Marketing in Practice: From Understanding the Market to Leading Marketing

This course follows one organisation from start to finish. You'll pick it now, and every task in every topic is applied to it. By the end your work adds up to one portfolio: a single collection of work that shows an employer what you can do.

The course runs in a fixed order through four stages. Foundation is about reading your market, your customers and the rules, and setting the numbers you'll be judged on. Practitioner plans and briefs a campaign. Commercial follows the money. Leader proves what worked and makes the case for what comes next. Each stage ends with a milestone that gathers your work: a strategic audit, a campaign plan, an ecommerce plan for a second market, and a performance review with a business case.

Choosing your organisation. Good choices are your employer, a placement, a live client, a club or society, or a business you know well as a customer. Pick one with enough public information: a website, social accounts, reviews and, ideally, a few news stories. You don't need a job or inside data. Every task works from what anyone can see.

Confidentiality. If your employer won't let you share details, either anonymise it ("a regional builders' merchant") and leave out anything private, or choose a well-documented public organisation instead. Never put confidential figures in your portfolio.

UK example: if your organisation is a UK company, its registered name, number, address and filing history are on the public register at Companies House, free to search. That's a quick way to check you have the right legal entity, and you'll use it again in Lesson 1.3.

Progress markers. Each topic has a progress marker, a plain statement of what you can now do. You rate yourself on a four-point scale: not yet, with support, independently, could teach it. Be honest: "not yet" on day one is the normal starting point, and the point of the course is to move it.

If you're stuck for a choice, use Larkfield Coffee Roasters for this topic and switch when you're ready. Larkfield is fictional and its figures are illustrative.

Your organisation's digital marketplace is everywhere its customers, competitors and partners meet it online. Think of it as the set of places a customer passes through on the way to buying, and the places they go afterwards to talk about it.

A practical map usually covers:

• search results, both the ordinary listings and the ads above them
• social platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and LinkedIn
• video, especially how-to and review videos
• online marketplaces, where your organisation might sell, or where competitors already do
• review sites and the reviews inside marketplaces and maps
• apps, including delivery and booking apps
• the organisation's own website and email
• the offline places these connect to: shops, cafés, events, branches

Some of these places are run by intermediaries: businesses that sit between your organisation and its customers, such as a marketplace, a delivery app or a comparison site. They can bring customers, but they set the rules and take a cut.

A useful shorthand is owned, paid and earned. Owned is what your organisation controls, like its website and email list. Paid is space it buys, like ads. Earned is what others say, like reviews and press. You'll go deeper into these in Module 7.

UK example: the Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes a monthly retail sales release. Its September 2026 figures, published on 23 October 2026, put online sales at 28.8% of all retail sales. Online matters a great deal, but most retail spending in that month still happened somewhere else. So a good map never stops at the screen: it shows how online and offline places feed each other. Someone might find a café on a map app, then buy its coffee beans online a week later.

For each place on your map, ask three things. Is your organisation there? What happens there (discovery, comparison, purchase, complaint)? Who else is there competing for attention? Write one line for each. A map that says "Instagram: we post twice a week; competitors run giveaways; customers ask about delivery in the comments" is far more useful than a list of logos.

Business intelligence is gathering, checking and organising information about your market, customers and competitors so that decisions rest on evidence. In this topic you'll use secondary research: information someone else has already collected. It's free, fast, and the right place to start before asking anyone a question yourself.

Good free UK sources include:

• official statistics from the ONS, on retail, households and the economy
• Companies House filings: a company's officers, filing history and accounts
• trade bodies for your sector, which often publish summaries of their members' views
• Google Trends, which shows how interest in a search term changes over time and by region
• competitors' websites and job adverts: prices, ranges, and the skills they're hiring for, which hint at their plans
• review sites: what customers praise and complain about, in their own words
• social listening: reading public conversations about a brand, a product or a topic

Each has limits. UK example: Companies House filings are public, but many small companies file abridged or micro-entity accounts with very little detail, so you may find no revenue figure at all. The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 will change what small companies must file; in June 2026 the government moved the accounts changes to April 2028, so check Companies House's current guidance before you rely on a filing rule. Google Trends shows relative interest on a scale of 0 to 100, not the number of searches, so it can tell you a term is rising but not how many people searched for it.

Judging a source. Ask four questions. Who produced it? When? How do they know (did they measure it, survey people, or repeat someone else)? Why did they publish it (to inform, to sell, to campaign)? An official statistic, dated and with its method published, is usually high reliability. A supplier's blog claiming "sales are booming" is low.

Keep a source log. For every claim, write the claim, the source, the date and a reliability rating (high, medium or low) with a one-line reason. It takes minutes and saves you from repeating something you can't back up.

AI activity: ask an AI assistant for a PESTLE of your organisation's sector. Then check every point against a named source and mark it verified, wrong or unverified. Note what the AI got wrong or out of date, and add only the verified points to your source log. AI tools can sound sure about things that are old, invented or about another country.

Scanning the environment means looking at the forces outside your organisation that it can't control but must respond to. Two tools help: PESTLE and a competitor snapshot.

PESTLE stands for political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors. Treat it as a prompt list, not a form to fill in. Ask of each letter: what is changing that could affect our customers or our costs? Leave a box short if nothing much is happening there. Six thin boxes are worse than two strong ones.

UK example: on the legal row, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 banned fake reviews from 6 April 2025. For any organisation that relies on reviews, that's a legal factor worth noting, and you'll return to the rules in Module 5.

A competitor snapshot describes up to five competitors on the same few points:

• who they are (a named business, or a type such as "national subscription brands")
• their offer and price point
• the channels they use, taken from your marketplace map
• what customers say about them, from reviews
• one strength and one weakness

You may name real competitors for your own organisation. Stick to what you can see and source.

From findings to implications. A finding is a fact you have sourced. In Larkfield's scan, one finding is that more people own home brewing equipment. An implication answers "so what for us?": more people brewing at home means more people who care about freshness, so Larkfield should make its freshness easy to see. An implication should suggest something your organisation might do, stop doing or watch. Each one needs a source behind it, so point it to a row in your source log.

Three good implications are the goal. They don't need to be dramatic. They need to be true, relevant and specific to your organisation. Read the worked example later in this topic before you write yours: it shows a full scan for Larkfield, from map to implications. Later topics build on this scan: your research in Module 2 starts from what your source log already shows.

Most organisations describe their customers as they imagine them. Real decisions are messier, and the gap between the two is where marketing money gets wasted. Buyer behaviour is how people and organisations recognise a need, search, compare, buy and judge what they bought.

The classic way to describe it is the consumer decision process: a need (my coffee has run out), a search (what are my options?), evaluation (which suits me best?), the purchase, and what happens after purchase (was it worth it, will I buy again, will I tell anyone?). Treat it as a simplification, not a law. People skip stages, loop back, and make many buying decisions with almost no search at all.

That's because a lot of buying runs on habits and mental shortcuts. We buy the same brand because it worked last time, choose the option already ticked, or read a higher price as a sign of quality. Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) describes fast, intuitive thinking alongside slower, deliberate thinking. You don't need a figure for how often each happens; you need to notice which one your customers are probably using when they buy from you.

Business buying adds people. A business purchase usually involves a decision-making unit: the user who will use the product, the buyer who places the order, the approver who signs it off, and influencers whose opinions count. In Larkfield Coffee Roasters, the fictional business this course follows, a café's decision to buy coffee involves the owner and the head barista. Market only to one of them and you can lose the sale to the other.

UK example: Tesco Clubcard. Tesco launched Clubcard in February 1995. It worked with dunnhumby, the data science firm founded by Edwina Dunn and Clive Humby, to analyse what members actually bought. The lesson for you is the principle, not the scale: what customers do (what they buy, when, how often) is often better evidence than what they say they'll do. Most organisations hold some behaviour data already, such as order histories, bookings or attendance, and asking questions works best alongside it.

When you sketch how your organisation's customers decide, mark each step as "known" (you have evidence) or "assumed" (you're guessing). The assumed steps are your research questions for the next lesson.

Good research starts with a question, not a survey. A useful research question is narrow and tied to a decision: "Why do customers cancel in their first three months, so we can decide what to change?" is far better than "What do customers think of us?". If no decision would change whatever the answer, it isn't worth researching. Choosing which question is worth your time is a first piece of marketing leadership.

Secondary first. Before you ask anyone anything, check what's already known. In Module 1 you built a source log; now go back to it. Public reviews, social comments, complaints, sales records and published reports often answer half the question for free. Write down what they show and, just as important, the gaps they leave. Those gaps are what your own research is for.

Primary research is research you carry out yourself for your question. It comes in two broad kinds, qualitative and quantitative:

• Qualitative research explores reasons and meanings through words, for example interviews or open comments. It tells you why.
• Quantitative research measures how many or how much, for example a survey with closed questions. It tells you how common.

Most small projects use both: a few interviews to find the reasons, and a short survey to see how widespread they are.

Samples. You won't ask everyone, so you ask a sample. A small sample can still be useful if you say honestly what it can't show. Five interviews can reveal reasons you hadn't thought of, but they can't tell you what share of customers feel the same. A survey of your own customers tells you about them, not about the whole market. Write that limitation into your plan before you start, not after.

Consent and anonymity. People should know who is asking, why, what will happen to their answers, and that they can say no or stop at any time. Ask for no more personal data than you need, and report results so no one can be identified. The Market Research Society's Code of Conduct (revised 2023) sets the standard UK researchers follow. The legal rules on personal data return in depth in Module 5.

The wording of a question can decide the answer. Small changes make a big difference, so this lesson is about writing questions that let people tell you the truth.

Closed questions give a fixed set of answers (yes or no, a list, a rating scale). They are quick to answer and easy to count. Open questions ("What nearly stopped you ordering?") let people answer in their own words. They are slower to analyse but often surprise you. A good survey is mostly closed questions with one or two open ones. Rating scales need balanced ends, such as "very poor" to "very good", with a middle option.

Order matters. Start with easy, general questions, then move to the specific and the sensitive. Put personal questions, like age, at the end and only if you need them. Earlier questions can colour later ones, so ask about overall satisfaction before you ask about one feature.

Three faults spoil most first drafts: leading, double and vague questions.

• A leading question pushes people towards an answer: "How much do you love our new range?"
• A double question asks two things at once: "Was delivery fast and well packed?" Someone who got a fast, damaged parcel can't answer.
• A vague question means different things to different people: "Do you buy coffee regularly?" Weekly? Daily?

Interviews use an interview guide: five or six open questions in a sensible order, plus prompts such as "Tell me more about that" or "What happened next?". Ask about real past behaviour ("Tell me about the last time you...") rather than guesses about the future.

Piloting means trying your questions on one or two people before the real thing. Watch where they hesitate, re-read or ask what you mean. Every pause is a question to fix.

AI activity. Ask an AI assistant to draft a short survey for your organisation's research question from Lesson 2.2. Then go through it line by line and find every leading, double or vague question it wrote, rewriting each one. Finally, note what it missed about your customers: the AI doesn't know who they are, how they buy or what your source log showed. Keep both versions; the comparison is useful evidence of your judgement.

Once the answers are in, resist the urge to report everything. Your job is to find what matters and what your organisation could do about it.

Start simple. For closed questions, count: how many people chose each answer, and out of how many? Always give the base ("39 of 96", not just a percentage), so readers can see how big the group was. For open comments and interviews, read everything once, then group similar comments into themes and count how many fall under each. Pick one or two short quotes that capture each theme in customers' own words, with no names attached.

A finding is not an insight. A finding is what the data says: "Most cancellations mention having too much coffee." Customer insight is a fresh, evidence-based understanding of why customers act as they do that the organisation can act on. It explains the finding and points to a decision.

A simple way to write one is the insight statement: "We noticed... (the finding), because... (the reason, from your evidence), so we could... (an action)." If you can't fill in the "because" from your evidence, you have a finding and a guess, and the guess is your next research question. If you can't fill in the "so we could", the insight isn't yet useful.

Say what it can't show. Every insight comes with limits. Who did you hear from, and who didn't you hear from? Did happy customers reply more than unhappy ones? Is it your customers or the whole market? Writing one honest line of limitations makes your insights more credible, not less.

Read the worked example later in this topic before you start the task: it takes Larkfield's survey all the way from a count to an insight statement. Then use the same steps on your own results or, if you can't survey anyone, on published reviews and comments about your organisation.

Most organisations describe their market with one word: "students", "families", "small businesses". Market segmentation goes further. It divides a market into groups of customers with similar needs or behaviour, who respond to marketing in a similar way. Each group is a segment.

