Marketing Audit: How to Run One (With a Checklist)

The short version

• A marketing audit answers three questions: what you’re spending, what it’s producing, and what to change first.
• Start with tracking, because every other finding depends on knowing where leads and revenue come from.
• Audit the full path from first click to closed sale, including how your team answers calls and forms.
• End with a short, ranked list of fixes that fits on one page, so your team actually acts on it.

A marketing audit is a structured look at everything your business does to get customers, with one goal: find where money is leaking and where the next dollar should go. Most small and mid-size businesses have never done one. They add channels over the years (an agency here, a lead vendor there, a social media freelancer) and nobody ever steps back to ask what’s working.

You can run a solid audit in two to four weeks with your own team, or bring in someone from outside. Here’s the process we use, plus a checklist at the end.

Step 1: Gather your numbers

Before you judge any channel, collect the last 12 months of data. You need:

• Total marketing spend by month and by channel (ads, agencies, software, staff, sponsorships)
• Leads by month and source
• Closed customers or jobs by source
• Revenue by source, if you can get it
• Average customer value and, if you have repeat business, lifetime value

Pull spend from your accounting software (QuickBooks, Xero) and your ad accounts. Pull leads and sales from your CRM or field software (HubSpot, Salesforce, ServiceTitan, Jobber). Put it all in one spreadsheet.

Expect gaps. Most businesses find they can’t tie a third or more of their revenue to a source. That gap is your first finding.

One more thing to gather: any reports your agencies or vendors send you. Don’t take them at face value. Line their lead counts up against your CRM for the same months. When the numbers don’t match (and they often don’t), trust the CRM and ask the vendor to explain the difference. Agencies grading their own work tend to count every form fill and phone call as a lead, including spam, job seekers, and existing customers calling about invoices.

Step 2: Audit tracking and attribution

This is where most audits find the biggest problems. If tracking is broken, every channel decision is a guess.

Check:

• GA4 is installed on every page and recording key events (form submits, calls, purchases, bookings).
• Google Ads and Meta conversion tracking fire correctly and aren’t double counting.
• Call tracking (CallRail, WhatConverts) uses separate numbers per channel and records calls.
• UTM parameters are on every email, social, and paid link.
• Your CRM captures lead source and keeps it through to the closed sale.
• Someone looks at a report every month. A dashboard in Looker Studio helps.

Our guide to building a marketing KPI dashboard shows what a clean monthly view looks like.

Step 3: Review the website and search visibility

Your website is where most paid and organic traffic lands. If it doesn’t convert, every channel costs more.

Website

• Load speed on a phone (use PageSpeed Insights)
• A clear headline that says what you do and where
• Phone number and main call to action visible without scrolling
• Forms that are short and actually send to someone who responds
• Service pages for each main offering
• Trust signals: reviews, certifications, real photos of your team

Then do the test most audits skip. Fill out your own form and call your own number at 4:45 on a Friday. See how long it takes to hear back. Lead handling problems often cost more than any ad problem.

Search visibility

Search is a primary source of leads for most local and service businesses. Look at both organic and local results.

• Search your top five services plus your city. Where do you show up in the map pack and the organic results?
• Review your Google Business Profile: categories, services, photos, posts, review count and rating.
• Run your site through Semrush or Ahrefs to see which keywords you rank for and where competitors beat you.
• Check Google Search Console for indexing problems and pages losing clicks.
• Look at whether you appear in AI answers (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews) for your main services.

Our local SEO checklist covers the local side item by item.

Step 4: Score each paid channel

For every paid channel, calculate cost per lead and cost per customer. Then compare it to what a customer is worth.

Example figures for illustration only.

Inside Google Ads, also review search terms (are you paying for irrelevant searches?), location settings, ad schedule, and whether conversion tracking matches what your CRM shows. Ad platforms often report more conversions than actually happened.

Watch out for vanity metrics here. Impressions, clicks, and followers don’t tell you if a channel pays.

Step 5: Look at reputation and retention

New customer acquisition gets most of the attention, but your existing customers are often the cheapest growth.

• Review count, rating, and how recent your reviews are, compared with your top three competitors
• Whether you ask every customer for a review (and whether a tool like NiceJob, Podium, or Birdeye automates it)
• Email or text campaigns to past customers
• Referral program, formal or informal
• Repeat purchase or renewal rate

Step 6: Rank the fixes

The output of a marketing audit should fit on one page. List every finding, then score each one on impact and effort. Fix high-impact, low-effort items first (broken tracking, missed calls, wasted ad spend). Plan the bigger projects (a new site, an SEO program) for the next quarter.

Also compare total spend to revenue. To see how your spend stacks up, our post on the average marketing budget for a small business gives typical ranges.

Marketing audit checklist

1. Pull 12 months of spend, leads, customers, and revenue by source.
2. Confirm GA4, ad conversions, and call tracking work and match your CRM.
3. Test your own forms and phone line during and after hours.
4. Check mobile speed, calls to action, and service pages on your site.
5. Review rankings, Google Business Profile, and Search Console.
6. Calculate cost per customer for each paid channel.
7. Compare reviews and ratings with competitors.
8. Review past customer marketing and referral activity.
9. Rank every finding by impact and effort.
10. Set a date to rerun the audit in 6 to 12 months.

FAQ

How often should a business do a marketing audit?

Once a year for a full audit, with a lighter monthly review of your key numbers. Run one sooner if leads drop suddenly or you change agencies.

How long does an audit take?

Two to four weeks for most small and mid-size businesses. The slowest part is usually gathering data from different systems.

Should I run the audit myself or hire someone?

You can do much of it yourself with this checklist. An outside reviewer helps when you’re too close to the work or when your agency is grading its own results.

If you’d like us to run the audit with you, our fractional CMO services often start with exactly this kind of review. Or get in touch and we’ll talk about what you’d want to learn.

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This is the Foxy account shared by our leadership team, Ethan, Jonathan and Helen. Our writing is inspired by situations we encounter (or would like to encounter) with our clients. We aim to post new articles about AI, SEO, PPC, marketing automation and all the other related topics that appear in our day-to-day marketing lives.