Gemma Philpott
TL;DR
A proper audit has two components: performance marketing (finding wasted spend and scaling opportunities) and analytics foundation (ensuring your tracking setup is accurate). Focus on immediate wins like pausing zero-conversion keywords, implementing server-side tracking, and setting up automated alerts. Expect 5-15% variance between platforms—anything higher signals broken tracking. Document everything, audit quarterly, and prioritize fixes by ROI impact.
A lot of marketing audits are exercises in box-checking that collect dust in shared drives. Proper audits should immediately identify actionable insights, find where you're losing money, and offer fresh opportunities to improve your return on investment. We know because we do them for every new client that joins us, and they’re always revealing.
Here's how to conduct a marketing audit that sorts through the fluff and delivers actionable insights your business can actually use.
The two-pronged approach: performance + data
A comprehensive marketing audit requires examining both your performance marketing and your underlying data infrastructure. Miss either piece, and you're building strategies on quicksand.
Performance marketing audit: Where your money goes and whether it's working
Marketing data audit: Whether the numbers you're using to make decisions are accurate
Let's break down each component.
Performance marketing audit: finding the money leaks
The primary goal here is simple: identify wasted spend and revenue lost. This isn't about minor optimizations either — we're looking for the 20% of your account spend generating zero conversions, budget misallocations hurting your efficiency, and scale opportunities left on the table.
Three core areas to audit
- Wasted spend and revenue recovery
Start with the obvious inefficiencies. Pull keyword-level performance data and identify spend with zero conversions. This often represents 15-20% of total account spend that can be paused immediately. Look for budget mismanagement between campaigns: high-performing campaigns deprived of budget while low performers get overfunded.
- Your foundations
Are you implementing value-based bidding where appropriate? How's your ad relevance and landing page alignment? Creative diversity preventing ad fatigue? Campaign structures optimized for conversion density? These aren't nice-to-haves, they're table stakes for competitive performance.
- Scale opportunities
The most overlooked audit area. You'll often find accounts over-investing in areas hitting diminishing returns while under-investing in incremental opportunities. This shows up in a number of ways: a decline over time in new users being reached, net new user revenue being generated, or fewer people searching for your brand compared to the demand for the product.
Scale isn't about spending more money. It's about reallocating existing investment into more incremental areas that can actually grow the business sustainably.
Marketing data audit: making sure your numbers are real
Your performance audit isn’t useful if it's based on inaccurate data. A data tracking audit ensures the foundation of your decision-making is solid.
The three-point data audit framework
- Confirm your current setup works
Before diving into optimizations, verify that your main KPIs are actually tracking. For e-commerce, ensure purchases are flowing into your platforms correctly. For lead generation, confirm form submissions are being captured. If you see zero conversions in platforms where you should see activity, stop everything and fix tracking first.
- Implement current best practices
The digital landscape evolves rapidly. Enhanced conversions in Google Ads, server-side tracking through Meta's Conversions API or TikTok's Events API — these aren't optional upgrades anymore. They're essential for maintaining data accuracy as we (maybe) move toward a cookieless future.
Server-side tracking bypasses browser-dependent pixels entirely, sending conversion data directly between servers. This eliminates the cookie dependency that's becoming increasingly unreliable.
- Identify additional opportunities
Once basics are covered, look for enhancements that can elevate performance. Offline conversion tracking is a non-negotiable for lead generation businesses. Why? it connects your CRM data back to your ad platforms, enabling optimization based on actual sales, not just form fills.
Common data pitfalls and quick wins
Referral exclusions: If users are redirected through third-party payment platforms like PayPal during checkout, your attribution may be crediting PayPal instead of your original ad campaign. Configure referral exclusions to maintain proper attribution.
UTM parameter management: Broken or missing UTM parameters break attribution chains. If UTMs are dropped during a user's journey, you lose the ability to trace conversions back to their original source.
Platform variance expectations: Google Ads and your e-commerce platform will never match exactly due to different attribution models. Expect 5-15% variance. If you're seeing 2x differences, something's broken.
Setting up audit alerts: the ongoing system
Manual quarterly audits are just the beginning. Smart marketers implement automated alerts that flag issues before they become expensive problems.
Set up alerts for:
- Performance declines outside normal variation
- Campaigns not reaching data sufficiency
- Conversion tracking drops
- Budget pacing issues
The upfront work to establish these systems pays dividends in time saved and problems caught early.
Non-negotiables for data tracking setup
While marketing tactics vary, certain analytics fundamentals are non-negotiable:
Event definition alignment: Your purchase event in Google Ads must match your purchase event in Meta, which must align with how your analytics platform defines purchases. Misaligned definitions make cross-platform analysis impossible and waste optimization efforts.
Documentation and historical context: Every tracking change should include notes explaining what was modified and why. Without historical context, troubleshooting future issues becomes guesswork. Use version histories in tools like Google Tag Manager to maintain an audit trail.
What about audit frequency?
For us, quarterly comprehensive audits are the minimum, with automated alerts for immediate issues. The initial setup requires significant effort, but automation reduces ongoing maintenance while keeping you ahead of problems.
Don't treat audits as annual events. In performance marketing, quarterly reviews prevent small issues from becoming budget-draining disasters.
Making audit results actionable
The best audit findings mean nothing without implementation. Prioritize fixes by potential impact:
- Immediate wins: Stop wasteful spend, fix broken tracking
- Medium-term improvements: Implement best practices, reallocate budgets
- Long-term opportunities: Test new channels, advanced measurement setups
A comprehensive marketing audit is about systematically identifying where your marketing is broken and where it can be dramatically improved. Done right, a single audit can immediately improve ROI while establishing systems that prevent future inefficiencies.
The difference between a good marketing program and a great one often comes down to this level of systematic analysis and optimization.