There are four common ways in, called bases for segmenting:

• Demographic: age, life stage, income, household. Easy to find, but weak at explaining why people buy.
• Geographic: where people live or work. It matters for delivery areas, local services and anything people travel to.
• Behavioural: what people do, such as how often they buy, how they use the product, which channel they buy through, and whether they come back.
• Needs-based: the benefit people want, or the job they're trying to get done.

Business markets use firmographics: sector, size (staff or turnover), location, and how the business buys. You met the decision-making unit in Module 2; a segment of businesses where the owner decides alone needs different marketing from one where a buying team decides.

Start from insight, not labels. The strongest segments come from needs and behaviour, usually combined with one or two other bases to find and reach people. Go back to the insight statements you wrote in topic 2. Where customers want clearly different things, you may have found the edges of a segment. A label such as "Gen Z" lumps together people who want very different things.

A useful segment passes four tests. Its needs differ from the other segments. You can find and reach its members. It's big enough to matter (in words, if you have no figures). And you have evidence it exists, not just a hunch.

UK example: Gymshark. Gymshark says it began in 2012 in a garage in Birmingham. CNBC reported in May 2023 that, with no advertising budget, founder Ben Francis and co-founder Lewis Morgan gave free products to popular fitness YouTubers at a bodybuilding expo in 2013, and some wore the clothing on their channels. The segment was defined by behaviour and needs: people who trained seriously and watched fitness creators. Age alone would have missed the point, and so would "people who exercise".

Once you have segments, you have to choose. Targeting means choosing which segments to serve, and how many, based on how attractive each one is and how well your organisation can win it.

Attractiveness asks whether a segment is worth having:

• Size: are there enough of these customers to matter?
• Growth: is the group getting bigger or smaller?
• Reachability: can you find them, and are there places where they gather or look?
• Competition: who already serves them well, and could you offer something better?

Fit asks whether your organisation can win it. What is it already good at? What does it already own, such as a reputation, a location, skills or a product? A large, growing segment is no use if a competitor serves it better and you have nothing different to offer.

Describe each score in words and say what evidence it rests on: "growing, judging by the rise in local brewing classes" is more honest than a made-up number. If you do have figures, give their source.

There are three broad approaches. Focus on one segment, and do it well. Serve several segments with one offer. Or take a differentiated approach: a different offer or message for each segment you choose. Small organisations usually start with one or two, because every extra segment costs money and attention.

Say why not. A good targeting decision explains what you've chosen not to do. Writing one reason for each rejected segment stops the team drifting back to "everyone", and it shows a manager you weighed the alternatives.

AI activity. Ask an AI assistant to suggest segments for your organisation, describing what it sells and to whom. Then test each suggestion against your own evidence from topic 2 and your source log: keep it, change it or reject it, and write one reason each time. Watch for segments the AI invented from a label, and for any figures it gives without a source. Keep the AI's list and your verdicts; they show your judgement.

A persona is a short, evidence-based portrait of a typical customer in a target segment. It gives a team one person to picture when it writes an email, designs a page or chooses a channel. "Would this help Jordan?" is an easier question than "would this help the segment?"

A persona is only as good as its evidence. Build it from your research in Module 2: survey answers, interviews, reviews, order data, comments on social media. Every detail should earn its place by changing a decision. Where they look for advice matters; their favourite colour probably doesn't.

A useful persona covers:

• Name and a short situation: their circumstances as they relate to what you sell.
• Needs: what they want from the product, and what puts them off.
• What they read, watch and listen to: the places your organisation could meet them.
• Evidence: where each detail came from.

The traps. The first is invented detail. Teams add a job, a dog and a hobby to make the persona feel real, then start making decisions based on things nobody checked. The second is the cliché: assumptions based on age or gender, such as "older people don't shop online" or "women buy the gifts". These are stereotypes, not evidence, and they can lead you to ignore customers who don't fit.

Test each detail by asking "how do we know?". If the answer is "we don't", cut it, or mark it as an assumption to research. Then give the persona a plainly fictional name, and say it's illustrative. A persona stands for a group; it isn't one real customer, so never use a real person's name or details.

One persona per target segment is enough to start. If your organisation targets two segments, write the second persona later, once the first has proved useful.

The path to purchase is the steps a customer moves through from first noticing a need to buying and buying again, including where they look and who influences them. It builds on the decision process from Module 2, but adds the places your organisation can show up.

This topic uses five stages:

1. Trigger: something starts the need, such as running out, a life change or seeing a friend's purchase.
2. Search: they look for options, online or by asking people.
3. Compare: they weigh up a shortlist on what matters to them.
4. Buy: they choose, often trying something small first.
5. After purchase: they use it, judge it, and decide whether to buy again and tell others.

At each stage, list the touchpoints: any point where a customer meets the organisation or hears about it, online or offline. A search result, a review, a shop shelf, an email and a delivery box are all touchpoints. Then list the influences: friends, reviews, creators, staff, price comparison. Some touchpoints belong to you, some don't, and the ones you don't control often matter most.

The customer funnel is a simpler model of the same idea: awareness, consideration, purchase and loyalty. It narrows because fewer people reach each stage. Its value is that it suggests a different goal at each stage: get noticed, get considered, get chosen, get chosen again. You'll turn those goals into measures with baselines in Module 6. Real paths loop and skip, so treat the funnel as a planning aid, not a description of how people behave.

Map the path for your persona, not for "customers" in general. Read the worked example later in this topic before you start the task: it maps Larkfield's persona, Jordan, stage by stage. Then do the same for your organisation, marking any touchpoint you've assumed rather than seen in your evidence.

You met your target segment in Module 3; now you give that customer a reason to choose your organisation. That reason is the value proposition: a clear statement of the benefit a target customer gets, why it matters to them and why your organisation delivers it better than the alternatives.

Benefits, not features. A feature is what the product has or does: "a 2,000mAh battery", "open until 10pm". A benefit is what that means for the customer: "your phone lasts the whole festival", "you can shop after your late shift". Customers buy benefits. To get from one to the other, ask "so what?" until you reach something the customer would care about.

Jobs, pains and gains. Value Proposition Design (Osterwalder, Pigneur, Bernarda and Smith, 2014) gives three useful prompts. Jobs are what the customer is trying to get done. Pains are what annoys them or gets in the way. Gains are what would delight them. Fill each one from your topic 2 research, not from guesses. If a pain has no evidence behind it, mark it "assumed".

The alternatives. Customers always have a choice: a competitor, a different kind of product, making do, or doing nothing at all. "Doing nothing" is often the strongest rival. Name the alternatives your target customer really considers, in their words.

The proposition statement. Keep it to one or two sentences a customer would recognise. A simple frame: for (target), (offer) gives (main benefit), because (proof only you can offer). The proof matters most. Without it, you have a slogan.

UK example: Greggs and the vegan sausage roll. Greggs launched a vegan sausage roll on 3 January 2019, timed for Veganuary. A brand known for sausage rolls now offered its best-known product to people who don't eat meat. In its preliminary results on 7 March 2019, Greggs reported company-managed shop like-for-like sales up 9.6% in the seven weeks to 16 February 2019, "helped in part by publicity surrounding launch of the vegan-friendly sausage roll". Notice what Greggs claimed and what it didn't: it said the launch helped, not that it caused all the growth. The lesson for you is the principle: the proposition stayed familiar (a Greggs sausage roll) while the product widened who it was for.

Test your draft on the target from topic 3. Would that customer, in particular, recognise their own job, pain or gain in it? If it would suit anyone, it isn't yet written for them.

A proposition says what you offer. Positioning is the place you want that offer to hold in the target customer's mind, compared with the alternatives. You don't fully control it: customers decide where you sit. But you can choose where to aim, and make every message point the same way.

The positioning statement. A widely used template, popularised by Geoffrey Moore in Crossing the Chasm (1991), runs in five parts:

• For (the target customer)
• who (their need or problem)
• our offer is (what it is, in plain words)
• that (the main benefit)
• unlike (the main alternative), (what makes yours different).

It is an internal tool, not an advert. Nobody outside the organisation needs to see it, but everyone inside should be able to say it.

Choosing the alternatives. Use the ones the customer really weighs up, from your topic 2 research and the competitor snapshot in Module 1. If you describe real competitors, describe them fairly and only with facts you can check.

The positioning map. Draw two lines crossing at the middle, one for each attribute customers care about, such as price and convenience, or freshness and choice. Then place your organisation and each alternative on the map. Two rules keep it honest:

• Choose attributes from your research, not ones that happen to flatter you.
• Place the alternatives as the customer sees them, not as you'd like them to be.

Gaps on the map. An empty corner can be an opportunity. It can also be empty because nobody wants that combination. Before you claim it, check your evidence says customers value it.

Claims you can back up. Every word in the "that" and "unlike" lines is a claim. If your organisation can't prove it today, either change the offer or change the words. Claims return in depth in Module 5, where you'll check them against the advertising rules.

When you have a statement and a map, read them side by side. If the map shows you sitting among the alternatives rather than apart from them, the "unlike" line needs work.

You now have a proposition. The marketing mix is everything the organisation controls that shapes what the customer actually gets. The original four Ps (product, price, place, promotion) were extended for services by Booms and Bitner (1981), who added people, process and physical evidence. Together they are the 7Ps.

Learners often treat the 7Ps as a form to fill in, one box at a time. Here they do a different job: they test one proposition. Customers judge a promise by the evidence around it. If the advert says "premium" and the website looks careless, they believe the website.

One question for every P. Ask each one: does this deliver the proposition?

Physical evidence means the tangible signs that let customers judge a service before or after they use it: packaging, a website, a receipt, a uniform.

Gaps and contradictions. A gap is a P that doesn't help the promise. A contradiction is worse: a P that says the opposite, such as a "fast" service with a slow checkout. Mark both. Then pick the one that would hurt most if a customer noticed it.

Read the worked example later in this topic before you start. It takes Larkfield Coffee Roasters, the course's fictional roaster, through all seven Ps.

AI activity. Ask an AI assistant for five alternative value propositions for your organisation's target segment. Then score each one against your own customer evidence from topic 2: does it match a job, pain or gain your research found? Can your organisation prove it today? Which P would contradict it? Write down which proposition survives and why. The AI writes fluent propositions quickly, but it doesn't know your customers. Your evidence is the judge.

When you write your own seven lines, write what is true today, not what you plan. The gaps are your organisation's to-do list.

Your proposition belongs to one product or service. Most organisations offer several, under one name or many. This lesson steps back to see the whole picture.

Brand architecture is how an organisation's brands and sub-brands relate to each other. David Aaker and Erich Joachimsthaler (Brand Leadership, 2000) describe a spectrum. In outline, there are three common choices:

• A master brand: one name across everything, with products described rather than separately branded. Each launch borrows the master brand's trust, and each mistake can damage it.
• Endorsed brands: a product has its own name, backed by the parent's ("X, from Y"). It can reach a different audience while keeping some trust.
• Separate brands: each product stands alone and customers may not know who owns it. Unilever, for example, sells many brands under their own names. It costs more to build each brand, but a problem in one rarely spreads.

The product portfolio is the full set of products or services an organisation offers, and how they work together. Give each item a role:

• Core earners: the steady products that bring in most of the money.
• Growth products: newer lines the organisation is investing in.
• Seasonal products: offers for a time of year, such as Christmas.
• Gateway products: a low-risk first purchase, such as a sample or trial, that leads to bigger ones.

Roles help you decide where marketing money and attention go, and spot a portfolio leaning too hard on one product.

Stretch or strain. A new product can stretch a brand into new customers, as Greggs' vegan sausage roll did in Lesson 4.1. It can also strain it, if the new product contradicts what the brand stands for. Ask two questions of any new product: does it fit the master brand's promise, and could a failure here damage the rest?

You don't need inside information for this task. A website's menus, a price list and an "about us" page usually show the architecture and most of the portfolio. Where you're guessing a product's role, say so.

Every claim your organisation makes is covered by rules, whether it's on a poster, a product page, a social post or an email. In the UK, most non-broadcast marketing follows the CAP Code, written by the Committee of Advertising Practice and enforced by the ASA, the Advertising Standards Authority. TV and radio adverts have a sister code. The ASA can't fine anyone, but it can stop an advert running, and its rulings are published with the organisation's name on them.

Three rules do most of the work:

• Don't mislead. Marketing must not materially mislead, or be likely to (rule 3.1).
• Don't mislead by leaving things out. Omitting material information can mislead just as much (rule 3.3).
• Hold the evidence first. Before you make a claim that can be objectively checked, you must hold documentary evidence for it (rule 3.7). That evidence is called substantiation.

