Why everyone found a different problem

The problem you get is the problem they sell

Nobody diagnosed your business. They diagnosed the part of it they know how to fix.

That’s not a conspiracy. It’s a lens. Spend your working life inside ad accounts and every leak looks like a targeting problem. Build websites all day and every drop-off looks like a design problem. People see what they’re trained to see. Then they quote for it.

The trouble is who goes first. When the person diagnosing is also the person selling the fix, the diagnosis lands on the fix. Every time.

It’s like asking a knee surgeon whether your pain is in your knee.

What it actually costs you

I sat across from a founder who spent $3,204 on ads in the month he came to us and made $548 back. Eight orders. About $400 to buy each one. He’d been through three agencies and the number hadn’t moved.

• $3,204 spent on ads in the month he signed
• $548 made back
• $400 to buy each customer
• $55 what a customer was worth

The ads were never the problem. His average order was $69. At his margin, a customer was worth about $55 in gross profit, and in his category you cannot buy a customer for $55. No ad account in the world closes that gap.

Ads amplify an offer. They don’t fix one that can’t pay for itself.

So we didn’t touch the campaigns first. We rebuilt what a customer was worth. By August his average order was $137, and he made $27,469 on $10,525 of media. Read how we did it.

Same ads team. Different first question.

Not sure which part of yours is the problem? See what’s holding your sales back → (opens in a new tab)

Three questions to ask before you pay anyone

1. 1

   What would have to be true for this not to be the problem?

   If they can’t answer, they haven’t checked. They’ve assumed.

2. 2

   What did you look at before you looked at the thing you sell?

   Your margins. Your offer. Whether your site converts the traffic you already pay for. If none of that came up, you got a sales pitch with a diagnosis attached.

3. 3

   What happens if the answer is that I don’t need you?

   Watch their face when you ask it. That tells you more than the proposal will.

Where we sit in this

You’re probably thinking: you sell things too, Mareike.

Yes. We do. That’s exactly why we built it the way we did.

We charge for the diagnosis on its own. Four weeks, $4000 + GST. We check in order: can your business afford a customer, does your site convert what you’re already buying, and only then the ads. Roughly six in ten Sprints end without us offering to do the work. Here’s who we do take on. You keep the plan either way.

That’s not generosity. It’s the only way the diagnosis stays honest. The answer can’t depend on what we’d like to sell you.

You don’t need another opinion. You need one from someone who’s allowed to tell you they’re not the answer.