Brand and marketing subscription services for brave new startups and growing small businesses.

To get started, we take time to get to know you, your small business, and your team through our immersion sessions.

During these sessions, we dive deep into understanding your business, your customers, and your market. We then conduct our own research to further enhance our knowledge. Finally, we provide you with a comprehensive Positioning Strategy, with our recommendations on how to define, differentiate and build your brand, ensuring it’s positioned effectively and resonates with your target audience.

Once we’re fully immersed in your brand, and we’ve identified who your customers are, we will collaborate with you to define your brand’s purpose, vision, mission, and values through our engaging workshops.

From these sessions, you’ll come away with a clear view of your brand strategy, and how to carve out a distinctive place in the market, building lasting relationships with your customers.

Now comes the exciting part – your visual strategy. We will explore logos, imagery, graphics, colour and typography. We will research the market and competitors, analyse trends and pull together an initial exploration of design routes for you to choose from.

Once we’ve found a visual identity you love, we’ll provide you with comprehensive brand guidelines, showing how your brand will show up across multiple media types. We will also help implement your new visual identity across various formats and provide templates to keep your brand looking sharp.

You’ve created your products, and mastered your purpose and vision, but how do you communicate that to your audience? A hugely important part of your brand strategy (and one that is often overlooked) is your tone of voice. We will work together to explore naming, straplines and the language you use to ensure your brand evokes personality in a relatable and memorable way.

We’ll research the market and create a Tone of Voice document that outlines your brand’s verbal identity and gives you, and your team, valuable tips to help write in a consistent tone of voice, always on brand.

First things first, we will conduct an audit of your social platforms and digital channels to see how you currently engage with your audience. Whether you’re a social media whizz or a complete novice, we are here to help optimise your channels and reach new customers.

From our research, we’ll provide you with an analysis of your current activity, a list of recommendations and tactics to improve your presence, and a marketing strategy best practice plan for you to implement to drive results.

We will host a marketing workshop where we’ll get up to speed with your business priorities and understand your goals and budgets for marketing activity.

We will then develop a themed, timed and budgeted marketing plan that will include key dates and milestones for your brand. We’ll also recommend content and campaign ideas to implement throughout the course of the plan.

We know that small business owners have a lot of plates to spin! We also know that marketing strategy often falls to the bottom of the to-do list behind other priorities, or perhaps through a lack of confidence, so we can pick this up and keep things moving for you.

We’ll work together to find the best media mix that gets your brand in front of your audience, whether that’s through digital, social, print or events, and help you plan engaging marketing campaigns for those channels.

We’ll roll out your marketing and social media strategy, managing your social and digital channels on your behalf. We will create content plans using the content you supply (or we can provide content via our Content Creation services) and manage your channels so that you can concentrate on the business priorities.

If you’re a solopreneur or startup currently use a drag-and-drop platform such as Wix or Shopify to sell your products, we can support you in refreshing your existing small business website design and user-experience using the in-platform settings and themes.

Together, we will review the options and decide the best way forward for you and your customer. We will agree a refreshed design and apply this within the platform, and ensure your site is Search Engine Optimised (SEO).  We will test the new site to check everything is working correctly, then launch the new website design as part of an integrated plan that gets you noticed.

Our Design option is perfect for micro-businesses through to SMEs who want to switch up their existing online identity with some more customised options but retain some of the elements that work for them.

Together, we’ll review the options and decide the best way forward for you and your customer. We will propose a new website design using the likes of WebFlow, and once you’re happy with the look and feel, we’ll test the new site to check everything is working correctly. The new design will then be launched as part of an integrated plan that gets you noticed.

If you’re ready to elevate your brand to the next level and are looking for something completely unique, then a custom-built website could be for you.

Together, we’ll review the options and decide the best way forward for you and your customer. We will work with our web development team to design a completely custom-built site, using a platform such as WordPress, that has everything you need.  Once you are happy with the look and feel, we will comprehensively test the site to check everything is working correctly, and will launch it as part of an integrated plan that gets you noticed.

Your website is now where you want it to be, so what’s next? We offer a range of tailored SEO and AI options to help take your brand to the next level.

We’ll propose the best options for your business, from SEO tools that ensure your site is showing up in all the right places, to intuitive AI tools and widgets to help simplify your processes and learn from your audience data.

We’ll host a planning workshop where we will discuss your priorities and goals for your campaign and gain an understanding of what you want to promote, your desired channels and media, and your campaign budget.

We will then develop a comprehensive campaign plan that details everything from initial production dates and deadlines through to asset deliverables, content creation and channel roll-out, as well as concept routes options for your review.

Once we have agreed on a concept route for your upcoming campaign, we can then handle the creative direction and production for you. We’ll work together to agree on shoot timings and locations, and source photographers, stylists, models, hair stylists, makeup artists and more to ensure you have the best possible team to bring the vision to life.

We will agree an appropriate budget with you and handle all the bookings and team communication on your behalf. We will handle production management on the day, to ensure everything runs smoothly and on-schedule so you don’t have to worry about a thing.

Following the campaign shoot, we’ll work closely with you to agree on image selects. These will then be retouched, and our design team will work on creating all your campaign assets within your chosen route style.

