The Marketing Report Card
You pay for marketing every month, in payroll or in retainer. This is the report card nobody hands you: five letter grades, an honest verdict, and the first move to make about it.
- Grades your in-house team or your agency, your pick
- No email needed to see the grades
- Verdicts come with the playbook, not just the letter
dimensions graded 3
possible verdicts, none of them vague 120+
client engagements behind the rubric
Why a report card and not an audit
Grades force honesty
An audit produces forty pages nobody reads. A letter grade produces an argument at the next exec meeting, which is the point.
Five dimensions that predict
Strategy ownership, pipeline accountability, shipping speed, value for money, and results trend. Across 120+ client engagements and my own P&L, these five told me the ending.
A verdict with a playbook
Keep, renegotiate, or replace for agencies. Invest, restructure, or add leadership for teams. Each comes with the first move.
Fair questions
Isn't grading my own team a bit brutal?
Kinder than the alternative, which is replacing people because nobody diagnosed the system around them. Most weak grades trace to structure and leadership, not talent. The verdict logic is built to catch exactly that.
My agency will hate this.
Good agencies grade well and love clients who think this way. If your agency would hate this scorecard, that itself is data.
What happens with my email?
You get the full report with the matching playbook: a renegotiation script, a transition checklist, or a coaching plan. No drip sequence, no fake countdowns.
Who decided the rubric?
Me, from founding and running a 120-client marketing company and sitting on the buyer's side of it as an operator. It's judgment codified, not industry benchmarks, and the reasoning shows its work on every grade.