Nick Irmo
Nick Irmo
Services
Marketing consultingAI marketing consultingWorkshops and speakingThe IRMO Playbook
Work
Mortgage and lendingLegal and professional servicesHR, PEO and B2B SaaSFranchise and multi-locationSenior care and healthcareE-commerce and retailCreative and videoAlpha Mortgage CorporationGuaranteed RateAmplify HR ManagementGordon Law Group & Gordon TaxUnilever · Dove
Insights
Zero-click marketingAI search and AEOMarketing leadershipAI tools and stacksBrand love is not a KPIWhat a fractional CMO costs in 2026, with my actual ratesClaude chat, Claude for work, and Claude CodeFractional CMO or marketing consultant? What the titles mean, and why I use one of them
Resources
Guides and templatesTalk decksZero-click mini-courseBooks on AmazonThe 2026 AI Marketing Toolkit100 AI Prompts for ChatGPT and ClaudeWhat the F*ck Is a Fractional CMO?When You Should Vendor Out Your MarketingHow to Sell Your Story
About
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Contact
The method

The IRMO Playbook: Four moves, in order, every time.

Every engagement runs the same four moves, whether it is a 30-day assessment or a two-year rebuild. The letters are a coincidence I decided to keep.

What it costs
I

Identify

Days 1 – 30

Find out what is true before deciding what to do. Audit the brand, funnel, data, stack and team. Interview sales. Baseline where you show up in Google and in AI answers.

  • Marketing audit and scorecard
  • ICP and positioning read
  • Prioritized 90-day plan with a number attached
R

Roadmap

Days 30 – 45

Turn the findings into a sequence: what to fix first, what to stop, what to build, who does it, what it costs. Agreed with the CEO or partners before anything is bought.

  • Quarter-by-quarter roadmap
  • Budget and vendor plan
  • Reporting cadence and KPIs
M

Market

Days 45 – 180

Build and launch. Website, CRM and tracking first so nothing leaks, then the few programs most likely to move pipeline: content, search, paid, partners, sales enablement.

  • Foundation rebuilt and instrumented
  • First programs live
  • Weekly pipeline report
O

Optimize

Ongoing

Read the numbers, cut what is not working, double down on what is. Train the team or hire the person who will run it, document everything, and hand off clean when the time comes.

  • Monthly optimization review
  • Playbooks and SOPs
  • Hire-and-train or hand-off plan
Why the order matters

Most marketing fails in the sequence, not the tactics.

Campaigns before measurement

Money goes out before anyone agrees what a lead is. Three months later the argument is about attribution instead of results. Identify exists to stop this.

Building before deciding

The site, the CRM and the agency get bought in parallel by different people. Roadmap puts the decisions in one document the CEO has signed before anything is purchased.

Activity without a hand-off

Programs run until the consultant leaves, then stop. Optimize ends in documentation, training and a hire-or-hand-off plan, so the function keeps running.

In practice

The same four moves, six industries.

Mortgage and lendingLegal and professional servicesHR, PEO and B2B SaaSFranchise and multi-locationSenior care and healthcareE-commerce and retail
EmployerMortgage lending2019 – 2020, 2022 – 2023

Alpha Mortgage Corporation

Rebuilt the digital foundation and lead engine for a lender with 50+ loan officers, producing $40M in qualified opportunities in 30 days.

$40Mqualified opportunities in 30 days
730%more internet leads in 90 days
EmployerMortgage lending2020 – 2021

Guaranteed Rate

Led marketing for Agent Advantage (agents.rate.com), the platform serving 110,000+ registered real estate agents whose referrals fed loan production company-wide.

110K+registered agent partners
2,000+community members in six months
EmployerHR outsourcing (PEO)2024 – 2026

Amplify HR Management

Built a complete marketing function as the first marketing hire: rebrand, a 700+ page Next.js website, attribution, reporting and a review engine.

98/100PageSpeed score, up from 34
700+page website rebuild
Questions

The playbook, answered.

What is the IRMO Playbook?
A four-move method for running marketing in a growth-stage company: Identify what is true, Roadmap the sequence, Market by building the foundation and the programs, Optimize against the numbers. Nick Irmo uses it on every engagement, from a 30-day assessment to a multi-year rebuild.
How long does each move take?
Identify is the first 30 days. Roadmap is days 30 to 45. Market runs from day 45 to roughly day 180 for a full build. Optimize is ongoing, usually reviewed monthly, with a hand-off plan when the company hires its own leader.
Is the playbook a product or a process?
A process. The only priced step is Identify, the 30-Day Marketing Assessment at $4,500, which is credited toward a retainer. Everything after it is scoped from what the assessment finds.
Does it work for a company that already has a marketing team?
Yes. With a team in place, Identify audits the team and the stack as well as the funnel, Roadmap reallocates rather than builds from zero, and Optimize becomes coaching and reporting rather than hands-on execution.
What is different from a typical agency process?
An agency sells the Market step and skips the first two. The playbook will not let anything be bought before the Roadmap is agreed with the CEO, and it ends with documentation and a hand-off rather than a renewal.
Next step

Ready for the first move?

Send a note No pitch deck. A reply within one business day.