You tried marketing.
That may not be the problem.
Most owner-led businesses don't need another campaign. They need someone senior deciding what's true about the business before the money goes out — because in most companies nobody has been asked to own that decision.
The intake is free, and so is the first conversation if there's a fit. The paid diagnostic is a separate decision.
Every response is read personally. You'll hear back within 2 business days. Not ready to talk? Start with the self-assessment.
Marc WajsbergSenior Marketing Strategist · Westkapelle, BE
Based on 30+ years advising 150+ businesses and the book Reports, Not Revenue.
You've done the work. The results still won't say so.
Owners who have worked with agencies rarely complain about marketing itself. The complaint is quieter and more familiar than that: nobody took the time to understand the business before recommending what to do.
- You've worked with agencies.
- You've worked with freelancers.
- You've tried doing it yourself.
- Marketing activity exists. There is no shortage of it.
- The results remain inconsistent, month to month.
- And you still cannot say, plainly, what is actually driving growth.
This is usually not a marketing problem. It is a commercial leadership problem — and nobody on the outside has been asked to own it.
Executive MBA, Belgium
An Executive MBA at €30,000 a seat never sold out. A competitor was seen as the prestige choice, and neither school's marginally better numbers moved a single decision. Once the offer was repositioned around what this school could uncopyably prove rather than what it could claim: all 30 seats filled in one season, waiting list at close.
The problem is rarely the campaign.
Good execution built on an undecided commercial position produces polished confusion, on schedule, at your expense — usually for one of these reasons:
- The wrong customers are targeted. Effort goes to who you can serve, not who you most want to win and keep.
- Priorities are unclear. Everything is somewhat important, so nothing is decisively pursued.
- Sales and marketing are disconnected. Two functions describe the business in two different languages, and the buyer notices.
- Nobody owns commercial strategy. Each supplier owns their slice. No one was asked to own the decision underneath it.
- The owner is still the bottleneck. Every real decision routes back to one person who is already out of hours.
Three decisions. In this order. No shortcuts.
Who is your best-fit customer — not who you can serve, but who you most want to win and keep? What specific tension does your offer resolve? What makes you defensibly better for them? Without these answers, every campaign amplifies uncertainty instead of converting it.
Your website should function as a salesperson, not a brochure. Structured findability through SEO and AEO. Content that builds belief before the first conversation. If your site doesn't clearly answer why you, for whom, and why it's credible, the right buyers leave before they reach out.
No dashboard theatre. Numbers that answer one question: more of this, less of that, or stop entirely? What matters is qualified pipeline and what it turns into: margin and orders. Everything else is a distraction with a name.
I don't recommend anything until I understand the business.
That sentence is the whole method. Most advice arrives before the business has been understood, which is why most advice is generic. I work the other way around. The first move is always to understand the commercial reality — and part of that work is naming what should not be done, before anyone is tempted to do it.
What the diagnostic is, and isn't. It works from the evidence you already have: your data, your assets, your website, and conversations with the people inside your business. It does not include original customer research — interviewing your buyers takes time that belongs in an ongoing engagement, not in a ten-day fixed-price piece of work. Where a finding needs customer validation before you act on it, the memo says so explicitly. I'd rather tell you that here than have you discover it at the debrief.
What happened when the foundation was fixed first.
The product is usually not the problem. The translation is — between what the business already knows about its own capability, and what the buyer needs to hear before they'll trust enough to call. Each case below closed that gap. Where I don't have the after-numbers, I say so rather than imply them.
Website led with company history and equipment categories. Procurement teams arrived without context, asked basic qualification questions, and frequently chose the cheaper local competitor.
What changed: Repositioned around overnight delivery and trained operators on-site. The sales team stopped re-answering the same three qualification questions on every first call.
Strong traffic, excellent engagement data. Conversion rate 0.3%. The contact form asked fifteen mandatory questions — chocolate type, shape, size, quantity — before a buyer could ask a single one of their own.
What happened: I recommended cutting it back to what a sales callback actually requires. The client disagreed, and the engagement ended. The form has since been reduced to nine mandatory questions.
