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SME Growth: What Businesses That Survive, Scale and Break £1m Turnover Do Differently
Getting a business started is hard. Growing one is a different sport entirely. At the beginning, success can be surprisingly simple. Find something people need. Find some people prepared to pay for it. Work exceptionally hard. Keep enough cash moving through the business to do it again next month. It is not easy, but it…
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Why Puffy matters: the strategic power of character in making a complex category human
Retrofit is technical. Home is emotional. Good marketing knows the difference. Even the word retrofit feels as though it was designed to lower the pulse. It is technically accurate, important and almost entirely devoid of emotion. Add decarbonisation pathways, asset condition data, compliance regimes, funding criteria and building-performance measures, and we have created a language…
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When Marketing creates opportunities that Change Behaviour, Categories Grow (And good stuff happens)
Most marketing teams are playing the wrong game. They focus on grabbing attention only. We spend an extraordinary amount of time trying to capture attention, improve conversion and take market share from our competitors. We analyse the funnel, sharpen the proposition and debate whether the call to action needs to be moved three centimetres to…
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If you want to attract investment or buyers, stop treating brand equity as a finishing touch
Too many scaling businesses still treat brand as the bit you tidy up once the ‘serious’ commercial work is done. The logo gets a quick refresh before a funding round. The website gets a sharp rewrite when the sales deck starts to feel embarrassing. The messaging gets tweaked just before investor meetings, usually after several…
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Why Every Executive Needs a Mentor, Especially the Ones Who Think They Don’t
There is a strange paradox in leadership. The more senior you become, the more people look to you for answers. Yet the fewer people there are willing, or able, to challenge them. At the start of a career, feedback is almost unavoidable. Managers review your work. Colleagues offer advice. Mistakes are discussed, sometimes with more…
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YOU ARE BUILDING YOUR MARKETING materials FOR THE WRONG BRAIN. LET’S GET REAL AND EFFECTIVE
Marketers like to think customers make decisions carefully. We hold workshops, build personas and map their journeys. We sweat the small stuff and write value propositions. Create detailed messaging frameworks. Then, after 15 reviews and gaining soft sign off, we present campaigns internally to rooms full of people whose full-time job is to analyse them,…
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Marketing: The Job Everyone Thinks They Can Do (Until They Have To Do It Properly)
There’s a peculiar phenomenon in business. Finance is left to finance. Legal is left to legal. Nobody wanders into operations and says, “I’ve got a feeling about your supply chain.” And yet when it comes to marketing? Suddenly, everyone’s an expert. The CEO has a view. The CFO has a view, often your budget is…
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Pivot or Perish: How to Rebuild Growth When the Market Moves Without You
There is a moment in every business where the numbers stop behaving. Demand softens. Customers hesitate. The gap to target gets bigger with less opportunity coming in. And what once sold easily now requires explanation. This is not failure. It is the market moving. The question is whether you move with it. A pivot is…
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Scaling Without Breaking: 17 Non-Negotiables for SME Growth
(Or: how to grow without turning your business into a very expensive mess) What scaling actually means (and where most get it wrong) Academic and industry research tends to agree on three scaling pathways: Scaling out – more customers, more markets, more products Scaling up – deeper value chain integration, partnerships Scaling deep – capability,…
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Spring 2026 Check-In: Where I Was Right, Where I Was Wrong, and What Comes Next
Mhari Coxon | Updated from the December 2025 article ‘B2B, B2B2C Marketing in 2026: Why the Brave Will Win and the Busy Will Be Ignored’ At the end of last year, I wrote that 2026 would be the year the brave would win and the busy would be ignored. It felt like a strong point…
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SaaS Marketing in 2026: Why Insight still Outperforms Algorithms – you can’t have performance without trust
HealthTech SaaS marketing is entering a more demanding phase. I am working with a scaling software company through my help to grow mentoring scheme and am sharing some of what I am mapping to help them succeed. Search Search is no longer a simple gateway to your website. With AI Overviews, generative search, and zero-click…
