October 25, 2026 · 7 min read
Run the Audit Before You Hire a Marketer or Sign With an Agency
The score defines the job. A Not yet office needs a builder, a Building office needs an operator, a Running office needs a specialist. How to write the posting from the bars and retake the audit at 90 days.
Run a marketing audit before you hire a marketer or sign with an agency because the score defines the job. An office scoring Not yet needs a builder. An office at Building needs an operator. An office at Running needs a specialist. Without a baseline, the job description comes from a feeling, and at 90 days there is no way to tell whether the hire worked.
The free Brokerage Marketing Audit takes five minutes and produces a score, a level, and a bar for each of eight areas. Those bars are the job description. The same 24 questions, retaken at 90 days, are the performance review. Both cost nothing, and both are more useful than the interview.
We have watched offices hire a social media manager when every social question was already a yes and every systems question was a no. The job was wrong.
The baseline is the job description
A marketing posting written without a baseline asks for whatever the broker noticed last. If a competitor's Reel got attention, the posting says video. The result is a role built around one month's anxiety.
The bars say what is empty. An office with brand and social at three of three does not need another person who is good at social. It needs the person who will own whatever sits at zero. Write the posting from the two or three lowest bars and the interview writes itself: tell me how you would take this area from zero to three in 90 days.
The same logic applies to an agency. Ask which of your empty bars the plan fills in month one and which are out of scope.
What each level says about who to hire
Not yet, under 40. The office needs systems before it needs content: a brand guide, templates, a request path, a calendar. A junior coordinator will drown here. This level needs a builder, or a plan that installs the system, or the 12 Week Program if a marketer is already on staff.
Starting, 40 to 64. Four areas are usually empty and four are usually fine. The job is to own the empty areas end to end. A coordinator with a clear list can do it if the list is short and the broker stops adding to it.
Building, 65 to 84. The pieces exist. The job is an operator: keep the calendar, run the approvals, send the report. The risk at this level is hiring a creative who reinvents the brand instead of running it.
Running, 85 and above. The office needs a specialist or growth work: video, luxury creative, recruiting content, a second market. The audit tells you what not to pay for, which at this level is most of what agencies pitch.
Writing the posting from the bars
Take an office of twelve agents with these bars: brand 3, social 3, listings 2, email 0, Google 1, website 1, recruiting 0, systems 1. That is eleven yes answers, a score of 46, Starting.
The posting most brokers would write for that office says "social media and content creator, must be great at Reels." Social is already full.
The posting the bars write says: own the monthly email and the Google profile in month one, build the request path and the approval step in month two, stand up the careers page and the weekly recruiting post in month three. Interview against that list. Ask each candidate to describe the first monthly email they would send and the review script they would hand agents. A candidate who can answer both is the hire, whatever the portfolio looks like.
For an agency, the same list is the scope conversation. The proposal should name email, Google, systems, and recruiting in the first quarter and say what the office keeps doing itself.
Hire, outsource, or train
The audit does not decide between the three routes, but it makes the decision honest.
Hire when the hours exceed one role's worth of work in areas the office wants to keep inside, and the office can manage the person. The hire versus outsource comparison lays out the math.
Outsource to a plan when the empty bars are system bars: a request path, an approval step, templates, a calendar, reporting. Installing a system is what a plan does in month one, and it is what a single hire struggles to build while also producing.
Train when there is already a marketer and the volume fits one role. The gap is usually the system, not the person. The 12 Week Program starts with an audit and a competitive scorecard, runs twelve weekly 30-minute strategy calls, and ends with a pass or fail at week twelve. It is priced on the call.
By the numbers
NAR's 2025 Technology Survey found 68% of agents use AI tools while only 17% report a significant positive impact on their business. A hire handed tools without a system produces the same result at office scale: drafts, not outcomes.
Metricool's 2026 Social Media Study found brands published 24.04% more content on Instagram while Reels reach fell 35% year over year. More output is not the job. The bars say which output matters.
Recruiting Insight's Q1 2026 Agent Migration report projects about 300,000 agents changing brokerages in 2026. A marketing hire in a brokerage will be judged on recruiting whether or not the posting mentions it, which is why the recruiting bar belongs in the job description.
The 90-day retake
At day 90, retake the same 24 questions with the same honesty rule: if you have to think about it, the answer is no. Then compare.
The bars the posting named should have moved. Email from zero to three is a newsletter that went out three times. Google from one to three is a completed profile, a review script in use, and weekly posts.
The bars that were strong should have held. If social dropped from three to two, the hire is spending time on the wrong areas or the broker keeps redirecting them.
The total reflects both. Eleven yes answers becoming sixteen is a 67, Building.
If the bars did not move, ask three questions before deciding the hire failed. Did the person have an owner-level mandate, or did every piece wait on the broker? Were the tools there: templates, a brand guide, a clean list in the CRM? Was the list four items or fourteen? Most 90-day disappointments trace to a system that was never built, and that is on the office, not the hire. The same retake works for an agency: the bars its scope named should have moved.
How Urban Marketing Edge handles this
We run the audit at the start of every engagement, and it becomes the structure of the plain-language monthly report, so the office can see the same eight bars move month by month. When an office already has a marketer, the honest recommendation is often the 12 Week Program: audit, competitive scorecard, bottleneck report, twelve weekly calls, and a pass or fail at week twelve, with the marketer keeping the day to day. When the hours exceed one person, a plan installs the system in month one, the dashboard for requests and approvals, monthly content themes, the listing launch set, and the weekly meeting, and the in-house marketer runs it. Plans are month to month, billed in advance, no setup fees. Take the Brokerage Marketing Audit before the first interview or the first proposal; the bars make both conversations shorter.
Questions brokers ask
Should I audit my marketing before hiring a marketing coordinator?
Yes. The audit takes five minutes and gives you a bar for each of eight areas. The lowest bars are the job description, the interview questions, and the 90-day review in one. Without it, the posting reflects whatever the broker noticed last month rather than what the office is missing.
What should a new marketing hire fix first?
The lowest bar that can move fastest, which in most offices is the Google profile or the monthly email. Both can be at three of three within 90 days. Systems, the request path and approval step, comes next, because it is what keeps the first two fixes running after the hire gets busy.
How do I evaluate a marketing agency before signing?
Show them your eight bars and ask which ones the plan fills in month one, month three, and never. A good answer names specific areas and what the office keeps doing itself. A weak answer lists deliverables without connecting them to a gap. Ask how the monthly report will show the bars moving.
How do I measure a marketing hire at 90 days?
Retake the same 24 questions. The bars named in the posting should have moved, the strong bars should have held, and the total should have risen by roughly four to six yes answers. If nothing moved, check the mandate, the tools, and the length of the list before judging the person.
What if we already have a marketer and the score is low?
That usually means the gap is the system, not the person. One marketer without a brand guide, templates, a request path, or a calendar spends the month reacting. The 12 Week Program trains that marketer inside a system, with weekly strategy calls and a pass or fail at week twelve.
Book a 30-minute strategy call
Before you post the job or sign the proposal, run the audit and bring the bars to a call. Thirty minutes is enough to tell whether the office needs a builder, an operator, or a specialist, and whether that is a hire, a plan, or training. We map the simplest plan for your content, themes, and monthly cadence. No pitch deck, no pressure, and we will say so if the right answer is a hire rather than us. Book a 30-minute strategy call, or read how the 12 Week Program trains an in-house marketer.
