Before you spend more on marketing, find out what's actually holding it back.
Ten categories, graded A through F, on your business and on your closest competitors. Then, if you have systems and a team behind it, we go inside and find the root cause.
Start with a conversation →You are spending on marketing. Maybe a lot, maybe a little. What you cannot do is draw a straight line from that spending to the customers you got.
So you ask around, and the answers do not agree:
- “The website looks fine to me.”
- “We are on social, we post regularly.”
- “We tried ads. Did not really do anything.”
- “Our competitor is everywhere. I do not know how they are doing it.”
- “Someone told me we need SEO. Someone else said we need to be on LinkedIn.”
- And if you have a team or an agency: “Sales says the leads are not qualified. Marketing says sales is not working them.”
Every one of those is a real observation from where that person sits. None of them tells you where the money is going.
You cannot see your own business the way a customer does.
You know what you sell, what makes you good at it, and why someone should choose you. All of that lives in your head, and some of it never made it onto your website, your listings, or anywhere else a buyer looks.
The version of your business a stranger encounters - which is rarely the version you think you are presenting.
They are making their own case, and you have probably never looked at it side by side with yours in any structured way.
If you bought software, hired someone, or brought in an agency, you now have a system. Systems drift. Things get half-configured and knowledge walks out the door.
The result is the same at every size: money going in, and no clear line to customers coming out.
An agency will find a campaign problem. A recruiter will find a hiring problem. A systems integrator will find a platform problem. Right now, nearly everyone will find an AI problem — because AI is what they're selling this year.
None of them are being dishonest. They're each looking at your business through the one lens they own.
We've worked across marketing, sales, operations, HR, product marketing, and account management, in ten industries, over eighteen years. That's not a credential we're listing for its own sake. It's the reason we can tell you it's a process problem when it's a process problem, even though the process work isn't the biggest engagement on our menu — and the reason we'll tell you when AI isn't your answer, which is more often than the market currently suggests.
Two phases. The second one scales to your business.
Phase one — the outside view
This part applies to every business, whether you have a marketing team or you are the whole department. We look at your business the way a prospective customer would.
Ten categories, each graded A through F, each with a priority rating:
Technical health and performance
How fast it loads, and what's slowing it down.
Mobile experience and usability
How it behaves where most of your buyers actually are.
Accessibility
Whether people using assistive technology can use it at all.
Search and discoverability
Whether you show up when someone looks for what you sell.
Brand messaging and content
Whether a stranger can tell what you do and why it should be you.
Traffic flow and conversion
Where visitors go, and where they fall off.
Reputation and reviews
What's being said, and whether you're doing anything with it.
Social and digital ecosystem
Presence, consistency, and whether it connects back to you.
Analytics and instrumentation
Whether you can measure any of the above.
Local and third-party listings
Google Business Profile, directories, and whether your details agree.
Each category comes back with a grade, a set of specific findings, why each one matters, and what to do about it.
And the same assessment is run on your closest competitors. That is standard, not an add-on. You see their grades next to yours - where they are ahead, where they are vulnerable, and where the opening is.
Phase two — the inside view
This part scales to what you have. If there are no platforms and no team, there is nothing to dig into and we will not pretend otherwise - phase one is the assessment, and it costs less accordingly.
If you do have systems and people behind the marketing, this is where the root cause usually lives.
- The platforms you're paying for, and what fraction of them you actually use
- How a lead travels from first contact to customer - and where it stops
- Whether the data reconciles, and whether anyone trusts the reporting enough to decide from it
- What your dashboards show leadership, and whether it's the thing they need to see
- Who owns what, where ownership is unclear, and whether the people doing the work have the direction and skills the job requires
The reason things are not working, named specifically - a people problem, a process problem, or a platform problem - rather than a guess.
What's in the deliverable
- A graded scorecard - all ten categories, A through F, with a priority rating on each so you know what is urgent and what can wait
- Findings tables - for every category: what we found, why it matters, and what to do about it
- The competitive comparison - your closest competitors graded on the same ten categories, side by side with you
- Quick wins, called out separately - the things worth doing this week, usually at no cost
- A phased implementation plan - what to fix first, second, and later, and why in that order
- Phase two findings where they apply - the root cause named as a people, process, or platform problem
- A clear answer on whether you need outside help at all, and what kind
- Fixed fee, agreed before any work begins. No hourly billing, no scope creep.
