marketing audit assignment pdf

How To Do a Marketing Audit

Digital Marketing

What is a Marketing Audit?

A marketing audit is a systematic examination of the way a business is being marketed. Marketing audits will show business owners and marketing staff where marketing efforts are successful; a marketing audit may also show the failures so the necessary changes can be made for your business to thrive.

Businesses are like living, breathing entities; their marketing is the air they breathe. In order to keep your marketing in tip-top shape, there is a high volume of preparation and planning involved called a marketing plan . Before writing a marketing plan, one must address the business’s strengths and weaknesses. And in order to determine your current marketing state, one must complete a marketing audit. 

Though it may sound intimidating, marketing audits are good for your business. In this post, we will break down exactly what a marketing audit is, why marketing audits are important, and how your audit can be carried out. 

A marketing audit is a review of a business’s marketing environment, typically conducted by a third party, such as a marketing agency. The marketing audit will systematically analyze, evaluate, and interpret the internal and external marketing environment, its goals, and the means by which the business will reach these goals. 

A marketing audit will determine what your business wants out of its marketing strategy and how best to get there. An audit is typically a prerequisite to a marketing strategy, or when a problem arises that makes a change to the marketing plan necessary.

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Guidelines for a Marketing Audit

• A marketing audit is comprehensive . The audit should cover all the areas of marketing.
• The audit should be systematic . It should be organized and encompass all strategies and operations that influence marketing performance.
• The audit should be independent . Though there are multiple types of audits, the best type of audit is the outsider audit. In this case, a third party would perform the marketing audit.
• The audit should be periodical . Don’t wait until a problem arises to complete a marketing audit. Most problems can be avoided with regular marketing audits. 

Does My Business Need a Marketing Audit?

Even if you already have a marketing strategy in place, marketing audits are still extremely useful. They can benefit the business in multiple ways, including but not limited to:

• Providing management with an in-depth look at the business’s marketing strategy and performance, with a particular focus on how to plan, implement and manage marketing activities.
• Pinpointing marketing efforts and practices that are thriving and successful, as well as those that are less so. Think of your business as a rose garden: it needs occasional pruning to stay healthy. With a marketing audit, you can determine which parts of your marketing strategy are yielding fruit and which are not.
• Don’t know where to start with a marketing plan? That’s easy. Trust your audit. Its systematic and structured approach will never let you down when it comes to your marketing plan. 
• If you perform regular audits, you can catch mistakes and errors before they cause any irrevocable damage to your company’s reputation or to your bottom line. 

Ultimately, a marketing audit can help inform the most crucial decisions about marketing the upper management of your business will ever make.

Types of Marketing Audits

When we say marketing audit, that’s something of an umbrella term. Businesses typically examine three major components during a marketing audit: the external environment, the internal environment, and the current marketing strategy. Within these three categories, seven identified types of marketing audits exist.

External Environment

Macro-environment audit.

This type of audit examines the external factors that might affect the marketing performance of the company, such as demographic factors, economic factors, cultural factors, environmental factors, and political factors. For the most part, these are factors that influence the consumer market: their beliefs, hobbies, or any social trends that could affect the company’s marketing performance. 

Task environment audit

This type of audit also focuses on factors outside of the company, but still closely associated with marketing activities and operations. While it does take some factors of the consumer market into account, it is slightly different than a macro-environment audit. A task environment audit will assess the size of the industry the company belongs to, identify competitors, and examine the company’s relationship with distributors and retailers. 

Internal Environment 

Marketing organization audit.

This audit is performed by evaluating the staff or the labor force of the company at their various levels of hierarchy. 

Marketing function audit

This type of audit will evaluate the core competencies of the company. It will examine the company’s product, pricing, distribution, marketing communication, and the sales force. It will also compare price points for the company’s product with those of the competition.

Marketing systems audit.

This type of audit will look at the marketing systems currently in use, such as the marketing information system, marketing control system, and even a new product development system. 

Marketing Strategy

Marketing strategy audit.

This type of audit will revisit the company’s mission and vision, as its goals and objectives. It will determine if the current marketing strategies being adopted are proper and appropriate with respect to the resources of the company. 

Marketing productivity audit

This is where the auditors will look at the effectiveness of the marketing strategies currently in use. The most common things they will look at are cost-effectiveness and profitability. 

How Do I Perform a Marketing Audit?

Each audit will be unique to the company it is performed on. After all, companies have different goals, products, and industries that will affect their reasons for conducting a marketing audit in the first place. 

However, the performance of each marketing audit can be broken down into three phases or stages. 

Stage 1: Pre-Audit

In this phase, the company will first determine who will perform the audit . Companies here have two options: self-audit, and outside audit. 

In a self-audit, the audit is performed by employees of the company chosen by management. The marketing team can perform the marketing audit, unless management believes this will create issues with objectivity. In this case, an outside department may complete the audit. 

A self-audit can also be performed by high-level executives or management, or, in the case of much larger companies, an organization may have a dedicated audit department.  

Outside Audit

With an outside audit, the company will hire the services of an outside auditor. This is obviously a more reliable means of running an audit, as the outside auditor is guaranteed to be objective. The auditor could be an independent practitioner or a company that specializes in marketing audits. 

The second part of Phase 1 is the timing of the marketing audit . Essentially, when will the audit start, and how often will it be performed? 

For your business to reap the benefits of an audit, it must be performed regularly or periodically. Markets change frequently, which necessitates that marketing strategies change just as frequently. In order to make effective changes rather than blind ones, audits must be performed regularly. 

The third objective of Phase 1 is to establish the scope and objectives of the marketing audit . This is essential to properly guide and direct the audit team. Ensuring that everyone involved understands the objective of the audit will ensure that every member of the team is on the same page. 

It is also important to identify every stakeholder in the audit, whether direct or indirect. 

The final part of Phase 1 is to determine the methodology of the audit . This is where the exact method by which the auditing team will proceed is decided.

Stage 2: Audit Proper

This is the phase where the magic happens, so to speak. This phrase looks vastly different, depending on the type of audit, methodology and goals of the company. However, we can break audit proper down into three basic steps. 

Audit Proper: Step 1

The first step is data gathering and collection. This will be the most tedious and time-consuming part of the audit. 

The watchword of data gathering is research, research, research. Research sources include any established source of marketing data, such as industry publications.

During this phase, the auditors will also look at the historical internal records of the company. The auditors may give surveys or questionnaires to chosen respondents, may conduct interviews of marketing team, and may also require walk-throughs of the marketing process. 

This data collected will pertain to the three environments: the external environment, the internal environment, and the existing or current marketing strategy. In this stage of the marketing audit, no conclusions will be drawn from the data; this is all about the collection of raw information, and organizing it for analysis. 

Audit Proper: Step 2

The second step, obviously, is the analysis of the data . The data collected in the last stage will allow the auditing team to build a complete picture of the marketing program. There are many tools the auditing team can use to evaluate and analyze the data, such as:

• SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis 
• PEST (political, environmental, socio-cultural, and technological) analysis  
• Five forces analysis, which will examine competitors, threat of new players in the game, customer power, supplier power, and the threat of substitute products.

Audit Proper: Step 3

The third step to the audit is the preparation of recommendations . The audit team prepares a marketing audit report. Based on the results of the analysis of the data, the marketing team will make recommendations as to any changes that need to be made. The auditor usually places the recommendations in a prioritized list for easier comprehension.

Stage 3: Post-Audit

 The auditor submits the marketing audit report to management. Then management will more than likely disseminates to other departments in the company. 

