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Gate 02 · Featured Entry

Marketing strategy diagnostic for teams that cannot explain what spend is doing.

The meeting usually starts with one question: which part of marketing is creating qualified pipeline? If the answer needs a dashboard tour, the strategy is too weak. This $5,000 diagnostic turns the argument into a written 90-day decision path.

Built for Bay Area B2B SaaS VPs of Marketing and growth leaders. Applies to CMOs, founder-led teams, and well-capitalized operators where spend is live, pipeline quality is unclear, and the next budget decision needs a cleaner answer.

// Specification

Marketing Strategy Diagnostic

Investment$5,000 flat
Timeline10 business days
Document20-30 pages
Session90-min executive
Roadmap90-day priorities
Refund30-day window
Bay Area marketing strategy diagnostic session mapping spend, pipeline, and 90-day priorities Request the Diagnostic →

The Marketing Strategy Diagnostic is a $5,000 fixed-scope marketing diagnostics engagement delivered in 10 business days. It is built for Bay Area B2B teams with active spend and unclear pipeline logic. Output is a 20-30 page strategy document, a 90-minute executive session, and a 90-day priorities roadmap your team can execute without a retainer.

Diagnostic Map

The proof is usually hidden in plain sight. Spend, pipeline, and sales pushback.

The diagnostic looks at the documents already on the table: CRM stages, closed-won patterns, paid spend, sales objections, website copy, and the board question nobody wants to answer twice. The first move is named in writing.

Bay Area marketing strategy diagnostic session with spend, pipeline, and 90-day priorities on the table
Buyer Decision Map

The private questions this page now answers. Before the sales call.

A serious buyer is asking whether the confusion is strategic, whether the team can absorb the answer, and whether a fixed diagnostic is safer than another retainer. The page now names the service, the scene, the proof, and the next step.

Question 01

Is this actually a strategy problem?

Yes if channels are active but priorities, ICP, messaging, pricing, and measurement are being debated separately. The diagnostic exists when the system is fragmented, not when one tactic needs tuning.

Question 02

What am I really buying?

A decision document. Not hours, not vague advisory, not a deck. The deliverable shows what to change, why it matters, and what should happen first across 90 days.

Question 03

Will this create internal clarity?

The output is written for leadership alignment. It gives the CEO, CMO, growth lead, and execution team the same commercial map so decisions stop being personality-driven.

Question 04

What happens after?

Your team can execute internally, scope a project, or move into partnership. The diagnostic is designed to be useful even if no larger engagement follows.

Decision rule
Buy this when the team is already spending time and money, but the commercial logic is not documented enough to make confident tradeoffs. Support pages: marketing strategy diagnostic, Bay Area B2B pipeline research, and B2B marketing budget framework.
What the Diagnostic Covers

Four axes. One coherent document.

The strategy document examines four axes of your marketing. Individually, each is a project. The diagnostic engineers the relationships between them, which is where strategy actually lives.

Axis 01

Positioning architecture

Category narrative, product narrative, and proof architecture. Who you are, to whom, and why they should believe it.

  • Current positioning audit across site, sales materials, and paid creative
  • Category landscape and competitive narrative map
  • Recommended positioning statement with evidence architecture
  • ICP map with pain and result by segment
Axis 02

Pricing and packaging

Price strategy, packaging structure, margin architecture. What you sell, how it bundles, how it prices against willingness-to-pay.

  • Current pricing audit with margin analysis
  • Packaging structure recommendation by segment
  • Price-anchoring strategy for high-intent buyers
  • 90-day pricing experiment design where applicable
Axis 03

Go-to-market motion

Distribution channels, sales-marketing alignment, buyer sequencing. How you reach buyers and move them through commercial motion.

  • Channel portfolio audit with attribution reality-check
  • Recommended channel sequencing by buyer stage
  • Sales-marketing handoff architecture
  • Motion definitions: inbound, outbound, partner, product-led
Axis 04

Demand generation

Paid acquisition, organic, content, PR, partnerships. How the top of pipeline is built, measured, and compounded.

  • Paid media audit by channel with unit economics
  • Organic and content investment architecture
  • PR and thought leadership prioritization
  • Measurement framework with attribution boundaries
The Ten Days

Fixed timeline. Three phases.

Days 01 - 03

Intake and diagnosis

Stakeholder interviews, artifact review, analytics audit, competitive landscape scan. Your team provides access to tooling; the team provides direction on what to extract.

