Sheppard

Free Resource · For Sponsors, Operating Partners & Founder-Operators

The Marketing Diligence Checklist.

The seven-workstream marketing audit framework used in PE platform deals in residential home services. Useful as a scoping input for your CDD provider, a self-audit before you go to market, or the structure for an operator-grade assessment of any portco's marketing engine.

Seven Workstreams

  1. 01Spend efficiency — paid, organic, local, offline against actual sourced revenue (not impressions)
  2. 02Attribution integrity — what the data proves vs. what reporting claims; CRM-dialer-dispatch reconciliation
  3. 03Lead quality and disposition — where leads die between source and booked appointment
  4. 04Vendor concentration and contract map — exit clauses, renewal cycles, scope overlap, transferability
  5. 05Brand equity baseline — competitive share-of-voice, branded search, review velocity by DMA
  6. 06Operational marketing maturity — tooling, talent, cadence vs. comparable platforms
  7. 07EBITDA-impact estimate — recoverable, structural, and 100-day plan in dollars

Stage

Vertical(s)

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Why It Matters

The marketing audit that actually moves a deal.

Most marketing reviews in PE deals land as a slide. Sometimes two. Usually written by a generalist consultant who interviewed the target's CMO for ninety minutes and looked at a Google Ads dashboard.

A structured marketing audit produces a quantified EBITDA estimate — what's recoverable in the first 18 months, what's structural, and what the 100-day plan looks like in dollars. That's the work this checklist scopes, whether you run it internally, hand it to your CDD provider, or bring Sheppard in to run it.

Frequently Asked

On running a marketing audit.

What does marketing diligence cover in a PE home services deal?

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Seven workstreams: spend efficiency review, attribution integrity audit, lead quality and disposition analysis, vendor concentration and contract map, brand equity baseline, operational marketing maturity scoring, and EBITDA-impact synthesis. The output is a working memo with a quantified EBITDA delta — packaged so the sponsor's deal team can fold it into commercial DD.

When should marketing diligence happen?

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Pre-LOI, alongside commercial due diligence. Findings can inform the bid, shape deal structure, or surface deal-killing issues before exclusivity locks the sponsor in. Post-close marketing diligence is still valuable as the first move of value creation, but it cannot inform the deal itself.

How long does a marketing diligence sprint take?

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Three to four weeks for most home services platform deals. The sprint is sized to fit alongside the sponsor's CDD provider's work and inside the LOI window so findings can affect the bid. The checklist in this resource is designed to scope that sprint from Day 1.

What does marketing diligence cost?

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A 3–4 week pre-LOI sprint typically prices at $35,000–$90,000 depending on the scale of the target. The cost is small relative to the EBITDA delta typical findings move — vendor consolidation alone usually returns 5–10x the diligence fee in the first 18 months of hold.

Can I use this checklist with my existing CDD provider?

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Yes — that's one of the primary uses. The checklist is structured so a commercial DD provider or in-house deal team can scope marketing diligence as a discrete workstream. If you want Sheppard to run the marketing sprint directly as a specialist alongside your CDD provider, start with the contact form.

Have a Deal in the LOI Window?

We can sit in alongside your CDD provider next week.

Pre-LOI sprints typically run 3–4 weeks and produce a working memo with an EBITDA-impact estimate your deal team can fold into commercial DD. Send a note with the deal stage, vertical, and approximate platform scale.

Scope a diligence sprintSee the full operating model