Melbourne · Australia-Wide · Est. 2006

We coach you to make marketing decisions that make sense.

Not another agency. Not another consultant who disappears after handing you a strategy. A coach who teaches you the questions that unlock smart marketing — so you leave every conversation more capable, not more dependent.

Dan MacInnis — MacInnis Marketing
Fellow
Australian
Marketing Institute
Clear plans Straight answers Real results
The story

Built from a belief, not a business plan.

MacInnis Marketing started in 2006, when Danielle MacInnis decided not to go back. After more than eight years as a senior product manager at Hewlett-Packard, and the birth of her son Lachlan, she and her husband Mark made the call to build something of their own instead.

What followed was nearly two decades of working alongside small business owners across Australia — close enough to understand exactly what makes marketing feel impossible for most of them. It's not that they don't care. It's that the sector has convinced them it's too technical to master.

That's the problem MacInnis Marketing was built to fix. Not by doing the marketing for you and keeping the knowledge to themselves — but by coaching you through the decisions, teaching you the questions that unlock the right answers, and building a system that becomes yours.

The result: clients who stay — not because they have to, but because the system works and they understand it.

2006

MacInnis Marketing founded

Left corporate life at HP to start a small business marketing consultancy focused on practical, customer-centric strategy.

2010s

The coaching methodology develops

Years of working with small business owners crystallised a clear truth: they don't need more marketing — they need more confidence in their marketing decisions.

2023

Small Biz Prompt Shop launched

A sister company focused on AI education and practical prompting for small businesses — extending the same coaching model into the AI era.

2026

The manifesto

A clear market position: own the space between performance complexity and traditional jargon — where marketing becomes manageable through education, not overwhelming through execution.

The philosophy

The sector sells complexity. We sell clarity.

Performance agencies promise growth through complexity. Traditional consultants offer expertise through jargon. Everyone claims to be "customer-centric" while building client dependency on systems only they can manage.

The real enemy isn't bad marketing. It's the belief that effective marketing requires technical mastery small business owners don't have time to develop.

MacInnis Marketing owns the space between — where marketing becomes manageable through education, not overwhelming through execution. The coaching questions that unlock smart decisions. Clear plans you can follow. Answers you can actually act on.

Small business owners don't want to become marketers. They want to become confident buyers of marketing. That's what we coach.

01

Coaching over consulting

We build your capability, not our necessity. Every engagement is designed to leave you more capable of making good marketing decisions — not more reliant on us to make them for you.

02

Clarity over complexity

Marketing that makes sense beats marketing that mystifies. We coach you to ask the questions that unlock smart decisions — before AI handles the technical execution.

03

Education over execution

The identity shift we're after for every client: from frustrated marketing avoider to confident marketing decision-maker. That shift happens through understanding, not through outsourcing.

04

Response speed as respect

Marketing decisions lose momentum when answers take days. Response time measured in hours creates decision confidence when business owners need it most.

The language shift

What MacInnis Marketing no longer says — and why.

The old language of marketing consulting is designed to sound impressive. The new language is designed to be useful. Here's the swap.

The old way
Customer-centric marketing solutions
Smart strategy and expert advice
Game-changing and transformative
Technical mastery required
Complex systems only we can manage
Comprehensive multi-dimensional experiences
The MacInnis way
Marketing that makes sense
Clear plan. Straight answers.
Practical. Real results.
Simple enough to own
Systems you understand and control
One clear next step
The proof

What the numbers say.

80%

Continue beyond original scope

Not because they have to. Because the coaching model builds capability that becomes repeatable — and they choose to keep growing.

5+

Years — average client relationship

The same core clients for over five years. Client relationships that prove the model works through results, not contracts.

40+

Five-star Google reviews

From small business owners across Australia who needed marketing to finally make sense — and found that it could.

"Dan is more than a marketing consultant — she is a business coach. She cares about the whole business."
"Dan is responsive and takes a lot of information and simplifies it into a practical marketing system."
"She builds the plane and flies it in the right direction — getting the big picture right while keeping the business running."
Credentials

Experience you can rely on. Qualifications that back it up.

Dan is a Fellow of the Australian Marketing Institute — the peak marketing body in Australia — with more than 25 years of experience spanning corporate marketing at Hewlett-Packard and nearly two decades of consultancy with small businesses.

She is a certified Mailchimp Pro Partner and Klaviyo Partner, with practical expertise across HubSpot, Canva, Squarespace, and the AI tools small businesses are actually using. She also runs Small Biz Prompt Shop — Australia's practical AI education resource for small business owners.

But the credential that matters most: clients who stay for years and refer their peers.

Fellow, AMI

Australian Marketing Institute — peak marketing body

Mailchimp Pro Partner

Certified expert in email marketing strategy and execution

Klaviyo Partner

Certified in advanced email marketing and automation

AI Education

Founder of Small Biz Prompt Shop — practical AI for small business

25+ Years Experience

HP corporate + nearly 20 years in small business marketing

HubSpot Certified

Inbound marketing and CRM strategy

Ready for marketing that actually makes sense?

The starting point is a free 15-minute conversation. No pitch, no pressure — just a useful chat about where you are and what would help.

Book a Chat with Dan →
A woman pouring tea or cocoa into a cup on a wooden tray, with a plate of fried food on the table, in a cozy indoor setting.