TL;DR: Answer 10 questions in about 2 minutes. The Growth Map self-assessment scores your business across the three domains that drive every growth outcome: Recruitment, Retention, and Revenue. The weakest score identifies your constraint. You get a concrete result archetype, a prioritized next step, and a short action plan built around your numbers.

Hero

Is your growth stuck? Find out in 2 minutes.

Most marketing advice gives you tactics. This gives you a diagnosis.

Every business that is not growing at the rate it wants is being held back by a constraint in one of three places: it is not bringing enough of the right customers in (Recruitment), it is not keeping them or growing them (Retention), or it is not converting what it has into enough revenue and profit (Revenue). The Growth Map self-assessment tells you which one is yours.

This is the same 3R framework used in the doctoral research that underpins how Hiilite works. It takes two minutes. The results are specific to your answers, not a generic report.

Why this matters

Eighty percent of marketers say they do not have a clear signal to understand what is working in their marketing. Forty-one percent report results without analyzing the “why.” The problem is not a lack of dashboards. It is a lack of a clear diagnosis.

A dashboard tells you what happened. A diagnosis tells you where to focus.

The Growth Map self-assessment is not a quiz. It is a structured diagnostic built on the 3R model from the Growth Mapping research. Each question is calibrated to surface where friction lives in your growth system, so the result points to the right lever, not the loudest one.

When you see your results, you will understand why certain tactics have not worked. They were probably correct in isolation. They were just aimed at the wrong constraint.

[BUILD NOTE — for frontend-eng / marcus]

Quiz specification

URL target: /tools/assessment

Schema: WebApplication with applicationCategory: "BusinessApplication", featureList: ["Marketing assessment", "Growth diagnosis", "3R scoring"], author pointing to the William Walczak Person entity.

Flow:

  1. Landing copy above (hero + why it matters).
  2. Optional: single pre-question field — “What is the primary goal you are working on right now?” (free text, stored on submission, used to personalize result copy). Not required to advance.
  3. 10 questions across 3 sections (3 Recruitment, 4 Retention, 3 Revenue — rationale: Retention has the most diagnostic nuance and the highest ROI-signal density for SMEs).
  4. Email gate after question 10, before results reveal. Capture: first name + email. Required to unlock full results.
  5. Results page: score summary (R/R/R bars), dominant archetype headline, tailored next steps, CTA to book a call or explore the platform.
  6. Confirmation email: triggered on gate submission. Enrolls contact in the 5-email nurture sequence (see: content/drafts/email-nurture-sequence.md).

Scoring model:

Each question uses a 4-point scale (1 = strongly disagree / never, 4 = strongly agree / always). No middle option. Forces a lean.

  • Sum each R domain separately (Recruitment: 3 questions = max 12; Retention: 4 questions = max 16; Revenue: 3 questions = max 12). Total max = 40.
  • Normalize each R to a 0-100 score: (raw / max) * 100.
  • The lowest normalized score = the primary constraint and determines the result archetype.
  • If two scores are within 5 points of each other, flag the secondary constraint in the result copy (“You have a close second constraint in [R]”).
  • Score bands per domain: 0-49 = Critical constraint. 50-69 = Active friction. 70-84 = Working but not compounding. 85-100 = A relative strength.

Email gate / CRM wiring:

  • On gate submission: create or update GHL contact with first name, email, tag assessment-completed, tag constraint-[recruitment|retention|revenue] (lowest R), custom field assessment_score_json (store all three normalized scores as JSON).
  • Enroll in GHL workflow: Growth Map Assessment Nurture (5-email sequence — see email-nurture-sequence draft for copy brief to Ricky).
  • Do NOT trigger the sequence if the contact already has tag assessment-completed (de-dupe guard).

The quiz questions

Each question is written in the voice of the business owner — the exact phrasing they would use to describe their own situation.

Section 1: Recruitment (R1)

These questions surface whether the business has a reliable, measurable way to bring in the right new customers.

