Agencies and freelancers get renewed because the founder likes the weekly call and nobody wants a messy handoff before the board meeting. That is relationship management. It is not an agency performance review. A private equity operating partner needs a one-page quarterly marketing vendor scorecard: ownership, CAC quality, tracking integrity, creative velocity, and reporting honesty. Then a keep, coach, or cut decision before the next board pack is locked.
Impaxium works with private equity and search-fund operators on PE advisory, portfolio growth audits, and vendor oversight. This is a scorecard you can run yourself. If you want a second operator in the review, that is a separate conversation. Weigh the source, then use the page.
Why relationship renewals fail an agency performance review in private equity
An agency performance review in private equity is a capital allocation decision wearing a marketing costume. Retainer, media, production, and internal time all sit on the growth P&L the thesis depends on. Renewing a team because they are responsive is how you buy another quarter of unclear CAC.
Baselines move when a qualified lead becomes a marketing-influenced opportunity, or when brand spend is folded back in. Freeze definitions, then score against that freeze. The portfolio marketing audit is where the definitions should live. The vendor review is where you enforce them.
What a marketing vendor scorecard for PE is, and is not
A marketing vendor scorecard for PE is one page, used the same way every quarter, for every material agency or freelancer. It is not a capabilities deck, a ranking of shops, or a vibe check.
Five lenses cover the failures I see in portfolio marketing vendor management: who owns the accounts and data, whether CAC and payback are fully loaded, whether the deck ties to the CRM and finance, whether tests reached a decision, and whether bad news shows up before you find it.
Score each lens keep, coach, or cut. Keep means renew on the current scope. Coach means renew only with a written fix, an owner, and a date. Cut means start the transition this quarter. One cut on ownership or tracking outweighs three keeps on communication.
The one-page PE marketing agency scorecard
Do not let the agency redesign this into their template. The point of a PE marketing agency scorecard is that an operating partner can read it and leave with a decision. If a cell needs a novel, the answer is already coach or cut.
| Criterion | Keep | Coach | Cut |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ownership | PortCo owns ad accounts, pixels, CRM, domains, and files. Vendor is a named user. Offboarding has been tested. | Access exists but is messy: shared logins, vendor-owned analytics, or files trapped in their tools. | Vendor owns the ad account, pixel, audience, or lead list. Firing them means losing the asset. |
| CAC quality | Fully loaded CAC and payback match the thesis. Fees are in the math. The move is explained, not spun. | Useful, but fees are out, brand is mixed with non-brand, or a soft conversion is the denominator. | The only efficiency number is platform ROAS or a CPL sales does not accept. Payback is unknown. |
| Tracking integrity | Spend, leads, and closed-won tie across ads, CRM, and finance. Consent and pixels are documented. | Gaps are known, owned by the PortCo, and on a dated fix list. | Cannot tie out. Duplicate pixels, broken UTMs, or undisclosed tag changes. The pack rests on the platform UI. |
| Creative velocity | A real test backlog ships monthly. Losers are killed. Winners scale with a written learning. | Volume is thin, or tests are cosmetic, with no offer or landing-page learning. | The same ads run all quarter. No kill rule. Brand consistency is the excuse. |
| Reporting honesty | Misses, waste, and broken tracking are in the first note, with a cause and a next step. | Bad news appears only if you ask. The deck leads with wins and buries the variance. | You hear it from finance, sales, or a platform email. The deck still says on track. |
Add incrementality when you can (a geo test, a holdout, or a brand versus non-brand split you trust) and compliance when the model requires it. Healthcare, finance, and lead-gen businesses should not park marketing compliance under brand. A clean ROAS slide on non-compliant lead flow is not a keep.
Ownership decides whether you can fire them
Start with ownership, before the chart. If you cannot leave, the rest is a negotiation with a hostage. Logged in as the PortCo, confirm ad accounts (company admin, not a guest), tag access, the CRM connection, creative files and DNS, and any audience built from your data.
Coach means name the asset, name the company admin, and move it within 30 days. Cut when they stall or when leads sit in their tools instead of your CRM. The same quarter is the right time for marketing tech stack consolidation, because vendors stack tools in their own tenants during a hold.
CAC quality, not platform ROAS
Define CAC the way the board already thinks. Fully loaded means media plus agency fees plus acquisition production, divided by customers or closed-won. Pick one denominator and keep it. Payback is months of contribution margin, using finance's definition, to earn that CAC back. A 4x ROAS on a form fill is not a payback under 12 months. Make them translate.
Keep when fees are in the number and brand is split out. Coach when the math is close but sloppy. Cut when they refuse the denominator or celebrate leads sales will not accept. Hiring rules and firing rules should match, which is why the note on paid media agencies private equity operators actually hire sits next to this page.
Score lead-gen vendors on cost per sales-accepted opportunity, not invoice CPL. The lead generation agency call is the same keep, coach, or cut test, with more consent risk.
Want this scorecard run on a live PortCo?
Impaxium's PE advisory work puts an operator next to the operating partner for ownership, CAC, tracking, and the vendor call, in language the board already uses.
Talk through a growth auditTracking integrity before you trust a chart
Ask for three ties, not a dashboard tour. Spend in the deck matches the invoice and the general ledger, with the delta listed. Leads in the deck exist as CRM records whose source was not edited the night before. Closed-won in the CAC math matches what finance will put in the pack. If those three fail, the other slides are optional.
