A live, two-hour masterclass for founder-led businesses across New Zealand and Australia

Still guessing why your marketing efforts aren’t working?

In two hours, you’ll map your business against the Market Alignment Model, identify where your market, offer and delivery have fallen out of sync, and leave knowing what to fix first.

Secure your place

Wednesday 25 November

Wednesday 25 November, 9:30am–11:30am, at Manifold Coworking Space, New Plymouth. Capped at around 20 places.

Saskia Thornton teaching the Market Alignment Model at a masterclass

The details

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Wednesday 25 November · 9:30am–11:30am

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Two hours · taught live, not a recording

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You work on your own business in the room

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The handbook and the self-assessment to keep

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$200 + GST per person (before RBP funding)

Meet Saskia

Saskia Thornton is a Taranaki-based growth strategist, former CMO and founder with 17 years’ hands-on experience building and growing businesses.

You’re doing the marketing. It still isn’t landing.

The posts go out. The website got rebuilt. There might be an agency, or a freelancer, or a capable person on the team doing their best with what they’ve been given.

Some months it works. Most months it’s flat, and nobody can quite tell you why.

So the next move is usually more. Another channel, another campaign, another opinion about the algorithm. And when that doesn’t shift anything either, the conclusion is that marketing is a bit of a black hole.

It isn’t. Marketing amplifies whatever sits underneath it. When the decisions underneath don’t line up (who the business is really for, what it sells them, how they find it and buy it) more marketing makes the noise louder without making the results better.

You don’t have a marketing problem.
You have an alignment problem.

Two hours on the decisions, not the tactics.

This isn’t about posting more, improving your hooks or figuring out which platform you should be on.

We’ll look at what’s happening underneath the marketing.

The Market Alignment Model helps you see whether your market, offer and delivery are actually working together. During the masterclass, you’ll use it to work out where things have drifted and what you need to fix first.

Saskia Thornton, growth strategist

What you leave with

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The model, and how to use it

One page you can put any business against, including the ones you’re about to buy from, hire, or compete with. Yours to keep and reuse whenever a new decision comes up.

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A diagnosis of your own business

Where market, offer and delivery have drifted apart, scored by you, against your real business rather than a case study.

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One decision to make next

The highest-value fix, named before you spend another dollar on activity or write another brief.

You’ll also get the handbook and the self-assessment, so the thinking doesn’t evaporate on the drive home.

Come along if

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You’re spending real money or real time on marketing

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Sales lean too heavily on referrals and on you

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You’re about to brief an agency, a freelancer or a new hire

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You run a product or service business with customers and revenue

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You’d rather be asked hard questions than handed a template

Give it a miss if

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You want platform tactics, hooks and posting schedules

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You want someone to write your campaign in the room

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You haven’t started trading yet

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You’d rather not have your current assumptions questioned

Saskia Thornton

Built from experience, not theory

Before I advised businesses, I built them.

Mad Millie and Grainfather were both built from scratch inside Bevie. I found the gap in the market, shaped the product and led the brand. Mad Millie now sells around 130,000 units a year across New Zealand, Australia, the USA and the UK. Grainfather grew to roughly $35 million in recurring revenue. I was CMO with a board seat at Bevie (around $60 million and 120 staff) and sat through the acquisition end to end. After that I co-founded FTN Motion, where we raised oversubscribed rounds.

I teach this session because the same problem turns up in nearly every business I sit down with, and it is almost never in the marketing.

What changes in two hours

From more activity to a clear strategic priority.

Before the masterclass

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You’re investing in marketing, but the results are inconsistent and difficult to explain.

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The team keeps adding posts, campaigns or channels because nobody knows what else to change.

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Sales, marketing and leadership have different opinions about where the real problem sits.

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Your market, offer, positioning and customer journey have evolved separately.

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Time and budget are being spent without a clear way to decide what should come first.

After the masterclass

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You’ll have mapped your business against the Market Alignment Model.

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You’ll see where your market, offer, positioning or delivery has fallen out of alignment.

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You’ll understand why the current marketing isn’t creating the results you expected.

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You’ll know the highest-priority decision to address before investing in more activity.

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You’ll be able to give your team, agency or freelancer a clearer strategic direction.

Hear it from founders, not from me.

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I attended Saskia’s Growth Strategy Masterclass and came away with a completely different perspective on marketing. She breaks down complex concepts into practical strategies that are easy to apply, and helped me think much more strategically about where to invest our marketing budget. The session was engaging, relevant and packed with actionable ideas. I’d highly recommend it to any business owner looking to grow with more confidence and clarity.

Hannah Hunt

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Saskia’s marketing method is such a simple concept, but it really shifted how I was thinking about things. Seeing it mapped out against a real business story made it click in a way that just talking through it wouldn’t have.

Juliet Condon

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Despite having a background in marketing I decided to attend Saskia Thornton’s marketing strategy masterclass. The world is changing quickly and I’ve become increasingly concerned that some of the approaches and practices I’d relied on in the past no longer seem effective or reliable. Having looked at Saskia’s background I was expecting a very professional and expert delivery. Where the workshop went beyond that, for me, was in its structure, which ensured that we fully explored each of the aspects of marketing strategy Saskia covered in isolation, enabling all participants to build out a really clear strategic structure quickly and (almost) painlessly. The advantage of the way Saskia broke it down is that, having worked through her templates once, participants walk away with an endlessly repeatable process that allows ongoing testing and iteration. I highly recommend the workshop to anyone who’s interested in optimising their marketing activities, whether they’re full-time marketing professionals or business operators for whom marketing is a vital part of growing their business and strengthening their customer relationships.

Read more

Dan Thurston Crow

Your business may qualify for co-funding through the Regional Business Partners Capability Fund

This helps to reduce the cost of training. To learn more, register your business details here. You will need to provide your NZBN and GST information, and your business must employ fewer than 50 people. Once registered, a Venture Taranaki growth adviser will contact you to discuss the next steps.

Saskia Thornton

It’s confirmed

Wednesday 25 November is locked in.

The first live session runs in New Plymouth. Can’t make this one? Join the waiting list and you’ll be first to hear about future dates.

This session

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Wednesday 25 November
9:30am–11:30am

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$200 + GST per person
before RBP funding

Can’t make this date?