Freelance marketing consultant with a clear perspective
Hello,
I’m Sarah, a freelance marketing consultant with extensive experience successfully navigating the terrains of high-profile brands.
Business owners come to me for expert guidance when they’re searching for ways to increase profitability, enter new markets, communicate more effectively with their audience, or achieve a greater return on investment from their marketing. If you’ve found me here, you’re on the right path to reach your business goals.
Based in Northumberland, I work with businesses across the North East and beyond, providing an expansive range of marketing consultancy and strategy services to help you outperform your competitors and re-engage with your customers.
As a true northerner, you’ll find me down-to-earth, straight-talking, and dependable. So, not only will you get a warm welcome, you’ll also receive pragmatic, professional advice borne out of a detail-oriented approach that’s designed to give you a clear perspective on how to tackle your next steps.
Your business is unique, so your roadmap to success may be different to someone else’s. That’s why the marketing plan I create for you will be developed after a full exploration of your business’s challenges and needs. My strategies pull on the wealth of experience I have gained over the past 20 years and I apply this to your specific business and objectives. What I guarantee is an honest appraisal of your current landscape and transparency in what I can do to add value.
At Simonside, listening happens first and bespoke comes as standard.
Weatherproof leadership
Starting my career over 20 years ago in event organisation for Leeds City Council, I delivered a series of networking events, breakfast briefings and formal lunches for the media sector before changing course towards agency land, where I became accomplished in a wide range of marketing disciplines.
I’ve held leadership roles agency-side and in-house working for household names such as DFS, ScS Sofas, Hitachi Finance and Boots, and now I share my expertise by working directly with clients as a freelance marketing consultant.
I am not a designer or a developer but I connect with creative and technical resources to deliver projects, working as the advocate for my clients to ensure a layer of strategic thinking is always applied so that every piece of marketing collateral remains on-brand and in-line with the over-arching marketing strategy and end goals.
Climb every mountain
The more my career rose with senior roles in big brand organisations, my work became less about creating marketing strategies and more about managing teams and preparing for board meetings. Whilst I had reached the summit professionally, my personal satisfaction was on a steep descent!
I set up Simonside to get back to doing what I love best – creating and delivering marketing strategies that make a huge difference to SME’s and entrepreneurs. I love lacing up my boots and getting stuck into the detail, as that is what drives change.
The two biggest challenges all my clients share are not having a deep enough understanding of marketing to deliver it effectively by themselves, and a lack of time. If you need an expert to manage a project end-to-end, from creating marketing campaigns to managing all third-party suppliers and deliverables, you can trust me to make it happen. It pays to get an experienced marketing consultant involved early on, as I ask the important questions that lead to the best route to success, leaving you with more time to concentrate on running your business.
I am a firm believer that creative, strategic marketing expertise should not just be available to the large organisations who can afford tens of thousands to procure the services of big agencies. One of the main reasons I set up Simonside was to bring the expertise and skillset I have amassed over the years to start-up businesses and SME’s.
I work flexibly with business owners on a project-by-project basis, or on a monthly retainer, so my clients can benefit from the big agency experience, without the big agency price tag!
Simonside inspired
As you may have gathered, my business is named after the breath-taking Simonside Hills in Northumberland.
I am fortunate to live in the Northumbrian countryside and awake each morning to views of this spectacular range. Everyone should have a happy place and Simonside is definitely one of mine. Being up in the wild gives me clarity and inspiration; it’s where I go to escape the hustle and bustle of modern life and to get my creative juices flowing.
It was a natural choice for me to call my consultancy Simonside, as I too provide a fresh perspective and a clear view to clients who are looking for someone to signpost the way for their marketing.
My personal compass
Although born and raised in Leeds, I have always been a country girl at heart. When I am not working with clients to develop their marketing strategies, you will usually find me outdoors, either exploring the countryside, listening to an audio book while walking Milo (the office dog, and my right-hand ‘man’), or knee-deep in mud at my allotment.
Testimonials
Business owners often tell me they feel comfortable hiring me due to my vast experience. They know they are in safe hands and I will present them with solutions to their business challenges. Here are just a few of my satisfied clients with marketing company reviews for Simonside...
Simonside Marketing have been nothing short of brilliant in helping me update my brand and develop a website. I run a long-standing family business that has never had a website nor ever thought about marketing. Sarah helped me think strategically about how the business works and how best to portray this to potential clients. She took my ideas and gave them a new lease of life creating a branding that stands out in the marketplace as well as a website that really tells the story of who we are, as well as bringing to life work we have done. I am extremely grateful to have gone through this process with someone as experienced and talented as Sarah. Thank you!
I’d like to thank Sarah Alcock at Simonside for the fantastic CPD session she provided my members of the Institute of Professional Will Writers. As the regional training coordinator, I always struggle to find quality speakers with good content. Sarah delivered hands down – it was evident she knew her stuff and was passionate about her topic. I’d also like to pass on some feedback I received from a delegate:
Thank you for inviting me to your CPD (marketing etc). I haven’t been historically that impressed by some of the IPW CPD offerings, so your session has created faith that this may [have] improved, as I thought this one was excellent. Albeit I don’t think there was much I haven’t heard before, there was a big chunk that I had forgotten or got a bit complacent with, so it was a really useful session even for an old git like me!
Thank you for passing your expert eye over my website before it went live. You looked at the architecture and flow of the site and suggested changes which resulted in a good website becoming better – more cohesive, uniform and flowing.
The things you suggested were things I hadn’t noticed. But everything has an impact and if you’re paying for a website you want it to be the best and most effective it can be.
A plain sponge cake is tasty but add icing and decoration and it will get more attention. Thank you for perfecting the decoration of my ‘sponge cake’.
My company prides itself on customer service and the quality of work we produce, so it was a pleasure to work with a marketing company that shared our values.
I asked Sarah to write the content for our new website, and from the very start, every interaction with her was professional and thorough. The final quality of the work was excellent and made my company sound more complete than I could have produced myself. Her attention to detail and the additional market research she undertook was a welcome addition.
I would not hesitate in recommending Simonside Marketing to my business associates.
Thanks Sarah! Your understanding and sympathetic approach to advertising and editorial woes was outstanding. From an initial consultation meeting where Sarah teased out the benefits I offer my customers (which I had not recognised myself), Sarah got to work on creating the brief, writing the copy and then managed the process through design to print. Her dedication to the task far outweighed my expectation. I have no hesitation in recommending Sarah to those needing a professional marketing consultant; she is understanding, practical and professional.