The Best Way to Ensure Marketing Works Is to Start with a Solid Strategy.
We can help. Brand strategy is more than creating a nice logo and matching shirts. It is the competitive strategy that helps your business stand out to customers who are ready to buy. It is the most important factor that affects the rest of your marketing and sales pipeline, and it is the starting point to building a business that grows with clarity. Contact us today and get started with a Core 8™ competitive evaluation.
Brand Strategy Consulting. Here is how we work with you.
Every engagement starts with understanding your competitive position. Whether you need a one-time strategy session, ongoing advisory, or full marketing leadership, each step builds on the last. Start where it makes sense for your business and grow from there.
Core 8™ Evaluation
The entry point to the Core 8 Framework. A competitive snapshot that maps your market, identifies where competitors cluster, audits your messaging against real benchmarks, and delivers a sequenced action plan for what to address first.
Discover Core 8Strategy Consultation
A two-hour paid consulting session where you ask the questions and we give you direct, senior-level advice. Competitive positioning, brand direction, team challenges, vendor decisions, marketing priorities. No deliverables, no reports. Just honest, experienced perspective.
Book SessionMonthly Advisory
Five dedicated hours each month with a senior marketing strategist. Ideal for pre-launch startups and growing companies that want ongoing strategic guidance before committing to a full engagement.
- ✓ Competitive strategy
- ✓ Brand and positioning guidance
- ✓ Team, vendor, and agency evaluations
- ✓ Recommendations and marketing roadmaps
- ✓ Monthly strategic session to review progress and set direction
Fractional Marketing Leadership
Full fractional marketing leadership. We own and direct the entire marketing function. Strategy, campaigns, vendors, and execution oversight for businesses ready to move beyond advisory and into active marketing leadership.
Learn MoreCompare consulting engagements side by side.
| What is included | Consultation $350 one-time | Monthly Advisory $725/mo | Fractional CMO $3,000/mo | CMO + Marketing Support $4,050/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Senior strategist hours | 2 hrs | 5 hrs/mo | Full engagement | Full engagement |
| Competitive strategy guidance | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Brand and positioning guidance | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Recommendations and marketing roadmaps | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Team, vendor, and agency evaluations | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Monthly session to review progress and set direction | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Brand and marketing system evaluation | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Growth roadmap with milestones | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Offer design and funnel architecture | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content plans and creative direction | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Local SEO and Google Business Profile | — | — | — | ✓ |
| CRM, email newsletter, and blog content | — | — | — | ✓ |
| Lead tracking dashboard | — | — | — | ✓ |
| Available add-ons | ||||
| Website design and development | — | — | Add-on | Add-on |
| Social media content and management | — | — | Add-on | Add-on |
| Paid advertising campaigns | — | — | Add-on | Add-on |
| Brand identity and design | — | — | Add-on | Add-on |
| Photography and video production | — | — | Add-on | Add-on |
CMO + Marketing Support combines the Fractional CMO engagement with an entry-level marketing support package. For businesses with larger or more complex marketing needs, additional agency services are scoped and priced separately.
What each engagement includes.
Strategy Consultation
$350 one-time- 2 hours with a senior strategist
- Competitive strategy guidance
- Brand and positioning guidance
Monthly Advisory
$725/mo- 5 hours per month with a senior strategist
- Competitive strategy guidance
- Brand and positioning guidance
- Recommendations and marketing roadmaps
- Team, vendor, and agency evaluations
- Monthly session to review progress and set direction
Fractional CMO
$3,000/mo- Full strategist engagement
- Everything in Monthly Advisory
- Brand and marketing system evaluation
- Growth roadmap with milestones
- Offer design and funnel architecture
- Content plans and creative direction
- Website design and development
- Social media content and management
- Paid advertising campaigns
- Brand identity and design
- Photography and video production
CMO + Marketing Support
$4,050/mo- Full strategist engagement
- Everything in Fractional CMO
- Local SEO and Google Business Profile
- CRM, email newsletter, and blog content
- Lead tracking dashboard
- Website design and development
- Social media content and management
- Paid advertising campaigns
- Brand identity and design
- Photography and video production
CMO + Marketing Support combines the Fractional CMO engagement with an entry-level marketing support package. For businesses with larger or more complex marketing needs, additional agency services are scoped and priced separately.
Not sure which engagement fits where you are? Schedule a discovery call and we will be happy to provide guidance and answer any questions.
Contact UsTactics get you traffic. Strategy builds a business.
When most business owners say they need marketing, what they mean is they need more clients. So they think: run some ads, build a new website, post more on social media. Those are tactics. And they can work. But they work far better, and cost far less, when they are guided by a clear strategy.
Strategy is the decision behind the tactics. It answers: Which market are we competing in? Who exactly is our buyer? What problem are we solving, and can we solve it better than the alternatives? What are competitors offering, where are they falling short, and where is there an underserved segment we can claim? Without those answers, your tactics are an expensive guess.
Where you compete is as important as how you compete.
Every market has a price-and-performance spectrum. When you plot competitors on that spectrum, you usually find clusters. Groups of businesses all trying to own the same position, offering the same thing at similar prices, all saying roughly the same things. That is the most crowded, most expensive place to compete.
Moving away from a cluster is a strategic decision. It might mean moving up-market, specializing more narrowly, or reframing the offer entirely. But the move has to be deliberate, and it has to be sustainable.
For businesses with multiple products or services, this gets more complex. Each offer may sit in a different part of the market, competing against different sets of alternatives. True strategy looks at where the company sits as a whole, whether the individual offers support each other, and how the combined picture builds brand equity over time.
Every business has strengths. Strategy makes them impossible to ignore.
Most business owners know what they are good at. The challenge is turning those strengths into a competitive position that customers can see, feel, and act on. Strategy bridges the gap between what you know about your business and what your market needs to hear.
We built a framework to find out exactly where you stand. And where you should go.
Most marketing and website firms ask you what makes your product better or different. It is an easy question to answer if you sell cars or software. It is much harder if you are a roofer, a healthcare practice, or a local restaurant. The honest answer for most owner-led businesses is that they do not fully know, and no one has ever helped them find out.
We built Core 8™ to address that. It is a strategy development framework for evaluating competitive positioning at the brand, product, and service level. It gives us a consistent logic for deciding where to compete, what to say, when to innovate, and what to change. It scales from the initial assessment all the way through ongoing strategic decisions.
The starting point is the Core 8 Evaluation: a structured competitive assessment that maps where you sit in your market, where your messaging falls short, and what to address first. Unlike larger consulting firms, we built it to be accessible to startups and second-stage companies at a price that reflects where they are.
Competitive Clarity
How your business is positioned relative to competitors, how buyers perceive your value compared to alternatives, and whether that competitive stance is intentional or something that just happened over time.
Competitive Landscape
Who you are competing against, where they cluster, and where the real white space exists.
Price and Positioning
Where you sit on the price-performance spectrum relative to direct and indirect competitors.
Messaging Foundation
Whether your current messaging is built on a real differentiator or a table-stakes claim everyone else is making.
Digital Presence Audit
How you show up across search, social, and your own website compared to where your competitors are investing.
Customer Perception
What your existing customers say about you versus what you say about yourself.
Innovation and Evolution Opportunities
Where the business or offer has room to move to reduce competition pressure or unlock a new market segment.
Strategic Recommendations
A sequenced action plan that covers what to address first, what to address next, and why, based on the competitive data we find, not on guesswork.