Sometimes, recommendations in the audit report will not be accepted blindly or easily by management, especially if the audit was performed by an outside auditor. The audit report and the recommendations therein will likely undergo lengthy discussion until all parties are comfortable making marketing decisions. 

Marketing Audits for Success

Businesses aren’t like windup toys : you can’t just set them up and let the chips fall where they may. Not if you want to be successful, anyway. Businesses require huge amounts of care and attention to prosper, and regular marketing audits are a great way to keep the blood flowing. 

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The Comprehensive Marketing Audit: 21 Questions to Guide Strategic Planning

But sadly, failed marketing attempts happen every day and everywhere.  Harvard Business Review says that strategic plans fail for many reasons, including poor execution and lack of understanding of the problem.

So, how can teams pinpoint what went wrong and redirect marketing energy?

As Paul Roetzer ( @paulroetzer ) states in Chapter 8 of  The Marketing Performance Blueprint :

“Every marketing plan should start with an honest internal marketing assessment. The assessment should consider perspectives from multiple stakeholders, including marketing and sales leaders, as well as key executives. The more involved the partiers are in the entire strategy process, the easier it is to align needs, goals, expectations and priorities.”

The time is now to transform your marketing program.

At Ready North, we utilize a comprehensive marketing audit of 40+ questions that zero in on talent, tech, strategy, and performance. As you’ll see below, we’ve broken down audit questions by each of these categories. This audit is a key piece of the puzzle when we start working with new partners to build long-term, custom marketing plans that win executive buy-in and align with stakeholder goals.

Continue reading below for 21 questions to ask your team and guide more strategic planning. For the full 40+ questions, download our Comprehensive Marketing Audit Template .

1. What are the roles and responsibilities of the existing marketing team?

Modern marketing is constantly shifting, and the folks that are part of your marketing team need to be masters in all things technology, best practices, and trends. Consider gaps in your current team structure; remember that both traditional and digital skills are more important than ever to become a hybrid professional .

Some roles to consider on your  marketing dream team :

• Content writer
• Data analyst
• Email specialist
• Graphic designer / visual storyteller

2. Do team members understand the metrics used to evaluate their performance and development?

Studies show that only 23 percent of employees feel they receive the right amount of recognition for their work, while only 19 percent of managers say recognition is a priority at their workplace. So, where’s the disconnect, and is it impacting your organization?

It’s imperative to meet on a regular basis to discuss performance, professional goals and areas to improve. Whether you’re evaluating the team on a quarterly or annual basis (or anything in between), clearly convey what metrics are used to evaluate individual performance. These metrics may be both internally facing (like efficiency) and business oriented (like leads closed or the number of campaigns managed).

3. What are our plans to augment the team through more advanced internal training or staff changes?

Hiring a marketing professional shouldn’t be a fix-it-and-forget-it tactic. Professionals need to be nurtured throughout the entirety of their careers with a clear, set path to advance and grow. Or your team risks high employee turnover.

Look for opportunities to implement professional development programs to ensure and encourage that the marketing team is staying up on technology and trends. Also, consider where you can make training mandatory. For example, if you’re using a marketing automation technology, require employees to be certified in that tech to feel comfortable using the tool and make performance-driven recommendations backed by technology.

4. What are the core components of our existing marketing technology stack?

It’s proven: Technology increases internal efficiencies, helps eliminate mundane, manual tasks and makes the marketing process more automated.

Marketing technologies are vast ( see Scott Brinker’s Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic (2020): Martech 5000 ), ranging from email solutions to social media management tools to best-in-breed marketing automation tools. Identify every day, manual tasks that could be sped up and easier with new technology.

5. Are redundancies in our marketing technology solutions leading to inefficiencies?

Technology usage should drive efficiency across your marketing team, not pull it down. Are there redundancies in your technology stack that may require team members to login into multiple accounts to perform similar tasks?

Look for all-encompassing platforms, such as HubSpot, that bundle sales, marketing automation, blogging, CMS, email, and more into one solution. Rather than logging into a separate solution to send automated emails, build landing pages and publish social updates, create efficiencies across the team with one simple platform.

6. Are the existing technologies being fully utilized by the marketing team?

A whopping  70% of all technology implementation projects fail partly due to a lack of user adoption. Don’t risk a failed implementation because your team isn’t fully utilizing the tool.

Invest in technologies that offer training to help employees onboard seamlessly. For example, HubSpot ( @HubSpot ) offers the  HubSpot Academy , which allows users to learn the platform at their own pace and become familiar with each function and module.

7. Are gaps in technology affecting performance?

Is your organization missing key pieces of the marketing tech stack that could impact performance? For example, online chat software is ideal for engaging with site visitors, answering questions, and capturing leads.

8. Which industries do we plan to focus on for growth?

Does your company target a variety of audiences across different industries? If so, remember that we are in the age of personalization. A content campaign that worked for a manufacturing lead will likely not be relevant to a pharmaceutical lead.

Make this year the most successful year by targeting vertical markets.  As Forbes states , it’s not enough to cast a wide net across target audiences; instead, narrow your focus to define vertical markets. This way, you can best target, communicate and serve up the most relevant content to each vertical.

9. What makes our company unique in the market?

Is it your culture? Customer service? Product?

Whatever sets your company apart from competitors should shine throughout all marketing collateral, especially your website. For instance, if you have extraordinary customer service, place your success rates or customer quotes across the home page to showcase third-party validation.

10. Do we have accurate buyer personas that inform our marketing strategy?

Performing a yearly market audit may require your team to take a step back and work on foundational projects, like  buyer personas . To make any marketing campaign successful, you must understand the goals, pain points, influencers, and preferences of each target buyer persona your company is targeting.

11. Have we created a content marketing editorial calendar that defines our strategy on content production and publishing?

Instead, connect every piece of content to a strategy that’s backed by a defined production and publishing schedule. Define goals for blogging and overall content production. Perhaps you’re using it to drive lead generation or to boost your site in organic search.

>> Free download: Build a data-driven content marketing plan with our free content strategy workbook template .

From there, flesh out an editorial calendar with working titles, authors or subject matter experts, publish date, and persona for each post to stick with a strategic process.

12. What are the milestones in the next six to 12 months that are highly relevant to our marketing program?

You can use milestones to launch fully integrated marketing campaigns, complete with associated content pieces, landing pages, nurturing emails, social shares, and more. Or use these events to drive media relations and community conversation.

Some events that may be classified as company milestones include:

• Website redesign
• Tradeshow or conference
• Speaking gig with an internal thought leader
• Product updates / new releases

13. Which assets do we have that are underutilized?

Before completely overhauling your marketing campaign this coming year, take a step back to reflect on any underutilized assets. Some areas to consider:

• A premium content piece that hasn’t been fully activated with a campaign.
• A blog publishing platform that is only updated several times per year.
• An outdated whitepaper that could be refreshed and repurposed.
• A loyal customer base that you’ve never asked for testimonials.
• A database of leads that haven’t been nurtured.

Before diving into new production, be sure you’ve fully utilized the assets you already have to save time and budget.

14. Do we have customers that are willing to share their success stories?

Consumers are more willing to trust peer reviews or recommendations than a company. In fact, 93% of consumers say that online reviews influence their purchase decisions. 

Work with your sales or customer success team to determine if loyal customers are willing to share their stories and boost your brand credibility. These stories may be shared in a format as simple as a testimonial or quote on your site. Or, publish a formal case study and use the asset in both marketing and sales efforts.

