Who marketing coaching is for
You might be doing the marketing yourself, or you might have someone on the team who can write, publish and organise things but needs help deciding what to focus on. Either way, you’ll get more out of coaching if you can bring real work to the sessions and make time to put it into practice between meetings.
That work could be a service people struggle to understand, a website that attracts visitors but few enquiries, or a steady stream of enquiries that tend to go quiet after you send the quote. We’ll look at where the problem sits before deciding what to do about it.
How the first four weeks work
Agree what marketing needs to achieve
We’ll start with what you want the business to achieve over the next 90 days and what marketing needs to contribute. We’ll look at where enquiries come from, what happens to them and how much time and money you can put into the work. If your records are patchy, we’ll agree what to start tracking. You’ll leave with a simple scorecard and a priority for the first month.
Put one idea into practice
We’ll choose something you can put in front of real people that week. You might try a clearer explanation of your service in your next sales conversations, follow up differently with suitable enquiries, or give people who already refer work to you a better way to explain what you do. We’ll work through the first example together and agree what response to look for.
Look at what people did
Bring the replies, enquiries or conversations back to the session. If suitable prospects keep asking what’s included, that tells us something different from an email that barely reached anyone. We’ll look at what the response can tell us and decide whether to make a change or give the test more time.
Plan the next month
You’ll talk through what you tried, what you learned and where you think your time would be best spent next. Together we’ll turn that into a short plan with a clear priority, a way to measure progress and a date to review it.
What you’ll learn to do
Work with Colin Kennedy
Colin has spent more than 20 years helping New Zealand businesses explain what they do, earn trust and turn marketing plans into work that gets done. His background as a journalist and editor shapes the questions he brings to coaching. What did the customer actually say? What evidence have we got? How would we explain this to someone hearing it for the first time?
More about Colin and Iron Road
If you’ve got a marketing problem you keep coming back to, bring it to the first call. Tell Colin what you’ve tried and where you’re getting stuck. That’s enough to begin working out whether coaching is a fit.
Frequently asked questions
What does a marketing coach do?
A marketing coach helps you decide what your marketing needs to achieve, choose what to work on and learn how to judge the results. At Iron Road, you work through those decisions using real examples from your own business and put them into practice between sessions.
What will I have at the end of the first four weeks?
You’ll have an agreed marketing objective, a simple scorecard, a record of the first action you’ve tried and a plan for the following month. You’ll also know which questions you still need to answer before committing more time or money.
Do I need a marketing plan before I start?
You can start with the information you already have. Bring examples of recent enquiries or sales, the marketing you’ve tried and any figures you can find. We’ll use those to set an objective and work out what’s worth tackling first.
How is marketing coaching different from a Fractional CMO?
In coaching, you or your team do the work with guidance from Colin. A Fractional CMO takes on senior marketing leadership within your business and can direct the people and work involved in delivering the plan.
Can we work on my website, social media or AI writing?
Yes. We’ll choose what to work on according to the problem you’re trying to solve. That might mean clarifying a service page, testing whether social content prompts useful conversations, or giving AI better examples of how you explain things to customers.
What happens after the first month?
We’ll use the month’s review to decide what comes next. You might need another round of the same test, help with a different part of your marketing or time to put the plan into practice. The next step depends on what you’ve learned and what you can take on.
Bring the marketing problem
you keep coming back to.
Most conversations start with a 30-minute call. Tell Colin what you’ve tried and where you’re getting stuck, and you’ll both have a better idea whether coaching is a fit.