand the business, agree on the story, then put it to work everywhere and measure it. Here is how I do it.
The first 180 days
Discovery, discussion, distribution.
Discussion
- Approve positioning, message and tagline
- Validate with outside research
- Approve the media plan
- Monthly reporting and a dashboard
- A creative brief for all new work
- Model budget, growth and revenue
Distribution
- Launch the new message and tagline
- Brand guidelines
- Site, app and experience brought in line
- New advertising across channels
- Agencies briefed or upgraded
- New materials for the sales team
Optimize
- Adjust quarter to quarter
- Shift budget toward what works
- Track brand awareness and AI visibility
- Keep testing new channels
The creative brief
Every good ad starts with a good brief.
It works with agencies, in-house teams and AI tools alike. If the team can't agree on the one sentence in question three, we're not ready to make the ad.
- The role of advertising. What do we want people to do, and how will this ad get them to do it?
- Who are we talking to? Their attitudes, their situation and, for business products, their company.
- The single most important thing. One sentence.
- Why should they believe it? The proof.
- The brand voice. What it sounds like.
- The practical facts. Budget, timing, sizes, media and logo use.
Before I take the job
The questions I ask first.
The answers predict the job better than any job description.
Goals
- What does success look like?
- How does the business model work?
- How big do you want to be in a year?
- What is your biggest challenge?
Marketing
- What problem must marketing solve?
- How would you describe the brand in one sentence?
- Why are you hiring for this role?
- What is marketing worth inside this company?
Measurement
- Do you measure brand awareness?
- What does a customer cost today, and what must it cost?
- What is a customer worth over time?
- Which channel works hardest?
Culture
- How would you describe it?
- What do people love, and dislike?
- What would you change if you started over?
- Does face time matter, or results?
Measurement
Numbers matter. You can't measure relevance.
I build a growth model, track spend and report against agreed targets every month and quarter. I also measure the things last-click reports miss, because that's where brand shows up.
Cost and value
Cost per acquisition, customer acquisition cost and lifetime value, against targets everyone agreed to up front.
Brand health
Awareness, people searching for you by name, and how often AI answers name you when buyers ask about your category.
What really worked
Mix modeling and simple tests that show which channels add sales, not just which one got the last click.
Sales
Marketing has to reach the sales team.
Marketing only matters if it drives revenue. Known brands open doors, but the sales team still needs tools built on the same story. I make sure they have:
Positioning they can say out loud
A pitch built on the value
Materials that look like the brand
Email that warms up leads
Video that helps explain and sell
Training on using the brand
Rules I work by
Nine things to remember about marketing.
- Marketing is harder than it looks.
- If marketing didn't work, you wouldn't be reading this.
- If you can't explain your product in a few words, your marketing is off.
- Good, fast, cheap. Pick two.
- You may not be creative enough to make your own ads.
- Define what success looks like.
- Know your metrics and how they drive revenue.
- Leave enough lead time to buy media and make the ads.
- Define your brand before you spend money.