Most marketing goes wrong before the first campaign is ever built, at the understanding stage. A strategy written from the boardroom alone describes the business leadership wishes they had. A strategy written from analytics alone describes traffic, not people. I learned across six industries that the only reliable picture comes from sitting in every seat at the table. So that's how I start, every time.
1. Walk in as the customer
Before anyone knows my title, I experience the business the way a stranger does. I browse the website on my phone. I put a product in the cart and abandon it, then watch what happens. I call the phone number on the contact page. I visit the store, the showroom or the yard and see what a first-timer sees.
This is where the truth lives. At a dealership, it's whether anyone greets you within two minutes. In e-commerce, it's the shipping surprise on the last checkout step. The gap between what the brand promises and what the customer experiences is usually the single biggest marketing opportunity in the building, and no dashboard will ever show it to you.
2. Listen to the people on the floor
Next, the front line: the salespeople, the service desk, the warehouse team, the reps on the road. They answer the same customer questions fifty times a week, and they know exactly which promises the marketing makes that the operation can't keep.
Some of the best-performing campaigns I've built started as a throwaway line from a counter salesperson. When I marketed fourteen safety brands, the reps taught me the difference between what a site foreman buys and what a retail walk-in buys, a segmentation insight no report had surfaced. Staff also tell you something subtler: how the business talks about itself when no customer is listening. That voice, honest, unpolished, proud in specific ways, is usually much closer to a workable brand than the tagline on the wall.
3. Sit with management
Then leadership: not just for the growth targets, but for the constraints. What margins actually allow. Which product lines the business wants to grow and which it quietly wants to retire. What was tried before I arrived, and why it failed. Where the operational limits are, because a campaign that outsells the warehouse is a failure wearing a success costume.
Reporting to a partnership board at a law firm taught me to translate in both directions: marketing into commercial language for leadership, and commercial priorities back into creative briefs the team can act on.
4. Hear what clients say when nobody's selling to them
Finally, the existing customers, through surveys, reviews, interviews and the complaints file. Why did they actually choose the business? What almost stopped them? What do they tell friends when they recommend it, in their own words?
Those words matter more than any positioning workshop. Customers hand you the campaign copy if you ask and then get out of the way. And the complaints file is a gift: every recurring complaint is either a product fix, an expectation the marketing set wrongly, or a competitor's opening.
5. Build the bridge
Now, and only now, the outline: a picture of where these four views agree, where they conflict, and what the marketing must do about it. The customer wants a simpler story. Staff want promises the operation can keep. Management wants growth inside real constraints. Clients want the thing they already love, made easier to find and buy.
The strategy that comes out of this is a bridge between all of them, channels, budget, message and measurement chosen so that the business is presented in its best light to every stakeholder at once, and honestly. Then I build it: the campaigns, the content, the pages, the automations, with clear numbers attached so everyone can see whether the bridge is holding.
Why I work this way
Because it travels. This method is why I could move from Harley-Davidson to heavy equipment to a law firm to D2C gifting to fitness retail and produce measurable results in each: Dealership of the Year, 3.5x ROAS, 60% organic growth, a 20% retention lift. The industries change. The seats at the table don't.