"The UK's freshest coffee" can be checked, so it needs evidence. Obvious exaggeration that nobody would take literally, called puffery, usually doesn't. The ASA judges how a typical customer would read the claim, not what you meant.

Environmental claims get extra scrutiny. Section 11 of the CAP Code says the basis of an environmental claim must be clear, and unqualified claims can mislead if they leave out significant information. The CMA's Green Claims Code (September 2021) says the same for consumer law: claims must be truthful, clear, complete, fair in any comparison, consider the product's whole life, and be backed by evidence. Green claims that are misleading, vague or unproven are called greenwashing.

UK example: HSBC. On 19 October 2022 the ASA ruled on two HSBC bus-stop posters seen in Bristol and London in October 2021, before the COP26 climate summit. One said HSBC was "aiming to provide up to $1 trillion in financing and investment globally" to help clients move to net zero; the other said it was helping to plant 2 million trees in the UK. The problem was what the posters left out: the bank's financing of businesses with notable greenhouse gas emissions. The ASA "concluded that the ads omitted material information and were therefore misleading", and they must not appear again in that form. A claim can be true and still mislead.

Where your work goes. The Marketing Compliance and Ethics Checklist finds the issues. Keep your fix list (issue, fix, owner, by when) in your portfolio document: you'll copy it into the Compliance fixes section of the Strategic Audit Builder in Module 6. The worked example later in this topic shows a full audit; read it before the task in Lesson 5.4.

You met consent in Module 2, when you asked people to take part in research. Now it returns for marketing, where two sets of rules apply.

UK GDPR, with the Data Protection Act 2018, covers personal data: anything that identifies a living person, such as a name, an email address or an order history. Its principles, in plain English: be lawful, fair and open; use data only for the purpose you collected it for; collect no more than you need; keep it accurate; don't keep it longer than you need; keep it secure; and be able to show you've done all this.

You also need a lawful basis for each use. There are six. The two that matter most in marketing are consent (the person has clearly agreed) and legitimate interests (a use people would reasonably expect, which you've weighed against their rights). A privacy notice tells people in plain words what you collect, why, and how to object.

PECR, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, adds rules for marketing by email, text and phone, and for cookies. To send marketing emails or texts to individuals you generally need consent. Valid consent is freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous: the person takes a clear action, such as ticking an empty box. A pre-ticked box isn't consent, and nor is silence.

In January 2026 the ICO, the UK's data regulator, fined ZMLUK Limited £105,000 for more than 67 million marketing emails. People had been shown 361 "partner" companies with no way to choose which could contact them, so their consent wasn't specific or informed.

The soft opt-in is the main exception. You can email or text your own customers about your own similar products if you got their details during a sale or while discussing one with them, and gave them a clear, simple chance to refuse then and in every message. Emailing business addresses follows different rules.

Cookies that aren't strictly necessary need consent, so a banner that sets them before anyone chooses is a problem.

What has changed. The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 19 June 2025, and the ICO says all its data protection provisions are now in force. For marketers: PECR fines can now reach UK GDPR levels (the higher of £17.5 million or 4% of worldwide turnover); some low-risk cookies, such as some used for statistics or to improve how a site works, can be set without consent; and charities can use a version of the soft opt-in for supporters. Check the ICO's current guidance for the conditions.

You noted in Module 1 that fake reviews were banned from 6 April 2025. That ban is part of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (the DMCC Act), now one of the main consumer laws a UK marketer needs to know. Its rules on unfair commercial practices took effect that day.

A commercial practice is unfair if it is likely to change what a typical customer decides, and it:

• misleads by what it says or shows (a misleading action);
• leaves out information the customer needs (a misleading omission);
• is aggressive, such as pressure or harassment; or
• falls below the standard of honest, careful behaviour expected of a trader.

On top of these sits a list of 32 practices that are banned in every case. Fake reviews are among them: writing or commissioning a fake review, or one that hides that the reviewer was paid or given something in return. Publishing genuine reviews in a misleading way, such as showing only the good ones, is also caught. Asking every customer for an honest review is fine; rewarding only five-star ones is not.

Drip pricing means showing a low headline price, then adding compulsory charges later in the buying process. The first price a customer sees must include every fixed charge they can't avoid. If a compulsory charge can't be worked out in advance, say how it will be worked out. Optional extras can come later, as long as they are clearly optional.

Who enforces. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) can now decide for itself that consumer law has been broken, without going to court first, and fine a business up to £300,000 or 10% of its global turnover, whichever is higher. Trading Standards also enforce consumer law.

Subscriptions: what's expected. The DMCC Act also creates new rules for subscription contracts. They are not yet in force. The government's draft guidance on GOV.UK (October 2026) says they are expected to apply to subscriptions taken out from 1 January 2027, if Parliament approves the regulations. They cover clear information before someone signs up, reminders, and an easy way to cancel. Check GOV.UK for the current date before you rely on it.

The test for every review, price and subscription is the same: would a typical customer, seeing what you show them, make the choice they'd make if they knew everything?

The law sets the floor, not the ceiling. Something can be legal and still cost your organisation the trust it depends on. A useful test: would you be comfortable if customers saw exactly how you did it?

Four areas to check:

• Customers in vulnerable circumstances. Anyone can be vulnerable at times, through illness, money worries, grief or stress. Pressure tactics such as a false "only 2 left!" hurt them most, and fake urgency can also break consumer law. Adverts aimed at children have their own rules in the CAP Code.
• Inclusive images and words. Who appears in your marketing, and who never does? Since 14 June 2019 the CAP Code (rule 4.9) has banned gender stereotypes likely to cause harm or serious or widespread offence. Beyond the rule, ask whether all your customers would recognise themselves.
• Dark patterns. Design that steers people into choices they wouldn't otherwise make: a "No thanks, I don't like saving money" button, a hidden unsubscribe link, a cancellation that needs five screens or a phone call. Some are already unlawful; all of them cost trust.
• AI. Never paste personal data (names, emails, order histories) or confidential information into a public AI tool. Check every fact and claim an AI writes: you need the evidence, not the AI. Watch for bias, such as who an AI image shows by default. Be open about AI use where customers would expect to know, and follow your organisation's policy if it has one.

AI activity. Take one piece of your organisation's ad copy, such as a product description or a social post. Ask an AI assistant whether it meets the CAP Code, and which rules apply. Then check its answer against the Code itself on the ASA's website. Note where it was wrong, out of date or vague: a rule number that doesn't say what the AI claimed, or "it depends" with no reason. Keep the AI's answer and your notes in your portfolio; they show your judgement. Use public copy only.

The audit. Read the worked example first: it shows Larkfield's audit in full. Then work through every group of the Marketing Compliance and Ethics Checklist using your organisation's real public marketing: its website, emails you've received from it, its adverts and its reviews. Mark each item Done, Partly or Not yet. For every gap, add a line to your fix list: the issue, the fix, who should own it, and by when. If you can't check an item from outside, write it down as a question to ask someone inside.

You met the customer funnel in Module 3, with a goal for each stage: get noticed, get considered, get chosen, get chosen again. Now you turn those goals into numbers.

Objectives come first. A KPI (key performance indicator) is one of the few measures that show whether an objective is being met. So start with the objective, not the data. A useful objective is SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. "Grow the business" is a wish. "Grow repeat bookings from 30% to 35% of all bookings by 31 March next year" is an objective you can measure.

The KPI tree. Draw it from the top down:

1. The business goal, such as more revenue, more members or lower costs.
2. The marketing objectives that drive it, such as more first-time customers or fewer customers leaving.
3. The KPIs that show each objective moving.

Every KPI should link upwards to an objective. If it doesn't, it may be interesting, but it isn't a KPI for this goal.

One KPI per funnel stage. Pick one measure for each stage you care about. Awareness might be visits from new users. Consideration might be enquiries or product page views. Purchase might be the conversion rate. Loyalty might be the repeat rate or the churn rate.

Leading and lagging. A lagging indicator tells you what has already happened, such as revenue or customers lost. A leading indicator moves first and gives you warning, such as sign-ups started this week. You need both: lagging to judge results, leading to act in time.

Vanity metrics. A vanity metric looks impressive but doesn't show whether an objective is being met: followers, likes, impressions, total page views. Ask: "If this number doubled, what would we do differently?" If the answer is "nothing", leave it off.

UK example: the GOV.UK Service Manual. Its page "Data you must publish" (last updated 6 April 2021) tells government service teams they must publish data on four mandatory KPIs: cost per transaction, user satisfaction, completion rate and digital take-up. Four numbers cover what a service costs, whether users are happy, whether they finish the task and whether they choose the online route. That's the lesson for you: a small, balanced set, each tied to what the service is for.

You've chosen your KPIs. Now find out where each number comes from, and what could make it wrong.

How web analytics works. A small piece of code, called a tag, sits on each page of a website. When something happens, such as a page loading, a click, a sign-up or a purchase, the tag sends a record to the analytics tool. Each record is an event. Events from one visit are grouped into a session, which ends after a period of inactivity. A conversion is an event you've marked as one that matters. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is one widely used example. It is built around events, and it now calls the events you mark as important "key events"; Google Ads still calls them conversions. Menus and names change, so learn the ideas, not the buttons.

Web analytics isn't the only source. Sales usually come from the shop or booking system, subscribers from the subscription system, opens from the email platform, and reach from each social platform's insights. For money, the order system is usually more reliable than analytics.

Campaign tags. UTM parameters are labels added to the end of a link you share: utm_source (who sent it, such as newsletter), utm_medium (the kind of channel, such as email) and utm_campaign (which campaign). Google's help page says the values are case sensitive, so "Email" and "email" show as two lines. Agree one naming list. Untagged links often show up as direct visits, and the campaign loses the credit.

Consent. You met cookie consent in Module 5; now see what it does to your numbers. The ICO's guidance on storage and access technologies, updated after the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, describes an exception for analytics used only to collect statistics to improve your own service: visitors must get clear information and an easy way to object. If the same data is used for advertising, consent is needed. Either way, visits from people who decline or object are usually missing or only estimated, so analytics usually undercounts. This isn't legal advice: check the ICO's current guidance.

Data quality problems to look for: pages with missing tags; bots and your own staff's visits; consent gaps; test or duplicate orders; and a definition that changed partway through the year.

AI activity. Give an AI assistant a simple chart or table with no personal data, such as twelve months of website visits, and ask it why a number changed. Then check each reason it gives against what else you know: campaigns you ran, the calendar, website changes, tracking changes. Mark each reason confirmed, possible or guessed. The AI can't see your calendar, so it often fills the gap with a confident guess.

A baseline is the value of a measure before you change anything. It's the starting point for every target and the yardstick for every result. Read the worked example later in this topic before you start: it sets Larkfield's baselines and shows the "from the outside" method.

Start with last year. The best baseline is your organisation's own figures for the last full year, or the same period you'll later judge results on. Three rules keep it honest:

• Same period: compare like with like, a year with a year or a quarter with the same quarter.
• Same definition: if "active subscribers" means the average over the year, keep it that way; don't switch to the year-end figure.
• Check it adds up: orders times average order value should equal revenue, and revenue should match the accounts.

Seasonality. Many organisations have busy and quiet months. A garden centre peaks in spring; Larkfield's gift buying is concentrated before Christmas. So compare a campaign month with the same month last year, not the month before. Otherwise the season gets the credit, or the blame, for your marketing.

When there's no data. Many learners can't see internal figures, and that's fine. Estimate from public information instead: a free traffic-estimate tool, the number of public reviews, follower counts on each platform, or accounts filed at Companies House (larger companies show turnover; many small ones file shorter accounts without it). Write "estimate" beside the figure, with the source, the date and why you trust it. An honest estimate is useful. An unlabelled guess is dangerous, because the next person will treat it as fact.

How reliable is it? Use the same scale as your topic 1 source log:

• High: your organisation's own records, checked against another source.
• Medium: your own analytics with known gaps, or a well-documented public source.
• Low: outside tool estimates and figures worked out from clues.

A flat baseline matters too. If a number has been steady, that tells you what would probably happen if you did nothing different. You'll need that when you judge whether a campaign really worked, later in the course.

A dashboard is not a report of everything you can count. It's a single page that helps someone decide what to do next. Most dashboards fail because they show too much and nobody knows what any number is for.

Keep it short. Four to eight KPIs on one page, taken from your KPI tree. If someone asks for a number to be added, ask which decision it will inform.

