Ideal for Marketing Managers who are looking to be more strategic in their marketing and in developing and supporting their teams
AMA’s Strategic Marketing Retreats are intensive residentials that take your marketing, strategy and leadership skills to the next level.
The Intermediate Retreat will help you understand how to set strategy for audience development, integrated marketing activities and impactful analysis. It’s ideal if you’re at manager-level and want to equip yourself for new challenges. It’s a great way to super-charge your strategic marketing abilities, and will also provide you with insight into how to develop your role as a manager or team leader.
Is the Intermediate Retreat right for you?
- Are you experienced in marketing campaigns and tactics but want to become more strategic?
- Would you like to understand more about brand guardianship and audience focus?
- Do you want to learn how to motivate your team and support their professional development?
If the answer is “yes”, then this Retreat is for you.
If you’re in a more senior role, our Advance level Retreat — ideal for senior practitioners who want to become CEOs or better support their CEO — will be taking place in September 2026. Find out more about the Advance level Retreat.
Booking opening soon
Early Bird Member rate: £995 + VAT
Available until 10 December 2027
Standard Member rate: £1,295 + VAT
Non-member rate: £1,495 + VAT
Booking opening soon
Questions?
If you have any questions about the Intermediate Retreat, please email: sophie@a-m-a.co.uk
Timings and location
The Intermediate Retreat takes place from Wednesday 10 February 2027 — Friday 12 February 2027 at Holiday Inn, Leicester.
Delegates will need to arrive at 2:45pm for a 3:00pm start on 11 February. The Retreat will end at 4:15pm on 13 February. Your accommodation, refreshments and meals are included as part of your ticket cost.
If you have any accessibility requests or dietary requirements, please email sophie@a-m-a.co.uk
Location:
Holiday Inn Leicester
129 St Nicholas Circle
Leicester
LE1 5LX
Topics covered
Over two and a half days you will have the opportunity to hear from sector experts, work on practical application, and connect with peers. Many Retreat delegates stay in contact long after the programme has ended.
Driving your mission and being a brand guardian
You will look at your organisation’s Vision and Mission and explore how to articulate the brand. You will examine your role in that picture and how brand is owned across the organisation with consistency, ultimately understanding how to create a marketing strategy that’s aligned to mission and brand.
Building the foundations of your marketing strategy
You will explore why analysis is important and how it acts as the first step in devising strategy. What intelligence do you need to inform your marketing strategy? What tools and models can you use to make this as informative as possible?
Covering internal and external analysis, including PEST, SWOT and TOWS, you will have the opportunity to try out the tools and start to gather the intelligence needed to inform your marketing strategy.
Understanding your management style
Together we will explore the idea of Management Repertoire so that you can understand the range of management styles available to you. This will enable you to identify your management strengths and the areas that need to be developed to access a range of management styles, depending on what the situation requires.
Audience focus
Delving into what an audience-focused organisation looks like, you will gain insight into the complexities of different systems of segmentation and consider what’s right for you. You’ll discover how to use what you know about your audiences in your marketing strategy, and the importance of getting targeting right.
The Marketing Mix
You will identify how to use the 4Ps (Product, Price, Place and Promotion) to achieve your strategic objectives, feel confident with where the 4Ps feature in creating your marketing strategy, understand budgeting at Head of Department level, and how to approach evaluation.
Being an inclusive manager
This facilitated small group discussion will allow you to understand what being an inclusive manager really means in your context. It will provide an opportunity to explore with others the practical and structural challenges to being truly inclusive and what kind of management skills are needed to start to work on these complex challenges.
Managing others
You will explore team communication styles, to help you understand what kind of management motivates different people and how to get the best out of others. You will explore the psychology of influencing and persuasion, and develop practical tools for having difficult conversations.
Setting your objectives and applying your strategy
Learn how to identify the right objectives for your organisation; set objectives you can report on/are useful; understand how to measure those objectives; understand where they fit and their purpose in the marketing strategy. You will also learn how to use situational analysis, objectives and sources of knowledge about your audiences to build your marketing strategy.
Peer sharing
This activity is a space to reflect on the biggest challenges and opportunities you currently face, and take a fresh look at these in light of what you have learnt during the Retreat.
Impact
Intermediate Retreats create strategic marketers and emerging leaders. Delegates add value to their organisations through the skills and insights acquired during the programme.
This leads to more impact in their roles, as they support their organisation’s marketing activities to move forward from tactical and reactive, to strategic and integrated.
“I really enjoyed the retreat — I found it invaluable both professionally and personally. You come away with lots of practical skills to take back to your role but arguably more importantly, I came away with lots of personal takeaways from discussions with likeminded colleagues who were in a similar career stage as me.
Pippa Lodge, Email Marketing Manager, Royal Ballet and Opera
“I valued loads of things from the retreat. The practical, building blocks learning around brand/objectives etc. The personal focus with Auriel. The communal meal and break times to facilitate networking/connection. Sharing work challenges with colleagues.
It is worth the investment if you can make it work! Throw yourself in, turn off your email and phone and give yourself the headspace to learn. But prepare to be very tired on your train home, it’s a full on 48 hours!
Bethany Lyne, Project Manager, Cornwall 365