Q1. “I have a clear and repeatable way to bring new customers in. I am not relying on referrals or luck.” (1 = This is not true at all / 4 = Fully true, it runs reliably)

Q2. “I know which marketing channel brings me the best customers — not just the most, but the most profitable ones.” (1 = I have no idea / 4 = I know exactly and I can prove it with numbers)

Q3. “I can predict, with reasonable confidence, how many new customers I will bring in next month.” (1 = Not at all — it is unpredictable / 4 = Yes, I have a solid forecast)

Section 2: Retention (R2)

These questions surface whether the business keeps customers, grows them, and earns repeat revenue.

Q4. “My customers come back. Repeat purchases or renewals are a meaningful part of my revenue.” (1 = Most customers are one-and-done / 4 = Strong repeat revenue, reliably)

Q5. “I know my average customer lifetime value — what a customer is actually worth to my business over time.” (1 = I have never calculated this / 4 = I know it and I use it to make decisions)

Q6. “I have a deliberate process for onboarding new customers that sets them up for a long relationship.” (1 = There is no real process — they figure it out / 4 = Clear onboarding, measurable outcomes)

Q7. “I know when a customer is about to leave before they actually go. I have a way to catch it.” (1 = I usually find out when they cancel / 4 = I have early signals and act on them)

Section 3: Revenue (R3)

These questions surface whether the business converts activity into profit, not just topline revenue.

Q8. “I know whether my marketing is actually profitable — not just whether it brings in revenue, but whether it covers its own cost.” (1 = I do not track this / 4 = Yes, I have the numbers and they are good)

Q9. “My pricing reflects the value I deliver. I am not competing on being the cheapest.” (1 = I am often competing on price / 4 = Pricing is strategic and defensible)

Q10. “I have at least one lever I can pull to increase average revenue per customer — upsell, cross-sell, or a higher-value package.” (1 = I do not have this / 4 = This is active and generating results)

Result archetypes

Each archetype is defined by the lowest-scoring R domain. The result page shows the archetype headline, a one-paragraph diagnosis, three prioritized next steps, and a CTA.

Archetype A: The Recruitment Gap

Trigger: Recruitment score is the lowest.

Headline: Your growth is stuck at the door.

Diagnosis copy:

You have a product or service that works. Customers who try it tend to stay. But not enough of the right ones are finding you — or the ones who do find you are not the ones who become your best long-term customers.

This is the Recruitment constraint. It shows up as revenue that feels unpredictable, dependence on referrals you cannot scale, and a nagging sense that you are working hard but not growing fast enough. The problem is not effort. It is the absence of a measurable, repeatable acquisition system.

The fix is not more marketing spend. It is knowing exactly which channel brings you the most profitable customers, building that channel deliberately, and tracking the cost of every new customer against their long-term value.

Three next steps:

  1. Calculate your customer acquisition cost (CAC) per channel. If you do not know it, that is your first number to find. The Hiilite platform ties GA4 and ad data to real revenue so this becomes visible.
  2. Identify your best existing customer. What brought them in? Build backward from that.
  3. Read the 3R framework to understand how Recruitment connects to Retention and Revenue — fixing one without the others caps your ceiling. [Link to /framework]

CTA: See how Hiilite diagnoses your recruitment gap → Book a call.

Archetype B: The Retention Gap

Trigger: Retention score is the lowest.

Headline: You are filling a leaky bucket.

Diagnosis copy:

You are bringing customers in. The problem is you are not keeping them — or you are keeping them but not growing what they are worth. Every new customer is replacing one who left, instead of adding to the base.

This is the Retention constraint. It is expensive. Acquiring a new customer costs five to seven times more than keeping an existing one, and a 5% increase in retention can improve profit by 25 to 95 percent (Harvard Business Review, Bain & Company). But the costs are invisible on most dashboards because they show topline revenue, not the churn happening underneath it.

The Retention constraint usually comes from one of two places: a weak onboarding experience that never fully converts a buyer into a committed customer, or a lack of early-warning signals that tell you when someone is drifting before they leave.

