Effective Marketing Plans for Small Business Owners

In this one, I'm delighted to be joined by Helen Cox, a Chartered Marketer, and Founder of Helen Cox Marketing, a marketing consultancy specialising in advising professional service firms on their marketing and business development.

In our wide ranging conversation, Helen and I cover all that you need to know about the benefits of effective marketing plans for small business owners.

🌟 Some of my favourite parts were:
✅ Understanding Helen’s marketing planning framework – specifically the six key elements of her planning wheel;
✅ How to marry a Client’s financial and business objectives and ensure that there is an alignment between the two;
✅ How we get very focused on the minute detail but don’t strategically think about why we're doing what we’re doing;
✅ Why it’s vital to ensure that marketing plans are an agile piece of work, iterations throughout the year, rather than an unchanging document;
✅ How to do client competitor analysis to understand how they position themselves, what services they're promoting, how they talk to their clients.

Business Book Bonus Section:

The Digital Marketing Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-digital-marketing-podcast/id373596600

Transcript

Adam (00:03.206)

So today I'm here with Helen Cox, who is the founder of Helen Cox Marketing, a chartered marketer with over 17 years advising professional service firms on their marketing and business development. Helen, welcome to the Fractional CFO Show. How are you doing?

Helen Cox (00:18.03)

I'm well thank you Adam, how are you?

Adam (00:20.23)

I'm very well, thanks for asking. So excited to talk about this today. We're diving into the benefits of effective marketing plans for small business owners. And I guess to start with Helen, would you mind giving us a bit of an overview of your career so far? How did you end up going? I see you studied law at university from your LinkedIn. So how did you go from that to running a marketing consultancy?

Helen Cox (00:45.774)

Yeah, how did I go from that? It's very different. So I think I...

always wanted to work in law, but I didn't want to be a lawyer. So I decided to go into the marketing area of law. So that's how that kind of came about. So instead of going straight into into kind of being a solicitor and going through all of the different millions of exams that you have to take, I was very much kind of keen on getting under the skin of the marketing side of things there. So I've kind of got involved with that. And it took a while to get into law firm marketing. They always ask for people to have experience and I'm like, well,

how does one person start at the bottom if they can never have experience? So it took a little while for me to get into marketing and all that once I got that break I've been I've been doing it ever since really or I've did it in my corporate life for sure.

Adam (01:35.43)

Excellent. And how are you enjoying your post -corporate life in terms of running a consultancy versus being in the corporate world?

Helen Cox (01:43.726)

Yeah, well, I must admit, I am enjoying it a lot.

So don't get me wrong, and you probably have this as well. You have like some great roller coaster moments where you have some great peaks and then you have some moments where you're like, my God, where's the next client coming from? I haven't got a clue. But I don't think I'm very employable now after seven years. I don't think I can necessarily go in and start working for someone again. It's very, very different. So for me, I'm enjoying it. It's tough. You know, we like, we both do the same thing,

but in different different fields, we have to do our own business development, we have to work on our own sometimes. And we have to have a certain mindset, I think it's better to do that. But I don't want to go back to working nine to five. No way I want to be a bit more flexible. And I like the I like having the choice of who I work with, and the variety of people that I work with as well. That's really important to me.

Adam (02:41.158)

Yeah, 100%. I definitely agree with that in terms of choice of who to work with and having those values that you hold dear working with people who have similar values rather than, you know, being forced to work under sort of someone else's control and direction and their values.

Helen Cox (02:55.726)

I know you get to choose. So I think some people think, you just go for any, you know, a client comes to you, you've got to accept it, but you don't. And I've definitely turned clients away because they just haven't really fitted with my personality or what I want to do, or they're definitely raising red flags before everyone started working with them. So yeah, we've got a choice and I think that's the most exciting thing.

Adam (03:17.894)

Absolutely, 100 % agree. Great. So I guess to start with focusing on plans and marketing plans, I'd love to start with an overview really. I know that you feel when we spoke before that everything has to start with a plan. So why is it that this is something you feel so strongly about?

Helen Cox (03:37.166)

I feel like I'm just always banging a marketing planning drum all the time. But I think from my perspective, having worked in corporate, having worked with different businesses in my consultancy life, what I see is people just going straight to marketing tactics all the time. And by marketing tactics, I mean, they'll go, I need to do some social media, or I think I need an email newsletter, or I think I'm going to do this. And I'm like, well, hang on a minute, do you need to do that? Is that where your audience is?

Is that what you're trying to achieve? Is it all aligned? So I think we get very focused on the minutiae detail of what marketing channels we use. And we don't take those steps back and have an actual real strategic think about why we're doing this and does it align with all the right marketing messages and target market. We just go straight into it. And I think this is where businesses fail is because they don't think this through and they'll spend hundreds of pounds or thousands of pounds on marketing activity and they go, well, it didn't work.

