Measure the forces in your marketing system. Find the constraint. Fix the right thing first.
This diagnostic measures the strength of each force in your marketing system — nine pillars, three layers, three growth loops — to calculate your BDVI™ (Brand Demand Velocity Index). This assessment takes approximately 10–15 minutes. It produces a board-ready output: your BDVI score, your Brand Tax Rate, your system diagnosis, and your 90-day action plan.
How This Works
1
System Reality Check
Three questions that reveal how your system is currently operating — before you score the individual forces.
2
Measure each force (0–5)
Score all nine pillars using clear anchors. Low scores are not failures — they are the highest-leverage opportunities.
3
Assess your growth loops
For each loop, identify where the connection is flowing, partial, or leaking. A loop that breaks at any point reverses.
4
Review your system diagnosis
Your BDVI, spider chart, system narrative, and loop insights update as you complete the assessment.
Company Information
Score Reference — What Each Number Means
0
Not present
1
Minimal activity
2
Inconsistent execution
3
Functional & repeatable
4
Systemized & scaled
5
Category leading capability
Before You Score · System Reality Check
Three questions about how your system is actually performing.
Marketing doesn't operate in isolated channels. These three signals reveal the shape of the system before you measure the individual forces. Answer honestly — they won't affect your BDVI score directly, but they'll sharpen your diagnostic.
1. What percentage of your revenue comes from repeat customers?
2. What percentage of your website traffic arrives without paid advertising (organic, direct, or referral)?
3. Is your customer acquisition cost (CAC) trending over the last 12 months?
Layer 1 — Foundation
Foundation Forces
These three forces determine the value of every other marketing dollar in the system. A weak Foundation doesn't just underperform — it reduces the efficiency of every channel above it. Score these first, and most honestly.
01 — Foundation
Brand Identity
Positioning · Identity · Storytelling · Equity
–
/5
Is your brand positioning clearly defined and written down — with a specific emotional territory you own, not just a product description?
Can your entire team describe the brand in the same way — same voice, same values, same promise — without reading from a document?
Does your brand feel genuinely consistent across all channels — social, email, paid, PR, and the website — to a customer who encounters it in multiple places?
Force Strength
0 = Not defined · 3 = Functional · 5 = Category-defining equity
Do you have automated flows covering the full customer lifecycle — welcome, post-purchase, win-back, and loyalty — or are you primarily sending one-off campaigns?
Are your sequences personalized by customer behavior — responding to what they've actually done — rather than batch-and-blast promotional broadcasts?
Do you track and optimize for Revenue Per Email and Customer Lifetime Value — not just open rates and click-through rates?
Does your brand rank in the top positions for your most important category and brand search terms — capturing demand at the moment it exists?
Is your content genuinely authoritative — answering real customer questions with real depth — or is it primarily keyword-optimized content that doesn't build expertise?
When your customers use AI tools (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews) to search in your category, does your brand appear or get recommended?
These forces distribute and multiply what the Foundation has built. Without a strong Foundation, they amplify weakness — not strength. If these scores are higher than your Foundation scores, that gap is the sequencing violation.
04 — Amplification
Social / Organic
Platform-Native Content · Community · UGC Loops
–
/5
Do you have defined content pillars that consistently reflect your brand positioning — or does social content develop its own identity separate from the brand?
Is your content generating genuine community engagement — comments, shares, saves, conversations — not just passive impressions and reach?
Are followers creating and sharing content about your brand without being prompted — organic UGC that signals a community forming around the brand?
Force Strength
0 = Inactive · 3 = Consistent content · 5 = Community flywheel active
05 — Amplification
Press / PR
Earned Media · Thought Leadership · Authority Gravity
–
/5
Are you securing meaningful press coverage in publications your customers and prospects actually read — not just trade press or niche blogs?
Does your PR coverage reinforce a consistent brand narrative — or is it scattered across unrelated topics that don't build cumulative authority?
Are you building genuine thought leadership — publishing expert content with enough depth and credibility that AI models would use it as a reference source?
Force Strength
0 = No earned media · 3 = Regular coverage · 5 = Industry authority, AI-cited
06 — Amplification
Influencer / Affiliate
Social Proof · Advocacy · Performance Loops
–
/5
Are your influencer partnerships genuinely aligned with your brand values and audience — or selected primarily on follower count and CPM efficiency?
Do you have a performance-first model in place — tracking ROI, earned media value, and conversion rates — not just post engagement metrics?
Is influencer-generated content being captured and repurposed across paid, organic, and CRM — or does it live only on the creator's channel?
Force Strength
0 = No program · 3 = Active partnerships · 5 = Performance loop compounding
Layer 3 — Capture
Capture Forces
Where demand becomes revenue. These forces work efficiently only when Foundation and Amplification are strong. If Capture scores significantly exceed Foundation scores, you are paying the Brand Tax — capturing demand you haven't built, at compounding cost.
Do you run a systematic creative testing process — test, learn, scale — or do you run the same creative until performance drops and then replace it reactively?