Three next steps:

  1. Calculate your churn rate. If you do not know the number, run the math: customers at start of month, minus customers at end, divided by start. That number, annualized, tells you how much of your growth you are giving back.
  2. Map your onboarding. What happens in the first 30 days after a customer buys? Where do people drop off or disengage? That is where retention is won or lost.
  3. Find your best long-term customers and find the pattern. What do they have in common in the first 90 days? That pattern is your onboarding target state.

CTA: See how Hiilite tracks retention and customer lifetime value → Book a call.

Archetype C: The Revenue Gap

Trigger: Revenue score is the lowest.

Headline: You have the customers. The economics are not working.

Diagnosis copy:

You are bringing customers in and keeping them. But the revenue those customers generate is not converting into the profit — or the predictable, scalable income — you need the business to produce.

This is the Revenue constraint. It is the most invisible of the three because the topline can look fine while the underlying economics do not. Common forms: you are competing on price because the differentiation is not landing, you have no systematic way to increase what existing customers spend, or your marketing spend is not tied to actual profitability so you cannot tell which effort is worth it and which is not.

Eighty percent of marketers say they lack a clear signal for what is actually working. This is why. Dashboards show activity. They do not show whether that activity is profitable — and in the absence of that signal, effort goes to the loudest metric, not the most valuable one.

Three next steps:

  1. Run the marketing profitability calculation: revenue attributable to each channel, minus the direct cost of that channel, minus the cost of serving those customers. That is your real number, and almost no one runs it.
  2. Identify your highest-margin product or service. Is it also the one you are leading with in your marketing? If not, you are optimizing for the wrong thing.
  3. Look at your current customers for an upsell or cross-sell moment. Growing revenue per customer has no acquisition cost.

CTA: See how Hiilite connects your marketing data to real profitability → Book a call.

Archetype D: Distributed friction

Trigger: Two or more R scores within 5 points of each other, all below 70.

Headline: You have friction across the board. Pick one and move.

Diagnosis copy:

Your scores are close across Recruitment, Retention, and Revenue. This is actually a useful signal — it means you do not have one broken system, you have a growth engine that has not fully been built yet.

The trap here is trying to fix everything at once. That spreads effort thin and produces movement on nothing. The right move is to pick the single R that, if improved, would have the fastest downstream impact on the other two — and put all focus there for 90 days.

For most businesses at this stage, that is Recruitment first: if you can bring in more of the right customers, you create the raw material to improve Retention and Revenue. But if your churn is catastrophic, Retention may be more urgent — there is no point in filling the top if the bottom falls out.

Three next steps:

  1. Go back to your three scores and find the one that is lowest or that feels most wrong when you read the diagnosis. Start there.
  2. Pick one metric to own in the next 30 days. One number that represents that R domain. Measure it weekly.
  3. Read the Growth Mapping framework to understand how the three Rs connect to each other — the order you fix them matters. [Link to /framework]

CTA: Talk through your results with our team → Book a call.

Archetype E: Growth that can compound

Trigger: All three R scores above 70, at least one above 85.

Headline: Your foundations are solid. Now you optimize.

Diagnosis copy:

Your scores suggest a business with real systems in place: you are bringing in the right customers, keeping them, and converting that activity into meaningful revenue. That is rarer than it sounds — most SMEs have at least one of the three significantly broken.

The work at this stage shifts from fixing constraints to compounding what works. That means identifying which of your current plays is producing the highest return and doubling down on it, systematically, rather than spreading effort across everything.

This is where data-driven prioritization pays off. Not more marketing. Smarter sequencing of the plays you already know work.

Three next steps:

  1. Identify your highest-ROI acquisition channel and set a deliberate growth target for it in the next quarter.
  2. Calculate customer lifetime value and use it to set your maximum viable acquisition cost. That number unlocks paid channels you may not have been able to justify before.
  3. Explore the Hiilite platform — the Diagnose and Advisor tools are built for exactly this stage: turning solid foundations into a compounding advantage.

CTA: See your full Growth Map on the platform → Explore metrics.hiilite.com.

How this connects to the framework and the platform

The 3R model — Recruitment, Retention, Revenue — is the operational spine of Growth Mapping, the research framework that underpins how Hiilite works. The three Rs are not arbitrary buckets. They are the three primary domains in which every growth decision a business makes can be categorized, measured, and improved.

