Case studies
The margin was always there. We found it.
A look at what an objective, evidenced audit of your marketing spend and unit economics actually surfaces — a marketing & margin audit. Anonymized to protect our clients; real in every number. Audits conducted between late 2025 and 2026. Client identities are anonymized.
Every figure is evidenced, reviewed, and signed off — before it ever reaches this page.
Nothing here is raw model output. Every figure is rebuilt from your own data and personally signed off by a named senior auditor — the person accountable for it.
Named, accountable reviewerOne fixed fee — no retainer, no hourly meter. If we don’t surface your tier’s guaranteed $10,000–$50,000 in recoverable margin, you owe nothing. The risk sits with us.
$10k–$50k-or-refund guaranteeWe withhold client names to guard their commercial edge — the same discretion we’d give you. The findings and figures are real and unaltered.
Confidential by defaultRead-only access, anonymized before review, access revoked at readout. We look, we report, we’re gone — working data deleted ≤ 30 days after close.
Read-only · never retainedWhat we free up isn’t just cut — it’s redeployed into growth. Every dollar recovered works for you again next year, and the next.
Recovered / yr, recurringThe full library
74 marketing & margin audit case studies. One highlight finding each.
Browse all 74 and open any one to see the finding, the redacted working paper behind it, and the result. Filter by industry to watch the same objective method surface a different leak in every business.
Scaling spend was hiding a $134k annual margin leak.
Two prospecting campaigns were buying revenue below break-even after shipping and returns.
Manufacturing · Water-pipe producer
Volume rebates were paid on orders that never hit the tier.
Distributor rebate accruals were calculated on gross POs, not shipped-and-paid volume, over-crediting buyers who never reached the threshold.
Fintech · Consumer
Incentive spend acquired users who never funded.
Sign-up bonuses optimized installs, not activated, funded accounts.
B2B SaaS · Enterprise
Late-quarter discounting was quietly eroding ACV margin.
Reps escalated discounts to close on time, and the pattern compounded every quarter unchecked.
Retail · Omnichannel
Online ads were paying for in-store demand.
Geo-lift analysis showed much of paid social was non-incremental to stores.
Pharma · Biopharma
Congress and KOL sponsorship showed no measurable return.
Six-figure congress and KOL spend had no attributable share-of-voice or prescribing outcome.
Fintech · Payments
Interchange margin varied wildly by acquisition channel.
Some channels brought volume at structurally worse economics.
Fintech · Exchange
Referral rewards were paid on self-referred and gamed volume.
A referral program paid out on volume that was largely self-dealing or wash activity.
Manufacturing · Packaging
A surcharge lag was never passed into customer contracts.
Resin and energy surcharges rose faster than contract pricing captured them.
Pharma · Rx brand (DTC)
Unbranded search was paying for traffic the brand site already won.
Disease-awareness and branded campaigns overlapped, double-buying the same high-intent visitor.
B2B SaaS · Vertical
A $1.2M ad budget hid a 40% wasted-impression rate.
Placements and dayparting were never optimized after launch.
Marketplace · Food delivery
Courier incentives overlapped organic supply in dense zones.
Peak-time courier bonuses paid for coverage the densest zones already had without them.
Manufacturing · Kids furniture
Rising freight never reached the price list.
Landed cost had climbed for two years while list prices held; oversized-carton surcharges quietly erased the margin on every flat-pack line.
Fintech · Insurtech
Broker commissions were flat across very different loss ratios.
One commission rate applied to products whose underlying margins differed sharply.
Retail · Grocery
Loyalty points cost more than the repeat they drove.
Point liability outpaced the incremental margin of loyalty purchases.
Pharma · Diagnostics
Patient-acquisition spend ran above what reimbursement paid.
Direct-to-patient test acquisition cost more per patient than reimbursement returned.
B2B SaaS · Usage-based
A billing config gap left usage overages uncharged.
Metered overages above plan limits were never billed because of a misconfigured usage rule.
Manufacturing · HVAC components
Dealer co-op funds were subsidizing competitors’ leads.
Co-op marketing budgets funded distributor campaigns that promoted rival brands alongside their own; tightening the terms cut waste without losing reach.
Retail · Fashion
Returns processing cost was missing from channel economics.
High online return rates carried handling cost that channel P&Ls never attributed to them.
D2C · Food & beverage
A discount habit was training the best customers to wait.