Performance

15. what are our company’s top marketing key performance indicators (kpis).

Measuring the effectiveness of any marketing campaign begins with defined and clear KPIs. Conduct a review to determine what the team will define as success in the new year and what KPIs you’ll track to quantify that success. Remember to include decision-makers in the discussion, as marketers with executive-level buy-in on defined metrics thrive.

• Website visitors/sessions
• Content downloads
• Marketing qualified leads (MQLs)
• Opportunities
• Social reach

If you’re still relying on spreadsheets for your marketing scorecards, or if your performance data is housed in multiple platforms (i.e. CRM, automation, Google Analytics), then consider getting a marketing reporting tool such as Databox. Databox ( pictured above) pulls all your metrics into one place so your team can visualize performance, gain insights and take action.

16. How many average monthly visitors do we receive to the website?

To truly gauge if your online marketing efforts are making an impact, take it from your average monthly, quarterly, or annual website visitors. Simply creating content, posting blogs, and updating website pages aren’t enough. If no one is visiting these assets, have you really earned any ROI on your efforts, time, and resources?

As a starting point, track the following to understand how visitors are engaging with your site and finding your brand:

• Goal completions
• Average session duration
• Average pages per session
• Bounce rate
• Organic search sessions
• Blog entrances

17. How do we classify lead quality or lifecycle stages?

What defines a qualified lead? When does a lead become ready for sales? What’s the difference between a lead and an opportunity?

These (and more!) are all important questions to pose and define to help you figure out how you’ll market to each segment of contacts in 2018. Plus, defining the different lifecycle stages and terms across your organization will set you up for  harmonious marketing and sales alignment .

As a starting point, HubSpot highlights the following  lifecycle stages :

• Marketing qualified lead (MQL)
• Sales qualified lead (SQL)
• Opportunity

18. How many active qualified leads are in the existing pipeline?

This may seem like an easy one to answer. However, take this question a step further by brainstorming how to grow numbers with lead generation campaigns in 2018.

>> Related read :   A Simple Way to Generate More and Better Leads

Also, consider not just the number of leads but the quality of leads. If your database looks stale, consider a reactivation strategy in the new year to weed out the old contacts and reignite your marketing relationship with those who engage.

19. What are our company’s goals related to marketing, and how will we track success?

An example of a SMART marketing goal : Increase sales qualified leads by 25% by the end of the fourth quarter of 2018.

An example of a not-so-SMART marketing goal: Increase brand awareness.

20. How many total subscribers do we have?

Your subscribers are those contacts that have voluntarily opted in to receive content from you. They serve as a great starting point to gauge the quality and interest of new blog topics or premium content launches. Plus, since they’ve opted in, you can market to them in new ways with email nurturing, newsletters, and more.

>> Related read:   12 Ways to Quickly Grow Your Blog Subscribers

21. Do we have an attribution model to track performance, spend and ROI?

If you were called upon by leadership to prove marketing ROI (MROI) and tie performance back to spend, could you do it? Set yourself up to successfully prove MROI with closed-loop revenue reporting.

To start, pull associated costs in areas like software (marketing automation, CRM system, web hosting), advertising, partners (agencies, designers), and events (tradeshows, webinars). Next, compare your total marketing budget to the total leads generated and sales closed to calculate the average cost per lead or cost per customer .

Get Access to the Full Audit

Want access to even more marketing audit questions to guide your strategic planning? Download the full audit for 40+ questions to redirect marketing failures into strategic successes.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in 2017 and has been updated to be more current and comprehensive.

Shannen Laur

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MKTG 330/Marketing Audit Assignment: Assignment

• Company Research
• Industry & Operating Environment
• Business News and Trends
• SWOT Analysis and Recommendations
• Cite Sources
• Research & Writing Help
• Presentation Tips This link opens in a new window

Marketing Audit Project

This guide is organized by each section of the written assignment. On each page you will find:

• Information Need -- what pieces of information do you need to find?
• Types of Resources -- the kinds of resources in which you will likely find this information
• Suggested Resources, Databases, etc. -- while these suggestions are not exhaustive, they will get you started

What You'll Need

 Researching the company

Org structure

Position in Industry

Operating Environment

Customer Trends

Current Economic Trends

Listing, Indexes, Mutual Funds

Industry Trends

Company Comparison

Tech Trends

Researching Marketing Strategy

Identifying target customers

Marketing mix

Distribution

Channel Research

Researching Product Strategy

Branding, Product mix, product history

Communication

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What a Marketing Audit Is (and How to Do One)

March 10, 2023

By Aaron Lyles

What is a Marketing Audit?

A marketing audit is a systematic, objective review of an organization’s marketing function to verify marketing systems are accurate, relevant, reliable, and aligned with defined processes and best practices. This review helps marketers determine whether marketing strategies, tactics, systems, or processes should be adjusted to improve marketing results or operational consistency. A common misconception is that a marketing audit is synonymous with or similar to a planning process. It is not. However, it should inform marketing plans and may even trigger marketing planning. A well-conducted marketing audit will highlight areas that are performing well and those that are not up to par. Ultimately, a marketing audit enables marketers to base decision-making on objective evidence rather than gut feelings. We call the marketing audit systematic because it is both objective and methodical. The breadth and depth of a given marketing audit can vary based on relative priority. It can be as broad as covering an entire marketing function. Alternatively, it may be a smaller targeted audit of a specific area, such as a content audit or an SEO audit. For reference, in this article, we’ll review the fundamentals of a complete audit of an entire marketing function. 

What’s the Difference Between a Marketing Audit, Marketing Analysis, and Marketing Assessment??

Unfortunately, too many marketers casually conflate the term “marketing audit” with “marketing analysis,” when in fact they aren’t necessarily synonymous. I myself was guilty of this before I knew better. Generally, I would use whatever term felt right at the moment without much thinking. This type of mix-up is understandable, but it should be corrected as early as possible. Marketing is far too critical to organizational success for key players not to be perfectly aligned on purpose, plan, and process. By definition, analysis is the breaking down of a whole into its component parts in order to better understand how they work together. In the case of an environmental analysis, we break down the various factors that define the competitive environment of an organization’s industry. In the case of a gap analysis, the whole that is being broken down is the collective difference between a current state and a desired future state. An environmental analysis and a gap analysis are generally conducted at the start of a marketing initiative or when marketing planning to determine the current state of the marketing function and where it falls short of best practices, benchmarks, goals, and objectives. Specifically, a gap analysis defines the difference between what we have and what we need. A gap analysis is often part of a larger assessment along with additional analysis, evaluation, and recommendations. Audits, in contrast, verify conformity: whether claimed facts are true, whether best practices are being adhered to, whether plans and processes are being executed as documented, and the results (performance) of that execution. Gaps and conformities may naturally be uncovered through an audit, but they are not necessarily analyzed further or corrected as part of the audit.

Who Is Responsible for Conducting a Marketing Audit?

Typically, a marketing audit is best conducted by a third party who is not a member of the organization. This eliminates any inherent biases and often results in the most constructive audit of the organization. Regardless of who actually conducts the audit, however, a few things should be top of mind. 

