Marketing Strategy and Planning Consultancy Services | Flex Marketing

Solid marketing advice to achieve your unique business goals

Marketing strategy and planning services customised to fit your requirements

Great marketing comes from great planning

Let us formulate and deliver the marketing strategy to help your business thrive.

We meet many business owners who request help with shifting their approach to their marketing. We encourage them to ask the ‘why’ question and do the strategic thinking before asking the ‘what’ question about tactics. The ‘thinking’ and the ‘doing’ need to be connected to each other and should come in that order.

How do we help you do this?

Through our marketing strategy and planning services...from identifying target audiences with marketing segmentation through to defining digital marketing strategies; we have frameworks and packages to step you through the process.

“Help your customers and you help your business”

– Leo Burnett

Marketing strategy and planning services

All our marketing strategies are crafted to suit your business – there is nothing out of the box. Having said that, often people ‘don’t know what they don’t know’ and to make it easier we have a menu of services below that you may be interested in discussing, including packages that help connect your business and marketing goals for set prices. If you don’t find what you are looking for listed, please contact us anyway so that we can discuss customising a solution to your requirements and budget.

Planning packages

Marketing Plan – Gold Package

Marketing Planning with support across 12 months. We prepare documentation

Work with us on your annual marketing plan…year after year if it suits. Involves preparing a marketing plan for you as described in the 'basic package', however it keeps you accountable with quarterly reviews. It also includes the development of an implementation plan for planning tactical marketing that helps meet your overall marketing objectives and strategies. Quarterly payment plan.

Marketing Plan – Silver Package

Marketing Planning with support across 12 months. You prepare documentation

Similar to the Gold package, however, you get even more involved by writing your own plan while we guide you through the process by providing you with templates and feedback to refine your plan. A cheaper alternative that is a great option for anyone with more time available and wanting to learn through being more ‘hands-on’. Quarterly payment plan.

Marketing Plan – Basic Package

A one-off Marketing Plan

Similar to the Gold package in that we will document it for you, but without the support across the year. Ideal for those that want help with the up front thinking and then be left to get on with things.

Other marketing consulting services

Marketing Workshops

Need a framework and fresh thinking about your branding, communication strategy, targeting or segmentation? Or simply a brainstorming session to help get your creative thinking cap on?

Our workshops are tailored to your requirements. We can facilitate and participate at the same time or be invited to participate in sessions hosted by specialists in a particular field to provide a broader marketing perspective (e.g. website discovery meetings, re-branding sessions or scoping deep-dives)

Marketing Guidance Session

Designed to be an affordable way of quickly accessing some ‘thinking’ about your business’s marketing.

Involves a strategy session for a duration that suits (usually 1-2 hours depending on whether we have worked together before), followed up with a 1-2 pager ‘tips takeaway’ document – an email reminder of things we discussed.

Marketing Audit

Need an independent review of your marketing processes, collateral or communications? Want an expert opinion on where you are doing well, where there are opportunities to develop and areas for you to address?

We can customise a marketing audit to suit your needs including a discovery phase as well as a reporting and feedback phase so that you get the chance to discuss findings and ask questions.

Marketing Consulting ‘by the hour’

Buy some time to pick our brains and get a fresh outside perspective.

We’ll agree how long we need to meet (by phone/video call or in person) and whether any additional time for research or background work is required. Our session should provide enough time to bounce around ideas, hear our thoughts as well as crystalise your own thinking. Minimum is 2 hours.

You will also find information on marketing coaching and training on this page, as well as an overview of how we can help on marketing projects here. If you need help with ‘the doing’, our outsource marketing packages are perfect for actually implementing your marketing plan.

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Why choose me as your marketing consultant?

Client-side experience – I know you. I’ve been in similar shoes to yours, making decisions for many businesses that have relied on my expertise and judgement. I’ve had real-world experience and had to put money where my mouth is, so I’m always considering “If it were my business…” when asked my opinion.
Lots of experience with many great brands – I have worked with some well-known businesses through a range of different economic times and unique challenges as their industries have undergone transformation. It has not all been plain sailing –a real roller-coaster of successful endeavours mixed with periods of immense pressure. This ‘ride’ has produced fantastic learnings that can be readily transferred to other businesses and industries regardless of size.
Bring big business experience to small businesses – I’ve had the luxury of big budgets while working for some large companies. I have also had massive audiences to test hypotheses and campaigns on in the United Kingdom and now smaller businesses I work with benefit from all that experience.

Practical thinking – you may choose to only use Flex Marketing for marketing consulting, however, you are sure to get practical advice because we don’t just spend all our time ‘thinking’ and not doing. Through our outsource marketing services we are still very hands-on for much of our time, meaning that we won’t advise you to do the impossible.
Easy to get along with – we relate to what your day-to-day is like, aiming to add value by being proactive and acting in your best interests. You won’t find us sitting in any ivory towers – we do our best to get to know you, your team and your business to help you succeed.

What is the cost, the process and other FAQs?

How much do you charge?

Although we do have an hourly rate for marketing consulting, quite often we work with clients on a number of different aspects of their marketing and they end up combining a marketing planning package with an outsource marketing package. The outsource marketing package lets them get some immediate help with the ‘doing’ and the marketing planning package gives them the ‘boost’ of time needed when we start working together to invest in strategic thinking. This planning will make implementation for the rest of the year so much easier. There are set prices for the packages that can be emailed upon enquiry. The prices for other services will be quoted on a per-project basis, with your unique requirements and budget in mind.

What is the process for working with you?

For any marketing consulting project, whether as a one-off freelance project or on-going planning package, the process of working with you follows the same steps outlined on this page.

Do you work with agencies?

You bet. If you are an agency needing to provide your client (either directly or indirectly) some strategic help with an area that you have limited knowledge about, we can help. We’ve worked alongside multiple agencies on client projects as well as been engaged by top agency DRAFTFCB to help their client from afar.

Where are you based?

At my home office in Auckland, New Zealand, a café, your office or in the cloud – technology removes any location barriers these days, so as long as we can virtually connect, we are good to go!

How far in advance do I need to book?

It really depends on the extent of your requirements. Typically, we can gather enough information via email/phone to work out the scale of a project and whether we are likely to be able to meet your deadline.

If a first meeting is viable, it can usually be held within a week or two of you getting in touch. After that initial meeting, we will be able to give you a better idea of the project timeline – in some cases, we will already be booked up and won’t be able to commence your project for a couple of weeks. Much of our time is allocated to our on-going retainer clients that are on monthly packages. We always aim to reserve some time for ad-hoc work – although obviously our capacity is limited.

If we have enough advance notice, we can arrange to accommodate your project. The best way to secure our time (and also offering the best value for money via access to reduced fees) is to take up one of our on-going packages, where the minimum duration is three months.