Recipes and Consultancy
You already know how the chain works. The question now is what to do about it — and there are two ways to act on it.
The recipes are step-by-step instructions for a specific job within the framework: diagnosing the real problem, or implementing the fix for a given link. Each one stands alone and is written so a business owner or an in-house team can work through it without me.
The consultancy is for when you don’t have the bandwidth or the appetite to do it yourself, or you want an independent view from outside your own organisation. Most recipes can also be commissioned as an engagement — I run the recipe, and do some or all of the work for you.
They range from a free 10-minute diagnostic to a full done-with-you engagement. Here’s what’s on offer:
The Marketing Chain Diagnostic
Recipe 00
A free downloadable pdf which helps you as a business owner to identity and name symptoms in your marketing, and then convert that into a scored diagnostic of which elements of the marketing chain might need attention.
Its a 10 minute exercise and the easiest way to begin analysing if you have a problem – and if so where the work needs to start.
The Marketing Chain Review
Recipe 01
The Marketing Chain Review is the next step on from the Diagnostic, and is designed to help you as owner to get a better understanding of the current status of each of the links in your businesses’ Marketing Chain.
It walks you through the six diagnostic tests of the Marketing Chain, one for each link. You score each link, you find the first link upstream that is not yet good enough, and you commit to fixing that link to a usable standard before you touch anything downstream of it.
It will take two or three hours to work through fully, but at the end you will have a much better understanding of how your marketing measures up to best practice. Its not that your marketing needs to be perfect – but once you understand which is required in each link – it is much easier to fix – and reap the rewards.
The Marketing Chain 360 Degree Review
Recipe 02
The 360 Review is a structured, evidence-based diagnosis of your firm’s marketing chain, conducted by a reviewer from the outside in.
We walk through all six links — Customer, Clarity, Offer, Visibility, Conversion, Experience — and score each one against a documented rubric. We gather evidence from your public footprint, from your internal materials, and (at the deepest level) from interviews with your team and your clients. We compare you against three same-sector competitors. We run the AI search test to see what Claude, ChatGPT and Perplexity say when a buyer asks for someone like you.
What you receive at the end:
- A written Chain Review Report (typically 15–25 pages, including evidence appendices)
- A defensible score for each of the six links, with the evidence each score is based on
- The identified first link to fix — the upstream constraint that’s holding the rest of the chain back
- A next-step recommendation for the work that follows
- A 60–90 minute delivery meeting where we walk you through the findings in person
There are more details about what is included and how the process works here: 360 Review
The next step is a short scoping call — 20–30 minutes, no charge, no obligation. We’ll talk through what you’re seeing in your business, work out which level of Review fits your situation, and agree the scope before quoting.
Email me david@themarketingchain.com or call me on 01482 778688, and we can arrange a time to speak.
Customer Research & Analysis
Recipe 03
Know exactly who you sell to, what moves them to buy, and the words they use — before you spend another pound on marketing.
Most marketing fails because it’s built on what the owner assumes about their customers, not what customers actually feel, fear, and say. This is the fix: structured research, not a persona workshop. We conduct ten recorded 45-minute interviews with your recent buyers — mostly best-fit, one or two wrong-fit — run by a neutral interviewer so people speak candidly. Every conversation is transcribed into a working corpus, then put through four structured analysis passes to build the customer foundation every other marketing decision sits on.
What you receive at the end:
- The Customer Avatar — an eight-section portrait of your best-fit buyer, built from the interviews: the felt experience underneath the demographics
- The Trigger Event Map — the specific moments that turn a buyer from “coping” into “actively looking,” in their words, with timing estimates
- The Language Inventory — a bank of verbatim buyer phrases tagged by problem, situation, and outcome, with the recurring ones flagged
- The Stakeholder Map — the buying group documented role by role, with the question each person asks and the material each needs to say yes
Done once, properly, this is the base layer that makes everything downstream — positioning, website, offers, content, proposals — sharper, cheaper, and more honest. There are more details about what’s included and how the process works here: Customer Research & Analysis.
Three ways to do it:
Done-For-You We run the whole project: recruitment, ten interviews, transcription, analysis, and all four deliverables, handed over with a walkthrough. Lead time agreed at booking. Deliverables 4–6 weeks after project start.
Cost: £5,000 + VAT
Call me on 01482 778688 or email david@themarketingchain.com
The Recipe (DIY) The complete step-by-step guide. Every module, script, and template you need to run the interviews and build the four deliverables yourself. The same methodology we use, in your hands. Immediate download.
Cost: £295 + VAT Buy and download
Hybrid The recipe plus a two-hour online briefing and training session. You do the work; we make sure you do it right — methodology, pitfalls, and a review of your plan before you start. Recipe immediate. Briefing scheduled to suit.
Cost: £995 + VAT
Call me on 01482 778688 or email david@themarketingchain.com
Not sure which fits? Call or email me and book a short scoping call — 20–30 minutes, no charge, no obligation. We’ll talk through what you’re seeing in your business and work out what works best for you.