Components of a Successful Marketing Audit

• The audit needs to be comprehensive. Marketing audits should cover all areas of marketing, not just areas where a problem is already perceived or areas in which the team knows they excel. A holistic audit is the best way to uncover opportunities and can highlight previously unknown areas of strength.  That said, it often makes sense to structure the auditing of the broader marketing function as a series of smaller, more focused marketing audits (e.g., a digital marketing audit, an event marketing audit, a marketing automation audit, an SEO audit, and so on).
• The audit needs to be systematic and objective. To ensure your audit is unbiased and doesn’t overlook fundamental flaws, your marketing audit should follow a predefined structure tailored to the specific scope of the audit. For example, a system audit (e.g., HubSpot) should follow a documented process. 
• The audit needs to be regular and recurring. A marketing audit shouldn’t only be conducted once problems or deviations become self-evident. Conducting periodic marketing audits enables your team to discover problems early and solve them quickly. Remember, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. 

How to Conduct a Marketing Audit

The specifics of how you conduct your marketing audit will depend on your industry, business maturity, culture, and specific scope of the audit. however, there are common best practices when it comes to conducting a marketing audit and specific areas we always want to ensure are accounted for (e.g., goals, results).  once scope has been established, the following steps can serve as a guide for conducting your own marketing audit., step 1: confirm marketing goals and objectives.

Confirm that all key marketing objectives are documented in a standard, accessible location along with at least one associated goal for each objective. All objectives should be definitive or directional. Some examples of key marketing objectives include:

• Increase return on marketing investment (ROMI)
• Increase customer lifetime value
• Reduce customer acquisition cost
• Increase brand recognition
• Become profitable
• Increase market share
• Decrease customer churn

Also verify that all marketing goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) . These goals must also be well documented and clearly aligned with key marketing objectives. Example marketing goals are below:

• Generate 250 percent return on investment for all clients by Dec. 31, 2023
• Increase average monthly MQLs 20 percent by June 30, 2023
• Generate $2 million in marketing attributed revenue by March 30, 2023

At a minimum, goals should be defined for the short term (1-3 years). Also note whether medium-term (3-7 years) and long-term (7-10+ years) goals are defined and prioritized because if they aren’t, this can alert decision makers to the possibility that their planning is strategically short-sighted. Shorter sub-term goals (e.g., quarterly or monthly) should also be defined. It’s important to explicitly confirm with decision makers and staff whether these objectives and goals continue to be relevant and accurate. That is, not only should goals be relevant, but they should also be known by people and teams tasked with achieving them. Attainability is a key attribute of SMART goals, so it's crucial to accurately verify whether goals are indeed attainable. Unfortunately, attainability is typically considered last or given the least amount of attention when it generally requires the most attention to define a goal that is achievable but challenging. For companies with a track record of their performance, a good rule of thumb to gauge attainability is to determine whether the goal falls within the historical range of performance. A challenging goal would be an extreme positive value within that range or following the established trend of that range. A trend is a minimum of three sequential occurrences. So, if the max sales you’ve ever closed in a quarter is $5M, and that was two years ago, then your goal next quarter should probably not be $10M. However, if the $5M quarter was the most recent quarter in a trend of three successive quarters of doubling sales, then $10M might be justified. For newer companies without sufficient historical internal data or for longer-term goals, historical industry data for similar-sized firms can serve as a benchmark. Has a company your size in your industry ever doubled sales from $5M one quarter to $10M the next quarter? If not, then that goal should probably not be considered attainable. If it has happened, is that common? If doubling sales is not common, do we understand what the similar company did differently to achieve their results? If not, the goal may not be realistic. In addition to goals, it’s important to confirm what leading or key performance indicators (if any) are linked to those goals. As a reminder, leading factors are metrics that predict how likely we are to hit our goals.

Here are some example marketing KPIs:

• Sales qualified leads (SQLs)
• Marketing qualified leads (MQLs)
• Appointments held
• New opportunities
• Average deal size or transaction value
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

Step 2: Determine Current Performance and Gaps

Current performance and performance gaps should also be verified. How performance is tracked and how performance data is accessed should be understood or referenceable by all key decision makers. Each data point should have a single agreed-upon source of truth. There’s no requirement that anyone memorize this data, but everyone who needs to refer to it does need to know how to quickly find answers to these questions and have the power to do so independently. There should be no data silos or black boxes. You also want to learn whether there are any concerns about the quality of marketing data. If so, it’s important to note those concerns, the rationale behind them, and what, if any, plans there are to address those concerns. After all, accurate data that no one trusts has little value because it can’t faithfully and reliably inform decision-making.

Step 3: Confirm Key Marketing Processes and Procedures Are Documented

After goals and performance data, we must verify the processes and procedures responsible for achieving goals and delivering performance results. It does us little good to meet or exceed our marketing goals if we have a poor understanding of how and why we hit those goals. Without this insight, marketers can’t reliably change what doesn’t work and scale what does. Note that not every process or procedure must necessarily be documented—only those linked and critical to delivering results and achieving goals. There is, however, certain process documentation that marketers should absolutely maintain at a minimum.

Standard Marketing Documentation

Below are standard marketing documentation we recommend all marketers maintain. However, in some industries and in cases such as a need to comply with ISO 9001 requirements, this list may be even more extensive.

• Goal and KPI setting and monitoring: If a company never hits its goals, it is possible the problem is with goal setting, not execution. How can we know whether there’s a problem with goal setting if we don’t know how we set our goals? This conundrum is why we also want to keep records of how goals and KPIs are set. That is, if your revenue goal is $20M, you should know where that number comes from. Key documentation includes formulas, spreadsheets, software, and key assumptions. If a goal is arbitrary, that should be explicitly noted.
• Performance monitoring: How will performance be tracked? All tracking tools and/or records should be specified so we know how to determine how close we are to hitting goals—and we know when we hit them. Sales and marketing service level agreements (SLAs): The best sales and marketing talent in the world fails when their purposes are not aligned. SLAs help everyone know who is responsible for doing what so that marketing and sales can maximize their collective potential.
• Product design and development (if applicable): In businesses in which products must pass through engineering, appropriate records should be created and maintained. However, in some service businesses, the product is a service designed with the customer during the sales or customer onboarding process.
• Customer input monitoring: One could argue that customer feedback is the single most critical input there is. After all, the only truly sustainable way to grow a business is to keep the customers you have while adding new ones. The key to both is proactively monitoring and addressing customer needs and wants.
• Talent qualifications: These may be maintained by Human Resources. Nonconformity management: A nonconformity is any instance in which an output or a process fails to meet documented minimum standards. There are two primary ways we manage nonconformities. Preventive actions are documented processes for monitoring for catching nonconformities before they’re created or at least before they directly impact the customer. Corrective actions are processes we follow after a nonconformity has been identified.
• Nonconformity documentation: When outputs critically fail—falling short of internal or external specifications—the incident should be recorded. Included in the log should be a description of the nonconformity, a description of the corrective actions, any customer concessions in accepting the nonconformity, and the internal authority determining correction actions. That same authority’s determination of whether the corrective action was effective should also be noted. 

Highly Recommended Additional Marketing Process Records

• Market intelligence
• Competitive research
• Market demand and analysis
• Ideal customer profiles (ICPs)
• Buyer personas
• Offers and promotions
• Communications
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Media formats
• Content map
• Content scheduling

Again, the above should not be secret knowledge known to only one person and undiscoverable by anyone else. Note that performance data should be used to inform continuous improvement efforts such as developing or modifying processes and procedures as necessary to ensure better and more consistent future results. That said, it’s also important to confirm that documentation accurately represents actual marketing processes and procedures. One vital part of an effective marketing audit is confirming that we do what we say we do and things are what we say they are. Otherwise, we can’t reliably troubleshoot and improve the way marketing is done. Note that documentation does not need to exhaustively cover every nuance and detail of a process, procedure, or event—it just needs to cover enough for those responsible for executing or overseeing execution to understand how things should be and are actually done. However, if there’s disagreement or debate over how to interpret documentation or apply it, that’s a red flag that it may need to be revised or expanded.  Be sure to verify the accuracy and application of inputs and outputs for processes. Remember the saying: garbage in, garbage out. For example, buyer personas are both critical outputs of the persona development process and inputs to market messaging and content creation. Not only should they be complete and accurate as outputs, but they should also be referenced as inputs during content creation. Are they?

