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What to Prepare for Your First Digital Marketing Strategy Session
By Blackbird Marketing
Before your first digital marketing strategy session, prepare a clear picture of the work you want, the customers you want to attract and the parts of your current setup that are not working. You do not need a polished marketing plan. You do need enough business detail for the discussion to focus on sensible priorities rather than guesswork.
In short: Bring your best-margin or most important services, target locations, recent customer questions, website and account access, previous marketing activity, and a realistic budget range. The session should then turn those facts into agreed priorities, not a long list of disconnected tactics.
Start with the commercial outcome you want
“We need more leads” is a reasonable starting point, but it is too broad to guide decisions on search engine optimisation, paid advertising, website changes or local visibility. Write down what a better result would look like for the business.
For example, you may want more enquiries for a particular service, fewer low-quality calls, a steadier flow of work outside your busiest periods, or better visibility in the areas you actually serve. These aims can lead to different recommendations, so be specific about the problem before discussing channels.
Decide which work matters most
List the services you offer, then mark each one according to its commercial importance. Useful questions include:
Which jobs produce the strongest return after labour, materials and overheads?
Which services do you want more of, even if they are not currently the biggest source of enquiries?
Which work is unsuitable because of travel, access, timing or capacity?
Are there services you no longer want to promote?
Do you need enquiries from homeowners, landlords, facilities managers, builders or another group?
This matters because a marketing plan should not simply maximise contact form submissions. A campaign that creates plenty of enquiries for work you cannot price properly, deliver profitably or schedule may make the business busier without making it healthier.
Separate urgent problems from longer-term aims
Tell the consultant if there is an immediate issue, such as a website that does not generate enquiries, a Google Business Profile problem, a sudden drop in visibility or a new service that needs introducing. Also explain the longer-term position you want to build.
Short-term lead generation and longer-term search visibility may both have a place, but they involve different decisions. Treating every problem as an advertising problem can lead to wasted spend; treating every problem as an SEO project may not address an urgent need for enquiries.
Bring a realistic picture of your customers and coverage
A strategy session needs more than a job title such as “homeowners”. The useful detail is what those customers need, how they describe the problem and what makes them choose one provider over another.
Bring examples from real conversations, emails, quote requests and missed enquiries. You can remove names and personal details. The wording customers use can reveal whether people are searching for a service, a fault, a location, an emergency response or reassurance about the work involved.
Write down the areas you genuinely serve
List your actual service area and any boundaries that affect whether a job is worthwhile. Include places you do not want to cover if that prevents unsuitable enquiries. Do not assume that adding a wider region to a website or advert will automatically produce useful local work.
Location also affects the right marketing approach. A business serving a compact area may need strong local information and accurate business details, while a specialist serving a wider region may need clearer service pages and evidence of the work it undertakes. The right emphasis depends on the service and the customer, not just the size of the map.
Explain how customers make a decision
Think about what a prospective customer needs before contacting you. They may want to know whether you handle a certain type of installation, whether you work on domestic or commercial premises, what information to provide for a quote, or whether the job is within your scope.
Also identify objections that regularly stop an enquiry from progressing. These could include unclear service boundaries, difficulty reaching the business, uncertainty about what happens next or concern that the provider is not suitable for the property. A useful strategy should address genuine barriers rather than add more general promotional wording.
Prepare evidence about what is already happening
Bring whatever information you have about current enquiries and marketing activity. It does not need to be perfectly measured. Even a simple record of where recent jobs came from can prevent a new plan from ignoring a channel that already works.
Useful material includes:
Recent enquiry sources, such as referrals, search, directories, social media, repeat customers or paid adverts.
Examples of good and poor-quality leads.
Pages or services that customers ask about but cannot find easily.
Previous advertising campaigns, including what was promoted and where.
Any available website, call or enquiry data.
Reviews, photographs, completed project information and commonly requested proof.
Do not worry if the records are incomplete. Say what you know and what you do not know. A gap in tracking is itself useful information because it may need fixing before performance can be judged fairly.
Bring access carefully, not casually
If the session may involve reviewing your website, analytics, search visibility, advertising or local listing, ask in advance which accounts may be relevant. Do not send passwords in an ordinary email or share more access than is needed.
Keep a list of the accounts and assets you know exist, such as your domain registrar, website platform, Google Business Profile, analytics property, search reporting account, advertising account and social pages. The important question is not simply whether an account exists, but who owns it and whether the business can recover access.
