I work with businesses across Yorkshire and the North of England to offer marketing consultancy services. My area of expertise is supporting SME's with their marketing strategy, create their marketing plans , and also deliver those plans if you don't have the resource to do so yourselves. I'm also very happy to work with companies further afield on a remote basis, or if you are looking for ongoing marketing support.

FAQs Archive - Ash Collyer

Q: How did you become a marketing consultant?

Since completing a Masters degree in Marketing management, I have had 10 years' marketing experience working with a great range of businesses of various shapes and sizes. Core elements of my experience include: Working for one of the best B2B Marketing Agencies in the UK, running marketing campaigns and programmes for some of the world's biggest technology and consultancy brands. These include Microsoft, Nokia, SAS, Capgemini, Xerox, Canon, and Smurfit Kappa. Head of Group Marketing for a family-owned group of 3 businesses. Setting up a marketing team from scratch and driving considerable business growth from developing and implementing successful marketing plans. Head of B2B Sales & Marketing for a family-owned SME with revenues in excess of £100m Various experience working with SME's to deliver one-off projects or ongoing marketing support

Q: If I hire you, how quickly can we get started?

From when you get in touch , I can usually get started in a few days depending on your requirements.

Q: What does a marketing consultant do?

A marketing consultant works with businesses to support them achieve their overall business objectives. They will typically work with you to develop a roadmap to success in the form of a marketing strategy and plan in the first instance. Then they'll implement the plan that will usually involve many aspects of marketing within the plan. As a starting point for most clients, I'll find out as much about your business, your objectives, and your competitors as I can. Every business is different, and as such each marketing plan will be unique. It is my job to understand your short, medium, and long-term business objectives, and then create a plan of how marketing can ultimately support and drive the business towards being able to achieve those goals.

Q: Why hire a marketing consultant rather than employing someone?

Hiring a Marketing Consultant will usually give you a highly experienced marketer who has worked with a wide-range of businesses and has successfully delivered marketing strategies and plans for them. Whilst on paper it may mean a higher day rate than if you were to employ someone to deliver your marketing in-house, the value I bring is that I have wide-ranging marketing experience, and a trusted network of great marketing, design, and development specialists to call upon to support where needed. It means you get the strategic mind when you need it, blending seamlessly into delivery of your plan by experts in their field. All of this is managed by the marketing consultant to ensure they are delivering the results for your business. Employing someone permanently can definitely work for some businesses, there's no doubt. If you're looking at going down that route, you really need to understand what the business needs to make its marketing a success, as most marketers will either be generalist across a range of areas, or perhaps a specialist in one or two.

Q: What is the difference between a marketing consultant and a marketing agency?

It's important to understand the difference between a marketing consultant and a marketing agency, as you will typically find that they work in quite different ways. From my experience, the core difference is that a marketing consultant will typically take more of a holistic and unbiased view of your business than a marketing agency who will often specialise in a specific area of marketing and want to prioritise those services. My approach is to work with companies to understand their challenges and goals, and then formulate a marketing plan to help achieve their objectives. Depending what is best for your business, either I will then carry out the work myself, or if there are specialist skills required I will work with my network of trusted contacts to deliver your marketing plans.

Q: What are the benefits of hiring a marketing consultant?

There are lots of benefits to be seen from working with a marketing consultant. Here are a summary of the main benefits Variety of experience with different industries Breadth of marketing experience A higher level of expertise for your money Flexible arrangement Dealing with just one person They’ll usually have a network of trusted contacts I've written a blog which goes into much more detail on the benefits if you'd like to know more . Read More >