Marketing advisory or marketing coaching? What each one is for

There are two situations I see more than any other in growing B2B businesses.

In the first, the founder or CEO is making marketing decisions with nobody senior to test them against. Budgets get set, agencies get hired, positioning gets rewritten, and each decision is made on instinct and whatever the last supplier recommended.

In the second, the business has a capable head of marketing who has been promoted faster than their experience. They can run the function day to day. What they lack is someone who has made the bigger calls before, and can help them make those calls well.

Neither situation needs a full fractional CMO. The first needs advisory. The second needs coaching. They sound similar, and they are bought by different people for different reasons.

The gap between doing and deciding

Most marketing capability in a growing business sits at the level of execution. Campaigns get built, content gets written, events get run. The gap is almost always higher up, in the decisions about which market to prioritise, how to position against a better-funded competitor, what to stop doing, and how to explain marketing's contribution to a board that thinks in revenue.

Those decisions are where marketing either earns its budget or wastes it. They are also the decisions least likely to have experienced input.

Marketing advisory

Advisory is for the people who own the commercial decisions: founders, CEOs, boards and investors. The adviser doesn't run marketing. They sit alongside the people who do decide, and they make sure those decisions are informed by someone who has seen the consequences before.

In practice, that means a regular session each month, plus access when something big comes up. A typical agenda covers whether the marketing plan still matches the commercial plan, whether a proposed hire or agency is the right one, how to read the numbers marketing is reporting, and what a new market or product launch will really require.

Good advisory is specific. The adviser should be able to tell you that your positioning won't survive contact with procurement in Germany, or that your agency's report is measuring activity rather than pipeline, and explain why. If the sessions produce agreement and frameworks without changing a decision, you are paying for reassurance.

Marketing coaching

Coaching is for the person running marketing. The aim is to make them better at the senior parts of the job, so the business stops depending on outside help for them.

The work is practical. We take the decisions on their desk that month (a budget submission, a board presentation, a difficult agency conversation, a positioning rewrite) and work through them together. They make the call. I make sure they have considered what an experienced CMO would consider, and that they can defend it in the room.

Over six to twelve months, the questions change. Early on they are about how to do something. Later they are about which of two good options to choose, and that shift is the measure of progress. A coach who is still needed for the same questions a year later hasn't done the job.

How to tell which you need

If the main problem is that the people with authority are deciding without senior marketing input, you need advisory.

If you have a marketing lead you trust, and the main risk is that they are stretched beyond their experience, you need coaching. It is cheaper than replacing them, and the capability stays in the business.

If you have neither the senior input nor anyone to run marketing day to day, you probably need a fractional CMO for a period, ideally one who builds the function and hands it over.

Some businesses need advisory for the CEO and coaching for the marketing lead at the same time. That works well when one person does both, because the advice to the top and the coaching below stay consistent.

What to look for

Whoever you bring in should have run marketing at a senior level, carried a number, and answered to a board. Coaching credentials matter far less than having made the calls they will be helping with.

Ask how they are paid. I charge a fixed fee for time, so my advice is never shaped by what I could sell next. And ask what will be different in your business in twelve months if it works. If the answer is a stronger team and better decisions, you are talking to the right person. If the answer is a longer engagement, you are not.