Chris Deets

Forensic Marketing & Branding

Uncover the Marketing That Truly Moves Your Business

I’ve run forensic marketing analysis on company after company as a contractor, full-time within the organization itself, or immediately following an acquisition at a PE firm. This 200-point forensic marketing review has never once come back clean. 100% of the time I’ve discovered significant blocks to brand awareness, customer engagement or prospect conversion.

Worst of all, the forensic shows how much money companies often waste on marketing that looks fine from the outside.

I'll show you which part of your marketing to keep, which of your marketing budget to re-allocate to other tactics, and which to simply stop.

What I bring

Branding, digital, AI, and more.

AI Integration

The first thing I will check is whether AI is integrated into your marketing systems. AI replaces repetitive marketing tasks, eliminates redundancy, assists in research and data analysis and frees up human time for higher-value strategy.

Digital Audits

A thorough analysis of your digital eco-system focusing on evidence over opinion and highlighting optimal budget allocation.

Branding and Positioning

I’ll analyze your brand, see if positioning is focused on market pain, confirm north star expression and ensure it’s impossible to say no.

Channel and Dealer/Distribution GTM

Overseeing the marketing and selling of exceedingly technical products through the people who invent them and actually move them.

B2B, B2C, D2C and Channel

From plant floors to travel and retail shelves — experience across B2B, B2C, B2B2C and D2C.

Direct to Consumer

From hospitality at AmericInn Hotels by Wyndham to Healthcare at Hazelden Betty Ford and the new-category Tersano iClean Mini, experience in D2C is the foundation of this 200-point forensic approach.

Selected work

Different industries. Same lens.

Restoration, home services, cleaning technology, healthcare, industrial. Brands I’ve helped shape through positioning, messaging, and all the optimization under the hood.

Critical Control Restoration

Commercial Disaster Recovery

Repositioned the brand around proof and control — not faster cleanup. “Built on Trust. Powered by Transparency.” Dramatically increased contact channels; optimized GBP and Local Service Ads; cleaned up reviews, digital consistency, and reputation.

Cregger

Home Services · Plumbing / HVAC / Electrical

Optimized all digital — including pinpointing the transposed phone number buried in the GBP quietly costing hundreds of calls — updated the complete brand strategy, and cleaned up reputation channels.

Tersano

Cleaning Technology · Consumer & B2B

Created, branded, and marketed a category-creating clean-tech — tap water turned cleaner without chemicals — to homes and businesses alike. Introduced a new market category; executed a B2B, B2C, D2C and B2B2C suite of tactics.

Hazelden Betty Ford

Healthcare · Nonprofit

Built the alumni experience to keep recovery connected, the brand relevant, and health continuing — the belonging side of a mission run on trust.

Apex Service Partners

HOME SERVICES P/E FIRM | REGIONAL BRANDING

Directed digital, traditional, and communication channels across 11 brands in Michigan, Illinois, and St. Louis. Partnered with national home-services groups like Generac, Home Depot, and Lowe’s to market directly to consumers.

Tennant

Industrial Equipment · B2B

Copywriting, developing, and executing a suite of strategies to bring premium janitorial products into industrial and consumer channels — including launching a street sweeper against the category incumbent into local governments, won through the dealer channel.

Sites designed and shipped

Strategy is only worth what gets built. These are sites my team designed, wrote, and shipped — from positioning through to the live page.

The Woodmans Arms

Hospitality

A premium site for a place that does three things at once — dining, stays, and events. Sorted the complexity into clear paths so a guest lands and knows immediately which one they came for.

Wint

AI / Technology

A SaaS site for an AI water-management platform. Turned dense technical capability into plain language and let the data tell the story — clean, scalable, and built to earn trust from a technical buyer.

GeekSeller

E-commerce · SaaS

A modern interface for multichannel selling and automation. Took a deep feature set and gave it hierarchy, so a seller sees what the platform does for them before they see everything it can do.

Custom Cabinets

Home & Trade

A visually rich site for a custom shop with a wide service range. Gave each offering its own clear section — craftsmanship on display, without making a buyer hunt for what they need.

The Foxes Photography

Creative · Services

A storytelling-first site built on emotion, landscape, and real moments. Structured the planning side so it’s simple to book, while the work itself does the persuading.

Pretty Like You

Retail · E-commerce

A bold digital experience for a beauty brand — elegance that still converts. Turned a complicated treatment menu into one confident path from scroll to booking.

My approach

Evidence first. Opinions last.

Marketing advice is often heavy on opinion and light on strategy.

As a forensic marketer, I start by looking into the areas others miss: the insights hidden in the data, the unpopular but obviously relevant channels, and how your current allocations compare against what 200-plus other brands are spending. Then I work backward, identifying the few moves that will change the numbers that matter. I won’t pile on more tactics. I find what’s already working, name what’s quietly costing you, and lay out the true picture clearly enough that the next decision makes itself.

The things that signal whether marketing works are almost always the things no one is measuring. I find where the results are hiding — and what spending should be stopped.

Three steps to forensic marketing

1

Find the evidence. Shine a light on the data, the channels, the money, and the benchmark of how the best in your category actually operate.

2

Highlight the signals. The few things carrying the business, the few draining it, and the gap between them.

3

Tell the story. A clear picture and a short list, sorted by urgency, in language you can act on without a translator.

How I translate the findings

Every strategy, channel and tactic gets a verdict.

Not every channel deserves your money. A Google Business Profile can be worth ten times a billboard, and the budget should say so. In a forensic audit, each tactic earns one of four ratings — so the report sorts itself and you know where to start.

Forensic Findings

Sorted by urgency

Critical Leak

Yield Gap

Blind Spot

Your Best

The evidence, sorted by urgency — so you know exactly where to start.

The money belongs somewhere else. Stop.

Working, but underperforming. Fix it.

Competitors own this. Take a look.

The 20% driving your 80%. Fund it until it stops returning.

About

Chris Deets.

I love finding what’s real about a brand, removing the noise, and building the marketing on authenticity, innovation, and differentiation. Today I lean on AI systems to do the work of a much larger shop and focus on the high-value vision and strategy work that actually moves a business forward.

— Chris

Contact

chrisdeets@gmail.com Or 952-715-8766

Chris Deets · Forensic Marketing & Branding

A two-person practice, with Mahadi Hasan · It’s time to trust your marketing.