Before recommending channels, budgets or campaigns, I do the homework — your numbers, your customers, your competitors. Then we build a 90-day plan that fits your actual business. Skip step one and you're gambling.
Before our call, you receive a written report: your buyer's real fears, the language they use, your top competitors, and which channel fits your business.
A marketing strategy is the research that decides where your budget goes before you spend it — who your real buyer is, what they want, where competitors fail them, and what you can afford per client. For Vancouver service businesses, it turns guesswork into a clear 90-day plan.
Most service businesses skip strategy and jump straight to channels — Google Ads, Meta Ads, SEO. That's like buying lumber before you've decided what to build. Sometimes it works. Often it wastes a year of budget.
The strategy phase answers four questions: Who's your real buyer? What do they actually want? Where do competitors fail them? What can you afford to spend per client?
Once those are answered, the channel decisions become obvious. Sometimes the answer isn't even paid marketing — it's hiring a salesperson, or fixing your offer, or raising prices. I'll say so if that's the case.
"We need to do TikTok" or "we need SEO" — without knowing if either fits your customer or your unit economics. The channel is the conclusion, not the starting point.
Surveying your friends, your team, or worse — your competitors' marketing copy. Real strategy comes from talking to actual buyers, ideally lost deals and detractors.
Spending on growth without knowing what a new client is worth, what they cost to deliver, and the math you have to hit for it to make sense. Vanity metrics own that vacuum.
"Sarah, 34, marketing manager in Vancouver" personas a chatbot invents from thin air are fiction. Real profiles are built from evidence — thousands of actual reviews, forum threads and UGC, mined for friction points, hesitations and exact language.
If your strategy looks like everyone else's in the space, you've decided to compete on price and convenience. That's a hard fight to win as a small business.
A 7-day process that builds a “digital twin” of your ideal buyer — a tool to test hypotheses on, get feedback on your ad creative, and speak to clients in their own language. Each day studies a different aspect of buying behaviour.
An AI strategist that pulls together everything above and lets us see the whole market from a bird's-eye view. Another 7-day process — this time mapping the competitive and macro landscape.
Not a slide deck for the founder's drawer. A working document — short, opinionated, with math and decisions — that the team uses for the next 90 days.
One-page summary your team can act on tomorrow. The strategic bet, the math, the priorities.
A neuro-model synthesis of real reviews, forums and UGC. Real language, decision triggers, objection patterns, the words you should be using in every ad.
Top 8 competitors plotted on a 2-axis matrix. Where the white space is — and where everyone else is fighting.
LTV, CAC target, payback period, gross margin per service line. The math sheet that every decision flows from.
Which channels for which audiences, with rationale tied to unit economics. Budget split, expected timelines, kill criteria.
Week-by-week execution plan. Deliverables, owners, decision gates at day 30 / 60 / 90.
What could go wrong, what we'd watch for, what the early signals look like, contingency plans.
Templates, prompts and frameworks your team uses to keep executing after I leave.
How long does a marketing strategy take? Four weeks end to end — week one the customer neuro-model, week two the business oracle, week three unit economics, week four the 90-day plan and a live handoff workshop. The insights stay useful for 12–18 months.
A fixed one-time project fee covering the AI research, competitor audit, unit economics, the 90-day plan and the handoff workshop — payable 50% up front, 50% on delivery. If we move into ongoing execution afterward, the full fee is credited against your first three months.
| Item | What it covers | Terms |
|---|---|---|
| Standalone strategy | AI buyer & market research, unit economics, 90-day plan & handoff workshop | One-time fee |
| Credited to execution | 100% of the fee credited back if we move into ongoing work | First 3 months |
Running ads is execution. Strategy is the decision about what to execute and why. You can skip strategy and get lucky, but you can't skip it and consistently win. Most agencies skip it because it's hard, slow and unsexy.
Yes. The research doesn't depend on your existing customer list — the AI neuro-model mines where your market already talks: forums, reviews, Q&A and UGC, across local and international markets. The unit-economics math gets fuzzier without sales history, but the strategy still has shape.
Absolutely — that's the goal of the handoff workshop and implementation kit. About half my strategy clients run the plan themselves; the other half ask me to execute pieces of it. Either works.
Four weeks end to end: week one the customer neuro-model, week two the business oracle, week three unit economics, week four the 90-day plan and a live handoff workshop. The insights stay useful for 12–18 months.
A fixed one-time project fee covering the AI research, competitor audit, unit economics, the 90-day plan and the handoff workshop — payable 50% up front, 50% on delivery. If we move into ongoing execution afterward, the full fee is credited against your first three months.
Then I tell you. I've turned down strategy projects where the real bottleneck was the offer, the operations or the price. I'd rather lose the project than charge you for a plan that won't work.
A $100 strategy session. We'll look at your business and figure out whether a strategy project is the right next move — or whether you should skip straight to channels.
Book a $100 Strategy SessionBefore our call, you receive a written report: your buyer's real fears, the language they use, your top competitors, and which channel fits your business.