It's like, well, yeah, because for instance, old people aren't buying houses on Facebook. That's Facebook advertising isn't the right way to do that. And that's genuinely an experience that I had when somebody wanted to do Facebook advertising to retire people to buy homes. I thought that's insane. So it gets a little bit muddled and a bit lost. And I think people want to see action, but don't necessarily take the time to think about the planning.

Adam (05:02.15)

Yeah, that's great and very comparable really with finance plans as well. I guess not surprisingly in that often people just jump in and want a budget and want a number, but they don't necessarily think about how they're gonna get to it, how it aligns with their objectives, where it fits within the grand scheme. So no, that's great. And yeah, I know when we've spoken before, you've mentioned you have a framework that you use like a marketing planning wheel.

Helen Cox (05:14.318)

Ha ha.

Helen Cox (05:28.366)

Yes.

Adam (05:29.286)

So it'd be great to understand, for those in the audience who might not be familiar with the process, can you give us an overview of what that is and then perhaps we can dive into the different elements.

Helen Cox (05:40.462)

Yeah, so there's definitely around six key elements to what I would call this planning wheel that I work with. And it really comes down to a series of questions to ask yourself as you're going through planning. So for instance, the questions that you'll be thinking about is, you know, where are we now? Where do we want to be? How do we get there? What should we do? When should we do it? And has that been successful? And it's going through those six key questions and asking yourself that

in a very frank and honest way that can help you create a marketing plan that's nice and structured and has some meaning and is aligned to business goals and objectives.

Adam (06:20.774)

Okay, great. So I guess, well, let's start with the first of those elements. I think you said, where are we now? Maybe just talk us through what your process would normally be to sort of help a business owner understand the answer to that one.

Helen Cox (06:26.638)

Yes.

Helen Cox (06:34.894)

Yeah, and I think where are we now is very much about looking at the bigger picture. So the things that I would want to talk through or as a business owner that I'd like people to consider is if you have been doing marketing in the past, it's a really good opportunity to take a step back and have a look at what is and isn't working. I think there's a tendency to just kind of carry on doing things the same old the same old and is it the right thing to do. So it's worth having a look at the market.

activity that you're doing, what is working, what isn't and where there might be opportunities.

Another area to think about is what are your competition doing? I find this very, very useful. So I'll go and have a look at my client's competition on their websites. I'll try to understand what wording they use on the website, how they position themselves, what services they're promoting, how they talk to their clients. And I think you can learn a lot about your competitor's set by doing that. And it's important not to ignore it.

they might not even be direct competitors, you might not need to take too much notice of them. But the amount of great ideas that you can that you can kind of splurge together, if that's even a word, from having a look at what other people are doing, it can really just help target your thinking. And I'm always a big fan of, I've had one client that has said to me, are we just stay in our lane, and we don't worry about what other competitors are doing. And I'm like, No, I think you should just pay attention. Doesn't mean you have to pull in doesn't mean you have to do exactly what they're doing. But you need to know what you're doing.

what your competitive market's doing is important.

Adam (08:13.542)

That's great, lots there to dive into. In terms of what you started there about what's working, what isn't working, there's a concept in financial budgeting and financial planning around zero -based budgeting. So assuming that you're starting from scratch each year, so you look at what's working, what isn't working, but then you're basically starting with a blank canvas. I would imagine it's similar.

Helen Cox (08:21.87)

Mm.

Adam (08:38.438)

from a marketing point of view as well, given the channels are changing, the mediums that people are consuming content are changing. Is there a similar concept or do you always frame it based on what has happened before and take that into account?

Helen Cox (08:54.158)

So I do frame it slightly differently to that. So the way that I tend to look at it is 70 -20 -10. So 70 % of the budget will go towards activities that are working for you. So you want to kind of continue to invest in that. 20 % is for new activities, things that you need to test and trial and you're not sure if they're going to work. And then we have like a 10 % budget of, my God, emergency, we need to do this event or something's just cropped up out of the blue. So we just have a, well, I was saying,

And I'm not saying all marketers do it like that, but for me, I think it just helps to again, focus that we've got a budget. So how are we going to start splicing that up and make sure that it's divided properly.

Adam (09:35.238)

That's a really good way of doing it. And I love that 10 % contingency. You always need a contingency, you always need a buffer. So having that makes a lot of sense. Okay, great. And then in terms of you mentioned looking at your competition and using that to sort of help inform what you do as a client A or client B, whatever. Are there other areas that you look at in terms of, you know, whether it be what other customers are doing, you know, doing some sort of benchmarking across

Helen Cox (09:41.326)

Yeah.

