Independent marketing and social media agency audits
Know whether your agency understands how people discover, engage, and decide today.
The Creative Group gives CMOs and marketing leaders an independent, evidence-led view of marketing strategy, social media performance, creative relevance, measurement, commercial value, and agency operations.
Independent. Evidence-led. Confidential. Transparent scope and pricing, with no forced retainer.
The problem
Agency reporting explains activity, not cause
A status report can tell you what was published and what the platforms attributed. It cannot tell you whether the social strategy reflects how audiences behave, whether creators and community are held to any standard, whether creative earns attention in the feed, or whether reported results survive scrutiny. We audit the connected system and show what is working, what is breaking, why it matters, and what to change first.
A full calendar without momentum
Social and content output is constant, but audience response and business movement are flat.
Clicks without customers
The creative earns attention, but the offer, audience intent, or destination breaks the journey.
Strong ROAS without profit
Attribution, discounts, returns, margin, or non-incremental demand may distort the result.
Awareness without preference
The market remembers the campaign but does not understand why it should choose the brand.
The chain
Ten links between intent and result
Marketing is a chain that runs from market reality through content, social, and media into business result. Value is created or lost at every connection, and the weakest link sets the ceiling for everything downstream.
- 01Market reality
- 02Audience behavior
- 03Positioning
- 04Offer
- 05Content and creative
- 06Social and community
- 07Paid and organic delivery
- 08Destination experience
- 09Measurement
- 10Business result
01 Market reality
Is the campaign built around the category customers are actually navigating?
We test the category frame, competitive set, demand assumptions, and cultural context against how buyers actually describe the problem.
If this link breaks: The campaign frames the problem as convenience while customers primarily discuss risk.
What we audit
Seven audits, led by social media effectiveness
Social media strategy, content, community, creators, paid social, platform fluency, and social measurement sit at the center of the practice. Advertising, media, and commercial accountability remain fully in scope.
Marketing Agency Performance Audit
A structured, evidence-led assessment of whether your marketing agency is producing growth or producing activity.
Social Media Strategy and Performance Audit
An independent read on whether your social strategy, content system, community practice, creator programs, and paid social work reflect how people discover, engage, and decide today.
Content, Creative, and Platform Relevance Audit
An assessment of whether content and creative output reflects current audience behavior and platform craft, or inherited convention.
Integrated Marketing and Operating Model Audit
An examination of whether strategy, channels, agencies, and internal teams operate as one marketing system with clear ownership.
Media, Measurement, and Attribution Audit
Verification of media and paid social buying practice, data integrity, and whether reported results survive independent scrutiny.
Contract and Commercial Review
An examination of contract terms, fee construction, and commercial value against the marketing work actually delivered.
Agency Relationship Reset and Review Readiness
A structured decision on whether to repair the current marketing agency relationship or prepare a defensible review.
Evidence standard
Every finding states how confident we are
We do not average nine dimensions into one campaign health score. A single number hides the constraint, and the constraint is the decision.
- Verified
Directly supported by reliable evidence.
- Supported inference
Multiple evidence points indicate the conclusion, but direct validation is incomplete.
- Hypothesis
A plausible explanation requiring a defined test.
- Unknown
Evidence is absent or contradictory.
Transparent offers
Two ways to start, both priced in public
No discovery call is required to learn the price of a standard engagement.
Leakage Check
Find likely financial leakage in five business days.
$2,500flat
- One agency contract or statement of work
- Twelve months of invoices
- Two major media platforms
- One legal entity
- One market
Full Campaign Audit
Understand performance across the complete journey.
From $15,000
- One campaign, one market: $15,000
- Up to three campaigns, one market: $25,000
- Multi-market or portfolio: Custom
Who we serve
Built for the people who answer for the result
CMOs
You need an independent read on whether your marketing and social agencies are creating growth before the next budget cycle, renewal, or board conversation.
Marketing directors
You need evidence that separates a social strategy problem from a content, creative, media, or measurement problem.
Finance and procurement
You need agency fees, paid social and media spend, and reported performance reconciled against delivery and business result.
Independence
The diagnosis is not a disguised pitch
We do not sell media, produce creative, or take the implementation work that our own findings recommend.
See the whole system
Marketing does not fail inside a dashboard. It fails when the connections between strategy, social, content, media, experience, and measurement break down.
Separate evidence from assumptions
Every conclusion is labeled as verified evidence, a supported inference, or a hypothesis that requires testing.
Turn diagnosis into decisions
Every material finding leads to a specific action, owner, expected behavior change, business metric, and validation method.
Know the scope and price
Standard engagements have published prices, defined inputs, explicit exclusions, and fixed delivery windows.
The deliverable
A Campaign Improvement Blueprint, not a slide deck
Nine scored dimensions, findings classified by evidence status, root-cause chains, prioritized recommendations with visible arithmetic, and a 90-day plan sequenced by dependency.
Free diagnostic
Campaign Failure Map
Nine questions, no email required to see the result. It shows which links are evidenced, which are unknown, and what evidence a real diagnosis would need.
Executive FAQs
Questions leadership asks first
- Is this a media audit?
- It includes media delivery and financial efficiency, but it goes further. We assess the entire system that determines campaign performance: market, audience, positioning, offer, creative, copy, media, destination, measurement, and commercial result.
- Why not rely on platform reports?
- Platforms report activity and attributed outcomes inside their own environments. They cannot independently establish whether the audience was right, the positioning was credible, the destination converted the promise, or the result was incremental and profitable.
- Do you replace our agency?
- No. The audit provides an independent diagnosis and an implementation-ready blueprint. Your internal team or existing partners can execute it.
- Will you criticize the creative subjectively?
- No. Creative findings are tied to the communication objective, audience evidence, channel context, comprehension, branding, behavior, and available performance evidence. Where evidence is insufficient, we state a hypothesis and define a test.
- Do you conduct customer research?
- Primary research is available as a clearly priced add-on. If current evidence is insufficient, we will not claim to know how the market perceives the brand.
- When does the delivery clock begin?
- When all required inputs have been submitted and accepted. The portal shows any missing or unusable evidence before the clock starts.
Insights
Recent thinking
- Social Media Performance
How to Audit a Social Media Agency: A CMO's Guide
Most social agency problems are diagnosed by feel. An audit replaces impressions with platform evidence, and gives leadership a decision it can defend.
- Social Media Performance
12 Signs Your Social Strategy Is Actually a Publishing Schedule
Individually these signals are unremarkable. In combination they usually indicate a calendar wearing the language of a strategy.
- Media and Measurement
Paid and Organic Social Alignment: What CMOs Should Be Able to Verify
Alignment is not a statement of intent in a status meeting. It is a set of things a client can independently verify across paid and organic social.
Confidential
Scope your audit and see the price before you talk to anyone
The guided scope builder returns a standard price where your scope fits a published package, and tells you plainly when it does not.