Examples of work
I've spent 11 years working closely with founders of small businesses. In almost every one, there's been more opportunity in what they'd already built.
They come asking for marketing. But it's almost always the conversation before that one - before deciding what marketing to do - that turns up the real opportunity. Something exciting sitting inside a business that's already working.
Usually it's a different way of framing the whole thing. Separate revenue streams where there was one. Customer segments nobody had pulled apart. An asset doing one job that could easily do two.
Here's what that's looked like in practice. One of them might sound a bit like yours.
01You're sitting on something you only use one way
An events service provider had spent years building up a database of high-net-worth customers. Nobody was marketing to it. The data had just accumulated - sitting there, valuable, yet unused.
We identified it as a separate audience with a huge opportunity — and one they already knew plenty about, including their interests and buying habits. So we built a new line selling directly to them, with its own ecommerce site.
A wholesaler, 20+ years established, was set up entirely to sell through trade. We started selling straight to customers alongside it - separate brands, its own ecommerce site, run completely apart from the wholesale operation. It now adds around 30% to annual revenue.
02You're selling to ‘everyone’
A language school was marketing to one generic audience. It turned out to be three: homeowners, GCSE and A-level students, and corporates - all wanting different things, all worth different amounts.
We sized the revenue and scale of each, worked out which offered the most immediate opportunity, and built the plan for going after it.
03You're selling your time, and it limits you
An L&D training company thought it did one thing: training, delivered in the room. Licensing their profiling tools was treated as a side activity that ticked along.
We pulled it out as a revenue stream in its own right, with its own growth strategy and its own sales and marketing behind it. It's now sizeable, stable and consistent — and it earns without anyone needing to be in a room.
04The person buying, isn’t the person you’re talking to
An at-home care provider spoke to the person receiving care in everything they did.
But the person choosing, arranging and paying was usually their adult child. A completely different audience, wanting completely different things — reassurance, security, trust. We reworked who the communications spoke to, and how to reach them.
05Your growth is in your customers you already have
A healthcare ecommerce business instinctively wanted more new customers. The real value was sitting in a loyal existing base, so we focused on retention and referrals instead.
Alongside that, a repositioning. Not another natural skincare brand - a medical one. Same products, different shelf with a stronger differentiator.
06Your own experience is the thing that wins the work
An L&D consultancy had a team with deep pharma backgrounds. It was in their bios, but not leant into being the reason clients chose them. We built the whole proposition around that niche, and worked out how to make that experience visible and relevant to putting forward proposals.
If none of these sound like you, that’s normal.
The whole point is that these weren't obvious to the founders either.
Every one of them came out of a conversation, not a brief. Nobody rang me and said "I think our database is an underused audience."
You don't need to know what your opportunity is. You just need to suspect there's one.