- Timeline depends on how much there is to look at - a business with one website and a Facebook page is a different exercise than one running four platforms and a team.
- Both the fee and the schedule are agreed up front.
- The assessment is yours. If you take it and execute it internally, that is a good outcome.
If AI readiness is a question you are carrying, we scope it in. If it is not, we will not manufacture it.
You should know what you're walking into, so here it is plainly.
Sometimes an assessment ends with a recommendation that we're the right partner for the next phase. Sometimes it ends with “hire a marketing operations manager and here's the job description.” Sometimes it ends with “your marketing is fine, your pricing is the problem.”
All three are successful outcomes. The assessment is a fixed-fee deliverable that stands on its own, and you're under no obligation past it.
Built for a specific situation, not a specific size.
- You are spending on marketing and cannot connect it to customers
- You do not know how you compare to the businesses you are competing against
- Growth has flattened in a way that feels structural rather than seasonal
- You are about to make a real investment - a hire, an agency, a new website, a platform - and want to be right about it
- You have systems or people in place and suspect something underneath is not working
- You have gotten conflicting advice from people you trust
You want someone to execute campaigns - this is diagnosis, not production
You already know exactly what is wrong and need hands to fix it
You want validation for a decision you have already made
You have not started marketing at all yet - there is nothing to assess, and Executive Advisory is a better first conversation
Current work
Kirk Trucking & Forestry Recycling
No website. No Google Business Profile. A social account and branding that was mid at best. The assessment found that customers looking for what they do could not find them at all, and that the business had not yet defined which services it wanted to sell or who it wanted to sell them to. That came first; the website came after.
New England's Tap House Grille Restaurant Group
Four brands with no cohesion between them, web properties that had drifted apart, and social accounts nobody could get into and nothing was posting from. The assessment surfaced problems well past marketing - file storage and password management among them. We found the full list, fixed it, and then trained and coached the staff so it stays fixed.
Z Car Club Association
Fourteen years building a forty-thousand-member community and a partnership with Nissan North America, on essentially no budget.
Where the pattern was learned
In three very different organizations at scale, the growth constraint turned out to be identical: the demand was already visible in the data, and nothing was set up to act on it.
At Newforma, contact data was arriving at too low a resolution to be useful - raising that fidelity and segmenting around genuine buying behavior increased qualified leads by 289%.
At Cell Signaling Technology, identifying which contacts were actually in research and consideration based on site behavior became the company's first global program of its kind.
At Southern New Hampshire University, closing gaps in the nurturing process contributed to enrollment growth from 90,000 to 120,000.
A university, an antibody manufacturer, and a software company - and it shows up the same way in a twelve-person contractor, just smaller.
Questions people ask before the assessment
Do I need to have marketing systems in place for this to be worth it?
No. Phase one - the external view and the competitive comparison - applies to any business with a website and customers. If there are no platforms behind it, there is nothing to dig into and the assessment is shorter and cheaper accordingly. We would rather tell you that than invent a second phase.
What do you actually look at?
Ten categories, externally: technical performance, mobile experience, accessibility, search and discoverability, brand messaging and content, traffic flow and conversion, reputation and reviews, social and the wider digital ecosystem, analytics, and local and third-party listings. Each is graded A through F with a priority rating, and your closest competitors are graded on the same ten. Internally, where it applies: your platforms and how much of them you use, how a lead travels from first contact to sale, whether the reporting reconciles, what leadership's dashboards show, and whether the people doing the work have the direction they need.
How is this different from an SEO audit?
An SEO audit tells you about search. This looks at the whole path from a stranger noticing you to a customer coming back - and at the systems and people behind it. Search is one of the ten categories.
How long does it take?
It depends on how much there is to look at. A business with a website and a Facebook page is a different exercise than one running four platforms with a team. Both the fee and the timeline are agreed before anything starts.
Is the assessment just a sales pitch for a bigger engagement?
It is a fixed-fee deliverable that stands on its own, and you are under no obligation past it. A meaningful share of assessments end with a recommendation that does not involve us at all.
Find out what's actually wrong.
Start with a conversation - 30 minutes, no cost, no pitch. Tell us what you're seeing and we'll tell you whether an assessment is the right next step or whether something simpler would do. If it isn't a fit, we'll say so.
Schedule a discovery call →