Marketing Agency & Consultancy

Most companies hire the wrong kind of marketing agency. Usually because nobody defined the problem first.

Brand, creative, SEO, PR and growth are different disciplines with different economics. This page will help you work out which one your problem actually needs — including when that is not us.

'Marketing agency' describes at least six different businesses

A brand agency sells positioning and identity. A creative agency sells campaign ideas and production. An SEO agency sells organic visibility. A PR firm sells earned coverage. A media agency sells buying and planning. A growth or performance firm sells accountable customer acquisition. These are genuinely different disciplines with different timelines, different measures of success, and very little overlap in the skills required. The most expensive mistake in this category is not choosing a mediocre supplier — it is choosing an excellent one from the wrong discipline. A superb brand agency will not fix a broken acquisition funnel, and the best performance team available cannot rescue a product nobody has a reason to choose. Diagnosing which problem you actually have is worth more than any supplier shortlist.

Platform-reported conversions versus booked revenue. Four advertising channels each report a share of the same conversions — Meta, Google, LinkedIn and YouTube. Because each measures inside its own attribution window with no visibility of the others, their combined claimed total is larger than the revenue actually recorded in the ledger.

Illustrative. Each platform reports the conversions it believes it influenced, inside its own attribution window, with no visibility of the others — so the same order gets claimed more than once and the totals exceed what finance booked. The gap widens with every channel you add.

Symptoms, causes and what they cost

You have hired agencies before and it did not work

Why it happens: Usually a discipline mismatch rather than a competence failure. The brief described a symptom — 'we need more leads' — and the supplier chosen solved whichever version of that they sell.

What it costs: Six to twelve months and a retainer, and the underlying constraint is exactly where it was.

You cannot tell whether marketing is working at all

Why it happens: No agreed measure of success. Brand work, content and paid acquisition are being judged against one another using metrics that were never comparable.

What it costs: Budget goes to whatever is easiest to report, which is rarely whatever matters most.

Every agency you speak to says they can do everything

Why it happens: Full-service positioning is commercially attractive and rarely true. Depth in media buying, brand strategy and technical SEO are not the same skill set.

What it costs: You buy breadth, receive it, and find the specific thing you needed was the shallow part.

Growth stalled and nobody can say why

Why it happens: The constraint has moved — from awareness to conversion, or conversion to retention, or retention to product — and the marketing plan has not.

What it costs: You keep spending against last year's bottleneck while the current one goes unaddressed.

Where growth is normally stuck

Conversion signal loss between the browser and the ad platform. Conversions fall at each stage of browser-side collection: tracking prevention and consent choices remove roughly a third, and further loss occurs before the event reaches the ad platform. A final bar shows the larger share that survives when events are also sent server-side.

Illustrative. Browser-side collection loses signal to tracking prevention, consent choices and blockers before it ever reaches the ad platform. Server-side events recover much of that gap — not all of it, and never the part a visitor declined.

Our solutions — matched to the problem you have

Our services

Diagnosis

Where every engagement starts, and where a meaningful share of them honestly end — with a recommendation to hire someone else.

Measurement first

Nothing downstream is trustworthy until this is right. We start here on almost every engagement, because optimising against numbers that do not reconcile just reaches the wrong destination faster.

Acquisition

Where acquisition genuinely is the constraint, media run against contribution rather than platform-reported returns.

What we actually do — and what we do not

We are one of the six kinds above: accountable customer acquisition, built on measurement you can defend. We are not a brand, creative production, PR or technical SEO agency, and we will tell you when that is what you need.

How it runs

The engagement sequence, phase by phase. Four sequential phases, beginning with diagnosis and measurement before any campaign changes are made.

The order is deliberate. Acquisition work built on unreconciled measurement compounds the error, so the measurement layer is corrected before any campaign changes.

Days 1–10 — Diagnose before recommending anything

Read-only access to ad accounts, analytics and CRM. We locate the actual constraint and show the arithmetic. If it sits outside what we do, you get that answer in week two rather than after a year of retainer.

Weeks 2–4 — Fix the measurement layer

If the constraint is ours to fix, this comes first. Server-side events, values on conversions, and reconciliation against booked revenue — because optimising against numbers that do not reconcile just reaches the wrong place faster.

Weeks 4–8 — Address the constraint you actually have

Acquisition, conversion or economics depending on the diagnosis — not a standard package applied regardless of what the first ten days found.

Ongoing — Re-diagnose as the constraint moves

Constraints migrate. Weekly against contribution and payback, and when the bottleneck moves somewhere we are not the right people for, we say so rather than expand the scope.

Why we would rather send you elsewhere

A misdiagnosed engagement is bad for everyone, and it is worst for us: we spend months unable to move the number, and you conclude the discipline does not work. Telling a prospect in week one that their real problem is retention, or pricing, or that they need a brand agency rather than a growth one, costs us a proposal and saves both sides a year. It is also the clearest signal we can offer about how we would behave once engaged — an agency that will not disqualify itself before a contract is signed is unlikely to start afterwards.