Coach only when the PortCo owns a dated fix list. Cut undisclosed tag changes, unauditable traffic, or a refusal to pass offline conversions because the platform number would look worse. Boards lose trust when packs get restated. Marketing attribution and board trust is the longer standard. This page enforces it quarterly.
Creative velocity means tests decided
Creative velocity is not an export count. It is how many hypotheses reached a kill or a scale decision. A keep quarter names the offer, the audience, the page, and the stop rule. A coach quarter changes colors and calls it a refresh. A cut quarter runs the same ads for three months and blames brand safety, with no log of what was actually blocked.
Reporting honesty is the culture test
Honest vendors lead with what broke, what it cost, and what changed. Ask what they hid or noticed late. A specific answer is a keep. A vague one is a coach. Surprise, or a deck that still omits a variance finance already has, is a cut.
Portfolio marketing vendor management across the book
Roll scorecards into a grid: company, vendor, fee, five lenses, decision. Do not average them into a fake portfolio grade. A cut at one company does not get diluted by keeps somewhere else. If four holdings are coach on tracking, you do not have four agency problems. You never installed a fund standard. Fix definitions, access, and the reporting format once.
Search funds feel the same politics with less staff. Pair the page with a fractional CMO in the seat, or a marketing board seat advisor who can challenge a renewal management is too close to.
Run the review in 90 minutes
Spend ten minutes on ownership while logged in as the company, twenty on CAC versus the thesis, fifteen on the tracking ties, fifteen on tests decided, and twenty on keep, coach, or cut with names and dates. The vendor can leave before the decision. The operating partner should not.
Write one paragraph the CEO and the board can both read. Keep paid media on the current scope. Coach creative, with four offer tests live by a named date or the production fee comes off. Cut the freelance buyer because the ad account is still in their manager account.
Keep, coach, or cut rules that survive the room
A cut on ownership or tracking blocks a keep. You may coach once, on a 30-day move. You do not renew a hostage account because the creative is decent. Two coaches on the same lens become a cut. Coaching is a repair, not a lifestyle. A keep still restates fee, scope, the CAC guardrail, and the test quota. Handshakes drift.
Name who holds admin on day one of a cut. If nobody can, you have a staffing gap, and a growth marketing partner built for private equity is a plan, not a search in week six. Move ownership and tracking before you hire the replacement.
The board pack gets four lines per material vendor: fee, fully loaded CAC versus plan, the worst lens, and the decision with a date. The working file holds the tie-out and the coach plan. If a cut is underway, say so. Surprising the board later looks like a miss. Flagging a scorecard outcome looks like control.
FAQ
What is a marketing vendor scorecard for PE?
A marketing vendor scorecard for PE is a one-page quarterly review of each agency or freelancer on ownership, CAC quality, tracking integrity, creative velocity, and reporting honesty, ending in keep, coach, or cut. Use the same page across the portfolio so a real problem is not averaged away.
How often should a private equity firm run an agency performance review?
Run the full agency performance review once a quarter, before the board pack, plus a lighter monthly check on CAC, tracking, and tests shipped. Annual reviews let a weak relationship survive. Monthly-only reviews never force the cut.
What belongs on a PE marketing agency scorecard?
A PE marketing agency scorecard needs ownership of accounts and data, fully loaded CAC and payback, tracking against the CRM and finance, creative tests that reached a decision, and reporting honesty. Add incrementality and compliance when the model needs them. Leave awareness metrics and partnership highlights off the decision page.
When should an operating partner cut a marketing agency?
Cut when the agency owns assets you paid for, when the number will not reconcile, when the same lens is coached twice, or when finance delivers the bad news first. A polished team you cannot fire without losing the ad account is a cut, even if the chart is green.
How is portfolio marketing vendor management different from a single-company review?
Portfolio marketing vendor management uses one scorecard across holdings so failure modes and vendor concentration are visible at the fund. You still decide company by company. You do not blend five scores into one comfort number. When the same lens fails everywhere, fix the fund standard instead of re-buying the lesson at each PortCo.
Who fills out the scorecard if the PortCo has no CMO?
The operating partner owns the verdict, finance owns the tie from CAC to the model, and a named manager confirms logins and CRM records. The vendor supplies facts, not the grade. If nobody can confirm admin access, that empty seat is part of the finding. A fractional operator can bridge the gap. It is not a reason to skip the page.
Can you renew an agency and still coach it?
Yes. Coach means the renewal depends on a written repair with an owner and a date, and you re-score that lens next quarter. If the next board pack does not change, it was a relationship renewal with extra paperwork.
Use the page before the next renewal
You do not need a new agency to get a better quarter. You need a decision the current one cannot talk you out of. Score ownership first. Write keep, coach, or cut in language the board can repeat. The relationship can stay. It does not get the vote.
If you want the page built against a live hold, with the tie-out and the vendor conversation included, start with Impaxium private equity advisory. A growth audit is the short version: what the scorecard would say this quarter, and what to fix before the pack goes out.
Impaxium advises private equity and search-fund operators and also operates as a growth marketing firm. This is an operating playbook, not a ranking and not a recommendation to hire or fire a named vendor. Match CAC and payback to your fund's model. Confirm ownership, consent, and claims with counsel before you treat a cell as a legal conclusion.
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