Marketing Consulting
Ongoing Marketing Advisory
A monthly call plus answers between calls when things come up
- Timeline
- Ongoing month to month with 30 days notice
Call (714) 823-3164 or ask a question. Clear recommendations, even if we never work together.
Ongoing marketing advisory is a monthly arrangement that gives a business owner a marketing expert on call. It covers questions between meetings, plus a review of vendor proposals and invoices. You get a second opinion before you spend. A short monthly call looks at the numbers and sets the next move.
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The problem
The expensive decisions happen between meetings. A vendor emails a proposal on Thursday and wants an answer by Monday. A sales rep calls about a directory listing that sounds official. The ads account manager suggests raising budget forty percent going into summer. Each of those is a real decision with real money attached, and the owner is standing in a supply house parking lot with ten minutes to think about it. Without someone to ask, the default is yes to whoever sounds confident, or no to everything, and both defaults cost money over a year.
What it is
Ongoing marketing advisory is availability plus continuity. Availability means you can send a proposal, a report, or a question and get a straight answer within a business day. You will not need a glossary to read it. Continuity means the person answering already knows your close rate, your busy season, what you tried in 2023, and which vendor tends to overstate results. So the answer fits your business instead of general best practice. The monthly call keeps a rhythm. A fixed set of numbers gets reviewed the same way each time, last month's decisions get closed out, and one or two actions get set for the next thirty days. We also keep a decision log. It sounds bureaucratic, and it turns out to be the most used part of the whole arrangement, because it stops the same rejected idea from coming back every spring with a new salesperson attached. This is a light touch arrangement on purpose. If a question needs a week of analysis, we scope that separately rather than pretend it fits in a call.
Signs you need this
- You get vendor proposals you are not equipped to evaluate
- Marketing decisions wait weeks because nobody wants to make the call
- You have vendors doing work and nobody checking whether it works
- You keep getting pitched things you already tried and cannot remember why they failed
What is included
- Monthly 45 to 60 minute call with an agenda circulated beforehand
- Same business day replies to email and text questions
- Written second opinion on any vendor proposal, contract, or invoice
- Shared numbers view covering spend, leads, and booked work by channel
- Decision log recording what was considered, chosen, and rejected, and why
- Templates for vendor briefs, scope requests, and monthly report formats
- Notes and action items sent the same day as each call
- Escalation guidance when an issue needs real project work instead of advice
Our process
Learn the business and the setup
Week 1 to 2One longer onboarding session covering economics, current vendors, tools, and history. We collect read access and note who does what. Knowing that your office manager handles reviews and your brother in law owns the domain saves several confusing months.
Set the numbers view
Week 2We agree on five to eight numbers that will get looked at every month and where each comes from. Fewer numbers reviewed consistently beat a twenty page dashboard nobody opens. This becomes the standing first section of every call.
Run the monthly rhythm
Ongoing, monthlySame date each month. Numbers, then open decisions, then whatever you brought. Two actions maximum per month, because a small business with three actions usually completes one and feels behind on all three.
Handle things as they land
Ongoing, as neededProposals, invoices, odd reports, and cold pitches get reviewed as they arrive. Most get a short written answer. Anything with real money behind it gets a recommendation with the reasoning laid out so you can disagree with the reasoning, not just the conclusion.
Realistic timeline: Ongoing month to month with 30 days notice. Onboarding takes two weeks. The arrangement is most useful from month two onward, once we have seen a full billing cycle and one normal month of lead flow.
Common Pitches and How They Get Answered
Most of what lands in an owner's inbox falls into a handful of buckets. The point is not that these are all bad. The point is that each one has a single question that settles it.
| What lands in your inbox | What it usually is | The question that settles it | Where it usually ends up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Directory listing invoice | A renewal for a listing you never bought | Show me one lead from this in the last year | Ignore it |
| Raise ad budget 40 percent | Sometimes right, often a quota push | What is cost per booked job right now | Raise it in steps |
| SEO retainer with no scope | Hours billed against vague deliverables | What ships this month, in writing | Ask for a scope first |
| Full website redesign quote | A rebuild when a few pages need work | Which pages produce calls today | Fix pages, not the site |
| Social media package | Posting volume sold as marketing | What happens after someone follows | Usually a no |
| Lead marketplace signup | Shared leads sold to several contractors | How many buyers get the same lead | Test small or skip |
None of these are an automatic yes or no. Column three is what decides it, and it takes about a minute.
What Actually Goes in the Decision Log
The decision log is one page a year, not a system. Each line holds a date, the decision, the reason, and who made the call. That is the whole format.
It matters because memory fades and salespeople do not. A directory rep who called in March calls again in September with the same offer under a new name. Two lines in a log answer that in ten seconds.
It also protects good ideas. Some things get turned down because the timing was wrong, not because they were bad. Writing the reason down means you can revisit it when the reason changes, like after you add a second crew.
The log lives in a plain spreadsheet that you own. If the arrangement ends, it stays with you. It is a record of your business, not our work product.
How a Proposal Moves From Inbox to Decision
Proposals almost always arrive with a deadline attached. This is the path they take, and it is short on purpose.
The written step is the one that matters. You should be able to argue with the reasoning, not just the answer.
Getting Your Money's Worth Between Calls
Ongoing marketing advisory pays off when it gets used. The owners who get the least out of it go quiet for five weeks, then bring everything to the call.
Do this
- Forward the proposal the day it arrives, before you have formed an opinion
- Send the ugly report, not the clean one, because the defects are the useful part
- Say the deadline out loud so we know what needs an answer today
- Ask the small questions, since a two minute answer often saves a month
- Copy us on vendor threads you want watched instead of forwarding them later
Not this
- Do not save six questions for the monthly call and then run out of time
- Do not ask us to bless something you already signed on Friday
- Do not use the retainer as free project work, because we will price it anyway
- Do not hide the channel you are embarrassed about, since it usually explains the numbers
- Do not skip two months and expect the third call to be worth much