The company is doing well. You would never tell from outside
Orders come from referrals, production runs, the numbers add up. Then somebody opens a website from 2002, finds not one usable photo from the workshop, and realises that the company with the most know-how in the region cannot say a word about itself.
Some call it a fractional marketing director. The name does not matter. What matters is that marketing finally has someone leading it, and that it is not one more job for you.
Four situations people come to us with
Each needs a different first thing. Pick yours, read the rest afterwards.
Marketing is not advertising. Advertising is its last step
All of this belongs under marketing. Only part of it will apply to you, but the choosing should be deliberate rather than driven by whoever calls first.
Understand the market
- Who buys from you, why, and what they are solving before they contact any supplier
- Splitting customers into groups and picking the one you want
- What competitors do and how you differ from them
- The brand: what should stay in people's heads about you, and how it looks
Set up the offer
- What is sold and in what form, packaging and documentation included
- The price and how a customer perceives it next to the competition
- Where and how it sells: directly, through sales reps, through an e-shop
- Service, warranty and the people a customer talks to
Get it out there
- The website and the content everything else rests on
- Search, meaning what people find you for without paying
- Social networks and groups where your customers actually are
- Email to existing customers, the cheapest channel almost nobody uses
- Trade fairs and events, one of the strongest channels for manufacturers: German exhibitors put 45 % of their marketing budget into them, second only to their own website
- Relations with the trade press, meaning what somebody else writes about you
- Paid advertising in search and on social
Do not stop at the sale
- Measurement and return: what paid off and what did not
- Care after delivery, because the second order is cheaper than the first
- Referrals and references that sell without you
Television, radio, outdoor and influencer deals are not run by us, but we can work out when they make sense and arrange them. What decides is not effectiveness, which is well documented, but the entry price: a hundred rating points in a thirty-second spot comes to 7.4 million crowns on the Czech Television rate card in autumn, and a month on thirty billboards in one region to roughly 230 thousand. So for most companies we start where their customers and the money already are: last year 18.2 billion crowns went into search in the Czech Republic, and 1.9 billion into radio as a whole.
Czech Television rate card for 2025, euroAWK site rate card, SPIR and SKMO for 2025.
What marketing is made of, and in what order
The most expensive mistake in marketing is not bad advertising. It is good advertising switched on while nothing underneath it holds.
What sets you apart and how to say it
Who you are, what you do better than others, and how to say it in one sentence a person outside the trade understands. Everything else is packaging for that message, so when it is missing, no amount of advertising helps.
How the company looks
The brand, the logo, colours, type and one consistent look across everything that leaves the building: the website, a quote, an invoice, the sign on the wall, the van. For a company that does its trade better than anyone in the region this often decides, because a customer has no way to judge the quality until they hire you.
What you are actually selling
A customer of a manufacturer does not buy only the product. They buy certainty of delivery, advice, a warranty, or simply being able to talk to you. What gets shown, and what backs it up, follows from that.
Photos and video from your own works
Most manufacturers do not have a single usable photo from production. Yet it is the most valuable thing they can own: nobody else has those photos and they cannot be bought. I shoot them myself and brief a camera operator for video.
A website everything else leads to
There is no point spending a crown on advertising until the site can hold a visitor and let them send an enquiry. This is where our two crafts meet: Martina says what belongs on the site and what has to be measured, Vit builds it.
Measurement you can trust
Before decisions get made from numbers, the numbers have to match what was really sold. In most companies I look into they do not, and nobody knows.
Organic reach
Content, search, business profiles, references. It grows slowly and then it stays yours. It is the only part of marketing you build rather than rent.
Paid advertising
Last, and deliberately so. Advertising amplifies what already works. When nothing works, it only amplifies that nothing works, faster and at a higher price.
Not everything has to be done, and not at once. But skipping a step has a price, and it is almost always higher than doing it properly would have been.
Why organic reach, even though it is slower
Paid advertising is rent. You pay, people come. You stop paying, they stop coming, and all that is left are the invoices.
Organic reach is property. A page you can link to in a quote. An answer to a question customers really type into search. A business profile that shows up before the website does. A reference that sells in a week when nobody is spending.
It takes time. First results usually come in three to six months and it cannot be rushed. But in two years it tends to be the part of marketing that holds when the advertising budget gets cut.
