How to get a repeatable growth model with marketing due diligence

Marketing due diligence finds out whether the growth in the model is repeatable. In a company of 40 to 200 people it usually surfaces 5 things: how concentrated the demand is, whether the message still fits the customers being won, what the systems can actually prove, what the marketing spend is buying, and how much of the pipeline depends on 1 or 2 people.

Commercial diligence sizes the market and checks the numbers. It rarely opens the question of whether the growth behind those numbers happens again next year without the founder in the room. That question has a specific set of answers, and they are more predictable than you would expect.

Key takeaways

• Most findings fall into 5 categories, and 3 of them show up in almost every target.
• Concentrated, referral-led demand is the single most common finding.
• An empty CRM means the growth assumption in the model cannot be verified either way.
• Some findings should change the price. Most are simply work to be planned and costed.
• The output belongs in the investment memo in pipeline and cost terms.

The 5 questions marketing due diligence answers

Marketing due diligence at this company size works through 5 questions in order.

• 1. Is the demand repeatable? Where do deals actually come from, how concentrated is that source, and would it survive a change of ownership.
• 2. Does the message match the customers being won? Whether the website and sales materials describe the buyer the company wins today or the one it started with.
• 3. Can the systems prove any of it? Whether the pipeline number in the model can be traced to a reliable record.
• 4. What is the current spend buying? Which activity produces qualified opportunities and which is running out of habit.
• 5. Who holds the relationships? How much of commercial performance sits with 1 or 2 individuals.

What it typically finds

The honest pattern across companies of this size. None of these are unusual, and none of them are reasons to walk away on their own.

• Demand is concentrated and referral-led. A large share of revenue traces back to a handful of relationships, often ones the founder owns personally. The growth is real, and it is not yet a system.
• The message describes an earlier company. The product moved upmarket faster than the copy did, so the website speaks to a smaller customer than the one now closing. That gap is the cheapest thing on the fix list and it blocks everything else.
• The record cannot support the model. Deal stages mean different things to different people, historical data is incomplete, and the pipeline figure is rebuilt by hand each month. This is the finding that most often surprises deal teams.
• Spend continues out of habit. Trade shows, retainers, and campaigns nobody has evaluated in 2 years, with no line connecting them to pipeline.
• Marketing is 1 or 2 people holding it together. Capable, overstretched, and doing service work for sales rather than building anything that compounds. They are usually a retention risk, and they are usually worth retaining.

3 findings that should affect the valuation, and 4 that are only work to be costed

This is the distinction worth being clear about, because they get confused in the room.

These affect the valuation:

• Revenue concentration in personal relationships that leave with the seller. If the top accounts came through 1 person who is exiting, the durability of that revenue is a genuine question.
• Growth that came from a one-off event. A single large contract or a regulatory change presented as a trend line.
• A market where the company has no right to win the segment the model assumes. Expansion assumptions built on a buyer nobody has spoken to.

These are simply work, and should be planned and costed:

• An out-of-date message. Fixable in about 2 weeks of senior time.
• Missing or unreliable systems. A rebuild inside the first quarter, run alongside the marketing work.
• No content or search presence. Slower to fix, and it compounds once started.
• Wasted spend. Usually a saving rather than a cost, once someone looks at it.

Treating the second list as a red flag kills workable deals. Treating the first list as work is how you overpay.

Write the findings in pipeline terms, with the fix costed and sequenced in the memo

The output only helps if it arrives in the language the committee already uses.

• In pipeline and cost terms. Not marketing vocabulary. What proportion of revenue is repeatable, what is at risk, and what the fix costs.
• With a costed plan attached. Every finding paired with what it takes to resolve, so the value-creation plan has real numbers instead of a placeholder line.
• Separated into price and plan. Using the split above, so nobody argues about a fixable problem as though it were a structural one.
• Sequenced. Which fix comes first, since most of them depend on the message being current before anything else is funded.

Done properly, the same read becomes the marketing section of the 100-day plan on the day you close, which is covered in the 100-day marketing plan for a newly acquired company.

What marketing due diligence found in one Nordic company

Take a newly acquired Nordic software company we work with: around 60 people, 600+ customers, two marketers, no CMO. On paper the growth looked ready to fund.

What the read surfaced:

• Almost all deals arrived by word of mouth, so the demand was real and almost entirely unmanaged.
• The company had started winning larger, more sophisticated buyers, while the website still described the smaller customer it was leaving behind.
• The systems were near empty and a CRM was still being chosen, so nothing in the pipeline figure could be independently checked.
• The two marketers were capable and had no senior direction, spending most of their time on requests from sales.

None of that changed the price. All of it changed the plan, and the order of it.

FAQ

Separate the 3 valuation findings from the work you can cost and plan

Most of what marketing due diligence turns up is workable: a message a year out of date, systems that never got built, spend nobody has questioned. What deserves a harder conversation is revenue that walks out with the seller. Get that distinction right before the committee meets. No random acts of marketing.

If you want the lighter version before a full read, the Positioning Teardown checks whether the message still matches the customers being won, and the portfolio company positioning play covers how it gets fixed. Both sit under the value-creation programme for portfolio companies.

When you are ready to test the growth assumptions in a live deal, book a strategy session. You will leave with a bird's-eye plan, whether or not we work together.

Book a strategy session →