Marketing operations consulting for teams running marketing in-house
Marketing operations consulting is senior external review for a company already running its own marketing. We audit the channels, funnel, spend, tracking and tooling, identify where revenue is leaking, and return a written plan for what to fix and in what order. Your team keeps executing. We supply the direction.
The audit
What does a marketing operations audit actually cover?
An audit covers the whole operation, not one channel. We go through the accounts, the data and the tooling directly rather than working from a questionnaire, then write up what we find in plain language with a recommended sequence.
- Channels and spend. Every active channel, what it costs, what it returns, and whether it should still be running.
- Funnel and lifecycle. How a lead is captured, qualified, routed and followed up, and where people drop out of that sequence.
- Messaging and positioning. Whether the offer is stated clearly enough for a buyer to self-qualify, and whether it is consistent across channels.
- Tracking and attribution. What is actually being measured, what is being measured incorrectly, and what is not being measured at all.
- Stack and tooling. What you pay for, what is configured, what is integrated, and what is being paid for but not used.
- Team, workflow and process. Who owns what, where work queues up, and which steps depend on one person.
The output is a written document with findings, priorities and a sequence. Not a slide deck.
The pattern
Where does marketing usually break in a 10 to 100 person company?
The same three failures come up repeatedly, and none of them are caused by the team working badly.
Ownership is split across vendors
An SEO agency, a paid media agency, a content freelancer and a web developer each optimize their own slice. Nobody is accountable for the number at the end, and no single person can see the whole funnel.
Execution runs without a system
The team is busy and producing work, but the work is not sequenced against a plan. Output is high and compounding is low, because nothing builds on what came before.
Measurement stops at the lead
Leads are counted, but not tied to qualification or closed revenue. That makes it impossible to tell an expensive channel that works from a cheap one that does not.
33%
The share of their martech stack’s capabilities marketers reported using, according to Gartner’s 2023 Marketing Technology Survey. Gartner
6 to 10
Decision makers in a typical B2B buying group for a complex purchase, per Gartner’s research on the B2B buying journey. Gartner
7.7%
Average marketing budget as a share of total company revenue in Gartner’s 2024 CMO Spend Survey. Gartner
Automation
Which marketing work is worth automating, and which is not?
The test is whether the work compounds. Automating a task that runs once a quarter saves nothing. Automating research, assembly and reporting frees senior time every week, and that time is where the return actually comes from.
Worth automating
- Research and source gathering ahead of content production
- First-draft assembly from an approved brief and structure
- Reporting: data collection, joins and dashboard refreshes
- Lead routing, enrichment, deduplication and list hygiene
- Repetitive campaign setup and QA checklists
- Meeting notes, follow-up drafting and CRM updates
Not worth automating
- Positioning and messaging decisions
- Anything a customer reads as the voice of the company, without review
- Qualification judgement on a high-value lead
- Creative direction and the decision about what to test next
- Pricing and offer construction
- Interpreting why a number moved
The distinction we hold to: automate the assembly, keep the judgement. Work that a customer will read still gets edited by a person before it goes out.
AI roadmap
What does an AI adoption roadmap look like in practice?
It is a sequence, not a tool list. Most failed rollouts start with a tool and look for a use case afterwards. We start from where senior time is being consumed, then automate in an order where each step makes the next one cheaper.
Fix the inputs first
Automation applied to disorganised data produces confident nonsense at speed. Data hygiene, naming conventions and tracking come before anything else.
Automate reporting
The fastest reliable win. Reporting is repetitive, high frequency, and mechanically checkable, so errors surface immediately rather than reaching a customer.
Automate research and assembly
Source gathering, briefing and first drafts, with a human editor on every piece that a customer will read.
Automate routing and enrichment
Lead handling, enrichment and follow-up sequencing, once qualification criteria are actually written down.
Review and retire
Every automation gets reviewed on a schedule. Anything that stopped earning its place is switched off rather than left running.
A practical starting sequence is set out in where a B2B company should actually start with AI.
Measurement
How do you measure a marketing operation properly?
Against pipeline. A marketing operation is working when it produces qualified pipeline at a cost the business can sustain, and when the reason a number moved can be explained. Everything else is a diagnostic.
Headline measures
- Cost per qualified lead, by channel
- Pipeline contribution, by channel and by campaign
- Lead to qualified conversion rate, and where it breaks
- Speed from enquiry to first contact
- Revenue influenced, tracked through to closed won
Diagnostics, not results
- Impressions and reach
- Click volume and click-through rate
- Followers and engagement rate
- Raw lead count with no qualification attached
- Keyword rankings taken in isolation
Diagnostics are useful for explaining a change. They are not evidence that the operation is working, and we do not report them as results.
Deliverables
What you get
- Full marketing audit across channels, spend, funnel, messaging, tracking and tooling
- Funnel and lifecycle map showing where revenue is leaking
- Channel strategy and budget allocation
- Marketing stack review and rationalisation
- AI adoption roadmap, sequenced
- Measurement and attribution framework design
- Team structure, workflow and process review
- Enablement sessions and documented playbooks your team keeps
How the engagement runs
Sold either as a fixed-scope diagnostic engagement with a defined start and end, or as an ongoing advisory retainer: standing reviews, roadmap governance and on-call senior input for your internal team. Engagements are scoped on a call.
Questions
Common questions
How long does a marketing operations audit take?
A diagnostic engagement typically runs three to five weeks from access being granted to the written plan being delivered. The variable is how much access is available and how the existing data is organised, not the size of the company.
Do you need access to our ad accounts and CRM?
Yes. We audit the accounts and data directly rather than working from a questionnaire, because self-reported setups and actual configurations rarely match. You keep ownership of every account throughout, and access can be revoked at any point.
What if we already know what is broken?
Then the engagement moves faster and concentrates on sequence and design rather than discovery. Most teams correctly identify one or two problems and miss the dependency between them, which is usually what has kept the fix from working.
Is consulting a route into a larger engagement?
Sometimes, but it does not have to be. Plenty of clients take the plan and run it themselves, which is why the playbooks and enablement sessions are part of the deliverables. If you want us to build and run it instead, that is the setup engagement.
Related: marketing operations setup if you want the operation built and run rather than reviewed, and paid media management if acquisition is the immediate gap. Background reading: what marketing operations actually means for a 30-person B2B company.
Book a strategy call
Thirty minutes, no deck. We look at what you are running now, where the operation leaks, and what it would take to fix it. Engagements are scoped on a call.