Adam (10:05.254)

Not just the competitive set, but other areas.

Helen Cox (10:05.614)

Mm.

absolutely. I think that's so the other three, the other three things that I would be looking at as part of that, where are we now is I'd also be looking at services that you're providing. So you know, what services are doing well, because I think we have a tech again, businesses might have a tendency to go, we need to be everything to everyone and do everything. But actually having a few core services that are working really well is key. Like, what do we need to diversify into? That's important. Where do we need to go? And what ones do we need to like drop off? Without getting too technical, there's a,

there's a matrix called the Boston Matrix and it helps you put your services into different categories like cash cows, stars, problem child and things like that. And it helps you work out which ones you should continue, which ones you should drop. And I think, you know, as part of this, where are we now? You do need to have a look at that service line set to make sure that you're putting all the effort into the things that are gonna help you to grow.

Adam (11:02.854)

That's great. In terms of that sort of assessment of all of these areas, do you use something like a SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, or is it not trying to lay a framework over framework over framework here, but do you use that kind of approach or trying to avoid that, but yeah, do you use that kind of framework as part of this assessment?

Helen Cox (11:18.026)

Turning into a marketing textbook.

Helen Cox (11:28.718)

Yeah, so I do. I try not to. I think when you study marketing, they give you like a million different things like porters, five forces and all this kind of stuff. my god, what actually works in practice. And one of the things I would always do and if I'm really useful is a swap. Absolutely. I think I do a swap for the company overall. Sometimes I might do a swap for services as well or particular products. I think that's really useful. So I definitely do a swap. One of the other areas that I was going to mention that I do a

Adam (11:47.846)

Okay.

Helen Cox (11:58.624)

as part of the where are we now category is what's happening in like, like in the wider kind of macro economic environment. So good old pestle analysis or pest or whatever, whatever it's called pest analysis is very, very useful to kind of understand what's going on from like a political, economical and social technological point of view, because things change very, very quickly and how that may or may not impact your business. That's really useful.

Adam (12:25.414)

Excellent. Okay, we've got another framework there as well. That's perfect.

Helen Cox (12:28.446)

so many frameworks, but that's the I mean, I don't spend hours agonising over it. It's just really just a quick think around, especially if there's for instance, a general election coming up, you know, how will government policies affect my business? It's just little things like that you just need to be is kind of like horizon scanning and making sure you're aware of anything that might impact you.

Adam (12:48.23)

Absolutely, it's just a checklist. It's just another way of making sure you've covered all the elements. No, I completely agree. And I guess sort of final question around this, where are we now stages around the financial elements. And so how does that feed into this stage? Do you look at, you know, what you've spent last year, what their budget is for this year at this stage? Will you incorporate that further down the track?

Helen Cox (13:14.99)

So for me, budgeting comes a little bit further down the track because we want to make sure that we're getting the right tactics in place. So we don't, I don't necessarily, it's good to know where you are, but for me, in the next step of the plan, we then start to look at objectives and then we'll have things like financial objectives, marketing objectives, we'll go into that in a minute, but those objectives will then help drive the tactics and then the tactics will help understand like what budget we need to put and where we need to place it.

Adam (13:42.662)

Perfect, well you've segued nicely there Helen into the next stage. I see what you did there. So, well perhaps, so this is the, I think you said it was the where do we want to be stage, right? In terms of objectives as you say is another way of looking at that. So perhaps tell us a little bit about how you would usually go about this stage.

Helen Cox (13:45.75)

Yeah.

Helen Cox (13:52.43)

Yeah. Yeah.

Helen Cox (14:00.174)

Yeah, so it's not a massive, great big planning stage from my perspective, but it's definitely there's two areas I tend to look at with my clients. The first one is the financial objectives. So I'm really keen to understand, you know, if they want to increase their sales or increase their profit or increase their pipeline, or do they want to have X amount of instructions if you're a solicitor, for instance, at this value, it's really important to understand that because you could have a cut for me, I could have a client that was

wants one new one new client at 500 K or 55 new clients at one P and even though that's an extreme that does does impact in how you think about what marketing that you want to do to people. First one being very personalised, the second one may be being a little bit more kind of broad brush. But that's really important to understand what it is from the financial objectives. I'm also really keen at this stage, well keen is vital to understand what the

the business objectives are, because actually those business objectives will then kind of flow into these objectives in the first place. I'm sure you have the same thing with yourself. You probably want to go straight to a business plan when you're doing this kind of thing. Am I right?

Adam (15:14.31)

You are right. You are right. That's exactly right. So I think it's interesting though, you mentioned about business objectives and it was something I was talking with Dave Parry. So he had an episode with Dave Parry from Well Meadow and he had quite an interesting take on objectives. And I came at it from the perspective of smarts and I asked him his perspective of that and he was quite not dismissive was the wrong word, but he was like, it's much more important that.

