You wouldn't build a client's portfolio before discovery. Goals, timeline, risk tolerance, you need the full picture first. We work the same way.
The audit is our discovery. We learn the firm before we touch the marketing. Then we build only what the audit proves you need.
Ready to get started? Grab some time on our calendar.
You can't fix an operation you haven't diagnosed. Reshuffle the team before you understand the bottleneck, and you've just moved the bottleneck. Buy a channel before you've defined the strategy, and you've just spent the budget faster.
The audit is what makes every decision after it defensible, because it runs on evidence instead of instinct. Building strategy before diagnosing the problem is how firms spend money making the same mistakes faster.
A structured, scored evaluation of your entire marketing function: strategy, operations, and output. We look at how the work gets done, not just what's going out the door.
Three documents. No filler decks. Everything specific enough to act on or hand to your team.
Executive summary followed by findings organized by function: organizational structure, content gaps, CRM and data infrastructure, communications, compliance and approval processes. Each finding includes evidence, risks, and quick wins. Written so your CFO can read it, not just your marketing lead.
A strategic measurement framework organized by marketing pillar: brand authority, content systems, demand generation, sales enablement. Each pillar has KPIs with current state, benchmarks, and definitions. Built as a living tool you update quarterly, not a snapshot that expires.
A prioritized breakdown by channel and function: email, web, paid, PR, social. Each section has concrete next steps specific enough to assign and KPIs to track against. The "here's what to do first, second, and third" document.
Some clients take the audit and execute on their own. Most want us to build what's next.
We start by aligning your marketing goals to your business goals: growth targets, distribution strategy, competitive positioning, where leadership wants the firm in 18 months. Every recommendation, every deliverable, every system we build works backward from that.
What that looks like is different for every firm, because it's built entirely around what the audit uncovers and where the business is headed. The goal isn't comprehensiveness. It's efficiency. The fastest path from where your marketing is to where it needs to be.
Brand foundation, core narrative, differentiators, voice and tone. The strategic layer everything else gets built on.
Digital, paid media, earned media, email, each with its own plan tied to your business model and distribution strategy. Not a generic playbook.
An anchor-and-spoke content model that turns one piece of strategic thinking into usable content across every channel. Your team stops creating from scratch.
Org structure recommendations, roles matrix, insource vs. outsource decisions, campaign briefs and workflow templates. The layer most firms never build.
Some clients take the strategy and run it with their internal team. Others don't have, and don't want to hire, the senior marketing leader it takes to keep a new strategy from quietly falling apart by Q3.
That's what Run is for. TWLC operates your marketing function month over month: strategy stays live, execution gets managed, and a senior operator sits in the room with your leadership. The strategy you paid for keeps working.
A 30-minute call to understand where your business is, what's happening with your marketing, and whether the audit makes sense as a starting point.
A marketing audit is a structured evaluation of your entire marketing function across six dimensions: positioning, content, channels, team structure, technology, and sales alignment. It runs 2–3 weeks and produces three deliverables, a Marketing Audit Report, a KPI Scorecard, and an Opportunity Map with prioritized recommendations. It assesses how the operation runs, not just what it produces.
Pricing is scoped to the engagement and depends on company size and complexity, so we discuss it on the intro call rather than publish a fixed rate. The audit is a fixed-scope diagnostic, a defined deliverable on a defined timeline, not an open-ended retainer.
An outsourced CMO provides senior marketing leadership, setting strategy, building systems, and connecting marketing to revenue, without the cost of a full-time executive hire. During an engagement we operate at that level: we audit the function, define what leadership it actually needs, then build and direct the strategy. Because we start with the diagnosis, the leadership is aimed at the right problem.
The audit diagnoses; the strategy build fixes. The audit tells you what's working, what's broken, and where the opportunities are. The strategy build closes the gap the audit identifies: positioning, messaging, channel plans, and the operational systems to run them. We always audit first, because building strategy before diagnosing the problem is how firms spend money making the same mistakes faster.
The clearest signal is an inflection point, an acquisition, a leadership change, rapid growth, or a contraction, paired with marketing that hasn't caught up. The second signal is spend without answers: six figures a year going out the door with no one able to connect it to revenue. If there are people executing but no one setting direction, that's the gap an audit is built to find.
Maybe, but not before you know what the role would actually be solving. We don't sell a fractional CMO title. During an engagement we operate at the marketing leadership level: setting direction, building systems, connecting marketing to the business. The audit comes first because it defines what kind of leadership the function actually needs, rather than defaulting to a hire.