The audit: we learn how the work actually moves
3 weeks on site with the marketing team. Process owners get shadowed rather than surveyed, because the shadow spreadsheet and the approval that happens in a hallway never come up on a call.
A process and time map, a controls register, the exception taxonomy in your team's own wording, a volume baseline pulled from the systems rather than estimated, and a build plan signed by the people who run the work. $15–25k, credited in full against a build signed within 90 days.
11 sessions with 9 people. Every session transcribed and tagged against the workflow it describes.
| Role | Sessions | Minutes each | Focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Campaign managers | 3 | 90 | Brief to live, and what gets rebuilt by hand every time |
| Marketing operations | 3 | 90 | Data model, tracking, platform configuration, sync health |
| Content | 2 | 60 | Asset production, approval path, messaging library currency |
| Demand generation | 2 | 60 | Channel mix, pacing decisions, lead handoff to sales |
| CMO | 1 | 45 | Reporting cadence, budget authority, what gets escalated |
31 sources ingested, indexed and made queryable. The working spreadsheets matter most, because they are where the real process lives when the SOP has drifted.
10 systems mapped, including the ones nobody lists on an architecture diagram.
- HubSpot · Marketing automation
- Salesforce · CRM
- GA4 · Analytics
- Google Ads · Paid media
- LinkedIn Ads · Paid media
- Segment · Event pipeline
- Snowflake · Warehouse
- Figma · Creative
- Asana · Coordination
- SharePoint · Documents
In-scope process work, not total department labour
| Driver | Volume | Hours/yr |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign build and QA | 96 campaigns at 14 hrs | 1,344 |
| Audience build and sync | 260 syncs at 2.5 hrs | 650 |
| Content repurposing | 480 assets at 1.8 hrs | 864 |
| Tracking and signal QA | 12 cycles at 26 hrs | 312 |
| Attribution reporting | 12 monthly at 22 hrs, plus weekly | 480 |
| Total in scope | 3,650 |
- Carried by agents2,227 hrs61%
- Stays with people1,423 hrs39%
1,423 hours a year remain manual, and should: judgement calls, genuine exceptions, and the relationships that need a person on the other end. The two shares are complements of one another, so they sum to 100 by construction.
Campaign build and QA
Nine days from brief to live is the constraint on how many campaigns run at all.
Audience activation
Highest automatable share. Segment definitions are rules, and rules travel between platforms.
Content repurposing
One asset into the formats each channel needs, with a person approving the claim.
Tracking and signal QA
Broken tracking is invisible until a quarter's spend has already been misattributed.
Attribution reporting
Assembly is mechanical. Which channel gets the credit stays a judgement call.
The five sum to $368k, the same modelled annual value shown in chapter 01. Bars are each workflow's value against the largest of the five.
- Audit · 3 weeks
- P1 Campaign build and QA
- P2 Audience activation
- P3 Content repurposing
- P4 Tracking and signal QA
- P5 Attribution reporting
- Operate · ongoing
Audit 3 weeks, build 10–12 weeks, then continuous operation. Workflows overlap because the connector work for one is usually most of the connector work for the next.
Session counts, document counts and hours are modelled against the basis company, not recorded from an engagement. The method is real; the volumes are what a 11-person marketing function at that size would produce.