More involved than an agency. Less expensive than a hire.

/the gap

Every supplier has their piece. Nobody is looking after the whole thing.

You can buy each piece of growth separately, and most companies end up doing exactly that. Five suppliers, five opinions, five invoices, and nobody accountable for whether any of it worked together. Meanwhile the website, the CRM and the reporting quietly drift apart.

Most providers do one thing

Marketing agencies run campaigns
Web agencies build websites
SEO consultants focus on search
HubSpot consultants set up the CRM
Automation specialists build workflows
Dev shops build apps
Fractional CMOs give advice

We join it all up

Works out what will move the numbers
Builds the website, the CRM and the tools
Runs the campaigns and reports back
Stays responsible for how it all works together

It's the same senior person across all of it, so the plan and the build stay in step.

/the options

Four ways to solve this. Here's the honest comparison.

All four can be the right answer, depending on where you are and what you already have. This is how they differ once the work starts.

Option 01

A marketing agency

Campaigns at volume, across a lot of clients at once.

Who does the work

Senior people sell it, juniors run it

Strategy

Channel plans, shaped by what they sell

Execution

Strong on campaigns, thin on systems

Where it breaks

Nobody owns your website, CRM or data

Option 02

A full-time hire

One person on payroll, fully yours, once you find them.

Who does the work

Them, after three to six months of hiring and ramping

Strategy

As good as the one person you managed to hire

Execution

Whatever that person is personally strong at

Where it breaks

Almost nobody is senior across strategy, web, search, CRM and automation

Option 03

A fractional CMO

Senior thinking, a day or two a month.

Who does the work

You do. They advise

Strategy

Usually the strongest part

Execution

Not included

Where it breaks

The plan is sound and nothing ships

Where we sit

RunLevel6

Senior thinking and the hands to build it, two to three days a week inside your business.

Who does the work

The person who scoped it. There's no handover

Strategy

Owned, and revisited when the numbers say so

Execution

Website, SEO, paid, HubSpot and automation, all in scope

Where it breaks

We're one senior person, so we take very few clients at a time

/how we work

Five things we do differently.

None of this is complicated. It's just rare enough in this market to be worth writing down.

Part of your team

We're in your Slack, your HubSpot and your Monday planning meeting, the same as a senior hire would be. You message us like anyone else on the team, and nothing sits in a queue waiting for a status update.

In practice: you'll see us in your tools and your meetings every week.

We do the work too

Advice is the easy part. We write the plan, then build the website, set up the workflow and run the campaigns ourselves. Nothing gets lost in a handover, because there isn't one.

In practice: the plan and the build are the same conversation.

The right tools, used sensibly

HubSpot, Webflow, automation and AI are all in the kit. We use them where they save hours or make things better for your customers, and leave out anything you won't use.

In practice: if a tool isn't earning its licence fee, we'll tell you to drop it.

You always deal with the senior person

The person who scoped the work is the person who does it. Questions get answered on the spot, and decisions don't get escalated and rescheduled.

In practice: we keep the client list short, so you get the attention you're paying for.

We'd rather make ourselves optional

The aim is to leave you with systems your own team can run, documented and working. If an engagement ends because you don't need us any more, that's the job done.

In practice: you get the keys, the logins and the instructions.

/the unflattering bit

The things we won't do.

Worth saying out loud before you spend money with us or anyone else.

We won't sell you a retainer you don't need

If an audit or a single fixed project is the right size of problem, that's what we'll quote you.

We won't hand you a deck and disappear

Strategy without execution is a nicely formatted opinion. We stay until it's built and running.

We won't add AI for the sake of it

It goes in where it saves real hours or makes things better for your customers, and nowhere else.

We won't take on more clients than we can do properly

We only take a small number at a time. That limit is how the whole model works.

We won't tell you what you want to hear

If something isn't working, including something we built, you'll hear it from us first.

/who's behind it

Hi, I'm Matt. I'm who you'll be working with.

I'm Matt Palmer, and I run RunLevel6. I've spent thirteen years doing hands-on growth and marketing work for SaaS, FinTech and tech-enabled service companies, including Actionstep and Spidertracks. Along the way I've built websites from scratch, rolled HubSpot out across whole sales and marketing teams, and spent a lot of years working out how to make lead generation pay its way.

I run every engagement myself, from the Waikato, for companies across New Zealand and Australia.

More about RunLevel6 Compare the engagements

/CONTACT

Sound like the gap you've got?

Tell us what's going on with your website, CRM or pipeline. You'll get a straight conversation about what we'd do, with no sales deck and no obligation.

TAKING ON NEW CLIENTS RIGHT NOW

Got it, thanks. We'll read it properly and come back to you shortly.

That didn't send. Email hello@runlevel6.co.nz and it'll reach us.