Helen Cox (15:17.006)

for it.

Adam (15:42.15)

the leader has a really clear vision and that that's described vividly for the wider team and that's attractive vision. And that's far more important than objectives, specific, measurable, et cetera. I don't know what your view is on that. And then if you were working with an organization that had more of a vision approach than an objective approach, how that would affect this, where do we want to be stage?

Helen Cox (15:45.006)

Mmm.

Helen Cox (16:08.574)

God, that's a question, isn't it? So I mean, I think, personally, because of the way I am, and the way my brain is structured, I think objectives are really, really helpful. I think visions, missions, purposes, and all that they have to be there as part of the business kind of culture ethos, and it's really, really important. But also, we could have a vision and visions tend to be quite high level. But then it's a case of like, well, what does that? How is that interpreted by different people? And if you have an objective that is really clear, and like you said, Adam, I'm more

about a smart objective because that it cannot be so transparent, you cannot get that wrong, then that's going to make sure that everybody's on the same page. Whereas if you have a leader with a vision, that's fine. And they should wish every business should have a vision statement. It can be quite opaque. It just depends what it means to different people. So my brain, the way I work, I'm like, give me something that I can really understand. And I know that we can work to. If I had somebody with a vision, I'd be I'd be probably trying to drill them down.

Adam (16:57.478)

Yeah.

Helen Cox (17:08.144)

to some some sort of objective or goal or like what or even sometimes I asked the question what does success look like rather than what's the objectives because I just need to understand that because yeah I think that's how I would handle that or that's how I think about vision versus objectives.

Adam (17:24.262)

There you go.

No, I think that's really, really interesting and very true in terms of having, and to be fair to Dave, I don't think he was saying it was one or the other. I think it was more about the importance on it. That was my interpretation that was not great there. But I think, no, you're right. Having something that's really transparent and understandable and able to be communicated very clearly to every member of the organization. Yeah, that's critical. That's critical. One other question I had just before we move on to the next section is just around, I guess it's similar to the question I asked,

Helen Cox (17:34.862)

okay.

Okay cool cool.

Adam (17:56.92)

asked before about fast moving nature and obviously as you say if you've got you know sales targets or financial or business objectives that over the course of the period that you're planning that they're moving how do you manage that as a you know from the perspective of a business owner with a with a sort of fixed marketing plan will you revise it will you update it you know how will you pivot to use an awful term to

Helen Cox (18:22.798)

I love a pivots.

Adam (18:24.038)

to take into account the sort of changing environment.

Helen Cox (18:28.942)

So I don't see marketing plans as concrete. You don't write it in January and then it doesn't change until December. It can't. That is a nonsense. I mean, marketing plans are iterations throughout the year. So what I would always do is I would be thinking about key milestones and it would probably be once every three months to see how we're going because you have to be agile. Things move quickly. Things change. People have new ideas. So it's really, really important to make sure that you're flexible. So I don't see this thing as not changing.

changing. It's reviewed, it's tweaked, it's an agile piece of work. And I think if you were to kind of just have that and then not, you know, not track it or do anything for 12 months ago, at the end of 12 months, how do we do? You're in a problem because you get yourself into a bit of a pickle. Because if you didn't do very well, you've wasted 12 months. So for me, it's really, really key. And the other thing I really wanted to quickly mention before we move on is even though I was just talking about financial objectives, I also just wanted to do the marketing objectives as well.

There's another piece there for me, which is quite important. A lot of the clients that I work with want to like increase brand awareness or target new customers or retain existing customers or develop some sort of brand loyalty or launch a new product. So there are different, so you've got the financials, but there's also marketing and it's important to have both and it all needs to be aligned back up to the business plan.

Adam (19:55.718)

Very good, very good. You've got to have a bit of alignment, that's exactly right. So we've talked about sort of where we're coming from, where we want to be, what's the next step, Helen?

Helen Cox (19:57.55)

bit of alignment.

Yep.

Helen Cox (20:08.558)

So for me, it's how are we going to get there? And all I call it like the strategy section, the marketing strategy section, because for me, this contains a couple of key areas. So within each six of the segments that we're talking about, there are little mini segments within them that's important to consider. So for me, in this section, what we're thinking about is firstly, our target audience and who they are and asking ourselves,

Adam (20:26.246)

Mm -hmm.

Helen Cox (20:38.464)

some key questions around demographics. So, you know, what job titles do they have? What kind of companies do they work for? What industries are they in? You know, what kind of, what age are they? It's very important to kind of really start to put together a profile in your mind about who they are. And then you need to start off. No.