Ideal buyer personas should include things such as:

• Job titles or functions
• Geographic location
• Company size
• Demographic
• Beliefs such as motivations, objections, and aspirations
• Behaviors such as what media channels they frequent and what they currently do to solve their problems
• Persona quotes

Lastly, it’s important to understand that documentation and records do not need to be in any specific media or follow any specific format or naming convention. They simply need to be accessible and understandable.

Step 4: Verify Marketing Plans Are Sufficiently Budgeted and Resourced

Far too often, marketing goals are not hit simply because marketing plans are under-resourced. So it’s vitally important to verify that plans have dedicated budgets. Your budgeting records don’t need to be overly complex, but the budget should be accounted for within the broader organizational financial budget. There is no single right way to create a budget for a marketing plan, but there are a few rules of thumb and red flags that you should consider.  All market share and sales goals should take into account the invested dollar per goal unit. A goal unit is simply the smallest single whole measurable quantity of a goal. If your objective is to acquire more customers, then your goal unit is a single customer.  If your objective is to increase sales, then your goal unit is a single sales dollar. Your budget should be evaluated against this same standard. That is, if your goal is more customers, then you should know how much you’re willing to invest to get a single additional customer. If a customer is worth $100 over a typical three-year lifetime, you need to know up front the max you’re willing to pay today for that $100 over time. Keep in mind that many companies big (e.g., Amazon) and small (e.g., mom-and-pops) are willing to spend a multiple of the value of the first transaction. That’s vitally important to know before you begin to plan content, offers, or promotions. 

Step 5: Summarize and Make Recommendations

At this point, you should have a pretty clear picture of your company’s standing. Note areas in which you’re falling short as you evaluate each section of your marketing audit. Keep detailed notes about any shortcomings or red flags you uncover as well as areas of excellence (i.e., going above and beyond minimum requirements of the audit in a way that adds value to the organization). After reviewing your marketing audit, you can make informed recommendations about where the company may best focus its continuous improvement efforts and what specific action plans it should consider. 

Here are example recommendations for common gap areas.

• Update buyer personas with fresh persona interviews or surveys.
• Create a content plan for addressing gaps in existing content.
• Develop sales enablement collateral for each persona/opportunity combination.
• Document sales and marketing service level agreements (SLAs).
• Address all website SEO penalties, such as broken links and 404 errors.
• Resolve analytics tracking issues. All metrics that matter should be tracked and validated.
• Identify specific opportunities for conversion rate optimization.
• Update the brand messaging matrix.

Step 6: Confirm the Plan for the Next Marketing Audit

Marketing auditing is an ongoing process, not a single event. Whether carried out as one comprehensive audit or a series of mini-audits, the next step or iteration should either already be scheduled by a specific auditor or be scheduled before concluding the audit. With a comprehensive marketing audit under your belt, you’ll be ready to develop strategies, tactics, and processes that align with your marketing goals and business needs. 

Frequently Asked Questions 

1. what are the 3 elements of a marketing audit.

The type, breadth, and depth of your marketing audit will depend on your industry, business maturity, culture, and goal(s). However, broadly speaking there are three main elements:

• A SWOT analysis 
• Competitor research 
• A market analysis 

A SWOT analysis looks objectively at an area of your marketing (e.g., SEO, content, or your overall strategy) to assess your strengths, weaknessess, opportunities, and threats. Taking a critical look at these elements compared to your competitors (and companies you admire) can provide valuable insights and help to establish future targets for your marketing plan.

Competitor research, or competitive analysis, is a component of SWOT in which you identify competitors in your industry and evaluate their marketing strategies. 

A market analysis is an industry-specific, in-depth look at your business’s target market and competitive landscape. Deep knowledge of your target market allows for a more comprehensive understanding of your place in the competitive landscape, and it is an important aspect of setting goals when historical data is not available for comparison purposes.

2. What is the role of a marketing audit?

Marketing audits, no matter what areas are being assessed, serve to verify  conformity, such as:

• Whether claimed facts are true
• Whether best practices are being adhered to
• Whether plans and processes are being executed as documented
• The results (performance) of that execution 

Gaps and conformities may naturally be uncovered through a marketing audit, but they are not necessarily analyzed further or corrected as part of the audit.

3. What are the types of marketing audits?

There are many different types of marketing audits, including:  

• Marketing environment
• Organization
• Productivity
• Process/functionality

Remember: Marketing audits need to be regular and recurring. A marketing audit shouldn’t only be conducted once problems or deviations become self-evident.

Conducting periodic marketing audits enables your team to discover problems early and solve them quickly. 

4. How do you conduct a marketing audit? 

The specifics of how you conduct your marketing audit will depend on your industry, business maturity, culture, and specific scope of the audit. However, there are common best practices when it comes to conducting a marketing audit and specific areas we always want to ensure are accounted for (e.g., goals, results). 

Step 1: Confirm marketing goals and objectives

Step 2: Determine current performance and gaps

Step 3: Confirm key marketing processes and procedures are documented

Step 4: Verify marketing plans are sufficiently budgeted and resourced

Step 5: Summarize and make recommendations

Step 6: Confirm the plan for the next marketing audit

For more details on each of the steps listed above, read more here .

5. What is a marketing audit checklist?

A marketing audit checklist can be a useful tool for getting started on a marketing audit. It can serve as a starting place to evaluate the effectiveness of all your current marketing efforts or be specific to one area. It doesn’t matter whether you complete your marketing audit in many micro-audits staggered throughout the year or you tackle them all at once during one intensive assessment period, as long as your audit plan includes recurrences for maximum efficacy.

There are many marketing checklists that can help you get started, such as this assessment offered by SmartBug Media. It is also possible that your organization will have a standardized checklist for each area of your marketing strategy as a place to begin your efforts.

Final Thoughts on Marketing Audits

Marketing audits are a powerful tool for ensuring marketing goals, plans, and processes are developed with objective intention, sufficiently resourced to achieve marketing objectives, and resilient to withstand errors and noncompliance. With a detailed marketing audit under your belt, you can pursue sales and marketing goals with confidence.  

This blog was originally published in October 2019 and has been updated since.

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About the author

Aaron Lyles is a Marketing Strategist for SmartBug Media. He is goal-driven, profit-focused, and data-oriented. Aaron has over 18 years of marketing experience across a range of industries including technology, SaaS, publishing, and distribution. He has led enterprise scale data projects and prior to SmartBug he led sales and marketing for 5 years at an SME. Aaron holds degrees in marketing analytics and information management systems and is author of a forthcoming book on sales funnel engineering. Read more articles by Aaron Lyles .

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How to Perform a Digital Marketing Audit Like a Pro (With Checklist)

Learn how to conduct a complete digital marketing audit of any website by following our comprehensive checklist.

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What is a Digital Marketing Audit?

How to conduct a full online marketing audit, digital marketing audit checklist.

