The P&L target is usually clear: CAC has to come down, the agency line is too high, or a proposed commitment has to earn its place in the plan. What is harder to judge from the finance seat is what each marketing commitment actually delivers, whether the internal marketing team can assess its own agencies and structure objectively, and what the business would lose by cutting it. Marketing Advisory brings marketing due diligence to those decisions: the marketing and operating judgment that makes the qualitative implications as clear as the financial ones.
What will the change actually do to profitability?
A vendor fee can disappear while replacement cost appears elsewhere. A reduction in marketing activity can affect contribution as well as expense. A payment moved into another period can help cash flow without reducing the annual cost base.
A useful recommendation distinguishes these effects, explains the evidence and makes uncertainty visible before a figure becomes part of the plan.
Recurring expense
What can stop, and what must replace it?
Timing
When can the change take effect, given commitments and transition needs?
Business impact
What happens to revenue, contribution and essential capability?
Two defined mandates
Marketing Decision Diligence
Derisk critical marketing decisions
For one consequential operating decision: an agency renewal, a defined media increase, a platform commitment or an insource-versus-outsource choice. The diligence examines the proposal, the alternatives and the assumptions that determine whether it makes sense for the company, including the qualitative questions a P&L view cannot answer: is this agency actually good, and can the team deliver without it.
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.
Marketing Cost Analysis
Cost savings across the whole marketing P&L
For a profitability mandate across the whole marketing P&L, not media alone: agencies, specialists, technology, production, media and the split of work between internal and external teams. The analysis identifies the cost savings the business can responsibly take, the implications of each change and the evidence behind the recommendation.
The output includes a cost map, assessment scorecard, Savings Register and executive recommendation. Depth and material areas of investigation are agreed in advance.
Starting at $20,000, depending on the size and complexity of the marketing P&L.
For CFOs
Finance already has the numbers. You can see the agency line, the CAC trend and the gap to plan. What the numbers do not show is the operating meaning of a change: whether the agency is any good, whether the internal team can absorb the work, whether a reduced scope is still viable, and which cuts would quietly take revenue with them.
The internal marketing team is rarely the right judge of its own vendors and structure, and a finance view of marketing metrics does not extend to assessing an agency’s skills or a plan’s dependencies. The engagement supplies that judgment from someone who has run consumer marketing P&Ls and owned an agency. Finance keeps ownership of the plan; the marketing team contributes what it knows about execution; the recommendation is one both functions can examine and use.
Fractional CFOs can also introduce a client situation where specialist marketing judgment would complement their work.
For private-equity operating partners
A portfolio-company plan usually assumes cost reductions and continued revenue performance at the same time. Those assumptions have to be tested together: removing a capability can change what the company is able to deliver, and an inherited commitment can consume resources the business needs elsewhere. A DTC leadership team can read its marketing metrics; what the plan needs is an operator’s read on which commitments the growth actually depends on.
A cut that damages the growth engine costs more at exit than it saves this year, and an inherited commitment that nobody has examined is a liability the next buyer will price. Start with the company-level decision and the management sponsor. Each engagement is scoped for that company’s cost base or particular commitment, with a recommendation management can assess and act on, and a fee agreed before findings exist.
These engagements concern operating decisions. Comprehensive acquisition diligence and portfolio-wide mandates require separate consideration and are not included in the standard engagements.
A recommendation you can examine
The conclusion needs enough reasoning to withstand questions from Finance, management and the board. Depending on the mandate, it should make clear:
- What the evidence supports and which assumptions remain unresolved.
- Which costs could be removed, including replacement and transition effects.
- When the change could affect the plan and what it depends on.
- What the company could lose or put at risk by making the change.
Identified opportunities are not guaranteed realized savings. Reinvesting released budget is a separate management choice, not expense returned to the bottom line.
How the engagement works
Start with a framing conversation
Thirty minutes, no preparation or confidential material needed. We take the question in front of you, a cost mandate, an agency renewal, a proposed commitment, 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 an engagement follows; if it does, the scope, deliverables and fee are agreed there.
Dissect the question with you
The engagement opens with a working session with the sponsor and management: an hour on a single decision, or two hours on the 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 from the finance seat.
Acquisition due diligence asks whether a business is worth buying. Marketing Decision Diligence asks whether one marketing commitment is worth making at a company you already own or run: the agency renewal, the platform contract, the media increase. It is marketing due diligence at the level of a single operating decision, with the fee agreed before findings exist. Assessing a target’s marketing function as part of commercial diligence in a transaction is a different scope, and can be discussed on the framing conversation.
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 the management team and how quickly financial records and contracts arrive. Both start with the 30-minute framing conversation, which can happen this week.
A sponsor who owns the decision, usually the CEO or CFO, and access to the people who do the work: the marketing lead, the finance team and, where relevant, the agency. Marketing contributes what it knows about execution and dependencies; Finance keeps ownership of the plan. The recommendation is written so both functions, and the board, can examine it.
Each engagement ends with a recommendation management can act on. If the company needs 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 experience with
operating responsibility
The services draw on Liz Dolinski’s background in consumer growth leadership, agency ownership and P&L responsibility: both sides of the agency invoice, and the operating seat where marketing plans are built, sold and delivered. Experience in consumer finance, together with an MBA from Duke Fuqua, also informs the assessment of financial implications.
Not ready to talk? Start with the checklist
A portfolio company will have a decision like this in front of it again within the year. The Marketing Decision Checklist is the ten questions to ask before any agency, platform or resource commitment, written so management can put them to their own team before they 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.