For more than twenty years we have helped B2B leaders decide which markets to plant in, which to push into, and how to position the firm to win. Project work, with a defined scope and a defined end.
B2B marketing consulting is project-based advisory work: a defined question, a defined scope, a defined end. We come in from outside, look hard at your market, your position in it and how your marketing function actually operates, and give you a recommendation you can act on. Then the project closes.
It is not a retainer, and it is not us running your marketing. If what you need is someone to lead the function on an ongoing basis, that is fractional marketing and it is a different service on a different page. Plenty of clients start here and move there, and plenty do not. The recommendation comes first either way, because deciding what to do is a different question from deciding who should do it.
Most of the leaders who call us arrive with one of three problems. They rarely describe it the way a marketing firm would.
| What you are dealing with | What the work looks like | |
|---|---|---|
| You know you need a marketing strategy and a real plan, and you want a view from outside the building before you commit budget to it. | Research into your market and your buyers, a decision about where to compete, a position built to win there, and a plan with the sequence, the budget and the measures attached. | Marketing plan development → |
| Marketing takes requests and completes tasks. It is a cost line. You know it should be driving growth and it is not. | An honest assessment of how the function operates today, then the structure, the people, the technology and the measures that turn it into something that produces revenue. | Marketing transformation → |
| You have been in business for decades and the brand no longer looks like the company you have become or the one you are becoming. | The story, the message and the identity rebuilt around what the firm actually is now, so the way you present matches the way you compete. | Branding and messaging → |
Most marketing problems presented to us are not marketing problems. They are the consequence of a company competing in too many markets at once, or in the wrong one, or in the right one with a position that sounds like everyone else in it.
Which markets deserve investment and which deserve patience is the hardest call a B2B leader makes, and it is nearly impossible to make from inside. You know your business too well. You carry the history of why things are the way they are, the relationships that would be awkward to unwind, and the assumptions that were true when you made them and quietly stopped being true. None of that shows up as a decision. It shows up as a strategy that hedges.
We have been advising B2B companies on those calls for more than twenty years, across accounting, engineering, healthcare, investment banking, life sciences, manufacturing, professional services, SaaS and technology. What you get is not a template. It is judgment about which trade-offs matter in your situation, from people who have watched the same trade-offs play out for other firms and know how they end.
In a lot of mid-market companies, marketing is a service desk. Sales asks for a one-pager and marketing produces it. Someone wants the website updated and marketing updates it. The work gets done, everyone is busy, and at the end of the year nobody can say what any of it produced.
That is not a failure of the people doing it. It is a failure of how the function was set up. A department measured on completing requests will complete requests, and it will never volunteer the harder question of whether any of them were worth doing. Nobody asked it to.
A marketing function that drives growth is built differently. It works from a plan rather than a queue. It measures pipeline and revenue rather than output. It has someone senior enough to say no, and a reporting line that makes marketing answer for a business result rather than for a task list. Those are structural changes, and they are what turns a cost line into a function a CEO would fund more of.
Companies change faster than their brands do. You have added services, moved upmarket, taken on clients you would not have taken ten years ago, and somewhere in there the story on your website stopped describing the firm you actually run. Nothing about it is wrong exactly. It just belongs to an earlier version of you.
The work is to rebuild the story, the message and the identity around what the business is now and where it is heading. Done well, a brand fits like a well-tailored suit. Nobody comments on the tailoring. They just notice that everything sits right.
Every engagement starts with discovery: interviews with your leadership and your customers, competitive analysis, a review of your market, and an audit of how your marketing performs today. We form a view from evidence rather than from a first meeting.
What you receive is a recommendation specific enough to act on. Not a set of principles, but the decisions themselves: which markets, which position, which sequence, what it costs, what it should produce and how you will know. Written to be handed to whoever has to execute it, including a team that is not us.
A recommendation is only worth what it produces, and that depends on whether the people who have to run it are set up to. So we write for execution, and if we think you lack the people or the systems to do what we are proposing, we will say so during the engagement rather than after it. That is a much easier thing to plan around than to discover in month six.
Consulting engagements are scoped and priced as projects rather than retainers. Most run $10,000 to $75,000, and where a project lands has less to do with the size of your company than with how complicated the question is.
Two things drive it. The first is how much original research the answer requires. A question that can be answered from analysis and a handful of conversations costs less than one that needs primary research and a full round of one-to-one interviews with your customers and your market. The second is how many moving parts your business has. A focused firm with a clear offering and a defined market is a narrower question than a matrixed business with multiple products, multiple buyer types and several markets to weigh against each other.