- A page of its own for each service or product, one you can link to
- Answers to the questions a customer asks before contacting any supplier
- A business profile on Google and Seznam that appears in results before the website
- References and case studies that sell without you in the room
- Content that gets reused: in an email, in a quote, in a meeting
Social networks: not all of them and not constantly
A manufacturer has no reason to open an Instagram account just because somebody else has one. What decides is where the people who buy from you, or want to work for you, actually are.
Usually the most useful network for companies selling to companies. Business partners find you there and hiring works better through it than through job ads.
A company page, but mainly groups: regional, trade and enquiry groups. Being in someone else's group tends to beat having a page of your own.
Worth it when there is something to show: production, craft, a finished job. Without photos and video there is no point opening it.
YouTube
Video from the works and how-to clips. Not for reach, but so there is something to point at when a customer asks what your place looks like.
Accounts get opened once there is something to fill them with. A profile with three posts from last year does more harm than none: it looks like a company that gave up.
What we do ourselves and what we commission
Nobody is good at everything and claiming otherwise would show on the first deliverable.
Done here
- Strategy, messaging and a plan that says what to do first
- The website and its content, copy and structure included
- Photography of your production, products and people
- A logo and a consistent visual style in usable form, when you have none
- Short video from production, when the point is having it at all
- Measurement and reading the data, including whether it measures the truth
- Paid advertising in search and shopping channels
- Content for social and the plan behind it
Commissioned and supervised
- A brand built from scratch, when it should be remarkable rather than merely decent
- Video where the point is a film, not a record
- Print, vehicle graphics and sign making
- Specialist advertising outside our channels
The difference between the two columns is honesty, not price. A logo, a visual style and short video are made here in a form a company looks decent in and can start using at once. When the brand should be remarkable, or the video should run on television, it belongs with someone who does nothing else. We say so up front, and we add no margin to their work: you agree the price with them directly.
What happens once it is set up
Getting started is one-off work. This is what keeps running, and what you will recognise from your own operation.
A content plan, seen through
With dates and a name against each item. Without that, content stays at the bottom of the list forever.
One line of communication
The site, the ads, social and email say the same thing. Today each channel tends to promise something else, because someone else wrote it.
A brief for the advertising supplier
What they should do, for how much and how anyone tells that they are doing it. Then a check that the spending follows the brief.
Reading the data
What earned, what did not and where people fall out along the way. Not reach and likes, but enquiries and revenue.
A monthly report and one decision
What gets stopped next month and what gets more. A report without a decision is just a prettier table.
Making sure somebody actually does it
The usual reason marketing falls asleep in a company is not a bad plan. It is a plan with no owner.
This is not a list of everything that can be done. It is the list of what is done every time, because without it the rest makes no sense.
Martina leads marketing, with the technical half at hand
She has spent eleven years in performance marketing, most of it at Notino, where she started running campaigns for the Czech, Slovak, Polish and Portuguese markets and left as head of digital advertising with a team of eight.
In between she led online marketing at OKAY and ran PPC for Bauhaus across two markets, including buying space from media houses. So she knows both: the large e-shop that decides from data, and the company where marketing is one person and half a budget.
We are one team, not two firms. Martina says what the site has to do and what has to be measured, Vit builds it and makes a change the same day. You get one supplier, one contract and one invoice, and nobody passing the job between them.
- 11 years
- in performance marketing
- 8 people
- in the team she led
- 4 markets
- CZ, SK, PL, PT
What this is not
Most misunderstandings come from everyone picturing something different behind the words marketing leadership.
- Not a team where you never know who actually works on your account
- Not billing for hours with nobody holding the whole together
- Not a part-time junior learning on your budget
- Not a single-channel specialist who cannot see the others
- Not a one-off audit that ends up in a drawer
Where this meets the website
Marketing and the site are related, but they need not start together. It depends where you are.
Strategy first, the site then builds it
- 01It gets clear who you sell to and what sets you apart
- 02The structure and the copy follow from that, not the other way round
- 03Production, products and people get photographed, so the site is not stock imagery
- 04The site is built to a finished brief, not to guesses
- 05At launch it is already known what gets measured and what gets switched on
The site is done, now it needs running
- 01First a check of whether the measurement tells the truth
- 02Then where people go and where they drop out
- 03What only spends gets stopped, what earns gets more
- 04Content and ads get a plan instead of chance
A site from me is not a condition. Marketing leadership can be bought for a site somebody else built, unlike its maintenance.