If you want to see sustained results from your online marketing efforts you must routinely review all your digital marketing campaigns.

In this guide, I will give you a step by guide to performing a digital marketing audit from start to finish.

By the end, you’ll have a digital marketing audit checklist to audit your digital channels like a pro.

A digital marketing audit is a process of evaluating the effectiveness of your marketing efforts across all your digital channels. By routinely analyzing your practices and their results, you can fine-tune your campaigns to improve their performance.

The audit also involves checking for technical and user-created errors across your platforms and campaigns. These errors can slip through the cracks during day-to-day activities.

Finding and resolving these issues during your digital marketing audit can help you mitigate the impact they may have on your marketing campaigns.

Let’s examine the steps needed to perform a comprehensive digital marketing audit.

Follow these steps to perform a digital marketing audit of your business or any business.

• Start with an SEO Audit
• Perform a Social Media Marketing Audit
• Conduct a Brand Reputation Audit
• Review Your Website Marketing
• Evaluate Paid Advertising Performance
• Perform a Content Audit
• Carry out an Email Marketing Audit

1. Start with an SEO Audit

The first step to assessing your online marketing is to perform an SEO audit . This is the process of evaluating how friendly your website is to search engines.

When you conduct a thorough SEO audit, you can find weak spots in your website’s SEO and make adjustments to help you earn better rankings in search engine results.

SEO audits must be done on a regular basis as the SEO industry changes very quickly. The best practices of today may not be the same a few months from now.

I recommend performing a complete SEO audit at least two times per year. This will ensure that you are always on top of the latest SEO developments.

SEO audits should be broken into three focus areas: technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO.

Here are the important things to check for each:

Technical SEO Audit

Check Google Search Console Google Search Console

gives you various reports and tools to visualize and manage how the Google search engine treats your website.

With it, you can quickly see which of your pages are included in the index, what keywords you are ranking for, any website performance issues, and more.

When you perform your technical SEO audit , you should check to confirm the following:

• Your sitemap is submitted to Google
• All appropriate pages can be found in the coverage tab
• Your site doesn’t have mobile usability issues
• There are no security issues
• Check your robots.txt file

The robots.txt file controls how search engines treat your pages. You should check to ensure that only the pages you want to be excluded are ‘noindexed’.

Check your URL structure

URLs play a role in SEO rankings so it’s important to routinely check their structure to ensure that they are SEO-friendly.

Most CMS solutions will automatically format your URLs properly but there is still a chance you may create a slug that isn’t SEO friendly.

Check your product pages and blog posts to ensure that your URLs are concise, contain keywords (not overdone), and don’t contain unnecessary hyphens or numbers.

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs typically sit at the top of a page and they help users navigate back to higher-level pages.

Google recommends having breadcrumbs enabled so you want to check and make sure they are active on your site.

Structured Data

Structured data helps Google better understand the context and meaning of your content. It can provide a boost to rankings while also improving the presentation of your SERPs through sitelinks and appearing in the answer box.

You should check to ensure you have structured data enabled for the following areas:

• Breadcrumb menus

XML Sitemap

Your sitemap is a list of all the web pages you want Google to include in its index. During your SEO audit, you should check your sitemap to make sure it only has the pages you want to appear in Google.

You should also check Google Search Console to ensure that the sitemap is submitted properly.

Websites that have a valid SSL certificate installed are routed via HTTPS instead of HTTP. You want to make sure your site uses HTTPS as added security is an important ranking factor in Google.

Your website’s speed is a critical part of your SEO rankings.

There are plenty of tools you can use to test your website’s speed which we’ll discuss a bit later on.

For now, you should know that your website needs to have the following to optimize your page load times :

• Serve files via CDN
• Minify CSS and HTML
• Compress images
• Run the latest PHP
• Remove unnecessary JavaScript
• Page and browser caching

Mobile-friendly

Google now uses a mobile-first index, meaning the mobile version of your site will serve as the baseline for determining your rankings.

This means it is paramount to have a website that performs well on mobile devices. Check the mobile usability report in Google Search Console to find and resolve any issues.

As a general rule, you should always use a responsive theme as part of your web design to ensure your pages render properly on all devices.

On-Page SEO Audit

Once you have checked the technical SEO factors, it is time to evaluate your content and other on-page factors .

Titles and Descriptions

Your titles and descriptions should be unique to each page. They should inform the user what the page is about while also being engaging.

If you have duplicate titles, change them so that they are no longer the same.

Headings and text formatting

Your content should use headings to break up areas into subsections. Headings should have the proper format: H1 for the page title , H2 for the main headings, and H3 for all subheadings.

Formatting such as bullet lists and bold text can help improve readability and by extension the user experience.

If your content lacks these elements be sure to add them in.

Make sure that your content is unique by running it through a plagiarism checker. You also want to analyze the length and freshness of your content. If your content is out of date, consider making updates

You can check how SEO-optimized your content is by using a plugin like Yoast SEO. This will tell you how well your page fits the expectations of a high-ranking page for the target keyword.

Internal Linking

Internal links are useful to both users and search engines. Check your pages to make sure they have between 2 – 10 internal links per page. Add variation to the anchor text and link to the most important pages from your homepage.

Check your images to ensure the file names describe the image and that you have added an SEO-optimized alt text .

Broken Links

Check to make sure all outgoing links are working properly. You can use a tool like Xenu or you can look for crawl errors in Google Search Console.

Once you find broken links you can either delete the link or add a replacement URL.

Off-Page SEO Audit

The last part of the SEO audit concerns off-page SEO . It involves reviewing the following factors:

Incoming Links

The first step is to check the links coming to your site from other websites. For this, you can use a tool like SEMRush or the “Links to Your Site” report in Google Search Console.

You want to check for the quantity and quality of linking domains, which of your pages has the most links, and how many links are going to your homepage.

If you notice any toxic links (links from low-quality websites) you may want to consider taking action to have those links removed from Google as they could hurt your SEO performance.

Domain authority

Domain authority, or domain rating, measures how strong or trusted your website’s domain is. The higher your score, the easier it is to rank in search engines.

The best way to increase your domain authority is through high-quality backlinks. If your domain authority is not where you want it to be, consider starting a link-building campaign to boost your score.

Your link profile relative to competitors

Comparing your backlink profile to your competitors is a great way to see what you need to do to best position yourself to rank for important keywords.

If your competitors are gaining a lot of high-quality links from authoritative domains, you will likely want to do the same. With a tool like Ahrefs or SEMRush , you can see exactly who is linking to your competitors and what pages they are linking to.

This can be a good starting point for finding link prospects to link to your own site.

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2. Perform a Social Media Marketing Audit

A social media marketing audit will help you understand the activity happening on each of your profiles.

Here are the steps to take to perform a social media audit:

Check social media pages for completeness and accuracy of information

To start, you should look over each of your social media pages to ensure that you have accurately provided all necessary information.

The important areas to look over include:

• Profile pics and cover photos: You want to make sure you have an image for each of these and that they align with your brand’s image:
• Profile bio: Your bio is one of the first things your audience will see so it’s important to ensure it’s complete and up to date. You have limited space to work with so you’ll want to succinctly highlight your brand’s core message.
• Links: All your social media profiles should link back to your website. During your social media audit, you should make sure that your links function properly.

Check your number of followers

After you have checked the accuracy of your profile information you want to check the number of followers for each of your pages.

Monitoring this metric will give you an understanding of your pages’ engagement and how quickly you are growing your following . If you notice one channel growing at a faster pace than the others, you could benefit from putting more focus into that channel.

