Fractional CMO · Strategy · Go-to-Market · Customer Experience
Marketing diagnostics
A structured read of what's working, what isn't, and what the numbers can and can't tell you. Often the right first engagement, because it settles the argument before anyone spends money on it.
Book a call →The conversation usually starts with one of these
"The board asked what the marketing spend returns, and nobody had a good answer."
"Two people here have opposite views on what's working and no way to settle it."
"Before I sign off on a big spend, I want an independent read."
Most marketing arguments aren't about opinion. They're about definitions.
When two people in the same business hold opposite views on whether marketing is working, it's rarely because one of them is wrong. It's because they're measuring different things and calling them the same word. A lead. A conversion. An enquiry. Pipeline. Each of those means something slightly different depending on who's reporting it, and once that's true no amount of dashboarding settles anything.
The second problem is attribution theatre — numbers that look precise and aren't. A channel gets credited because it was the last thing someone clicked, not because it did the work. Spend follows the credit, and the things that actually built demand get defunded because they're harder to measure.
A diagnostic is how you stop arguing. Not a dashboard, a verdict — with the reasoning attached, and an honest line between what the evidence supports, what it doesn't, and what simply can't be known from the data you have.
Cheaper to settle the argument than to fund both sides of it.
How the work happens
Two to three weeks, a fixed fee, and a document at the end. The lightest way to start with Summatt.
Gather
The data, the reporting, the tools, and interviews with the people who produce and consume the numbers — including sales, because half the disputes live at that boundary.
Test
Whether each metric means what it's assumed to mean, whether the definitions hold, and whether the conclusions being drawn are actually supported by what's underneath them.
Verdict
A plain-English read of what's working, what isn't and what's unproven — plus what to fix first, and what would need to be true for the unproven things to be worth funding.
What you get
An audit of what's actually being measured, versus what people think is being measured
A test of whether the metrics you report on mean what you think they mean
Where marketing and sales are using the same words for different things
A plain-English verdict on what's working, what isn't, and what's simply unproven
The questions your current data genuinely cannot answer, named rather than fudged
A short list of what to fix first, ranked by what it will actually move
What to stop measuring, because it's generating noise rather than decisions
A reporting set worth taking to a board, with the caveats written in rather than hidden
A clear recommendation on whether further work is warranted — including when it isn't
Recent example
A mining technology client came to Summatt saying “our CRM needs fixing”. It wasn't broken. It was faithfully recording a definition of a qualified lead that had never been written down, which meant every report built on top of it was measuring something nobody had agreed to. That's a diagnostic finding, not a systems project — and it was cheaper to fix than the CRM replacement that was being considered. Read the full story →
Who this is for
You suspect the numbers being reported aren't telling the real story. There's disagreement internally about what's working and no one has a way to settle it. Or you want an independent read before committing budget to a bigger piece of work.
Good fit
- A decision is pending and better evidence would change it
- You'd rather know the data can't answer something than be given a confident guess
- You want a starting point with Summatt that doesn't commit you to a quarter
Not a fit
- You need ammunition to win an argument you've already decided
- There's no one with the authority to act on the findings
- The business is too new to have generated data worth reading
Engage Summatt. Get Stu.
Twenty years in senior marketing roles, most of it in-house rather than in an agency — which means I've had to live with my own recommendations, not just hand them over and move on.
I'm direct, I show the working, and I'll tell you when something's rubbish. Nicely.
Former CMO of an ASX-listed technology company. Currently head of marketing, on contract, for an ASX-listed healthcare group. Sales has reported to me in both.
Tell me what's going on.
I read these myself and reply within a day. If it's obvious from your message that I'm not the right person, I'll tell you that too — and usually point you at who is.
Your details go into my CRM so I can reply, and nowhere else. I don't sell data or add people to lists they didn't ask for. The privacy policy has the detail.