Flat revenue, competitors pulling ahead, tools from a decade ago, vendors that never talk to each other: before prescribing anything, we put your marketing, your operations and the foundations underneath under the microscope. You walk away with a clear diagnosis, a framed budget and a prioritized action plan.
Most SMBs spend on marketing without knowing what each dollar brings back, where their operations hold growth back, or what their foundations quietly let age. We audit all three: what brings customers in, what serves them afterward, and the working tools that hold it together. That diagnosis is what turns a budget into a plan.
The same mechanics on every engagement, with a depth calibrated to your situation: some cover acquisition and operations, others put the whole business under the microscope. What never changes is how we score, rank and sequence.
Every function goes through the same lens: what we observed, what it actually costs, what to do about it. Strategy, sales, marketing, customer relations, organization, operations, data, compliance, and finance when the numbers are open to us.
Every domain gets a score, and the whole gets a structure rating. It does not measure your commercial health: a company can sell very well on a fragile structure, and that gap is exactly what we set out to show.
Risks are listed, scored and split between critical and secondary. Those that threaten continuity come before those that cost comfort, even when the latter are far more visible.
Every action is scored on impact, urgency and difficulty, then ranked on that ratio. The ranking is open to debate, but the debate happens on criteria rather than on convictions.
Secure, restore margin, build capacity, then generate demand. Generating demand before prices are fixed means selling more at a loss; before capacity is there, it means damaging your reputation.
The projection comes in three scenarios, floor, target and high, with the assumptions written down. Anything we could not verify is flagged as such, with the list of what remains to be obtained.
You see the result, not the cause. The audit works back up the chain: acquisition, conversion, offer, processes, vendors, and isolates the real leaks before a dollar of budget is committed.
A website here, some ads there, vendors who never talk to each other: nobody manages the whole. We reset the picture and frame a budget as a percentage of your revenue, allocated line by line.
You have the means to accelerate and no desire to waste it. The audit lays the foundations: quantified targets, a forecast, priorities, and the roadmap for setup and ongoing steering.
Not an 80-page report that dies in a drawer: every finding is quantified, prioritized and tied to an action. All of it is usable by your team, with or without us afterward.
Acquisition (ads, SEO, social), conversion (website, landing pages, paths), brand and messaging, tracking and data. Every channel gets a grade: what pays, what costs, what is missing.
Internal processes, tools, how information moves between departments, how inbound requests are handled. We find the friction that loses customers after marketing has brought them in.
Business software, data and backups, capabilities already paid for and left switched off, assets to protect (trademarks, domain names, insurance), key roles with no backup. What marketing never sees, and what blocks everything else.
Competitors mapped by business model, mystery visits at the ones closest to yours, a positioning map and a measured journey gap. What a customer experiences with them, against what they experience with you.
Who does what, for how much, with what measurable result. Agencies, freelancers, tools, subscriptions: the consolidated view nobody had, and the duplicates it reveals.
A reasoned envelope as a percentage of your revenue (8 to 12% depending on sector and ambition), allocated line by line: acquisition, content, website, tools, steering.
What the budget should produce, quarter by quarter: leads, customers, revenue. Assumptions stated, milestones measurable, a course shared with your team.
Every action scored on impact, urgency and difficulty, then ranked: the wins to launch this week, the structural projects, the order and the owners. The roadmap that then feeds setup and ongoing steering.
The method is the same either way. What changes is the scope: either we put the whole business under the microscope, or we take on the single angle that is blocking you today.
The whole business, in one engagement.
Every strand below, run together and cross-read: a commercial weakness often turns out to be an organizational one, and the reverse holds too. This is the transformation format, the one that ends in a twelve-month plan and a costed projection.
One angle, when you already know where it hurts.
Each strand stands alone, with its own deliverable and its own action plan. You do not buy the whole to answer one question, and nothing stops you widening later: what has been done is not done again.
Either way, the depth is agreed with you before we start: we state what we will cover and what we will leave aside.
The same run of play on every audit: collect the facts, diagnose both sides of the business, put numbers on the plan, then debrief and move into action.
Interviews with leadership and teams, access to the accounts (ads, analytics, CRM), a close read of the numbers and current processes. We also listen to your vendors: their view is part of the diagnosis.
Marketing (acquisition, conversion, brand, data), operations (processes, friction between departments and vendors) and foundations (business software, data, assets to protect, roles with no backup), run in parallel. Every finding is quantified.
The budget framed as a percentage of your revenue, allocated line by line, plus a 12-month forecast toward your targets: leads, customers, revenue. Assumptions on the table, nothing magic.
A working session to present the findings, the prioritized plan and the quick wins. You execute with your team, or we move together into setup and steering: that is our fractional growth & operations leadership.
Marketing brings customers in; operations keep them. An audit that looks at only one side misses half the leaks. That is why we always audit both before framing a single dollar of budget.
Median figures from our 2024-2025 audits. They vary with your starting point, your industry and the execution that follows the debrief.
Each expertise goes deep on one specific lever of this offer, for businesses in Toronto and across the GTA.
Estimate your target budget and growth maturity yourself: the audit starts from your numbers, so it pays to know them before we talk.
How much to invest in marketing, and how to allocate it.
Use the tool AssessmentWhere does your marketing stand? A score out of 100 in 3 minutes.
Take the assessment CalculatorHow much your poorly followed-up leads cost you, every year.
Use the toolTwo to three weeks depending on company size and the number of active channels, debrief included. We request access (ads, analytics, CRM) on day one so no time is lost.
That is the range an SMB that wants to grow should reason in, with the cross-industry average sitting around 8% (Gartner). The exact percentage depends on your sector, your margins and your ambition: that is precisely what the audit frames, along with the line-by-line allocation.
Everything that happens after marketing brings in a potential customer: request handling, internal processes, tools, how information moves between departments, vendor coordination. A company can double its leads and gain nothing if operations leak: that is often where the fastest wins hide.
Yes, and that is often where the cheapest wins are. We also look at your business software and your data, the capabilities already paid for and never switched on, the state of your backups, the assets that protect your name, and what stops the day a key person is away. A company can sell well and still be fragile: the diagnosis says both.
That is exactly the starting point. We measure the gap with what your competitors do instead of leaving it to gut feel, then turn it into projects ranked by what they return. Modernizing without an order is expensive: the value of the audit is precisely to say where to start.
No. The deliverables are designed to be usable by your team or your current vendors: quantified findings, an allocated budget, a prioritized plan. Many clients then choose our fractional growth & operations leadership for setup and steering, but that is a decision, not a condition.
The framework covers all of them; the depth is calibrated with you at scoping. An acquisition engagement does not need the same level of detail on production as a transformation engagement. We tell you upfront what we will cover and what we will leave aside, rather than promising exhaustiveness and diluting it.
With milestones written in advance. A firm initial period, the time the levers physically need to produce. A recalibration in month two, where the model is rewritten with observed figures rather than estimated ones. A results review at mid-point, with the right to stop at no cost if the leading indicators are off target. Nobody can guarantee revenue; we guarantee the measurement, the milestones and your freedom to walk away.
The opposite: vendor mapping is part of the audit. We assess what each partner produces against what they cost, with no conflict of interest since we have nothing to sell at that stage. Sometimes we recommend keeping one vendor and changing another.
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