The first month week by week
With a service that produces nothing you can hold, fear of the unknown is the main barrier. So here is what happens.
Listening
Who the customers are, what sells best, what does not sell at all and what you have already tried. Access to measurement and ad accounts.
Findings
What the data says and where it lies. Where the money goes today and how much of it has a traceable result.
Proposal
Messaging, audiences and a plan for the quarter. Steps in the order of what brings the most soonest.
Launch
The first changes are live, measurement is right, and it is clear who does what and what the first report will show.
Three scopes, by how much you do yourselves
The difference is not in quality but in how much work stays with you. Prices are monthly and exclude VAT.
Foundation
Direction, an order of steps and oversight. Whoever does the work today keeps doing it.
6,900Kč per month
4 hours of work a month
Contact: a call once a month
- Messaging and audiences, written so that people can actually write from it
- An order of steps: what to do first and what can wait
- A measurement check, so the numbers match what was really sold
- A plan a quarter ahead
- A monthly report with one recommendation that needs a decision
- Four hours of work a month
Leadership
Most chosenMarketing finally has one person leading it.
14,900Kč per month
10 hours of work a month
Contact: a call every fortnight
- Everything in Foundation
- A content plan with dates and a name against each item, not a list of ideas
- A brief for the advertising supplier and a check that spending follows it
- Briefs for the designer, photographer or camera operator, and a check on the result
- Which social networks to use and a plan for what to fill them with
- Strategy worked on continuously, not once a quarter
- Ten hours of work a month
Leadership and delivery
For firms with nobody to hand the work to, not just the managing of it.
24,900Kč per month
18 hours of work a month
Contact: a weekly call
- Everything in Leadership
- Copy and posts written here, not by you
- Campaigns run without another supplier, or that supplier managed
- Email to existing customers, from plan to send
- Priority on deadlines
- Eighteen hours of work a month
Beyond the retainer 1,400 CZK per hour excluding VAT, billed in half hours.
Advertising budgets are not included and do not pass through my invoice. You pay Google, Seznam or Meta directly, so you see what the media costs and what the work costs.
One month's notice, no penalty. Anyone who feels tied down will not buy. And to say it plainly: what gets agreed is the scope of work and when it will be done. Not the result in the market, which depends on things none of us holds.
When we will not shake hands
Same as with the websites. A bad fit loses on both sides.
- You expect a result within a month. The first honest numbers come after three.
- You want campaigns run and nobody asking why.
- You would rather not let anyone into production with a camera. Without your own photos only half the work is possible.
- The decisions will be made by someone who will not be in the room.
- You are looking for someone to confirm a decision that has already been made.
What people ask most
- We do not even have a proper logo. Is this not too early?
- The opposite, it is the best moment. A company with no ingrained habits can be set up right the first time. Reworking marketing that has swallowed three years of unplanned spending is far harder.
- Do we have to do everything at once?
- No, and I would advise against it. The audit and the first month both produce an order of steps. Most companies start with photography and the website, because without those nothing else is worth doing, and reach advertising six months later.
- Should we not have our own person for this?
- An in-house marketer costs around sixty thousand a month with contributions, and half a year passes before they are up to speed. That does not fit a budget with twenty thousand left for marketing. That is the whole reason this service exists.
- Are we too small?
- What decides is not the size of the company but whether there is something to build on. If you have orders and want more of them, or different ones, leadership makes sense. If the company barely covers its costs, the money belongs elsewhere and I will say so.
- What if it does not work?
- One month's notice, no penalty. And you can start with a fixed-price audit that produces a list of steps regardless of who carries them out. If the conclusion is to do nothing right now, that is what it will say.
- How is the result measured?
- By numbers agreed in the first month: cost per enquiry, the share of enquiries that make sense, and revenue from channels where it can be traced. For organic reach, also the number of pages people actually visit, because that grows before revenue does.
- Can we start with the website and add marketing later?
- Yes, and that is the usual case. The website is the main service, marketing an optional addition. It also works the other way: strategy first, the site built to it.
- How long is the commitment?
- There is no minimum. Billed monthly, notice to the end of the following month. The audit is a one-off.
Thirty minutes online
No deck and no pitch. You say what runs today and you leave with an opinion on what you would do first if you were in my seat.
I reply within 24 hours on working days.