Marketing Effectiveness Quotient Report
Confidential · June 2026
Overall MEQ Score
Prepared for
Alex
Performance band
Mixed
Sector
Professional Services
Assessment
MEQ Score
Your score
60 / 100Mixed
Your profile
The Reactive Operator
Biggest lever
Commercial Efficiency (40% weight, score 58)
First action
Establish a marketing attribution framework in the next 30 days
Boardroom Translation
What this means for leadership — in language your exec team will recognise
If your CFO asks about marketing ROI
Marketing spend is generating a return below the threshold for efficient deployment. A 10-point improvement in commercial efficiency typically translates to £80k–£120k of additional pipeline value on a £500k budget — without increasing spend.
If your CEO asks why marketing isn't more proactive
Nearly half of all marketing spend (44%) is reactive. The team isn't lacking proactivity — they're absorbing unplanned demand. A 25% reactive cap and a lightweight approval gate would free meaningful capacity for planned, higher-returning work.
If your board asks about competitive positioning
Customer (72) and compliance (69) relationships are above sector benchmarks — a genuine competitive asset. The risk is operational: budget control (48) and reactive load (44) are eroding the leverage those relationships could otherwise create.
The one number to remember
44% — the share of marketing spend currently classified as reactive. Bringing this below 25% is the single highest-leverage operational change available.
Section 1 · Score at a Glance
Alex, your MEQ Score of 60 places you in the Mixed performance band. This is a score that reflects genuine capability held back by structural inefficiency. You are not underperforming across the board — your market relationships and execution quality are solid — but two areas are creating a meaningful drag on your overall effectiveness.
The score tells a coherent story: a team that has invested in the right relationships and can deliver when given clear direction, but has not yet built the operating discipline needed to maximise the commercial return on that effort. The priority is not to fix what is broken — it is to stop tolerating what is inefficient.
Pillar profile — further from centre = stronger
Section 2 · How Your Score Compares
60
Your score
54
Sector average
Professional Services
50
Market average
Cross-sector
+5
Points to next band
Strong
Your position — journey to next band
A score of 60 sits at the upper end of the Mixed band. The average MEQ Score across all users is 50, and the average for Professional Services firms is 54. You are outperforming both benchmarks, which indicates your team is above the median for your peer group — but the gap to the Strong band (65+) is achievable within a single quarter with focused action.
The difference between Mixed and Strong is rarely about capability. It is almost always about operating discipline: how reactive spend is controlled, how budget variance is managed, and whether the commercial return on marketing spend is being actively tracked and optimised.
Section 3 · Your Four Pillar Profile
| Pillar | Score | Weight | Profile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commercial Efficiency | 58 | 40% | |
| Execution & Agility | 57 | 35% | |
| Market Effectiveness | 71 | 15% | |
| Organisational Effectiveness | 55 | 10% |
Commercial Efficiency
A score of 58 in Commercial Efficiency is the single biggest drag on your MEQ Score given its 40% weight. Your commercial return on marketing spend is below the threshold for efficient deployment, and the implied cost of this gap — relative to your blended ROMS — is material. This is the area where a targeted intervention will have the highest leverage.
Execution & Agility
Your Execution & Agility score of 57 reflects a team carrying a high reactive load. With 44% of spend categorised as reactive or unplanned, a significant share of your team's capacity is being consumed by work that was not in the plan. On-time delivery (67) is respectable, but the reactive drag is suppressing what should be a stronger execution score.
Market Effectiveness
Market Effectiveness is your strongest pillar at 71. Both customer satisfaction (72) and your compliance relationship (69) are above threshold. This is an area of genuine strength and should be protected as you address the operational issues elsewhere. Do not allow budget reallocation to erode the relationship investments that are driving this score.
Organisational Effectiveness
An Organisational Effectiveness score of 55 reflects manageable but real friction. Stakeholder confidence (63) is reasonable, but budget control (48) and complaint management (55) are both below the 60 threshold. The budget control figure in particular suggests that campaign-level financial discipline is inconsistent — a solvable problem with better pre-campaign approval gates.
Dimension Scores
| Commercial Efficiency | Revenue Efficiency Score | 58 | |
| Execution & Agility | Reactive Load Score | 44 | |
| Execution Quality Score | 61 | ||
| On-Time Delivery Score | 67 | ||
| Market Effectiveness | Customer Score | 72 | |
| Compliance Score | 69 | ||
| Organisational Effectiveness | Stakeholder Score | 63 | |
| Complaint Management Score | 55 | ||
| Budget Control Score | 48 |
Section 4 · What You're Getting Right
Despite the areas for improvement, your profile includes several genuine strengths that are worth acknowledging. These are not areas to ignore — they are foundations to protect and build from.
Strong market relationships
Your customer satisfaction score of 72 and compliance relationship score of 69 indicate that your team has built genuine trust with the audiences that matter. This is not a given — many teams with stronger commercial metrics underperform on these dimensions.
These scores suggest your team communicates well, manages expectations effectively, and is seen as a credible partner rather than a cost centre. That perception is valuable and should be actively maintained.
Solid on-time delivery
An on-time delivery score of 67 means that when your team commits to a timeline, it generally delivers. In an environment of high reactive load, maintaining this level of delivery consistency is a meaningful operational achievement.