Days 04 - 07

Strategy synthesis

Cross-axis analysis. Recommendations drafted against the four axes. Priorities sequenced. Measurement framework built. One mid-engagement checkpoint with your team to validate direction.

Days 08 - 10

Document and session

Final document delivered. 90-minute executive session to walk the document with your team, answer questions, and confirm the 90-day priorities. Roadmap finalized based on session.

What You Receive

Three deliverables. Every one of them yours.

30pp

Strategy document

A 20-30 page written strategy covering all four axes. Written for operator execution, not consultant impression. Yours in perpetuity.

90min

Executive session

A live session with your team to walk the strategy, answer questions, and pressure-test priorities. Recorded for reference.

90d

Priorities roadmap

A 90-day sequenced priorities list with owners, milestones, and success metrics. Designed for your team to execute without us.

Is This The Right Gate

Who the diagnostic fits. And who it doesn't.

// Fit

The diagnostic is for you if

  • Your company does $2M+ in revenue and has active marketing execution.
  • You have a marketing team or external vendors executing, but no coherent written strategy.
  • Your board, CEO, or investors are questioning marketing spend and you cannot defend it with a strategic document.
  • You have two or more of the four axes underperforming and suspect the issue is structural, not tactical.
  • You want a document your team can execute from, not a consultant who stays in the room for six months.
  • You run a manufacturing or industrial company whose trade show pipeline is thinning and whose digital motion has not replaced it. See the manufacturing approach.
  • You run a life sciences or biotech company where the science is strong but commercial partners, investors, and buyers are not converting. See the life sciences approach.
// Not fit

The diagnostic is not for you if

  • Your company is pre-revenue or has no active marketing execution yet.
  • You want a cheaper version of a discovery call or a proposal.
  • You need execution resources and do not have a strategy gap.
  • You are shopping on price and want to negotiate the scope.
  • You sell Shopify ecommerce specifically - our parent firm Stan Consulting LLC handles those engagements directly.
$5,000
Pricing

Flat. No discovery-call discounting.

The price is the price. Not a range. Not a quote. Not a retainer commitment in disguise. Five thousand dollars, delivered in ten business days, with a fixed deliverable set and a 30-day refund window.

The scope is what it is because the work is what it is. Discounting it would mean compressing the work, and compressed strategy is not strategy.

Frequently Asked

Questions before the engagement.

What does the Marketing Strategy Diagnostic cost?

The Marketing Strategy Diagnostic is $5,000 flat. The price is the price - no discovery-call discounting, no tiered options, no retainer entrapment. Delivery is 10 business days from contract signature, with a fixed deliverable set of a 20-30 page strategy document, a 90-minute executive session, and a 90-day priorities roadmap.

Who is this diagnostic for?

Built for VPs of Marketing, Heads of Growth, CMOs, and CEOs of companies from $2M to $250M in annual revenue whose marketing execution is active but whose strategic architecture is undocumented. It applies to Series A-C SaaS, AI companies, fintech, and established traditional industries including healthcare, construction, legal, and manufacturing.

What does the strategy document contain?

The document covers four axes: positioning architecture, pricing and packaging, go-to-market motion, and demand generation. Each axis includes the current-state diagnosis, the strategic recommendation, the measurable outcome expected, and the 30-60-90 day sequencing to get there. Written for operator execution, not consultant impression.

How is this different from a discovery call or a proposal?

Discovery calls produce relationships. Proposals produce scope. Diagnostics produce documents. The output is a written strategy your team owns in perpetuity, whether you continue working with the team or not. No consulting firm retains the document. No retainer is required to use it.

What happens after the diagnostic?

Three paths. Your team executes the 90-day priorities in-house. You engage the team on a scoped execution project ($10K-$75K). You move to the Quarterly Strategy Partnership ($4,500/mo) for ongoing strategic oversight. All three are valid. Roughly 40% of diagnostic clients execute internally and return later for a deeper engagement.

Is there a refund policy?

If the strategy document is delivered and you find it unusable within 30 days, a full refund is available. Invoked rarely. The fixed-scope format and the 10-day timeline exist specifically to produce documents that are usable on delivery, not documents that require revision cycles.

Where This Starts

Your marketing is a collection of tactics.
We build it as a system.

Six diagnostic entry gates. Each priced. Each fixed-scope. Each producing a document your team can execute from in 30 days.

Request the Strategy Diagnostic · $5,000 → See all six entry gates