Marketing strategy is a board issue, not a brochure

Firms hire marketing people and then wonder why business development still sits with the founder. They hire business-development people and then wonder why the brand is incoherent. Selling gets treated as a personality trait. None of that is strategy.

What the board should own

Who the firm is for. What it refuses. Why a Category A client pays more. What the brand means in the culture, not on the website. How organisational structure either supports that story or quietly contradicts it. This is the second MBA specialism at R W Progressive: marketing and business strategy as a board discipline.

What a Chair will challenge

Activity that cannot be tied to pipeline quality. Discounting that trains the wrong client. A “rebrand” that leaves pricing and service design untouched. Founder-led selling with no transferable process — fatal if the brief is sale, PE or IPO in 5.

One of the existing client stories is simple: an accountancy firm that stopped supplying what it assumed Category A clients wanted, and started charging for what they needed. Higher prices. More of the same clients. That is strategy. It is not a campaign.