A focused engagement for teams that buy calls or leads but don't have deep media-buying expertise in house — partner scoring, CAC/LTV economics, conversion architecture, and reporting built for both your media partners and your internal stakeholders. Faster to start and narrower in scope than a full fractional executive engagement.
These are the mechanics we built and operated inside a Medicare Advantage marketplace directing $25M+ in annual media across affiliate, search, social, and call networks — where partner mix, pricing, and routing decided whether a season was profitable. Same systems, adapted to your spend and product.
Every partner and source scored on downstream outcomes — contact rate, conversion, bind, retention, and contribution margin — not on lead volume or top-line CPL. Tiering that decides who gets more budget, who gets repriced, and who gets cut.
A defined view of the consumer who actually converts and retains, mapped back to the partners and creative that reliably produce them. Buying decisions stop being a volume negotiation and start being a match to the profile.
Payouts tied to what the traffic is worth, not what the market quotes. Dynamic bids and tiered rates by source, daypart, geography, and product — so margin holds when volume scales instead of quietly eroding.
Real-time bidding and routing logic built around carrier and agency economics: who sees which lead, at what price, in what order. Ping-post structure, floor pricing, and routing rules that protect both fill rate and unit economics.
Dashboards and reporting built for two audiences at once — the media partner relationship, so pricing and performance conversations are backed by data instead of negotiation, and internal stakeholders, so leadership sees exactly what's working without needing a media background to read it.
A defined project that maps where the money is going and what it's producing: partner-by-partner economics, CAC and LTV by source, lead quality and downstream conversion, pricing and payout structure, and the gaps in your reporting. You get a scored partner list, a repricing and mix plan, and a prioritized set of fixes with the dollars attached.
Typically 2–4 weeks · Fixed fee
Ongoing ownership of the system after the audit: partner negotiations and repricing, mix and budget decisions, quality escalations, new source testing, and a weekly reporting cadence your team can run against. We sit in your operating rhythm and stay accountable to CAC, quality, and contribution margin.
Monthly retainer · 3-month minimum
Pricing is scoped based on media spend and complexity — not sold as a fixed package. A short call is enough to size it.
Buying calls or leads through agencies and vendors, with limited visibility into which sources actually bind and persist.
Spending real money on media without a dedicated buying team — and watching CAC climb faster than producer capacity.
Managing both sides of the economics, where partner mix, pricing, and routing decide whether growth is profitable.
Scaling acquisition ahead of the measurement layer, with reporting that can't yet explain quality or retention differences.
What teams ask most often before scoping a media and partner engagement.
It's narrower and faster to start. A fractional executive retainer covers the whole commercial system — org, pipeline, partnerships, board cadence. This is scoped to one thing: how you buy media, how partners are scored and priced, and whether the reporting tells you the truth. Many engagements start here and expand from there.
No. Most of the teams we work with buy calls or leads without deep media-buying expertise in house — that's usually why the economics drift. We work with whoever owns spend today, whether that's a marketing lead, an agency partner, or the founder.
Spend and volume by partner and source, downstream outcomes if you have them (contact, quote, bind, retention), and access to whatever reporting exists today. If the data is messy or incomplete, that's a finding, not a blocker — rebuilding the measurement layer is often the first deliverable.
Pricing is scoped to media spend and complexity rather than a fixed package. Audits are a defined project with a fixed fee; ongoing management runs as a monthly retainer. A short call is enough to scope it.
Bring your partner list, your spend, and whatever downstream data you have. Thirty minutes is usually enough to tell you where the margin is leaking and whether an audit is worth doing.