The things owners ask before they invest in me.
Because neither of us should commit to a year on a conversation. The first thirty days produce things you can hold, the visibility audit, the spend audit, a signed commercial narrative, and the list of problems we agreed to solve, and at the end of them we both know whether this is going to work.
It is a diagnostic with a decision at the end, and it is not refundable. If either of us says no, you keep everything I produced and owe nothing further. If we both say yes, the year begins on the same terms, $8,000 a month.
Yes, and so can I. At day thirty we meet, look at the deliverables, and each decide whether to continue. Either of us can say no for any reason, in writing, within five business days of that meeting. You keep the work. There is no penalty and nobody has to call it a failure.
Marketing is a long play, and it's probabilistic. Anyone who promises you a set number of leads by a set date is selling something other than marketing. What I can stand behind is the work, and thirty days is enough for both of us to see it.
After month three, either of us can end the engagement with thirty days' written notice. You keep everything you have paid for. Months two and three are committed, because that is when the strategy map and the business rules get built, and stopping in the middle of those leaves you with half a foundation.
Usually not. If your agency is good, the problem is rarely the agency. It is that nobody on your side is telling them what to do, so they fill the gap with whatever they happen to sell. My job is to give them a plan to work against, and to get you asking better questions of them.
If the agency is not good, I will say so, and I will help you vet and hire one that is.
Then they are usually the best part of this. Most marketers I meet inside mid-market manufacturers are capable people who were never given a system, a set of definitions, or a budget they could defend. A year of this turns a doer into someone who can run the function.
If you already have a marketing director, you probably do not need me. That person should be doing this work, and hiring me to do their job is an expensive way to find out whether they can.
No. Anyone who does is selling something other than marketing.
What I will commit to is that by month twelve you can say where your marketing money goes, what it produces, and what you would cut first. That is a harder thing to promise and an easier one to check.
Everything built during the year is documented and handed to named owners on your team. You get an engagement report that puts month one next to month twelve, with the spend audit rerun against the year's actuals.
Then you decide whether a second year earns its fee, from evidence rather than from how the year felt.
One of two things must be true. Either the map is missing an assumption and we change the map together, because a map that cannot absorb a real business need is the wrong map. Or the request sits outside the engagement and becomes a separately priced project.
There is no third answer, and that is deliberate. It is what keeps the year from turning into a queue of whatever showed up most recently.
Whatever spend records you have, in whatever shape they are in. Access to your website, CRM and analytics. And a few hours from you and your sales leader for the narrative interviews, which are the only part of the first thirty days I cannot do without you in the room.
If your question isn't here, ask it directly. I'd rather answer it before you book than during the call.
Doug Jones