What We Ask Before Recommending Any Marketing

Why the Questions Matter More Than the Proposal

A marketing proposal written before anyone understands the business is a list of activity. It reads well, it is easy to compare against another list, and it commits you to spending against assumptions nobody has tested. The expensive part is not the fee. It is the quarter spent pointing good work at the wrong buyer.

So the useful test when you are choosing between people is simple. Give each of them the same thirty minute description of your business, then ask one question. What would you want to understand about us before you told us what our marketing strategy should be.

What You Actually Sell

• What are you actually selling, described the way a customer would describe it?
• Who has this problem badly enough to pay for it right now?
• Are these genuinely separate services, or parts of one proposition?
• Is the name you use for it the way your customers think about the problem?
• Which service should be the entry point, and which should follow?

What the Customers You Have Already Won Tell Us

• Where did your best existing customers come from?
• Why did they choose you over the alternative they were considering?
• Which customers were profitable, and which quietly were not?
• What is the pattern across the last twenty deals you won?
• What is the pattern across the ones you lost?

The Commercial Machine

• What is a deal worth, and how long does one take to close?
• How can the salespeople and business development reps you already employ be made more effective before hiring anyone or buying technology?
• What happens to an enquiry today, step by step, and where does it stall?
• What does the leadership team believe about marketing that the numbers do not support?
• What should we stop doing?

What Comes Out of It

The output is deliberately short. One clear statement of who you are selling to and why they buy, a decision on how the services are presented, one or two priorities for the next quarter with a cost against each, the number marketing is answerable for, and a list of what is being stopped.

From there you either run it yourself, or Bluerock stays on as an embedded part-time head of marketing and delivers it. See also fractional CMO versus agency versus in house.

A Note on Marketing Budget

Being careful with money is a feature of this process rather than a constraint on it. Where the market is small and the deal value is known, spend is worked backwards from what a customer is worth and how many you need, not set as a share of revenue. One or two initiatives done properly beat six done thinly, every time. Published figures for the Irish market are collected in the Irish B2B marketing benchmarks, and grant supported routes are listed under marketing grants.

Questions About the Diagnostic Stage

What should I ask a fractional CMO before hiring them?

Ask what they would want to understand about your business before telling you what your marketing strategy should be. Then listen to the questions rather than the answers. Someone who leads with channels, tools or a content engine is describing their own product. Someone who asks about deal value, why customers chose you and what you should stop doing is thinking about your business.

Why not just ask for a marketing proposal?

A proposal written before anyone understands the business is a menu of activity. It will look thorough and cost you a quarter to discover it was pointed at the wrong buyer. Better to give two or three people the same thirty minute description of the business and compare what each of them asks next.

What is a marketing diagnostic?

A short piece of paid work, usually a few weeks, that answers what you sell, who has the problem badly enough to pay for it, which service should be the entry point, where your best customers came from and what marketing should do next. It ends with a costed plan in priority order rather than a strategy document.

Do you need access to our numbers to do this?

Yes, and the useful ones are commercial rather than marketing. Deal values, win rates by service, sales cycle length, where the last twenty customers came from, and which customers were profitable. Marketing metrics matter later. These decide where the money goes.

We have several services that feel disconnected. Where does that get resolved?

Early, because it changes everything downstream. Separate services often turn out to be one proposition sold to one buyer, or genuinely different businesses with different buyers that should stop sharing a message. Deciding which of the two you have comes before any campaign work.

How long before we get a recommendation?

Usually two to four weeks. Long enough to talk to customers and read the pipeline, short enough that momentum is not lost. The output is a small number of priorities in order, with what is being stopped stated as clearly as what is being started.