SF Marketing Agency runs six Layer-1 entry points: the $2,500 Paid Media Audit (5 days), $5,000 Marketing Strategy Review (10 days), $7,500 Positioning Sprint (14 days), $3,500 Conversion Review (7 days), $2,500 AI Visibility Audit (5 days), and the $4,500 per month Marketing Partnership. Each gate is a fixed-scope, fixed-fee engagement with a documented step-by-step procedure and a written deliverable. The methodology below specifies the intake, the analysis, the deliverable, and the close for every gate.
$2,500 flat
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$4,500 / month
Built for Heads of Growth, Marketing Directors, and Growth Leads spending $10,000 or more per month on paid media without confidence the unit economics are right. Typical clients are Series A-C SaaS, AI companies, fintech, and established businesses running digital acquisition.
30-minute scoping call with the operator. Confirm active paid channels, monthly spend, attribution stack, and the binding question for the audit.
Read-only access to Google Ads, Meta Business, LinkedIn Campaign Manager, GA4, and the attribution tool is provisioned within 24 hours and revoked at delivery.
Account structure, campaign architecture, audience segmentation, creative inventory, and bidding strategy are reviewed against documented benchmarks for the segment.
Reported channel performance is reconciled against revenue data to identify over- and under-credited channels and isolate measurement error from acquisition error.
Channel CAC, blended CAC, and CAC payback period are recomputed using the operator's gross margin to test fundability against the OpenView SaaS Benchmarks and Growth Unhinged CAC payback thresholds.
Five to ten implementation priorities are sequenced for the next 30 days, ordered by expected payback and implementation cost.
A 12-to-18 page written audit document is delivered with the priority list, the attribution map, and the unit-economic table.
A 45-minute call walks the operator through the priorities, answers execution questions, and confirms ownership of the next 30-day plan.
Written audit document (12-18 pages). 30-day implementation roadmap. 45-minute strategy call.
Methodology backed by: OpenView SaaS Benchmarks 2023 (C-005); Kyle Poyar / Growth Unhinged CAC Payback Guide 2024 (C-016)Built for Series B SaaS VPs of Marketing, bootstrapped B2B founders carrying marketing themselves, and manufacturing CEOs where marketing activity is high and pipeline creation is flat. Applies to any leader where marketing cost is visible and marketing impact is not.
60-minute call with the founder or VP Marketing. Scope the binding question, confirm in-house data access, and align on the executive audience for the final session.
Review of existing positioning, ICP definitions, sales pipeline data, CRM stage definitions, marketing reporting, and at least the last two quarters of board-level marketing material.
Closed-won and closed-lost data is segmented by ICP slice to identify drift between targeted ICP and actually-buying ICP. Buying-committee shape is mapped against the McKinsey B2B Pulse 2024 baseline of 10 stakeholders across 10-plus interactions.
Current positioning is tested against the Bain Almquist B2B Elements of Value framework (HBR 2018) to surface over-indexing on functional value and under-indexing on individual and inspirational value.
Sales motion, lead handoff, channel mix, and measurement are reviewed against the operator's stage and ACV band. Madison Logic 2024 lead-handoff benchmarks are used as the reference baseline.
A 20-to-30 page strategy document is drafted covering positioning, ICP by cohort, GTM motion, paid media audit summary, and a sequenced 90-day priority list.
A 90-minute executive session walks the founder or VP through the document, surfaces objections, and locks the 90-day priorities.
The strategy document and 90-day priority sheet are handed off in writing. The operator executes in-house, with the Partnership available as a follow-on if ongoing strategic support is required.
20-30 page strategy document. 90-minute executive session. Sequenced 90-day priority list.
Methodology backed by: Gartner Future of B2B Sales 2024 (C-002); McKinsey B2B Pulse 2024 (C-003); Bain Almquist HBR 2018 (C-001)Built for founders and marketing leaders where the product is real but the positioning is generic. Typical clients are Series A-B SaaS where the company has shipped product but cannot defend a category position, and PE portcos where post-acquisition positioning needs to be rebuilt.
90-minute intake with the founder, marketing lead, and at least one sales lead. Confirm the binding positioning question and align on the target buyer segment for the sprint.
Review of customer interview transcripts, win-loss data, and inbound-form free-text to surface the language buyers actually use about the product.
Current product claims are mapped against the 40 B2B Elements of Value across table stakes, functional, ease of doing business, individual, and inspirational tiers (Almquist, HBR 2018).
Top three competitors are analyzed against the same value-element map to surface defensible differentiation rather than feature-parity claims.
A positioning statement is drafted in the standard four-part form: target buyer, category, capability, defensible difference.
A 90-minute session with the founder, marketing lead, and sales lead pressure-tests the positioning against current pipeline and recent deals.