Give each KPI five things:

1. An owner: the person or role who explains why it moved and acts on it. If you work alone, the owner can be "me" or a role such as "marketing lead".
2. A baseline: where it started, from Lesson 6.3.
3. A target: where the objective says it should be, and by when.
4. A rhythm: how often it's checked. Leading indicators might be weekly; lagging ones monthly or quarterly.
5. A decision: write it as "If this falls below X, we will...". If you can't finish the sentence, question whether the KPI belongs on the page.

Show change, not just numbers. "2,400 members" means little on its own. "2,400, up 150 on the baseline of 2,250, target 2,500" tells you where you are. Where there's a season, show the same period last year beside it.

Colours need rules. Red, amber and green are quick to read, but only if you've decided in advance what each colour means. Otherwise people argue about colours instead of acting.

Sketch it first. A pencil sketch or a simple table is enough for this task. Later you might build it in a spreadsheet or a free dashboard tool such as Looker Studio, but the thinking is the same. Test the sketch with one question: could someone pick it up on a Monday morning and know what to do?

You've now built every piece of your Foundation stage work. A strategic audit puts it together: a structured review of where your organisation stands now, ending with the main issues to act on. It's Milestone 1, and the Practitioner stage starts from it. Read the worked example later in this topic first: it shows Maya Collins's audit for Larkfield.

The sections, each drawn from earlier work:

Summarise, don't paste. Each section needs two or three sentences and the evidence behind them. Keep it in the present tense: this is where the organisation is, not what you plan. Then name your weakest evidence. Every audit has some, and saying so is a strength.

Choosing three issues. An issue is a problem or an opportunity that matters to the business goal. Test each candidate:

• Does it link to a KPI, so you'll know if it improves?
• Is there evidence for it, or only a hunch?
• Can marketing act on it?

Leadership: make the call. This is your first leadership moment in the course. You'll rarely have perfect evidence, and a list of fifteen problems isn't a decision. Choose three. For each, say why it matters, what the evidence is and what would change your mind. If someone more senior disagrees, your evidence is what you bring to the conversation.

Your three issues become the starting point for your campaign plan's objectives at Milestone 2, and your baselines are what you'll judge results against at the end of the course.

You met paid, owned and earned media in Module 1, as parts of a marketplace map. Now they become the parts of a plan.

• Paid media is space you buy: search ads, social ads, posters, sponsorship.
• Owned media is channels you control: your website, email list, social accounts, packaging and premises.
• Earned media is coverage and sharing you don't pay for: press, reviews, word of mouth, customers' own posts.

Integrated marketing communications means planning all of these so they work together towards one objective, with one idea. Three tests tell you whether a plan is integrated.

1. One idea. Could someone who saw your advert, your email and your shop window say in one sentence what they have in common? The idea comes from the proposition you wrote in Module 4, told in a way people remember.
2. A consistent look and voice. The same colours, logo, tone and key phrase, so each contact adds to the memory the last one left. Consistent doesn't mean identical: a search ad and a video do different jobs.
3. Hand-offs. Each channel should pass people on to a next step. An advert sends people to a page that answers the question it raised; a free sample carries a code that leads to sign-up. A broken hand-off wastes the money spent before it.

Without a plan, most organisations drift the other way: the social posts say one thing, the website another and the price promotion a third.

UK example: Cadbury. On 10 October 2022 the IPA (the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) announced that VCCP's work for Cadbury, "There's a glass & a half in everyone", had won its Effectiveness Awards Grand Prix. The IPA reported that the campaign drove a 22% increase in annual value sales, and that Cadbury's annual revenue was £261m higher in 2021 than in 2017. Kantar's account of the work (February 2023) describes two strands under one idea, generosity: "storytelling", advertising that shows people being generous, and "storydoing", initiatives such as the Secret Santa Postal Service, first run in 2018, which let people send a free bar of chocolate to someone. The adverts and the thing people could take part in told the same story. Those results are the IPA's and Cadbury's; the full award paper sets out the evidence.

You won't have Cadbury's budget, but the test is the same at any size: one idea, told in each place in the way that place needs.

Not all communications do the same job.

Brand building creates memory and preference among the many people who will buy from your category later, though they aren't looking today. Its effects build slowly and last. Think of a distinctive video, a sponsorship or a well-known local presence.

Sales activation prompts people who are ready to buy to act now: a search ad, an offer, a reminder email. Its effects come quickly and fade quickly.

You need both. Activation harvests demand, and much of that demand was created by brand building, often years earlier. Cut the brand building and activation can keep sales up for a while, then it has less to harvest. Brand building alone may be too slow for an organisation that has to hit this quarter's numbers.

The evidence. Les Binet and Peter Field studied campaigns in the IPA's databank of Effectiveness Awards entries. In The Long and the Short of It (IPA, 2013) they found that, on average, the most effective campaigns put about 60% of spend into brand building and 40% into activation. Read it carefully:

• It's an average across many categories and brands, not a rule for yours. The IPA describes their later report, Effectiveness in Context (2018), as showing how the best mix can differ with brand type and context.
• The data come from award entries, which lean towards campaigns that worked.
• Your organisation, its budget and its category may look very different from the brands in that databank.

So treat 60:40 as a starting question, not an answer.

What this means for a small organisation. Brand building doesn't have to mean television. Consistent packaging, useful content, sampling, a community and local press can all build memory. When you choose your balance, ask three questions:

• The category: do people buy it often or rarely, and do they search when they need it, as they do for an emergency plumber?
• The objective: is it a short-term target, or growth over years?
• How customers buy: from your path to purchase, how much of the decision is made before anyone searches?

A short, sharp target pushes the balance towards activation. Just be honest that you're borrowing from memory that someone else, or an earlier campaign, built. Write the balance down with your reasons, so you can test it later.

Media planning decides which channels to use, how much of each and when. Start from your customer, not from the channels your organisation happens to use already.

Match channels to stages. You mapped a path to purchase for your persona in Module 3. Now give each stage a channel with a clear job.

A stage with no channel is a gap. Two channels doing the same job at the same stage may be a waste.

Reach and frequency. Reach is how many of your target audience see a message at least once. Frequency is how many times, on average, those people see it. Too little frequency and you're forgotten; too much and you pay to annoy the same people. Brand building usually needs reach. Activation needs to be in front of the right people at the right moment.

Phasing. Timing matters as much as choice. You can run always on, in bursts, or building to a peak. You met seasonality in Module 6: if your customers buy before Christmas or in spring, plan the money to arrive before the peak, not during it.

One communications objective. You set KPIs with baselines in topic 6; now each campaign needs one communications objective, written as a KPI moving from its baseline to a target by a date. Every channel's job should help that one number move.

AI activity. Give an AI assistant your campaign budget, your objective and the stages of your path to purchase, with no personal or confidential data. Ask it for three different ways to split the budget across channels. Then challenge each split against your path and your baselines. Which stage does each channel serve? Is any stage empty? Note every assumption it made that you can't support, such as a cost per click or a conversion rate it didn't get from you. Keep the three splits and your notes in your portfolio: they show your judgement.

You now know what the plan needs to do. The budget has two questions: how much in total, and how to split it.

Setting the total. Four common methods, each with a weakness:

• Percentage of revenue: simple, but backwards. When sales fall, the budget falls, just when you might need it most.
• Matching competitors: you rarely know what they spend, and their objectives aren't yours.
• What you can afford: whatever is left over, with no link to what you're trying to achieve.
• Objective and task: list the tasks needed to meet the objective, cost each one, and add them up. It's the most defensible, and the hardest, because you have to estimate what each task will achieve.

In practice many managers start from objective and task, then check the total against what the organisation can afford. Say which method you used; a finance team will ask.

Splitting it. Working spend buys media that reaches people: ads, search clicks, promoted posts. Non-working spend pays for everything else: making the content, agency fees, tools, managing the work. Some costs, such as sampling at events, could go either way; decide, and say how you counted them. Too little non-working spend and you buy plenty of space for weak work. Too much and good work is seen by too few people.

Contingency is a part of the budget held back for problems or opportunities you can't predict: a channel that works better than expected, or creative that needs fixing. Decide in advance who can release it, and for what.

The target cost per new customer. Divide the budget by the extra customers you need. "Extra" matters: you set baselines in Module 6, and some customers would arrive anyway. Counting them makes the campaign look cheaper than it is. The answer is a limit to watch: if a channel brings customers in at more than this, question it. Whether the limit is affordable depends on what a customer is worth, which comes later in the course.

Your task. Read the worked example first. Then set a budget for one objective from your strategic audit and split it in the Communications Budget Calculator. If your organisation has no budget you can see, use a stated assumption, such as a share of its published revenue, and label it as an assumption.

You met Jordan's path to purchase in Module 3: trigger, search, compare, buy, and buy again. At every stage Jordan is looking for something. Now you plan the content that gives it to them.

User needs before organisation wants. Organisations tend to publish what they want to say: news about themselves, awards, a long "about us" page. Users arrive with a question or a task. A content strategy is the plan for what content to create, for whom, why, where it lives and how it's kept up to date, and it starts from user needs. Content design is the writing end of the same idea: start from the need and choose the clearest form to meet it. That might be a table, a short answer or a video rather than an article.

UK example: GOV.UK. The government's design principles (first published 3 April 2012, last updated 2 April 2025) begin with "Start with user needs", and add: "If you don't know what the user needs are, you won't build the right thing." GOV.UK's content guidance says content design starts by taking a user need and meeting it in the best way possible. A government website isn't selling anything, but the discipline transfers: every page should exist because someone needs it.

Writing a user need. Use a simple form: "As a [who], I need to [do or know what], so that [why]." For example: "As a first-time buyer, I need to know when my order will arrive, so that I can be in." Find needs in your research from Module 2, customer emails, reviews, the questions staff get asked, and what people type into your own site's search box.

Pillars, formats and homes. Group the needs into three to five content pillars: the themes your organisation will be useful on. Then decide each piece's format (page, guide, video, email or post) and where it lives. Content that answers a lasting question belongs on your own website, where people can find it again. Social posts point to it; they don't replace it.

Ownership. Content goes out of date: prices change, offers end, people leave. Give every important page an owner and a review date. Out-of-date content costs trust, and it can break the rules you met in Module 5, for example an old price or a claim you can no longer support.

Choosing less. Ask one question of every planned piece: which user need does it meet? If the answer is none, don't make it.

Content can meet a real need and still fail if people can't work the page. Usability is how easily people can do what they came to do. In Module 4 you checked Process as one of the 7Ps; usability is that process seen through a screen. You don't need a lab to judge it. You need a few principles and an honest five minutes.

Five basics.

• Clear labels: buttons and links say what happens next ("Choose your delivery date", not "Submit").
• One obvious next step: the main action stands out, and everything else is quieter.
• Short forms: ask only for what you need now. Every extra field is another reason to stop.
• Helpful error messages: say what went wrong and how to fix it, next to the field ("Enter a postcode, like DE1 1AA"), and keep what the person already typed.
• Mobile first: people often arrive on a phone, straight from a social post or an email. Design for a small screen and a thumb, then check the computer view.

Nielsen's heuristics. In 1994 Jakob Nielsen published ten usability heuristics: general rules of thumb, first developed with Rolf Molich in 1990. The Nielsen Norman Group still publishes them. Four are especially useful for marketers:

• Visibility of system status: people can see where they are, such as "Step 2 of 3".
• Match between the system and the real world: use the customer's words, not internal jargon.
• User control and freedom: an easy way back, or out, without losing work.
• Error prevention: stop mistakes before they happen, such as a date picker that won't accept a date in the past.

The five-minute check. Pick one key page, such as a product page, a booking page or a sign-up form. Pretend you're a new customer with one task. On your phone:

1. In five seconds, can you tell what the page is for and what to do next?
2. Can you finish the task without zooming, guessing or going back?
3. Make a mistake on purpose. Does the error message help you fix it?
4. Count the form fields. Which could go?
5. Repeat on a computer, and note what changes.

Write each problem down in one line, with where it happened. Don't fix anything yet: you're collecting evidence. The journey map in the next lesson shows which problems cost the most.

Read the worked example later in this topic first: it maps Larkfield's subscription sign-up from start to finish.

Which journey? The path to purchase you mapped in Module 3 crossed many places, and one of them is usually your organisation's website or app. Choose the journey where the path turns into action: a sign-up, booking, checkout, donation or enquiry form. If your communications plan from Module 7 sends people somewhere, start there. Paid visitors lost at this point are money lost.

The journey map. A user journey map is a step-by-step picture of one task, for one type of user, such as your target segment. For each step, write:

• what the user does ("taps Subscribe");
• what they think ("Do I have to create an account?");
• how they feel (confident, unsure, annoyed);
• where they get stuck, and your evidence.

