Methodology
Two methodologies, one brand. How the work happens. And what the work installs.
When this is the right answer
Marketing has to show its working in £, or it’s just a big pair of jazz hands. That principle gets stated a lot. Stating it is the easy part. Operationalising it — turning the principle into a methodology a marketing team can run on a Tuesday morning without consulting the CMO — is what most marketing functions never quite get to.
This page is the version that gets you there. Two methodologies, stacked. One describes how I run the consulting engagement. The other describes the operating model I install in the client’s business, the thing left behind once the engagement closes.
Both apply to every sector. Both are universal. Channels, personas, tech and metrics vary; the spine does not.
The engagement methodology
How the consulting room runs. Five stages. One playbook. Documented in full inside every service.
Diagnose
Find out what’s actually happening before recommending what to change. Sales alignment, CRM audit, channel-by-channel commercial defence, retention versus acquisition balance, the question nobody is saying out loud.
One week, five diagnostics, one page of findings.
Decide
Convert findings into recommendations, and recommendations into a sized commercial case. Three things working. Three things broken. One thing nobody is talking about.
A prioritised twelve-month plan with budget, owners, timelines, and the commercial outcomes each move is expected to produce.
Build
Make the recommendations real. New campaigns, new tech, new operating rhythms, new content, new reporting layer.
Whatever the plan called for, built to the standard the audit said was missing.
Run
Operate the built thing inside the team for as long as the engagement scope requires.
Steady-state delivery, against the metrics the Decide stage committed to.
hand over
Document the operating model, train the in-house team to run it, recruit the permanent hire if that’s the brief.
Walk out leaving a function that works without me in the room.
A note on the shape: the five stages are sequential in spirit but rarely tidy in practice. Diagnose loops back into Build when something the audit missed surfaces during implementation. Run produces new Decide moments as the data comes in. Hand over begins on day one through documentation, not at the end through training. The discipline is naming the stages so the team knows which one they’re operating in this week.
The marketing methodology (the operating model)
What gets installed in the client’s business. Eight customer states. Three macro phases. One test.
Notices
Realising they have a problem worth solving
Plant the problem in their consciousness. Connect it to the cost of doing nothing.
Looks
Searching for what might fix it
Be findable. Help them understand the space. Get into the consideration set.
Sizes-Up
Comparing the real options
Make the comparison favour you. Proof, specificity, offer architecture.
Buys
Paying, Contracts, T&Cs
Remove friction. Reinforce the decision. Set expectations for what happens next.
uses
Living with the purchase
Make the product land. Onboarding, customer success, time to first value.
judges
Deciding if it was worth it
Make the value visible. Reports, reviews, success summaries.
returns
Buying it again
Convert the verdict into a commitment. Renewal, expansion, save-the-account.
preaches
Telling other people
Give advocates the materials, the platform, and the recognition.
The test
Every recommendation passes the same single question.
Does this show its working in a commercial outcome we can name and a time horizon we can defend?
A funded stage that cannot name its outcome: defunded. A channel that cannot name its metric: removed. A campaign that cannot name its stage: rebriefed. Not a high bar — the bar that turns marketing from activity into an addressable system.
The not so erotic story about what each of the 20 channels is for, where it fires in the funnel, and the numbers that prove it.
How this maps to the five services
Every service touches the methodology at a different depth.
Fractional Digital
Marketing Director
Runs the methodology as the operating system of the marketing function for the duration of the engagement.
DigitaL Audit & Roadmap
Uses the methodology to structure the diagnosis, fills in the commercial sizing for the client’s actual funnel, and produces a refreshed marcomms plan as the canonical output document.
Campaign Strategy & Launch
Uses the methodology to position the campaign. Which stage(s) does it target. Which push and pull levers fire. Which commercial metric it moves. Campaigns that cannot be located in the funnel and named against a metric are campaigns I will not ship.
Marketing & Tech OPERATIONS
Uses the methodology to scope the stack. Does the stack run the methodology defensibly?
Ai Marketing
system set-up
uses the methodology as the substrate for the AI-native marketing function: the funnel, the maps and the templates are the content the AI system reasons over. The AI does not invent the methodology; it operates inside it.
What now?
Every service touches the methodology at a different depth.
The methodology lives on this page. It is also a 90-minute teaching session, a three-week sizing exercise, a twelve-month marcomms plan, an installed AI system that operates inside it, and a quarterly review rhythm that keeps it honest.
The fastest way to find out whether it fits your business is a conversation. 45 minutes, mostly listening, no pitch deck.
Latest Thoughts
What I’m thinking about right now.
