STRATEGY
& PLANNING

Marketing without strategy isn't marketing — it's just activity. And activity without commercial purpose is where budgets get wasted and departments get written off as the colouring-in team.

Real strategy means understanding where the business is trying to go and building a marketing function that actively gets it there. That requires working across every part of the business — sales, finance, operations, leadership — and being able to demonstrate in clear commercial terms what marketing is contributing and why it matters.

How I Approach it

I build marketing strategy around business objectives, not marketing ones. That distinction matters more than most people realise. When I sit down to plan, I start with what the business needs to achieve commercially, then work backwards into what marketing needs to do to support that — which channels, which campaigns, which investments and which metrics prove it's working.

Strategy without execution is just a document. I build plans that are designed to be delivered — with clear timelines, measurable milestones and enough flexibility to adapt when the market or business changes.

The Work

PGR Timber & Connect Plumbing

Building Strategy from Nothing

Walked into a business where marketing meant posting on social media and designing the occasional poster. No strategy, no tracking, no attributed revenue and no connection between what marketing was doing and what the business was trying to achieve commercially.

I rebuilt the entire function from the ground up. Wrote a full group marketing strategy, annual plans and a five-year roadmap covering brand positioning, digital integration, CRM, paid media and content. The strategy was designed to show immediate commercial impact while laying the groundwork for long-term digital transformation in a business that had historically operated almost entirely offline.

The result was a marketing department that could demonstrate measurable revenue contribution for the first time — with the reporting infrastructure to prove it at any point to any stakeholder.

Comms Express & PGR Timber

Repositioning as a Commercial Function

In both businesses, marketing was seen as a support function rather than a growth driver. My job in both cases was to change that — not just by saying it but by proving it.

At Comms Express I inherited a channel mix that wasn't being scrutinised commercially. Offers were being pushed at director level based on instinct rather than data — and the data clearly showed they weren't converting. I raised it, was initially met with resistance, and rather than dropping it I continued to build the case over time — tracking performance, presenting alternatives and letting the numbers do the talking. Eventually the approach shifted. It's one of the clearest examples I have of what it actually means to lead with commercial thinking rather than just follow instruction.

At PGR the shift was more structural — integrating CRM, paid media and content into a single performance framework with shared KPIs, joint planning with the sales team and reporting that connected marketing spend directly to revenue outcomes.

Strategy, Planning & Budgeting

Thoughtful Marketing not Done on a Whim

Every year I run a full review of the previous year's performance before a single pound of budget is allocated. What worked, what didn't, where money was wasted and where there's opportunity to reinvest. I then map out the business targets for the year ahead with the sales team and build a marketing plan and budget around delivering on those — covering campaign activity, regular channel spend and ongoing technology costs.

Strategy sits at the centre of this process. Budget decisions aren't made in isolation — they're made in the context of where the business is trying to go, what the competitive landscape looks like and what the data from the previous year is telling us. A channel that performed well last year doesn't automatically get the same investment next year if the strategic priorities have shifted. Everything gets challenged, justified and aligned to commercial outcomes before it gets signed off.

The output is a structured annual plan built around SMART objectives, competitor analysis, brand positioning, key campaign timelines and Gantt charts — a living document that the whole business can reference, not something that gets signed off and forgotten about.

By The Numbers

£7 million total revenue growth delivered across career
£2.5m revenue growth at PGR through CRM and strategy-led initiatives
8:1 blended ROAS at Comms Express across performance channels
Six-figure monthly budgets managed across multiple brands
Five-year marketing strategies built and delivered across trade, e-commerce and fitness sectors

Reporting & Dashboards

One of the things I've invested heavily in across every role is making marketing performance visible to the wider business. I build dynamic dashboards — using a combination of CRM reporting, Klaviyo analytics and custom-coded solutions with AI integration — that give a real-time snapshot of marketing contribution to revenue, channel performance and customer behaviour.

The goal is simple: any stakeholder should be able to look at a dashboard at any point and understand exactly what marketing is doing for the business. That kind of visibility builds trust, justifies investment and removes the guesswork from budget conversations.

STRATEGY & PLANNING

The Work

By The Numbers

Reporting & Dashboards

STRATEGY
& PLANNING