What you get out of it

You hire the right discipline

A correct diagnosis is worth more than a supplier shortlist. Most agency failures are category errors, not competence ones.

You get an agreed definition of success

Fully-loaded CAC, contribution and payback — measures that work across suppliers and survive a board meeting.

You stop funding last year's bottleneck

Constraints move. Re-diagnosing regularly means budget follows the current limit rather than the historical one.

You keep the capability

Models, tracking and dashboards live in your accounts. The point is to make us unnecessary, not indispensable.

Cumulative contribution against customer acquisition cost over twelve months. Contribution accumulates month by month as a rising line, while acquisition cost is a flat line paid up front. The two cross once cumulative contribution overtakes acquisition cost. The shaded area before that crossing is the payback period, during which capital is committed.

Illustrative. Contribution accumulates monthly while the acquisition cost is paid up front. The shaded area is the period your capital is committed — the real constraint on how fast you can scale, regardless of how strong the LTV:CAC ratio looks.

Published engagements

Client names are withheld under NDA. Every figure comes from the engagement it is attached to.

This is for you if

Do not hire us if

Industries we serve

D2C & e-commerce

Margin-aware acquisition and repeat-purchase economics rather than headline ROAS.

B2B SaaS

Pipeline and closed-won accountability across long, multi-stakeholder cycles.

EdTech

High enquiry volume where qualification, not lead cost, is the usual constraint.

Real estate

High-value, geography-bound demand where lead quality dominates volume.

Automotive & local retail

Online demand that completes offline weeks later.

Fintech & regulated

Acquisition shaped by consent and what may lawfully be transmitted.

Check your own numbers before you talk to anyone

A working spreadsheet with live formulas: spend through to net contribution, blended CAC including the fees your ad platform excludes, and payback computed on contribution rather than revenue. No email required — it is a file, and you should be able to check our thinking before you hear our pitch.

Download the worksheet

Frequently Asked Questions

What kind of marketing agency do we actually need?
It depends on the constraint. If people do not know or trust you, that is brand and PR. If they find you but do not convert, that is funnel and conversion work. If you convert but lose money doing it, that is unit economics and acquisition. If they buy and leave, that is retention and product. Most companies describe the symptom — 'we need more leads' — and buy whichever discipline the first supplier they called happens to sell.
Is a marketing agency or an in-house team better?
In-house is usually better once the volume and the problem are stable enough to justify permanent headcount, because the context compounds. External help is better for specialised capability you need periodically, or where you need the measurement layer built once and handed over. We are explicitly built for the second case — everything stays in your accounts precisely so you can take it in-house.
What should a marketing agency actually cost?
Ours is priced on scope: $2,500 for a diagnostic audit, $4,500–$5,500 for a build sprint, $6,500–$8,500 per month for a retainer. The model to be wary of is a percentage of ad spend, which pays the agency more when your budget grows regardless of whether the growth was profitable, and makes recommending a reduction structurally irrational.
How do we know if an agency is any good before hiring them?
Ask what would make them tell you not to hire them. Ask how they would know their work was not producing incremental revenue. Ask who owns the tracking and models afterwards. Firms that cannot answer the first two are selling activity rather than outcomes, and the third question tells you whether you are buying a capability or renting a dependency.
Do you work with small businesses and startups?
It depends on the constraint rather than the size. If you are spending enough on acquisition that a few points of efficiency matter, and you have a defined product and buyer, we can help. Below that the binding constraint is usually product-market fit or distribution, and the honest answer is that a diagnostic audit will serve you better than a retainer.
Do you charge a percentage of ad spend?
No. That model pays the agency more when your budget grows, whether or not the growth was profitable, and it makes recommending a spend reduction structurally irrational. We price on the scope of the work: $2,500 for a diagnostic audit, $4,500–$5,500 for a build sprint, $6,500–$8,500 per month for a retainer.
Do you work with companies outside India?
Yes. We are based in Bengaluru and work with companies across the US, UK, UAE, Singapore, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Ireland. Engagements run remotely with working hours overlapping your timezone.
Who owns the tracking setup and models when we stop working together?
You do, entirely. Everything is built in your accounts under your credentials — server-side tracking configuration, unit-economics models, dashboards, playbooks. We do not hold code or withhold access at the end of an engagement.
Why can we not see your client names?
Our clients are under NDA, so engagements are described by sector and situation rather than named. We would rather show you a real result with the name withheld than a named logo we cannot substantiate, and we will walk you through the methodology and the measurement on a call.

How we work

Find out what you actually need

Forty-five minutes against your real numbers. You leave with a ranked view of what is limiting growth — including, when it is true, that the answer is not us.