Finding drop-off in the numbers. Drop-off is the point where people leave without finishing. Analytics tools can show it as a funnel report: how many people reach each step and how many fall out in between. In GA4 this is called a funnel exploration. The headline figure is the completion rate: people who finish divided by people who start. You met baselines in Module 6; now the completion rate becomes this journey's baseline, and any redesign is judged against it. Remember the consent gaps from that topic: analytics undercounts, so read the shape of the funnel as well as the totals. If you can't see your organisation's analytics, count the steps and fields as a visitor and label any drop-off you estimate as an assumption.

Finding the why by watching. Numbers show where people leave; they rarely show why. Watch one real person try the task, ideally someone like your target customer. Give them the task, not instructions ("Sign up for a coffee subscription"), ask them to think aloud, and stay quiet. Note every pause, frown and step back. Ask their permission first, as you did for research in Module 2. One person can't tell you how common a problem is, but they'll show you problems you'd never have guessed.

Reassurance before payment. Many sticking points are worries: hidden costs, being locked in, not knowing how to cancel. Answer them on the page, before payment, where the worry happens.

From map to fixes. Write one fix for each sticking point. Try first the fix at the step with the biggest drop-off and the strongest evidence. Keep your map and fixes in your portfolio document: they go into your campaign plan in Module 10, in the Creative Brief and Campaign Plan Builder.

Accessibility means designing so that disabled people, and everyone else, can use a service. It covers people with sight, hearing, movement and cognitive impairments, and it helps anyone using a phone in bright sun or with one hand free.

The standard. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) come from the W3C, the web's standards body. WCAG 2.2 became a W3C Recommendation on 5 October 2023. It has three levels, A, AA and AAA; AA is the usual target.

UK example: the law in outline. GOV.UK's guidance (last updated 30 September 2024) says most public sector websites and apps must meet WCAG 2.2 AA (some bodies are exempt) under the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018, and publish an accessibility statement. Private organisations aren't covered by them, but under the Equality Act 2010, service providers must make reasonable adjustments for disabled people, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission describes the duty as anticipatory: think about all potential disabled customers, not only the ones you know about. This isn't legal advice.

Six checks anyone can do.

• Contrast: normal text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background. Pale grey on white often fails.
• Alt text: each meaningful image has a short text alternative saying what it shows and why it's there. Decorative images get empty alt text, so screen readers skip them.
• Headings: real headings, in order, so screen reader users can jump through the page.
• Links that make sense on their own: "See delivery prices", not "click here".
• Forms: every field has a visible label, errors are explained in words rather than colour alone, and nobody has to type the same thing twice (Redundant Entry, new in WCAG 2.2).
• Tap targets: at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels, with some exceptions (Target Size (Minimum), also new in 2.2).

Plain English. Short sentences, everyday words, the most important thing first. GOV.UK's content guidance asks for content that is clear and written in plain English. It helps people reading in a second language or in a hurry.

Inclusive words and images. Use the words people use about themselves, and show the range of your customers in photos, as you checked in the regulation topic.

AI activity. Paste one public page from your organisation's website into an AI assistant (no personal data). Ask it to rewrite the page in plain English, then describe two images and ask for alt text for each. Check every change: is each fact still true, has it added a claim or figure, does it still sound like your organisation, and is the alt text accurate and short? Fix what it got wrong, and note what you changed and why.

You met Jordan's path to purchase in Module 3: after the trigger comes search. Search is the one channel where people tell you what they want, in their own words, at the moment they want it. Your job is to be the useful answer.

Search intent is what the person searching is trying to do. Four jobs are common:

• Learn: "how to brew with an AeroPress".
• Find a particular site: a shop's name plus "opening times".
• Compare: "best running shoes for beginners".
• Buy: "coffee subscription".

Read intent from the words, then check the results page. If the first results are guides, searchers want to learn; if they're shops, they want to buy.

Keyword themes. A keyword theme is a group of searches with the same intent that one page can answer. You can find them for free:

• the suggestions a search engine shows as you type, and the related searches at the foot of the results
• your website's own search box, if it records what people type
• Google Search Console, which shows the searches your site already appears for and how often people click
• the words customers used in your research from Module 2, in reviews and in emails

Keyword tools add search volumes, but their figures are estimates and differ between tools.

SEO basics. Search engine optimisation earns a place in the unpaid results. Google's guidance, "Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content", asks whether content is made mainly to help people or mainly to attract visits from search engines. Four basics follow:

• useful content that answers the search well, written from real experience
• titles and headings in the searcher's own words
• links: your pages linking to each other, and other sites linking to you because the content is worth it
• technical health: pages search engines can reach, that load quickly and work on a phone

SEO is slow to build, and it lasts.

Paid search shows your ads against the searches you choose, and you usually pay when someone clicks. It's fast, you control the message, and it stops when the money stops. Use it where people are ready to buy, or to test which themes bring customers before you invest in content.

AI answers. Google now shows AI-written summaries, called AI Overviews, above some results, and other tools answer questions directly. These features change often. Google says there are no extra requirements to appear in them: the same basics apply. Some learn searches may now be answered without a click, so make your pages the clear, trustworthy source those answers draw on, and judge learn content by more than clicks.

Email is owned media: no platform decides who sees it. But you can only use it with permission, and people leave as soon as it stops being useful.

Permission first. You met the rules in Module 5. To send marketing emails to individuals you generally need consent: a clear action, such as ticking an empty box. The soft opt-in is the exception for your own customers. You got their details during a sale or while discussing a sale, you're emailing about your own similar products, and you gave a simple way to refuse then and in every email. A message about an order someone has placed, such as a dispatch notice, is a service message rather than marketing, as long as it doesn't slip in promotion. The ICO says its email guidance is under review after the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, so check its current pages. If your organisation has no list, start one lawfully: an unticked box, a line saying what you'll send and how often, and a link to the privacy notice.

Segments. Email segmentation divides a list so that each group gets messages that suit it. Segment on what people do, not just who they are: new customers, regular buyers, people who haven't bought for a while, people interested in one product line. One email to everyone suits no one.

Sequences. Automated sequences are sent by a trigger, such as signing up, not by a date. The most useful is a welcome series: a few emails that set expectations, help new subscribers or customers get value and point to the next step. Others follow a first order, come before a renewal or check in when someone goes quiet. Give each email one job and one action.

Subject lines. Say what's inside; clear beats clever. The advertising rules from Module 5 apply to emails too, so a subject line promising an offer the email doesn't contain is misleading.

Deliverability is whether your email reaches the inbox. Complaints and ignored emails hurt; a list that wants your emails helps. Since 1 February 2024 Google has required everyone sending to Gmail addresses to authenticate their email and keep the reported spam rate below 0.3% (it advises staying below 0.1%). Anyone sending 5,000 or more messages a day must also set up DMARC and offer one-click unsubscribe. Your email platform handles much of this.

KPIs beyond opens. In June 2021 Apple announced Mail Privacy Protection, which, for Apple Mail users who turn it on, stops senders knowing when they open an email. Open rates have been unreliable since. Judge email by what people do next: clicks, orders or sign-ups from the email, unsubscribes and complaints.

An audience listens to you. A community talks to each other. Followers who like your posts are an audience. Customers who answer each other's questions, swap tips and turn up to events are a community. That difference is the point: members get value from each other, so they come back without being chased.

Purpose. Start with what members get, not what the organisation wants. "A place to talk about our products" is weak. "Help each other get better at home brewing" gives people a reason to post. If you can't write the purpose in one sentence a member would agree with, the community will be quiet.

Where it lives. A group on a social platform, a forum on your own site or a chat server. A group on a platform people already use is easy to join, but the platform sets the rules and can change them. A forum you own is yours, but people have to remember to visit. Choose where your members already spend time, and know what you'd lose if the platform changed.

House rules say what the community is for and what isn't allowed: be kind, stay on topic, no selling, no sharing other people's details. Keep them short and pinned.

Moderation is setting and enforcing the rules. Decide who moderates, how members report a problem, and what happens next: usually a warning, then a suspension, then removal. An unmoderated group drifts into spam or worse, with your organisation's name on it.

The organisation's role. Host, not star. Staff welcome newcomers, answer what only the organisation can answer, and say what changed because of members' ideas. Complaints will appear in public: answer them openly and move personal details to a private channel. Members' posts are personal data, so the rules from Module 5 apply here too.

UK example: Monzo. The bank Monzo runs a community forum. In a blog post on 5 November 2018, Monzo said the forum began as "a home for our first few hundred customers to give us feedback", that its Pots feature for setting money aside "started life as an idea" there, and that each feature it launched in Monzo Labs had its own forum thread for feedback. Its guidelines (checked November 2026) describe a place where users "should feel welcome and included to share their opinions". They set zero tolerance for abuse, harassment and discrimination, and describe a moderation team of Community Leaders and staff, with staff having the ultimate say and penalties that step up from a warning. Members can flag posts, and a post flagged by several members is hidden until it's reviewed. These are Monzo's own descriptions; the same parts work for a running club.

You met hand-offs in Module 7: each channel should pass people on to a next step. Search, email and community make those steps concrete.

A learn page found through search can offer an email sign-up that fits it, such as a guide sent by email. The welcome series can invite people into the community. Community members recommend you, their friends search for you by name, and the loop starts again.

One KPI per channel. You built KPIs with baselines in Module 6. Give each channel one KPI that shows it doing its job, not a vanity metric:

• search: sales or sign-ups from organic search, not rankings
• email: an action after the email, such as a second order, not opens
• community: active members, such as members who post, not total members

Say where each number comes from. Tag the links in emails and community posts with UTM parameters, as in Module 6, so visits get the right credit instead of showing as direct. If you have no baseline yet, record the first month before you set a target.

The channel you'd drop. Small teams can't run everything well. Ask which channel your organisation could stop with least harm. A quiet community damages trust, and a neglected list goes stale. Doing two channels well beats doing three badly.

One test. Pick one thing to test first: two subject lines, a new page for one keyword theme, or a welcome email that invites people to the community. Decide the measure before you start.

AI activity. Read the worked example first. Then give an AI assistant 15 to 20 searches related to your organisation, with no personal or confidential data, and ask it to group them by intent. Ask it for five subject lines for the first email in your sequence. Check each group against real search results: search a few of the terms and see whether the results are guides, shops or comparisons. Check each subject line against your organisation's voice and the rules on misleading claims from Module 5: does it promise anything the email doesn't deliver? Note what you kept, changed and rejected, and why.

A creative brief is a short document that tells a creative team the problem, the audience, the single most important message and what success looks like. Read the worked example later in this topic before you start: it shows Maya Collins's brief for Larkfield.

A brief is a question, not a set of instructions. The clearer the question, the better the answers. If you tell a designer exactly what to make, you get what you imagined, at best. If you tell them the problem, they may solve it in a way you hadn't thought of.

The parts of a brief.

1. The problem: what's wrong or missing, in one or two sentences. Use your strategic audit from Module 6.
2. The objective: the number that should move, with its baseline, target and date. This comes from your communications plan in Module 7.
3. The audience: one target, described as a person. Use your segment and persona from Module 3, and say where they are on their path to purchase.
4. The single-minded proposition: the one thing the communication must leave the audience believing or feeling. It grows from your proposition in Module 4, but it is a single message told in a way people remember, not a list of benefits.
5. Mandatories: what must or mustn't appear. Legal wording, a logo, a claim you can't make. Your fix list from Module 5 belongs here.
6. Budget: what the fee or production line is, and what it has to cover.
7. Timing: dates for concepts, final work and launch.
8. Success: how you'll know the work did its job, and who will judge it.

Keep it to one page. The longer a brief, the less of it gets read.

Test the single-minded proposition. Could someone repeat it after one viewing? Does it contain only one idea? Is it true, and can you prove it? If you need "and" twice, you have more than one message.

UK example: the IPA's briefing guidance. The IPA (the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) publishes Briefing an Agency best practice guide, listed on its website with a date of 21 February 2013. It covers the principles of a good brief, why a written brief matters but is not enough on its own, the role of the briefing meeting, and written briefing forms. A newer IPA guide, The best way for a client to brief an agency, was written by BetterBriefs and Mark Ritson in partnership with the IPA, and launched at the IPA Business Growth Conference on 6 July 2022. The lesson from both is the same: a brief is a conversation as well as a document. Check the IPA's website for current versions.

The work comes back. Now you have to say what you think, and that is harder than it sounds, because everyone has taste and taste is not a measure.

Judge against the brief. Put the brief next to the work and ask four questions:

• Does it answer the problem?
• Will the target audience understand it, not just you?
• Does it say the single-minded proposition, clearly and once?
• Does it meet the mandatories, including anything legal?

