Checklist — $29

The one-hour marketing audit checklist.

Six timed passes through the places your marketing tells the truth: revenue source, website, follow-up, search, and spend. It ends the way an audit should, with three decisions that have owners and dates. Buy once, print forever.

One-time purchase. The full checklist is also visible on this page if you prefer to work through it here.

Have it run for you

Before you start the timer

The hour works because the order is fixed. Each pass narrows the next one, so resist jumping to the part you already have opinions about.

One uninterrupted hour and a timer you can see
Analytics, your CRM or inbox, Search Console, and your own website open in tabs
A blank page for decisions, kept separate from your notes
Nobody else in the room for the first pass, so you record what is true rather than what is defensible

The checklist

Six passes, ten minutes each. Tick the boxes as you go and write the line at the bottom of each pass before moving on.

Minutes 0 to 10

Where business actually comes from

Which channel earns the revenue, and does the budget agree?

Export closed deals from the last 12 months
If you are stuck
No clean CRM export? Use invoices or bank deposits. Revenue is the number that matters here, and accounting always has it.
Tag each with its true first touch: referral, search, social, event, outbound
If you are stuck
When two touches compete, credit the one that made the buyer aware you existed. A referral beats the ad they saw afterward.
Total revenue by first touch, not lead count by first touch
If you are stuck
Lead counts flatter the cheapest channels. If you only have time for one column, make it revenue.
Write your current spend beside each channel
If you are stuck
Take the last full month and multiply by twelve. Include retainers, tools, and any hours you pay for.
Circle any channel where spend and revenue disagree by more than 2x
If you are stuck
If nothing disagrees by 2x, look again at the channel with no spend beside it. A free channel carrying revenue is the one to fund.

Write this down

The one channel carrying the most revenue, and the one absorbing spend without it.

Minutes 10 to 20

Whether the site says what the buyer needs

In five seconds, is it clear what you do, who for, and what to do next?

Read the homepage as a stranger, out loud, once
If you are stuck
Read it to someone outside the company if you can. You cannot un-know your own offering, but they can tell you what landed.
Note what you actually understood in the first five seconds
If you are stuck
Write the sentence you actually understood, not the one you meant to write. The gap between them is the finding.
Confirm the primary action is visible without scrolling, on a phone
If you are stuck
Open your own homepage on your phone and hold it at arm's length. If you have to hunt for the action, a buyer will not.
Load the homepage on mobile data and count the seconds
If you are stuck
Turn off wifi and load it on cellular. Anything past three seconds is a real cost to the business.
Check the page title and description in a search result preview
If you are stuck
Google your company name and read the result as a stranger. If the description is truncated or generic, that is the fix.

Write this down

The single sentence a visitor should leave with, and whether the page delivers it.

Minutes 20 to 30

What happens after someone raises a hand

How fast is the reply, and does it name a next step?

Submit your own contact form as a stranger would
If you are stuck
Use a personal email address and write like a real prospect. A test submission that says test tells you nothing about the reply.
Time the acknowledgment, then time the human reply
If you are stuck
Use the timestamps on the emails, not memory. Round to the nearest fifteen minutes and write the real number, even when it is embarrassing.
Check whether either message names a specific next step
If you are stuck
A next step names a time, a link, or a person. Looking forward to connecting is not a next step.
Call your own main number and listen to what a caller hears
If you are stuck
Call from your cell, not the office line. Listen for how long it takes to reach a person and whether the greeting is current.
Confirm form submissions land somewhere a person checks daily
If you are stuck
Send one now and watch where it lands. If it only goes to an inbox nobody owns, that is the finding for this pass.

Write this down

Actual response time in minutes or hours, and who owns it.

Minutes 30 to 40

What search is already giving you

Which pages are one rewrite away from more traffic?

Open Search Console, last three months, Queries tab
If you are stuck
Not set up? That is the finding. Score this pass low, add the property today, and come back in two weeks with real data.
Sort by impressions and scan for low click-through rows
If you are stuck
Low click-through with high impressions means Google is showing you and nobody is choosing you. Usually a title problem, not a ranking problem.
Note the top three queries with demand and weak clicks
If you are stuck
Ignore branded searches for your own name. You already win those, and they hide the queries worth working on.
Open the pages ranking for them and read their titles
If you are stuck
Read the title the way it appears in results, not in your editor. If it does not answer the query, rewrite the title first.
Check that your sitemap is submitted and returning pages
If you are stuck
Check yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml in a browser. If it loads and lists real pages, submit it in Search Console and move on.

Write this down

Three queries with impressions you are not converting into clicks.

Minutes 40 to 50

What is running on autopilot

Which line items have produced evidence this quarter?

List every active spend line, tool, subscription, and retainer
If you are stuck
The fastest source is last month's credit card statement, line by line. Nobody remembers every subscription.
Mark each as producing evidence or not producing evidence
If you are stuck
Evidence means a number you could show someone: revenue, qualified inquiries, or booked calls. Impressions and activity are not evidence.
Flag anything unmeasured for a full quarter
If you are stuck
If you cannot name what changed because of a line item, it is unmeasured. Being uncertain is the answer here. Mark it and move on.
Note any tool nobody has logged into in 30 days
If you are stuck
Check seats and last login in the tool itself. Paying for eight seats and using two is the same finding.
Total the flagged spend so the number is real
If you are stuck
Write the monthly figure and the annual figure. The annual number is the one that makes the decision obvious.

Write this down

The flagged monthly total, and the first line you would cut.

Minutes 50 to 60

Thirty findings, three decisions

What changes, who owns it, and by when?

Choose exactly three decisions from everything above
If you are stuck
Take your three lowest-scoring passes and pull one decision from each. That is a defensible three without debating the whole list.
Give each one owner by name
If you are stuck
A team is not an owner. If you cannot name a person, the decision belongs to you until you can.
Give each one date inside the next 30 days
If you are stuck
Pick a date you would not be embarrassed to report on. Thirty days is the ceiling.
Write what you will stop doing to make room
If you are stuck
Something has to go, or nothing changes. The flagged spend from the last pass is the honest place to look.
Put the review on the calendar before you close the document
If you are stuck
Put a thirty minute review on the calendar for the date furthest out and invite the three owners.

Write this down

Three lines: decision, owner, date. If you cannot write them, run this pass again.

Three ways the hour gets wasted

Collecting findings instead of decisions

Thirty observations feel productive and change nothing. The hour is only worth it if the last ten minutes produce three owned decisions.

Auditing the tactics before the source of revenue

Ad copy and posting cadence are easy to critique. Do the first pass first, or you will optimize a channel that never earned anything.

Skipping your own form

Response speed and clarity move more revenue than most channel adjustments, and it is the one thing nobody tests on themselves.

Where to go from here

The thinking behind this sequence, written out in full, lives in The One-Hour Marketing Audit.

If the hour turns up a positioning problem rather than a channel problem, the go-to-market strategy template is the next document to fill in.

Want the version with outside eyes, benchmarks, and a written plan? That is the three-week marketing audit.

The tool — $99

Or run the hour online and leave with a scored report.

The Marketing Audit Tool is these six passes as a working tool. Score each pass one to five, record what you found, name the three decisions, and export a branded audit report plus a one-page decision summary for the person who approves the budget. One-time purchase, unlimited edits and exports.

Open the Audit Tool

Next step

The hour finds the questions. The audit answers them.

A full marketing audit takes the same six passes further: interviews, competitive context, and a prioritized plan you can hand to whoever is doing the work. You leave with decisions, not a deck.

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