How to Run a Marketing Audit for Your Business (Step-by-Step Guide)

Is your marketing strategy working — or just running?

If you’re not sure, it’s time to run a marketing audit.

A thorough marketing audit reveals what’s driving results, what’s underperforming, and where your biggest growth opportunities lie — across your website, channels, tools and team.

Whether you’re running paid ads, building SEO traffic, or just relying on your website to convert leads, this guide will walk you through how to audit your marketing performance — and give you a head start with a free website audit tool you can run in under 60 seconds.

What is a Marketing Audit?

A marketing audit is a structured analysis of all your marketing activity, tech, and results. It checks whether your strategy, tools, and tactics are aligned — and actually working.

Think of it as an MOT for your marketing engine.

Depending on your business, a marketing audit may include:

• Website performance & SEO review

• Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) audit

• Marketing tech stack review

• Paid media channel analysis

• Email & content performance review

• Customer journey & funnel diagnostics

A good audit gives you not just data — but insight and recommendations to improve ROI.

Why You Should Audit Your Marketing (Even if Things Seem Fine)

Here’s why every business should run a marketing audit regularly — especially if:

• You’re unsure which channels are performing best

• You’ve scaled fast, but lack a clear marketing roadmap

• Leads are dropping, but you don’t know why

• You’re switching agencies or hiring new marketers

• Your tools and tracking feel “a bit all over the place”

Regular audits help you:

• Fix broken tracking and underperforming campaigns

• Identify wasted spend

• Find quick wins in CRO, SEO and email

• Create a strategic plan based on evidence, not guesswork

Step-by-Step: How to Run a Marketing Audit for Your Business

Here’s how to run a complete marketing audit, broken into manageable phases.

1. Start With a Free Website Audit (60 Seconds)

Your website is the hub of your marketing. Begin by running a free website audit to check:

• On-page SEO

• Page speed & mobile performance

• Technical issues (broken links, HTTPS, indexability)

• UX/CRO fundamentals (load speed, navigation, clarity)

You’ll get an instant report showing what needs attention — and a solid foundation for deeper audits.

Run your free audit now

2. Audit Your Marketing Tech Stack

Your tools should help you grow, not hold you back. A marketing tech audit checks if your stack is:

• Properly integrated

• Tracking the right data

• Creating automation, not admin

• Flexible enough to scale

Check the following:

• Google Analytics / GA4: Is it configured to track meaningful goals?

• CRM (e.g. HubSpot, ActiveCampaign): Are leads syncing properly?

• Email marketing: Are open/click/conversion rates in line with benchmarks?

• CMS / Website platform: Are you using plugins or tools that conflict or slow you down?

• Conversion tools: Are popups, landing pages, personalisation tools helping or hurting performance?

Document issues, and note opportunities to simplify or upgrade.

3. Audit Each Marketing Channel (Only the Ones You Use)

You don’t need to audit every channel — just the ones where you're actively investing time or money. For each channel, check:

Paid Ads (Google, Meta, LinkedIn)

• Are campaigns structured logically (by funnel stage or intent)?

• Are conversions being tracked correctly?

• Are you bidding on the right keywords or audiences?

• What’s your ROAS or cost-per-lead trend?

Email Marketing

• Are you segmenting audiences effectively?

• What do your open, click and unsubscribe rates say?

• Are automations driving value?

• Are your emails mobile-friendly?

Content Marketing

• Which blog posts drive the most traffic or leads?

• Are content pieces aligned with search intent and SEO best practices?

• Are internal links helping or hurting performance?

SEO & CRO

• Are your priority pages optimised for target keywords?

• Is your site structured for crawlability?

• Are users converting when they land on key pages?

Not sure where to start?Use a free website audit for SEO and CRO to uncover surface-level issues and prioritise what to fix first.

4. Review Your Customer Journey & Funnel

Even if your channels are set up right, customers may still be falling through the cracks.Use this checklist:

• Where do leads drop off most often?

• Are CTAs clear and relevant at every touchpoint?

• Are landing pages aligned with ad or email messaging?

• Are nurture sequences timely and tailored?

You can back this up with heatmaps, scroll maps or session recordings to see where users hesitate or bounce.

5. Document Your Findings (Don’t Skip This!)

Your audit isn’t valuable unless it’s actionable. Organise findings into a spreadsheet or Airtable like this:

Observation	Recommended Action	Priority	Owner	Status	Notes
Homepage loads slowly on mobile	Compress hero image & defer scripts	High	Dev	In progress	Run PageSpeed Insights

Want a plug-and-play audit format? Our full marketing audit comes in this structure — so you can work through it with your team or agency.

Tools You Can Use (Free & Paid)

Here are tools that help automate parts of your marketing audit:

• Rise Marketing Free Website Audit Tool – Instant report on SEO, performance & CRO

• Google Analytics / GA4 – Behaviour, traffic, goal tracking

• Google Search Console – SEO & technical diagnostics

• Hotjar or Clarity – Heatmaps and session replays for CRO

• Screaming Frog (free) – SEO & site crawl

• SEMRush / Ahrefs / Moz – Keyword & backlink audits

• Email tools (e.g. Mailchimp, Klaviyo) – Built-in analytics

When to Bring in a Marketing Audit Expert

Some issues need an outside view. Consider a full marketing audit if:

• You don’t have time to run this in-house

• Your data feels disconnected or overwhelming

• You’ve hit a plateau in leads, sales or ROI

• You need a roadmap to hand to your team or agency

At Rise, we offer full audits that combine SEO, CRO, paid media, tech stack and content performance into one clear strategy — with prioritised actions and accountability built in.

Start with your free website audit and we’ll recommend the best next steps based on your results. Try it here

Final Thoughts: A Good Audit is Your Growth Engine

Audits aren’t about perfection — they’re about clarity.By stepping back and objectively reviewing your marketing, you’ll see:

• What to double down on

• What to pause or pivot

• Where to make the highest-impact changes next

You can start with a simple, free website audit today — and build from there.

Run your free website audit now to get instant insights and a clearer path to growth.