Fit for Purpose: A Marketing Review
Strategic marketing support for creative and independent businesses
For people with good work, a strong offer or a promising business idea who need a clearer sense of how to market it, where to focus and what to do next. This review is suitable for established businesses, people reshaping or restarting an existing practice, and those at an early stage who need help getting the foundations right.
- creative businesses
- Independent venues and studios
- galleries and artist led spaces
- training organisations
- small professional service businesses
- artists and creative practitioners
- local businesses
Who is this for?
You may have good work, a strong product or an exciting idea, but still feel overwhelmed by everything you are told you should be doing to market it. You are posting on Instagram, sending emails, updating your website, trying different offers and following plenty of advice, but you are not sure what is actually working. Some things bring results, others do not, and it can feel as though you are throwing a great deal of activity at things, without knowing which part is worth continuing.
You may not be clear about why people buy from you, where your customers are coming from or what they most need to hear. Your messaging may have become broad or a little vague, and the amount of day-to-day activity leaves very little space to step back and decide where the business is going. Or you may be at an earlier stage, with an idea you want to develop but no clear sense of how to get it off the ground. There is no shortage of conventional advice about what a new business should be doing. The difficulty is working out what matters now, what can wait and where your time and energy will have the greatest effect.
You will come away with:
The review helps you make sense of what is already happening and decide what to focus on next.
• a clearer understanding of your customers, why they buy and how they find you
• a stronger sense of what you need to say to connect with the right people
• an informed view of which parts of your current marketing are working and which are not
• clear decisions about what to do more of, what to reduce and what to stop
• practical ways to improve your visibility and reach
• priorities that reflect the stage your business is actually at
• a focused three-month action plan, with strategic direction and clear practical steps
The aim is not to give you more marketing tasks.
It is to help you make better decisions about which ones are worth doing.
The review includes:
- a pre-review questionnaire
- a review of your website, social media and current marketing activity
- a scan of relevant competitors or comparators
- a 90-minute strategy session
- clear recommendations on messaging, audiences and how to find and reach your
customers - a simple 3-month marketing action framework
Why this work fits my background
My background brings together marketing, business development, adult education, psychotherapy training, art education and creative practice. Across different fields, I have often worked with businesses, organisations and programmes where good work needed to become clearer, more visible and more commercially workable.
Relevant experience includes:
- building my current art education and coaching business, including international online courses, challenges, coaching groups, newsletters, sales pages, lead magnets, social media campaigns and online delivery systems
- building a private psychotherapy practice and supervision practice
- setting up a training organisation in Transactional Analysis, The TA Training Organisation, and being a central driver in its curriculum, structure, recruitment and development
- developing evening seminar programmes for therapists and counsellors, combining professional development, networking and business development
- improving conference models by reducing financial risk, introducing sponsorship and developing livestreamed access
- working in law firm marketing, where I strengthened sector-based marketing activity and developed more coherent client communications, including turning a generic house magazine into themed issues that showcased expertise across different departments
- setting up a marketing department within an employment agency, developing the overall marketing strategy, introducing a sector-focused approach, and establishing the full marketing mix including corporate identity, marketing literature, customer tracking and PR
- opening and developing recruitment agency branches, including running the most successful new branch in the company that year and subsequently opening a new branch in Telford
The common thread is strategic diagnosis: seeing where there are opportunities to clarify messaging, focus audiences, develop routes to market, make better use of existing assets, and shape marketing activity in a way that is more likely to produce the results the business needs.
Price:
Introductory Offer: £500 available to the first three clients
Standard Price thereafter: £750
What this is, and what this is not.
This is strategic and practical marketing support.
It is designed to help you clarify what you offer, who you need to reach, what message will matter to them, and which routes are most likely to help you find the right customers. It is not ongoing social media management, done-for-you content creation, or a full brand redesign. Further support can be discussed separately if needed, but the review itself is a contained piece of work with a clear beginning, middle and end.
About Lin
I am a marketing strategist, business developer and entrepreneur, as well as an artist, educator, coach and former psychotherapist, with a long background in marketing, business development, training and adult education. I I have worked across recruitment, professional services, psychotherapy training, conference development, art education and creative business. My work has often involved helping people and organisations make their offer clearer, more structured, more visible and more useful to the people they want to reach. I bring a mix of commercial thinking, educational structure, psychological insight and creative judgement to the work. My approach is direct, practical and thoughtful, with a focus on what will genuinely help the business move forward.
If you’d like a clearer view of what is working, what is getting in the way, and where to focus next, book an exploratory marketing call with me. We’ll look briefly at your business, your current priorities and whether my Fit for Purpose Marketing Review would be a useful next step.