Marketing audit

A marketing audit is an independent review of a business’s whole marketing system: the positioning and offer, the website, search and maps visibility, the Google Business Profile, ad accounts, social, email, reviews, tracking, the CRM and how leads are followed up, what is being spent against what comes back, and how the team and agencies are set up. You receive a written report with findings ranked by impact and a plan for what to fix first. It is for owners and new marketing managers who need an honest picture before they decide anything. Canada Create is a Toronto agency serving businesses across Canada.

Contents

• When to commission a marketing audit
• What the audit looks at
• Website and conversion review
• Search, maps and reviews
• Ads, social and email accounts
• Tracking and data quality
• CRM and lead follow up
• Spend, results and the people behind them
• The report and ranked findings
• Compliance points an audit flags
• How an audit runs
• What a marketing audit costs
• How to choose an auditor
• Your next step

When to commission a marketing audit

An audit is most useful at a turning point, when someone is about to make a decision about marketing and wants it based on what is actually happening rather than on what vendors report.

Four common triggers

• A new marketing lead starts. A new manager or director inherits accounts, agencies and habits they did not choose. An audit gives them an independent baseline in their first weeks, before they are blamed for the past or credited for luck.
• Results have dropped. Calls are down, the pipeline is thin or online orders have slowed, and every vendor says their channel is fine. An audit looks at the whole chain to find where the break really is.
• Before switching agencies. Owners who are unhappy with an agency often cannot say exactly why. An audit separates poor work from poor setup, so the next agency is chosen for the right reasons.
• Before a budget increase. Adding money to a system that leaks only makes the leak bigger. An audit checks that tracking, follow up and the offer can carry more spend.

What an audit is not

An audit is not a sales pitch disguised as a review, and it is not a plan to rebuild everything. Its job is to describe what exists, judge it fairly and rank the fixes. Some findings will be things your team can fix in an afternoon. If a full new plan is needed afterwards, that is the job of a digital marketing strategy, another new page in this service family.

What the audit looks at

A marketing audit is wide on purpose. Problems in one place often show up as symptoms somewhere else: an ad campaign blamed for poor leads may be fine, while the form it sends people to is broken or the leads sit unanswered for days.

Positioning and offer

The audit starts with what you are saying and offering. Is it clear, within a few seconds on the home page, who the business serves and why someone should choose it? Do the ads, website, profile and sales team describe the business the same way? Is the main offer, such as a free estimate, a consultation or a first order discount, something the target customer wants? Weak positioning makes every channel work harder.

The full list of areas

Beyond positioning, the review covers the website and conversion paths, organic search visibility, the Google Business Profile and maps presence, reviews, each ad account, social channels, email, tracking and analytics, the CRM and lead follow up, spend against results, and the people and agencies doing the work. The proposal confirms which areas apply to your business, because a business that does not run ads does not need an ads review.

Website and conversion review

The website is where most marketing channels end up, so it gets close attention.

What is checked

The audit looks at whether each main service or product has a clear page, whether contact options work on phones, whether forms reach a monitored inbox, how fast key pages load, whether the booking or checkout flow loses people, and whether the pages answer the questions customers ask before they buy. It also checks basic accessibility and that the site is in your name, on hosting you control.

Where findings lead

A finding such as “the quote form fails on some phones” goes straight to the top of the list. Deeper, ongoing testing of pages to raise conversion rates is a separate discipline, covered on our conversion rate optimization page; the audit tells you whether that work is worth doing yet.

Search, maps and reviews

For many businesses, the first impression comes from a search result or a map listing, not from the website.

Organic search

The audit checks whether the business appears for the services and areas it cares about, whether the right pages show up, and whether there are obvious problems such as missing pages, duplicate content or pages blocked from search. A marketing audit looks at search as one part of the system; a detailed technical and content review of search alone is what our free SEO audit covers.

Google Business Profile and maps

For local businesses, the audit reviews the Google Business Profile: categories, services, hours, photos, the website link, whether the address and phone match the website, and whether questions and messages are being answered. Ongoing care of the profile is described on our Google Business Profile management page.

Reviews

The audit notes how many reviews the business has across the main platforms, how recent they are, whether the business replies, and what themes customers mention. Repeated complaints about the same thing are often the most useful finding in the whole report, because they point to an operational fix rather than a marketing one.

Ads, social and email accounts

Each paid and owned channel is reviewed for setup, spend and what it brings.

Ad accounts

For search and social ad accounts, the audit checks who owns the account, how campaigns are structured, which searches or audiences the money actually reaches, whether ads point to relevant pages, whether conversions are counted properly, and whether spend is going to areas or hours that never produce customers. It does not change anything in the account.

Social channels

The audit looks at which platforms the business is on, whether profiles are complete and consistent, how often they are used, whether content matches the positioning, and whether social produces anything measurable such as messages, profile visits or traffic. Sometimes the useful finding is that one channel can be dropped.

Email

For email, the audit reviews how subscribers join, whether consent is recorded, how often messages go out, what they contain and how people respond. A list that has not been mailed in years, or one built from contacts who never agreed to receive email, is flagged.

Tracking and data quality

Many audits find that the biggest problem is not any channel but the numbers used to judge them. If tracking is wrong, every decision based on it is suspect.

Common tracking problems

• Conversions counted twice, so ads look stronger than they are.
• Calls from the website or profile not counted at all.
• Form submissions counted even when they are spam.
• Analytics set up in a former employee’s or agency’s account.
• No way to connect a lead’s source to whether they became a customer.

Why tracking comes first

The report usually ranks tracking fixes near the top, because once the numbers are trustworthy, every other finding can be checked and every later decision can be measured. An audit that skips tracking may be judging channels on false data.

CRM and lead follow up

Marketing can bring an enquiry to the door and still lose it if nobody answers. This part of the audit often surprises owners.