Adam (20:56.486)

Would you, sorry, no, I was just gonna ask, would you, you said you mentioned profile there, would you actually do personas at this stage and like really dive into an app?

Helen Cox (21:03.502)

Yeah, this is... Yeah.

this is persona section. So you could call it target audience, you can call it client personas, you can call it your ideal client profile or ICP. Again, a million different things us marketers call it, I just go for target audience, but this is your personas. And I tend to map this out, like I actually got a picture of somebody, this is like my target client, and this is what the kind of demographics are. And for me, it's about considering things like, what are their pain points? What are their challenges? What keeps them up at night? It's that.

Adam (21:12.326)

Okay.

Helen Cox (21:35.872)

that, let's get in their shoes and start thinking about how they think and what are their biggest problems. And then what are, you know, what are the challenges and how can we address those challenges? So there's lots of different things to start kind of piecing together in the target audience. But for me, it's about understanding who they are, and how they're thinking, and then how we can help. And how, most importantly, how do they get their information? Like, how would they research somebody like you? Would they go

to an event, would it be through word of mouth? If you're targeting CEOs, for instance, they are not going to be someone that's going to be Googling you, they are going to probably ask for word of mouth referrals. So it's really important to start thinking about that. So sometimes when I'm doing like a target audience or an ideal client persona,

I will go on LinkedIn and actually find these people. So I was doing this for an insure tech company recently for claims directors. And I went on and I had a good old look at loads of claims directors on LinkedIn. And then I felt like I really understood what they were talking about, how they were interacting with each other. And yeah, sometimes it's useful to use LinkedIn in a way where you can start actually rather than going, I think this person might look and feel like this. It's actually like go and have a look on LinkedIn because they're actually on there. And you can get a much more realistic profile.

Adam (22:54.726)

And that's really interesting and I guess my natural persona would be I get down a rabbit hole of like three days later I'd still be looking on LinkedIn at the different personas and individuals. How do you sort of control this? But whether it be you doing it or your clients doing it to make sure that it's really targeted and best use of time.

Helen Cox (23:17.646)

I think for me it's about, god, this is really boring. I'll make a template. So I make sure that I kind of capture like key information and you don't have to go on for reams and reams. It's like maybe three key points for each of those things I've just talked about like demographics, biggest challenges, how we can help, where they get their information. Just, it shouldn't be something that has taken you days to do. Hopefully if you've been in business for a little while or you know, you've just started up, you should have a good understanding, but it's about capturing it, doing some research, sense checking it, and then making tweaks as necessary based on what you're doing.

you've found out. So yeah, don't go down a rabbit hole for three days. Your eyes will go like, like big.

Adam (23:53.542)

And I guess to your point that, you know, if you've done this last year or you know your business really well, is there a case for just not needing to do this? Or would you do it each time you do a plan to make sure that you're still talking to the right people in the right way?

Helen Cox (24:09.166)

Yeah, I think so. I think it's really important to make sure you keep on top of things. So again, marketing planning, I would say you start it, it runs for the year, but you have your milestones. When you do your next marketing planning cycle, you do need to just sense check it. You might have launched some new services, you might have changed the way your business works, things might be slightly tweaked. So again, it's just kind of revisiting and not being too static with it. But I think it's important to keep on top of it. And yeah, I know,

I know it's like, if it's in your head, it's fine. But what happens if, someone said, I usually say, well, you got hit by a bus and someone else has to take over. Someone said, let's rephrase that and say, you won the lottery and you left the business. But if someone wants to leave the business and they had that all in their head, where's the business continuity perspective, where's that information other than in that person's mind? So for me, it's about capturing it, I think, and putting it down and getting it there and checking in.

Adam (25:07.366)

No, that's great. Lots of good advice there. Perfect. Okay. Is just conscious of time and maybe we, is there anything else you want to mention on this sort of strategic stage?

Helen Cox (25:13.55)

god.

Helen Cox (25:18.254)

my god, I really want to mention some very quick things and I'll stop talking about all of this. But I think this I think this will get a bit shorter as we go down to the other sections. But for me, again, it's about looking at your USP, your unique selling proposition or how you differentiate yourself. So make when you're looking at the competitors and when you're thinking about what you offer, having a USP is really important and knowing that very, and knowing that off by heart and being able to describe it when you're at networking. That's that's key.

Adam (25:23.142)

No, it's great. Go for it.

Helen Cox (25:48.846)

Another area that I want people to think about is what your key messages are to your audience. So if there are three things that your audience need to know about you or what you offer, what should that be? And how do you make sure you weave that in?

