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
Tag each with its true first touch: referral, search, social, event, outbound
Total revenue by first touch, not lead count by first touch
Write your current spend beside each channel
Circle any channel where spend and revenue disagree by more than 2x

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
Note what you actually understood in the first five seconds
Confirm the primary action is visible without scrolling, on a phone
Load the homepage on mobile data and count the seconds
Check the page title and description in a search result preview

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
Time the acknowledgment, then time the human reply
Check whether either message names a specific next step
Call your own main number and listen to what a caller hears
Confirm form submissions land somewhere a person checks daily

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
Sort by impressions and scan for low click-through rows
Note the top three queries with demand and weak clicks
Open the pages ranking for them and read their titles
Check that your sitemap is submitted and returning pages

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
Mark each as producing evidence or not producing evidence
Flag anything unmeasured for a full quarter
Note any tool nobody has logged into in 30 days
Total the flagged spend so the number is real

Write this down

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

Minutes 50 to 60

Three decisions, not thirty findings

What changes, who owns it, and by when?

Choose exactly three decisions from everything above
Give each one owner by name
Give each one date inside the next 30 days
Write what you will stop doing to make room
Put the review on the calendar before you close the document

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.

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.

Start with an Audit See published rates