You will have the scope, the price and the timeline in writing before anything starts. Where an engagement uncovers work beyond what was scoped, we will tell you and price it separately rather than absorbing it quietly or letting it drift.
| Where projects land | What that looks like | Typical range |
|---|---|---|
| Lower end | A focused business with a clear offering and a defined target market. The work is analysis, competitive review and a smaller set of conversations. | $10,000 to $25,000 |
| Middle | A business with more than one offering or more than one market to weigh, requiring primary research and a full round of interviews. | $25,000 to $50,000 |
| Upper end | A matrixed business with multiple products, several buyer types and a number of markets in play, requiring substantial original research before any recommendation is credible. | $50,000 to $75,000 |
Marketri has become our trusted source for market research and outreach recommendations that are helping us accomplish our marketing goals. We have better brand awareness, a stronger online presence, and the infrastructure to do proactive marketing, and we’re building a stronger pipeline.
Holly Johnson
Chief of Staff, Chesapeake Corporate Advisors
We have partnered with Deb Andrews and her team for the last few years. They did an amazing job helping us navigate the process of rebranding and identifying our 'voice' for our marketing style. Each year, we work together to layout a roadmap for our content strategy and they keep us on track during our regularly scheduled meetings. The Marketri team is very collaborative and truly an extension of our team.
Lanie Raphael
President, B.F. Saul Insurance
Our organization has been working with Marketri for just over one year. Their insights and expertise have driven very positive results for our business. Team members are diligent, insightful and patient when implementing new processes and tool. Strongly recommend reaching out to Marketri to learn more about they can bring to your company.
Shawn Patton
Chief Financial Officer, Engineering Design & Testing Corp.
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Read the Full StoryTell us what you are trying to decide. We will tell you whether it needs a project, and whether that project is one we should do.
B2B marketing consulting is project-based advisory work in which an outside firm examines a company's market, competitive position and marketing function, and delivers a recommendation the company can act on. Unlike a retainer, an engagement has a defined scope, a defined price and a defined end. Typical questions include which markets to pursue, how to position the firm to win in them, and why an existing marketing function is not producing growth.
A consulting engagement answers a question and ends. A fractional CMO leads your marketing function on an ongoing basis and is accountable for what it produces. Consulting tells you what to do. A fractional CMO does it, manages the people doing it, and answers for the outcome. Many companies start with a consulting project and move to a fractional engagement once they know what the plan requires, but the two are separate decisions and the first does not commit you to the second.
Engagements begin with discovery: leadership and customer interviews, competitive analysis, market review and an audit of current marketing performance. From that we produce the recommendation, which depending on the question may cover market prioritization, positioning and messaging, a go-to-market plan with budget and measures, or the structure and staffing a marketing function needs to produce growth. The deliverable is written to be executed by whoever will run it, including a team that is not us.
By changing how the function is structured rather than how hard it works. A marketing department that operates on requests will always be a cost line, because it is measured on completing tasks rather than producing revenue. The change requires four things: a plan the function works from rather than a request queue, measures tied to pipeline and revenue rather than output, someone senior enough to decline work that does not serve the plan, and a reporting line that holds marketing accountable for a business result. Most mid-market marketing functions have none of the four.
A strategy is a set of decisions: which markets you will compete in, which buyers you are for, how you will be positioned against alternatives, and what you will not do. A plan is how those decisions get executed: the programs, the sequence, the budget, the owners and the measures. A plan without a strategy is a list of activities, which is the most common reason marketing produces work without producing growth.
Either. The recommendation is written so your own team can execute it, and for many clients that is exactly what happens. Where a company does not have the people or the systems to run what we have proposed, we will say so as part of the engagement rather than after it, and Marketri can lead the execution through a fractional engagement if you want that. It is a separate decision and a separate agreement, and the recommendation is yours regardless.
Three situations account for most engagements. When you need to decide where to compete and want an outside read before committing budget. When marketing is completing tasks rather than driving measurable growth and you need to know why. And when the brand and story no longer describe the company you have become. What these share is a decision that is difficult to make from inside the business, which is what outside advisory work is actually for.
Marketri consulting engagements are priced as projects rather than retainers, and most run $10,000 to $75,000. Where a project lands is driven by two things: how much original research the question requires, including primary research and one-to-one interviews, and how complex the business is. A focused firm with a clear offering and a defined market sits toward the lower end. A matrixed business with multiple products, several buyer types and a number of markets to weigh sits toward the upper end. Scope, price and timeline are agreed in writing before work begins.
When you already know what to do. If the strategy is settled and the plan exists and what is missing is someone to run it, consulting will produce a document you did not need. That situation calls for marketing leadership or a marketing team, not advice. Consulting earns its cost when the decision itself is genuinely open.
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