From apprentice marketer to embedded marketing team
Client: Advanced Handling
The challenge
Advanced Handling is a UK manufacturer of materials-handling equipment, working across specialist sectors including aerospace and defence.
When Keystone began working with the business, its in-house marketing resource consisted of an apprentice Marketing Assistant. As a solo marketer developing their skills and experience, they had no senior marketing colleague internally to provide strategic counsel, challenge or support.
The opportunity was not to outsource marketing, but to help Advanced Handling build its own capability: providing senior strategic support while establishing a more structured, commercially focused approach to marketing across the business.
Our approach
Over three years, Keystone provided the senior marketing thinking that Advanced Handling did not yet have in-house, deliberately adapting our involvement as the internal team developed.
We started with weekly support and introduced a regular monthly marketing meeting, creating greater structure around priorities, decision-making and delivery. We worked with the team to connect marketing more closely to business growth, including a stronger focus on priority sectors and audiences, and supported the development and launch of a new website.
We also challenged existing activity where we believed it could work harder. After assessing Advanced Handling’s approach to Google Ads, we recommended a more effective approach to digital lead generation. Keystone introduced a specialist partner and coordinated the relationship, while ensuring knowledge and capability were transferred to the in-house team. Advanced Handling subsequently became able to manage its digital campaigns internally, removing the need for ongoing external management fees and saving more than £10,000 a year.
As the marketing function matured, our role changed with it. Weekly support evolved into monthly meetings and, eventually, quarterly strategic sessions focused on bigger business opportunities. These explored areas including sector targeting, the customer journey, service engagement, Salesforce segmentation and how marketing could support customers more effectively beyond the initial sale.
The final phase brought that thinking together into a clear 2026/27 marketing strategy, giving the team strategic priorities to take forward independently.
Impact
Three years on, Advanced Handling has an established in-house marketing function.
Its original apprentice marketer completed their apprenticeship with distinction, progressed to Senior Marketing Executive and now manages a Marketing Assistant completing an apprenticeship of their own. Marketing also has a regular seat at the Senior Management table.
The business has strengthened its internal digital marketing capability, reduced its reliance on external suppliers and embedded a more strategic approach to marketing.
For Keystone, that evolution is an important measure of success: our involvement reduced as Advanced Handling’s own capability grew.
Services used
- Fractional strategic marketing support
- Marketing strategy
- Team development and capability building
- Digital marketing consultancy
- Customer journey and engagement strategy
- Website strategy and development support
