How well is marketing actually working in your business?

Most established businesses are doing some marketing. The harder question is whether it’s the right marketing, whether it happens consistently and whether it’s actually helping the business achieve what it needs to.

This quick Scorecard looks at how marketing really works in your business, from strategy and consistency to measurement and ownership.

In just five questions, you’ll discover where your marketing sits today and the one thing that would make the biggest difference next.

Get your marketing profile and score instantly
See what’s working and where the gaps are
Get one clear priority to focus on next

Take the 2-Minute Marketing Scorecard →

Watch the 2 min video

There are no bad scores.

Marketing rarely starts from scratch.

You may have a strong reputation and plenty of referrals but little structure behind your marketing. Or you might have regular activity, a clear plan and good people involved, but still struggle to prove what's delivering a return.

That's exactly what this Scorecard is designed to uncover.

Answer based on what actually happens in the business today, rather than what should happen. You'll get a much more useful result.

Show me my marketing score →

Where does your marketing sit?

Your answers will place your marketing into one of four profiles. None is inherently good or bad. They simply show what needs to happen next.

The Firefighter

Marketing happens when something needs fixing.

There may be plenty of good ideas and occasional bursts of activity, but little holding everything together.

The opportunity: Put a simple strategy underneath it.

The Sprinter

Marketing is happening, but in bursts.

There's energy and effort going in. The challenge is creating enough consistency to build momentum and learn what really works.

The opportunity: Turn activity into a sustainable marketing rhythm.

The Builder

The foundations are in place.

Marketing has structure and consistency. Now it's about measurement, focus and putting more behind the things that genuinely contribute to the business.

The opportunity: Double down on what pays back.

The Strategist

Marketing is working as a business function.

Strategy, activity and measurement are connected. The next constraint is likely to be senior capacity and keeping marketing aligned with the next stage of growth.

The opportunity: Turn a good marketing engine into a growth engine.

This isn't marketing theory.

We've seen what happens when businesses stop treating marketing as a collection of activities and start connecting it properly to where the business is going.

CN Glass wanted to fundamentally change the shape of its business, moving from predominantly domestic work towards more consistent, higher-value commercial work.

Marketing wasn't simply tasked with “getting more leads”. It was focused around that commercial objective.

Over the following years, the business successfully moved from 70% domestic to around 70% commercial, exactly the direction its MD wanted to take it.

Read the CN Glass story

Hi, I'm Sophie Davies.

I'm the founder of Your Marketing Department.

I've spent 27 years in marketing, working both in-house and agency-side, before founding YMD to bring proper strategic marketing thinking to ambitious SMEs.

We help businesses move from reactive marketing activity to a clear strategy, practical plan and consistent delivery, all tied back to what the business is actually trying to achieve.

YMD works as an outsourced marketing department, bringing together senior strategic thinking and hands-on delivery without the cost of building a full in-house team.

And one thing you'll find we ask rather a lot is:

Why?

Why are you doing that marketing?
What business objective does it support?
Is that where your customer actually is?
And is there something else that would deliver a better return?

Those are exactly the sorts of questions behind this Scorecard.