Always-on promo codes eroded full-price demand; a tiered structure protected margin.
Marketplace · Travel & experiences
Paid search was bidding on supply the platform already ranked for.
Branded and category search paid for clicks organic listings would have captured for free.
Pharma · Medtech / device
HCP and patient budgets were optimized in isolation.
Two teams bid against each other for the same audiences; a unified plan cut waste without losing reach.
Manufacturing · Water systems
Distributor margin was set once and never revisited.
A fixed dealer discount applied across the whole catalog subsidized low-margin commodity SKUs at the expense of the engineered range.
Pharma · Generics
Detailing and sample spend produced no prescribing lift.
A large share of rep detailing and samples went to HCPs whose prescribing never moved.
Marketplace · Services
Supply-side incentives outlived their purpose.
Onboarding bonuses kept paying for supply the platform no longer needed.
Subscription · B2B software
Seat true-ups were under-billed as accounts grew.
Expanding teams added users faster than contracts were trued up, leaving seats unbilled.
Services · Legal
Intake was dropping a third of qualified calls.
Marketing filled the top of funnel while operations leaked the bottom.
Ecommerce · Amazon seller
FBA fees and returns had overtaken the margin on the hero ASINs.
Marketplace fee creep and a rising return rate pushed the best-selling ASINs below true contribution.
Fintech · Wealth & robo
Free planning support cost more than small accounts earned.
Human financial-planning support was offered to accounts whose AUM fee never covered it.
Ecommerce · Pet
Bestsellers were priced below their true landed cost.
Freight and packaging inflation had never been passed into unit economics.
Marketplace · Gig & freelance
Promotional fee waivers were never switched off.
Launch-era fee waivers kept suppressing take-rate long after they had served their purpose.
Retail · Furniture
Free assembly and delivery were bundled below cost on big-ticket lines.
Large-item orders included delivery and assembly priced under what they actually cost.
Pharma · Vaccines
Media ran outside the eligible-population windows.
Campaign flighting and targeting spent heavily outside when and where eligible patients converted.
Subscription · Fitness
Annual plans were discounted below their retention value.
The annual discount exceeded the churn it prevented.
Manufacturing · Modular kitchens
Configurator upsells were discounted below their cost.
Default bundle pricing in the online configurator gave away high-spec finishes at a negative contribution once fitting was included.
Manufacturing · Industrial fasteners
Small-order handling cost exceeded the margin on the order.
A low minimum order value meant many small orders cost more to handle than they earned.
Services · Agency
Retainers were priced below delivery cost.
Blended rates hid unprofitable accounts inside a healthy-looking book.
Retail · Home improvement
Click-and-collect was subsidizing the delivery it replaced.
Free click-and-collect still carried picking and handling cost the model assumed it removed.
Ecommerce · Home & living
The agency’s ‘winning’ campaign was the biggest loser.
Attribution credited a campaign for sales it didn’t drive; budget reset to incremental channels.
B2B SaaS · Dev tools
Free-tier support cost more than the plan earned.
Cost-to-serve was never modeled against plan pricing.
Subscription · Digital media
Weak payment recovery was leaking revenue as involuntary churn.
An over-lax failed-payment flow let recoverable subscribers lapse instead of being retried.
Services · Accounting & tax
Fixed-fee packages were scoped below the hours they consumed.
Standard packages had drifted below the real delivery hours as client complexity grew.
Retail · Electronics
Markdown timing was leaving margin on the shelf.
Discounts triggered before demand actually softened.
Pharma · Animal health
Retail-vet channel discounts were set below margin.
A blanket vet-channel discount undercut the margin on the products it was applied to.
Manufacturing · LED lighting
Dead SKUs tied up the margin in slow catalog lines.
A long tail of near-zero-velocity products carried inventory, listing and marketing cost that dragged the whole catalog’s margin.
DTC · Apparel
Free shipping was quietly deleting the margin on every third order.
A threshold set years ago no longer matched basket economics or carrier rates.
B2B SaaS · Channel
Partner referral fees were paid on deals sales had sourced directly.
Attribution credited partners for opportunities the direct team had actually originated.
Subscription · Meal kit
The pause and skip flow was leaking straight to cancellation.
Members who wanted to pause found canceling easier, turning saves into lost subscriptions.
Services · Implementation
Travel and onboarding time was going unbilled.
