Define the tiers
Tier language is written before any company is examined, so the scale cannot move to flatter the field.
Methodology
An absolute scale, published, so a score
means the same thing in every market.
Relative scoring grades everyone against the strongest company in the set. The scale then moves with the field, and mediocre execution in a weak market reads as excellence. Absolute tiers remove that.
- 1
Absent
The capability is not present in any observable form. Recorded only after a direct check of the source.
- 2
Present but incidental
Something exists but is generic, inconsistent, or stale enough that a buyer gains nothing from it.
- 3
Competent standard practice
What a well run company in most markets does. Consistent, current, and adequate. This is par, not praise.
- 4
Deliberate and differentiated
Evidence of a decision rather than a default: structured, specific, and built for a defined buyer.
- 5
Proven and defensible
Tier 4 plus published proof of the claim in a named outcome. Rare in most markets, which is the point.
The evidence rule. Three independent, dated, verbatim pieces of evidence are required to award tier 4 or tier 5. A company that is thinly researched is structurally capped, which is why evidence depth across the whole cohort is measured before a report can publish.
Procedure
Six steps, run the same way every time.
Assemble the set from signals
Search visibility, lost deals, hiring geography and publishing rather than reputation.
Capture evidence to a parity floor
Comparable coverage for every company in the set, including the ones nobody finds interesting.
Score against the tier language
Each score records the reasoning that maps the evidence to the tier, plus a confidence label.
Review the flat columns
Uniformly low columns are read as unclaimed ground, which is usually the most actionable output.
Re-score on a set interval
Competitive standing does not move monthly. Evidence is refreshed on a fixed cadence with dated differences.
The rubric
Five lenses, every tier requirement written out.
This is the same document the scoring runs against, and the same document every recommendation cites verbatim. Competitors being scored can read it too. That is intentional: a standard that only works while it is secret was never a standard.
Positioning
Who they are and what they stand for to a buyer.
In one sentence, what is this company for, and is it for me?
| Tier | Name | What must be demonstrated to earn it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Undifferentiated | No stated audience and no stated point of view. Copy could be lifted onto any competitor in the category without changing meaning. |
| 2 | Category language | States a category and a service list. Any differentiation is claimed in adjectives, quality, experience, service, rather than in anything a buyer could verify. |
| 3 | Clear and conventional | Names an audience and a clear offer. A buyer can tell what this company does and roughly who it is for. Consistent across the main surfaces. This is par for a competently run business. |
| 4 | Deliberate | Holds a specific, defensible position that excludes some buyers on purpose, and that position is repeated consistently across at least three independent surfaces with dated evidence. |
| 5 | Owned | Meets tier 4 and the position is backed by proof a competitor cannot simply copy: named methodology, published standard, original research, or a track record stated in specifics. Evidence appears in third-party sources, not only the company’s own site. |
Evidence gathered for this lens before scoring
- Homepage and about page copy, captured verbatim with date
- The single clearest statement of who they serve and what they claim
- Consistency of that statement across site, ads, social profiles and executive interviews
- Whether a named point of view exists or the language is category-generic
Service Architecture
How the portfolio is structured and presented.
Can I find the thing I need, understand its scope, and see how it fits with the rest?
| Tier | Name | What must be demonstrated to earn it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Undefined | No service pages, or a single page listing capabilities as bullet points with no scope, process or detail. |
| 2 | Listed | Services are named and separately addressable, but scope and process are not described. A buyer cannot tell what is included. |
| 3 | Structured | Each core service has its own page describing scope and process in enough detail for a buyer to self-qualify. Navigation reaches any service in two clicks. Par. |
| 4 | Architected | Meets tier 3, and the portfolio is organised around how buyers actually shop, by problem, segment or stage, rather than around the internal org chart. Relationships between services are made explicit. |
| 5 | Productised | Meets tier 4, and offers are packaged with defined inputs, outputs and boundaries that a buyer could evaluate without a call. Dated evidence of at least three such packaged offers. |
Evidence gathered for this lens before scoring
- Every service page, captured and inventoried
- Navigation structure and depth from homepage to a specific service
- Whether scope, process and deliverables are stated or implied
- Coverage of the category: which adjacent services exist and which are absent, verified by a direct sweep of their own site
Inbound & Content
Content, case studies, video, and organic search presence.