Respond to comments

The next step is to respond to comments left on your posts by your followers. This is a great way to engage your audience and understand them better.

You’ll probably want to monitor your profiles and respond to comments more frequently. However, your digital marketing audit can be a good time to find and reply to any unanswered comments.

If you’re not receiving any comments it could be a sign that your content is not interesting or relevant to your target audience. Or, you simply may not have that many followers.

• Check your social media handles

A social media audit is a good time to evaluate your social media handles. Ideally, you would use the same handle across every channel if you can. During your audit, you can check for consistency in your handles and update any that are dissimilar from the rest.

Create a plan to update accounts with fresh info

The final step of your social media audit is to plan future content for your profiles. By creating a plan for what and when you’ll post, you ensure that your pages are consistently engaging your audience.

It is also a good idea to strategize regular updates to your account info such as your bio. This will keep your pages from appearing stale.

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3. Conduct a Brand Reputation Audit

A brand reputation audit involves finding mentions of your brand across the internet to assess the public’s perception of your business.

With a thorough brand reputation audit you can:

• See customers’ relationships with the company
• Find problems with certain areas of the business
• See how your compare to the competition

Here are the steps to performing a brand reputation audit:

Search for your brand on Google

Start by searching for your brand on Google to see what comes up first. If your company or any of its employees have received press recently you may notice some news stories appear at the top of the results.

You can also set up Google alerts to receive daily (or instant) notifications every time someone mentions your brand.

Go to https://www.google.com/alerts and enter your brand name. Set your preferred notification period and hit Create Alert .

You’ll then get email alerts that compile a list of all brand mentions Google picks up from around the web. This will save you time from having to dig through search results to find new mentions.

• Find and address bad reviews across the web

The next step is to find any bad reviews for your brand. Your Google search will help you surface some, but you’ll also want to check popular review sites that are relevant to your business.

Some notable review sites worth checking include:

• Trust Pilot

If you sell physical products on marketplaces or comparison shopping engines like Amazon or Google, you’ll want to check these channels for product reviews.

If you find any negative reviews you want to politely respond to the customer’s complaint if the platform allows you to do so. Try to clarify any misunderstanding or offer a solution to address the issue.

4. Review Your Website Marketing

The next part of your digital marketing audit is to review your website marketing . The steps include:

• Check your website design

Your website design makes an immediate impression on your visitors. It can either encourage them to explore your business further or cause them to leave without taking any meaningful action.

You want your website’s design to be fresh and modern to best project a positive brand image. Beyond that, there are some structural best practices you should follow:

• Content should be divided by ample headings, images, and white space
• The navigation menu should be easily accessible and allow users to find the most important pages
• Images and other visual elements should have a consistent style
• Call-to-actions (CTA) should be placed in prominent positions and not overused
• Check your website speed

We touched on this earlier but it can’t be overstated. Page load times are an important part of both user experience and search engine rankings.

When you conduct your digital marketing audit, you should test the loading times of your most important pages to ensure they are performing as they should.

There are plenty of speed testing tools. The most popular ones are:

• Pagespeed insights
• Make sure your site is mobile-friendly

After you check your website speed, you want to analyze the user experience on mobile devices. This is critical as the majority of today’s web traffic comes from mobile.

You can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to get an idea of how well your site performs on mobile devices.

You can also manually check your important pages via smartphone to see what the experience is like.

Check Core Web Vitals

The Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console uses real-world data to assess the performance of your web pages. Google will point out problem areas that you can then fix to help improve your user experience.

They will also give you specific instructions on how to fix the issues. After you make the changes, you can validate the fix within Google to have the error message removed.

5. Evaluate Paid Advertising Performance

Next, you want to audit the performance of your paid advertising campaigns. Here are the primary areas you should review:

• Ensure conversion tracking is enabled

Start by ensuring that conversion tracking is enabled and that you are collecting accurate data for conversions taking place on your website.

Without conversion tracking, you won’t have accurate insight into your campaigns’ performance and you won’t be able to take advantage of Google Smart Campaigns.

• Analyze important KPIs

You’ll want to check important performance indicators to see which of your campaigns are performing well and where you need to make changes.

The important metrics to evaluate are:

• Click-through rate – This metric tells you how often people who view your ad click on it. A low click-through rate can be a sign of poor targeting or irrelevant ad copy.
• Conversion rate – This metric measures how many people click on your ad and convert it into customers. It is a great indicator of the effectiveness of a campaign.
• Cost per conversion – This metric tells you how much you are spending on ads to acquire each customer. Your cost per conversion needs to be below your average order value (AOV) if you want your campaigns to be profitable.
• Reach – This metric tells you how many people you are reaching with your ads. A low reach can be a sign that you need to broaden your targeting or adjust your bidding.
• The average cost per click – Your cost per click tells you how much you spend on average for each person that clicks on your ad. It is an important metric to monitor as it directly impacts your return on ad spend.
• Check your budget

You should use your digital marketing audit to ensure that you are using your ad budget effectively.

Look for campaigns that are performing the best and concentrate your ad spend on those campaigns.

If your campaigns in Google are marked as “Limited by budget”, you should raise the budget for that campaign to extend its reach or adjust your targeting and keyword settings to reach a larger audience.

• Check your ads

Finally, you want to evaluate your ads to look for areas of improvement. Some important elements to check include:

• Message – Ensure that the message of your ads is relevant to the audience that you are targeting and that it aligns with your brand. You should also check for spelling and grammar mistakes.
• Display URL – Check to see if your display URLs are optimized for the keywords you are targeting. This can help improve click-throughs.
• The number of ads – Check to see if you have enough variety of ad copy for each ad group. Aim for 3 to 5 ads for each group.
• Landing URL – Make sure that the URLs of your landing pages are accurate and that the pages align with the objective of the campaign.
• 10 Best Facebook Ads Courses
• Google Ads Conversion Tracking Guide

6. Perform a Content Audit

After assessing the performance of your paid advertisements, you want to evaluate the content on your website. To do this, you will:

• Find your best-performing content

Start by checking your existing content to see which pages are performing the best.

You can either compile all your pages in a spreadsheet and check each one manually or use a tool like SEMRush or Screaming Frog.

See which pages are getting the most views, the most engagement, and are driving the most conversions.

Look for common characteristics among the top-performing pages as this will help you know what types of content to prioritize going forward.

• Find pages to remove, consolidate, or update

Once you check all your pages, look for an opportunity to clean up your site by removing outdated or low-value pages . You can also combine pages that are similar to each other.

If you choose to consolidate any of your pages make sure to create 301 redirects for the deleted pages.

• Create a content marketing plan

Next, you should create a content marketing plan detailing your future content creation. Use the insights gained while evaluating your pages to focus on the best-performing type of content.

You can also use the knowledge gained during your SEO audit to find gaps in your keyword strategy. These can be used to find new topics for your content.

• How to Become a Content Marketing Specialist
• Best Content Marketing Courses

7. Carry out an Email Marketing Audit

The last stage of your digital marketing audit is to evaluate your email marketing efforts. Here are the important areas to check:

Check how many subscribers you get per day

The first step is to check how many email subscribers you are getting per day. The best campaigns won’t do much good if nobody is on your list. As such, you want to make sure your lead generation efforts are gaining enough subscribers for your campaigns to be successful.

If your subscription rate is low, it could be a sign of a problem with one of the other areas of digital marketing we’ve previously discussed.

