Fractional CMO · Strategy · Go-to-Market · Customer Experience
Marketing Strategy
What the evidence says about your category, which segment is actually worth winning, and what to stop doing.
Book a call →The conversation usually starts with one of these
"The board asked what the marketing spend returns, and nobody had a good answer."
"Growth has flattened, and the explanations are getting vaguer."
"Someone has proposed a rebrand as the answer to a growth problem."
Why the obvious fixes don't work
Most marketing activity is built around the buyers who are in-market right now — actively comparing options this quarter. That's a real audience, but it's a small one. The much bigger pool is everyone who isn't in-market yet and won't be for months, sometimes years. They're not ignoring you out of disloyalty; they're just not shopping. The trouble is that when they finally are, they'll only consider brands they already know — and most B2B strategy spends nothing on being known ahead of that moment.
That's why a rebrand rarely fixes a growth problem, and why doubling down on the existing database rarely finds new revenue. If the plan isn't built around being noticed, remembered, and easy to buy from at the moment a trigger fires — for buyers who aren't looking yet — it will keep underperforming no matter how good the creative is or how hard the sales team works the pipeline that already exists.
This is where the diagnostic work starts: not with a workshop about brand values, but with a hard look at who actually buys in your category, what triggers them, and whether anything you're doing today reaches the ones who aren't ready to buy yet.
How the work happens — a quarter, not a retainer
Senior time, a minority of your team's capacity to manage, and a clear end point.
Diagnose
Reading the data, the market and the team — where the category is actually growing, whether the segmentation reflects who's really buying, and whether current activity matches what the evidence says works.
Decide
The segment worth winning, the positioning that earns attention, and the two or three moves that matter — with the budget reallocations and the things to explicitly stop doing.
Hand over
A plan the existing team runs, with the reasoning attached — written so a board can read it and a marketing coordinator can execute it without a translator.
What you get
- An honest read of your category — who's actually buying, and on what basis
- Segment prioritisation, including which segments to stop chasing
- Positioning grounded in evidence, not the last workshop's opinion
- A category entry point map — the moments and triggers that put your brand in consideration
- Where the budget should go, and what to defund
- A 90-day execution plan with the reasoning attached
- A document the board can read and the team can run without a translator
Recent example
An ag-tech client came to Summatt saying, “we need our positioning sorted.” The work started with a category read — who was actually buying, and why — before a word of messaging was touched. Read the full story on the Case Studies page →
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Who this is for
Good fit
- $20–100M revenue, marketing team of one to a handful
- The board or CEO wants evidence, not opinions, on where spend goes
- Growth has flattened and no one's explanation quite holds up
- You want a second, more experienced pair of hands — not another junior hire
Not a fit
- You've already decided on the answer and want it validated
- You need hands-on execution (campaigns, content, ads) with no strategy work
- You're after the cheapest option rather than the right one
Engage Summatt. Get Stu.
Twenty years in senior marketing roles, most of it in-house rather than in an agency — which means I've had to live with my own recommendations, not just hand them over and move on.
I'm direct, I show the working, and I'll tell you when something's rubbish. Nicely.
Former CMO of an ASX-listed technology company. Currently head of marketing, on contract, for an ASX-listed healthcare group. Sales has reported to me in both.
Ready for an evidence-based answer?
I read these myself and reply within a day. If it's obvious from your message that I'm not the right person, I'll tell you that too — and usually point you at who is.
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