Marketing Audits and Lessons Learned

The point of marketing and brand audits is to systematically evaluate your marketing performance, brand positioning, and customer perception to identify inefficiencies and growth opportunities. What I find, time and again, is that businesses miss opportunities their competitors are exploiting. They operate without precise data on what actually drives revenue, or run fragmented campaigns with no cohesive strategy.

Even the most sophisticated companies leave money on the table by failing to conduct regular professional marketing audits. And we're not talking about marginal gains from experimental tactics. A business generating $1 million in revenue that improves its marketing performance by just 15% adds $150,000 to the top line. I regularly see revenue improvements in the 20-40% range—the kind of numbers that transform P&L statements and fund expansion plans.

I've been lucky enough to do marketing, brand strategy and AI audits for a wide range of companies: major technology brands, solar companies, tech start-ups, advertising agencies, online retailers, entertainment companies, animation studios, fintech giants, arts organizations, and record labels. Some have marketing teams of ten or more people. Others have a founder doing all the marketing themselves. The themes are remarkably similar.

Here are the most common issues, lessons and opportunities I've seen from doing marketing and brand strategy audits. Marketing audits uncover hard truths about your marketing plan and brand—especially in the age of AI. The good news is that everything is fixable, and the returns for doing this work are significant.

1. There's Always Room for Marketing Improvement

   
   Obviously, I'm going to say this as I do marketing audits for a living. But no matter how sophisticated your digital marketing infrastructure is—whether you have perfectly designed landing pages, an active blog, thriving social channels, or optimized Google Ads campaigns—there is always room for improvement that can dramatically boost performance. I've never conducted a marketing audit and said, "Nope, didn't find anything that can be improved."

   
   And by improvement, I mean tangible outcomes: more traffic, more customers, broader awareness, more leads, more sales and more revenue. Not vanity metrics or small percentage gains, but fundamental shifts in how effectively your marketing engine converts investment into results.
   Modern marketing creates blind spots. The difficulty is objectively seeing your own operations when you're buried in day-to-day execution. An audit and external view are critical.

   
   

2. Low-Hanging Fruit: Marketing Problems Can Be Solved This Month

   
   Here's what consistently surprises me: many companies are ignoring basic marketing fundamentals—quick fixes that deliver immediate returns.

   
   

   Across 25 audits, I've seen Google Analytics either misconfigured or completely missing. Company information is inconsistent across directories and platforms. Google Business Profiles are unoptimized or absent. UTM tracking is broken or nonexistent. Conversion tracking is missing in action. Branded search terms are ignored in paid campaigns. I see high-friction website flows that bleed conversions. Even something as simple as company email signatures —I've seen wild variations within the same company. These aren't edge cases—they're patterns. And they're all low-hanging fruit: fixable within days, with ROI that compounds immediately.
   
   

3. Know Your Competition and How You Stack Up

   
   Another recurring gap: companies don't honestly know their competition or how they're demonstrably better. They can name their competitors. They might even have a slide in their pitch deck with a competitive matrix. But can they prove, with data and specificity, why a customer should choose them? Can they articulate, beyond generic claims of "better service" or "more innovative," what makes them superior? This lack of clear differentiation is a consistent theme. In an environment where buyers conduct extensive research before ever contacting sales, ignoring this is expensive.

   
   Marketing audits include a deep dive into your competitive landscape. This work often uncovers competitors you didn't even know about (or didn't take seriously), reveals what others are spending on marketing, and shows that your marketing and brand positioning could win more business if they were stronger. Competitive reviews are high ROI strategic marketing work that can be done quickly.

   
   

4. Business Plans + Marketing Strategy = Measurable Growth

   
   Business 101, right? During initial discovery with marketing audit clients, I always request copies of their existing marketing strategy, media mix, marketing budget, advertising plans, and business plan. I do this to quickly get a sense of what's been done and establish a marketing performance baseline. Over 50% of the businesses I've worked with lack these critical strategic plans, in whole or in part. They're often operating on institutional knowledge, scattered spreadsheets, unintegrated CRMs, and assumptions that have never been pressure-tested or documented. I'm a marketing consultant, but I'm often pulled into business and growth planning because my audits sometimes ask questions that can't be answered—and need to be.

