Marketing audit · Written diagnosis · Ranked priorities

Marketing audit for businesses that know performance is off and not where

A structured review of every channel, the tracking underneath them, the funnel they feed and the reporting they produce — measured against what the business is actually trying to achieve.

It ends in a written diagnosis and a prioritised list. It stands alone: plenty of engagements stop here and the client’s own team executes.

Experience includes

When an audit is the right first step

Most requests I get open with a proposed solution rather than a problem. The audit exists to establish which problem you actually have before anyone spends money on the wrong one.

What the audit covers

Channel review

Every active channel: spend, structure, targeting, creative and the role it is supposed to play. Includes channels running on habit that nobody has questioned in a year.

Why it matters: budget is usually inherited rather than allocated.

Tracking verification

Conversion actions, event definitions, duplicate firing, value assignment, and reconciliation between the ad platforms, GA4 and the CRM.

Why it matters: this is where the majority of findings come from, and it invalidates everything above it when wrong.

Funnel and conversion review

Where visitors and leads are lost between first contact and revenue, and which losses are worth attacking first.

Reporting review

What the current reports measure, who reads them, and which decisions they have actually informed.

Why it matters: a report nobody acts on is a cost, not an asset.

Competitive position

Who is bidding against you, what they claim, and where your offer is weaker or stronger in the places buyers compare.

Written findings, ranked

Each finding with its evidence, its likely impact and its dependency — so the order is defensible, not just the list.

What you get out of it

A document you own, in plain language, that a non-marketer on your board can read.

A ranked list where the ranking is explained. Some items are cheap and urgent; some are expensive and can wait; some cannot be started until something else is fixed.

A clear answer on whether you need ongoing help, and if so for what. Sometimes the answer is that your team can execute the whole list, and I will say so.

What you do not get is a proposal disguised as an audit. The findings are the deliverable.

How the audit runs

01

Access and context

Input: read access to ad accounts, analytics, Search Console and CRM, plus a conversation about the business model and margins.
Output: a scope confirmed in writing before work starts.

02

Data verification

Action: check what the numbers actually measure before analysing them.
Output: a list of what can and cannot be trusted, which frames everything after it.

03

Analysis

Action: channel by channel, then across channels, then against the business objective.
Output: findings with evidence attached.

04

Prioritisation

Action: rank by impact and dependency, against your real team capacity.
Output: a sequenced list, not a wish list.

05

Walkthrough

Action: a working session on the findings, with the disagreements aired.
Output: a plan the team believes in rather than one delivered at them.

Measurement before conclusions

The order matters more than the coverage. I check what the data means before I interpret it, because an audit built on unverified tracking produces confident conclusions that are wrong — and confident wrong conclusions are worse than no audit.

It also means the findings sometimes point away from marketing. Pricing, product-market fit and sales capacity all present as marketing underperformance. If that is what I find, that is what the document says.

Who this fits

Best suited for

Probably not the right fit if

Questions this usually raises

A written document with findings, evidence and a ranked action list, plus a working session to go through it. No slide theatre.

No. The audit is scoped and priced as a standalone piece of work, and the findings are yours regardless of what happens next.

Read access to the ad accounts, analytics, Search Console and ideally the CRM. Read-only is enough for the audit itself.

Then it says so. That happens, and it is more useful than a marketing plan that cannot fix the actual constraint.

Yes, and it is common. A good agency benefits from an independent measurement framework it is judged against fairly.

Start with an honest baseline

If the current explanation for your performance is a theory rather than evidence, the audit is the shortest route to a real answer.