Digital Direction Day
A focused working session to clarify the problem, weigh the options and decide where your time, money and attention should go next.
Direction + action planIndependent digital adviser
Clarity for your next digital move.
Experienced digital leadership, bought when you need it. I help growing businesses make better decisions across digital, marketing and technology, without hiring a full-time Digital Director or disappearing into a large agency.
Senior thinking.
Plain speaking.
Plain speaking.
Strategy ●Customer experience ●Search & AI ●Marketing technology ●Measurement ●
Ways to work together
Senior thinking, packaged around a decision.
Each engagement is deliberately contained. We get to the heart of the problem, challenge the assumptions and leave you with something your team can actually use.
Digital Performance Review
A senior review of the customer journey, channels, content, measurement and conversion performance, finding the gaps that matter commercially.
Evidence + prioritiesAI & Search Readiness Review
A practical view of how discoverable your business is across search and AI answers, with actions spanning content, structure, authority and measurement.
SEO / AEO / GEODigital Spend & Agency Sense Check
An independent look at your plans, proposals, retainers or platform investment before you commit more budget or renew what you already have.
Independent challengeFractional Digital Adviser
Ongoing senior counsel for leaders and lean marketing teams who need regular direction, challenge and decision support without another full-time hire.
Flexible ongoing supportDigital Marketing Strategy Review
A joined-up review of your customers, priority segments, audiences and ideal customer profiles, testing whether your proposition, content, channels, journeys and investment are aligned to the same commercial goals.
Customers + focus + alignmentBespoke support
Something awkward?
Digital problems rarely arrive in neat boxes. If the decision cuts across customer experience, marketing, technology, teams and commercial reality, bring me the knotty bit. We’ll unpick the nuance, challenge the obvious answer and shape the right engagement around the problem itself.
Now
What needs attention immediately, and what can stop consuming energy.
Next
The moves that unlock progress once the essentials are under control.
Later
The bigger opportunities worth building towards, without pretending they all belong in sprint one.
The useful bit
A plan with an order, not a 90-page deck.
The core output is a concise Now / Next / Later Digital Action Plan: clear recommendations, the reasoning behind them and a realistic sequence. Enough substance to act with confidence, without creating another document that gathers dust.
I work customer-first and commercially backwards. Technology, channels and AI are tools in the answer, not the starting point.
What I cover
Across the places digital decisions collide.
Website & customer experienceJourneys, conversion, proposition, UX and continuous improvement.
Search & discoverabilitySEO, AEO, GEO, paid search, content and AI visibility.
Acquisition & growthDemand, lead generation, channel mix, budgets and performance.
Data & measurementKPIs, analytics, attribution, dashboards and decision-ready insight.
CRM & marketing technologyPlatforms, automation, integration, personalisation and value realisation.
Content & go-to-marketStrategy, operating models, messaging, governance and activation.
SitecoreScrunchSalesforceHubSpotOpenAIANTHROPICGoogleLinkedInSemrushahrefsWordPressUmbracoDrupalMicrosoft
The person behind the advice
I’ve spent 20+ years making digital make sense.
I’m James Gray, a digital strategy leader who has worked across agency, consultancy and in-house teams. My sweet spot is connecting the boardroom question to the customer experience, marketing choices and technology reality underneath it.
I bring strategic breadth without losing sight of what needs to happen on Monday morning. That means honest challenge, useful detail and recommendations grounded in commercial outcomes rather than digital theatre.
Digital strategy, CX and transformation
Search, content, data and MarTech
Senior stakeholder and workshop leadership
Fresh thinking, almost daily
The Daily Dose of Digital.
My LinkedIn newsletter covering the useful, awkward and occasionally absurd edges of digital strategy, customer experience, marketing technology, search and AI.
The 11 Laws of the Universe That Explain an Awful Lot About Digital
Eleven mental models that explain why programmes drift, dashboards distort behaviour and AI may simply help us make the same mistakes considerably faster.
Read on LinkedIn →AI Visibility Measurement Is Messy, but Looking Away Is Not a Strategy
Why imperfect measurement still matters, where false precision becomes dangerous and how brands can use directional evidence responsibly.
Read on LinkedIn →Moving Too Fast, or Travelling Without Moving?
The difference between moving quickly once and creating the foundations that let digital teams move quickly again and again.
Read on LinkedIn →A good fit
Growing businesses with real decisions to make.
Most useful for owner-managed and mid-sized organisations, typically £2m–£50m turnover, where digital matters but the answer is not automatically another hire, another platform or another agency retainer.
- You are a founder, MD, Marketing or Commercial Director who needs an experienced second opinion.
- Your marketing team is lean, capable and short of senior digital bandwidth.
- You need to connect business goals, customer experience and technology choices.
- You value plain speaking, practical recommendations and a healthy challenge to the brief.
Let’s talk
Got a digital decision that needs unpicking?
Send me the knotty bit. I’ll tell you honestly whether a focused session, a review or ongoing support would be useful.
Start a conversation →