Marketing Training for Founders & Intrapreneurs

Internationally acclaimed modular marketing courses for growth focussed but time poor leaders.

Gateway 1:
Target Audience & Value Proposition

Next Gateway: 19 & 20 November

Gateway 2:
Content Marketing & Metrics

Next Gateway: 24 & 25 November

Gateway 3:
Branding & the Marketing Plan

Next Gateway: 26 & 27 November

Why you should read this

Like most people, you’re juggling a hundred and one things. You want to spend more time on marketing, but struggle to give it the time it needs.

You want to understand the main concepts and discover new trends, not become an expert. Enough to make informed decisions and know what ‘good’ looks like. Enough to form a plan, delegate appropriately and grow your business.

Gateway Courses makes this happen.

The Gateway Courses Approach

What it is

Gateway Courses is a simple collaborative learning approach developed by international marketing and communication trainers, Joe Pélissier and Sam Birkett. It’s based on the premise that you don’t have much time for learning but when you do, you want it to be applicable and enjoyable.

Via a series of 90-minute courses you can:

  • Validate your understanding of what marketing is
  • Gain new ideas and insights
  • Discover applicable frameworks & tools.

There are three Gateways and each consists of two 90-minute sessions delivered by Zoom from 19.00 - 20.30 GMT on two consecutive days.

Price:

£497.88

Places:

20 maximum
per course

Gateway 1:
Target Audience & Value Proposition

Session 1: How to understand and engage with your target audience

Session 2: Creating and shaping value propositions

Next Gateway: 19 & 20 November

Gateway 2:
Content Marketing & Metrics

Course 3: Making the most of content marketing

Course 4: Metrics: Understanding what to measure and why

Next Gateway: 24 & 25 November

Gateway 3:
Branding & the Marketing Plan

Course 5: Branding and creating a brand identity

Course 6: The art of writing a simple marketing plan

Next Gateway: 26 & 27 November

REGISTER FOR THE COURSE

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Joe Pélissier and Sam Birkett deliver their comprehensive courses online to a diverse group of marketing professionals worldwide. The course material is excellent, and their insights and tips are invaluable in helping you overcome the daily challenges of this vital role, and to become even more effective marketers. The lively classes also encourage participation, questions and collaboration via exercises in breakout rooms, giving you a chance to meet and interact with each other.

I thoroughly recommend these courses for anyone looking to deepen and refine their marketing know-how. The courses are suitable for marketers in companies small or large or for start-ups. Enjoy!

SES Satellites

Andy McGarry

Senior Manager, Product Marketing, Space & Defence

Joe & Sam

Who registers for a Gateway Marketing Course

A Gateway course is for anyone who is looking to grow a business or brush up their skills. It’s also for anyone in the start-up phase, bootstrapping their way to that first sale or significant investment.

If so, you want to:

What Founders & Intrapreneurs gain from a Gateway Marketing Course

Depending on which Gateways you complete, you will:

It’s all possible via a collaborative learning approach that doesn't suck up a massive amount of time.

Register for the course

Scenario Box: Marketing Overview

“I need a better understanding of the fundamentals of marketing”

Sibelius.ai is a fast growing startup offering piracy prevention services for the music industry. Sonia Sangez, 36, is preparing for a seed round of £3m to help grow the business but she realised that she doesn't really know what 'good' looks like when it comes to contracting an agency or consultant. She needs a decent marketing overview to help her as a leader and decision-maker.

Students

Gateway 1: Target Audience & Value Proposition

In this gateway, our aim is to help you to think about the problems your product or service solves for your target audience and the steps to take to create a meaningful value proposition.

Date: Wednesday 19 & Thursday 20 November
Start: 19.00 GMT
Duration: 90 mins

Session 1: Understanding your target audience

Session 1 starts where all marketing must begin - the audience. Who is in your ideal target audience? What motivates them? Why will they be interested in your product or service? And how can you reach them? With this knowledge you will start to communicate in relevant and meaningful ways.

You’ll explore:

  • Customer Segmentation - defining your audience their attributes, attitudes and actions
  • Customer Personas - bringing your target audience to life with a focus on customer needs, frustrations, blockers, and motivations
  • Market research techniques to avoid the danger of relying on assumptions
  • Processes for gaining deeper insights into audience buying decisions

In breakout groups, you’ll learn how to create personas and discover why the insights from such work shape future marketing strategy. A range of supporting websites and tools are shared to help explore the topic in detail.

Lead Facilitator: Sam Birkett

Sam Birkett

Scenario Box: Target Audience

“Do I really know my target customer and what matters to them?”

