Eighteen companies. Forty-five thousand dollars.
I sell real estate — about as crowded as small business gets. Every agent is their own marketing department, chasing the same listings in the same few towns, and getting found is most of the job. So I hired the people you hire, over and over, and I had no way to check a single thing any of them told me.
Five marketing agencies. Four web designers. Three social media consultants. Six ad specialists. Around $45,000, all of it meant to expand my reach and turn visitors into leads.
Every one of them won my business the same way — by telling me what was wrong with what I had. Then, once they had it, I had to take their word that any of it ever got done.
I had to take their word for it. There was no way to check.
I still get calls every day from someone who wants to fix my marketing. Nobody can find my business on Maps, but everybody can find me to pitch me. That is the whole problem in one sentence: who do you trust — and even if you choose well, how would you ever know they were doing the work?
You don't. And people running a business are busy running it. Paying someone is easier than learning enough to check them, which is exactly what the last one was counting on.
When I finally learned enough to look for myself, here is what all those invoices had actually produced. Each one is now a module in the grade — the instrument is my own bad experience, written down so it runs on anyone's business in two minutes.
So don't take my word for it either. Here is the part everyone skips: we sell the fixing too. An audit from someone who profits from the answer is a sales call wearing a lab coat, and I sat through eighteen of them.
The only honest way I know to do this is to hand you the whole measurement first, free, in writing, before you decide anything — findings, evidence, and the nine items we refuse to score because they need a person. Keep it. Hand it to your current guy. Point the same instrument at us. If we do the work, the same 46 checks run again at the end, so you can see what your money bought instead of being told.
Point it at your own business — or at whoever you are paying right now.
No account, no card, no sales call.
Fix it yourself, or we can.
The report is complete and it is yours — every finding, the evidence behind it, and what to change. Nothing is held back to force a call. If you would rather not do it yourself, this is the work.
The grade and the findings
46 checks, the evidence behind every one, and a plain list of what to change. Yours to keep, hand to your own web person, or ignore entirely.
The fix pack
We generate the corrections from the evidence in your own report — structured data, page titles and headings, your name and address block, review replies, image descriptions — as paste-ready blocks. Nothing invented: every line traces to something the audit actually read.
Lead response, wired up
The bigger job, and usually the one worth the most. An instant reply, sensible routing and a real second touch, installed into the tools you already use — then the same test run again, so you can watch the answer time drop.
We run the audit again
Every engagement ends with the same 46 checks on the same ruler, so before and after are directly comparable. You should be able to see what your money bought. Most of this industry cannot show you that.