marketing support for SMEs
Feel confident about how you're showing up
Empower, up-skill & optimise your team
Get the most out of your marketing budget
Benefits of outsourcing marketing.
Access to expertise
We live and breathe marketing, day-in and day-out, so we know what works and what doesn’t. That benefit of hindsight thing… it’s priceless.
Cost effective
How much would it cost you to recruit this amount of talent to your business? I can bet it would be significantly more than hiring The Design Grove.
Get back to your day job
If you’re considering outsourcing your marketing, the chances are it’s not your fortay. So you get back to doing what you love and I will take care of what I love!
Flexible and scalable support
Dip in and out and use me as often as you like. If you have a particular need or campaign I can be on hand as and when needed.
Tech and tools
Marketing related software is not cheap, but we have plentiful subscriptions that you will indirectly benefit from.
A fresh pair of eyes
If you always do the same things, you’ll always get the same results. How about getting a fresh perspective on your marketing challenges?
Your marketing – done for you
Do you want to carry out your marketing with the benefit of hindsight? Do you want to do this without having to break the bank with expensive agency fees? The Design Grove isn’t an agency, it’s your outsourced marketing department providing marketing support for SMEs since 2005!
Hi, I’m Gillian, an outsourced marketing director with over 20 years industry marketing experience!
Over the years I’ve worked in a huge range of industries. Rail, aerospace, pharmaceutical, ink manufacturing, cosmetics, healthcare, medical, electronic engineering, the list goes on and on.
In 2019 I made the decision to leave employment and set up my own business, The Design Grove, to provide freelance marketing support for SMEs and I’ve never looked back!
I can help your business to fulfil its marketing goals with a great value, flexible marketing support service. Find out more by booking a meeting.
The services I provide…
Marketing Strategy Support for SMEs
My clients often come to me asking for a logo, a website or to manage their socials, but what they also need is a strategy.
That’s why I have developed a range of workshops designed to extract the visual and written elements of your brand in three different formats to suit most budgets.
Group Masterclass
1 hour a week for 4 weeks - as part of a group. You will learn everything you need to be more effective with your marketing.
Deliverables
Homework and activities to put into practice what you learn. Core messaging, marketing audit, social media planning.
121 Fast Track
I’ll ask you lots of questions in a four hour session, go away and write up your strategy for you.
Deliverables:
All messaging, marketing plan, competitor audit, client avatar, keywords & blog plan, social content ideas & branding written up for you.
121 Masterclass
1 hour a week for 6 weeks - you will learn about marketing but I will write the strategy for you.
Deliverables:
All the deliverables from the group masterclass plus social content ideas, social media templates & banner
Logo Design
Gathering Insight
If you’ve done a workshop with me already, we’ll move straight to concept creation, otherwise there will be a 1-2 hour meeting to learn more about your business.
Concept Creation
Based on what we know about you and your design preferences, we’ll go off and create some initial concepts for your new logo.
Choose & Refine
One concept will be chosen from the variations provided and evolved to suit your feedback.
Amend & Package
One set of final amends is included before your logo is packaged up into its various file formats such as SVG, PNG and AI.
Brand Guide
We will provide a simple brand guide, with fonts, colours and icons as appropriate.
Cost: £450
Payable in two instalments 50% deposit and 50% on delivery.
Content Marketing Support
Like every service I offer, content marketing support starts with a strategy. If you have already gone through a strategy workshop with me, we will use that to guide and shape your content marketing plans. If you haven’t, don’t worry it’s included in your set up fee for this package.
Gathering Insight
Either zoom or face to face we will run a 3-4 hour workshop with you to uncover all the good stuff about your business.
Customer Profiling
We will discuss your target audience and your business goals, and come up with a 6 month targeted content plan.
Content Audit
We will audit your socials and your website analysing SEO performance, and introducing a keyword blog plan.
Branded Assets
We’ll create your branded assets, social media banners, templates and signatures.
Core Messaging
We will produce your core sales messaging – your vision, mission, values, features, benefits, targeted customer messaging that can be used for captions and content for your website and bio’s.
Cost: £1,460
A one off cost payable in two instalments – 50% deposit and 50% on delivery. Deduct £660 from this price if you have already bought a strategy package.
Monthly content management
Coming up with new ideas for your ongoing monthly content is tough, which is why you are looking at outsourcing it right? And as an external resource for this service, I can tell you that it only really works when you make a commitment to producing at least 3 posts a week and one blog a month to feed the engine!