Perhaps your SEO and paid advertising campaigns aren’t driving enough traffic. Or maybe your content isn’t interesting so visitors don’t want to sign up for your list.

Check your analytics platform to see where on your website people are dropping off. Make sure to include your CTA and sign-up forms in a prominent place.

You can also consider offering a more enticing lead magnet to encourage more users to subscribe.

• Check email deliverability rates

Next, you want to check your delivery rates to ensure that your messages are reaching your subscribers’ inboxes.

If your deliverability rate is low it could be because your email was blocked by the ISP or it ended up in the spam folder.

Here are some ways you can improve low email deliverability:

• Maintain proper IP allocation
• Authenticate your email domain
• Avoid spammy subject lines
• Create a subdomain and use it for emails
• Clean up your email list
• Check your email open and click through rates

Once you ensure that your messages are indeed reaching your subscribers, you want to evaluate your open and click rates .

This will tell you how much people are engaging with your messages.

If your open rate is low, look over your subject lines to see how compelling they are. You’ll also want to look at the time you are sending your emails and consider making changes.

If your open rate is on target, but your click rate is low, you’ll need to evaluate the design and content of your emails.

• Check email design

Your email design should be attractive and contain useful content. It is also important to make sure your emails are responsive as many people will open them on their mobile devices.

Some email design problems you should avoid include:

• Not including an unsubscribe button
• Text that is too large
• Issues with rendering
• Designs that are not aligned with your brand
• Not including alt text for images

If your emails are not performing as you would like, consider using a different style or rearranging the CTA.

Check email automation campaigns

Next, you should analyze the performance of your email automation campaigns . Check to see the open and click rates for each message in the sequence. This will inform you where in the funnel you need to make adjustments.

The most popular email marketing solutions provide detailed stats to help you evaluate the overall success of a campaign.

These will allow you to see the overall revenue for a campaign as well as see which specific customers are making purchases and engaging with your messages the most.

You can use these insights to refine the audience of your campaigns to focus on those most likely to convert.

• Clean your email list

Your subscriber list is the most important part of your email marketing. During your digital marketing audit, you should clean your list to ensure that it only contains high-quality subscribers.

Look for individuals who are inactive and remove them from your list. This will provide several benefits. To start, you won’t be wasting your time marketing to people who aren’t interested in your business.

Additionally, a clean list can improve email deliverability as it increases your overall open rate. It can also lower your expenses as most email marketing solutions charge based on the number of subscribers.

• Best Email Marketing Courses

This is your digital marketing audit checklist.

• Check Google Search Console
• Check your URL Structure
• Check your breadcrumb menu
• Check your XML Sitemap
• Check for HTTPS
• Check your website’s mobile-friendliness
• Check your titles and descriptions
• Check your headings and text formatting
• Check your content
• Check your internal linking
• Check your image SEO
• Check for broken links
• Check incoming links
• Check your domain authority
• Check your competitors’ links
• Check the accuracy and completeness of your social media profiles
• Check your number of social media followers
• Respond to social media comments
• Create a plan to update your accounts with fresh info
• Search for mentions of your brand in Google
• Check core web vitals
• Check how many email subscribers you get per day

If you want to learn more about digital marketing, check out the 10 best digital marketing certificate programs .

Alex Chris is a digital marketing consultant, author, and instructor. He has more than 18 years of practical experience with SEO and digital marketing. Alex holds an MSc Degree in eCommerce and has consulted with Fortune 500 companies in different industries. He blogs regularly about SEO and Digital marketing, and his work has been referenced by leading marketing websites. Connect with Alex on Twitter and LinkedIn .

March 4, 2021 at 8:20 pm

Thanks Alex! Great and extensive content on how to perform an SEO audit.

November 10, 2022 at 1:16 pm

Thanks a lot, glad I could help!

March 17, 2021 at 12:23 pm

Thanks for sharing this great blog Alex, its a eye opener blog for me, keep posting. All the best, Have great day…

Thanks a lot!

All the best Alex

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26+ Free Marketing Audit Templates & Samples – Word, PDF, Google Docs

A marketing audit refers to a systematic analysis , evaluation, and interpretation of the business marketing environment. This keeps a check on both internal and external factors, the goals and objectives, principles, areas pertaining to problems and issues, etc. so that a strong action plan can be recommended to enhance the marketing performance of the firm.

Marketing Audit Report Template

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Step 1: marketing goals and objectives, step 2: identify your target audience, step 3: gather the data, step 4: list your products and services, step 5: identify competition, step 6: marketing strategies, marketing audit template for professional academy.

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General faqs, 1. what is a marketing audit, 2. why is a marketing audit important, 3. what are the components of a marketing audit.

• Marketing strategies and objectives
• Goals of the company
• Assessing the viability of a business
• Mission strategies
• Market and retailers
• Competitors and distributors
• Influences that have a direct impact on the business’ marketing performance.

4. What are the types of Marketing Audits?

• External audit – describes the environment and marketing of the company. Factors that influence your business and are not in control.
• Internal audit – focuses on the resources of a company like labor, finances, time, etc. Analyzes the marketing team concerning basic structure, effectiveness, and correlation.

5. How do you create a Marketing Audit?

• Create an inventory of assets
• Align your audit with goals
• Collect data about your marketing performance
• Compare results to the goals you have
• Adapt and optimize
• Check your conversions and leads.

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MKT 240: Principles of Marketing

Student marketing audit.

• Search Tips
• In-Text Citation
• Reference Citation

Meet with a librarian for one-on-one research assistance.

Spalding University Library

Email: [email protected]

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Find Marketing Information

Market and Industry Reports and Statistics

Business News and Articles

Government Information

• Explore Census Data Replacing American FactFinder, Data.census.gov is the new platform to access data and digital content from the U.S. Census Bureau.
• EDGAR All companies, foreign and domestic, are required to file registration statements, periodic reports, and other forms electronically through EDGAR. Anyone can access and download this information for free.
• U.S. Census Bureau Economic Statistics
• U.S. Census Bureau Retail Trade

Using Library Databases in MKT 240

The student marketing audit (SMA) is a report of the current marketing strategies in place in an organization, as well as the relevant variables influencing those decisions. This type of audit would be used by product/brand managers or marketing managers within an organization.

In order to complete your student marketing audit, you will need to use secondary sources from databases such as Statista and Business Insights to thoroughly investigate your market topic. This will require using a variety of information sources packaged in different formats, including:​

• Articles (trade & news)
• Company websites and reports
• Consumer demographics and analysis
• Industry and market reports

You will need to access these sources using a variety of tools and platforms (not just Google), and synthesize information found across them to address your research questions. 

This guide will provide resources and suggestions for complete the SMA assignment for MKT 240. If you are having trouble finding references for your company, topic, or factors,  schedule a one-on-one appointment  with the librarian. 

Company Reports

You can usually find company information and annual reports published for investors on the corporation's sites. On a company's site, look the fine print links on the bottom of the page or sitemap for links to: 

• Annual Report
• Investor Relations

For example, this 2016 Annual Report for Target can be found on their investors page, as well as their 10k SEC filings . 

When looking at company information, consider their  bias and how a company may want to present themselves to the public and investors. 

An  SEC filing  is a financial statement or other formal document submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Public companies, certain insiders, and broker-dealers are required to make regular SEC filings and are publicly available.

EDGAR , is the SEC public search interface. You can search for companies by title or file number, and limit by state, country, or standard industry classification codes. 

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• Last Updated: Jan 11, 2023 9:19 AM
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