How We Work

One of the biggest things to consider when working on your marketing systems (whether on your own, or with a consultant or agency) is “where do I start?”

The last thing you want to do is to build a campaign, or have someone take over a campaign without first having a solid game plan or strategy in place.

Truthfully, that’s where I’ve seen some of the biggest issues coming from.

A business owner launching a campaign, or a business having an agency or freelancer taking over a campaign with all the enthusiasm in the world, but not having a clear framework on where they are going.

Or even worse, a business owner handing over the “keys” to their advertising campaigns to an agency hoping that they will somehow take a campaign from non performing to performing at an incredibly high level without having a proper gameplan or genuine/realistic expectations in place.

Or hoping that an agency or freelancer can build them a marketing system that will work immediately out of the gate, and getting frustrated when it doesn’t.

And truthfully, a lot of that happens when the expectations and strategy are not set correctly from the start.

An agency or consultant promising the world.

A business owner hoping for “magic” to happen.

But reality sets in.

And there ends up being no “easy button” that you can click to have a campaign generating you a positive ROI immediately out of the gate.

The better way to start?

Sitting down and having dedicated time to building out a solid strategy based off of timeless marketing principles, with clear objectives and a clear roadmap ahead of you.

Having “hypotheses” of what might work (based on principles), and then going out into the marketplace (with your advertising) to test those hypotheses.

And then being patient and allowing the data from those campaigns to tell you what is working, and what is not.

Making changes as needed.

Testing, testing, testing.

Getting feedback week after week and allowing data to inform your decisions.

Sometimes even going back to the “drawing board” all together and starting fresh.

Deciding to play the “long game” and understanding that building a predictable and profitable marketing system takes time (and takes a lot of testing).

Again, the “secret” to doing that successfully requires three things:

1.) Being willing to put together a solid strategy based on marketing principles and fundamentals.

2.) Understanding that you are going to need to test, test, test in order to figure out what works and what doesn’t work for your specific business.

3.) The ability to be patient and play the “long game” understanding that building out a predictable and profitable marketing system that can generate leads and customers week in and week out takes time, and there are no short cuts to getting there.

Most importantly keeping in mind that there are absolutely no guarantees that a marketing system is going to work well out of the gate - no matter who is promising you that.

Every business is unique, every offer is unique, and not every market/customer segment responds to one business the same as they might another.

Things take time.

And that’s why for me, I start every single client engagement with a mandatory marketing strategy consulting session.

I’ve realized after working with many clients in many different industries that if I just jump straight into building (or managing) a campaign without having a proper strategy on the front end, that I’m (more than likely) setting myself (and the client up) for failure before long.

And there’s no sense in creating headaches for myself and for the clients that I work with if I don’t need to.

I’ve found that having proper expectations and proper strategy on the front end is what creates the highest level of alignment with myself and with the clients that I work with.


Now that being said, having a strategy doesn’t guarantee that a campaign will ever perform at a high level, but it does allow everyone to be exactly on the same page, with clear objectives, with clear expectations and with a clear roadmap to run off of.

Now, some clients might decide that after our marketing strategy consulting session, they simply want to implement it themselves (without my help) and that’s great.

There’s a lot of go-getters out there that just need a solid plan in place to run with.

And I get that.

For other clients, they want a bit more “hand holding” through the process and might look for additional consulting calls to walk them through that process of building out that marketing system.

And that’s great too.

Other clients might want me to implement everything for them.

And other clients might want me to act as a bit of a “fractional CMO” to help their current team members implement the plan.

And in most cases, it’s a combination of seeing where the client needs help, and seeing if it makes sense for me to help them in that way.

Always looking for what is best for the client, and what I genuinely feel I can help them with.

But at the end of the day, I’ll always start every engagement with a marketing strategy consulting session.

At the end of our consulting session, I’ll always provide you with the document that we worked on together (outlining the strategic marketing gameplan for your business), so you can always go back to it for future reference.

You can consider it a “living, breathing” type of document.

Something you are continuing to work on and tweak as time goes by and as your campaign feeds you more and more data.

Tweaking offers as needed.

Adjusting your cost per acquisition expectations, etc.

That’s the basic “how we work” framework in a nutshell.

Starting off with building a strategic marketing gameplan together, and then helping you implement it (with you, with your team, or implemented for you) - if you decide you’d like the help.

Or taking that strategy and running with it yourself.

Thought it might be good to give you this “high level” overview of my thought process as it relates to working with, and taking on new clients.

If you’re interested in having a conversation, feel free to fill out the quick form at the bottom of this page, and we can chat (via email) about your specific business, and your specific needs.

Looking forward to chatting soon!
-Colin