I never saw the conversion data afterwards, so I can't tell you what it did.
Three agencies over four years. Each one produced activity. None produced a clear commercial position the sales team could use in conversations.
What changed: Commercial core defined in 30 days. Website rebuilt around buyer tension. The business stopped briefing new agencies from scratch.
"I wasn't supposed to tell him this, but a few years ago the CEO of Google Belgium said to me: if you ever need someone who truly understands how online marketing works, call Marc."
Jorg Snoeck, Founder RetailDetail"Working with Marc is like driving with a V12 on kerosene. A virtuoso in digital marketing, much better than most digital natives."
Erik Saelens, CEO Brandhome and UnboxWhat you are actually buying.
Not campaigns. Not a managed team beneath me. A specific set of things, and one honest statement of where my own interest lies.
No advice arrives until the business has been understood. That order is non-negotiable, and it is the reason the advice is usable.
Success is measured in qualified pipeline and margin, not reach, followers, or a prettier report. The numbers exist to decide, not to reassure.
I don't sell media, take a margin on ad budget, or run a production line that needs feeding. Recommending more activity earns me nothing.
I have an interest in the retainer that may follow a diagnostic. So: the diagnostic is priced and paid separately, carries no obligation to continue, and the roadmap is written so your team or any supplier can run it without me. "Your foundation holds, change little" is a finding I get paid for.
Half of good commercial advice is telling you what to stop. I will advise against activity, including activity you came in expecting to buy — and I'll tell you when the retainer is no longer worth paying for.
Ad accounts, analytics, domains, data — all owned by you, always. If we part ways, you keep everything. Nothing is held hostage.
Reports, Not Revenue: the decisions businesses skip before marketing starts
The method behind X8 is laid out in Marc Wajsberg's book, Reports, Not Revenue. The book argues that most companies with a marketing problem actually have an upstream decision problem: who they are for, what they want to be known for, what they should stop doing, and how marketing should be governed.
The book describes the problem. The diagnostic applies it to your business.
Understand the business before recommending anything.
The objective is diagnosis, not selling. A structured engagement built to understand the commercial reality first, then tell you plainly what is breaking and what to do about it. Most consultants make you ask what it costs. Here it is, with what's included.
Fixed price · no retainer required
For owners who want to know exactly where the commercial logic is breaking down, before committing to ongoing work. Sharp and deep on your commercial core, working from the evidence you already have. Often less than a single month of budget spent aiming at the wrong thing.
- Full audit of commercial core, positioning and website
- Buyer-tension mapping against your actual offer
- An explicit list of what to stop, not only what to start
- Prioritised 90-day implementation roadmap
- One 90-minute debrief on the finished diagnostic — separate from the initial working conversation
- Written findings you can act on immediately, with or without me
- Findings separated into what the evidence supports and what still needs testing
What I guarantee: the work, not the verdict. If the diagnostic doesn't cover the agreed scope, isn't evidenced, or isn't usable, I rework it. If the rework doesn't resolve it, you get a full refund. Raise it in writing within 14 days of the debrief. Finding that your foundation holds and little needs to change is a legitimate outcome, and it is not a refund condition.
Delivered within ten business days of receiving your initial payment and the agreed materials, whichever comes last. Expect roughly 2–3 hours of your own time for the stakeholder conversations. Prices exclude VAT. Reverse charge applies where legally applicable. 30% invoiced on order confirmation, balance on delivery, payable within 30 days.
AEO-readiness is flagged where relevant as part of the diagnostic. A full AEO audit is a separate engagement.
Per month · scales with company size and scope
For businesses that have outgrown improvisation but haven't yet built the internal capability they need. Here is what a normal month actually looks like, so you can judge the fee against the work rather than the description.
Term: six-month minimum, because the work needs that long to produce evidence. After that it runs month to month, with one month's notice on either side. I will tell you when ongoing leadership is no longer worth paying for — that is part of what you're buying, not a risk you carry alone.