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Innovation relies on good management
Innovation Doesn’t Sit in a Department. It Sits in Your People The problem: We say we want innovation. We manage for control. Spend any time in a leadership team and you’ll hear the same refrain:“We need to innovate.” And yet, many organisations are structured in a way that makes innovation almost impossible. Layers of approval.…
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highlights from PMW unlocked 2026 day 2
this is note form not a blog so take the snips of insight that speak to you and forgive the disjointed format! Paul Evans from V2RSION opened the day. Focus is now on growth and that means brand and performance are both needed. Performance needs to be the 5th P of Marketing and is our…
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Scaling beyond the 5 million ceiling – success favours the brave. and the mentored
I have just completed another mentoring course as part of my role with Help to Grow. This Goverment initiative is supporting 1000s of businesses in UK to scale up and prepare for growth. Here is what I have learned in my time mentoring these SMEs for growth and scale . Fortune favours the brave, but…
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The rise of the Growth role. Business Development and Marketing: Two Sides of the Same Coin
(and Why the Customer Journey Cares) For years, business development and marketing have been treated like distant relatives. Same family, shared interests, but rarely seen in the same room without a bit of tension. That way of thinking is quietly dying, and not a moment too soon. Across boardrooms, NHS supplier briefings and LinkedIn comment…
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Marketing isn’t a department. It’s your sensing-and-response system for growth.
I am saying it loud and proud. “Marketing is not a function. It’s the management of the end-to-end customer experience under real-world conditions.” Because “real-world conditions” is the part most organisations politely ignore. Customer experience doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens while prices rise, budgets tighten, and switching costs fall, trust in institutions wobbles…
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Don’t be a bore – build relationships with your CRM
CRM Email marketing is not a quick fix. There. I said it. It requires time, engagement and value. You are building a relationship. That takes time. If you simply spam them, then you end up being nothing more than that boring guest at a dinner you got stuck beside. Nobody enjoys a boring dinner party…
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Charities Need Business Acumen To Survive In 2026
I have been a non executive director for a not for profit charity for 11 years. In that time I have seen the challenges charities face, the regulations expectations, and the number of charities that collapsed, increase year on year. It has never been more important to be business process led when executing the purpose…
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Stop, Listen, Look. Change the View Not the Person.
I have worked in behaviour change since 1996. My first career was in healthcare, dental, in clinic most days providing treatment. I am still in contact with some of my patients some 11 years since I stopped clinical practice and remain registered in my profession. I had a very successful career, a thriving practice, lecturing…
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Why Building an In-House Marketing Team Isn’t Just Smart. It’s Strategic Brilliance
In the age of rapid innovation and fickle consumer attention, the classic agency-outsourced model is being challenged -not by arrogance, but by the hard economics of agility, brand coherence and cost discipline. Savvy organisations are discovering that in-house marketing teams aren’t a fad – they’re a competitive advantage. Let’s break down why in-house marketing works…
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B2B & B2B2C Marketing in 2026: Why the Brave Will Win (and the Busy Will Be Ignored)
By Mhari Coxon & her Co-Creator 😉 I’ve worked in marketing long enough to see entire “next big things” come and go. Digital transformation. Big data. Social media. AI. Each arrived with noise, hype, and a flurry of poorly thought-through pilot projects. What separates 2026 from every cycle before it is this: There is no…
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Discovery Shift in Our Digital World: Winning Growth in an AI‑Search and Zero‑Click World
Why this is one of the most topical B2B and B2B2C marketing issues in the UK right now Search behaviour has fundamentally changed. UK B2B, including B2B2C, buyers are no longer relying solely on traditional search engines to research suppliers. Instead, they are using AI‑powered tools to summarise options, compare vendors and form shortlists faster…
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You might know me from marketing campaigns such as……..