"I don't like it" isn't feedback. "It's too cold for an audience who are meant to feel looked after" is, because it points to a reason in the brief that the creative team can act on.

Feedback that works. Make it specific, kind and actionable. Say what works first, because the team needs to know what to keep. Then name the gap against the brief. Then, if you can, say what would close it, without drawing the solution yourself. "The headline reads as two ideas; the brief asks for one" lets the team find the fix. "Change the headline to this" takes the problem back from them.

One voice. If five people give feedback separately, the team gets five contradictory messages. Agree who collects comments, settles disagreements and sends one set. That is usually the person who manages the work day to day. The person who signs off decides, but they hear from the team through one channel.

When to say no. Sometimes the work doesn't answer the brief, and the right response is to say so clearly. Do it early, against the brief, not at the last round. If you're changing your mind about what you want, that is a new brief, and it may cost money. Say so honestly.

Rounds of amends cost something. Contracts usually limit them (more in Lesson 10.3). Collect all your feedback into one round, not a drip of small changes, so you don't use up rounds on things you could have said together.

You can't make everything yourself. Who you choose, and how you run the relationship, decides whether your brief becomes good work.

Choosing. Look at four things:

• Fit: have they solved a problem like yours, for a customer like yours?
• Chemistry: can you disagree honestly with these people? You'll need to.
• Capacity: who will actually do the work?
• Cost: what does the fee include, and what doesn't it?

To pitch or not. A formal pitch has agencies compete with sample ideas, which costs them and you a lot of time. For a small project, a chat and a look at past work is often enough. If you ask for ideas, say whether they are paid for.

Scope of work. The scope of work is what an agency or freelancer is contracted to deliver, by when and for what fee. A statement of work is the document that records it. Write down:

• Deliverables: each item, with its format. "Social assets" is vague; "12 social assets" is a scope.
• Fee: fixed or by the hour, and what it covers.
• Amends: how many rounds are included, and what happens after.
• Timeline: dates for each stage, including your own feedback.
• Owner: one named person each side.

Amends are changes requested after creative work is presented. Contracts usually include a set number of rounds. After that, changes cost extra. Clear feedback against the brief makes the included rounds enough.

Intellectual property and usage. Under UK copyright law the creator is generally the first owner, unless they made it as an employee in the course of their job. Paying doesn't make you the owner unless they assign it to you in writing. Agree in writing who owns the finished work, and where and for how long you may use it, including any music or stock images in it. This is general information, not legal advice; for a big contract, ask a solicitor.

Running the relationship.

• One owner on your side, the single voice from Lesson 10.2.
• Short, regular check-ins, not one long meeting at the end.
• Honest reviews in both directions.
• Pay on time, and say when you're delayed.

Leadership: setting direction for people you don't manage. You can't tell an agency what to do as you would a colleague. You can give a clear brief, a fair scope, quick decisions and honest feedback.

Retrieval. In Module 7 you split a budget into working spend (buying media) and non-working spend (making and managing the work). An agency fee is non-working spend. That isn't wasteful: strong work makes the working money go further. The test is whether the fee buys what the objective needs.

AI tools now draft copy, vary images and suggest ideas in seconds. You met the wider rules in Module 5; this lesson applies them to creative work.

Where AI helps.

• Ideas: a wide spread of starting points to react to.
• Variations: the same message in different lengths, tones or formats.
• Drafts: a first version to improve, not a finished piece.
• Critique: a second reader for your brief.

The limits.

• Accuracy: AI can state false things confidently, so every claim needs a human check against your evidence.
• Sameness: tools trained on existing work tend to produce what's common. Your audience may have seen it.
• Rights: who owns AI output, and whether the training behind it respected others' work, is unsettled (see below).
• Likeness: don't generate images or voices of real people without their agreement. An AI depiction of a real person can suggest an endorsement they never gave.
• Confidentiality: don't paste personal data or confidential material into a public tool.

Copyright and AI in the UK. Section 9(3) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 says the author of a computer-generated work is the person who made the arrangements for its creation. How that applies to AI output is unclear. The government consulted on copyright and AI from December 2024 to February 2025. In its Report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence (18 March 2026) it proposed removing this protection for computer-generated works, while saying copyright should continue to protect works created with AI assistance. That is a proposal, not yet law, so check GOV.UK for where it stands before you rely on it. Don't assume you own a purely AI-generated image, and ask your agency whether and how they use AI.

Advertising rules still apply. The ASA and CAP, which regulate UK advertising, say the Codes have no AI-specific rules but apply however an ad is made. In a CAP News article of 29 May 2025, they note there is no general legal duty in the UK to disclose that AI was used. They suggest two questions: would the audience be misled without a disclosure, and if so, does the disclosure clarify the message or contradict it? A label won't fix a misleading claim. You are responsible for your ad whoever, or whatever, made it.

AI activity. Give an AI assistant your creative brief, with no personal or confidential data, and ask it to critique the brief and suggest three creative routes. Then judge the routes against your brief, using the four questions from Lesson 10.2. Note which suggestions you rejected and why. Keep the critique, the three routes and your notes in your portfolio: they show your judgement.

Milestone 2 closes the Practitioner stage. A campaign plan is one document setting out a campaign's objective, audience, message, channels, budget, timeline and how it will be measured. It pulls together your work from Module 7, Module 8, Module 9 and this one. Read the worked example later in this topic first: it shows Maya's plan for Larkfield.

The sections, each drawn from earlier work:

Make the sections agree. A plan fails most often at the joins. The objective in section one should be the objective in the brief. The money for production should match the fee in your scope. Every channel should have a KPI, and every KPI should lead back to the objective. Check each join before you call the plan finished.

Name the risks. What could go wrong, and what would you do? Late creative, a channel that underperforms, a claim that can't be supported. One line each is enough.

Leadership: bring people with you. The plan is only useful if the people who have to act on it understand it. Your manager, finance, the agency and your colleagues each need to see their part. Write the one-sentence version of the plan first and check that each of them could repeat it.

Looking ahead. The measures in this plan are what you'll judge the campaign by later in the course, so choose them with that in mind. Your baselines are the yardstick.

A route to market is the path a product takes to reach the buyer. It makes place, one of the 7Ps from Module 4, concrete: who sells your product, and who controls the sale.

The main routes.

Read the table as trade-offs, not a ranking. Control and data usually fall as reach rises, and fees and rules change, so check them at the source.

With direct to consumer you also carry the work of bringing people to your shop, which is the marketing you planned in Module 7. A marketplace gives you shoppers who are already looking, but takes a fee and puts you beside rivals. A retailer keeps a share of the shelf price, called the retailer margin: you trade some of the price for reach you couldn't afford alone.

UK example: Graze. Graze began as an online snack-box subscription business. In spring 2015 it ran a trial in Boots stores, and in July 2015, the trade press reported, its first shop range launched in Sainsbury's, Boots and WHSmith Travel. Unilever bought Graze in February 2019 and sold it to Katjes International in a deal announced in December 2025 and completed in February 2026. A business that started direct chose to add a route with different reach, control and economics.

Your organisation's routes. Most organisations use two or three routes and ignore the rest. Larkfield Coffee Roasters (fictional, with illustrative figures) sells through its own online shop, wholesale to cafés, and farm shops and delis. It doesn't use an online marketplace yet.

Whatever mix of routes you choose, your own online shop is the one you control. Run it well, because everything else is measured against it. This lesson is a quick audit of the basics.

Product pages. The page has to answer the questions a buyer would ask in a shop. Clear photos that show the real product, a plain description in the customer's words, the price including anything extra, and what's included. Put the main action, such as "Add to basket", where a thumb can reach it. Use the usability checks from Module 8: clear labels, one obvious next step and a layout that works on a phone first.

Checkout. Checkout is a journey like the sign-up you mapped in the UX topic, and it loses people in the same ways. Offer guest checkout, ask only for what you need, show the full cost before payment, and explain errors where they happen. The consent rules from Module 5 still apply here: no pre-ticked marketing boxes.

Delivery promises. Say when the order will arrive, what delivery costs and who carries it, before the customer pays. Then keep the promise. A delivery promise is part of your proposition; for Larkfield it is "at your door within three days of roasting". Late or vague delivery is one of the quickest ways to lose a repeat buyer.

Returns and refunds. Make the returns policy easy to find and written in plain English. In the UK, buyers who purchase online generally have a right to cancel within 14 days, with exceptions such as goods that deteriorate rapidly. The rules sit in the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, and the exceptions differ by product, so check what applies to yours. This isn't legal advice.

Customer service. Say how to reach a person and how fast you reply. Questions people ask often belong on the product page.

Genuine reviews. Reviews help buyers decide, and they are one of the reasons marketplaces work. You met the fake reviews rules in the regulation topic. Since 6 April 2025, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 bans fake reviews, including paying for reviews without saying so. The CMA published guidance on the ban in April 2025. The safe approach is simple: ask real customers for honest reviews, publish the bad ones as well as the good, and never write or buy reviews.

The one-journey check. Pick one product and buy it on your organisation's site, on a phone, as a new customer. Score it on what you find: the page, the checkout, the delivery promise, the returns policy, how to get help and the reviews.

Read the worked example later in this topic first: it works one figure through all three routes.

Revenue isn't profit. A sale through a marketplace or a retailer can look like growth while earning far less than the same sale through your own shop. The price the customer sees isn't what you keep. To compare routes you need the contribution per unit: the price the customer pays, minus the costs that come with each sale. Those costs are the product itself, the fee or margin the route takes, delivery and fulfilment, and payment fees.

Four questions for one sale.

1. What does the customer pay?
2. What does the product cost to make and pack?
3. What does the route take: a marketplace fee, a retailer margin, delivery or payment costs?
4. What's left?

What's left is the contribution. It goes towards costs you pay regardless of volume, such as salaries and rent, and then profit. Contribution margin is that contribution as a share of the price the customer pays. Module 12 builds on it with lifetime value.

Fees and margins you can't see. You often don't know a marketplace's fee for your category or a retailer's margin. Look up the marketplace's own seller fee page, or ask the retailer, and until you have it use a stated assumption, labelled as one. For retailers, work from the shelf price: if they keep 35% of £8.00, you receive the other 65%.

VAT. If your product carries VAT, take it out of the price first, because VAT goes to HMRC, not to you. Larkfield's roasted coffee is assumed to be zero-rated in the UK, so its prices carry none. Check your own product's rate on GOV.UK.

What the number leaves out. Contribution per unit shows what a sale earns once it happens. It doesn't include the marketing needed to win the sale. Read the contribution beside the reach: how many sales each route can realistically deliver.

Retrieval: choose the measure. In Module 6 you set baselines before judging change. A route decision needs the same discipline. Before you grow a route, note the baseline you'll measure it against: orders, contribution per order, and orders from new customers.

AI activity. Ask an AI assistant to summarise a real marketplace's seller fees for your product category. Then check every figure against the marketplace's own official fee page, with the date. Record what the AI got wrong or out of date, and whether it presented any figure with more confidence than the page justifies. Then decide which fee figure you'd use and label it an assumption, or confirm it from the page.

Having worked out what each route earns, you now decide which to grow, which to test and which to decline. The numbers inform the decision. They don't make it.

Grow, test or decline. For each route, ask three things.

• Does it earn enough per sale to be worth the effort, once every cost is counted?
• Does it reach people you can't reach another way, or only people you already sell to?
• Can you serve it well, with stock, delivery and customer service, without harming the routes that already work?

A route with strong contribution and proven demand is one to grow. A route that looks promising but has gaps in the evidence is one to test, small, with a baseline and an end date. A route that earns too little or puts the brand at risk is one to decline, for now. Saying no to a route is a decision, and worth writing down with the reason.

Channel conflict. Channel conflict is tension between your own routes. It shows up in three ways.

• Price: one route sells at a lower price than another and pulls customers across.
• Availability: a product is on every route, so no route feels special.
• Brand control: a partner presents the product in ways you wouldn't, from the photo to the description.

The fix isn't always a policy of identical prices. It might be a product only one route carries, such as a gift set, or a clear difference in what each route offers.

Leadership: making a call others may not like. A route decision usually has someone who wants a yes. A sales colleague likes the big listing; a customer service lead worries about new complaints. Lead the decision by showing the numbers, saying what you assumed, giving the reason for the choice and saying what would change your mind. People can disagree with a call and still trust how it was made.

Winning a customer ends at the payment. What they feel next decides whether they come back. That run of moments, from the box arriving to the day they cancel, is the customer experience (CX): the sum of a customer's interactions with an organisation and how they feel about them.

