Independent growth systems consultancy

Most companies don't have a marketing problem. They have a growth system nobody has ever looked at.

We map how your company gets, converts and keeps customers — the channels, the handoffs, the data, the decisions — and tell you what is missing, what it is costing you, and what to build first.

We don't implement what we recommend Fixed scope, fixed fee Vancouver, BC · North America
The growth system — what we assess
01
AcquisitionEvery channel that brings you demand, paid and unpaid.
02
ConversionWhat happens between an inquiry arriving and someone paying.
03
RetentionRepeat business, renewals, and the customers who quietly left.
04
MeasurementWhat you count, and whether it can be checked.
05
ExperimentationWhat has been tried, and what it actually showed.
06
Decision-makingWho decides the spend, and on what evidence.
One of the six caps the other five. Finding which one, before you spend another year adding to the rest, is the work.
Independent by design We specify what your growth system should be. We never sell you the work of building it.
The problem

Nobody is looking at the whole machine.

Your agency owns the ads. Someone else owns the website. Your team owns the follow-up. Sales owns the CRM. Each part is run by someone who only sees their part — and each one reports that their part is fine.

The questions that decide your budget sit between them. What a new customer actually costs you. Which inquiries never got a reply. Which part of the system is capping the rest. No single vendor's report answers those, because no single vendor can see them.

That space between the parts is where we work.

What we look at

Six parts, and the way they hold each other back.

These are not six separate projects. They run in sequence, and each one sets a ceiling on the ones after it.

Acquisition
How you get customers

Every channel that brings you demand — what you pay for, what you don't, and whether anyone can say what each one produces.

"We're growing, but nobody can tell me which channel is actually working."
Conversion
How inquiries become paying work

What happens from the minute an inquiry arrives until someone pays. How long people wait, who follows up, and what happens to the ones nobody answers.

"We get plenty of inquiries. I don't know what happens to most of them."
Retention
How you keep customers

Repeat business, renewals, and the accounts that quietly stopped coming back without anyone noticing or asking why.

"We win new customers every month and revenue stays flat."
Measurement
What you actually know

What gets counted, who counts it, and whether those numbers can be traced back to something real — invoices, records, a system anyone can open.

"We get a report every month. I couldn't check a single number in it."
Experimentation
What you've tried and learned

What has been tested, what it showed, what was dropped and why. Most companies have tried plenty and kept none of the learning.

"We try things all the time. I couldn't tell you what worked."
Decision-making
How the spend gets decided

Who decides what to spend, on what evidence, and how often that decision is revisited with anything other than a vendor's own report.

"We renew because cancelling feels riskier than continuing."

The best advertising in your market is worth nothing if nobody answers the phone. Better follow-up is worth nothing if the people calling were never going to buy. Each part sets a ceiling on the ones after it.

Companies lose years improving parts that were never the constraint. Our job is to find the one that is — with evidence from your own records — put a dollar figure on it, and specify what to build.

Engagements

Three engagements. No fourth.

Each one has a defined scope and an end date. None of them turn into a retainer you have to cancel.

How we're engaged: a fixed scope and a fixed fee, agreed in writing before the work starts. One engagement, not a monthly relationship. We scope it on the call, because it depends on how many channels, systems and locations you run. Invoiced; payable by transfer.
01
Baseline
One-time · five business days

Before you commit to anything larger, we establish the numbers your decisions should be based on — and that nobody has put in front of you.

What we do
  • Review what you spend on marketing and where it goes
  • Trace every inquiry from the last ninety days — how long each waited, which ones nobody answered
  • Reconstruct, from your own books, what you actually paid for each new customer last year
  • The evidence, a minimum annual figure for what the gaps are costing, and the three things worth fixing immediately

Credited in full against a Diagnostic started within ninety days.

03
Independent Oversight
Quarterly · after a Diagnostic

Someone independent checking, every quarter, that what was specified actually got built and is producing what it was supposed to produce.

Each quarter
  • A review of the inquiry record and what it produced
  • A review of the spend and what the vendors delivered for it
  • One memo: what changed, what didn't, what you have to decide
  • One sixty-minute decision call
Book a 15-minute call → If you're not yet spending on marketing, there isn't a system to look at. We'll tell you on the call rather than sell you something.
Independence

We are paid for the answer, never for the work that comes after.