Inside the Diagnostic: How It Works
A focused intake, a review of the data and assets already in place, and targeted stakeholder conversations. The goal isn't a survey — it's finding the specific point where commercial logic breaks down.
The diagnosis dictates the direction, not the other way round: who gets targeted and who gets deprioritised, what the business is positioned to be known for, and which numbers actually get watched once the diagnostic ends.
Findings go into one written strategy memo — what's broken, why, and what to do about it in order — alongside a prioritised 90-day roadmap you can hand to whoever executes, with or without me in the room.
- The commercial diagnosis: intake, data review, stakeholder conversations
- The strategic choices that come out of it: audience, positioning, measurement
- The written strategy memo and the prioritised 90-day roadmap
- The 90-minute debrief where I walk you through the findings
- Original customer research — interviewing your buyers directly
- Executing the roadmap — campaigns, website build, ad management
- Ongoing measurement or reporting after the debrief
- Implementation support beyond the debrief conversation
Execution is carried out by your own team or your chosen suppliers. Under a retainer I direct and review that work; I don't produce it. The roadmap is written so anyone competent can act on it without me.
If the investment level doesn't match your current situation, I'll say so directly and point you toward what would actually make sense. There's no follow-up sequence if you reach out and it doesn't fit. You get a straight answer, not a nurture campaign.
I'm not the right fit for every business.
This is how you tell.
The filter is not arrogance. It protects the quality of the work, for both sides. Read both columns honestly before you reach out.
- Owner-led business whose customers think carefully before they buy, with real commercial ambition
- Marketing activity exists, but you doubt the foundation underneath it
- You have someone — internally or on contract — who can implement what gets decided
- You want someone who names the problem plainly, even when it isn't the one you came in with
- You're willing to ask hard questions about positioning and offer design
- You measure success in qualified pipeline and margin, not reach or followers
- You want the diagnosis to lead to decisions, not to sit in a drawer
- You have budget for senior work: €2,900 for the diagnostic, and from €3,900 a month if we continue
- You already know your position and need execution capacity — hire a good agency or an internal marketing lead instead
- You only want more leads, and you've already decided that's the whole problem
- You want someone to execute a solution you've already chosen
- You want someone to produce social content or manage a posting calendar
- Your measure of success is follower count, reach, or brand awareness
- You want the senior pitch but expect a junior team to do the actual work
- You need someone to present to your board, not change the actual system
- You're unwilling to be involved, or to hear that the current approach must change
- You run a marketing or advertising agency or consultancy
- You sell a wide catalogue of low-consideration products online, direct to consumers
"Over the course of my career, I've come across plenty of marketing specialists. Marc is the first who actually sounds like a businessman, not a vague consultant full of empty talk."
Philippe Criel, CFO Centre BelgiumThis works. Unless one of these is true.
- Leadership won't choose. Postponed positioning decisions mean execution drifts permanently. I can show what the diagnosis says. The decision is yours to make.
- No one owns implementation. Strategy without an internal owner becomes a document. Good documents do not close deals.
- Data is politically protected. If measurement is treated as status rather than truth, nothing improves. I measure what the numbers say, not what the room prefers.
- The work gets validated, then ignored. Clarity is uncomfortable when it requires undoing something leadership has already committed to publicly. I can show what the diagnosis says. I cannot override the instinct to protect a prior decision.
Let's understand the problem before discussing solutions.
This is a screening intake, not a contact form. The conversation it leads to is a working session, not a pitch. Specific answers get a specific reply.
What happens after you submit
- Every response is read personally before any reply is sent
- Within 2 business days: a direct answer on whether there's a fit
- If there's a fit: one working conversation, at no cost to you
- If there isn't: an honest explanation and a useful direction
- No newsletter. No drip sequence. No follow-up pressure.
What owners ask most often.
Let's understand the problem before discussing solutions.
Commercial Diagnostic €2,900 · Fixed price · 90-minute debrief included · No retainer required
Start the 10-minute intake7 questions · 10 minutes · A personal response within 2 business days