Ownership becomes especially important when a previous supplier set everything up. Make a note of the account owner, current administrator and any agency access. A strategy can be sound but difficult to implement if the business cannot access its own website or advertising assets.
Check the website before discussing promotion
Marketing activity sends people towards a decision. If the website does not make the service, coverage and next step clear, more visitors may not solve the underlying problem.
Before the meeting, look at the site as a customer would. Check whether the important services are easy to find, whether contact details are consistent, whether the pages reflect the jobs you want and whether the enquiry route works on the device you normally use. Note specific issues rather than describing the whole site as “not very good”.
Questions worth taking to the session
Can a visitor understand what we do within a few seconds?
Does each priority service have enough information for a suitable customer to take the next step?
Are the areas we serve and do not serve clear?
Is the contact method suitable for the type of enquiry?
Can we tell which pages, adverts or listings generated a contact?
Who can make changes, and are there technical restrictions?
Website changes may be part of the recommendation, but they should be tied to a real problem. Blackbird Marketing’s published website design information describes a review, plan, build and launch or improve sequence. That is a useful distinction to discuss: establish what needs changing first, then decide whether the existing site can support the plan or whether a rebuild is justified.
Be clear about budget, capacity and constraints
You do not need to commit to a figure before speaking to anyone, but you should understand the limits. A plan involving ongoing search work, paid clicks, website development or content production has different resource implications from a small set of technical fixes.
Discuss the budget in terms of what it includes. For paid advertising, separate the media spend from management or setup work. For website or search activity, ask which work is included, what requires your input and what may be recommended later.
Capacity matters just as much as spend. If the business cannot answer calls, return enquiries or provide photographs and technical information, increasing demand may expose an operational problem rather than improve results. Tell the consultant when you are busy, which jobs you cannot accept and who will handle new contacts.
Ask what will be measured
Agree what counts as a useful outcome before work begins. Depending on the objective, that might be suitable calls, completed enquiry forms, booked surveys, requests for a priority service or improved visibility for a defined set of local searches.
Ask how those actions will be recorded and what cannot be measured reliably. Do not accept a report full of activity that does not connect to business decisions. At the same time, avoid demanding a precise result that the available tracking cannot support.
Prepare questions about the proposed approach
A good first session should leave you understanding the proposed order of work, not just the names of several marketing channels. Take questions that test the reasoning behind the recommendation.
What problem is the first piece of work intended to solve?
Why is this channel more suitable than the alternatives for our service and customers?
What needs to be fixed before promotion can work properly?
What will we need to supply, approve or maintain?
Which parts are one-off improvements and which require ongoing attention?
What could make the plan unsuitable or need changing?
How will unsuitable enquiries be identified?
When will we review the plan and what information will inform that review?
These questions help reveal whether the recommendation is based on your trading model or simply follows a standard package. They also make responsibilities clearer, which reduces the risk of delays caused by missing approvals, content or account access.
What not to prepare
Do not spend the week trying to invent marketing jargon, write a perfect brand statement or copy phrases from another business. Clear facts about your services, customers, coverage and constraints are more useful than polished language.
Do not promise that every service, town or audience should be promoted. A shorter list of commercially suitable priorities is easier to build, measure and maintain. You can add further work later if the first priorities are supported by evidence and the business has capacity.
Also avoid treating a competitor’s website as proof that its approach will work for you. Use other businesses to identify questions about presentation and customer expectations, but judge recommendations against your own margins, skills, service area and ability to deliver.
A simple preparation checklist
Before the meeting, put these points in one document or note:
Your main business objective and the problem behind it.
The services you want to promote, protect or stop promoting.
The customers and property types you want to reach.
The areas you genuinely cover and any boundaries.
Examples of good, poor and missed enquiries.
Current marketing channels and what you believe they produce.
Website, listing, analytics and advertising account ownership.
Website issues, access limitations and technical concerns.
Your available time, internal responsibilities and budget boundaries.
The questions you need answered before approving work.
This preparation should make the session more productive, but it does not lock you into a plan. The purpose is to give both sides enough context to decide what deserves attention first and what should wait.
If you are comparing possible next steps across SEO, local visibility, paid advertising or website work, you can review Blackbird Marketing’s digital marketing services for tradespeople and use the points above to ask whether the listed approach fits your business objective.
Ready to discuss the right starting point? Bring your priority services, customer information and current account details so the conversation can focus on practical next steps. Contact Blackbird Marketing about digital marketing support.