The people best placed to tell you whether your marketing is working are the people being paid to do it. That is not a scandal — it is a structural problem, and it is the reason the question rarely gets answered. Markspeed exists to answer it from outside.

We do not implement

We do not run campaigns, buy media, or build websites, landing pages or systems. When a client asks us to build what we specified, the answer is no — and we will tell you what to ask whoever does, and how to verify it afterwards.

No commercial relationships on the other side

No commissions, referral fees, revenue share or partner arrangements with any agency, vendor, tool or platform. If we name a vendor, we have no interest in you choosing them.

We show our work

Every figure in a Markspeed deliverable is traceable to a source in your own records or to a published benchmark we cite. Assumptions are written out, not buried.

We say when there is nothing to do

If your growth system is working, that is the finding, and you will get it in writing. A confirmation is a legitimate outcome of an engagement, not a failed one.

Who we work with

The people who own the growth decision.

Founders, CEOs, CFOs, and the marketing leaders who run the system day to day — usually in the same room, which is often the first time the question gets asked with everyone present.

Our clients are owner-led and executive-led companies between roughly $2M and $15M in revenue. What they share is not an industry. It is that they have grown past the point where growth can be steered by instinct, and they want to see the whole machine before spending another year adding to it.

This is senior work, scoped so a company of this size can commission it — and built to be useful to the marketing team that has to live with the answer, not to go over their heads.

Managed IT and technology services
Professional and technical firms
Distribution and wholesale
Healthcare and clinic groups
Home services and trades
Manufacturers and e-commerce
Who is behind Markspeed

A decade inside the agencies that write those reports.

Marco Gamero
Founder · Vancouver, BC
  • 01Head of Performance & Programmatic, Carat (Dentsu)
  • 02Interaction Manager, MEC (GroupM)
  • 03Lead Project Manager, Accenture
  • 04Head of Digital Business, Ingenia Soluciones
  • 05Founder of his own digital consultancy, five years
  • 06Canadian MBA, 2024

I spent a decade inside the agencies that send those monthly reports — leading performance and programmatic media at Carat, part of Dentsu, and at MEC, part of GroupM; running digital strategy for automotive brands; coordinating delivery between a European hub and a telecom client at Accenture; and then running my own consultancy for mid-sized companies.

Before any of that, I was the one signing the invoices. I built an import business, created a beverage brand from nothing, and managed my own capital by my early thirties. I know what it is to approve marketing spend with your own money and have no way to tell whether it worked.

Markspeed exists because of the one thing I could never fix from inside an agency: the report a client receives is written by the people being judged by it. Not through dishonesty — through structure. This is the seat that was missing from that room.

Common questions

What owners ask first.

My agency already sends me reports.

They do, and the reports are usually accurate about the part the agency controls. The problem is that the work is being assessed by the people doing it, using the numbers they chose. We work from your records — your spend, your inquiries, your books — and show you where each figure came from so you can check it without us.

Can you fix what you find?

No, and that is the point. We specify what needs to exist and in what order. Your team or your existing vendors build it. If it helps, we'll tell you exactly what to ask them for and how to verify the work afterwards.

What if you find nothing?

Then you have confirmed, with evidence, a decision you were going to keep making anyway — and you still get the specification and the list of what to stop spending on. A confirmation in writing is a deliverable, not a refund case.

What do you need from us?

Read-only access to the accounts where your marketing runs, an export of your inquiries with no names or emails, and your invoices for the period. A kickoff interview with you, sixty to seventy-five minutes. We sign a mutual NDA before any of it.

How long does it take?

A Baseline is five business days from the day we have what we need. A Diagnostic is scoped on the call and runs in weeks, not months, with a fixed end date agreed before it starts.

Do you use AI in the work?

Software assists the analysis and the drafting. Every finding is verified by hand and traced to a source in your own records before it reaches you. The tools we use are disclosed in the engagement terms.

Start with a 15-minute call.

Bring your last marketing invoice. We'll tell you whether there is a system problem worth looking at — and if there isn't, we'll say so.

Book 15 minutes →
No obligation · Nothing sold on the call that we could be paid to build