Know where your marketing actually stands, before you spend another pound.
A five minute assessment that gives you an honest read on your marketing across the seven pillars of the Big Brand Blueprint. You'll get a score, a straight diagnosis of what's working and what's leaking, the one thing to fix first, and a plain list of what not to spend money on yet.
Free · Five minutes · No call, no pitch, no follow-up unless you want one
Most marketing money isn't wasted on bad execution.
It's wasted on decisions that were never properly made. The ad wasn't the problem. The agency wasn't the problem. The problem was three steps upstream, in a choice nobody sat down and made, and by the time the money's gone it's very hard to work out which part let you down.
Which is why the useful question isn't whether your next campaign will work. It's whether your marketing is in a state where spending more on it makes any sense yet. That's what this assessment answers, and it'll tell you plainly if the answer is no.
Founders and business owners who are about to spend, or already spending.
And who it isn't for. If you're looking for something to tell you you're doing brilliantly, this will disappoint you. It's built to be honest rather than encouraging, and most people find at least one thing in it uncomfortable.
- You're about to put real money into marketing and want to know if you're ready for it
- You're spending already and can't say with confidence what's actually working
- You've got plenty of activity happening but nothing clearly tying it together
- You're weighing up an agency, ads or a rebrand and want a straight second opinion first
- You've read the book, or you like the thinking, and you want it pointed at your own business
Five minutes, four steps.
A little about your business.
Thirty seconds. Sector, size, roughly what you spend on marketing, and what's frustrating you right now. It's what makes the report yours rather than generic.
Twenty-three plain statements.
About four minutes. No jargon, no homework, nothing you'd need to go and look up. You just say how strongly each one is true of your business.
Your score and your seven lights.
Instantly. A readiness score out of 100 and a red, amber or green on each of the seven pillars, so you can see the shape of it at a glance.
Your full report.
On screen and as a PDF in your inbox. This is the part that actually tells you what to do.
A diagnosis, not a score.
Plenty of tools give you a number and leave you to work out what it means. This one does the interpretation, which is the bit you actually wanted.
- A readiness score out of 100, and a traffic light on each of the seven pillars of the framework.
- The pattern you're in, named. Certain combinations of strengths and weaknesses are recognisable situations, and yours gets identified and explained. Most people find this the most useful page in the report.
- A verdict on every pillar, written by me, saying what your score means, what it's costing you and what to do about it.
- Specific callouts on your own answers, so it responds to what you actually said rather than to a band you happened to land in.
- The one thing to fix first, and why everything downstream of it will underperform until you do.
- What not to spend money on yet. The page nobody else offers, and usually the one that saves people the most.
- A 30 day plan, six actions maximum, in the order that makes each one easier than the last. Six, deliberately, because twenty-one actions isn't a plan.
It's a framework, not a quiz.
Built on a published model.
The seven pillars come from the Big Brand Blueprint, written up in full across two books, not invented for a lead magnet.
It asks about evidence, not confidence.
You're never asked to rate how good you think you are at something, because people with weak marketing are the least able to judge their own marketing. You're asked what's actually true.
Sequence is the whole point.
The seven pillars compound in order, so the report always names the earliest serious weakness rather than the loudest one. That's usually not where people expect.
Twenty years of judgement, not an algorithm's guess.
Every word of every verdict was written in advance by me. Nothing in the report is generated on the fly.
Chris Willman
- Two decades leading marketing inside CrowdStrike, Commvault, RSA Security and Kaspersky
- Author of The Big Brand Blueprint and The Entrepreneurs Marketing Manual
- B2B Future CMO award, 2024 and 2025
- Over 1bn dollars of qualified pipeline created
Questions
How long does it actually take?
Around five minutes. Thirty seconds on your business, four minutes on the statements. You get your score straight away.
Is it really free?
Yes, right now. It's new, and I'd rather have people using it and telling me what's useful than charge for it on day one. It'll be a paid report later on.
Do I need to know my numbers?
No. Nothing here requires you to go and look anything up. If you genuinely don't know the answer to something, say you're unsure, and the report will treat that as a finding in itself, because it usually is.
Will I get chased with sales calls?
No. You'll get your report, and one short email thread that's useful in its own right. If you want a conversation you can book one, and if you don't, nothing happens.
What if my score is bad?
Then it's done its job. A low score isn't a judgement on you, it's a map of where the money's leaking, and it's considerably cheaper to find out here than after another quarter of spending.
Who's behind it?
Chris Willman. I spent twenty years leading marketing inside some of the world's biggest technology, SaaS and cyber security brands, and I now bring that judgement to founders and B2B businesses. The framework behind this is the one in my books.
What happens to my answers?
They're stored securely and used to produce your report, and in aggregate to improve the benchmarks. They're never sold or shared. You can ask for your data to be deleted at any time.
Is this the same as the audit?
No. This is wide and instant and free. The audit goes deep on your actual marketing, with evidence and a prioritised plan, and it's £2,250. The assessment will tell you honestly whether you need one.
Five minutes now, or another quarter guessing.
You'll come away knowing where your marketing genuinely stands, what to fix first, and what not to spend a penny on until you have. If it turns out you're in better shape than you thought, it'll tell you that too.
Not ready for that? Read the Before You Spend guide instead.