Before any campaign they produced a baseline my team could reconcile. Three quarters later the forecast has landed within 12% of actuals every time, and the quarterly review takes twenty minutes instead of two hours.
The numbers first.
Then the plan.
StrateonX is a marketing strategy and infrastructure consultancy. Our five-phase method runs in a fixed order, and nothing is built before the baseline is measured.
We knew in week two what would be live in week nine, and it was. No agency has given me that before.
Their model showed in month two that one channel would not pay back. We moved the money before it went out, and that one decision is still the largest saving in this year's budget.
They spent the first month on our reporting and only then on campaigns. Three of our supposed wins turned out to be seasonality. We cut the spend behind them a quarter earlier than we would have on our own.
Scope changed twice during the CRM rebuild. Both times the new date was confirmed in writing before a single task was rescheduled, and the final date held.
Every month we get a variance report before the review meeting. It is the least exciting document I read, and the most useful.
Our lead process now runs the same on a Friday afternoon as it does on a Monday. The plan named that milestone in month one, and it arrived on the date.
Their AI scoring parked two of our four pilot ideas on day one, with the reason on record. The two that ran were live in the quarter the roadmap named, not the one after.
The measured plan.
A launch calendar is not a plan. It is a sequence with the arithmetic missing. We count before we write, never after. Five phases, one order, each closing with a document you can read and a date you can check. Measured. Sequenced. Dated.
Baseline.
Most marketing numbers have never been reconciled with anything.
- revenue, pipeline and spend reconciled to one ledger
- every data source rated for what it can and cannot prove
- baseline before budget
Model.
A forecast without its assumptions attached is a guess with formatting.
- a demand model that shows its working, line by line
- cost, lag and ceiling modelled for every channel
- ranges, not promises
Sequence.
A plan that is not written down is a mood.
- a dated roadmap where every item names its dependency
- which segments and channels get budget, which get parked, and why
- dependencies before deadlines
Execute.
Heroics are what a missing runbook looks like from the outside.
- each system tested and live before the next one starts
- a weekly written status that replaces the meeting
- runbook before rollout
Calibrate.
Systems do not break; they drift, one unwatched week at a time.
- forecast against actual every month, variance explained
- a single variable per test, so the cause stays visible
- reviewed, not rescued
Where does your plan break?
Tell us what keeps slipping. We hand you the first step. And the phase it belongs to…