When I go looking for help with this problem, do I find them, and is what I find worth my time?
| Tier | Name | What must be demonstrated to earn it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Absent | No content programme. No blog, no case studies, negligible organic footprint beyond the brand name. |
| 2 | Dormant | Content exists but is stale or sporadic. Most recent substantive publication is more than twelve months old, or output is fewer than four pieces a year. |
| 3 | Active | Publishes regularly and ranks for a meaningful set of non-brand terms. Has case studies. Content is competent but largely restates category basics. Par. |
| 4 | Compounding | Meets tier 3, ranks in the top positions for commercially valuable non-brand terms, and publishes at least one format beyond written articles. Case studies carry specific, checkable outcomes. Three or more dated pieces of evidence. |
| 5 | Authoritative | Meets tier 4, and the content is cited by third parties, appears in AI-generated answers for category questions, or contains original research the category references. Evidence must include citation from outside the company’s own properties. |
Evidence gathered for this lens before scoring
- Organic keyword footprint and ranking positions
- Content inventory with publication dates, so cadence and dormancy are both visible
- Case studies and their specificity: named outcomes versus generic praise
- Video and podcast presence with dates and view counts where public
- Whether the brand is cited in AI answers, checked directly against Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT
- Backlink profile and referring domain quality
Conversion
How a buyer goes from interested to in touch.
I have decided I want to talk. How hard is it, and what do I get for taking the step?
| Tier | Name | What must be demonstrated to earn it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Obstructed | No working conversion path beyond a generic mailbox or a phone number. Forms broken, missing, or hidden. |
| 2 | Minimal | A single contact form exists. No context, no expectation set for what happens next, no differentiation by buyer intent. |
| 3 | Functional | Clear contact path with a reasonable form, present on the pages that matter, with a stated next step. Par. In the first live cohort, every single company in the market landed here. |
| 4 | Considered | Meets tier 3, and offers more than one path matched to buyer readiness, such as direct booking alongside a form, with trust evidence at the point of decision and a stated response commitment. |
| 5 | Self-serve | Meets tier 4, and a buyer can get a meaningful, specific answer, a quote, a configuration, or a qualified scope, without waiting on a human. Verified by direct use, with the date it was tested. |
Evidence gathered for this lens before scoring
- Every conversion path on the site, enumerated and tested
- Number of form fields and what is demanded before value is given
- Whether self-serve quoting, configuration, or pricing guidance exists
- Response mechanics: booking links, live chat, stated response times
- Trust assets adjacent to the point of conversion
Audience
Who they target, by vertical, size, and geography.
Do they work with companies like mine, in my industry, at my size, where I am?
| Tier | Name | What must be demonstrated to earn it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Unstated | No identifiable target audience. No vertical, size or geography stated or implied. |
| 2 | Everyone | Targets broadly and says so. Any business, any size, any location. No segmentation visible in copy or in paid media. |
| 3 | Defined | Names its verticals or its geography, and paid and organic activity is broadly consistent with that claim. Par. |
| 4 | Segmented | Meets tier 3, and addresses distinct segments with distinct messaging and distinct proof, evidenced in at least three dated artefacts such as vertical landing pages, segment-specific ad copy, or segment case studies. |
| 5 | Precise | Meets tier 4, and targeting is specific enough to exclude, with evidence that the exclusion is deliberate and consistent across owned content, paid media and hiring. |
Evidence gathered for this lens before scoring
- Stated verticals, company sizes and geographies across site and paid media
- Paid search keywords and ad copy with run dates, showing who they are actually paying to reach
- Ad library records across Google, Meta, LinkedIn and TikTok
- Job postings by location, as a check on where they are actually operating
- Whether targeting narrows or broadens over time
Metric definitions
The definition is where reporting quietly goes wrong.
None of the failures below require anybody to lie. Each one only requires a definition that nobody wrote down, and each one moves the number in the direction that flatters whoever is reporting it.
- New lead
-
A distinct person whose first contact with the business falls inside the reporting window. Not a raw touch, not a session, not a form fill.
Deduplication removes roughly 30% of raw contacts in live data, from two real and measurable effects: people who call more than once, and people who submit a form and then phone about the same job. Counting touches instead of people inflates a lead count by about a third.
- Channel credit
-
Credit for a lead goes to that person’s first touch, not their most recent one.
The first touch is what actually brought them in. Last-touch attribution systematically credits the channel that was already going to close, usually branded search, and starves the channel that created the demand.
- Cost per paid lead
-
Ad spend divided only by the leads that ad spend actually produced. Never ad spend divided by all leads.
On a live account, dividing spend by all leads understated the true cost per paid lead by 61%, in the direction that flattered the agency. This is the single most common way marketing reporting misleads without anyone lying.
- Sales solicitations
-
Inbound vendor pitches, identified and excluded from lead counts. The excluded count is displayed rather than hidden.
Every business receives them, and they arrive through the same forms and phone numbers as real leads. Showing the excluded number makes the filter auditable instead of asking for trust.
- Ad spend, range-aware
-
Precise daily figures for short windows. For long windows, the authoritative platform export prorated by exact day overlap. Never a blended monthly average spread evenly.
Blending hides the exact thing a date-range comparison is for. A campaign that ran for nine days of a month is not one third of that month’s spend.
