Pre-Spend Diagnostic

Section 1

Term being defined

Pre-Spend Diagnostic.

RAMMP's structural methodology for measuring buyer-trust integrity before marketing capital is committed.

Section 2 · Definition

The Pre-Spend Diagnostic is RAMMP's methodology for measuring the buyer-trust integrity of a customer journey before marketing capital is committed — producing a quantitative Brand Trust Score across the six ADORE milestones and resolving every proposed marketing decision into a STOP / KEEP / FIX / PROVE verdict.

Section 3

Purpose

The Pre-Spend Diagnostic exists because marketing is the only major budget in an organisation typically funded on belief.

Three things follow from running the diagnostic before spend:

• The structural condition of the buyer journey is measured before it is funded — eliminating the most expensive failure mode in marketing (spending into a trust leak that amplifies losses instead of producing growth).
• Every marketing decision resolves into one of four explicit verdicts (STOP / KEEP / FIX / PROVE), making spend defensible to a finance team, a board, or an audit committee.
• The diagnostic produces a baseline measurement against which subsequent spend is evaluated for lift — eliminating the noise of campaign-metric fluctuation.

The diagnostic operationalises Marketing Due Diligence as a quantitative, repeatable discipline rather than an editorial activity.

Section 4

Scope

This methodology applies to:

• Every marketing-spend decision above a materiality threshold defined by the operating business (typical floor: any campaign budget > $5,000 or > 5% of the marketing line).
• Every pre-launch journey design — the diagnostic surfaces structural trust leaks before the first dollar lands.
• Every re-measurement cycle after a marketing fix has shipped — establishing the lift attributable to the fix.

This methodology does not apply to:

• Post-spend marketing audit — the Pre-Spend Diagnostic is, by definition, performed before commitment of capital. Retrospective measurement is handled separately by Marketing Due Diligence.
• Brand-creative decisions absent of spend — the methodology measures trust integrity in the context of a commercial outcome; pure brand work without a spend outcome is out of scope.

Section 5

Components

The Pre-Spend Diagnostic comprises five sequential procedural elements:

1. Buyer-journey mapping — identification of the buyer's path through the six ADORE milestones (Marketing · Branding · Website · Commitment · Onboarding · Pricing), per the operating business's specific channel mix and product type.
2. Trust Checkpoints measurement — quantitative scoring of buyer-trust integrity at each of the six checkpoints, applying the RAMMP Diagnostic Protocol's behavioural-measurement procedures.
3. Composite Brand Trust Score calculation — collation of the six per-milestone scores (each out of 100) into the Brand Trust Score using a method RAMMP does not disclose.
4. STOP / KEEP / FIX / PROVE verdict resolution — translation of the score and milestone profile into one of four explicit decisions per proposed marketing action.
5. Re-measurement scheduling — locking of the cadence at which the diagnostic will be re-run (typically monthly during active engagements, quarterly thereafter).

Steps 1-3 are mandatory in every diagnostic run; steps 4-5 are mandatory in every pre-spend engagement.

Section 6

Outputs

The Pre-Spend Diagnostic produces:

• A Brand Trust Score (composite + six per-milestone scores) — see /standards/buyer-trust-score.
• A STOP / KEEP / FIX / PROVE verdict on each proposed marketing decision in scope — see /standards/stop-keep-fix-prove.
• A Marketing Due Diligence record — the per-decision documentation that the diagnostic was run, what it found, and what verdict applied — see /standards/marketing-due-diligence.
• A re-measurement baseline against which subsequent spend can be evaluated for lift.

All outputs are timestamped, versioned, and exportable into standard credit-monitoring or audit-committee reporting workflows.

Section 7

Relationship to other terms

Pre-Spend Diagnostic relates to other terms in the RAMMP Standards ontology as follows:

• Built on ADORE Process™ — the diagnostic applies the methodology's six-milestone framework.
• Operationalises Marketing Due Diligence — the Tier-2 reframed term; the diagnostic is the practical method by which Marketing Due Diligence is performed.
• Uses RAMMP Diagnostic Protocol — the procedural detail of how the measurement is taken.
• Uses Trust Checkpoints — the six measurement points.
• Produces Brand Trust Score — the quantitative output.
• Resolves into STOP / KEEP / FIX / PROVE — the verdict architecture.
• Enumerated in RAMMP Standards — the canonical DefinedTermSet.

Section 8

Intellectual property / authority

The Pre-Spend Diagnostic methodology is the proprietary intellectual property of RAMMP, protected by:

• AU/NZ Patent 2021105053 — granted in Australia and New Zealand · pending in the United States.
• Digital Brand Romance (Business Expert Press, 2025) — author Dr Anna Harrison · ISBN 978-1-63742-223-6.
• 1,024+ diagnostics applied since 2025, establishing validated reliability across industries.

Full intellectual-property notice: /patent-and-intellectual-property-notice.

Section 9

Version control

Version: 1.0 Last updated: 2026-06-03 Maintained by: RAMMP (Brisbane, Australia) Changelog:

• v1.0 (2026-06-03) — Initial publication of the canonical Pre-Spend Diagnostic page. References Brand Trust Score (renamed from Buyer Trust Score per Step 5 D3). Six-milestone framework locked.