The positioning statement, value-tier map, and differentiator set are delivered in writing along with a one-page sales-enablement summary.
A short rollout brief is included specifying which website surfaces, sales decks, and outbound assets must be updated and in what sequence.
Positioning statement (four-part form). Value-tier map across all 40 B2B Elements of Value. Differentiator set vs top three competitors. One-page sales-enablement summary. Rollout brief.
Methodology backed by: Almquist, Cleghorn, Sherer, The B2B Elements of Value, Harvard Business Review March 2018 (C-001)Built for Heads of Growth and Marketing Directors where traffic exists but the conversion rate is measurably below segment benchmark. Typical clients are Series A-B SaaS with active acquisition spend and a measured pricing or signup-flow conversion problem.
30-minute call to confirm the primary conversion event, current measured rate, target rate, and active funnel surfaces (homepage, entry pages, signup, demo request, pricing).
Read-only access to GA4, server-side analytics, and any session-replay tool (Hotjar, FullStory) is provisioned within 24 hours and revoked at delivery.
Each surface is reviewed against documented conversion benchmarks for the segment, including above-the-fold clarity, primary CTA, form friction, and trust signal placement.
Forrester 2024 buying-group research and McKinsey B2B Pulse 2024 are used as the reference baseline for the number and shape of buyer interactions each surface must support.
Conversion-rebuild hypotheses are ranked by expected lift, implementation cost, and confidence level. The top five to eight are sequenced into a 30-day implementation list.
A 10-to-15 page written review is delivered with the surface-by-surface findings, hypothesis ranking, and the 30-day implementation list.
A 45-minute call walks the operator through the findings, the hypothesis ranking, and the sequencing logic.
10-15 page written review. Surface-by-surface findings. Ranked hypothesis set. 30-day implementation list. 45-minute review call.
Methodology backed by: Forrester Buying-Groups Research 2024; McKinsey B2B Pulse 2024 (C-003)Built for marketing leaders at Series A-C B2B SaaS and Bay Area B2B companies whose buyers now ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini before contacting a vendor. Applies to any operator who sees competitor mentions in AI answers and brand absence in the same surfaces.
30-minute call to confirm the brand entity, primary commercial queries, target buyer personas, and the AI surfaces the operator cares about (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overview).
A defined set of commercial and brand queries is run across the target AI surfaces. Citations, brand mentions, and competitor-displacement instances are captured with timestamps.
Indexed pages are audited for FAQPage schema, Speakable schema, named-source citations, Organization sameAs entries, and llms.txt and ai.txt presence.
Pages that are currently indexed without citations are flagged. Competitor citation patterns are mapped to identify which authoritative publishers are quoted in current AI answers.
A page-by-page schema and citation rebuild plan is drafted, prioritized by query volume and competitive displacement risk.
A 10-to-14 page written audit is delivered with the captured AI-surface evidence, the schema-rebuild plan, and a 30-day implementation list.
A 30-minute call walks the operator through the audit, confirms the implementation owner, and locks the 30-day plan.
10-14 page written audit. Captured AI-surface evidence (citations, mentions, displacements). Page-by-page schema and citation rebuild plan. 30-day implementation list. 30-minute review call.
Methodology backed by: Gartner Future of B2B Sales 2024 (C-002); Schema.org SpeakableSpecification and FAQPage specificationsBuilt for operators who have completed a Layer-1 marketing review and need ongoing strategic input without a fractional CMO retainer. Typical engagement length is 2 to 4 quarters. Fractional CMOs at this stage price at $12,000 to $25,000 per month per Pavilion 2024 compensation data.
At the start of each quarter, the operator and the SFMA partnership lead set three strategic priorities and one defensive priority for the quarter. Priorities are sourced from the most recent marketing review or from open operating issues.
A 60-minute bi-weekly working session reviews progress against the quarter priorities, surfaces blockers, and produces decisions in writing.
At the mid-point of the quarter, the priorities are stress-tested against current pipeline and channel performance. Up to one priority can be swapped without re-scoping.
At quarter end, the partnership lead produces a written quarter-close memo summarizing decisions, priority outcomes, and the recommended priorities for the next quarter. The operator approves the next-quarter brief before the new cycle opens.
Quarter-open priority brief. Six bi-weekly working sessions with written decision logs. Mid-quarter recalibration memo. Quarter-close memo with priorities for the next cycle.
Methodology backed by: Pavilion State of Marketing 2024 (C-007); fractional CMO compensation benchmarksEach gate carries a fixed scope, a fixed fee, and a documented written deliverable. The Marketing Strategy Review is the most common entry point. The other five gates are correct entries when the binding question is paid media, positioning, conversion, AI visibility, or ongoing marketing agency partnership.
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