And the last thing is again, it's a structure and it's called the four P's. I don't know if you've ever come across it, Adam, but it's about price, place, promotion and your products. So as part of the marketing planning process, you'll be looking at your pricing strategy and making sure that's in line with the competition or is it fixed pricing or retainers or unison? You might be looking at the place where you sell your product online or physical. Is that giving the right impression? One of my older clients, they were an accountancy firm. They had a

rebrand and the ring and when I visited their offices is a completely different look and feel to what their actual rebrand was like this is the same place. It was very it's very confusing. So it's making sure your your the place where you sell your product is works for you is on brand. Then it's looking at your products and services and what you offer and what you shouldn't. And then it's back down to the promotional side of things as well. That's real real quick whistle stop tour but they are some very key areas to think about in the in the strategic section I think.

Thank you.

Adam (27:03.142)

I get the feeling we could probably go into a whole podcast on each of those elements. So yeah, I'm sorry to.

Helen Cox (27:07.982)

my God, I could chat, chat.

Adam (27:13.062)

Sorry, we had to rush through that, but yeah, those are huge topics. But yeah, conscious sort of moving on to the next area. Sorry, remind me, was this around tactics?

Helen Cox (27:13.518)

Last time.

You

Helen Cox (27:23.662)

Yep.

Yes, so tactics are...

important. There's three houses of tactics I think that you need to look at. So I won't go into again, you could have a web a podcast on SEO and website, but there's the digital side of things that you need to look at. So your digital marketing tactics like your website, your SEO, your Google Business Profile, your social media, email marketing, content, pay per click or social advertising, what you're doing, what should you be doing, that's important to understand. There'll be an offline side of things.

So what I mean by that offline is events that you want to attend exhibitions, awards that you might want to enter in a marketing collateral. You know, still people want to have a PDF of the services that you have. Just having a think about what you what you need there. And again, I'm really just touching base on these, but it's the business development side of things. So I don't think you can have marketing BD like one without the other business.

development is really important. So it's how do you cross -sell to existing clients, you know, new products and services, how do you target new clients, how do you re -engage with lapse clients. And I think there's another one in there, but there's lots of different things to think about, not just marketing, which provides air cover, but you need the BD, which provides that more kind of one -to -one. And if you work in business to business, relationship building is key. So you ask why you need both.

Helen Cox (28:59.392)

you

Adam (29:00.646)

Wow, lots there, lots there. In terms of the, how do you recommend your clients keep an eye on all of this? Because there's so many different elements and obviously in terms of the different offline and online objectives and tactics, they're each gonna have different metrics and measurements and success or failure sort of.

identifiable metrics that you can track those. So do you have any tools or any ways that you advise clients to monitor and keep an eye on those?

Helen Cox (29:32.622)

Yeah, and I think this comes down to the last one of one of the phases of that planning well, it's like the measurements and the tactics, but there are different things that you can use as different things, different tools to be a bit more, a bit more technical that you could use to help measure. So for instance, with the website, you might want to look at your Google Analytics, your email marketing, you'll be looking at your stats for your open rate and click through rates. If you have a CRM, if you're big enough and you've invested, then that will help

you monitor the business development side of things like where your business is coming from, how much value is that business. But in the absence of that, what some of my clients have been doing. So when I say that, I mean, like a CRM, what we do tend to do is put spreadsheets together to say, look, this is how many inquiries we've had. This is what the types of inquiries for the services and sectors. This is the value of those inquiries. And we start to build out like an Excel spreadsheet so we can see a pipeline. Not everybody can afford a CRM. It's expensive.

but Excel spreadsheets will work up to a point.

as well. So yeah, definitely want to track it. And there's lots of different ways you can fit. I think there needs to be a focus on what the right, a what the right tactics are for you, because not all of those tactics that I've just mentioned are going to be working. So for me, I just think my website, my LinkedIn, and networking, and they're the three social media, they're the three things that I focus on, and everything else kind of falls away a little bit. So it's making sure that you kind of focus on that. And then reporting on on the things that mean the most to you. Again, I had a client that had dashboards all over the place. And I was like, well,

we don't need 80 dashboards, right? What do you need to know? What's useful for your business? And trying to refine it, because I think you can just get overloaded by data sometimes.

Adam (31:17.702)

Yeah, absolutely. I think to your point earlier, I think in terms of aligning, you know, what you're interested in relevant to who your client, your ideal client or persona is relevant to what service you're offering. So it's, it's making sure that everything dovetails into each other, right?

Helen Cox (31:33.454)

Yeah, exactly. It's really, really important. Everything needs to connect. It's like a puzzle piece. I think sometimes I call it the marketing playing puzzle because it all just needs to connect in with each other. I'm conscious that I've also just not quickly mentioned one of the sections that I mentioned in the planning wheels. And it's not that we kind of skipped it. We went from tactics to measurements, but there's a bit in the middle about the action plan. And I just wanted to touch on it very, very quickly because I think we all go, that's what we're going to do. But we actually need to put a plan of action together to make sure that we're

Adam (31:55.654)

Great, yeah.

