Brilliant Marketing
Marketing
that builds.
Not just buzzes.
Most B2B businesses do not need more marketing activity. They need clearer thinking about what they are actually doing — and why.
The real challenge
You are not under-marketed.
You are under-led
on marketing.
Most B2B businesses have a marketing problem that looks like an activity problem. The website is not performing. The pipeline is unpredictable. Tactics are being executed and assets are being produced, but nothing quite lands. The instinct is to do more — a new channel, a new campaign, a bigger budget. But the problem is almost never what is being done. It is that nobody has properly agreed what the proposition is, who it is for, and what makes it genuinely different.
Leadership teams cannot align on positioning. Teams and agencies execute activity against a brief that was never clear. The founder is doing three things that should be one. Marketing sits in a corner of the business instead of at the centre of its growth conversation. And the spend keeps going out the door without anyone quite knowing why the results feel so inconsistent.
The problem is not capability — it is clarity. And clarity is a leadership question, not a marketing execution question. When senior marketing leadership is in the room, things start to make sense. Not just for the marketing function — for the whole business.
The market context
Over 73% of SMB owners say they lack confidence in their marketing decisions. That is not a budget problem or a headcount problem. It is the absence of senior strategic marketing leadership at the moment the business most needs it.
What we work on
Four areas where
marketing is won or lost.
Every business is different. But the patterns that produce brilliant marketing — and the patterns that quietly prevent it — tend to cluster around the same four areas. This is where we focus.
01
Marketing strategy and positioning
Agreeing who you sell to, what makes you genuinely different, and — critically — what you should stop doing before you start doing more. The businesses that grow with confidence are the ones that know exactly what they are saying and why it matters. The best marketing is not louder, it is more inspiring. The organisations that move people do so by saying something worth saying, not simply amplifying noise.
02
Fractional CMO and senior marketing leadership
Being the senior marketing brain in the room — one to two days a week — without the full-time hire cost or risk. Jonathan brings two decades of direct experience building marketing functions from scratch and leading them across technology, professional services, and high-growth B2B businesses — working as a thinking partner and strategic operator for organisations that need that level of leadership but are not yet ready to hire it full-time. A senior fractional saves a typical UK SME £150k or more versus a full-time CMO hire — while delivering the same strategic clarity.
03
Go-to-market and growth planning
Building the twelve-month plan that the whole leadership team has signed off — not just the marketing function. A go-to-market plan that lives only inside marketing is not a go-to-market plan. It is a wish list. We work with the whole leadership team to build a plan that reflects commercial reality, has buy-in from the people who need to deliver it, and gives marketing the mandate it needs to actually move the business forward.
04
Building and leading marketing teams
Hiring, structuring, and developing the marketing function that the next phase of growth actually requires. The marketing teams that perform best are the ones where the leader has created an environment of psychological safety — where people feel able to try, to fail, and to bring their whole thinking to the work. Kindness and empathy are not soft considerations here. They are the operating conditions that determine whether a team produces ordinary output or something genuinely excellent.
Example workshops
Brilliant workshops.
Built for the marketing
conversations that matter.
These are not off-the-shelf sessions. Every workshop is built around the specific business, moment, and challenge in front of us. What these examples give you is a sense of the work — the level, the focus, and the standard we hold ourselves to.
Agree who you sell to, what you sell, and where to focus. Then inspire the marketing team to buy in and deliver.
This is not a strategy presentation. It is a working session for the leadership team — built around the three foundational decisions every B2B marketing strategy depends on: who is it for (ideal customer profile and positioning), what is it for (value proposition and genuine points of difference), and how will we grow (the two or three channels we will actually back).
Day one is designed to produce alignment in the room — not a deck to align around later. By the end, the leadership team has agreed on the answers to the questions that marketing has been quietly working around for months. That agreement is what unlocks everything else.
The two-day format goes further. Day two is for the marketing team — the people who will actually execute. Rather than receiving a strategy document from on high, they are brought into the room: given context, invited to challenge, and helped to understand not just what the plan is but why it was built this way and what their role is in making it work. The result is a team that does not just follow the strategy — they believe in it.
Best for
- Founder and leadership teams where marketing is busy but pipeline is unpredictable
- Businesses that have outgrown their current setup but are not yet ready for a full-time CMO
- Any leadership team that has postponed the positioning conversation for too long
Turn ad-hoc activity into a repeatable monthly engine for new client acquisition.
Where the Marketing Clarity Day is about strategy and positioning, this workshop is about execution. It is a hands-on planning session — the room rolls its sleeves up and builds the actual twelve-month plan together. Not a template applied from the outside, but a plan the team has made, stress-tested, and committed to in the room.
The workshop draws on direct experience of building marketing engines across sectors — from high-growth software businesses to professional services firms, field marketing at scale, and founder-led organisations finding their footing in a competitive market. The common thread is always the same: most businesses already have what they need to grow. They just need to stop doing everything and start doing a few things brilliantly.
By the end of the day, the team leaves with a twelve-month marketing plan on one page — objectives agreed, channels chosen, monthly rhythm defined, and owners named. Not a document to revisit in a quarter. A plan people will actually follow.
Best for
- Founder-led and growth-stage B2B businesses without a senior marketing leader in the room
- Organisations where the founder is still doing too much of the marketing themselves
- Teams who want a plan they will actually follow, not a deck they will forget
The evidence
Three data points.
One clear picture.
The case for senior marketing leadership in founder-led businesses has never been stronger. The market has shifted — and the organisations that recognise it first are the ones that will pull ahead.
SMB Marketing Confidence
73%
Over 73% of SMB owners lack confidence in their marketing decisions. The problem is not budget or headcount — it is the absence of senior strategic leadership at the moment it matters most.
UK Fractional CMO Market
£150k+
A senior fractional CMO saves a typical UK SME £150,000 or more versus a full-time hire while delivering the same strategic clarity. The category has moved from justifiable cost-saver to obvious first move.
Global Workplace Happiness Report 2026
#1
Inspiration is the #1 driver of workplace happiness. The best marketing teams — like the best teams anywhere — are the ones where people feel genuinely inspired by what they are building and why. That does not happen by accident.
How we engage
Three ways to work together.
We keep the engagement model simple. Three formats, each designed for a different moment. The workshops are often where things start — but the Advisory relationship is where the most significant change happens.
01
Workshop
1 to 2 days
A focused, facilitated session built around one of the four pillars — Leadership, Communication, Teams, or Marketing. Workshops are designed to shift thinking, surface what is really going on, and leave the team with something concrete to act on. They work best when there is a specific challenge, transition, or conversation that needs a dedicated space.
02
Programme
6 weeks to 6 months
A structured engagement with defined outcomes — focused on a single pillar or spanning multiple pillars in combination, depending on what the moment requires. Programmes are built around your organisation’s specific situation, not a template applied from the outside. They move at the pace that creates real change, not the pace that feels comfortable.
03
Advisory
Ongoing retained relationship
A retained relationship, typically 1–2 days per month, working across all four pillars as priorities evolve. Advisory works for founders and senior leaders who want a thinking partner with direct experience of the commercial and human challenges they are navigating — someone who can ask the questions that don’t get asked in the room.
Ready when you are
Every engagement
starts with a
conversation.
The marketing conversation is often the most clarifying one a leadership team ever has — because it forces agreement on what the business is actually for. Thirty minutes to explore what is really going on — and whether there is something worth building together.