Are your campaigns structured across the full funnel — awareness, consideration, and conversion — not primarily retargeting and bottom-of-funnel capture?
Is your ROAS stable or improving while CAC remains flat or declining — or is paid efficiency eroding despite increasing spend?
Are you actively defending your branded search terms — and is branded search volume growing as a proportion of your total search traffic?
Are your landing pages genuinely matched to search intent — or do you send all traffic to a generic homepage or category page?
Is your paid search strategy coordinated with your SEO investment — or are you paying for terms you could rank for organically, doubling the cost of the same customer?
Loops only compound when they flow end-to-end. A loop that breaks at any connection point doesn't just slow down — it reverses and begins to drain the system. For each question, assess the connection honestly: Flowing, Partial, or Leaking?
Loop 1 — Brand Momentum
Brand Identity → Social → PR → Influencer → UGC → Paid → Brand Identity (repeat)
Does your brand positioning drive what you publish on social — or has social developed its own identity, separate from the brand's core narrative and positioning?
Do your paid ads feel like the same brand as your organic and influencer content — or do they feel like a separate campaign created by a different team?
Do your email flows move customers toward purchase with behavioral precision — responding to what they've done — or are they primarily time-based promotional broadcasts?
Do you have a loyalty and repeat-purchase system in place — so customers who convert are systematically moved into a retention loop that reduces your effective CAC over time?
Is your organic content ranking for the search terms your customers actually use — and is organic traffic growing as a percentage of total site traffic?
When customers search your category using AI tools, does your brand appear in responses — or are competitors with greater content authority capturing that discovery moment?
BDVI™ System Output
Your Marketing System Diagnosis
Score your pillars above — your diagnosis, spider chart, and loop insights will generate here.
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BDVI™ Score · Brand Demand Velocity Index
Complete assessment
–%
Estimated Brand Tax Rate
Layer Health
Foundation
–
Amplification
–
Capture
–
⚠ Sequencing violation detected.
System Diagnosis
System Diagnosis
Score your Foundation and Capture pillars to generate your system diagnosis.
Key Structural Weakness
Complete more pillar scores to identify your key structural weakness.
First Strategic Priority
Score your Foundation pillars to reveal your highest-leverage first investment.
Force Strength — All 9 Pillars
Foundation
Amplification
Capture
Growth Loop Status
Brand Momentum Loop
Not assessed
Answer the loop questions above to generate your Brand Momentum Loop diagnosis.
Conversion Loop
Not assessed
Answer the loop questions above to generate your Conversion Loop diagnosis.
AI Discovery Loop
Not assessed
Answer the loop questions above to generate your AI Discovery Loop diagnosis.
Top Priority Pillars
Score all 9 pillars to reveal your sequenced priority list.
Priority Output
90-Day Priority Action Plan
Use your diagnostic scores to document your top three pillar investments, OKRs, ownership, and timeline. This is your board-ready strategic output — sequenced Foundation first.
1
Priority Pillar #1 — Highest impact constraint
Your most critical investment. Fix this first — it raises the ceiling on every other channel in the system.
Pillar & Objective
Key Results (OKRs)
Owner & Timeline
2
Priority Pillar #2 — Second highest leverage
The second investment that compounds once Priority #1 is established. Sequence matters — don't start here.
Pillar & Objective
Key Results (OKRs)
Owner & Timeline
3
Priority Pillar #3 — The loop activator
The investment that, combined with #1 and #2, activates a complete growth loop for the first time.
Pillar & Objective
Key Results (OKRs)
Owner & Timeline
90-Day BDVI Target
Where should your BDVI be in 90 days? Set a realistic but stretching target.
Success Definition
What does success look like in plain language for your board or leadership team?
Next Review Date
Schedule your quarterly BDVI re-score now. Acceleration rate is the metric that matters most.
BDVI is tracked quarterly. A rising score signals a compounding system.
Next Step · Ratio9 Strategy Diagnostic
This is the directional picture. The full diagnostic is the verified one.
This self-assessment gives you the shape of the problem — your system architecture, sequencing violations, and loop health — based on your own signals. The full Ratio9 Strategy Diagnostic goes deeper: AI research agents analyze your brand, competitive landscape, and market position. We calculate your Verified BDVI from actual data and build a sequenced strategic roadmap with precise financial targets.
Typical engagement begins within 5 business days. Delivered as a board-ready diagnostic report.
AI Research Agents
Multi-agent system runs 15+ searches across brand, financial, social, competitive, and ecommerce data — organized by layer, not channel list.
Competitive Benchmarking
Your BDVI compared against top-3 competitors in your category. See where your system has a structural edge — and where competitors are compounding against you.
Verified BDVI Modeling
Calculated from your actual CAC, email revenue, organic traffic, and retention data. Precise, defensible to a CFO or board. Includes Brand Tax Rate in dollars.
Sequenced Strategic Roadmap
A 90-day plan built in Foundation → Amplification → Capture sequence with OKRs, investment allocation, and the minimum intervention set that activates your highest-value growth loop.
Ratio9 Diagnostic™ · Your Brand · 0 of 9 pillars scored