What the audit tests

Where you agree, the audit traces what happens to a new enquiry: where it lands, who sees it, how quickly someone replies, whether the reply is helpful, and whether the lead is recorded with its source. It reviews the CRM or whatever system holds leads: are records complete, are stages used, are quotes followed up, are lost reasons noted? Missed calls and unanswered weekend forms are common findings.

Typical fixes

Fixes range from routing forms to the right person to setting up a CRM. Canada Create sets up and connects CS+, our CRM, for businesses that need one, described on our CRM and automation page. Where calls go unanswered, an AI receptionist is one option the report may mention.

Spend, results and the people behind them

The audit sets what the business spends on marketing beside what it can show for it, channel by channel, and looks at who is doing the work.

Spend versus results

The review gathers what is spent on ad platforms, agencies, freelancers, software subscriptions, directories and sponsorships, and compares each line with the enquiries, customers or sales it can be linked to. Lines with no measurable return are not automatically bad, since some spending builds awareness, but each one should have a stated reason. Forgotten subscriptions and overlapping tools are frequent finds.

Team and agency setup

The audit describes who does what: internal staff, agencies, freelancers, the owner. It looks for gaps (nobody owns the website), overlaps (two vendors both bidding on the same searches), unclear reporting lines and accounts held by vendors rather than the business. It describes the setup fairly; it is not a performance review of any person.

The report and ranked findings

The deliverable is a written report in plain language, followed by a walkthrough with you and anyone you want in the room.

How findings are ranked

Each finding states what was observed, why it matters, the likely impact on enquiries, sales or cost, the effort to fix it and who could fix it. Findings are then ranked by impact against effort, so the first page of the report lists the handful of changes most worth making. Quick fixes your own team can make are marked as such.

The plan that follows

The report ends with a short plan: what to fix first, what to decide next, and what can wait. You are free to carry it out with your own team, your current agencies or anyone else. If you ask us to help with some of it, that work is quoted separately in writing.

Read only access

To review accounts properly, an auditor needs to see them. We ask for read only or viewer access to analytics, ad accounts, the Google Business Profile, email and the CRM, never administrator rights and never your passwords. Nothing is changed during the audit, and access can be removed by you as soon as the report is delivered.

Compliance points an audit flags

Because the audit sees everything the business says and sends, it is a natural moment to spot compliance gaps.

Claims in ads and on the website

The Competition Act requires that marketing claims are truthful and not misleading. The audit flags claims that look hard to support, such as unqualified superlatives, comparison claims without a basis, or sale prices that may not reflect a real saving, so you can review them.

Email and text consent

CASL applies in general to commercial email and texts: consent, sender identification and a working unsubscribe. The audit flags lists with no record of how people joined, messages without an unsubscribe, and texts sent to customers who never agreed to them. This is a marketing observation, not legal advice.

No promises from an audit

An audit describes and ranks; it does not promise that fixing the findings will bring a set number of leads, sales or rankings. What it gives you is a clear picture and a sensible order of work.

How an audit runs

An audit is defined in writing at the start, so you know what will be reviewed, what we need and what you will receive.

Free review

We start with a conversation about why you want an audit now, which channels you use, who runs them and what decision the audit should support.

Written proposal

You receive a proposal listing the areas in scope, the read only access needed, any interviews with staff or vendors, the format of the report and fees quoted in writing.

Review and interviews

We review the accounts, the website and the follow up process, and speak with the people involved where you agree. Vendors are told only what you choose to tell them.

Report and walkthrough

You receive the written report and a walkthrough of the findings. Access is then returned to your control, and the report is yours to keep and share.

What a marketing audit costs

Marketing audit fees are quoted in writing after the free review. If you later want help with any fixes, that work is quoted separately; ad spend and software subscriptions always stay between you and the platforms.

What drives the price

The main drivers are the number of channels and accounts to review, how many locations, brands or websites are involved, how much spend history there is to analyze, whether staff and vendor interviews are included, whether the audit covers French channels as well as English, and how detailed the report needs to be for its audience. A single location business with a website, a profile and one ad account needs a shorter audit than a multi brand company with several agencies.

Audit only or audit and leadership

Some owners want the report and nothing more. Others want someone senior to take the findings forward; that ongoing role is the fractional CMO service on our marketing strategy and fractional CMO page.

How to choose an auditor

An audit is only useful if it is honest. These questions help you judge whether it will be.

• Will you review the whole system, or mostly the channels you sell?
• Do you need only read only access, and will you change anything during the audit?
• Will findings be ranked by impact and effort, with the reasoning shown?
• Can we see the format of a report before we start?
• Will you tell us when our current agency is doing good work?
• Who owns the accounts? The answer should be you. One of the first things an audit should confirm is that every ad, analytics and profile account sits in your business’s name, not a vendor’s.
• Is the report ours to share with other providers?

Be cautious of an audit that finds every channel failing except the ones the auditor sells, or that arrives as a long automated printout with no ranking. If the findings show a product or market that needs relaunching, a go to market strategy is the closer fit; if the system is sound and the question is what to test next, growth marketing picks up from there. Both are new pages in this service family, and the team behind our digital marketing services can take on the fixes if you want one provider to carry them out.

Your next step

If you are new in the marketing seat, unhappy with results or about to change agencies or budgets, a free audit consultation is a sensible start. Tell us what decision is coming and which accounts you run, and we will scope the audit in a written proposal with fees quoted in writing. Owners and marketing managers can ring the Toronto office on (416) 273-9030 or the 24/7 toll-free sales and support line on +1 (800) 808-9235. To send details instead, use our audit request page; we reply within one business day. Our office is at 126 Willowdale Avenue, Suite 3, Toronto, and we audit marketing for businesses across Canada.