Map the stages. List what happens after the purchase, in order:

• delivery or access: does it arrive when and how they were told?
• first use: can they get started without help?
• service: what happens when they have a question?
• problems: how are mistakes put right?
• changing or leaving: can they pause, switch or cancel without a fight?

Find the pain points. A pain point is a moment that causes frustration, effort or doubt. You find them by listening, not guessing: the reasons customers give for leaving, complaints and reviews, questions to your service team, and watching one customer try something while you stay quiet. You did this kind of listening in the customer research topic, and the reasons people give for leaving are the best map you'll get.

Moments that matter. Not every stage weighs the same. People remember the first use, the moment something went wrong and the way out. Fix those first.

Ethics. A customer should be able to leave as easily as they joined. Making cancellation hard keeps customers who resent you, and the regulation topic showed it can break consumer law too.

UK example: Club Pret. Pret A Manger launched a coffee subscription in September 2020 at £20 a month for up to five barista-made drinks a day, as ITV reported on 4 September 2020. By 2024 the subscription was called Club Pret and cost £30 a month. In July 2024, Restaurant Online reported that from 3 September 2024 Pret would replace it with a version giving 50% off up to five barista-made drinks a day, at an introductory £5 a month rising to £10 from 1 April 2025. On 11 February 2025, Restaurant Online reported that Pret had dropped the rise and would keep the price at £5. Pret's own Club Pret page, checked in November 2026, describes £5 a month for 50% off up to five hot or iced barista-made drinks a day, with the app used to claim, and says members can pause or cancel any time. Terms like these change often, so check the page before you quote it. The lesson isn't which price was right. A subscription's economics, what it costs to give each perk, and customers' reactions when the deal changes all shape how long people stay.

Customer relationship management (CRM) is the strategy, processes and systems an organisation uses to manage its relationships with customers. A CRM system is only the tool. The real work is deciding what to know, why, and what to do with it.

What data, and what you may use. List what your organisation holds about customers: contact details, what they bought and when, how they found you, and what they've said to your service team. Then check what you may do with each item. The regulation topic set the rules: use data for the purpose people were told about, collect only what you need, and respect consent and the soft opt-in. Not legal advice: the ICO is the regulator to check with. A customer record with no clear reason to hold it is a risk, not an asset.

Simple segments. You met segmentation in the customer topics and in email. For CRM, three questions about behaviour go a long way:

• Recency: how recently did they buy or engage?
• Frequency: how often?
• Value: how much have they spent, or contributed?

Someone who bought last week, often, with high value is a different customer from someone who bought once a year ago. Start with these three before anything cleverer.

Lifecycle messages. A lifecycle message is sent because of where someone is in their relationship with you, not because of a date in the marketing calendar. You built email sequences in the search, email and communities topic. Four lifecycle moments cover most organisations:

1. Welcome: after a first purchase, set expectations and help them get value.
2. First repeat: nudge a second purchase, which is when many customers decide whether to stay.
3. At risk: a customer whose behaviour is slipping, such as longer gaps or repeated skips, gets a helpful message, not a guilt trip.
4. Win-back: a lapsed customer is asked once, kindly, whether they want to return, and given an easy way to say no.

Each message needs a lawful basis to send, a single job and a way to stop. Say what the data showed, not what you assume about the person.

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the contribution an organisation expects from a customer over the whole relationship. It tells you how much a customer is worth keeping, and so how much you can sensibly spend to win or keep one. Retention rate is the share of customers who stay over a period. Churn is its opposite: the share who leave.

Use contribution, not revenue. You met contribution margin in the routes to market topic: what is left from a sale after the costs that vary with it. Revenue overstates a customer's worth because it ignores the cost of the coffee, the packaging and the postage. A customer paying £17.00 a month who costs £9.00 to serve is worth £8.00 a month, and £8.00 is the number that pays for marketing.

The simple formula. For a subscription or any regular customer:

1. Expected lifetime in months = 1 ÷ monthly churn rate.
2. CLV = contribution per month × expected lifetime.

At 5% monthly churn the expected lifetime is 1 ÷ 0.05 = 20 months. That is an average: some customers leave in a month, some stay for years.

What it assumes. The formula is a simplification. It assumes churn stays steady month to month, that contribution per customer doesn't change, and that every customer is alike. Real churn is usually highest in the first months. Use CLV to compare options and to size a decision, not as a promise. Say what you assumed whenever you show it.

For a business with no subscription. If customers buy now and then, replace months with years: contribution per purchase × purchases per year × expected years as a customer. Label each as an estimate until you have data.

What a lower churn rate is worth. Small changes in churn have a large effect: expected lifetime is 1 ÷ churn, so each point off a low churn rate adds more months, and the gain applies to every customer. Work out CLV at the current churn and at the target, take the difference, and multiply by the number of customers. That gives the value of the retention change across the base.

Read the worked example first. It shows every step for Larkfield. Then try the Customer Lifetime Value and Retention Calculator with your own figures.

A loyalty scheme is a programme that rewards customers for repeat purchases or engagement. It isn't the same as real loyalty. A customer may collect points because the reward is good, while still switching the moment a competitor is cheaper. Real loyalty is a customer who chooses you again because the experience is good. A scheme can support that, but it can't replace it.

Rewards that fit the proposition. Ask what your customers value, and reward that. A discount trains customers to wait for it and cuts the contribution on every sale. Access, early information or recognition costs less. Compare each perk's cost with what it does to churn, which the Customer Lifetime Value and Retention Calculator lets you test.

Costs. A scheme costs the reward, the system, staff time and discounts given to people who would have bought anyway. Write down the cost and the effect you expect on CLV before you start.

UK example: Tesco Clubcard. Tesco launched Clubcard in the UK in February 1995 and has worked with the data analysis firm dunnhumby on it; accounts differ on who designed what, so check Tesco's and dunnhumby's own pages before quoting detail. The idea that made it influential was that a card links purchases to an individual customer, so a retailer can see what that customer buys over time instead of only what the till sold in total.

Ethics of loyalty pricing and data. Loyalty cards trade data for value, and the trade has to be fair. In its review of loyalty pricing in the groceries sector, published on 27 November 2024, the Competition and Markets Authority looked at about 50,000 products at Tesco, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, Co-op and Morrisons. It found 92% offered a genuine saving against the usual price, with average savings of 17% to 25% for members, and very little evidence that usual prices were inflated. Loyalty prices were not always the cheapest around, and some supermarkets could do more to help people without smartphones join. In its consumer survey, 43% thought it unfair that members pay lower prices for some products. It said it saw no evidence of consumer law concerns in how supermarkets collect and use data. Savings should be real, access fair and data use honest.

AI activity. Take 20 to 30 anonymised customer comments about your organisation: reviews, survey answers or service notes, with no names or contact details. Give them to an AI assistant and ask it to group them into themes and name each theme. Then check a sample of ten by hand against the themes. Record where the AI misread a comment, merged two different problems or missed sarcasm. Keep the themes you can defend.

Organisations go abroad for reasons, and some are better than others. Growth at home has slowed. Customers abroad have found you. A product that suits a niche has too few buyers in one country. Or a rival is moving first. Write your reason down, because it decides how much risk is sensible. "We could" is not a reason.

Choosing between markets. Compare at least three candidates on the same criteria, and write the evidence beside each, not just a score.

Psychic distance. Psychic distance is how different a foreign market feels in language, culture, business practice and law. It is not the same as miles. A market a short flight away with a different legal system can be further, in the way that matters, than one with a long flight and familiar habits. It is also dangerous in the other direction: when a market feels close, we skip the checks.

UK example: Tesco's Fresh & Easy. Tesco is one of the UK's largest and most experienced grocers. In 2007 it opened its first Fresh & Easy stores in the United States. In April 2013 it announced that it would leave the US and sell the business. The trade press reported a charge of about £1.2bn for the exit, much of it writing down the value of the US stores and leases; reports before the announcement had put the bill at about £1bn. Reasons were debated at the time. You don't need to settle them to use the case: a large, experienced retailer found that skill at home did not guarantee results in a market that looked familiar enough to enter. Read what Tesco itself said, and reputable press from the period, before you draw your own conclusion. Check the dates and wording at the source.

Your organisation's candidates. Read the worked example later in this topic first: it compares three markets for Larkfield Coffee Roasters. Then pick three for your organisation. Include one that feels close and one that feels far, and ask whether the one that feels close has earned its place or has just not been questioned.

Once you have a market, you need to know how its customers might think differently. Cultural frameworks give you questions to ask. They don't give you answers.

Hofstede's dimensions. Geert Hofstede compared national cultures on a handful of measures, set out in Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (3rd edition, 2010). The dimensions include power distance (how far people accept unequal power), individualism and collectivism, uncertainty avoidance (how uncomfortable people are with the unknown) and long-term orientation. Each country gets a score. These are cultural dimensions.

Hall's high and low context. The anthropologist Edward T. Hall described, in Beyond Culture (1976), a difference in how much meaning sits in the words and how much in the setting. In a low-context style, the message is in what is said, plainly. In a high-context style, much is understood from tone, relationship and what is left unsaid. A direct "buy now" suits one; it may feel pushy in another.

Handle with care. Both frameworks describe national averages, not individuals. The person you are writing to may be nothing like the average, and your target segment, such as Home Brew Enthusiasts, may share more with enthusiasts in another country than with its own neighbours. Critics also point out that Hofstede's original data came from employees of one company, that countries aren't uniform, and that culture changes. Use the dimensions to generate hypotheses to test, never to label a nation.

What to adapt. Culture shows up in practical things:

• language, spelling, and humour that doesn't travel
• imagery and colour, and who appears in photos
• trust signals: which reviews, badges and guarantees people there recognise
• payment habits: the payment methods customers expect to see at checkout
• delivery and returns expectations
• when and why people buy, such as the gifting seasons

Segments travel differently. You chose a target in Module 3. Ask whether it exists in the new market, how big it is, and whether its path to purchase looks the same. A segment can be common at home and thin abroad, or the other way round.

Same language is not the same culture. Think of how differently "quite good" is heard in different English-speaking places. A phrase that sounds warm in one can sound lukewarm in another. A shared language removes one barrier and hides the rest.

A market entry mode is the way an organisation enters a new country. For an online seller the main choices are these.

These are the routes from Module 11 with a border added.

The rules after Brexit. This is a list of what to check, not legal advice.

• Customs: goods sent from Great Britain to Ireland are exports and imports, with paperwork. What is needed, who files it and whether duty applies depend on the goods, their value and where they were made. The EU's duty rules for low-value parcels changed on 1 July 2026, so don't rely on older guides. Check GOV.UK's guidance on exporting goods and the Irish Revenue Commissioners' customs pages.
• VAT: goods sold to consumers there fall under the destination's VAT rules. The EU's Import One-Stop Shop scheme, explained on Irish Revenue's website, covers low-value consignments up to a stated limit. Check the current limit and the VAT rate on your product; don't assume the UK's.
• Consumer law: EU customers generally have a 14-day right to cancel distance purchases under the Consumer Rights Directive, with exceptions that vary by product.
• Data protection: EU GDPR applies when you sell to people in Ireland, even from the UK. Your privacy notice, email consent and cookie banner must meet it, and you may need an EU representative. The regulator is the Data Protection Commission. You met the UK version in Module 5.
• Currency: you earn in one currency and spend in another, and rates move. Label any rate you use as an assumption.

Contribution per unit falls. Repeat the contribution sum from the routes topic for the new market and expect a lower answer: postage is higher, customs may add handling, and payment methods can cost more. If it falls far, your price, costs or plan must change.

Northern Ireland. This topic means the Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland has its own arrangements and isn't covered here.

Localisation means adapting content, language, prices, payment and service so they feel native to a market, not just translated. Translation changes the words. Localisation changes the offer.

Standardisation and adaptation. You will keep some things the same everywhere, such as your brand name and quality, and adapt others. The question for each element is whether it works unchanged. If not, is the gain from changing it worth the cost? Keep what makes you recognisable. Change what gets in the customer's way.

What to localise.

• Proposition: You wrote it in Module 4. Does every promise in it still hold in the new market? A delivery promise made for home may not survive a border.
• Prices: Set a local price in the local currency, check it against local competitors, and work out what it earns after local costs. Show the price including anything the customer must pay, so there are no surprises at checkout.
• Delivery and returns: Say what arrives when, who carries it, and what a return costs and how it works.
• Proof local customers trust: Reviews from customers in that market, recognisable payment options and a clear way to reach a person. Never write or buy reviews; the fake reviews rules you met in Module 11 apply at home, and EU consumer law bans them too.