Helen Cox (32:03.408)

that we're going to do it. So for every marketing tactic that we've decided on, we need to make sure that that is kind of logged in who's doing what and when and what's that timeline like, some people use a Gantt chart. That's me, I'm old school. Other people might use Trello or Monday or something like that to help organise their time. But there's no point having a plan without those actions off the back of it and knowing when things happen. That's the only way it's going to happen. And you can start looking at what your activity is and

where the pigs and the trots are.

Adam (32:36.102)

No, that's brilliant. And I think it reminds me a lot of financial planning, again, in terms of making sure that you're managing it in a kind of efficient way. And you talk about Gantt charts or Monday or Trello. These are kind of project management tools, aren't they? So I wonder, like from your point of view, how important project management skills are in your job, in your day to day for sort of ensuring your clients are able to action things in the right way.

Helen Cox (32:51.054)

Mm.

Helen Cox (33:02.766)

massively. Like I don't, you have to be super organised. Not only do I have a number of clients, but they all have a number of projects that are going on within each of the clients. And some of those projects are, can be brand refreshes, like that's a multiple, that's juggling multiple different streams. There could be campaigns where you're dealing with content production schedules, like getting videos done, but then they have to be launched onto the channels and the content has to be written. So for me, absolutely essential. Like if you weren't organised, you couldn't do this job because there's so many

There's a billion things to think about. I mean, I'm talking about in the sense that I'm working with maybe, you know, businesses that are maybe a little bit more established sometimes. So I don't want the smaller businesses to get scared. This is not what's the typical thing, but there's lots of different streams and I need to be on top of that. So organization is key.

Adam (33:49.766)

So just out of interest, do you have like loads of Gantt charts stuck on walls behind you with like bits of string going between each of them?

Helen Cox (33:56.222)

Yeah, so what have I got? So I used to do a doogant chart. I also have a work list and I also have a daily calendar, like that I write what I need to do each day as well. I just because I'm managing multiple clients and multiple projects, I really just need to be on top of it all the time. So yeah, lots of organisation, making sure that I can deliver what I've said I'm going to deliver and keeping an eye on the timelines because you could just be going la la la la la la la la

that needs to be delivered on Friday. Do it!

Adam (34:29.766)

Brilliant. I think we could have a whole other podcast on project management skills and how we run our lives. But that's really good. I guess one other question on the...

Helen Cox (34:34.158)

Everything, yeah.

Adam (34:40.07)

just out of interest you're talking and this again comes back to my experience with financial plans. You know often you'll run through a financial planning cycle and at the end of it there'll be some kind of change that you need to manage with you know a particular department that might not have the budget that it was expecting or had last year or whatever it might be. And so can you tell me some of the ways that you manage that or experience that from a marketing plan perspective in terms of getting buy -in for the new change?

and making sure that you've got effective teamwork and collaboration towards that.

Helen Cox (35:17.006)

So in terms of buying, I think it helps when you are looking at competitors and seeing what they're doing because that helps kind of the direction of travel. I work a lot with professional services and lawyers and they're argumentative. So that's kind of their nature of what they do. So you have to be on the ball. If I wanted to help instigate some change, I'm definitely looking at the stats.

and I'm going, I'm having a look at maybe the financials. I might be having a look at the pipeline. I might be having a look at how we're positioning ourselves and how we might, how that might affect a brand refresh. There's lots of different things, but I tend to do a lot of research to make sure my ideas are well received. The businesses that I work for, I work quite closely and probably a bit like yourself, I mean, you're working quite closely with the CEO or the managing directors anyway.

and most of the clients that I work with are quite open to new ideas. So it's not like the corporate world where trying to push something free just felt like wading through mud and you had a lot of red tape. These guys have come to me because they want some advice and they want to take that advice. So I don't always have as much pushback as I would have had in the corporate world because they want to take on that advice. That's why I'm there really.

Adam (36:43.43)

Yeah, no, I think you're right. I think in the consulting world or the fractional world, you're in a fortunate position in terms of working very closely with that key decision maker or decision makers rather than needing to go up through different departments, different divisions to get by in before you get there, which is kind of the corporate experience that I had anyway. So yeah, I think.

Helen Cox (37:05.742)

have to go for any of that nonsense anymore. No, it's fine. It's fine. But if I was in the corporate world, I've definitely been making a case, you know, I feel like I'd have to make a case.

