Bringing in senior marketing help is a leap of faith. You’re paying for judgement, and judgement is hard to inspect before you’ve bought it. So it’s fair to ask what actually happens once someone like me starts, and when you should expect to see something for the money.
This is how I run the first three months, and what I’d expect a business to see at each stage.
Weeks one and two: learn the business, not the marketing
I start with the business rather than the channels. What makes money, what doesn’t, which customers you’d like more of, which ones you’d rather not have, what capacity you’ve got, and what the owner actually wants in three years.
That last one matters more than people expect. A business being groomed for sale needs different marketing from one funding a founder’s retirement, and both look different from a business trying to double.
I’ll want time with whoever speaks to customers, because sales teams know why deals are won and lost long before the data does. And I’ll want to see the numbers: revenue by service, margin, enquiry volumes, what a customer is worth over their lifetime.
Weeks two and three: the audit
Then I go through what’s already running. Website, advertising accounts, analytics, social, email, whatever agencies are in place, and whatever the in-house team is spending its time on.
I’m looking for three things. Money being wasted, which is usually the fastest win. Things working that nobody has noticed, which are often worth doubling. And measurement that can’t be trusted, which is more common than any other problem.
With the Royal Armouries shop, the audit turned up conversion tracking that was missing sales. Until that was fixed, every conclusion about what advertising was doing would have been built on incomplete data. Fixing it first is why the following year showed return on ad spend up 141% on Google Ads and 246% on Meta.
The other thing I’m reading is the last twelve months of reports. Not for the numbers, but for what they were chosen to show. Reporting that hides more than it reveals tells you a lot about a supplier relationship.
Week four: the plan, on a page
At the end of the first month you should have a marketing strategy you can read in one sitting, and argue with.
Mine covers who we’re going after, what we’re saying to them, which channels earn their place and why, what the budget is and how it’s split, what we’ve stopped, and the handful of numbers we’ll judge it all by. It should be short. A plan that runs to forty slides is usually hiding a lack of decisions.
The argument is the point. You know your business and your market, and the plan gets better when you push back on it. Then we agree it, and it becomes the thing we hold each other to.
Month two: fix the foundations and start the quick wins
Measurement gets sorted first: tracking that records what actually happens, reporting that shows the numbers we agreed, and a clear line between enquiries that came from marketing and those that came from somewhere else.
Alongside that I’ll be doing the unglamorous things that pay back quickly. Wasted ad spend switched off. Negative keywords added. Landing pages that leak enquiries tidied up. Follow-up processes that leave leads sitting in an inbox for two days sorted out with your sales team.
This is usually where a business first sees a difference in the numbers, and it rarely comes from anything clever. It comes from stopping the losses.
Month three: build the engine
With the foundations right, month three is when the bigger work starts. Campaigns rebuilt properly rather than patched. Content and video planned as a programme instead of a one-off. Email doing something useful. Agencies briefed against the strategy, with someone senior actually managing them.
For Rucklidge Law this is the shape the work settled into: one strategy, one budget, Google Ads run end to end, a website built around the questions clients actually ask, and a quarterly video programme. The website now brings in 30 to 50 qualified leads a month, and the firm can see exactly which part of the engine produced them.
What you should expect at 90 days
Honest version: some of it will be visible and some of it won’t.
You should have a strategy you understand and believe in, reporting you trust, waste removed, quick wins banked, and one or two channels visibly performing better than they were. You should also be clearer about what your marketing costs and what it returns than you’ve ever been.
What you won’t have at 90 days is the compounding stuff. Content, organic search and brand take longer, and anybody promising otherwise is selling. The Rucklidge Law engine took the best part of a year to hit its stride, and it keeps improving because somebody is still looking after it.
What I need from you
Three things, and the work is much better when I get them. Access to everything on day one, including analytics, ad accounts and whatever your agencies hold. Decisions inside a week rather than a month, because marketing momentum dies in approval queues. And someone internal who can answer questions about the business without me having to book a meeting.
In exchange you should expect straight answers, including when the answer is that something you’re paying for isn’t working, or that the thing you asked me to do is a bad use of money.
If you’re weighing up whether this is the right kind of help, the difference between an agency and a fractional CMO is a good place to start. If you’d rather just talk it through, book a free consultation and tell me what’s frustrating you.