Bruno Cafagna and Stephanie Owen are quietly confident they know who their ideal target customer is. However, they've never created a persona or interviewed potential customers; they worked with a set of assumptions. As they plan to raise investment for their energy storage business, they've realised it's time to approach things a little more professionally.

Register for the course

Session 2: Designing value propositions

Following your understanding of your target audience in Session 1, this session teaches how to create meaningful value propositions for your business.

You will learn:

  • What is a value proposition and why it is important
  • Different types of value proposition and how to find the right one
  • The difference between economic, perceived, relational and experiential value
  • How brands develop and refine their value propositions over time
  • The ‘fit’ between products / services and a customer's desired gains / pains

You’ll take part in a breakout session to examine a value proposition case study. Afterwards you’ll receive tools and templates so you can refine your value proposition, as well as case studies and reference material.

After Gateway 1, you are ready to think about Gateway 2 and the type of content that will engage your target audience.

Lead Facilitator: Joe Pélissier

Sam Birkett

Scenario Box: Value Proposition

“How does one create a value proposition that stands apart from everyone else?”

As a challenger brand in the competitive 3D printing space, Astral3D, believes it has multiple value propositions. However, it lacks an overarching proposition, one that will differentiate it from the competition and attract the attention of potential investors. As an engineer by background, its founder Dr Rick Brodie, 31, finds that looking at problems this way is new and informative.

Register for Gateways 1,2,3. Price £497.88

Register for the course

Gateway 2: Content Marketing & Metrics

In Gateway 2 the focus is on helping you to think about the type of content that will create a demand for your products or services. You’ll consider the skills and resources your business needs and why metrics tell you which of your marketing efforts are working and which are not.

Date: Monday 24 & Tuesday 25 November
Start: 19.00 GMT
Duration: 90 mins

Session 3: Making the most of content marketing

This session teaches you how to think like a publisher when producing content and how to focus on creating content that is relevant and engaging. As digital content is so varied, we examine the skills needed to produce content consistently, tools to support content creation, including AI, and the dangers of an unrealistic content marketing plan.

You’ll learn about:

  • Content marketing and the business case for using it
  • Consistency, frequency and relevance as the criteria behind effective content marketing
  • The Content Marketing Interplay and the need to get for balance between content, channels, tools (AI), skill and resources
  • Businesses that have used content marketing to accelerate business growth
  • The skills that content marketing needs, whether in-house or out-sourced

To enhance your understanding you'll take part in content marketing activities, discuss case studies and consider ways to plan your content marketing strategy.

Lead Facilitator: Joe Pélissier

Scenario Box: Content Marketing / AI

“Where do I start with content marketing? And what sort of content should we produce with our limited resources? How can AI accelerate content marketing”

Elena Miller, 29, has been publishing bits of content on LInkedIn and TikTokYou but with mixed results. She’s seen plenty of posts on LinkedIn promoting the latest marketing innovations in AI but needs advice about which aspect of content marketing to focus on as well as some tips and tricks to help her produce meaningful content about her subcarbon start-up business.

Register for the course

Session 4: Metrics - Understanding what to measure and why

Here we focus on the data that flows through your marketing efforts, the metrics. We help you build an understanding of marketing metrics, how to define data, as well as the objectives and key performance indicators that will lead to business success.

You’ll learn about:

  • Why Metrics Matter: to help you measure performance, understand the impact of marketing activities, and make informed actions
  • Types of Metrics: digital metrics for website traffic, email engagement, social media analytics, and ROI calculations
  • Using Metrics Effectively: marketing funnel and post-funnel strategies, distinguishing meaningful metrics from vanity metrics
  • AI in Analytics: Highlighting how AI enhances analytics through predictive insights, personalisation, and real-time optimisation
  • Setting Goals & Measuring Success: using SMART objectives, KPIs, and critical success factors tailored to business goals

Via our breakout rooms, you’ll engage in exercises to learn how to select the appropriate metrics based on a brand’s lifecycle and aspirations, how to focus on the data you need and not on the data you don’t.

Lead Facilitator: Sam Birkett

Scenario Box: Metrics

“There are so many things we could measure, how do I work out what is and what is not important?”

Ashrul Ghazali, has an engineering background and so he’s very familiar with the importance of analysing data. However, when it comes to marketing his point cloud surveying technology business the language or marketing analytics is completely new. He wants to be pointed in the right direction so that any future analysis is razor sharp, rather like his tech!

