Overview

I was originally brought in to run ads and content for a specialist consultancy. There was no CRM, no analysable data and no consistent brand positioning behind any of it, so there was nothing solid to base creative or targeting decisions on. Before touching a campaign, I made the case to go back to first principles: analyse the fees, sectors and clients, build a business strategy from what that showed, then let the marketing strategy and channel plan follow from there.

My Role

I expanded the brief from executional marketing into business strategy, brand positioning and a CRM build from scratch, then directed an external agency for website design and B2B paid media once the strategy was in place.

Key responsibilities included:

Data and Business Analysis: Built a CRM from scratch and extracted several years of client, service and fee data out of invoices, since none of it existed in an analysable form, to understand which parts of the business were actually worth investing in.

Business and Brand Strategy: Used that analysis to define a business strategy, then built the brand positioning, architecture and messaging around it, replacing a generic services pitch with a story about the firm's genuine strengths.

Marketing Strategy and Channels: Only once the business and brand strategy were set did I define the marketing strategy, audience targeting and channel plan, then briefed and managed an external agency for the website consolidation and B2B paid media.

Strategy & Execution

The sequence mattered: data first, then business strategy, then brand, then marketing. Each stage depended on the one before it. The starting measure was unit economics, revenue per client set against delivery hours and staffing cost. Not "are we winning more work" but "is the work we're winning worth having."

Portfolio Reallocation:

Identified which sectors were most profitable and which were taking the most effort for the least return, by hours invested against revenue

Ran targeted paid activity and direct outreach at the highest-value sectors specifically, with messaging built around what each actually valued

Underperforming Segment Redesign:

Pushed lower-labour services into the weakest-performing part of the business and restructured packages to protect margin

Templated and part-automated delivery using AI while keeping qualified oversight on quality

Website Consolidation:

Directed an agency to merge several separate websites into one site with a logical structure, once the brand and business strategy gave the site something coherent to say

Protected SEO through proper redirect planning and met the compliance standard the business itself was built on

Reporting and Cadence:

Built two dashboards, one for team workflow and pipeline, one for leadership performance and margin

Identified a seasonal pattern in enquiries by sector and used it to build a targeted, cycle-led outreach list

Results & Impact

Revenue grew in the sectors the data identified as most valuable

Margin improved in the area of the business that had been underperforming, alongside client growth once that offer was restructured

Several separate websites were replaced with one consolidated site, with brand consistency and SEO preserved through the transition

Paid media was targeted at the sectors the data proved were worth the spend, rather than spread evenly across the business

Strategic Takeaways

Ads Without Data Are a Guess: No campaign is better than the strategy behind it, and no strategy is better than the data it's built on.

The Brief You're Given Isn't Always the Job That Needs Doing: Recognising the actual problem, and making the case to solve it in the right order, is part of the job.

Sequence Protects the Investment: Data before strategy, strategy before brand, brand before channels, each stage makes the next one worth doing.

Direction Is a Skill in Its Own Right: Briefing, targeting and managing external delivery produces commercial results without needing to hold every tool personally.