The challenge
The business was at an early stage and needed to build awareness without the resources, reputation or marketing infrastructure of an established competitor.
Like many start-ups, it faced pressure to do everything:
- Build a brand
- Create a website
- Generate awareness
- Find customers
- Produce marketing materials
- Decide which channels to use
- Appear trustworthy despite being new
Attempting all of that at once could easily produce disconnected activity and waste a limited budget.
The challenge was therefore not to create the longest possible marketing plan. It was to identify the smallest coherent marketing system the business needed to explain its value, establish credibility and make customer enquiries possible.
The audience
The audience consisted of people in the business’s local market considering professional support with their garden.
Because the company was new, potential customers needed several questions answered quickly:
- What does the business offer?
- What type of customer or project is it suitable for?
- Why should I trust a new provider?
- What could the outcome look like?
- How do I ask for more information?
- What happens after I make contact?
The marketing needed to reduce uncertainty and make the service feel understandable, credible and easy to enquire about.
My contribution
I volunteered to lead both the planning and execution.
My contribution included:
- Applying the SOSTAC framework to structure the marketing strategy
- Assessing the business’s starting position
- Clarifying realistic priorities
- Considering the target customer and their decision journey
- Identifying practical activity suited to a limited budget
- Developing the business’s website
- Designing a supporting brochure
- Creating greater consistency between the strategy and customer-facing materials
- Building my own understanding of website management and graphic design that would go on to provide a foundation for my work at Zizzi
The insight
For an early-stage business, clarity is a competitive advantage.
An established company can sometimes survive an unclear page or inconsistent message because customers already recognise its name. A start-up has not yet earned that familiarity.
Potential customers should not need to work hard to understand what the company does, whether the service is relevant or how to take the next step.
The business did not initially need to be everywhere. It needed to become clear and credible somewhere.
The output
The project produced:
- A structured SOSTAC marketing strategy
- A clearer assessment of the business’s position
- Defined marketing priorities
- Recommendations suited to a limited budget
- A more coherent customer journey
- A customer-facing website
- A supporting brochure
- More consistent communication of the business and its services
- Practical materials the founder could continue using
The strategy followed the SOSTAC structure:
- Situation: Where is the business now?
- Objectives: What needs to change?
- Strategy: Which customers and opportunities matter most?
- Tactics: Which activities can realistically support the strategy?
- Action: What needs to be created and implemented?
- Control: How should progress be reviewed?
Using the framework prevented the website and brochure from becoming isolated design exercises. They were created as practical parts of the wider plan.
The impact
The business gained a clearer marketing direction and two usable customer-facing assets: a website and brochure.
These gave the start-up:
- A more credible presence
- A consistent way to describe its services
- Materials to support customer conversations
- A clearer route for potential customers to learn more
- A practical foundation for future awareness and acquisition activity
Tania’s Garden Design continues to operate as a small, local business, with the owner accepting projects selectively alongside other commitments rather than actively pursuing full-time growth. As a result, the marketing activity has not been implemented at a scale that would allow changes in enquiries, conversions or revenue to be attributed reliably to the project.
The impact was therefore about creating readiness for future growth.
Learnings
The project taught me that constraints can improve strategic thinking.
I learned to:
- Prioritise what a business needs rather than everything it could potentially do
- Translate a planning framework into practical activity
- Connect strategy with customer-facing execution
- Design for what a small team can realistically maintain
- Balance ambition with budget and capacity
- Build clarity before pursuing scale
- Use a website as part of a customer journey rather than treating it as a digital brochure
- Move between strategic planning, website management and visual communication
Most importantly, I learned that strategy only creates value when somebody can act on it.