Most marketing does not fail loudly. It fails in the places nobody is watching: a lead notification that quietly broke, ad spend measured in clicks instead of customers, a brand that drifted apart across five surfaces, a list of past customers nobody emails. This check asks fourteen plain questions about those places. It returns a map of where you have visibility and where it is dark, split across the two halves of the practice, and what each dark area quietly costs. Nothing is gated, and the tool collects no contact information.
The full treatment of what a real diagnosis covers lives in the practice’s reference on the marketing audit. This check is its self-serve front end: the same areas, asked of you instead of inspected.
How this check works
The check asks fourteen questions about the places marketing quietly fails, each answered yes, no, or not sure. It does not score you, and it returns no number. It sorts your answers into three states: what you can see (yes), what you already know is missing (no), and what you are not sure about (not sure). That last state is the point. “Not sure” is not a wrong answer; it is the signal, and for most businesses it is the most common one, because marketing run as a list of tasks leaves most of itself unwatched.
The result is a map, split across the two halves of the practice. Seven questions concern Binary, the systems that carry the work: where leads go, what is measured, who holds the keys. Seven concern Glyph, the brand those systems exist to deliver: the position, the audience, the reputation, the substance, and whether one person owns the whole. The map shows you which half is darker, because the fix is different depending on the answer, and most businesses are surprised by which side it is.
What this check refuses to do
It does not grade you, because a number invites you to feel finished, and there is nothing finished here. It does not diagnose your systems, because it asks you rather than reading them; a question can surface that you are unsure whether your lead notifications fire, but only an inspection can confirm whether they do. It promises no outcomes. It is a mirror of what you can account for, not a verdict on your marketing. The diagnosis that reads the systems directly, rather than asking you about them, is the audit.
Binary Glyph is a brand and marketing practice in Toledo, Ohio. The dark areas this check surfaces are what a fixed-fee marketing audit turns into a documented map: exactly what is broken, what it costs, and what it takes to fix, in priority order and yours to keep. The audit credits toward a six-month Foundation Engagement. If the map raised questions worth a senior conversation, begin a conversation →
This check reflects your own answers. It does not access, scan, or inspect your website, accounts, or systems. It produces a starting point for thinking, not a diagnosis. The diagnosis is the audit.