I've spent the past few months properly testing ChatGPT inside real marketing work. Not casually playing around with it. Actually trying to integrate it into long-form blog writing, LinkedIn content, positioning work, messaging, SEO pages, strategic thinking, and commercially-sensitive copy. I chose ChatGPT, because it's currently what most people - including potential clients of mind - use. I followed all the best practice advice. Gave detailed context. Provided examples of

A lot of businesses think their marketing problems sit in strategy, channels, or execution. Sometimes that is true. But usually it sits within the leadership team. Here's why... As Founder, You Can't Let Go of Marketing You hired a marketing manager. Agreed the plan. Promised you'd step back. Then at 11pm on Tuesday night, you rewrite the landing page copy because it "didn't feel right." You vetoed the new campaign concept because it wasn't what you'd have done. Many founders

If you’re expanding into Japan, alignment between sales and marketing needs to be built around how decisions actually move inside Japanese organisations, not around how your UK pipeline is structured. Most UK teams operate with a fairly standard model. Marketing generates demand, sales qualifies opportunities, and both functions are measured on visible progression through pipeline. That works reasonably well in markets where buying decisions move through direct commercial con

Most CEOs don’t bring in a Fractional CMO because everything's working. It usually happens when marketing is happening in some form, but the output doesn’t line up with revenue in a way that makes sense. There’s activity across channels, agencies are delivering, and the team is busy, but pipeline isn’t where it should be, or it’s harder than it should be to explain what’s actually driving growth. At that point, the question isn’t whether more marketing needs to happen. It’s w

I’ve seen UK companies make the same mistake in Japan more times than I can count. The website gets translated, pricing is adjusted, someone bilingual is hired, and then everyone waits for things to move. And they don’t. The issue is rarely the translation itself. In most cases, the translation is accurate. What doesn’t carry across is everything around it - how your argument is structured, what counts as proof, who's delivering the message, how relationships develop, and the

I’ve never met an agency owner who didn’t know, somewhere in the back of their mind, that a piece of work was wrong before they took it on. The issue usually happens in the moment the brief lands - the pressure is there to win the business, and your normal decision-making process starts to waver. This is one of the patterns I see most often working with agency owners and founder-led businesses. The wrong work rarely turns up looking obviously wrong. It shows up as revenue, or

Most go-to-market advice assumes a business that already has a structure around it. A sales team, a marketing function, a CRM that’s actually being used. If that’s not your situation, a lot of the advice will feel disconnected from how things actually work day to day. In smaller businesses, you know your GTM strategy usn't working when you're not getting the right enquiries, you're winning work that turns out to be more effort than it’s worth, or when you know that marketing

The mistake most companies make when they enter Japan is treating it like a localisation exercise, when in reality your proposition itself usually needs to change. You translate the positioning, adjust your sales deck, bring in a partner, and the early signals look fine. Meetings happen, people engage properly, nothing gets challenged in a way that forces you to rethink anything, and there's enough positive feedback to assume the core message is landing. Internally, that gets

Most agencies don’t expand services because of a clear strategic decision. They do it because it’s the easiest way to grow revenue from the clients they already have or because the market is tough . A client asks for something, your agency takes it on, delivers it well, and keeps it as a potential service. Over time, more of that work gets pulled in. It increases account value, reduces reliance on one line of work, and strengthens client relationships. For most agencies, the

The fractional model has grown quickly, and for good reason. It gives you access to senior marketing input without the cost and commitment of a full-time hire, which makes it an attractive option if your business has outgrown ad hoc marketing but isn’t ready to build a full leadership team. Alongside that growth though, there’s been a noticeable shift in who is using the title. You’ll come across people positioning themselves as Fractional CMOs whose experience is heavily wei

Once a go-to-market approach is in place, the question doesn’t take long to surface. You’re investing time, budget, and effort across multiple areas, so you want to understand what it’s actually producing for the business. The difficulty is that the answer rarely comes back in a clean, single view. You’ll have reports, dashboards, campaign updates, and pipeline numbers, but they don’t always line up in a way that gives you confidence. Different people see different things dep

Entering Japan often starts well enough that it’s easy to assume you’ve got things broadly right. Meetings happen, people engage, and the proposition makes sense without much resistance. There’s no obvious pushback, nothing that suggests you need to re-think what you’re doing, and the overall feel is that you’re getting traction. At that stage, most businesses assume the fundamentals are in place and that what follows is just a matter of execution. Then, the pace changes. No

How Client Work Takes Over Without Anyone Deciding It Should Most agencies don’t sit down and decide to deprioritise their own marketing. It happens gradually, and usually for good reasons. Client work increases, which brings more pressure on delivery. The team grows, which brings more management overhead. Expectations rise, deadlines tighten, and more of the agency’s time is taken up keeping existing work moving. At that point, marketing the agency itself starts to feel les

How to Find a Fractional CMO Who Can Actually Lead Marketing in Your Business If you’re looking for a Fractional CMO, you won’t struggle to find people using the title. A quick search brings up plenty of profiles, all offering some version of strategy, delivery, and growth. What’s less obvious is who can step into your business and take responsibility for how marketing actually works. That distinction matters once the role is in place, because the expectations at that level a

How to Stand Out in AI Search Without Chasing the Wrong Things AI search is starting to change how people look for information, and you can already see the effect in how buyers behave. Instead of clicking through pages of search results, they’re asking more direct questions and expecting a structured answer. That shifts where attention sits. It’s no longer just about ranking on a page, it’s about being included in the answer itself. For most businesses, the concern is obvious

How Much Does a Fractional CMO Cost in the UK and What Do You Actually Get for It? If you’re looking at a Fractional CMO , you’re probably comparing it to something else. Hiring full-time, sticking with agencies, or trying to get more out of what you already have. In the UK, most Fractional CMO work sits somewhere between £600 and £1,000 per day. Ongoing marketing support usually lands between £2,000 and £8,000 per month depending on how involved the role needs to be. And pr

Sustainability Has Moved Up the Agenda. The Way It’s Communicated Hasn’t Most businesses have started talking about sustainability. Some because they genuinely care about it. Some because customers are asking more questions. Some because it feels like something they should be doing. You can see it in the usual places. Website updates, new sections, a few lines added into proposals. The language is often similar. Responsible. Committed. Doing the right thing. It all sounds rea

Sit in enough leadership meetings and you start to notice the same moment. Marketing is in motion. Campaigns are live. Content is going out. Agencies are delivering. There’s plenty to point at. Then someone asks how much of it is turning into pipeline. And then the answers rarely line up cleanly. Marketing talks about activity. Sales talks about what they’re seeing in conversations. Finance looks at cost. Everyone has a view, but there isn’t a single version of the truth. Tha

Most growing companies eventually reach a point where marketing activity starts to increase. Campaigns appear. Content gets published. Paid ads begin running. Agencies may be brought in to support the team. Budgets slowly expand. From the outside, everything looks active. Inside the business, though, something often feels slightly unsettled. Marketing is happening, yet the commercial impact remains difficult to pin down. Leads arrive inconsistently. Pipeline fluctuates. Sales

There’s a moment many agencies experience. A client wins business in Japan. Or decides to expand there. Or is acquired by a group with Japanese operations. Suddenly, the agency is expected to “ support Japan .” The team can arrange to translate assets. They can adapt creative. They can brief local partners. But beneath the surface there’s uncertainty: Are we positioning this correctly? Will this resonate? Are we about to make an expensive cultural mistake? This is where white