Marketing and business development projects for professional services and B2B firms

How these projects work

A project is a piece of work with a specific question at the centre of it, an agreed scope, and a point at which it’s finished. You know upfront what you’re getting and what it costs. There’s no day rate, no open-ended retainer, and no expectation that I’ll still be here next year unless you want me to be.

The projects

Marketing and BD effectiveness review

You’ll recognise this if: we’re busy, but we can’t tell if any of it is working.

Your team is producing. Events are running, content is going out, someone’s posting on LinkedIn. But when your managing partner asks which of it brought in work, nobody can answer with any confidence, and the honest version is that some of it almost certainly isn’t earning its place.

I review what you’re doing across marketing and business development, what it’s costing you in money and in people’s time, and what’s actually generating enquiries and instructions. Then I tell you what to stop, what to keep and what’s missing.

You get: a written review with findings and recommendations, prioritised by impact, plus a debrief with you and your leadership team.

Sector or service line growth sprint

You’ll recognise this if: we’ve picked a priority sector and we’ve got no usable plan for it.

The decision’s been made. Someone’s been named as sector lead. And six months later there’s an enthusiastic partner, a slide from an away day, and nothing that tells anyone what to do on Monday.

A sprint turns that into a real plan: who the buyers are, what they’re already being offered by your competitors, what you can credibly claim, which relationships and referral sources matter, and what the sector team does over the next twelve months.

You get: a sector or service line growth plan, an action plan by quarter, and a debrief with the sector team.

Marketing and BD playbooks

You’ll recognise this if: the team has grown fast and nobody can say how anything is meant to be done.

This isn’t a tidiness problem, and no firm has a budget line for tidiness. It’s coherence. Every person you hire arrives with the way things were done at their last firm, so within a year there are three versions of the pitch process, two ways of running an event and no agreed standard for either. The function got bigger without getting better, and your head of marketing has quietly become the only person who knows how anything works.

It costs you in specific places: new starters take months longer to become useful, work gets redone because nobody knew it existed, and quality swings depending on who picked the job up. A playbook writes down how your firm does the handful of things it does repeatedly, in a version a new starter can follow in week one.

You get: playbooks for the processes you choose, built with your team so they’ll actually be used, plus a handover session.

Campaign and go to market sprint

You’ll recognise this if: we’ve got an idea or a new service and we need a route to market.

You’re launching something. A new service line, a new office, a product, a proposition you’ve been sitting on for a year. Everyone agrees it’s a good idea and nobody’s quite sure how it reaches the people who’d buy it.

A sprint gives you the positioning, the messaging, the audience, the channels and the sequence, so the launch is a plan rather than a burst of activity and a hope.

You get: a go to market strategy, messaging and positioning, a channel plan and a campaign timeline.

Bespoke projects

You’ll recognise this if: we’ve got something big coming and nobody in-house has done one before.

Some projects don’t fit a template. They’re large, they’re one-off, and the cost of getting them wrong is high.

I’ve led rebrands and brand refreshes, which typically run six to nine months and need someone holding them together across your team, your agencies and your partners. I’ve launched a European law firm’s London office. I’ve built thought leadership campaigns from a standing start as well as run website projects.

If you’ve got something that needs senior ownership from start to finish, tell me what it is and I’ll tell you honestly whether I’m the right person for it.

You get: a scope, a plan and a fixed fee agreed before we start.

How a project runs

1. Discovery. I get properly into the problem. Depending on the project that means interviewing your leadership team, your marketing people, sometimes your clients. This is where most of the value comes from, and it’s the part firms are always surprised by.

2. The work. I do it. You’ll get progress updates at agreed points rather than having to chase, but you’re not managing me.

3. Delivery. You get the output, with proper time to read it before we discuss it. Then a debrief with whoever needs to be in the room.

4. What happens next. Some clients take the output and run. Others want implementation support, which we’d agree separately. There’s no assumption either way.

Why fixed fee

Because you should know what a piece of work costs before you commission it, and because a day rate rewards the wrong thing.

If I’m charging by the day, a project that takes longer earns me more. That’s a bad set of incentives for both of us. A fixed fee means we agree the scope and the price upfront, and the risk of it taking longer than expected sits with me, which is where it belongs.

If the scope changes materially, we’ll have a conversation about it before anything happens. What you won’t get is an invoice you weren’t expecting.

Why work with me

I’ve been running Helen Cox Marketing since 2016 and have worked with clients across professional services and B2B, from magic circle and silver circle law firms to top ten accountancy practices and large consultancies. Before that I was in-house.

That’s the whole basis of this work. When I tell you which parts of your marketing aren’t earning their place, or what usually goes wrong in the fourth month of a rebrand, it’s because I’ve watched it happen before. You’re not paying me for capacity. You’re paying me for pattern recognition.

I’m a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (FCIM) with Chartered Marketer status.

Who this is for

This works best for professional services firms and B2B businesses that know roughly what the problem is and want it properly answered rather than worked around. Law firms, accountancy practices, consultancies and B2B organisations, usually with a marketing function already in place.

It’s less useful if what you need is delivery capacity. I’m not going to write your newsletters, run your social accounts or execute the campaign week to week. If that’s the gap, a freelancer, an agency or interim marketing will serve you better and cost you considerably less.

I’ll tell you on the call if that’s what I think you need.

Get in touch

You probably already know which of these is yours. Most people do by the second paragraph.

Book a discovery call, tell me what you’re circling, and I’ll tell you what I’d scope and roughly what it would cost. If I think you need something smaller than you’re asking for, I’ll say so.

I work with B2B businesses, law and solicitors firms, accountants and consultancies in London, the UK, Europe and the USA.