Marketing Audits.

The terms are often used interchangeably, and I use them together deliberately. An audit examines what's happening — channel performance, spend efficiency, KPI and revenue alignment, and competitive positioning. An assessment evaluates capability and process — team structure, how decisions get made, and where execution slows down internally. Both together give you a complete picture. Neither alone is sufficient.

The sweet spot is B2B companies with $2M–$50M in revenue who are running active marketing but aren't seeing the growth they expect. You have marketing happening — this audit tells you why it isn't translating to revenue the way it should. The engagement scales accordingly. A founder-led company with one marketing channel needs a different scope than a 50-person company running six.

An agency sells execution — content, ads, SEO, creative. Their incentive is to keep you on retainer for the services they provide. A marketing audit is the opposite: independent, advisory, and built to tell you the truth about what you actually need, whether that's more of what you're already doing or something completely different. If you're already working with an agency, an audit is often the best way to evaluate whether you're getting a return on what you're spending — with no conflict of interest in the answer. If you're about to hire an agency, an audit first tells you exactly what to brief them on and what success should look like. That brief alone is worth the investment.

Both. The findings report documents what's broken and why. The action plan tells you what to do about it, in what order, and what impact to expect. The deliverable is built for decision-making, not just diagnosis. You leave with a prioritized list of fixes, not a 50-page document that sits in a drawer.

Audit fees vary by scope — see the Pricing section above. ROI is typically strong: a rigorous audit routinely returns over 150% in the first year, often making it the highest-return project a company can undertake. The recovery usually comes from two sources: spend that was going to channels that weren't working and can be redeployed, and pipeline improvements from fixing gaps in demand generation and messaging alignment.

Engagements begin with a 60-minute kickoff call with key stakeholders. From there, you can expect weekly check-ins or async updates depending on the scope and pace you prefer. Most clients find two to three touchpoints over the audit period is sufficient — not frequent enough to feel like overhead, close enough to stay aligned. Communication runs through email and video calls. No project management platform is required on your side. I work around your schedule, not the other way around. For Audit + Advisory (fractional CMO) engagements, the rhythm is more embedded: typically a standing weekly or biweekly leadership meeting, async availability between sessions, and quarterly strategy reviews.

Access to your analytics platforms — Google Analytics, Google Ads, LinkedIn Campaign Manager, and your CRM if you have one. Your current marketing materials: campaigns, landing pages, email sequences, any strategy documents that exist. A 60-minute kickoff call with the key people who own or influence marketing decisions. If there's a marketing manager or agency involved, their input is useful but not required on day one. That's it to start. The audit is designed to be low-burden on your side. You provide access and context; the diagnostic work is done independently.

Core audits typically complete in 2–3 weeks. Full audits run 4–6 weeks depending on the number of channels and the volume of data to review. A clear timeline is established before the engagement starts — no scope creep, no open-ended timelines. The Audit + Advisory (fractional CMO) tier begins with the same 4–6 week audit, then transitions into an ongoing monthly engagement.

Fully. All client information — channel data, spend figures, competitive intelligence, internal strategy documents — is treated as confidential and never shared or referenced outside the engagement. If a formal NDA is preferred before the scoping call, that's straightforward to arrange. Just ask.

Core and Full Audit tiers are advisory-only. You own the findings and the plan; your team or agency executes. The deliverable is written to be handed directly to whoever will implement — no translation layer required. The Audit + Advisory tier includes ongoing fractional CMO support if you want a senior strategic partner to implement alongside your team.

Free audits are lead generation tools. They're designed to identify problems that the agency offering them can then charge you to fix. The methodology is shaped by the services they sell. My audits are paid and advisory-only. The only agenda is finding the truth and giving you an actionable plan. If you don't need a particular service — including services I offer — I'll tell you that.

Yes — and it's often better timing than starting from scratch. An independent audit gives your existing team or agency a clear, prioritized brief: here's what's working, here's what isn't, and here's where to focus. That's more valuable than a general mandate to "improve marketing." For the marketing manager specifically, an independent audit often surfaces structural issues — misaligned KPIs, budget allocation problems, team structure gaps — that are difficult to raise internally without it looking like a performance critique. An external finding creates room for the honest conversation.

No. It raises the stakes. AI changes how marketing is executed — content production, ad delivery, search behaviour. It doesn't change the need for strategy, brand positioning, or KPI and revenue alignment. What it does is accelerate the cost of getting those wrong: bad positioning scales faster now, and misallocated budgets compound more quickly when AI tools are amplifying the activity. Only 17% of marketing professionals have received detailed AI training. Most organizations are adopting AI tools without the strategic foundation to deploy them effectively. That gap is exactly where an experienced outside perspective creates disproportionate value.

Yes. I work with B2B companies across Canada and North America, and most audit work is conducted remotely. Location has never been a constraint on a successful engagement.

A free 30-minute scoping call. No commitment, no pitch. The call is to understand your situation, confirm the right scope, and give you a clear sense of whether an audit is the right fit right now. If it is, you'll have a proposal within 48 hours. If it isn't, I'll tell you that too.