Personal brand. Elevator pitch. Strapline for you. For some it comes easy, for others it gives serious ick. How to showcase you in either a new role or a networking situation where opportunities can be missed by wall flowering. First impressions do matter. This blog will give you a go do list to strengthen how…
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Trust, AI, Localisation & Video The Four Pillars of regional B2B Marketing in 2026
It’s that time of year where we reflect and predict. So here is my predictions for marketing in EMEA in 2026. EMEA in 2025 presented a complicated but rich marketing environment. 2026 will move fast and it is key to be ready and relevant. Between diverse languages, complex regulatory regimes, long procurement cycles, and increasingly…
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Mastering B2B2C Healthcare Marketing: Why the Complexity is Your Competitive Advantage
In healthcare, nothing works in straight lines. Unlike traditional B2C, where brand, message and purchase path flow predictably, not linear but in a flow, B2B2C healthcare marketing operates inside a multi-layered ecosystem: patients, clinicians, payers, retailers, regulators, procurement teams and influencers all shape the final decision. Think spaghetti vs McKinsey Models. Having spent more than…
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Why Every Executive Needs Mentoring and Every Mentor Needs Supervision
In today’s fast-moving business environment, the most successful leaders aren’t those who operate alone, they’re those who actively seek meaningful challenge, reflection, and strategic support. Your business can’t afford to have you siloed in your thinking. Mentoring at an executive level isn’t a sign of weakness; it is a hallmark of ambition, resilience, and high…
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How I Borrowed from B2C to Work in B2B (and Won)
The best B2B marketing is human. Storytelling, segmentation, and customer experience are no longer optional they’re the edge. For years, B2B organisations, and recruitment in them, insisted they were different. “Our buyers are rational.” “Purchase decisions are logical.” “We don’t need brand we need leads.” And for years, many of those same organisations underperformed, commoditised…
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Combining data with emotion for success
Yes, data drives decisions, but emotion drives purchase. The magic happens where the two meet. The best B2B marketing is human. Storytelling, segmentation, and customer experience are no longer optional, they’re the edge. Where Human Truth Meets Hard Evidence: The New Standard of Effective Marketing For years, B2B marketing has operated in extremes. On one…
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The Power of a Customer Journey led strategy
Mapping the customer journey isn’t just a UX task, more it’s a strategic blueprint for growth. Here’s how I’ve used journey design and data led insight to uncover new revenue. From Screens to Strategy – Rethinking the journey Too often, organisations start journey maps as a “sticky note” exercise — a visual of screens, stages,…
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Change Management – settling in to flight when all at sea
The only thing I can say with certainty is there will be change. This was my opening line to our first team development time with our 2 new team members. It can be hard to find time to spend on being a team among all the doing. But that time is key. What was warming…
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Right people, right message, right time – Sureserve Healthy Homes Check
Marketing is about finding the right people, understanding what the right message is to inform and influence, and then serving the messaging at the right time for that person’s journey. Easy right?! When done right it adds value and enriches the journey to the predetermined end goal. And when executed poorly, is inflammatory, insensitive and…
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Why Rebranding Is a Catalyst for Growth ~ When Done Right
Rebrands fail when they focus on logos and fonts alone, and don’t use strategy, insight and logic. Here’s what made the Sureserve rebrand work: 1.Alignment 2. Simplicity 3. Relentless focus on the people Rebranding Isn’t About Looks It’s about logic. Too often, companies treat rebranding like a cosmetic exercise – a new logo, colour palette,…
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Agile sprints in marketing
How to keep focus and momentum when clarity is lacking. When a brand is scaling at speed the goal posts can move quickly. Sometimes daily. That swerve, pivot or u-turn can knock the rhythm for a creative team. This is when agile (yes banging on about it again) really works for marketing. Plan less. Do…
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Metamorphosis of Marketing
Marketing used to be about awareness first, revenue second. Now it’s about revenue. You need to be across the full funnel and connected to the functions that own each next best action. The biggest shift I’ve seen as a marketing leader is how digital, data, and brand strategy sit at the core of commercial success.…