The risk is that reactive demand will eventually erode this score if the underlying operating model is not addressed. Protecting delivery performance means reducing the reactive load that threatens it.
Above-average stakeholder confidence
A stakeholder satisfaction score of 63 places you above the median. Your key internal stakeholders — likely including the senior leadership team and commercial functions — have a broadly positive view of marketing's contribution.
This is a commercial asset. Stakeholder confidence translates into budget support, strategic access, and organisational goodwill. It is worth investing in explicitly, not just maintaining passively.
Section 5 · Priority Improvement Area: Commercial Efficiency
Commercial Efficiency carries a 40% weight in the MEQ model, making it the highest-leverage improvement area in your profile. A 10-point improvement here adds 4 points to your MEQ Score — more than any other pillar.
Your marketing budget — return by activity type
Reactive spend
£1.58 / £1
44% of budget at this return
Planned spend
£2.51 / £1
56% of budget at this return
1.6×
Return gap: planned vs reactive
+8%
Blended ROMS improvement if reactive falls to 25%
£2.28
Projected blended ROMS at 25% reactive
Your revenue efficiency score of 58 reflects a commercial return on marketing spend that is below the threshold for efficient deployment. The model does not require you to be generating exceptional ROMS — it requires you to be above the point where the return justifies the investment. You are not there yet.
The most common cause of a below-threshold commercial return in Professional Services is attribution: spend is tracked, but the link between specific marketing activity and pipeline or revenue is not sufficiently established. Without that link, it is difficult to make confident reallocation decisions — and difficult to defend the budget in stakeholder conversations.
The implied cost of your current ROMS gap
If your current marketing spend is generating a return at the 58-score level, the gap to the 65-score threshold represents a meaningful opportunity. For a team spending £500k annually on marketing, a 10-point improvement in commercial efficiency typically translates to £80k–£120k of additional pipeline value — without increasing spend.
The priority action is not to spend more. It is to ensure that what is being spent is tracked, attributed, and reallocated toward the highest-returning activities. This requires a measurement framework, not a budget increase.
Section 6 · Secondary Focus Area: Execution & Agility
With 44% of spend categorised as reactive or unplanned, your Execution & Agility score of 57 reflects a team operating in a mode that is structurally inefficient. Reactive spend is not inherently bad — but at this level, it is crowding out planned, higher-returning activity.
The reactive load score of 44 is the most actionable number in your profile. It is a direct measure of how much of your team's capacity is being consumed by unplanned demand. At 44%, that is nearly half of all spend — a proportion that is difficult to sustain without eroding delivery quality, team capacity, and commercial return.
The path to improvement here is operational: a formal reactive spend threshold (typically 20–25% of total budget), a lightweight approval process for unplanned requests, and a quarterly review that holds the line against scope creep. These are governance changes, not capability changes.
Section 7 · Your 90-Day Improvement Plan
The following plan is sequenced by impact and feasibility. Actions 01 and 02 address the two priority areas identified in your profile. Actions 03 and 04 are consolidation moves that protect the strengths you already have.
Establish a marketing attribution framework
Map your current marketing spend categories to pipeline and revenue outcomes. You do not need a sophisticated attribution model to start — a simple spreadsheet that links campaign spend to pipeline contribution is sufficient for the first iteration.
The goal is to identify the two or three activities that are generating the majority of your commercial return, and to create a visible, shareable view of that relationship that can be used in stakeholder conversations.
Success indicator
Attribution framework documented and shared with senior leadership within 30 days.
Implement a reactive spend threshold and approval gate
Set a formal cap on reactive/unplanned spend at 25% of total marketing budget. Introduce a lightweight approval process for any unplanned request above a defined threshold (e.g., £5k or 2 days of team time).
This is a governance change, not a capability change. The goal is not to eliminate reactive work — it is to make it visible, deliberate, and accountable.
Success indicator
Reactive spend as a percentage of total budget falls below 30% by end of quarter.
Introduce campaign-level budget sign-off
Your budget control score of 48 indicates that campaigns are regularly exceeding planned budgets. Introduce a pre-campaign budget approval process with a defined variance tolerance (e.g., ±10%) and a post-campaign reconciliation step.
This does not need to be onerous. A one-page brief and a sign-off from one senior stakeholder per campaign is sufficient to create accountability without slowing execution.
Success indicator
Budget variance across campaigns falls below 15% on average within the quarter.
Formalise a quarterly stakeholder review
Your stakeholder confidence score of 63 is an asset. Protect it by introducing a quarterly review that presents MEQ metrics, attribution data, and forward priorities to the senior leadership team.
The format should be concise — 20 minutes, three slides: what we achieved, what the numbers say, what we are prioritising next quarter. Regularity matters more than depth.
Success indicator
First quarterly review delivered within 90 days, with senior leadership attendance confirmed.
If you do nothing else from this report
Set a 25% cap on reactive spend and implement a basic attribution framework. These two actions alone will have a greater impact on your MEQ Score than any other combination of changes available to you right now.
Re-score in 90 days
Return to MEQ Score in 90 days and re-run the assessment with updated inputs. A 5–8 point improvement is an achievable target if the priority actions are executed.
Re-run MEQ Score →