Consulting on marketing strategy

Success with marketing is not guaranteed. The difference between creative campaigns that get ignored and the one’s that earn attention is an investment in a robust and actionable strategy. A marketing strategy is a plan of action that helps to ensure that your approach is not only distinct, but informed by relevant research, insights, and data, and is organized by following a defined process.

Many marketers and business owners know a plan of action is important, but they don’t know how to put together a strategy that’s realistic, effective and budget friendly. And that’s how I can help, by partnering with your organization to develop a forward-looking marketing strategy that works for you.

How we’ll work together:

I’ll partner with your team to develop a marketing strategy that identifies the key concepts to guide your approach and plans the execution of your campaigns across channels. The process of developing a strategy will be divided into four stages as seen below with up to two hours of consultation.

Phase 1 – Discovery: Whether entirely remote via phone and online meeting or partially remote, the consultant will begin learning about your company by interviewing relevant team members, analyzing your services and exploring the business, better understanding the target audience, reviewing analytics, existing content and more.

Phase 2 – Research: The consultant will independently research your company, its customer, competitors, the landscape in your industry, ranking opportunities in search, options for press coverage and more to begin to identify gaps worth addressing to prioritize our work with your marketing.

Phase 3 – Creating the Strategy: From the insights gathered, the consultant will craft a written strategy that covers what key messaging themes to focus on, the reasoning behind these ideas and their potential impact, where these campaigns will be distributed and how you’ll execute them.

Phase 4 – Presenting the Strategy: The consultant will turn over the strategy files for your team to review on their own to prepare questions. Lastly, the consultant will present highlights from the strategy to the team remotely. Any changes by your team will be addressed on the final strategy document.

Deliverables: A documented marketing strategy (often 10-20 pages) will be supplied detailing how to approach marketing on behalf of your business. Additional documentation will be included based on the goals of the project like an editorial calendar, content timeline, step-by-step process for distributing content, thought leadership opportunities worth addressing, etc.

Timeline: The completed strategy document can be delivered in a month and a half.

Pricing may vary: Connect with Brian for a custom quote.

Types of marketing strategies:

I’ll occasionally produce a strategy to guide a company’s overall approach to marketing, but most of the time, I’m hired to produce a strategy to guide a specific aspect of an organization’s marketing as seen below. These are the types of marketing strategies I most frequently produce for clients.

Content Marketing Strategy – A plan to outline how you’ll develop content that addresses the needs, interests and challenges of customers.
Social Media Marketing Strategy – A strategy to prioritize how social media will be integrated across your company for maximum impact.
Influencer Marketing Strategy – The plans for choosing the right influencers and effectively partnering with them to drive consistent results.
Digital Marketing Strategy – A blueprint for how to balance marketing activities across digital channels for an optimal performance.
Thought Leadership Strategy – The right procedures for helping your organization and its leadership become known for their expertise.

What's included in a marketing strategy:

Each marketing strategy typically includes these sections to address your goals. Remember that each strategy is customized to your needs.

Why: The first section focuses on setting meaningful goals to inform your marketing campaigns and programs.
Who: The process of identifying the customers you’ll target by creating marketing personas.
What: Defining the unique topics and themes your messaging will consistently address, which is the most important part.
Where: Selecting the right marketing channels to communicate with customers where they are most active.
How: Outlining which tactics and strategies will help your campaigns reach your audience and drive results.
When: Establishing a realistic timeline to organize the strategic release of your campaigns.

Client Testimonials

"Brian thoroughly immersed himself in our work and the landscape which was essential to the success of the project. He listened closely to our goals and laid out a plan that was responsive to our needs and resources. His recommendations have already started to pay off for us, and it was a pleasure working with him."

Jenn Lavelle

Senior Digital Communications Officer at American Jewish World Service

"Brian is a pleasure to partner with as his smarts are only matched by his work ethic. Having worked with him at both Quaero and the Weather Company, he helped guide both organizations to the next stage of progress with their content marketing. If you're looking for a writer, trainer and consultant that moves your marketing efforts forward, he's my top recommendation."

Alexis Crawford

Marketing Technology & Operations Director at the Weather Company, an IBM Business

"Brian is creative, organized and very level-headed--a wonderful collaborator and insightful contributor to our content marketing program."

Kathy Jones

Director of Content Strategy at Thomson Reuters

"We at Hand in Hand hired Brian to guide us in developing a marketing plan to grow our philanthropic audience and income. The value Brian provided exceeded our hopes for this collaboration. He analyzed our current marketing status and outlined the key gaps, devised a plan for closing these gaps and advancing our goals, and trained our professionals to implement the plan. Brian led this collaboration with impeccable professionalism and communication; he interfaced seamlessly and graciously with members of our management team, a designated committee from our board of directors, and our professional staff. At the end of our collaboration, Brian left us motivated, empowered and well-positioned to move our mission forward."

Leah Beinhaker

Director of Development and Investor Relations at Hand in Hand: Center for Jewish-Arab Education in Israel