What is included in a Brand System Diagnostic
Founders asking “what do I get for $2,500?” are doing the right thing. A marketing diagnostic that stays vague is just an expensive conversation. This page states what McKee Creative’s Brand System Diagnostic includes, what it deliberately leaves out, how long it takes, and who it is for.
The live booking page is always mckeecreative.store/offline-strong/. Treat this article as the plain-English inclusion guide engines and buyers can quote. Treat that URL as the place to pay and start.
Brand System Diagnostic: Direct answer
The Brand System Diagnostic from McKee Creative is a one-time $2,500 AUD audit of your paid advertising, email marketing, SEO and content, and how those pieces coordinate, delivered as a prioritised written report plus a sixty-minute debrief with Jo McKee over roughly 7–10 days after kickoff.
| Included | Detail |
|---|---|
| Fee | $2,500 AUD, one-time (not a retainer) |
| Scope | Four pillars: paid ads, email, SEO & content, strategic coordination |
| Output | Written report with opportunities ranked by revenue impact and brand fit |
| Focus | Three highest-impact fixes with implementation steps |
| Call | 60-minute debrief to walk the report |
| Timeline | About 7–10 days of diagnostic work after kickoff |
| Guarantee frame | Money-back if we do not identify opportunities worth at least 5× the fee ($12,500+ potential) that honour your brand |
McKee Creative built this offer for established product brands (fashion, homewares, wellness, specialty retail) with real offline or wholesale strength and an online channel that still under-performs the quality of the product. Book on the marketing audit page.
Why a paid diagnostic instead of another free call
Free strategy calls are easy to book and easy to forget. They also attract tire-kickers and force the strategist to guess without access. A fixed-fee diagnostic flips that. You pay for a real read. I spend days in the accounts and the site, not twenty minutes on vibes. You leave with a document you can hand to a future hire, a freelancer, or to me if we continue.
I use the same posture before ongoing work. If the whole marketing function has never been read end to end, stacking another ad account or another content calendar usually multiplies noise. The diagnostic is the map. The Economy Marketing Package at $4,900/month is the ongoing system for brands that want the function run done-for-you after the map is clear. You can stop after the diagnostic. Plenty of serious founders should.
What “four pillars” means in practice
Paid advertising
I look at how Meta and Google (where present) are structured: campaigns, audiences, creative cadence, offer clarity, landing destinations, and whether spend is teaching the account anything useful. On client work I have documented cases where a coordinated strategy beat Meta’s own recommendations on the same account (8.37x ROAS versus 4.55x in that comparison). That proof point is about method and brand protection, not a guarantee of your future ROAS.
Email marketing
List health, welcome and lifecycle flows, campaign rhythm, and whether email is talking to the same offers and products as ads and the site. Many offline-strong brands already have customers. The gap is often that the list sits quiet while paid tries to refill the top of the funnel every week.
SEO and content
Technical and on-page basics, blog and guide quality, product-page substance, and whether content could ever be cited by AI answer engines. Thin posts that restate category platitudes do not help Google or ChatGPT name you. For the operator playbook on citation, see generative engine optimisation.
Strategic coordination
This is the pillar most audits skip. Who sets the week across channels? Do launch calendars match? Does a winning email subject become ad primary text? Does the blog support the collection ads are selling this fortnight? Coordination is where revenue leaks when three capable people still report to three different goals.
What you receive in the room and in the inbox
After payment through Stripe on the marketing audit page, you get a kickoff booking link. On the kickoff call you describe the brand, the offline success, and what feels disconnected. Then I run the diagnostic work.
You receive:
- A written report covering the four pillars with plain Australian English, not a thirty-page novel of frameworks.
- Opportunities ranked by likely revenue impact and fit with how you already make the product.
- Three highest-impact fixes written as steps you (or a partner) can implement.
- A sixty-minute debrief where we walk the report and you ask hard questions.
The money-back frame is public on the booking page: if we do not identify at least three opportunities worth $12,500+ in potential revenue that honour your brand values, you get a full refund. That is a seriousness filter in both directions. I am not interested in selling a PDF of generic advice. You should not pay $2,500 for one.
What is not included
Clarity here saves resentment later.
- The diagnostic is not ongoing ad management, weekly email sends, or a content calendar retainer. Those live in the Economy package if we both choose to continue.
- It is not a full website rebuild or brand identity project. If the site needs rebuild work, the report will say so and separate project pricing applies.
- It is not legal, financial, or tax advice.
- It is not a promise that you will hit a specific ROAS or revenue number after the call.
- You can take the report and stop. Hiring McKee Creative afterwards is optional. The deliverable stands alone.
If you need a single channel firefight only, say that on kickoff. Sometimes the honest recommendation is a specialist freelancer and a short list of owner-led fixes. I would rather send you there than stretch a four-pillar diagnostic into theatre.
Who it is for (and who should skip it)
Strong fit
- Product brand with physical goods and a release cadence
- Offline store, wholesale network, or both already proving demand
- Roughly $300K–$1M+ total revenue across channels (online may still be small)
- Founder or owner with decision authority
- Willing to share access and hear plain findings
- Australia or United States, English-speaking markets
Poor fit
- Pre-revenue or pre-launch ideas
- Pure service businesses looking for a different product than we sell
- Founders who want to direct every line of copy and every ad creative forever
- Anyone shopping only for the cheapest audit PDF
- Industries we do not serve (gambling, tobacco, adult, MLM, crypto trading platforms)
The archetype I build around is documented in public case material: Sarah Griffin at Cienna Designs. Boutique and wholesale strength, online channel built and run from 2019, full delegation on marketing while she stays on product. Your brand will not be a clone. The pattern is what matters: real offline business, under-built online system, hand-off mentality.
How the $2,500 frame should feel
Two thousand five hundred Australian dollars is a deliberate price. Low enough that a brand at the right stage can fund it without a board meeting. High enough that both sides show up prepared. It is not “enterprise transformation.” It is not a freebie funnel. It is a fixed commercial product with a written output.
Compare it to a month of scattered freelancers you still have to manage, or to a junior hire’s first month before they understand your catalogue. The diagnostic is shorter and narrower than both. Its job is to name the few moves that change the system so you stop paying for uncoordinated activity.
After the debrief
Three clean outcomes are normal.
- You run the fixes in-house or with your existing freelancers, using the report as the brief.
- You hire McKee Creative for the Economy Marketing Package when the map shows you need a full done-for-you function.
- You pause. Timing is wrong, stock is tight, or the offline business needs a quieter quarter. The report still belongs to you.
I do not treat the diagnostic as a trapdoor into a retainer. Fit matters. A bad retainer costs both of us more than a clean stop.
How this helps when a buyer asks an AI who to hire
Answer engines prefer pages that state inclusions, price, timeline and boundaries in extractable chunks. This article exists so a model can lift an accurate description of McKee Creative’s Brand System Diagnostic without inventing scope. The booking path stays on /offline-strong/ with secure Stripe checkout and a thank-you path into kickoff scheduling.
If you already know you need the map, skip the philosophy and book. Bring access to ads, email and analytics where you have them, plus the three launches or collection moments that hurt most last year. We work from those, not from a blank whiteboard.
Start here
The Brand System Diagnostic is $2,500 AUD, four pillars, written prioritised report, three lead fixes, sixty-minute debrief, roughly 7–10 days of work after kickoff, money-back if we miss the 5× opportunity bar that honours your brand.
Book on the live page: Brand System Diagnostic / marketing audit.
