Human-operated marketing systems
A human runs it.
Not software you license and leave to rot. One accountable operator runs the measurement, automation and reporting system under your marketing — the same person who sets it up — so every number you act on carries a source, a window and a freshness date, and somebody whose name you know is answerable for it.
One machine, three parts: open the code, collect the emails, go live for $0. Built with an AI agent, on free tiers, no coding experience needed.
- Nine feeds → one operator
- Every figure carries its source
- Named roles act on it
- No dashboard theatre
Every figure on this site states where it came from, what period it covers and when it was last checked. That is not a flourish: it is the same standard the operator holds client reporting to, and the reason a person runs the system rather than a platform. If a number cannot name its source and its window, it does not go in front of a decision.
- Source dated roles
- Window 2007–2025
- checked 23 Sep 2026
- Source role record
- Window Jun 2020 – Apr 2024
- checked 23 Sep 2026
- Source LSA Watch
- Window 7 days to 23 Sep 2026
- checked 23 Sep 2026
- Source LSA Watch health check
- Window 16–23 Sep 2026
- 0 failed
Six things one operator runs.
All six are run by the person who set them up. There is no account layer, no handoff to a junior team and no licence to a system nobody opens — and each one exists to make a decision cheaper to take: fewer sources to reconcile, less time between a question and an answer, and a lighter audit trail at the end of it.
Four stages. One operator throughout.
Diagnostic
Week 1–2
We read what your marketing produces today and find the places where the numbers disagree.
- Funnel and tracking audit, read-only access only
- Measurement gap register: what is missing, what is duplicated, what is wrong
- Findings memo with a prioritised fix list and effort estimates
Build
Week 3–8
The measurement, automation and reporting agreed in the diagnostic, set up and put into production — by the same person who will run it.
- Tracking, attribution models and data-quality checks in place
- Flows, scoring, routing and reporting pipelines live
- Every published figure shows its source, window and freshness
Operate
Monthly
A named operator watches the systems and keeps the numbers honest after the novelty of launch wears off.
- Health checks, alerting and pipeline repair
- Budget allocation and platform hygiene where we run paid media
- A written brief on a fixed cadence, from the same data as the dashboard
Hand over
Whenever you want it
You should be able to run this without us, and we document it that way from day one.
- Runbooks, data dictionary and a written record of every assumption
- Access, credentials and infrastructure documented and transferred
- Working session with whoever inherits it
Nine feeds, four systems, one console — running for a 15-office law firm.
Collins OS · in productionCollins Family & Estate Law Group runs its marketing on one system, operated by one named person. It replaced a spread of vendor dashboards with a single place where each number states its source, its window and how fresh it is. The managing partner and marketing director set Local Services Ads budget by office from it; intake leadership uses its weekly report.
| System | What it does | Evidence | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| LSA Watch | Tracks the firm's Google Local Services ad position across 45 city and practice markets. | 1,395 scans in 7 days, 0 failed | running |
| Attribution engine | Links ad leads, calls, CRM matters and billed revenue to price every hire. | 7 data checks passing | running |
| AI Visibility | Asks six AI engines what a client would ask and records who they name. | 48,908 answers in 7 days | running |
| Ops agent | Drafts a weekly marketing brief from the same data; a person checks it before it goes out. | No brief since 5 Sep | being fixed |
- Source Collins OS health surface
- Window 16–23 Sep 2026
- Checked 23 Sep 2026
- one system reported as broken, because it is
A good fit, and a bad one.
Where this works
You spend real money on marketing and cannot fully explain what it produced. Multiple sources disagree, somebody rebuilds a spreadsheet every month, and the conversation about budget keeps returning to opinion.
You have at least one person who owns marketing and can act on a better system, and you want the measurement to survive staff changes. Above all you want a person accountable for the system, not another platform to log into. Multi-location and lead-generation businesses see the fastest return, because the same question gets asked per market.
Where it does not
We are not a creative agency. We do not shoot, write brand campaigns or run PR, and we will not take a media budget to manage without the measurement layer that makes it accountable — that order produces expensive guesswork.
If you need volume of content every week, or an agency to be the marketing department, this is the wrong practice. If you already trust every number you report on, you probably do not need us either.
Who actually does the work?
Mikee Shattuck, who is the practice, and who runs every system described on this site. There is no account layer and no handoff to a junior team, which is why the diagnostic is delivered by the person who would operate the system. Where a job needs a specialist — legal review, a design asset, a platform integration — that is named in the scope before it starts.
What access do you need, and what happens to our data?
The diagnostic needs read-only access to ad platforms, your CRM and analytics. Nothing is written, and nothing is exported beyond the figures that appear in the findings memo. For the build stage, access is scoped to the specific properties named in the scope, credentials are stored in a password manager rather than in documents, and access is revoked at handover.
We already have a dashboard. Why would this be different?
Usually the dashboard is not the problem; the joins underneath it are. A dashboard that adds together a platform's count of leads and a CRM's count of matters will disagree with both, and nobody can tell which one is right. We start by counting the records that fail to join and reporting that number, so the gaps are visible instead of averaged away.
How is pricing structured?
The diagnostic is a fixed fee for a fixed two weeks. Build work is quoted per scope, fixed where the scope is knowable and capped where it is not. Operating retainers are monthly and cancel with thirty days' notice. Nothing is billed as a percentage of media spend — that arrangement rewards spending more, and we are usually trying to find out whether you should spend less.
What tools do you build on?
Whatever you already run, where it can carry the load: your CRM, your automation platform, your analytics. Where something has to be set up, it is set up to be run by a person and maintained by anyone — on infrastructure you control, with the source handed to you, and with a named operator answerable for it. We do not sell a licence to software nobody opens, and we do not put a client's reporting inside a proprietary system that only we can open.
How fast does anything change?
The diagnostic produces a findings memo inside two weeks with the highest-leverage fixes marked. Most engagements make their first visible improvement in reporting coverage within thirty days, and the first budget decision informed by the new measurement in the following cycle. Anything claiming faster than that is guessing.
Start
Build the machine yourself, free.
The same build at small scale — a page, a form and a deploy. Seven minutes of film, then the written lessons and the Starter Kit, free and with nothing to install.