You’ll receive a suite of creative assets to cover all media platforms outlined in our initial planning session, ensuring you are fully equipped with everything you need to deliver an engaging and cohesive campaign across all your marketing channels.

If you’d like us to handle the roll-out of the campaign, we can manage this for you to ensure a seamless execution across all chosen channels. We will deliver the agreed campaign plan by launching your creative across all your owned channels (website, social media and newsletter), as well as managing campaign deliverables for any external media bookings.

We will stay on top of any paid social, and keep an eye on campaign performance, making any needed tweaks along the way to ensure maximum impact and reach.  Once your campaign is complete, we will produce a detailed campaign performance report.

We will start with an initial discussion to identify your social media goals, audience demographics and review competitor content, in order to agree your brand’s key content pillars. We will then work together to create a detailed content calendar of posts (using imagery and video that you already have) and caption suggestions, so you know what to post, and when.

We can also support with Influencer Strategy and User Generated Content if this is something you’d like to explore, from identifying content creators that resonate with your brand, to creating influencer briefs and managing campaign delivery.

We know how important platforms such as LinkedIn are for small business owners, so we can provide support here too. As with Consumer Social, we will discuss what your goals are for Business Social and agree on a set of content pillars to work to, as well as identifying key communities, organisations and hashtags for you to engage with.

We’ll work together to create a detailed content calendar of posts (using imagery and video that you already have) and captions suggestions to help you build your profile and drive awareness of your business.

If you need some fresh new content for social media, or just don’t have the facilities to create your own content in-house, our dedicated Content Creation Team can assist.

Once we’ve gained a better understanding of your social media goals and created a content plan via our Consumer Social or Business Social services, we will shoot social media content featuring your products (our Content Creators can travel to you, or you can send us your products – whatever works best) and provide you with a bank of edited images and videos to get you started.

Note – If you require a large-scale shoot for a wider campaign or product launch, our Creative Campaign package might be more suited to you.

Can’t find the words to perfectly sum up your products or services? Whether you need help telling your brand story in an engaging way, want to power-up your product descriptions, or are looking to launch a blog or newsletter for your brand but don’t know where to start, we can help.

With our team of skilled copywriters, we can help you discover your brand voice and communicate your message effectively.

Put simply, it’s whatever you want it to be. Depending on what stage you’re at in your brand’s journey, whether you’re about to start a small business or already have an established brand, it could be a combination of a few of our subscription packages where you might need some additional support and expertise, or it could be every single one of them.

We will start with an Immersion call to discuss your brand, your business needs and goals and where you might need our support, then we’ll propose a suite of services that are tailored to you.

Once we’ve agreed on the best way forward, we will work through each of the selected services with you over an agreed timescale, providing the support you need to maximise your brand’s growth.
With our Pick ‘N’ Mix service, we offer affordable payment options, so that you can spread the cost.

If you’re looking for support with multiple areas of your small business, then our Pick ‘N’ Mix option could be for you. Ideal for solopreneurs who are self-funded or have external investment and are looking to launch a new business or revitalise an existing brand.

If you’re unsure, don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’re passionate about supporting small businesses, so we’d be happy to chat through your requirements and make some recommendations.

If you think our Pick ‘N’ Mix service could be a great fit for you, we’d love to hear from you! Just drop us an email and tell us a bit about yourself and your business. Once we receive your inquiry, a member of the Blackline team will reach out to schedule an immersion call and get the ball rolling.

Our Managing Partner, Andy Bailey, has been supporting small business leaders as a volunteer coach and mentor, through the Help to Grow programme, managed by Enterprise Nation since 2022. He’s a full member of the Association of Business Mentors and the Institute of Leadership and Management.

This year, he completed a degree in coaching and mentoring and has accumulated over 200 hours: listening, advising, and supporting solopreneurs, start-ups, scale-ups, and SME leaders in building their brands and businesses.

“Our greatest leaders and innovators can be found nationwide, creating and managing small businesses; let’s give them the support they need so we, as consumers, can enjoy the products, services and experience we want. It’s a win-win for everyone.”

Let’s arrange a free chemistry call to discuss your goals and how business coaching or mentoring can enable you to realise your potential. This will be a 45 to 60-minute video call. If we both feel the chemistry for a future productive partnership, let’s discover and develop a tailored programme that’s best for you.

The first call in our partnership will enable us to define the goals, develop the direction and decide whether coaching or business mentoring is best for you. We will build upon the immersion and understanding in the chemistry call, set down some practical goals and ways of working, and agree on a tailored communication programme that fits in with your business and personal life.

Our one-to-one business coaching services have either a results-oriented project focus or a personal performance orientation. They are set over at least six sessions within nine weeks or up to fourteen sessions within twenty weeks. Each session is a 60 to 75-minute video call, all delivered around a detailed plan we co-developed and agreed upon in our discovery call.

Our business coaching services perfectly complement launching a brand, product, targeted business, or personal performance progression plan.

Our business mentoring services are the perfect partner for longer-term leadership and business development strategies. They are set over at least six sessions within nine weeks or up to fourteen sessions within twenty weeks. Each session is a 75-to-90-minute video call delivered around a strategic direction, with milestones we co-developed and agreed upon in our discovery call.

Our business mentoring services focus on you, your business, your brand or a mix of all three, ensuring you are perfectly positioned for your future success.