- Hiring velocity
-
New job postings appearing week over week. Explicitly not the count of currently open roles.
Job boards keep filled roles listed for weeks. An open-role count measures listing hygiene as much as it measures hiring. New appearances measure intent.
- Capacity hiring vs structural growth
-
Two separate signals, never merged. Capacity means field and delivery roles. Structural growth means leadership, a new branch, or a new service line.
Collapsing them into one number destroys the finding. Ten field roles means volume is coming. Three senior leadership roles in one market means a competitor is standing up a division.
- Does not rank vs does not exist
-
Ranking data supports "does not rank." Only a direct sweep of a competitor’s own site supports "does not exist." The two are never used interchangeably.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. A service that exists but ranks nowhere is a completely different finding from a service the competitor does not offer.
Limits
What this method does not claim.
Stating limits is part of the standard. A method presented as universally applicable is being sold rather than described.
- It reads observable behaviour. It does not see a competitor’s internal strategy, margins or roadmap.
- It does not predict. Leading indicators shorten the delay between a move and your awareness of it, nothing more.
- It cannot recover history that was never instrumented. A clean baseline starts when clean measurement starts.
- It will sometimes contradict a plan already approved. That is the intended behaviour of an honest method.
- AI answer citations vary by session and phrasing, so those checks report tested attempts on a stated date rather than a general claim.
- Ad transparency records show creative, not budget. Segmentation may exist below the level those records expose.
Sources
Every third-party figure and quotation on this site.
A service about traceability cannot run a marketing site full of unsourced numbers. Nothing below is a testimonial and nothing below is about Ultimate Analytics. These are published findings and statements by named parties, listed so you can check them.
Figures
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Marketing budgets have flatlined at 7.7% of overall company revenue, and 59% of CMOs report they do not have enough budget to execute their strategy.
Gartner survey of CMOs and marketing leaders, as reported by Gartner and trade press.
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Marketing budgets rose only slightly to 7.8% of company revenue in 2026, while CMOs allocate 15.3% of marketing budgets to AI and only 30% say they are ready to scale AI capabilities.
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Only 52% of senior marketing leaders can prove marketing’s value and receive credit for its contribution to business outcomes.
Gartner survey of senior marketing leaders.
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47% of CMOs report that marketing is viewed inside their organisation as an expense rather than a strategic investment.
Gartner survey of 395 CMOs, February to March 2024.
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67% of B2B buyers favour a rep-free buying experience, and 45% said they used AI tools during a recent purchase.
Survey of 646 B2B buyers, fieldwork August to September 2025.
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69% of B2B buyers turn to sales representatives to validate AI-generated insights.
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B2B buyers do not speak with a seller until roughly 70% of the way through their buying journey. Buyers initiate the first conversation 82% of the time, 85% have completely or mostly set their requirements before that conversation, and 81% engage first with the vendor that ultimately wins.
Survey of more than 3,500 B2B buyers across three global regions.
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In 2025 the point of first vendor contact moved earlier, from 69% to 61% of journey completion, with buyers reaching out roughly 3.5 weeks sooner than the year before.
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At any one time, up to 95% of business buyers are not in the market for a given product or service. Only about 5% are actively buying.
Derived from average B2B purchase cycles: a five-year replacement window puts roughly 20% of a market in play in a year and about 5% in a given quarter.
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Advertising works principally by building and refreshing memory links to a brand, which is why building mental availability is a multi-year task.
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Peer-reviewed research using large-scale web-crawled vacancy data finds that job postings act as a leading indicator of firm performance, visible before it appears in financial reporting.
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Server-log data from 137,000 domains found that 97% of llms.txt files received zero requests in May 2026, and that AI retrieval bots accounted for just 1.1% of the requests that did arrive.
Server logs across 137,000 domains, request data for May 2026.
Quotations
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“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Primary source: published address text.
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“The essence of strategy is in the activities: choosing to perform activities differently or to perform different activities than rivals.”
Primary source: the published article.
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“What gets measured gets managed, even when it is pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organisation to do so.”
Written as a summary of V. F. Ridgway, Dysfunctional Consequences of Performance Measurements, 1956.
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“In God we trust. All others must bring data.”
Widely attributed to Deming. We could not locate it in his published work, so it is printed here as attributed rather than sourced.
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“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”
Widely attributed to Churchill. No primary source located, so it is printed here as attributed rather than sourced.
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“It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.”
Widely attributed to Shaw. No primary source located, so it is printed here as attributed rather than sourced.
If any of this does not hold up,
we would rather hear it now.
The rubric is public so it can be argued with. If you think a tier requirement is wrong, or a definition is doing quiet work in somebody’s favour, that is a conversation worth having.
No prices on this site. Every engagement is scoped and quoted after the first meeting.