Marketing operations advisory

Your marketing spend is up. Your returns aren't.

More tools, more vendors, more data — less clarity than ever. You've outgrown your marketing infrastructure. Now what?

The problem

Growing pains are real.

Growth creates complexity. Complexity creates blind spots. Here's where most mid-market companies find them.

01
Too many tools. Too little visibility.

You added platforms to fill gaps. Now the stack costs more than it produces and data lives in three places that agree in none of them.

02
Marketing spend that can't prove its value.

Your team is executing tactics while your business needs strategy. The CFO is asking questions nobody can answer.

03
Systems built for a different stage.

Your marketing systems were built for the company you were — not the company you are. That gap compounds fast.

04
Vendors optimized for their own renewal.

Somewhere in the background, a vendor or agency relationship has quietly stopped serving your outcomes and started serving its own continuity.

How we work

It starts with
the diagnostic.

We don't prescribe solutions before we understand the problem. Every engagement begins with a clear-eyed assessment of what's working, what isn't, and what's costing you money for no reason. What follows depends on what we find.

01
Marketing Systems Audit

A focused diagnostic that maps your tools, spend, data health, and capability gaps against your actual business goals. Clear picture, prioritized roadmap, vendor recommendations.

2–4 weeks · Fixed scope · Where every engagement begins
02
Strategy & Roadmap

Vendor-neutral stack architecture, platform evaluation, and integration planning. No platform bias. No preferred vendor. Just the right answer for your specific business.

Variable scope · Built on what the audit reveals
03
Implementation Oversight

Strategy is only as good as how it gets built. We manage implementation with vetted technical partners, ensuring the work matches the intent at every stage — not just at kickoff.

Ongoing · Milestone-based · Making sure the plan survives execution
04
Ongoing Advisory

A retainer relationship for continuous measurement, refinement, and strategic guidance as your business and the technology landscape evolve.

Monthly or quarterly · Continuous refinement as the business evolves
Results

Client details are kept confidential by default.

Who you're working with

You work with Nick.
Not a team you'll never meet.

CHILENKO is a boutique advisory led by Nick Chilenko — fifteen years building a web development firm from the ground up, and the last several solving marketing infrastructure problems for mid-market companies before any of it had a name on the door.

Read the full story →
Founded
2006 — Nicholas Creative
Focus
Mid-market · $20M–$250M
Model
Principal-led, specialist partners per engagement
Location
Grand Rapids, MI
Roster
Limited by design, not capacity

Vendor-neutral — we don't sell software, we make sure you buy the right software.

Diagnostics-first — we find the real problem before recommending any solution.

No discounts, no RFPs, no spec work. The work stands on its own terms or it doesn't.

Start here

This isn't for everyone.

We take on a limited number of engagements at any time. This form helps us both figure out quickly whether this makes sense — before either of us commits to a call.

No auto-responder.
No sales sequence.
A real person reads every submission.
Response within one business day.
No follow-up cadence
you didn't ask for.