Every budget cycle turns into a negotiation you shouldn't need to be having. The board asks whether you're behind, compared to whom, and what it's costing, and your own dashboards can't answer any of it.
The fix is evidence with an independent signature on it: your composite score against the sector median, every claim source-linked, every figure carrying a confidence label.
You know what's wrong with it. You've said so, repeatedly. But dev controls the roadmap, or an agency owns the build, or changing it has become a political question. What moves that conversation is an external read with weight behind it.
The numbers are fine. They were fine last quarter. None of that is producing direction. You're reporting on activity when leadership wants an argument.
You can describe what they did. What you lack is a structured way to assess whether it's working and what it means for you, before leadership asks.
A new CEO, a new board member, whoever it is: they want an honest, independent read on where marketing actually stands before backing a plan. You can't run that audit yourself. You're inside it.
Composite digital marketing score
A comparison your dashboards cannot produce: they only see your own channels.
The diagnostic. An independent, scored read of marketing performance across six weighted dimensions, benchmarked against the sector median composite. Findings are written for leadership. The output is a document you can put on a desk, or forward to the board unedited.
The brief for your agency. The same document works as the brief you hand your agency: scored gaps, prioritised fixes, sources attached. It sharpens the relationship without replacing it.
The stakeholder narrative. The deck for the board, the story for the next planning round. The framing that turns "marketing ran some campaigns" into "marketing built a system that compounds".
Fractional capacity. Where the need is continuity, I work inside the team part-time: planning sessions, competitive reads, and the narrative leadership hears.
Explore the BriefFifteen minutes. Bring the question leadership keeps asking; I'll tell you what evidence would answer it and how fast it can exist.