Your agency contract is up for renewal, an expensive platform proposal is on your desk, or the board wants marketing costs down, and you need to know what will happen to the business if you say yes. Marketing Advisory gives CEOs of consumer businesses a better view of how marketing decisions will impact business performance, with the evidence, financial implications and risks made clear.
What does your business need?
Marketing Decision Diligence
Should the business make this particular change or commitment? Evidence-based diligence on one defined decision and the alternatives.
Marketing Cost Analysis
Which marketing costs can be reduced, and what would change if they were? An analysis of the whole marketing P&L, with deeper investigation of the most significant opportunities.
Marketing Decision Diligence
Derisk critical marketing decisions
Examine the decision before making the commitment.
An agency renewal, a team change or a proposed media increase can be consequential whether or not spending changes. A persuasive proposal does not establish whether the change solves the underlying problem, improves on the alternatives or can be delivered without unacceptable disruption.
Marketing Decision Diligence examines one defined marketing decision, the evidence behind it and the conditions required for it to work. The work considers the current approach, credible alternatives, full costs, operating dependencies and the risk of being wrong.
Questions that can fit
- Should we renew or change this agency relationship?
- Does the evidence justify this proposed media increase?
- Should we buy this platform or use the capability we already have?
- Should this defined activity move in-house or to an external provider?
What you receive
You’ll receive a written recommendation: proceed, proceed with conditions, test first or don’t proceed, with the reasoning, business implications, key risks and any evidence or changes needed before acting.
Starting at $6,000 for one bounded decision.
Not ready to talk? Request the Marketing Decision Checklist: ten questions to ask about any agency, platform, or resource decision before you lock it in.
Marketing Cost Analysis
Cost savings across the whole marketing P&L
Put unnecessary expense back on the bottom line.
Most cost savings exercises stop at media. Marketing Cost Analysis examines the whole marketing P&L: agencies, external specialists, technology, production, media and the way work is divided between internal and external teams. The aim is the cost savings that can be taken without damaging what the business needs.
The analysis screens the agreed cost base broadly, concentrates deeper investigation on the material opportunities, and examines what would be affected by changing each commitment, so a possible cut becomes a savings assumption only when it deserves to.
What makes a saving defensible?
Removing a vendor fee may shift work and cost onto the internal team. Reducing production may limit creative testing. A change in payment timing may help cash flow without reducing annual expense. The recommendation needs to account for those consequences before a possible cut becomes a savings assumption.
Your team contributes essential operating knowledge. Their experience is considered alongside financial records, contracts and performance evidence to determine what can reasonably change and what should remain.
What you receive
- A cost map showing the agreed marketing-related cost base.
- An assessment scorecard explaining the evidence and judgment behind material findings.
- A Savings Register setting out supported opportunities, replacement costs and when benefits could begin.
- An executive recommendation describing the changes, dependencies and risks that matter.
Starting at $20,000, depending on the size and complexity of the marketing P&L.
How the engagement works
Start with a framing conversation
Thirty minutes, no preparation or confidential material needed. We take the question you are facing, an agency renewal, a platform proposal, a cost mandate, and frame it properly: what is actually being decided, what would have to be true for each answer, and what evidence would settle it. You leave with a clearer question whether or not a review follows; if it does, the scope, deliverables and fee are agreed there.
Dissect the question with you
The engagement opens with a working session: an hour on a single decision, or two hours on your marketing P&L for a cost analysis. Together we take the framed question apart, separate what is known from what is assumed, and settle the specific assumptions the work has to test and the evidence that will test them.
Examine the evidence
Financial records, contracts, proposals and performance data are read alongside conversations with the people who do the work. The aim is to test what the numbers assume, what each activity actually supports, and what would change if it stopped, shrank or was replaced.
Review session
Liz walks you and your exec team through the findings and the written recommendation. It is written so leadership, Finance and the board can challenge it, and it is yours to act on.
Frequently Asked Questions
A few practical questions about the engagements.
A single, defined choice the business is about to make: renew or change an agency, approve a media increase, buy a platform, move an activity in-house. The scope and fee are confirmed before work begins. A multi-decision annual plan or a broad organizational review needs a different scope, which is easy to settle in the introductory conversation.
The whole marketing-related cost base agreed at the outset, not media alone: agencies, external specialists, technology, production, media and the way work is divided between internal and external teams. Entities, information requirements and depth of investigation are agreed before work begins and set the fee. Identified opportunities are not guaranteed realized savings.
Each engagement ends with a recommendation your team can act on. If you need help carrying it out, an interim or fractional CMO assignment can follow on as a separate engagement. The fee is fixed before findings exist, with no vendor commission or share of savings. Keeping an expense or leaving the current approach in place can be the right conclusion.
Marketing Decision Diligence typically runs two to three weeks from the working session to the review session, so it fits inside a renewal or approval window. Marketing Cost Analysis usually takes five to seven weeks, depending on the size of the cost base, access to your team and how quickly financial records and contracts arrive. Both start with the 30-minute framing conversation, which can happen this week.
Not ready to talk? Start with the checklist
You will have a decision like this in front of you again within the year. The Marketing Decision Checklist is the ten questions to ask before any agency, platform or resource commitment, written so you can put them to your own team before you sign. Two fields, and it is in your inbox.
Marketing Decision Checklist
Ten questions to ask about any agency, platform, or resource decision before you lock it in.
For CFOs and private-equity operating partners
Explore how these engagements support budgeting, profitability mandates and decisions at consumer portfolio companies.