Marketing consultant

Digital marketing is changing…

For starters, Google is sending less traffic to websites (on purpose). And Gartner predicts 25% less web traffic by 2026.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

• Paid ads are getting more competitive and expensive
• Content marketing is getting upended by AI
• Attribution models are unreliable
• SEO is getting harder and taking longer to achieve results
• Social media sites both hide and algorithmically discourage outbound links
• Oh and... the economy is not great

OK. Deep breath.

Everything old is new again

We are in a big moment of change. This also means there are big advantages to be gained by businesses who are not afraid of change.

The good news is that traditional marketing — where you create an amazing brand, craft compelling offers, and build genuine connections with real people — still works.

But there are no shortcuts. And believe me, I know that you’re getting bombarded by marketers and AI founders offering shortcuts online all day long. They can be really convincing. This is because marketers are desperate and selling “shortcuts” is a way to get your attention, your email, and your credit card number. AI creates efficiencies, but it speeds up bad strategies just as well as it speeds up good ones.

Authenticity matters more than ever

In a crowded marketplace of dubious promises, the most important thing is to practice authenticity, vulnerability, and understand that growth happens by putting one foot in front of the other.

Good marketing is like compound interest. And compound interest grows very slowly in the beginning. It may even look like nothing is happening, but if you are brave enough to stick with it, and you can keep your hand off the emergency brake, you will be rewarded with compounding growth.

But you gotta stick with it. This is how marketing has always worked. We’ve just become incredibly impatient and obsessed with misleading metrics and stories of viral success.

Fractional marketers reduce cost and bring more expertise

Growing an in-house marketing team is becoming cost prohibitive. Businesses are increasingly choosing fractional help. Fractional CMOs, freelancers, consultants. You don’t need W2s to build a strong marketing team.

In fact, because I run an agency and freelance community of almost 2,000 members, I could easily build a team of fractional experts to tackle any marketing need.

Fractional really shines when what you actually need is senior strategy, not 40 hours a week of someone clicking buttons. Which, honestly, is most small and mid-sized B2B and service businesses. If you’re paying six figures for a single marketing hire and still feeling stuck, a fractional CMO or consulting engagement can usually replace that with a sharper plan, better vendor choices, and specialists who only show up when there’s actually work for them to do.

Why hire Chris Bolton as your marketing consultant

Short version: I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I spent over a decade as an executive at a Portland branding agency (Murmur Creative) that my brother and I grew to 26 people, and in 2024 I started Diviner so I could work more directly with clients and be more nimble in a market that is shifting under everyone’s feet.

Along the way I’ve worked with hundreds of brands — tiny local shops, scrappy startups, Fortune 500s — which mostly means I’ve seen what actually works, and I’ve seen a lot of marketing theater. I host The Creative Agency Podcast, where I talk to agency founders and marketers about how this industry is actually changing under AI. I also run Grow Your Agency, a community of nearly 2,000 marketers, consultants, and agency owners. (That community is also a working bench. When a project needs a specialist in paid, lifecycle, product marketing, or technical SEO, I can call someone I already know is good.)

My focus is B2B and service businesses, and I work as a senior strategist across brand, SEO, GEO, paid, and martech. I’m not reselling anyone’s software. I’m not chasing a media commission. I have no reason to make a problem look bigger than it is, and every reason to make sure you actually get somewhere.

Want the longer version? Read more about my background.

My approach

I don’t believe in cookie-cutter solutions. Each business is unique, and I tailor strategies that fit your specific needs. My goal is to help you refine your brand, position it for success, and create an agile marketing strategy that creates compounding growth.

A typical engagement starts with a free consult so we can both figure out if there’s a real fit. From there I do a discovery pass — your current marketing, analytics, search visibility, sales motion, whatever martech you’ve already cobbled together — and turn it into a written strategy doc that you actually own. It names priorities. It calls out what to stop doing. It ranks the bets by effort and likely return.

After that, the engagement shapes around what you need. Sometimes that’s ongoing fractional support where I stick around as your senior marketing brain. Sometimes it’s a defined chunk of implementation work where I run a specific workstream (SEO, GEO, paid, brand, web). Sometimes it’s a clean handoff to your team or vendors with documentation and a few check-ins. What I don’t do is rope you into a retainer that outlives its usefulness.

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Frequently asked questions