Strategy
The Marketing Audit Checklist: 40 Questions to Find Wasted Spend and Missed Growth
Every marketing program accumulates waste and blind spots. Work through these 40 questions to find where the money is leaking — and where it is waiting.
Key takeaways
- Audit the system, not just channels — the biggest problems live between them.
- Start with measurement; if the data is wrong, every other conclusion is too.
- Size every finding in revenue, pipeline or savings so you can prioritize.
- Turn the audit into a 90-day plan with owners, or it becomes a document nobody reads.
A marketing audit is a structured review of everything that drives growth: strategy, channels, funnel, measurement, technology and team. Done well, it pays for itself many times over by recovering wasted spend and exposing the few changes that matter most.
Use these questions as a working checklist. Answer them honestly, with data where possible.
Strategy and economics
- Can you state your target customer and value proposition in one sentence each?
- Do you know customer acquisition cost by channel, and payback on gross margin?
- Do you know customer lifetime value by segment and cohort?
- Is the marketing budget set from a growth model or from last year’s number?
- Are marketing goals expressed in revenue, pipeline or margin?
Measurement
- Does reported revenue in analytics reconcile with finance within an acceptable margin?
- Are conversion events defined consistently across platforms?
- Are server-side tracking or conversion APIs in place for major ad platforms?
- Are UTMs applied consistently?
- Have you run an incrementality test on your largest channel in the past year?
Paid media
- What share of spend goes to branded or retargeting campaigns that may not be incremental?
- Are bids optimized to value or profit rather than conversion counts?
- When were account structures last simplified?
- How many new creative concepts were tested last month?
- Are search terms and placements reviewed for waste?
SEO and AI search
- What share of organic traffic is non-branded?
- Are there crawl, indexation or Core Web Vitals issues?
- Do you have dedicated pages for each priority topic and service?
- How are you described — if at all — by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews?
- Which authoritative sites link to or mention you, versus competitors?
Conversion
- What is conversion rate by device, and how big is the mobile gap?
- Where is the biggest drop-off in the funnel?
- Do paid campaigns land on dedicated, relevant pages?
- How many fields are on your primary form, and are they all necessary?
- Are you running structured experiments, and what did the last five teach you?
Lifecycle and retention
- What share of revenue comes from existing customers?
- Are core automated flows in place — welcome, abandonment, post-purchase or onboarding, win-back?
- Is messaging segmented by behavior and value?
- Is email deliverability healthy, with authentication configured?
- Do you know why customers churn or don’t repurchase?
Technology and data
- Is the CRM the trusted system of record for leads and customers?
- Are lead routing and follow-up automated and fast?
- Which tools overlap or go unused?
- Can you build a standard performance report without manual spreadsheet work?
- Are AI tools being used in governed, shared workflows — or ad hoc?
Team and partners
- Is there one senior owner of the marketing plan and results?
- Do agencies report on business outcomes or platform metrics?
- Do you own all ad accounts, data and creative?
- Are marketing and sales aligned on definitions and SLAs?
- What would you stop doing tomorrow if you had to cut 20% of the budget?
How long a proper audit takes
A focused internal review of the questions above can be done in a week or two if data is accessible. A thorough external audit — hands-on analysis of every ad account, analytics property, CRM and key funnel, with each opportunity sized — typically takes two to three weeks. Most of that time goes into measurement: if tracking is unreliable, it has to be fixed or adjusted before any channel conclusions can be trusted.
What a good audit report includes
- An executive summary that fits on one page.
- A measurement verdict: can current data be trusted for decisions, and if not, what to fix first.
- Channel-by-channel findings with evidence, not opinions.
- Every opportunity sized in revenue, pipeline or savings, with a confidence level.
- A prioritized 90-day plan with owners.
- A short list of things to stop doing.
Turning answers into action
For each weak answer, estimate the impact in revenue, pipeline or savings, the effort required and your confidence. Rank by impact over effort. Pick the top three to five, assign owners and dates, and review progress weekly. An audit is only as valuable as the plan it produces.