The assessment you just took is a lightweight diagnostic version of the same Scorecard that runs inside the Hiilite platform. The platform does the same diagnosis continuously, against your live data from QuickBooks, Google Analytics, Search Console, and your CRM — and then recommends the specific plays to address what it finds.

Most dashboards tell you what happened. The platform tells you what to do next to hit your revenue, client, and profit goals.

If your assessment surfaced a clear constraint, the platform is where you close the loop.

FAQ

What is the Growth Map self-assessment?

It is a 10-question diagnostic built on the 3R model from the Growth Mapping research framework. It scores your business across Recruitment, Retention, and Revenue, identifies your primary constraint, and gives you a tailored result archetype with specific next steps.

Who is this for?

SME owners and leaders who want an honest, structured read on where their growth is stuck. It is most useful if you have been in business for at least a year and have some marketing activity already running — the questions are about what is working and what is not, not about building from zero.

Why do you ask for my email?

To send you your full results and the follow-on analysis. After the assessment, you will receive a short series of emails that go deeper on your specific constraint — the Growth Map framework, the research behind it, and how other businesses have addressed the same pattern. No spam. Unsubscribe any time.

How is this different from a generic marketing quiz?

Most marketing quizzes assess your knowledge. This one assesses your system. The questions are calibrated against the Growth Mapping framework — a doctoral research model grounded in Teece’s dynamic capabilities theory and the growth-hacking taxonomy from Bohnsack and Liesner (2019). The result tells you which constraint is limiting your growth, not which marketing channel to try next.

What happens after I see my results?

You will get the full archetype result — your diagnosis, three prioritized next steps, and context on how the 3R model connects to the Growth Mapping framework. You will also receive a short email sequence that goes deeper on your constraint. At any point you can book a call to talk through what you found and see what a full Growth Map looks like with your real numbers in it.

About the author

William Walczak, MBA is the CEO of Hiilite Creative Group and a PhD candidate in Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies at UBC-Okanagan, where his doctoral research — “Growth Mapping: A Mixed-Method Study of Growth Hacking” — produced the 3R model and the Growth Mapping framework that powers the Hiilite platform. He has been building and running marketing systems for businesses since 2014.

The Growth Map self-assessment is a public expression of that research — a tool that gives SME owners access to the same diagnostic logic that underpins how Hiilite works with its clients.

CTA block

See where your growth is stuck.

Take the 2-minute assessment. Get your result archetype and a specific plan for your primary constraint.

Get your Growth Map results

Or, if you want to skip straight to the full picture: Book a discovery call and we will walk through your actual numbers together.

Outbound references

The following outbound links are load-bearing for E-E-A-T and AI-citation. Include at least two in the rendered page, verified before publish.

Nurture handoff note for Ricky

The email gate on this tool triggers the 5-email Growth Map nurture sequence. The sequence structure (triggers, send timing, subject-line brief, CTA per email) is specified in content/drafts/email-nurture-sequence.md. That file does not yet exist — it is the next content asset to produce after this spec is approved.

The sequence arc the copy should follow:

  • Email 1 (immediate): Deliver the result. Confirm the archetype. Short and specific.
  • Email 2 (Day 2): Go deeper on the constraint. Show the research behind why it matters. Cite the Bohnsack/Teece foundation without being academic.
  • Email 3 (Day 5): The framework. Explain Growth Mapping, the 3R/3P model, and how the three Rs connect.
  • Email 4 (Day 9): Social proof or case example. A specific before/after on the constraint they have (one archetype per email, personalized by tag).
  • Email 5 (Day 14): The platform demo. Show what the full Growth Map looks like with real data. CTA: book a call.

Each email references the author (William Walczak) and links back to /framework or the appropriate guide hub.

Rollback / CRM undo

If the GHL workflow fires incorrectly on test contacts: disable the workflow trigger in GHL, remove the assessment-completed tag in bulk from affected test contacts (under 10 contacts — within Marcus scope), and re-run the test with a clean contact before re-enabling.