Frequently Asked Questions

A fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader who works with your business part-time, giving you board-level marketing direction without the cost of a full-time hire. It's a good fit if you're a founder or CEO who needs sharper commercial focus and a confident route to growth, but doesn't yet need (or want to fund) a permanent marketing director. We bring the judgement a CMO would, scaled to what your business actually needs.

The most common trigger is when growth decisions matter and the answer isn't obvious: a confused positioning, an unclear audience, a weak retailer story, or internal teams pulling in different directions. The expensive mistakes usually happen early, before any campaign runs. Bringing in strategic clarity before you commit budget is far cheaper than fixing misdirected activity afterwards. Around a third of marketing budgets are wasted on poor briefs and misdirected work, so getting this right upstream pays for itself. Find out more about marketing strategy.

We're client-side marketers, not an agency. We've sat where you sit, leading marketing for major global food and drink brands and as advisors for scaling, challenger brands, so we bring practical commercial judgement rather than a campaign to sell you. The team has even invested in 3 challenger brands. We're agnostic about the answer: sometimes the right move is sharper positioning, sometimes a better retailer story or clearer agency briefs, and sometimes it's less activity, not more. We start with your business problem and work out what genuinely needs to happen.

We work with food, drink and FMCG brands from category leaders to fast-growing challengers. Our experience spans major names like Arla, Weetabix, Kingsmill, Birds Eye and Ocean Spray, alongside founder-led challengers such as Spoon Cereals, Sauce Shop, Bold Bean and PACK'D. The common thread for our client is ambition: they’re brands that want board-level thinking without big-consultancy fees.

We focus on four areas: marketing strategy (where to play, who to target, how to win); retail and shopper growth (compelling retailer stories and shopper strategies); brand positioning and audience (a clear, useful point of difference); and fractional CMO leadership (senior direction and better agency alignment without the full-time overhead). But have a look at our services page to see some more detail, or the work page to see some case studies.

A marketing strategy sets the guardrails for how you'll achieve your business objectives: who to target, how you'll win, what you'll say, and how you'll measure success. It's not the same as tactics, which are the individual activities like ads, social posts or packaging changes; those should flow from the strategy, not stand in for it. A common warning sign is having plenty of activity but no single organising idea tying it together, which usually shows up as inconsistent marketing performance. We've written a fuller breakdown, including an 11-point checklist to test whether you really have a strategy or just a set of tactics: https://www.bigblackdoor.com/what-is-a-marketing-strategy

We're based at Tower Works Studios in Leeds, but we work with food and drink brands across the UK and internationally. Strategic work doesn't depend on being in the same room, and much of what we do runs comfortably remotely with periodic in-person sessions where it adds value.

The simplest first step is a free clarity call. Tell us about the brand, growth or marketing challenge you're wrestling with, and we'll help you see where sharper strategy could make the biggest commercial difference. From there we'll suggest a focused way of working that fits the problem. We’re flexible to work in a number of different ways - have a look at our services page to see more.

Results vary by brief, but examples include 72% rate-of-sale growth for Spoon Cereals, a 30% improvement in marketing effectiveness for Arla Foods, and footfall growth of 11 percentage points versus the competition for Merry Hill. We're happy to talk through relevant examples on a clarity call.

It depends entirely on the brief. Some clients work with us for a single half-day workshop on one specific decision. Others take a fixed-scope strategy project over a few weeks, or an ongoing fractional arrangement that runs for several months while we help embed sharper thinking. We don't lock you into open-ended retainers. Every engagement has a clear scope and a clear end point, and we'd always rather do the right amount of work than the most.

You work directly with senior people. Big Black Door is led by experienced client-side marketers (each member of the team has a minimum of 15 years client side marketing experience). We're deliberately built without the layers of a big consultancy, so you get board-level judgement without your work being passed down to a junior team as soon as the work starts.

You can absolutely start small. Many clients begin with a single workshop on one focused challenge - it's a low-risk way to see how we think and whether we're the right fit before committing to anything bigger. If it makes sense to go further from there, we will; if it doesn't, you've still walked away with sharper thinking on a real decision.

Yes, in fact, a lot of our work is alongside existing marketing teams rather than instead of them. CMOs and marketing directors bring us in for an objective outside perspective, stronger strategic alignment, better briefs and more impact from their budget and agencies. We're not here to replace your team; we're here to help them make sharper decisions and pull in the same direction.

It starts with a free clarity call to understand the business problem you're wrestling with. We’ll discuss whether we’re a good fit for each other. From there we agree a focused scope and a fixed-price proposal, so you know exactly what you're committing to. Once we begin, we get quickly to the heart of the issue: reviewing what you already know, identifying the decisions that matter most, and working out what genuinely needs to happen and what doesn't. The aim is clarity early, not a long runway before you see anything useful.

By commercial impact, not vanity metrics. The point of sharper strategy is better decisions that drive real growth: rate of sale, marketing effectiveness, footfall, or whatever matters most to your business. We've helped clients deliver results like 72% rate-of-sale growth for Spoon Cereals, a 30% improvement in marketing effectiveness for Arla Foods, and footfall growth of 11 percentage points versus the competition for Merry Hill. We agree what good looks like up front, so success is defined against your goals rather than activity for its own sake.