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.

The eight states

Every customer in any commercial relationship is in exactly one of eight states at any given moment. Marketing’s entire job is to know which state they’re in, and to fire the right lever to move them to the next one.

1. Notices

Realising they have a problem worth solving

Plant the problem in their consciousness. Connect it to the cost of doing nothing.

2. Looks

Searching for
what might fix it

Be findable. Help them understand the space. Get into the consideration set.

3. Sizes up

Comparing the
real options

Make the comparison
favour you. Proof, specificity, offer architecture.

4. Buys

Purchase
process

Remove friction. Reinforce decision. Set expectations for what happens next.

5. Uses

Living with
the purchase

Make the product land. Onboarding, customer success, time to first value.

6. Judges

Deciding if it
was worth it

Make the value visible. Reports, reviews, success summaries.

7. Returns

Buying
it again

Convert the verdict into a commitment. Renewal, expansion, save the account.

8. Preaches

Telling
other people

Give advocates the materials, the platform, and the recognition.

Eight is the number that survives a finance review. Four is too coarse (every phase contains multiple states). Twelve is too fine (you spend more time arguing about whether someone is in stage 9b than moving them). Eight gives enough granularity to take different actions at different moments, while staying few enough to remember without a cheat sheet.

The stages roll up into Acquisition (01–03), Conversion (04) and Retention (05–08) — and every stage gets sized in three numbers: contacts, customers, £ per annum. Twenty-four cells that turn a marketing conversation into a finance conversation.

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 marcomms map

What fires at which stage, on which channel, in which targeting mode. The same channel does a different job at a different stage.

Each channel gets its own piece — what it’s for, where it fires, and the numbers that prove it. Click any one.

Same channel, different job. Pick a funnel stage to see which channels fire there — and how each one targets, from broad cold reach to named customers and owned advocacy.

Showing all 20 channels — select a stage to filter.

How it targets: Broad reach Targeted Named customer Owned / earned Continuous / secondary

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?