Your first marketing audit: what it covers and what you get

A marketing audit is a structured check of where your marketing stands today: the brand, the website, search, social channels, advertising, and whatever measures all of it. The result of a first marketing audit should not be a score or a forty-page report, but a short list: what works, where money and attention leak, and what to fix first.

Below: what a good audit checks, what it needs from you, what you should get at the end, and how to run a short version yourself in an hour.

Measurement: the foundation

An audit starts with measurement, because every other conclusion depends on it. Three questions:

• Does analytics count the result? In Google Analytics 4, events that measure actions important to the business are now called key events, a change Google announced in March 2024 (they used to be called conversions). Check whether a form sent, a call button tapped or a purchase is marked as one.
• Does the ad platform get the right signal? Meta's Conversions API connects marketing data from your server, website platform, app or CRM directly to Meta, and Meta says that using it alongside the pixel creates a more reliable connection.
• How does consent work? Google's consent mode passes a visitor's consent status to Google, and the tags adjust their behavior to respect that choice. Check that the cookie banner and the tags are actually connected.

Search

The first check is the simplest. Google's SEO Starter Guide suggests searching for your site with the site: operator; if you see results pointing to your site, you are in the index. Then Search Console. The Page indexing report shows which pages Google can find and index and why others were not indexed, and the Performance report shows which queries bring people in, with clicks, impressions, CTR and average position. This is where the first surprise may be waiting: the page you thought mattered most may not appear in search at all.

The website

Three things. Speed on a phone, against Google's Core Web Vitals thresholds: LCP within 2.5 seconds, INP at 200 milliseconds or less, CLS at 0.1 or less. A form that really sends and reaches the right person. And contact details visible on the first screen or one tap away. The last two need a practical check as well as a technical one: send a test inquiry and confirm it reaches the right person.

Content and social channels

Here the count of posts matters less than three things: whether each channel has a clear purpose, whether the last ten posts look like one brand, and what happens in the comments and messages, meaning how quickly people get an answer and whether they get one at all. More on this in What is SMM, and what a business should expect from it.

Advertising

An audit checks what the campaigns are optimized for and whether that matches the business goal, how many pieces the budget is split into, and how many ad sets stay stuck in learning. Meta says an ad set usually exits the learning phase after about 50 results in the week after its last significant edit, and splitting a small budget into many pieces makes that harder. And one question that is not technical: who owns the ad accounts. More in Meta ads vs Google ads: which to choose on a small budget.

The brand

Consistency across every touchpoint: the site, social channels, ads, packaging, the email signature. Does it look like one brand, or like four different companies? If it is four, the problem is the system, not the logo: see Logo vs brand system: what you actually need.

What a marketing audit needs from you

For the first stage, only public information: the website and the channels. That already shows a lot: speed, indexing, content, how consistent the brand is, and the advertising that is visible. A deeper audit needs read access to Analytics, Search Console and the ad accounts. Give that access through a role, never a password, and remove it when the audit is over.

What you should get at the end

The result of a good audit is short. Three parts: what works and should be left alone; where money or attention leaks; and the one step to take first. Every point should say why, what fixing it takes, and how you will know it is fixed. If the report is too long to read to the end, it was written for a presentation, not for you.

Who should run it

Your own team knows the context and the history, and that is exactly what makes some problems invisible to it: a form that has always sent to an old address, an account that "someone" set up years ago. An outside reviewer may spot those issues, but needs the team's context to understand their causes. The best first audit uses both: an outside look at what is visible, then a conversation with the people who know why things are the way they are.

After the audit

Take the first step within a month, and write down beforehand what should change if it works: more inquiries from the form, a page appearing in search, fewer unanswered messages. Then look again. An audit that is not followed by a second look is a report, not a process. The second audit is shorter than the first, because the questions are already known.

Three traps

• The audit as a sales pitch. If every finding ends with the same service, it was not an audit.
• The automatic score. A tool's "62/100" says nothing until someone explains which items are worth fixing and which are not.
• Everything at once. A long list of recommendations is hard to act on. Order the work by importance and the resources it needs.

A mini audit in one hour

1. Search site:yourdomain and see whether your key pages come up.
2. Open the Performance report in Search Console and see which queries bring people in.
3. In GA4, check whether the main actions are marked as key events.
4. Fill in your own site's form and see where it arrives.
5. Run the home page through PageSpeed Insights, on mobile.
6. Check whose name the domain and the ad accounts are registered in.
7. Read the last ten comments and messages and see when and how they were answered.

How the MRKFLOW free audit works

Our free audit covers this first stage: public information only, with no account access, and no meeting unless you want one after the report. We review your brand, content, media footprint and digital presence against our checklist and send you a short written report: what works, where it leaks, and the one step we would take first. The report is yours either way. If you need measurement set up properly, that is on the analytics and reporting page.