Founder-led B2B digital growth + MarTech consultancy
Turn marketing into a commercial growth engine.
I help global B2B and professional-services businesses connect digital experience, Marketo, CRM, search, data and AI — so more of the demand they create becomes pipeline, revenue and action.
15+ years in B2B growthGlobal experienceFrom startup to enterprise
Platform experience
AdobeSalesforceMicrosoftand more
The real constraint
The problem is rarely a lack of tools. It’s the gaps between them.
Marketing builds the website. Operations runs Marketo. Sales lives in CRM. Data sits somewhere else. Then AI arrives as another pilot. The result is plenty of activity, but no coherent commercial system.
01
Demand is created, but not identified.
High-value behaviour gets lost in generic reporting and disconnected journeys.
02
Leads are scored, but not trusted.
Qualification, routing and ownership do not match how the business actually sells.
03
Signals exist, but sales cannot act on them.
Data reaches the CRM without the context a frontline team needs.
04
Reporting shows activity, not commercial impact.
Marketing cannot clearly connect investment to pipeline, revenue or behaviour change.
Where I help
Strategy, architecture and delivery — without the usual hand-off gap.
The work can start with a single platform problem or a wider growth challenge. Either way, the aim is the same: make the technology, process and commercial team work as one system.
01
Adobe Marketo Engage & MarTech architecture
Make Marketo the operational backbone — not an expensive email tool.
Architecture and instance reviews, lifecycle design, scoring, routing, CRM integration, governance, reporting and the operating model around the platform.
Turn the website from a publishing estate into a measurable demand engine.
Website strategy, requirements, form and lead-capture journeys, content operations, governance, personalisation, analytics and conversion — across platforms such as AEM, Sitecore and WordPress.
Understand how customers discover, compare and find your business across search engines and AI.
SEO and answer engine optimisation across traditional search and AI assistants: technical foundations, content opportunity, structured data, competitor analysis and measurement, supported by tools including Semrush.
Use AI where it changes a commercial workflow — not simply where it demos well.
AI lead intelligence, behavioural-signal interpretation, Marketo and CRM workflows, proof-of-concept design, vendor assessment and responsible scaling into day-to-day work.
Lead intelligenceSignal summariesCRM workflowsProof of conceptScale + adoption
06
Digital operating models & fractional leadership
Connect the strategy to the people, process and governance needed to make it stick.
Senior advisory support for transformation roadmaps, global and local operating models, team design, capability building, vendors, measurement and interim leadership.
Digital roadmapOperating modelTeam + capabilityVendor strategyFractional support
What sets the work apart
Depth, not theatre.
I don’t just commission marketing systems. I architect them — then bridge them into the business.
Strategic enough for the leadership table.
Start with growth, operating-model and commercial outcomes — not a platform feature list.
Technical enough to get into the mechanics.
Data, integrations, scoring, routing, content, measurement and AI workflows.
Commercial enough to know when it works.
The job is not finished until the capability changes behaviour and creates value.
Selected experience
Built in complex, global environments — from startup to enterprise.
These are outcomes delivered in previous in-house leadership roles, not claims about Arena Digital client work.
324%growth in leads through a rebuilt global digital engagement model
Global experiencedigital and MarTech leadership across international B2B and professional-services businesses
From startup to enterpriseexperience building growth systems at different levels of scale and maturity
2,000+frontline users reached by AI-enabled lead intelligence
From behaviour to sales-ready context
Designed AI lead intelligence that translated Marketo behavioural signals into concise, actionable context for frontline teams. The point was not the AI itself; it was making the next commercial action clearer, faster and easier to take.
RN
Founder
Robert Nicholson
Digital growth · MarTech · AI
A strategist, architect and bridge
Between marketing, technology and sales.
I’ve spent 15+ years leading digital and marketing transformation across global B2B and professional-services businesses, including Robert Walters and Korn Ferry.
At my best, I sit between the CMO, the platform team and the frontline commercial organisation — translating between them, designing the system and making sure new capability becomes new behaviour.
Arena Digital is intentionally founder-led and hands-on. I can work independently, alongside an internal team, or with agency and technology partners where a broader delivery model is needed.
Previously served on Adobe’s B2B Customer Advisory Board for Marketo
Previously served on LinkedIn’s Customer Advisory Board
Three-time judge for B2B Marketing awards programmes
Marketo Masters finalist; led award-winning Marketo teams
How I work
Start with the commercial failure. Build only what fixes it.
No giant discovery phase for its own sake. No hand-off deck that dies in SharePoint. The work should create a clear decision, a working capability or both.
01
Find the constraint
Separate symptoms from the real commercial, process or technology problem.
02
Design the system
Map the experience, data, decisions, ownership and measurement end to end.
03
Build the critical path
Prioritise the smallest set of changes that unlocks meaningful value.
04
Embed the behaviour
Train, govern and measure until the capability works without heroics.
Ways to engage
Clear scopes. Senior attention. Useful outputs.
Focused diagnostic
Audit & roadmap
A clear assessment of what is working, what is not, the risks, the opportunities and the order in which to act.
Defined delivery
Transformation sprint
A bounded project to design and establish a capability such as lead management, Marketo optimisation, lifecycle or AI sales intelligence.
Ongoing leadership
Fractional advisory
Senior support for a CMO, Digital Director, Growth leader or transformation team without adding a permanent role.
Bring me the messy version
The stack that doesn’t join up. The funnel nobody trusts. The AI pilot without a use case.
That is usually where the useful work starts. Arena Digital is based in London and works with B2B and professional-services teams in the UK and internationally.