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CREF©

The system that connects your marketing to the income statement

CREF© (Consultoría de Crecimiento Elevam Framework) is Elevam's proprietary system to design, govern and measure marketing from the P&L. It structures every project across four dimensions — Growth, Profitability, Strategy and Framework — so every marketing decision goes through the income statement.

I designed CREF because I was tired of seeing companies billing millions take marketing decisions without knowing how much it costs to acquire a customer. That's over.

Asier LópezCEO of Elevam
The pattern

The pattern we see in almost every company that comes to Elevam

Companies that don't do marketing don't come to us. Companies that have been doing it for years do.

They have active channels, allocated budget, team or providers. But when you ask how much business each invested euro generates, no one has the answer. When you ask the real cost of acquiring a customer per channel, silence. When you ask whether the marketing team knows the business margins, almost never.

It's not an incompetence problem. It's a system problem. There are pieces, but they're not connected to each other or to the income statement.

CREF exists to close that gap.

The four dimensions

The four dimensions of CREF©

Crecimiento (Growth)

The Growth dimension analyzes where your customers come from today, how much it costs to acquire each one and which levers have the most runway to scale revenue.

We map your current acquisition model channel by channel. Not only digital — also referrals, sales network, trade shows, alliances. For each channel we measure real cost of acquisition, volume, lead quality and trend.

With that map we decide where there's runway and where there isn't. Sometimes the most powerful lever isn't a new channel — it's optimizing one that already works. Other times the answer is cutting a channel that looks profitable but, once you add the real cost (team, time, opportunity), is burning margin.

The output of this dimension is a levers map with 6- and 12-month prioritization. Not a list of ideas. A plan with numbers.

Rentabilidad (Profitability)

The Profitability dimension opens the P&L before touching any channel. If margins don't sustain growth, no campaign will fix it.

We analyze margins by service or product, average ticket, recurrence, LTV and customer concentration. We cross that with cost of acquisition per channel to know which product-channel combinations are profitable and which aren't.

This changes conversations. Some companies discover that their flagship service has a 12% margin and their «secondary» service has a 45% margin. They come asking for more customers and leave knowing they need more customers of the right service. You don't see that difference if you start from the channel.

The output is an economic X-ray of the business that connects directly to marketing decisions. What to sell more, to whom, through which channel and at what cost it makes sense.

Estrategia (Strategy)

The Strategy dimension decides what to do, what not to do and in what order. Every action has a hypothesis, a control metric and a stop criterion.

With Growth and Profitability data on the table, we define the plan. Not 50 recommendations. Three to five priorities with budget, owner, deadline and expected result.

Strategy is built with direction, not in parallel to direction. The CEO or committee participates in prioritization. Because when marketing impacts P&L, decisions can't be made by the marketing team alone.

Every action in the plan carries a hypothesis behind it. «If we do X, we expect Y in Z months.» If it doesn't happen within the deadline, we have a clear criterion to decide whether to adjust, scale or stop. Without hypothesis there's no learning. Without stop criterion there's no governance.

Framework

The Framework dimension builds the governance structure: dashboard, review rhythms and decision rules so the system works without depending on ad hoc meetings or intuitions.

We design the dashboard with the 4-5 indicators that matter to direction. Cost of acquisition, pipeline, margin per channel, conversion, recurrence. Not a dashboard with 40 charts. The numbers you need to make decisions every quarter.

We define the rhythms: quarterly review with direction, monthly operational follow-up, alerts if something deviates. And we establish decision rules: if the CAC of a channel goes above X, it's reviewed. If an action doesn't generate results in Y months, it stops.

Marketing stops being an area that «does things» and becomes a system with governance. That's what differentiates a company that invests in marketing from a company that grows with marketing.

How it works in practice

How does CREF© work in practice?

CREF is not a document that gets delivered. It's a system that gets installed in the company and reviewed every quarter. The process has three phases.

  1. 01

    Weeks 1 to 6 · Diagnosis and plan

    P&L audit, acquisition analysis per channel, margins and operational capacity X-ray. Result: prioritized levers map and plan with 3-5 specific actions. This is what we present to direction before moving a piece.

  2. 02

    Months 2 to 6 · Activation and first results

    The prioritized levers are activated. If the plan requires SEO/GEO, Paid Media or Web+CRO, Elevam's specialized teams come into play. Every action is measured against the stated hypothesis. Monthly operational review. First impact data on acquisition metrics.

  3. 03

    Quarterly, continuously · Governance and adjustment

    Review with direction. Results vs objectives. What worked, what didn't, what changes. Adjustment of priorities, budget and channels. The system is fine-tuned every quarter. It's not installed and abandoned.

What CREF© is not

What CREF© is not

It's not an audit delivered in PDF and forgotten in a drawer.

It's not an 80-slide deck with generic recommendations.

It's not generalist business consulting. CREF connects marketing with P&L. It doesn't reorganize your HR department or redesign your supply chain.

It's not a fancy name to sell the same thing everyone does. It's a documented system with steps, metrics and decision rules. What we recommend to clients we have tested first with our own business from Elevam Labs.

Operating system + levers

CREF© is the operating system. Services are the levers.

CREF defines priorities. Elevam's specialized teams execute the channels. Everything connected in a single system, with a single dashboard.

Growth Consulting

Where CREF is directly applied. Audit, strategy, plan and quarterly accompaniment with direction.

Growth Consulting

SEO, AEO and GEO

Organic positioning in search engines and generative AI engines. When CREF identifies that organic is a priority lever.

SEO, AEO and GEO

Paid Advertising

Google and Meta campaigns managed from the CRM and connected to the CREF dashboard.

Paid Advertising

Web + CRO

Conversion-oriented web architecture. Every change is measured against framework metrics.

Web + CRO

One system. One dashboard. One conversation with direction.

Track record

Track record of companies working with CREF©

90%

of clients renew the second year of work with Elevam.

+200

projects structured with CREF since 2012.

Forbes

Recognized by Forbes as one of the best marketing consultancies in Spain.

Asier López
Who designed CREF

Who designed CREF© and why

I'm Asier López, CEO of Elevam. I have been working for 13 years with mid-sized companies that invest in marketing without a system that connects that investment to their business numbers.

CREF was born from a specific frustration: companies billing millions, with competent teams and budget, but without a framework to decide where to put each euro and how to know if it's working. There was no system designed for the CEO of a 1-to-20-million-euro company that needs marketing to be accountable to P&L. So we built it.

Today CREF is the operating system of everything Elevam does. Every project, every service, every decision goes through these four dimensions.

See Asier's full profile

If you want to know how CREF© would apply to your company, let's talk

30 minutes. We analyze your situation, your model and your growth challenges. We honestly tell you if CREF fits and if it makes sense to work together.

Press contact
Adriana Juaninfo@elevam.es