Growth 22 min
Fill Your Competitive Benchmark Backwards
A grid built forward ends with everyone scoring three out of five. Build it from the decisions you owe, and know that adding rows changes which competitor wins.
Growth
Decisions that come before the tactics
Budget, team, agencies, reporting, personas and proof: the arbitrations a founder makes once, and lives with for two years.
These are the decisions nobody documents, because each one is made once. How much to spend. Whether to hire or to outsource. What a report has to contain before it counts as one. Which numbers are allowed on a website and which expose you.
They are also the decisions where the cost of getting it wrong shows up eighteen months later, long after anyone remembers making the call.
Where to start, depending on your situation
- You are deciding how much to spend. Marketing budget as a percentage of revenue goes back to the Gartner and CMO Survey figures everyone quotes, and shows what the ratio hides : stage, margin and model move the number more than industry does.
- You are choosing between a hire and an agency. What your first marketing hire actually costs counts the items comparisons leave out. In-house vs agency and the hidden cost of running several agencies cover the two versions of the same arbitration.
- You cannot tell whether your provider is working. What agency reporting must contain and how long before you can judge an agency. Then what a dashboard structurally cannot see, which is the reason two honest people read the same report differently.
- You are writing personas, or a competitive benchmark. Build a persona you can actually be wrong about and fill your competitive benchmark backwards are both about making the exercise falsifiable instead of decorative.
- You want to show proof without exposing yourself. Using client names, logos and results and what US law allows on customer reviews cover what you may publish, and what will cost you.
What connects these pages is a preference for arbitration over ambition. Each one tries to make an irreversible decision reversible, or at least visible. Our full approach is on the B2B growth firm page.
16 articles in this category. See all resources
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- Growth 25 min
Build a Persona You Can Actually Be Wrong About
A persona with more than nine attributes matched nobody in five of six real datasets. And the researchers who tested the method place it outside science.
- Growth 21 min
Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned
The acronym was coined in May 2010 by someone else. The post everyone credits does not contain it, and the trademark declares a first use three years later.
- Growth 25 min
Does a White Paper Still Work?
Nobody has published a measurement of how much of a downloaded document gets read. And the numbers used to justify writing one do not survive tracing.
- Growth 25 min
What alignment research actually found
A survey of 337 business units found that some differences between sales and marketing improve performance. None of the famous statistics survives its source.
- Growth 23 min
What your first marketing hire actually costs
The salary is 68.5% of it. The federal numbers for the four job titles you are choosing between, why the metro spread is 2.8x, and what nobody publishes.
- Growth 24 min
Customer Data Before You Have a CRM
A spreadsheet carries the same obligations as a platform. Deletion has to reach your vendors, and you now have to have decided how long you keep things.
- Growth 25 min
Using Client Names, Logos and Results
A logo wall implies an endorsement. A case study with a number is a performance claim. US law treats both as statements you have to be able to back.
- Growth 28 min
Customer Reviews: What US Law Allows
Since October 2024 there is an actual rule, with civil penalties per violation. It permits more than people think, and forbids one thing almost everybody does.
- Growth 24 min
What Agency Reporting Must Contain, and Where It Stops
Three things a report should let you verify. The third is what the agency was paid, and the industry's own literature explains why that one is missing.
- Growth 22 min
What a Marketing Dashboard Structurally Cannot See
One platform credits a conversion for 30 days by default, another for 90. Six structural reasons a consolidated dashboard cannot make the numbers reconcile.
- Growth 25 min
How Long Before You Can Judge an Agency
Fifty results a week, up to three weeks to calibrate: stack the published clocks and the earliest honest verdict is later than most contracts assume.
- Growth 11 min
Marketing Budget as a Percentage of Revenue: 7.7% to 9.4%
Gartner reports 7.7% of revenue, The CMO Survey 9.4%. B2B products sit at 6.4%, B2B services at 9.0%. Why the ratio still hides your real number.
- Growth 10 min
Integrated Marketing Agency: Why B2B Consolidates
An integrated marketing agency runs brand, web and acquisition as one system. Why B2B firms consolidate, when specialists still win, and what it saves.
- Growth 9 min
The Hidden Cost of Multiple Marketing Agencies
Running separate agencies for brand, web and ads adds hidden costs of coordination, broken attribution and lost context. Here is how to price them.
- Growth 11 min
In-House vs Agency Marketing: The Honest B2B Call
Neither model wins outright. What a senior in-house hire truly costs in the US, when to build a team, and why B2B lands on a hybrid model.
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