Strategy & advisory
Growth strategy & roadmap
You get a growth model you can open and edit yourself, a 12-month plan sequenced by dependency rather than enthusiasm, and written criteria for killing anything that isn't paying back.
The short version
Most growth plans are a list of channels with no arithmetic underneath them. That's why they collapse the first time someone asks what a customer is allowed to cost. We start at the other end, with your margin, your sales cycle and how many months of payback your cash position can stand, then work out which channels survive those constraints. What comes out is shorter than you expect, and much easier to defend to a board.
What is included
- A growth model in a spreadsheet you own outright, with traffic, conversion rate, average order value, acquisition cost and payback period all editable as assumptions.
- A channel-by-channel assessment scored against your margin and your sales-cycle length, including the channels we'd advise you not to run and the reason why.
- A 12-month roadmap split into quarters, with dependencies marked so nothing is scheduled before the thing it relies on actually exists.
- One named leading indicator per initiative, so a quarter can be judged in week 4 rather than after the year's revenue has already been decided.
- Written kill criteria per channel: the figure and the date at which we stop spending, instead of asking you for more patience.
- A one-page summary written for a board or an investor, plus a note on what has to be hired or built before the plan is possible at all.
How we work
Our approach
The stages this work runs through, in order. Every one of them ends in something you can see or sign off.
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Step 01
Start with the arithmetic
Before any channel talk we need three numbers: contribution margin per sale, how long a deal takes to close, and how many months of payback your cash position can tolerate. Those three decide most of what follows. A 20% margin against a 6-month sales cycle rules out most paid acquisition before we've opened an ad account, and finding that out in week one costs far less than finding it out in month five.
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Step 02
Rule channels in and out
Each candidate channel gets tested against the model rather than against fashion. We ask what would have to be true for it to work, then check whether it plausibly is: enough search demand at a price your margin allows, an audience large enough to spend into without frequency collapsing, a sales team able to answer the leads it creates. Rejected channels get written down with the reason, so nobody re-proposes them in six months.
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Step 03
Sequence by dependency
A roadmap is not a shopping list with dates on it. Some things have to happen first: tracking before paid spend, a landing page before a campaign, an email flow before you start collecting addresses. We lay the 12 months out so each quarter unblocks the next, and mark the few items that genuinely can run in parallel. You also get the version that survives a 30% budget cut, because that call gets made more often than anyone admits.
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Step 04
Write the stopping rules
Every initiative gets a figure and a date attached in advance. If cost per acquisition is still above the ceiling after 8 weeks, and the spend needed to learn more exceeds what the answer is worth, we stop. Agreeing that while nobody is emotionally invested is the only time it's easy. We also set the review cadence, monthly for the numbers and quarterly for the plan itself, and put both in the calendar before we finish.
Before you ask
Questions we get asked first
How long before we have the plan?
Three to four weeks. The first week is data and interviews, the second is modelling, and the rest goes on sequencing and writing it so it survives being read without us in the room. It takes longer when the underlying numbers don't exist yet, which is common. If nobody currently knows your contribution margin per sale or your true acquisition cost, we build those first and say so on the proposal rather than modelling on top of guesses.
How is it priced?
A fixed fee in pounds for the strategy work, quoted after a scoping call, with the number of channels assessed and the length of the roadmap written into the scope. It is deliberately separate from execution. You can run the roadmap in-house, hand it to an agency you already use, or ask us to quote the parts we're the right people for. Splitting the two keeps the recommendation honest, because we aren't pricing a plan we then have to sell against.
What do you need from us?
Numbers and a decision-maker. On numbers: revenue and margin by product or service, current marketing spend by channel, and whatever acquisition cost you can reconstruct. On people: one person who can actually commit budget, in the room for two workshops of about 90 minutes each. We'll also want to speak to whoever answers your enquiries, because sales knows things the reporting doesn't, including why the promising leads go quiet.
How do we know the plan is working?
By the leading indicators in week 4 of each quarter, not by revenue at the end of the year. Every initiative carries one number that moves early, such as qualified enquiries, trial starts or cost per qualified lead. Those get reviewed monthly against the model, and the model gets corrected whenever reality disagrees with it. The plan is a document that changes. What shouldn't change quietly is the payback ceiling, because that's the constraint everything else was built on.
Want this scoped for your situation?
Tell us the goal and the deadline. You get an honest read on whether this is the right service, a fixed price if it is, and a straight no if it isn't.
Or email [email protected] directly. We reply within one working day.