Marketing Audit: A 15-Point Checklist You Can Run in an Afternoon

A marketing audit is a structured review of what you spend on marketing, what it brings back, and where leads and money are leaking in between. You do not need an agency to run a useful one. An owner with the right logins and three hours can complete the 15 checks below and know more about their marketing than most of their vendors do.

What you need before you start

• Twelve months of marketing spend, by vendor and channel.
• Lead or inquiry counts for the same period, however rough.
• New customer counts and revenue for the same period.
• Logins for your website analytics, ad accounts and CRM or inbox.

If you cannot gather these, write down which ones are missing. That list is your first finding.

Part 1: Money (checks 1 to 3)

1. Can you list every marketing dollar by vendor? Add it up for the last twelve months. Most owners find one line they forgot they were paying.
2. Do you know your cost per new customer? Total spend divided by new customers. One number, even a rough one.
3. Can you name the channel you would cut first? If you cannot rank channels from best to worst, nobody is measuring them.

Part 2: Leads (checks 4 to 6)

4. How fast does a new inquiry get a reply? Submit your own form and call your own number. Time it.
5. Is there one path from inquiry to sale? Write the steps down. Look for the step where someone has to remember to do something.
6. What share of inquiries become customers? If you do not know, count last month by hand.

Part 3: Website (checks 7 to 9)

7. Can a stranger tell what you do and who it is for in five seconds? Ask someone outside the business.
8. Is the next step obvious on every page? One clear action, not five.
9. Does it work on a phone? Complete your own form on mobile, start to finish.

Part 4: Channels (checks 10 to 12)

10. Search: search for what you sell plus your city. Are you on page one? Is your Google Business Profile accurate?
11. Paid ads: open the account and look at the search terms you actually paid for. Count the ones that have nothing to do with your business.
12. Existing customers: what share came back or referred someone last year? This is usually the cheapest growth available and the least measured.

Part 5: Ownership (checks 13 to 15)

13. Are the ad accounts, analytics and domain in your name? Not your agency's, not a former employee's.
14. Do you get one report that ties spend to customers? Separate reports from separate vendors do not count.
15. Is one person accountable for the whole? If the honest answer is you, in your spare time, write that down.

How to score it

Give each check a yes, a no, or a "don't know." Count them.

• 12 or more yes: your marketing is well run. Look for growth in new channels or more budget.
• 8 to 11 yes: typical. Fix the no answers in Parts 2 and 5 first. They cost the least and return the most.
• 7 or fewer, or many "don't know": the problem is not a channel. Nobody owns the whole picture.

Treat every "don't know" as a no. If you cannot see it, you cannot manage it.

What a real audit found

When we looked at a summer camp's marketing, enrollment had fallen four years in a row, from 618 campers to 473. In that situation the usual reflex is to buy more advertising.

The diagnosis pointed somewhere else. The losses were in checks 4 to 9: inquiries were handled inconsistently, there was no single path from interest to registration, and the website lost parents partway through. More ad spend would have sent more families into the same leaks.

So the leaks were fixed alongside the channels, not after them. Enrollment rose that season for the first time in four years, and new customers grew 3.4×. The case study has the numbers.

Most audits we see start with channels, because channels are what agencies sell. Start with money, leads and ownership.

What to do with the results

1. Fix lead handling this week. A faster reply and a written follow-up process cost nothing.
2. Move every account into your name. Do it before you change any vendor.
3. Cut the worst channel. Put that money into the best one for ninety days and measure.
4. Decide who owns marketing. You, a manager on staff, or outside leadership. See when to hire a fractional CMO for how to tell.

When to bring in someone else

Run this yourself if you have the logins and the afternoon. Bring in outside help when the answers are mostly "don't know," when vendors disagree about what is working, or when you have the findings and no time to act on them.

Pattern Growth is a fractional CMO for owner-operated businesses. Our engagements start with this kind of review, and then we do the fixing, inside a fixed scope you approve up front. If you would like us to run it, ask for a growth plan, or read how we work.