Adam (37:14.598)

Absolutely. And I think that joking aside, there's still the case to be made to get the rest of the team around you and around the CEO in and on board. You know, it's all well and good saying, yeah, the CEO is brought into it. But if the case isn't there to your point and you've, you know, when the rest of the team go and check the stats or check the pipeline, you know, the case doesn't get made there, then you're still in trouble, aren't you? Even if it's coming from the other angle.

Helen Cox (37:42.094)

It's just important to make sure that everybody's aligned and that any big decisions that you're making are aligned to business objectives as well.

Adam (37:51.11)

Absolutely. So just moving on to, I think we covered some of that final stage already in terms of measurements, but is there anything else around that kind of control feedback, you know, end of the cycle that you would want to sort of touch on again?

Helen Cox (37:58.574)

Mm.

Helen Cox (38:08.014)

So I think we've already mentioned it. So you track, you know, what is and isn't working as you go, you do your quarterly milestones to make sure that you're keeping agile. We've got the online, for every tactic that we mentioned, but in the tactical section, we just want to make sure that we can measure it. So for everything that you do, like SEO, social, understand how you're going to measure the success within those marketing channels. So it's just making sure that they're aligned. There's other things to think about as well. So again, with all the things that we've talked about,

offline activities like events, the one thing that I find happens all the time is people don't really follow up at all, or they don't really tear their contacts. And I know this sounds horrific, but we go networking, me and Adam, you know, we met at networking. It's just important to make sure that you identify who the people are within the networking events you go to or any event that you go to who you want to follow up with. And then you tier them according to how important they will be, you know, do you think this person will have a good

working relationship with this person? Is this just I'm going to send them a card at Christmas or do I need to do something in between? And one thing that I see, everyone thinks that just going to an event, for instance, and I know I've just focused on this, but going to an event is enough, but it's not. It's the start of a process. And I think that people need to be aware that it's not just about showing your face. It's about this long -term like relationship building. And a lot of my clients never do that. They kind of go to a networking event and they're like, yeah, I've done it.

I was like, yes, and do we have a war room afterwards? Have we all sat down and we've decided who's going to talk to who and what relationships might be really useful to follow up with and how often we're going to follow up with these people? Do we want to invite them to another event? It doesn't happen. And I think that's a bit dangerous. So I think it's important to look at the measurements for digital, the measurements for offline and any sort of measurements from the business development activity. We talked about like new client targeting and that's sometimes anecdotal. I always spoke to this person.

and that person introduces this person and actually this is how we got a meeting there. So capturing everything as much as you can is important.

Adam (40:16.678)

Great, okay, perfect. So just moving, changing tack slightly for our final section, which I call our business book bonus section. And this is where we ask our guests to provide a recommendation for the audience of a business book or it can be any other kind of business content to make it a bit easier that's helped you during your career and that you would like to recommend to the audience. So, Helen, what business book or other content would you like to recommend?

Helen Cox (40:21.358)

Yep.

Helen Cox (40:25.966)

Okay.

Helen Cox (40:46.926)

Yeah, so I was having a think about this and I think some of the books that I would recommend are very kind of marketing heavy about brand positioning and positioning statements and I think, I'm not sure about that. So I was having a pivoted when I was thinking about it. And I think a really good resource for people that are interested in digital marketing and what's happening is called the Digital Marketing Podcast. I listen to it every week and it's literally on the case on all new digital marketing tactics. So for instance, a couple of weeks ago, I was talking about chat GPT 4 .2.

and I was like, my God, there's another version of it. What's this about? So that was really, really good for me. So I think if you want to kind of get a handle on digital marketing and they tend to have like good blogs, good content, just generally it's worth checking them out because marketing moves really, really quickly and things change all the time. Like I don't know everything that's going on. That helps me kind of keep in touch with when big changes happen.

Adam (41:45.414)

I'm slightly biased by 100 % agree that podcasts are probably my number one way of keeping abreast of the changes. It's an efficient way of getting a snapshot of the most important stuff, particularly the best one. So that sounds like a great one. The Digital Marketing Podcast, I'll put a link to that in the show notes for anyone who wants to find it. That's great. Is there anything we haven't covered or where can people find you if they are intrigued by your marketing plan suggestions?

Helen Cox (41:52.91)

Yeah.

Helen Cox (41:58.094)

Yeah.

Helen Cox (42:02.766)

cool.

Helen Cox (42:13.646)

I mean, people can find me on LinkedIn. So Helen Cox, I think I'm probably one of the first people that's very, very kind of very succinct name there that you can put in the search function and also Helen Cox marketing .co .uk is my website if anyone wants to check me out there. So mainly LinkedIn and my website.

Adam (42:33.637)

Excellent, excellent. Well, thank you so much, Helen, for joining me today on the Fractional CFO show. I really appreciate your insight, your perspective and your time. Thank you.

Helen Cox (42:42.51)

Thanks, Adam.