   
   A marketing and brand growth strategy aligned with the business plan ensures resources (people, ads, content) are efficiently focused on the right customers and activities to achieve revenue goals. Without this alignment, organizations waste budget and undermine their own business objectives. Google, Meta, and LinkedIn are happy to take your money. But why are you advertising where you are, and how does it relate to your quarter-over-quarter/YOY business plan? The two go hand in glove, and marketing audits help uncover what needs documenting to improve your bottom line.

   
   

5. Sales and Marketing Need to Speak the Same Language

   
   Perhaps the most expensive problem I encounter: sales and marketing teams operating in parallel universes with no agreed definition of a "qualified lead." Marketing generates leads, sales dismisses them as garbage. Sales complains about lead quality, Marketing complains that Sales doesn't follow up. No one agrees on what constitutes a qualified lead—whether it's a Marketing Qualified Lead or a Sales Qualified Lead—or on what the handoff process should look like.

   
   This dysfunction can waste 30-40% of marketing budgets. The impact is massive: budget waste, finger-pointing, good leads going cold, sales teams working with unqualified prospects, and marketing teams optimizing for the wrong metrics. Research shows (this one I got from ChatGPT) that the average B2B company follows up on only 27% of marketing-generated leads.
   The fix requires an executive mandate and a bit of what I call corporate therapy. Organizations need to establish a service-level agreement between teams: what marketing will deliver, how quickly sales will respond, and when leads will be recycled. Implement lead scoring with input from both teams. Create closed-loop reporting so marketing sees what converts to revenue, not just opportunities. This represents a 2-3 month cultural and process overhaul, but the ROI is immediate and substantial.

   
   

6. Use the Measurement Tools You Have. Add AI to the Mix.

   
   Another consistent finding: companies underutilize basic attribution and measurement technology. Google Analytics sits at the heart of measuring digital marketing and brand awareness, and it's essential for optimizing campaigns for maximum ROI. Yet few companies have attribution correctly set up, aren't measuring every part of their marketing strategy or, worse, don't even look at their Google Analytics daily. They're underutilizing out-of-the-box insights that could inform not just marketing decisions but overall business strategy. In the marketing strategies I run for clients, I relentlessly measure marketing performance and evaluate strategies and tactics using over 100 data points to uncover issues and implement fixes that improve the bottom line.

   
   The same point could be made for AI tools. Everyone is using them for marketing production—ChatGPT and Claude are great for content creation, Jasper for copywriting, Canva's AI features for simple design tasks, HubSpot's AI for customer relationship management and email marketing, and Hootsuite for AI scheduling. The list goes on.

   
   

   But how are companies using AI tools to measure their marketing performance, media mix and know what's driving sales and revenue on a day-to-day basis? AI won't replace human insight into business context, brand understanding, and the strategic creativity needed to develop comprehensive marketing strategies that align with company goals, target audiences, and competitive positioning. But they are tools that, when used right, turbocharge your marketing—and you have them at hand right now. I do AI marketing audits to help your company realize your strategy and winning marketing tactics to move ahead of the competition.

   
   

7. Fix the Mid-Funnel Black Hole

   
   B2B companies excel at top-of-funnel content—blog posts, awareness campaigns—and bottom-funnel tactics like demos and pricing. But marketing audits of customer journeys often reveal a black hole in the middle. Prospects go dark for 6-18 months because there's no systematic nurture strategy keeping you top-of-mind during the consideration phase.

   
   The impact: You're present during initial research, then competitors swoop in during active evaluation because you disappeared. Win rates suffer because you're not influencing the six to eight stakeholders involved in B2B buying decisions during lengthy evaluation periods.

