Miranda Gowlland

I cut my teeth in brand management and it taught me discipline that’s carried me through my career. I’ve spent the years since arguing that brand and performance are as important as each other - despite working mainly in performance marketing. I’ve worked on rebrands, redesigns, brand positioning, messaging frameworks and I can be useful here for helping you understand what your positioning, how to build brand, and how to defend brand spend against short time horizons.

I have experience spanning the full range from having no team and deciding the who/how/when of hiring through to rebuilding a marketing function from scratch, hiring across performance, CRM, brand, content and comms. I’ve navigated whether to in-house roles or used agencies - and have done plenty of both. I can be useful on the awkward parts: what your first hire should actually be, generalist versus specialist, when agencies are the better answer, and what to do when a hire isn't working out.

CRM and lifecycle have been part of every in-house role I've held. I've built programmes from nothing, run them globally, and evaluated platforms, built business cases and at the end of the day, actually written the copy and designed the flows. Useful for lifecycle mapping, deciding what to automate first, deliverability basics, and which tools might be best for your organisation.

I’ve worked on this at many lifecycle stages: a new product seeking product-market fit, a validated product that’s scaling, entering new markets or new channels for an established product. The strategies might differ but there are always some guiding principles that can apply. I can be useful for pressure-testing whether you have a marketing problem or a positioning problem, and sense checking your thinking.

I’ve led marketing in companies where the function’s worked brilliantly, and where it’s been valued. I’ve led marketing in companies where… it hasn’t. The hard parts of leadership aren’t unique to marketing - managing a board that wants certainty, building for both short term growth and long term gain, holding a team together through a bad quarter. I can give you perspective from a career with plenty of ups and downs.

I’ve done both the buy and sell side of paid search. 8 years at Google gave me a depth and knowledge I still use today. I’m less hands on in Google Ads these days, but I still know it well. Lots of experience with other platforms too, and I can help you work out which ones to prioritise, what you want to do in them, and how to get started.

I've worked remotely and across time zones for much of my career and most recently managed a distributed and multicultural team. I'm less interested in what tools you use here than in the team culture side of things: unclear ownership, decisions made in calls half the team didn't attend, managing to get the best out of people whether you’re in the same timezone or not, how to build an effective working relationship by screen only.

I sold social media while working at Facebook, since then I’ve been on the buyer side. I’ve run ads and organic social in all my client-side roles, as well as handling influencer marketing in more recent roles. Here to help you troubleshoot all things social media whether organic or paid.

I have 25 years of experience in working with founders, consultants, senior leaders and executive boards, and I'm now training to be a coach, so I've had plenty of practice listening properly rather than waiting for my turn to talk. I get how hold it can be to grow a business. Bring me the thing you can't say to your board, your co-founder or your team. I may not be able to solve it for you but I will give you the space, empathy and active listening you may be needing.