STRATEGIC MARKETING CONSULTANCY
YOUR BUSINESS HAS OUTGROWN
THE STORY IT’S TELLING
Ibali rebuilds the marketing foundation; the positioning, the story, the strategy. That closes the gap between how good your business is and how clearly your marketing is saying it.
It happens at a particular stage of growth.
The business moves forward. Revenue grows. The team expands. The work gets better. And somewhere in the process, the story the business tells about itself (on the website, in the social, in the sales conversation) stops reflecting where it actually is.
The positioning was written for a smaller version of the company. The messaging describes what you do without making anyone feel why it matters. The marketing is running, but the gap between effort and outcome keeps widening.
Pipeline that should be easier isn’t. Sales conversations that should close faster don’t. The wrong clients keep arriving, or the right ones can’t quite articulate why they chose you.
This isn’t a campaign problem. It isn’t a social media problem. It isn’t a problem a rebrand will fix.
It’s the story. Specifically: the story hasn’t kept pace with the business. And until it does, everything else; every campaign, every channel, every piece of content… is working against itself.
THAT’S THE PROBLEM IBALI FIXES
94%
OF CONSUMERS RECOMMEND BRANDS THEY EMOTIONALLY CONNECT WITH
Most brand marketing creates no emotional connection at all. Not because the product isn’t good. Because the story isn’t clear enough to make anyone feel anything in particular.
Between 4,000 and 10,000 marketing messages land on your potential client every single day. The ones that cut through don’t shout louder. They say something more specific to a more precisely defined person.
Specificity is the mechanism. The story is the strategy.
EVERYTHING ELSE IS AMPLIFICATION
I’ve been obsessed with stories since I was a child.
The kind of obsession that means reading under the duvet with a torch when you’re supposed to be asleep. The kind that still means the rest of life gets somewhat deprioritised until the book is finished. The kind that comes with a full mourning period once it’s done, until the next one begins.
In marketing, I’ve never stopped thinking about stories. Specifically: why some businesses tell one that makes people stop, feel something, remember it, and most don’t.
The answer is almost always the same. It’s not the creative. It’s not the budget. It’s the foundation. The clarity about who the business is genuinely for, what it stands for that nothing else does, and how to say that in a way that makes the right person feel specifically, precisely understood.
That foundation is what Ibali has been building with businesses for the last six years. I’m still finding it interesting.
SPEAK SOON, LUCY X
‘The best investment I’ve made in my business.’
Rebecca Clissett
Rebecca came to Ibali with a business she was genuinely proud of and marketing that no longer reflected it. Six months later: the right clients were finding her, her prices had gone up, and her marketing finally said what her business had always been.
TWO WAYS TO WORK WITH IBALI
Both start in the same place: the story, the positioning, the foundation. Where they differ is how deep in we go, and whether the work is a defined project or an ongoing leadership relationship.
FRACTIONAL CMO SERVICES
Senior marketing leadership. Embedded.
For businesses at the stage where they need a serious marketing mind in the room: in the decisions, in the leadership meetings, accountable to the commercial results. Not just a consultant who submits a report.
MARKETING CONSULTANCY
Rebuild the story. Reposition the business.
For growing businesses where the story has stopped keeping pace. We rebuild from the ground up: positioning, audience clarity, messaging architecture, commercial strategy. A brief the team can actually work from.
‘Lucy has a knack for anticipating the needs of
both my business and my clients.’
Robert Harris
I work with four businesses at a time.
Not because I can’t take on more. Because this work requires depth; knowing your business well enough to see the story it should be telling, and the gap between that and what it’s telling now.
If something on this page sounds like your business: I’d like to hear about it.
lucy@ibali.co.uk - Subject: Let’s talk