26Point Checklist

The framework · Customers & Growth

09 Marketing & Demand Generation

11 sub-categories. The three numbers on each are the typical opportunity in that area across businesses — not your result.

Time6.9/10Financial8.2/10Automation7.8/10

These three numbers are researched cross-business benchmarks for the area — the typical opportunity available in it. They are not your score, not a forecast, and not a promise. What is actually critical depends on your business, which is what the audit is for.

9.1

Marketing strategy

Time6/10Financial8/10Automation5/10
What this is
The plan for how demand will be created — which audiences, which channels, what budget, what result.
Why it matters
Without a strategy, marketing becomes a series of purchases made in response to sales calls. The spend is not the problem; the absence of a hypothesis is.
You have a problem here if
You could not say what your marketing is supposed to achieve this quarter in one number.
What to automate
The plan is human. The reporting against it should be automatic, so the question "is this working?" has an answer that does not require a day of spreadsheet work.
9.2

Target audiences

Time6/10Financial8/10Automation7/10
What this is
The specific audiences marketing is aimed at, defined tightly enough to target.
Why it matters
Broad targeting is expensive in paid channels and ineffective in organic ones. Narrow definition is what makes a small budget competitive.
You have a problem here if
Your ad targeting is set to something close to "everyone nearby".
What to automate
Build audiences from your own customer data — lookalikes from best-customer lists, suppression lists for existing customers, segment-specific campaigns — and refresh them automatically as the customer base changes.
9.3

Distribution/channel selection

Time7/10Financial8/10Automation7/10
What this is
Which channels you use to reach those audiences, and why those rather than others.
Why it matters
Channel fit determines cost per customer more than creative does. Being present in three channels properly beats six channels badly.
You have a problem here if
You are active on channels because you always have been, not because they produce customers.
What to automate
Automated cost-per-acquisition reporting by channel, including the organic ones. Channels should be kept or cut on evidence, and the evidence should assemble itself.
9.4

Messaging

Time6/10Financial8/10Automation7/10
What this is
What you actually say — the words, claims and offers that do the persuading.
Why it matters
Message quality changes response rates by multiples, not percentages. It is the cheapest variable to change and the most frequently left alone.
You have a problem here if
Your messaging has not been tested or rewritten in over a year.
What to automate
Use language models to generate variants and structured testing to pick winners — but only against a proposition a human decided. Automated volume on a weak message just buys more of the wrong result faster.
9.5

Content

Time9/10Financial7/10Automation10/10
What this is
The material that attracts, educates and reassures buyers before they talk to you.
Why it matters
Ten out of ten for automation potential — the highest in the framework. Content is also the main mechanism by which a small business earns attention without paying for every impression.
You have a problem here if
Sales conversations repeatedly cover the same ground that a page could have covered.
What to automate
Now largely automatable end to end: drafting from your own source material, repurposing one asset across formats and channels, scheduling, and performance reporting. Keep a human editor — unedited machine content is recognisable and it damages the authority it was meant to build.
9.6

Organic acquisition

Time7/10Financial8/10Automation8/10
What this is
Customers acquired without paying per click — search, referral, social, reputation.
Why it matters
Organic acquisition has a high setup cost and near-zero marginal cost, which inverts the economics of growth once it works.
You have a problem here if
All acquisition stops when the ad account is paused.
What to automate
Automate the operational grind — technical SEO monitoring, publishing cadence, internal linking, listing consistency, rank tracking — so the compounding asset gets maintained even in busy months.
9.7

Paid acquisition where appropriate

Time7/10Financial8/10Automation9/10
What this is
Paid channels, where they make economic sense.
Why it matters
Paid is the fastest way to buy demand and the fastest way to lose money. It rewards measurement discipline more than any other channel.
You have a problem here if
You know your ad spend but not your cost per customer.
What to automate
Automated bid management, budget pacing, creative rotation and alerting when cost per acquisition breaches a threshold. Set the threshold from your real unit economics, not from a platform default.
9.8

Partnerships/referrals

Time5/10Financial7/10Automation5/10
What this is
Demand that comes through other businesses, introducers and formal partnerships.
Why it matters
Partnerships are usually the highest-margin acquisition channel available to a small business and the most neglected, because they are relationship work rather than campaign work.
You have a problem here if
You can name partners who send you work but have no arrangement with any of them.
What to automate
Modest automation potential. Track partner-sourced revenue automatically and automate the routine touchpoints — reporting back to the partner, referral acknowledgement, commission calculation. The relationship itself is not delegable to software.
9.9

Lead generation

Time8/10Financial10/10Automation9/10
What this is
The system that turns attention into identified, contactable prospects.
Why it matters
Ten out of ten financially, and near the top for time. Lead generation is the join between marketing and sales, and it is where most small businesses lose the value of their marketing spend.
You have a problem here if
Traffic is respectable and enquiries are not.
What to automate
Very high automation fit: capture forms feeding directly into the CRM, instant acknowledgement, automatic source tagging, lead scoring, and routing to the right person without manual re-keying. Every manual step here loses leads.
9.10

Marketing measurement

Time8/10Financial8/10Automation10/10
What this is
Knowing which marketing produced which customers and at what cost.
Why it matters
The highest automation potential in this category. Without measurement, marketing budget is allocated by anecdote, and the loudest channel wins rather than the best one.
You have a problem here if
Your attribution is "I think most people find us on Google".
What to automate
Automate end-to-end tracking from first touch to closed revenue: consistent campaign tagging, source capture at enquiry, and revenue written back against the source. Imperfect attribution consistently applied beats perfect attribution never assembled.
9.11

Customer acquisition cost and ROI

Time7/10Financial10/10Automation9/10
What this is
What it costs to acquire a customer and what that customer returns.
Why it matters
The number that makes marketing a decision rather than a gamble. It sets how much you can afford to spend, and therefore whether you can outbid competitors for the same customer.
You have a problem here if
You cannot state your cost to acquire a customer, or its ratio to customer lifetime value.
What to automate
Combine ad spend, sales cost and closed revenue into an automated cost-per-acquisition and payback report by channel and segment. Once this exists, most marketing arguments in the business end.

Category totals

Time 76/110 · Financial 90/110 · Automation 86/110. The sum is the official roll-up; the averages above exist so categories of different sizes can be compared.