Services

There's no shortage of marketing advice out there. The hard part is knowing which direction is right for your business, right now.

Before recommending a path forward, I spend time understanding where you are: a brief conversation about your business, a review of your website, and existing brand or marketing documents.

Sometimes the right starting point is obvious. Sometimes it isn't — and that's exactly what the Marketing Assessment is designed to resolve. It's also how I make sure I'm recommending the right service for where you are, not just the most obvious one.

The result is a working session and a written one-page recommendation covering what is working, what is missing, and what makes the most sense as a next step.

This is not a sales call. It is a working session that produces something useful whether or not we work together further.

What's included:

•  A kick-off call to discuss your business, goals, and current challenges

•  A brief intake form to capture anything that surfaces after our conversation

•  Review of your website and up to 2 existing brand or marketing documents

•  A working session covering what is working, what is missing, and recommended next steps

Investment: $1,000

Timeline: 2 to 3 weeks

You may have analytics, sales numbers, and a CRM. What's often missing isn't the information itself but a clear picture of the motivations and behaviors driving your customers' and clients' decisions — and the time or bandwidth to translate what you already have into something you can act on.

Without that picture, the consequences are real:

•  You're investing in marketing without knowing what actually motivates your audience to choose you — which means your message is based on assumptions, not evidence.

•  Every campaign starts from scratch — because without a real understanding of your audience, there's no foundation to build consistent messaging from.

I design a custom research approach built around the specific questions you need answered about your current customers, clients, or potential new audience. It typically includes a short quantitative survey and several one-on-one conversations. Then I synthesize everything into findings you can act on. 

The questions matter as much as the answers. A well-designed questionnaire surfaces what surveys and dashboards can't: why they really chose you, how they describe your value to others, what almost stopped them, and where your real growth opportunities are hiding.

If you're continuing to Brand Clarity work, this becomes the foundation we build on — deeper, richer, and grounded in real voices rather than assumptions.

You'll walk away with:

• An Ideal Client Profile (ICP): a clear, research-backed picture of who your best customers or clients are and what motivates their decisions

• Strategic recommendations for how those insights should shape your brand positioning and marketing decisions

• A clear picture of what resonates, what doesn't, and where your real growth opportunities are

This is focused, interpretive work. Not a large-scale research study — a sharp, purposeful examination of what your customers or clients think, feel, and value. The findings become the foundation your brand and messaging strategy are built on.

Investment: $6,000

Timeline: 4 to 6 weeks

For brand positioning to work, three things need to be true:

•  You know your audience or audiences intimately: who they are, what they value, and what motivates their decisions.

•  You understand your unique value to that audience: not just what you do, but why you are the right choice over every other option they have.

•  You have a brand positioning that functions as an internal north star: a clear, consistent foundation that guides every word you write across every platform, every proposal, and every conversation. 

Without that foundation, the consequences are real and compounding:

•  Wrong clients keep showing up. You're attracting people who aren't quite the right fit, for work that isn't quite your best work. That's a brand problem masquerading as a sales problem.

•  You can't articulate what makes you different from your closest competitor. You know your value — but it lives in your head, not in your brand. It doesn't translate to your website, your proposals, or your referral conversations.

•  Pricing pressure increases. When you can't articulate distinct value, clients compare you on price. That's a positioning problem, not a market problem.

•  Referrals slow down. Your best clients become silent advocates instead of vocal ones — because they can't describe what you do clearly enough to send someone your way.

Your brand doesn't exist in a document. It exists in every conversation, every referral, every piece of content your organization puts into the world. When the foundation isn't solid, audiences notice the inconsistency — even when they can't name it. And when they notice, trust starts to erode.

I start by identifying what's missing or misaligned — then combine what you know about your business with what your best customers and clients say about working with you, synthesizing both into a clear brand foundation grounded in real language from real people.

You'll walk away with:

•  A clearly defined Ideal Client Profile (ICP): who you serve and why they choose you. If you have already completed the Audience Insights Sprint, we build on that foundation and can go even deeper. If you have an existing ICP but want validation, we build that into the process.

•  A sharp Unique Selling Proposition (USP): what makes you genuinely, distinctly you — and why the right clients should choose you over every other option.

•  A Brand Positioning Framework: the internal north star that guides every message and marketing decision that follows.

Investment: $8,000

Timeline: 6 to 8 weeks

Your website says one thing. Your LinkedIn says another. Your emails say something else. Each one makes sense on its own — but together they don't tell a consistent story. 

Imagine a potential client who found you on LinkedIn, loved your tone, visited your website, and felt like she landed somewhere different. Same company, different voice. That gap is what happens when copy exists without a strategy to hold it together.

Most people think a messaging strategy is the words they use. It isn't. The messaging strategy is the thinking underneath the words: the emotional tone, the brand voice, the throughline that ties everything together. The copy is how that strategy shows up on the page. Without the strategy, copy is just decoration. Without the copy, strategy is just a document.

I build both. We start by defining your messaging direction: the emotional experience you want your audience to have, the themes that reflect your brand, and the core message that carries through every platform. From there, I translate that strategy into a consistent narrative expressed as written copy for your three priority channels — so your brand finally says what you mean, consistently, everywhere it shows up.

If you've completed the Brand Clarity Sprint with me, we move seamlessly from foundation into messaging. If you're coming to this without that brand foundation in place, we'll start with the Marketing Assessment service and determine the right path forward together. 

You'll walk away with:

•  A Messaging Direction: the emotional tone, brand personality, and throughline that ties all your communications together

•  A Core Brand Message: 1 to 2 sentences carried through every platform, in your voice

•  A Messaging System Map: how your strategy translates into platform-specific copy across your three priority channels

•  Platform-specific copy: written and ready to implement for your three priority channels

•  A Brand Voice Master Summary: a reference document for emotional tone, personality, communication style, and language — so every future piece of content starts from the same place

•  An Implementation Punch List: a prioritized, specific list of exactly what to do, with enough context that you or anyone on your team can implement without a briefing

Investment: $8,000

Timeline: 6 to 8 weeks

When you bring me into an Advisory engagement, I immerse myself in your business — your goals, your market, your challenges, and your opportunities — because I'm genuinely invested in where you're headed. I look for the dots to connect. I bring questions, observations, and perspective shaped by 25 years of working across very different industries and business models. That cross-industry lens is where the most useful thinking comes from.

My career spans senior marketing roles in tourism, entertainment, CPG, higher education, and B2B — from 3M to DreamWorks to Choose Chicago. I've worked with organizations where the budget was lean, and with organizations managing multimillion dollar campaigns and the complexity that comes with them. That range means I've lived it from the inside. Which is exactly what makes my outside perspective valuable.

Advisory engagements have a way of evolving. One client brought me in for a defined scope: providing strategic marketing counsel and an industry perspective on their services. Within the first month, I had identified additional opportunities that aligned with their business goals. By the end of the three-month engagement, the work had grown to include a go-to-market strategy, customer research, and new thought leadership development.

The minimum engagement is three months because real strategic momentum takes more than one conversation. After that, we reassess together. 

What this looks like in practice:

•  10 hours per month of strategic advisory time

•  Go-to-market planning, working sessions, campaign reviews, and strategic counsel on what comes next

Investment: $4,000/month

Minimum engagement: 3 months because real strategic momentum takes more than one conversation.