   
   The solution involves building multi-touch nurture sequences based on prospect behaviour and buying stage. You need to invest in creating middle-funnel content: comparison guides, ROI calculators, implementation roadmaps, and case studies segmented by industry and use case. Map content to buying committee roles, recognizing that technical buyers need different information than economic buyers. This is a 3 to 4-month project when done correctly.

   
   

8. Talk to Your Existing Customers—They Already Trust You

   
   B2B companies spend 5-25 times more on acquiring new customers than on expanding existing ones. Yet existing customers already trust you, understand your product or service, and are cheaper to upsell. Many B2B brands I've audited lack a systematic approach to identifying expansion opportunities, executing cross-sells, or preventing churn.

   
   The missed revenue is massive. Research shows that a 5% increase in retention can increase profits 25-95%. If you're ignoring your customer base, competitors are targeting those same customers, and you're not proactively managing the relationship.
   The fix: implement customer health scoring to identify at-risk accounts and expansion opportunities. Launch dedicated customer marketing campaigns—quarterly business reviews, exclusive webinars, user communities, and expansion plays based on usage data. I often recommend referral and advocacy programs. Measure Net Dollar Retention. This isn't an overnight project, but get it right and the lifetime value impact is transformational.

   
   

9. Thought Leadership—Painful but Necessary

   
   Thought leadership strategies come up in marketing audits, often. Much B2B "thought leadership" is thinly veiled product marketing or generic advice that could apply to any company. There's no unique point of view, no proprietary data, no courage to stake a contrarian position. Executive visibility is non-existent—CEOs and founders aren't building personal brands or contributing meaningfully to industry conversations.
   
   

   The result: You're invisible to buyers conducting early research. You're not in the consideration set when deals are being shaped. Industry analysts and journalists don't quote you. Your competitors with strong points of view are defining the category and setting buying criteria that favour their solutions.
   
   

   I advise developing an actual thesis about how your market is changing and why. Publish original research. Take contrarian positions backed by data. Have executives speak at major events and publish regularly on LinkedIn (which I know is painful). Build relationships with industry analysts. Thought leadership is a long-term commitment—12+ months minimum—and needs executive buy-in (often tricky). Still, it establishes category authority and fills the top of the funnel with qualified prospects.

   
   

10. Your Competitors Are Spending on Strategic Marketing. So Should You.

    
    

    Businesses that underspend on marketing lose brand visibility and market share to competitors who maintain stronger customer engagement. This leads to declining acquisition, reduced revenue, and difficulty recovering once competitors dominate customers' minds.

    
    Companies allocate an average of 7.7% of revenue to marketing, with B2B companies spending around 6% and B2C companies 5-10%, according to HubSpot. Gartner puts successful B2B budgets higher at 11.2% of revenue. These percentages vary by industry—banking and finance average 9.49%, communications and media 14%, while retail and e-commerce often exceed 10% (2024 Asymmetric Marketing data).

    
    Where does your business land? Marketing budgeting comes up in every audit I do. Some businesses put marketing in the front seat; others treat it as a bolt-on to Sales or something to do when they have "extra" budget. Consistently investing in measurable, strategic marketing—and over-investing when markets are tough—is core to business growth.
    
    

    Marketing Audits Show the Way Forward (And Ruffle Feathers)

    
    Marketing audits reveal uncomfortable truths. They expose gaps between what organizations believe about their marketing effectiveness and what the data actually shows. They illuminate opportunities so obvious in hindsight that clients often ask, "How did we miss this?"
    But that's precisely why they can deliver ROI improvements of 20-40%. The low-hanging fruit alone—the properly configured analytics, the consistent branding, the optimized Google Business Profiles—can generate immediate wins. The bigger strategic initiatives – documenting your strategies, aligning marketing and sales teams, investing properly in your brand - transform marketing from a cost center into a genuine growth engine.
    
    The question isn't whether your marketing could be more effective. After 25 audits across many different industries, I can tell you with certainty: it can. The question is whether you're willing to look objectively at what's working, what's not, and what you're leaving on the table.