Marketing Audit Checklist, Including the Prospect Test

The leads have slowed down, or the agency report says everything's fine and it doesn't feel fine. A marketing audit is how you find out. It's a written review of everything between a stranger's search and a booked call: tracking, ad accounts, spend, landing pages, follow-up, reviews and site speed.

A good audit ends with a short list of fixes in order of money at stake. A bad one skips the phone, which is where a lot of that money gets lost.

Below is the checklist I use, the prospect test most audits leave out and five things you can check yourself this week.

What should a marketing audit cover?

It should cover seven areas, in this order, because each one depends on the one before it. The checklist below is the order I work through them.

1. Tracking

Can you tell where each lead came from? Check that Google Analytics is installed, that Google Ads and Meta conversions fire, that forms record a source and that calls from ads use tracking numbers.

If tracking is broken, every number in the rest of the audit is wrong. That's why it goes first.

2. Accounts and access

Who is in your Google Ads, Meta Business Manager, Google Business Profile, Analytics, Search Console, domain registrar and CRM, and at what level? Old agencies and former staff can keep admin access for years.

Google Ads has five access levels, and only admin can change who else gets in. Confirm you hold that seat.

3. Spend

Pull the last 90 days by platform and by campaign. You want what was spent, how many leads came in, cost per lead and how many of those leads became booked calls or signed clients. If the last column is blank, that's the finding.

4. Landing pages

Where does each ad send people? Check that the page matches the ad, states a price or range, shows a phone number above the fold on a phone and has one form that works. Submit the form yourself.

5. Follow-up

What happens in the 10 minutes after a form or a call? Who gets the notification? How fast does a person respond? What happens to a missed call, and does a text go out on its own?

In my experience, it's the section audits skip most, and it's the one I spend the most time on. I wrote up what should happen in the first five minutes after a lead comes in.

6. Reviews and Google Business Profile

Your profile name should match your real business name, with a real address, tight categories, the right hours and photos of your actual office. Google's guidelines for representing your business spell out the name, address and category rules. Breaking them is also what gets a Google Business Profile suspended.

Then look at review count, how recent the reviews are and whether anyone replies.

7. Site speed and mobile

Run the site through Google's PageSpeed Insights on mobile and read the Core Web Vitals. Then open it on your own phone over cell data, not office Wi-Fi, and try to book a call. Note everything in the way.

What does a bad marketing audit skip?

It skips the phone. Many audits I've seen are a screenshot of a Google Ads dashboard, a list of keywords you're not ranking for and a proposal. Nobody calls the business.

I call, from a number they don't recognize, during business hours, as a prospect with one question.

In my experience, that one test turns up problems a keyword report never shows. A campaign with a good cost per lead feeding a phone that rings out at 4:45 on a Friday has a hole in it, and no bid adjustment fixes that.

On the agency side, an audit starts with walking the path a prospect takes and finding where it breaks. In any company's funnel, the common breaks often aren't in the ad account:

• A form stops sending notifications after an update.
• A tracking number gets forwarded to a line nobody answers.
• A phone number disappears in a redesign.

None of that shows up in a dashboard. You find it when you call and click through the way a stranger would.

The other common skip is accounts and access. Some agencies don't like auditing who owns what, because the answer is often "we do," and you shouldn't be okay with that.

How long does a marketing audit take?

For a small company with one website, two ad platforms and a Google Business Profile, it takes me three to four hours of work. That's spread over a few days, because you'll wait on access and on the follow-up test. A company with multiple locations, several ad accounts and a sales team takes a day or two.

Access is what stretches it. Plan for a day of back and forth, and for finding out that nobody knows the Search Console login.

The audit should produce one page: findings in order of money at stake, each with a fix and who does it. A 40-page PDF is a sales document.

Who should run your marketing audit?

Pick someone who won't be selling you the fix, or who tells you up front that they might. I'm in the second group. The free Buyer Test at Hickey Media is a partial audit I'd like to turn into work, and you get the findings either way.

For a fully independent audit, hire a consultant for a fixed block of hours with no monthly program to sell. Either way, ask for the checklist before they start. If they can't show you one, they're going to improvise.

What to do next

1. Call your own business from a number the front desk doesn't know. Count the rings and write down what happened.
2. Submit your own website form and time the response.
3. In Google Ads, go to Admin, then Access and security. List every user and remove anyone who shouldn't be there.
4. Pull a 90-day report of spend and leads per campaign. Add a column for "became a booked call" and fill it from your CRM.
5. Run your homepage through PageSpeed Insights on mobile.

If you'd rather I run the phone and form part, request the free Buyer Test. For the website side, the free website checkup tests your site on a phone and scans for ad tracking.

FAQ

How often should you do a marketing audit?

Once a year in full, and the follow-up test (call and form) every quarter. The phone changes more often than the ad account does.

How much does a marketing audit cost?

It varies. Hickey Media's Buyer Test is free. A full audit is done as consulting, which is sold as a 10-hour block for $1,500, and a small company's audit takes me about three to four of those hours.

Can I do a marketing audit myself?

You can do the follow-up test and the access review yourself, this week. Spend analysis and tracking checks go faster with someone who reads those reports every day.

What should I ask before hiring someone to audit my marketing?

Mostly what you'd ask an agency: who owns the accounts, who does the work and what the deliverable will look like. I keep a list of questions to ask a marketing agency.

Book a free call

To talk through what your audit should cover, book a free 15-minute call with Blake by phone or Zoom. The full audit is done as consulting, and the free Buyer Test covers the phone and form part on its own.