Register for Gateways 1,2,3. Price £497.88

Register for the course

Gateway 3: Branding & Marketing Plans

Gateway 3 considers the value of having a clear brand identity as a business differentiator and how to bring your marketing objectives together with the help of the Gateway Courses Pithy Marketing Plan (PMP).

Date: Wednesday 26 & Thursday 27 November
Start: 19.00 GMT
Duration: 90 mins

Session 5: Brand & Brand Identity

This session teaches you what to consider when it comes to creating a brand with a memorable and distinct personality as well as the different ways that a brand is perceived and valued.

We explore:

  • The component parts that give a business a strong brand identity
  • How brand identity differs from brand fingerprint and brand equity
  • Why solid core values are the foundation behind sustainable and ethical brands
  • What happens when a brand loses sight of its identity
  • The component parts (and thinking) that go into creating a core identity or 'big idea'.

You’ll explore how brand personality fulfils a psychological function and discover tools and methodologies to help you begin the process of building your brand.

Lead Facilitator: Joe Pélissier

Scenario Box: Brand Identity

“When do I need to start thinking about our brand identity, and why do people say it’s important?”

Stansilav Gacev, 29, has suddenly found his mobile 24-hour delivery app, Now! gaining in popularity. As a programmer he's never given much thought to branding and what it involves. He's now convinced that giving time and thought to this area of the business is also an investment for the future.

Register for the course

Session 6: How to write a marketing plan

Session 6 provides you with the easy to use Pithy Marketing Plan (PMP) that you can complete immediately. Using some of the marketing topics discussed in other Gateway Courses the plan is a blueprint that covers the strategic, operational and tactical elements to help you increase a demand for your services.

You will clarify:

  • Market research needed
  • Your target audience and their customer journey
  • Your value proposition
  • Your marketing objectives in relation to your business goal
  • Strategy and tactics (and the difference between the two)
  • Actions and timescales
  • The marketing budget
  • Setting metrics and analysis review cycle

In working through the key components of a fictitious marketing plan you'll be ready to populate and execute your own.

Lead Facilitator: Sam Birkett

Scenario Box: Marketing Plan

“I need to create a marketing plan but I don’t have the time to work on one.”

Dr John Ashton, 36 is the founder of OrthoMonitor, a medical tech business that he’s developing alongside a full-time job. Whilst he knows how important marketing is to help his start-up to grow, he’s struggling to find the time other than a few hours here and there. He wants help in creating a sample marketing plan that he can stick to and guidance as to which are the most important actions to focus on.

Register for Gateways 1,2,3. Price £497.88

Register for the course

Meet Your Trainers

Joe and Sam have been delivering workshops to satisfied participants since 2022.

Joe Pélissier

With over 30 years of experience in designing and delivering award-winning, multi-format training programmes, Joe began his career in the film industry at John Cleese’s pioneering video training company, Video Arts. Today, he mentors founders aiming to scale their businesses, as well as senior directors and business owners seeking expert guidance on marketing and communication strategies. As a sought-after course designer and facilitator, Joe has collaborated with prestigious clients such as Nespresso, Gucci, European Commission, Sony PlayStation, Oxford University, and England Rugby.

CONTACT: joe@gatewaycourses.co.uk
LINKEDIN: www.linkedin.com/in/joe-pelissier/

Sam Birkett

Sam has a strong connection to education, having worked in the sector for over 20 years and being married to a nationally recognised English teacher. He previously led marketing for open enrollment programmes at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, before founding his own consultancy focused on executive education, innovation management, and professional services. Since then, he has collaborated with institutions like LSE, UCL, and the University of Oxford, as well as professional service and online education brands. Additionally, he runs a murder mystery business that engages participants ranging from students to chief justices, reflecting his passion for facilitation and discovery.

CONTACT: sam@gatewaycourses.co.uk
LINKEDIN: www.linkedin.com/in/sambirkett

Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us Sam and Joe ❤️ love the insights!

Melbourne Innovation Centre

Loan Kien, Founder @ Dième Agency / Business Mentor

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Next Gateway Courses Cohorts:

Gateway 1: 21 & 22 January 2026
Gateway 2: 26 & 27 January 2026
Gateway 3: 28 & 29 January 2026

About Gateway Courses

Gateway Courses is a provider of training courses that specialise in helping founders, business owners and intrapreneurs to grow a business via a better understanding of marketing and branding. Based in Oxford, Gateway Courses is the trading name of Pélissier Communications Ltd in partnership with Amiable Marketing & Consulting Ltd.

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