Delivery hours around kickoff and travel were absorbed rather than billed to the engagement.
Marketplace · Rentals
Take-rate was leaking through unmanaged refunds.
A refund policy gap quietly reduced effective take-rate every month.
DTC · Footwear
Affiliate commissions were being paid on sales the brand already owned.
Influencer and affiliate links claimed organic and branded purchases that needed no incentive.
Services · Field services
Quoting ignored callback and warranty cost.
Job quotes were built on first-visit cost, excluding the callbacks and warranty work that followed.
B2B SaaS · Series A
Paid was subsidizing a channel sales already owned.
Brand-term and retargeting spend claimed conversions that would have closed anyway.
Subscription · Box
Shipping tiers didn’t match cohort value.
The most loyal cohort subsidized shipping for the least loyal.
Manufacturing · Underfloor heating
Trade-show spend had no attributable pipeline.
Six-figure annual exhibition and sponsorship spend was never mapped to booked orders; reallocating to specifier-led demand lifted return per dollar.
Retail · Beauty
Vendor promo funding wasn’t covering the margin given away.
Co-funded in-store promotions discounted more deeply than the vendor support actually covered.
Services · Dental group
Every location bought the same keywords against each other.
Internal auction competition inflated CPCs across the group.
Ecommerce · Beauty
Bundles were cannibalizing full-price hero SKUs.
A promo bundle sold well but pulled buyers off higher-margin singles.
Retail · Convenience
Payment fees varied by tender and went unmanaged.
Interchange and scheme fees differed sharply by payment type with no steering or review.
B2B SaaS · Mid-market
Content spend had no path to revenue.
Top-of-funnel investment never mapped to opportunities; budget moved to demand capture.
Subscription · SaaS
Win-back campaigns were re-buying customers who’d have returned free.
Discounted win-backs targeted naturally-returning users.
DTC · Beauty
Retargeting was paid twice for the same customer.
Overlapping audiences double-counted conversions across two platforms.
B2B SaaS · PLG
The cheapest leads were the most expensive customers.
A low-intent channel filled the funnel but crushed sales-cycle efficiency downstream.
Marketplace · Two-sided
CAC looked fine — until we split it by cohort.
Blended CAC masked a segment acquired far above its lifetime value.
Services · Home
Lead spend ignored close-rate by source.
The cheapest leads converted worst; reallocating lifted booked revenue per dollar.
Fintech · Lending
Acquisition ignored default rate by channel.
Channels were judged on approved-loan CAC while their default rates varied wildly.
Pharma · OTC consumer health
Seasonal media weight ignored when the category actually converted.
Spend peaked with the flighting calendar, not with demand; reallocating to true in-market windows lifted efficiency.
Marketplace · B2B wholesale
Buyer subsidies outran the repeat GMV they were meant to unlock.
Acquisition subsidies were justified on lifetime GMV that most subsidized buyers never delivered.
DTC · Supplements
Subscription churn was masked by aggressive new-trial spend.
Net revenue retention was negative once trial incentives were removed.
Services · Recruitment
Job-board spend was spread evenly regardless of fill rate.
Budget was split flatly across boards while fill and margin varied enormously by source.
Manufacturing · Smart-home products
DTC ads were cannibalizing higher-margin retail.
Paid social drove direct sales that displaced the same units through retail partners at a better blended margin, net of returns and support.
Subscription · Media
Growth spend was outrunning retention.
Acquisition was healthy on day one but churn erased it by month three.
Pharma · Nutraceutical
Subscription acquisition ignored regulatory-driven churn.
Claims restrictions raised churn on paid cohorts; creative and targeting were reset to compliant, higher-retention angles.
Fintech · SMB
CAC payback was twice what the board believed.
Fully-loaded acquisition cost was understated by excluding onboarding.
audits in DTC / Ecommerce — here’s where the margin most often leaks.
Not sure where to start in the 74 above? Choose your industry for the short version: the leaks we surface most, the typical recovery, and how fast we find it. The one draining your margin is often among them.
Whether you sit in the CFO, CEO, CMO or COO seat, the leak shows up in your numbers — thin margin, wasted spend, operational cost, or hidden risk. What we recover gets redeployed into growth, not simply cut.
Every one of these hid behind a healthy ROAS — the leak only showed once shipping, returns and true landed cost were loaded in. Most accounts we audit have one.
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