AI activity. Choose three pieces of your marketing copy: a headline, a product description and a delivery message. Ask an AI assistant to translate or adapt them for your chosen market. Do not include personal or confidential data. Then have a native speaker, or a reliable local source such as a local retailer's website or a customer from that market, check the results. Record what the AI missed: wrong register, a phrase nobody uses, a promise that isn't true there. Keep the original, the AI version and your notes in your portfolio. They show your judgement.

Milestone 3 closes the Commercial stage. A second-market ecommerce plan is one document setting out which market you chose and why, how you'll enter, what the offer and rules are, and how you'll launch and measure it. It pulls together your work from the routes, loyalty and international topics. Read the worked example later in this topic first: it shows Maya's plan for Larkfield.

The sections, each drawn from earlier work:

Make the sections agree. The market you chose should be the market your culture, rules and prices describe. The route should match the entry mode. The contribution per unit should use the local price and the local costs, not the home ones. Check each join before you call the plan finished.

Name what you'd test before launching. You will not have proof. Say what you would learn first, cheaply: a small test, a conversation with someone from the market, a trial order to see the real delivery time and cost. Say what result would make you stop.

Leadership: who will do what. A launch asks people to do new work. Name an owner for each task: the plan, the storefront, the customer service, the checks on the rules. Be clear about who decides whether to go ahead. Ask each person whether they can repeat their part in a sentence.

Looking ahead. The plan feeds the business case you will make later in the course, so write the numbers as clearly as you can and label every assumption.

A performance review compares what happened with what you meant to happen, and with what you would have expected anyway. It has three parts.

Results against objectives. Take each objective from your plan and put the result beside it. Use the same measure and the same dates. A target of "net new customers" is not met by a result of "gross new customers". A simple table does the job:

Results against baselines. You set baselines in the KPIs topic: where the numbers stood before you started. A result only means something beside its baseline. Sales of 500 are good news if the baseline was 300 and bad news if it was 700.

What changed besides the marketing. Season, a price change, a competitor's offer, a stock shortage, even the weather can move results. List them. You can't always remove their effect, but you can say they were there. A review that credits marketing for everything is as unreliable as one that blames it for everything.

Say what missed, and why. If you missed a target, say so in the first line, with the size of the miss. Then give the reasons you can support with evidence, and the ones you only suspect, labelled as suspicions. People trust a review that opens with the bad news far more than one that buries it.

Keep the sums checkable. Every figure should be traceable to a source, and every total should add up. Check your own arithmetic before anyone else does.

Attribution means giving credit for a sale or sign-up to the marketing touchpoints that came before it. Most people meet more than one before they act: a social ad, then a search, then an email. Attribution is the rule for sharing out the credit.

The common models.

• Last click gives all the credit to the final touchpoint before the conversion.
• First click gives it all to the first.
• Position-based gives most to the first and last and a little to those between.
• Data-driven uses a platform's statistical model of customer paths to share out the credit. It is only as good as the data it can see.

The choice of model changes the answer. Google removed first click, linear, time decay and position-based attribution from Google Analytics 4 and Google Ads in 2023, leaving last click and data-driven. Check the current help pages.

Why every platform over-claims. Each platform counts the conversions it can see and takes credit for those it touched. Add up the claims and the total is often more than the sales you made. Nobody is lying. Each is measuring its own view of the path.

What it cannot show. Attribution follows people who clicked. It can't tell you:

• who would have bought anyway, which the next lesson tackles
• the effect of things people saw but did not click, such as a poster, a video or a friend's recommendation
• offline influence, such as a conversation in a shop
• how changing ways of finding answers affect clicks. When search tools answer questions directly, fewer people may click through, and the data can understate what that activity did

UK example: published effectiveness research. In April 2024 Thinkbox, the UK television industry's marketing body, published Profit Ability 2. Five agencies combined their econometric databases of client data, covering 141 brands, to measure profit payback over several time periods. Read the source for its findings, and note that it relies on modelling, not experiments, and an industry body commissioned it. Les Binet and Peter Field's The Long and the Short of It (IPA, 2013) reports that, on average across the cases studied, a mix of roughly 60% brand-building and 40% activation performed well. That ratio is an average from their data and varies by category, so treat it as a starting point for discussion, not a rule. Both matter here because effects that take time to build don't show up in a last-click report.

AI activity. Ask an AI assistant to explain why last-click and incremental results can differ for your campaign. Compare its answer with this lesson and your data, and note anything it states as fact that you cannot check.

Incrementality is the part of a result that would not have happened without the marketing. The rest would have happened anyway. Attribution tells you who was touched. Incrementality asks whether the touch made a difference. If you take one question from this topic, take that one: would it have happened anyway?

The calculation is simple. Incremental results = results with the marketing − what you expected without it. The hard part is the second number.

Three ways to find it.

1. A holdout group. Choose a group at random and deliberately don't show them the marketing. Compare their results with the group that saw it. This is the strongest method, because the two groups differ only in the marketing. The cost is that you forgo some sales from the held-out group, which you can often afford if the group is small.
2. A geographic or matched comparison. Run the marketing in some areas or shops and not in similar ones. It works when you cannot hold out individuals, but areas never match perfectly.
3. Before and after against a baseline. Compare the campaign period with your baseline from the KPIs topic. It needs no special set-up, so most organisations start here. Its weakness is that it assumes nothing else changed. If the season, price or a competitor shifted, the baseline no longer shows what would have happened.

State the weakness whichever you use. A figure that comes with its limitation is more useful than one that pretends to certainty.

Marketing mix modelling (MMM) is a statistical method that uses months or years of sales and spend data to estimate how much each activity, and factors such as price and season, contributed to sales. It suits organisations with several channels and a good run of data, and it does not rely on tracking individual people. It needs a lot of clean data and skilled interpretation. Open-source tools exist, such as Meta's Robyn and Google's Meridian, but both come from advertising platforms, so ask who built a model and what they gain from the answer. For a small organisation, a simple holdout or comparison is often the practical choice.

Designing a test. Write down before you start:

• the question: what are you trying to learn?
• the groups: who sees the marketing, who does not, and how you chose them
• the measure and the period
• what result would change your decision
• how you will tell if something else interfered

Marketing ROI is the return on marketing investment. This course measures it on contribution, not revenue, because revenue ignores the cost of delivering what you sold. Some organisations use revenue. When someone quotes an ROI, ask which they mean.

The steps.

1. Incremental customers = customers gained − customers expected anyway.
2. Value created = incremental customers × lifetime value per customer.
3. ROI = (value created − cost) ÷ cost.
4. Cost per incremental customer = cost ÷ incremental customers.

Pull back what you know. Before reading on, try to recall how lifetime value is worked out. It is contribution per month multiplied by expected lifetime, and expected lifetime is 1 ÷ monthly churn. You met it in Module 12. Lifetime value is a forecast. It is earned over time, not paid into the bank this quarter. So an ROI built on it is an expected return, not cash already received.

Compare with a target. The cost per incremental customer is the figure to hold against the target you set when you planned the budget. It is also worth comparing with lifetime value: the gap between the two is what each new customer is expected to earn after paying for their own acquisition.

Test the assumptions. An ROI depends on inputs you estimated. Change the important ones and see what happens. Lifetime value is usually the largest. Run the sum at the figure you expect and at a more cautious and a more optimistic one. If the ROI stays positive across them, you can say so with confidence. If it turns negative at a plausible lower value, say that, too.

Read the worked example first. It models every step for Larkfield. Then use the Campaign ROI and Incrementality Calculator with your own figures.

AI activity. Give an AI assistant your spend, results, expected results and lifetime value, and ask it to check your ROI arithmetic and explain any difference between last-click and incremental results. Then redo every step yourself. Note any step it got wrong or any number it introduced that you did not give it.

A decision-maker has little time and a fair suspicion of marketing reports. A performance review for a business case is a short, honest account in four parts: what we did, what happened, what we learned, and what it means for the next decision. Read the worked example later in this topic first.

Start from your own numbers. You built the pieces in Module 6 and Module 14. Pull them together: the objective and the baseline you were measured against, the result, the cost, the ROI, and the assumption it rests on. If part of the result would have happened anyway, say how you estimated that and that it is an estimate.

Be honest about misses. A missed target does not sink a case. A hidden one does, because the first awkward question will find it. Say what was missed, by how much, and what you think caused it. Then say whether the investment still earned its money. Both can be true.

End on meaning. Finish with one sentence beginning "So what this tells us is". That is the bridge to the options.

Keep it short. If the review runs past one page, the reader is being asked to do your analysis for you.

A business case sets out why an investment is needed, the options, the costs, the benefits and risks, and a recommendation. It is an argument for a decision: what we should do, why, what it costs, what could go wrong and who will do it.

The Five Case Model. HM Treasury's framework splits the argument into five parts:

UK example: the Treasury's guidance. HM Treasury publishes Guidance on Developing Business Cases for projects and programmes, based on the Five Case Model (first published 16 May 2024). It sits beside the Green Book, the Treasury's appraisal guidance, which has a 2026 edition after a 2025 review. Both are written for public spending, so borrow the structure, not the rules. Check gov.uk for the current versions and for how the guidance handles options.

Options appraisal. Compare realistic options, and always include doing the minimum. It is the baseline: every other option has to beat it. An option with no real alternative beside it is a decision already made.

Use your milestones. Your options should come from work you have already done. If you planned a second market in Module 13, that plan is a ready-made option, with its contribution per customer. The lifetime value from Module 12 turns customers into money, and the campaign you planned in Module 7 is what your review judges.

Judging the money. ROI is (benefit − cost) ÷ cost. Payback is how long until the money back covers the cost. Both need a stated benefit, and the benefit needs a stated assumption.

Sensitivity. Change the assumption you trust least and see what happens. Find the break-even point, the result where benefit equals cost, and ask how far the plan is from it.

A risk register is a list of what could go wrong, each with its likelihood, impact, owner and the action to reduce it. It is the part of a case that shows you have thought past the good news.

Look in five places. Commercial risks affect sales and money, such as slow uptake or a currency move. Operational risks affect delivery, such as capacity or delays. Legal risks come from rules, such as consumer and data law. Ethical risks are about doing the right thing, such as claims you can't support. Reputational risks are what the others cost you in trust. You met the rules side in Module 5, and an unsupported claim is both an ethical and a reputational risk.

Score and rank. Give each risk a likelihood and an impact from 1 to 5, and multiply. A risk scoring 4 for likelihood and 3 for impact scores 12. The scale is a convention, not a law of nature, and the scores are your judgement. Show your reasoning so someone can disagree with it.

Every risk needs an owner and an action. An owner is one named person. An action says what will be done and by when, or what would trigger it. "Monitor" is not an action.

Plan the trigger. For the biggest risks, decide in advance what you'll see that tells you to act or to stop.

Risks you choose to accept. Some risks aren't worth reducing. Write down which, and why.

The best case still fails if the people who must act on it aren't with you. Leading marketing means getting a decision made and then getting the work done, often by people you don't manage.

Know what each person needs. The finance adviser wants to see the sums and the downside. The managing director wants a clear choice and a recommendation. The delivery team wants to know what changes for them. An agency wants a clear brief, as you learned in Module 10. Write down, for each, what they need from you and what they might worry about.

Lead people you don't manage. You have no authority over an agency or another department. You have clarity, fairness and your word. Say what is needed and by when, give feedback quickly, and credit good work in public.

Communicate the decision, including a no. If your case is approved, say what happens next and who does what. If it is turned down, say what was decided, why, and what happens instead. Don't blame, and don't let the team find out sideways.

Look after the team. A launch adds work. Say what will stop to make room, and notice who is carrying too much.

AI activity. Ask an AI assistant to act as a sceptical finance director and challenge your case and risk register. Remove names and commercially sensitive figures first, or use public or invented ones. Decide which challenges are fair and answer them. Note any it raised that you had missed, and keep the challenges and your replies in your portfolio.

Milestone 4 is the last piece of your portfolio and the one you may actually use. It is one document that a decision-maker could read in the room. Read the worked example later in this topic first: it shows Maya's case for Larkfield.

The sections, in the order a reader needs them:

The executive summary. Write it last and keep it to one page. Open with the decision you are asking for and the date. Then the evidence, the recommendation with its ROI and break-even point, the main risk and what you need from the reader. If the reader stops there, they should still decide well.

Check the joins. The review's results feed the options. The costs match across the options, the financial case and the ROI. Every risk in the register has an owner who appears in the leadership plan. The recommendation is the option the economic case favours, or you say why not.

Ask for something specific. End with the decision, the date and the first three actions after a yes.