Sheppard

Marketing Audit · Pre-LOI or First 60 Days Post-Close

Marketing due diligence that informs the bid.

A 3–4 week specialist marketing audit on a PE home services platform deal. Sized to fit alongside your CDD provider's commercial DD work. Output: a working memo with a quantified EBITDA-impact estimate the deal team folds into committee materials — and an operating plan the future portco CEO runs from on Day 1.

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Why It Matters

The marketing review that lands in the deal binder.

Most marketing diligence in PE deals lands as a slide. Sometimes two. Usually written by a generalist commercial DD provider who interviewed the target's CMO for ninety minutes and looked at a Google Ads dashboard. The slide doesn't move the bid. It doesn't shape structure. It doesn't surface deal-killing findings before exclusivity locks the sponsor in.

A specialist marketing audit produces a quantified EBITDA delta — what's recoverable in the first 18 months, what's structural, what the 100-day plan looks like in dollars. It belongs alongside commercial, operational, and financial DD as its own workstream — particularly in residential home services, where marketing is now a meaningful EBITDA lever that competent post-close work can move 150–400 bps in 18 months.

The diligence that earns its keep is the one that informs the bid — or kills the deal.

The Seven Workstreams

What a 3–4 week marketing audit actually covers.

Each workstream produces a discrete output. They synthesize into a working memo with a quantified EBITDA-impact estimate — packaged so the deal team can fold it into committee materials or the operating partner can use it as the Day-1 plan.

— 01

Spend efficiency review

Paid search, paid social, local, and offline analyzed against actual sourced revenue — not impressions or clicks. Output: a sourced-revenue waterfall that shows the committee which channels are driving the topline.

— 02

Attribution integrity audit

The single most common pre-close finding is that reported attribution is fiction — multi-touch models papering over a CRM that doesn't reconcile to the dialer or dispatch. The audit assesses what the data actually proves vs. what reporting claims.

— 03

Lead quality and disposition

Across CRM, dialer, and dispatch — where do leads die? What share converts to booked appointments? What share converts to revenue? This is the operational picture most sellers don't have themselves.

— 04

Vendor concentration and contract map

Every agency, freelancer, software vendor, call tracking system — with contract terms, exit clauses, renewal cycles, and asset ownership. The blueprint for value creation in the first 100 days.

— 05

Brand equity baseline

Competitive share-of-voice in priority DMAs, branded search trend, review velocity, local-pack visibility. The brand layer that determines pricing power across the hold period.

— 06

Operational marketing maturity

The function's tooling, talent, and operating cadence vs. comparable platforms. Where structural under-investment shows up — and what it takes to professionalize.

— 07

EBITDA-impact estimate

Synthesis: what's recoverable in the first 18 months, what's structural, and what the 100-day plan looks like in dollars. The artifact the deal team folds into commercial DD or the operating partner uses as the Day-1 plan.

What You Get

Three artifacts. All actionable.

  • 01

    Working memo — executive summary the deal team reads in five minutes

    Top findings, structured by workstream, with the EBITDA-impact estimate up top.

  • 02

    Detailed appendix — workstream findings the operating partner hands to the portco CEO

    Source data, vendor inventories, attribution audits, brand baselines — everything that supports the headline findings.

  • 03

    EBITDA-impact estimate — modeled, sourced, defensible

    Recoverable savings (vendor consolidation, channel-mix rebalance), structural costs, and the 100-day plan in dollars.

3–4 weeks

Typical sprint, sized to fit inside the LOI window

$35–90k

Engagement fee depending on platform scale

5–10×

Typical first-18-month return on vendor consolidation alone

150–400 bps

EBITDA improvement most platforms capture in 18 months

Frequently Asked

On marketing due diligence.

What is marketing due diligence in a PE platform deal?

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A specialist commercial review of a target company's marketing engine, conducted pre-LOI alongside the sponsor's CDD provider, 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, operational maturity, and produces an EBITDA-impact estimate splitting what's recoverable from what's structural.

How does marketing due diligence differ from commercial due diligence?

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Commercial DD validates the market and the target's position in it. Marketing DD validates whether the target's growth engine is structurally sound — and what it will take to scale it under sponsor ownership. CDD asks 'is the market real?' Marketing DD asks 'is the growth machine real, and what does it take to compound it over the hold?' They sit alongside each other as complementary workstreams.

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 — by then the bid is committed.

What does a marketing audit 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 audit fee in the first 18 months of hold.

Can my CDD provider run marketing diligence instead of Sheppard?

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Some generalist CDD providers will check a marketing box. The output is usually a slide. Specialist marketing diligence produces a working memo and a quantified EBITDA-impact estimate, scoped to the operating realities of the trade. If your CDD provider doesn't have residential-home-services marketing depth, Sheppard sits in as a specialist workstream alongside their broader commercial review.

Why focus marketing diligence specifically on home services?

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Home services platforms have specific marketing economics — emergency vs. retail demand splits, lead quality through dispatch, multi-DMA local SEO compounding, brand equity through neighborhood saturation, vendor concentration around a handful of local SEO and paid search firms — that generalist marketing diligence often misses. The questions a sponsor needs answered in HVAC are not the same questions they need answered in B2B SaaS.

Have a platform under LOI? We can be in next week.

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