Three phases. Three modes. One engagement.

A structured review of a target company's marketing engine, conducted pre-close as a deal-team input, or in the first 60 days post-close as the Day-1 plan. It assesses spend efficiency, attribution integrity, brand equity, lead quality, vendor concentration, channel mix, geographic coverage, competitive positioning, and operational maturity, and produces an EBITDA-impact estimate splitting what's recoverable from what's structural. It's the operator's read of the marketing function, packaged so the deal team can use it as a specialist marketing workstream alongside commercial, operational, and financial DD if they want.

The LOI-to-Day-100 marketing playbook is a documented, sequenced operating plan for the marketing function, built around the deal thesis, scoped to the platform's specific add-on cadence, and ready to deploy the day the wire clears. It eliminates the typical 30-day discovery and 60-day rebuild that costs platforms a full quarter of value-creation runway. Sheppard builds it before close so the operating partner can act on it from Day 1.

Value creation is the install phase, building the operating system: dashboards, attribution methodology, AI workflows, agency-relationship rationalization where the platform has inherited add-on shops, and playbooks the portco can run. Execution is the run phase, operating that system day to day, either embedded as the marketing function or managing the agency relationships that do the channel work. Most sponsors over-buy execution and under-invest in value creation, then wonder why the platform underperforms at exit.

Marketing's EBITDA contribution comes from four value-creation levers. First, lower customer acquisition cost through channel-mix optimization against unit economics. Second, higher booked-call rate from better lead quality, dispatch, and creative. Third, higher average ticket from membership conversion and price-led merchandising. Fourth, reduced fixed overhead from operating-system discipline across the marketing function. A platform running all four typically captures 150 to 400 bps of EBITDA improvement inside 18 months.

We build the marketing data room from Day 1, not month 9 of the exit process. That means clean attribution methodology, vendor-by-vendor performance lineage, channel-mix narrative, brand-equity baselines, sponsor-facing dashboards, and a transferable systems pack the buyer's team can run on Day 1 of the next ownership cycle. The platforms that do this defend their multiple under buyer-side diligence; the ones that don't lose half a turn of EBITDA in negotiation.

The Marketing Stack Audit produces a quantified opportunity map at week four. The Value Creation install produces measurable improvements (booked-call rate lift, CAC normalization, attribution reconciliation) inside the first 60 to 90 days. Compounding EBITDA contribution shows up in months four through twelve as the operating system runs and the channels rebalance against unit economics. We don't promise hockey-stick lift in month one. We promise a function that compounds.

No. The audit is designed to be useful on its own. About a third of operators take the audit and run the recommendations themselves or with their existing agency. About two thirds engage Sheppard for the Value Creation install. A smaller portion continues into ongoing Execution. Each phase is scoped and priced independently.