So I only offer management support to businesses that are able to commit to that amount of content. If this is not you, worry not, I do offer a content only package a little further down the page.
Plan Execution
Using your content strategy and plan, we start to put it into action.
Social Media Creation
We create 12 social media graphics, caption them and schedule them onto a profile of your choice.
Blog Writing
We will create & upload one blog from the blog plan and optimise it via your website plugin.
Monthly Reviews
We will carry out monthly reviews of your content and brainstorm extra content ideas as the need arises.
6 Month Plan
We will replan after the first 6 months to review what has worked and what could be improved.
Cost: £800 per month
Payable in arrears within 14 days of invoice.
Website Development
All websites include a strategy session as standard. If you have already bought one separately, £660 will be deducted from your overall website costs.
I build websites in WordPress and as a baseline, each one includes a cookie plugin, a custom header & footer, home page, about page, contact us page, a blog page, 1 x product page, connection to Rank Math, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, privacy policy placement.
Gathering Insight
If you’ve done a strategy with me already, we’ll move straight to SEO audit, otherwise there will be a 3-4 hour strategy session required to uncover all the great features of your business.
Customer Profiling
We will discuss your target audience and your business goals, and come up with the core messaging for your website.
SEO Audit
So that your website is optimised for the search engines from the outset, we will carry out an SEO audit and uncover the keywords you need.
Concept Design
We will audit your existing branding and incorporate this and any improvements to your page design concepts.
Build & Launch
We will write, design and build each of the pages as agreed on our proposed sitemap. Going live on completion.
From £2,500 for the baseline
Additional pages can be added, £200pp for optimised / £150pp for non optimised, and a starter pack of 3 blogs can be added for £400. All payable in two instalments, 50% deposit and 50% prior to go live day.
Ad-hoc graphic design & copy support
I can provide adhoc graphic design support for social media and print purposes. Whether you need an ad design for a magazine, an exhibition banner or some graphics for socials, ask us for a quote.
Social Media Design
Reusable graphics delivered in Canva for you to implement yourself.
Print Design
Printing can be sourced and quoted on request.
Getting **it done
If you’re not looking for monthly outsourcing support, that’s absolutely fine. Perhaps you have an employee in-house that needs a little hand holding.
Accessing my 121 Marketing Mentor package can be a great way to upskill your team and keep the brains of a 20+ year experienced marketer on-tap.
My mentor package includes monthly planning and review meetings and a monthly coworking session where you can put me to task on anything you like for that hour.
Make the most of your marketing investment and make the progress you deserve.
121 Marketing Mentor
Ideal if you need accountability and marketing knowledge to power your work.
What you’ll get from better marketing
A first impression that converts to RFQs
With better visibility comes more opportunity to quote for jobs. We’ll look at your quote process too and optimise this.
Better content = better engagement
With refined messaging, you should see your audience start to engage with your content.
Make progress in the search engines
There are no promises in the wonderful world of Google, but many of our clients see massive improvements in their rankings.
More opportunities to do business
You’re out there, you’re making noise and you’re getting noticed, you will start to see opportunities everywhere.
Maximise your marketing budget
You’ll undoubtedly feel like the time, money and effort you’re spending is being put to better use.
A more engaged team
If we work with your team, we upskill and inspire them by showing them the impact of their work. And your wider team gain a sense of pride.
Don’t just take our word for it
Shaun Sidebottom
After months of struggling I decided to ask Gillian for help and I wish I’d asked sooner. She has been amazing, patient and her knowledge is truly remarkable.
Fiona Norbury
I have never met a person more dedicated to making good things happen for her clients. Hugely talented, highly personable and very thoughtful, you won’t regret hiring Gillian for your outsourced marketing.
Kate Thorpe
Love The Design Grove, they did a fabulous job for me of marketing a new offering. The graphics were brilliant, the messaging on point and the whole look and feel was very professional.
Sarah Cardwell
The brand workshop I had with The Design Grove has honestly been one of the best investments for my business. If you’re looking for branding and don’t know where to start, start with Gillian.
Sarah Cooper
Branding and Canva experts! I decided to treat myself to a branding workshop and wow was I glad I did. Gillian is a genius at pulling out all your key messages and helping you find clarity in the fog.
Tommy Walsh
When it comes to communicating an idea or a vision, there is no one better than Gillian, period.
We are so glad we found you.
Sarah Edge, Rugged Data
