Guides for growing businesses
In-depth articles on customer journey, audience segmentation, marketing automation, CRM and data, content planning, and marketing metrics. Written from experience and designed to be immediately useful.
Featured Articles
Customer Journey
How to Plan Your Customer Journey: A Step-by-Step Guide for Small Businesses
A practical guide covering persona development, stage mapping, touchpoint planning, gap analysis, and what to do once the map is built. Includes a free planning template.
Marketing Automation
What Is Marketing Automation, and Why Should Growing Businesses Be Investing In It?
What it is, how it works, and three core reasons to start investing in it now.
CRM and DataBuilding Your CRM Right: What to Collect, How to Structure It, and Why It Matters
The practical guide to contact data, field structure, trigger data, and data cleanliness as an ongoing discipline.
Audience and Segmentation
Intro Guide
Know Your Audience: A Small Business Introduction to Segmentation
Why segmentation matters, the two types of data, five techniques at a high level, and when to start thinking about it.
How-To Guide
Lead Nurturing for Small Businesses: How to Turn Interest Into Action
The nurturing mindset and five practical strategies including email sequences, segmentation, and automation.
Deep Dive
Your Warm Audience: How to Nurture Long-Term Relationships That Are Worth More Than an Immediate Sale
Why your most engaged contacts deserve a different kind of attention, and how to build relationships that pay off well beyond the first sale.
Deep Dive
Re-engagement Strategies: How to Win Back Lapsed Customers and Cold Leads
The two re-engagement groups, the right mindset, strategies for each, and how to handle list hygiene.
Customer Journey
Intro Guide
What Is a Customer Journey, and Why Does It Matter for Your Business?
A plain-English explanation of what a customer journey is, using a practical small business example.
How-To Guide
Plan Your Customer Journey: A Step-by-Step Guide for Small Businesses
Personas, stage mapping, touchpoints, gap analysis, and team ownership in a single practical guide.
Deep Dive
Understanding Your Audience: Not Everyone Is Ready to Buy Right Now
The three distinct audience categories and why treating them differently matters for small business marketing.
Customer Journey Planning Template
7-page PDF: persona planner, stage mapping, touchpoints, data collection and more.
Marketing Automation
Intro Guide
What Is Marketing Automation, and Why Should Growing Businesses Be Investing In It?
What it is, how it works, and the three core reasons to start: personalisation, time-saving, and staying aligned as the business grows.
How-To Guide
Getting Started With Marketing Automation Workflows: A Beginner's Guide
What workflows are, the anatomy of a workflow, and the five workflow types worth setting up first.
Deep Dive
How to Write Automation Emails That Don't Feel Automated
Tone, personalisation tokens, subject lines, testing process, and how to make triggered emails feel human.
Deep Dive
How to Use Automation to Improve Customer Retention
How to use automation to keep customers engaged after the sale, from win-back sequences to loyalty touchpoints that don't feel robotic.
CRM and Data
Intro Guide
Does Your Business Need a CRM?
What a CRM does, clear signals that it's time to invest in one, and an honest view on cost and time.
Overview
What Your CRM Should Really Be Doing for Your Business
What a CRM should be doing beyond storing contact details, and how to tell whether yours is falling short of its potential.
Series · Part 1
Building Your CRM Right: What to Collect, How to Structure It, and Why It Matters
Contact data fields, data structure decisions, trigger data, and cleanliness as an ongoing discipline.
Series · Part 2
Using Your CRM Across the Whole Business: Attribution, Lead Scoring, and Beyond Sales
CRM value beyond sales - customer service, team alignment, retention, attribution modelling, and lead scoring.
Series · Part 3
What Good CRM Data Makes Possible: Automation, Efficiency, and the Bigger Picture
How clean CRM data turns into faster automation, sharper segmentation, and reporting you can actually trust.
CRM Data Planning Template
6-page planning template covering contact data fields, data structure, trigger mapping, and a data cleanliness checklist.
Marketing Metrics
Intro Guide
Why Marketing Metrics Matter – And Where to Start
The real cost of not measuring, activity metrics as the foundation, and an overview of performance vs health metrics.
Deep Dive
Performance Metrics: Measuring Whether Your Marketing Is Reaching, Engaging, and Converting
Exploring keep performance metrics - reach, engagement, conversion, and business outcomes including ROMI and CLV.
Deep Dive
Health and Operational Metrics: Key Numbers That Can Easily Be Overlooked
The health and operational metrics that don't show up in a performance report - deliverability, list hygiene, response times, and team capacity - and why ignoring them causes problems downstream.
Free Templates
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Planning templates built to go with these guides, covering customer journey, segmentation, CRM setup, automation, and campaign planning.