Six Steps for Conducting a Marketing Audit

There are many reasons why a company may perform a marketing audit. The goal could be as narrow as gauging the success of a specific campaign to as broad as evaluating your entire marketing strategy. Maybe a certain campaign isn’t delivering the results you expected. Or a new competitor entered the market. Or you are planning the launch of a new product or service. Notable business changes such as a merger or acquisition are other cases where a thorough marketing audit should be conducted.

Marketing audits will help you find what areas to focus on, allocate resources better and gain insights into your customers and competitors. Here are six important steps to follow to ensure you walk away from your audit with a clear understanding of what is working and what needs to change.

1. Determine the objective and goals.  

Identify what to audit—whether it’s your entire marketing operation or a specific campaign, process or area. Many marketing components are interrelated so looking at your strategy across the entire funnel could be beneficial. What is the purpose of the audit? What goals is it going to help you reach?  Goals need to be SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. It’s not enough to say, “increase lead generation” or “build brand awareness.”  

Here are some examples of SMART goals:

• Increase “Request a Quote” form submissions 300% by April 1, 2025
• Grow our Midwest U.S. audience, increasing base followers 500% by December 31, 2026
• Increase email campaign click-through rate (CTR) 200% by June 1, 2025
• Increase traffic to our website’s Product page by 200% by September 1, 2025
• Generate 400% more leads from social media by December 31, 2026

2. Decide who will perform the audit.

Based on what processes and materials are being audited, examine what resources you will need to tap into. Decide if it is something your team can audit internally or if a third party could provide value. Are you looking into one problem or an entire strategy?  

When auditing your whole operation, it’s typically best for a third party to conduct the audit to gather constructive feedback and help ensure there are no inherent biases or components overlooked. A third party will also help take the load off your team and fill any gaps in knowledge of expertise and best practices.  

3. Evaluate your target audience.

Do you have a clear vision of who you’re trying to reach with these marketing efforts? How have your buyer’s expectations, preferences, challenges and pain points changed since you last conducted an audit? Will you be marketing to a new audience? Now is the time to update your buyer personas. Customer and industry expectations are always evolving. Your data must be accurate since it is integral to building a more effective strategy.  

A well-developed buyer persona includes their demographics, goals, needs, challenges, pain points and responsibilities. How does your product go beyond problem-solving to helping customers reach their ideal selves in the workplace? What are the most common objections your sales team faces? These insights are critical to creating marketing content that works.

4. Collect information.

What internal information needs to be collected? Common areas to evaluate include your website, blog, social media, email marketing and collateral. Look at customer engagement, leads from campaigns, web pages with the most traffic, time spent on pages, mobile vs desktop viewing trends, site/page load speed, CTRs, and other KPIs.

What external information needs to be collected? Performing a competitor analysis will help you see what is and isn’t working and identify opportunities. Depending on the objective of your audit, it may be helpful to review their marketing collateral, website, SEO performance and social media accounts.  

5. Analyze the data and make recommendations.

Organize the data into meaningful reports and identify trends. Where are leads coming from? What messaging content drew the most engagement? What web pages are seeing the most traffic? Have you noticed your social posts perform better at certain times or days of the week? Adjust your strategy based on the findings. As you pull apart key findings, you’ll be able to create a better roadmap to meet your objectives.  

6. Share your findings internally.

What takeaways did you have from step five? How should this impact your strategy going forward? Create a report that summarizes your findings and recommendations to share with internal stakeholders. Consider which team/s you’ll need to collaborate with to implement your new strategy. Other teams may benefit from your findings, such as Sales, Customer Service, and Product Development.  

Start pivoting faster and smarter.

Following these six steps will help ensure you understand what is or isn’t working to develop more effective strategies. And remember, no strategy should be set in stone. Regular audits will keep your company, customer and competitor information up to date, helping you see in real-time what matters most and allocate resources smarter.