Guide to Marketing Audits

Marketing Audit: a smarter way to grow

Not all marketing audits are created equal. Some dive deep into SEO. Others review your social media footprint. Some are so narrow they miss the forest for the trees.

At Brucey, we start with a different kind of audit — a Strategic Marketing Audit designed to give business owners, marketers, and sales leaders a clear, focused view of what’s really driving (or blocking) growth.

This isn’t about surface-level checks or generic recommendations. It’s about understanding how your marketing efforts align to your goals, how your customer journey performs in reality, and what needs to shift so you’re not just staying busy — but moving forward.

We’ll unpack that below. But first, let’s look at what a "marketing audit" can mean — and why it pays to start with strategy before diving into tactics.

What Is a Marketing Audit?

A marketing audit is a structured review of your current marketing activities, assets, channels, systems, and performance — with the goal of identifying gaps, inefficiencies, and opportunities for improvement.

But here’s the thing: marketing audits vary wildly in scope.

Some are narrowly focused — looking only at your website or email flows. Others go wide but shallow. And few give you the confidence to know what to act on first, what to ignore, and what will actually help you reach your business goals.

That’s why at Brucey, we start with a strategic take on the marketing audit, that has breadth and depth — without drowning in the weeds.

The Strategic Marketing Audit (Your Growth Baseline)

A Strategic Marketing Audit is a business growth diagnostic — built to help business owners, sales leaders and marketing leads see what’s working, what’s missing, and how they can move forward toward their growth goals effectively and confidently.

It’s not just about channel performance or technical setup — it covers six core areas that underpin effective growth:

• Where is your future focussed? – What are your goals and ambitions? Where are you heading, in both the short and long-term? 

• What's the market reality? – Are your above goals in sync with the market, customers, competitors? How well do you know them?

• Where do you fit in? – How do you position your brand, your product and services, solve your customers’ needs and deliver value?

• How do you go-to-market? – How do you engage the market across the entire customer journey (marketing, sales, customer service)? Where are your resources focussed?

• What's your track record? – How effective have you been at achieving your goals in the past? What do you measure and use to make decisions?

• How capable are you? – Do you have the right team, skills, systems and resources in place to grow? Do you have clear processes and have you documented them?

Deliverables of a strategic audit include a traffic-light scorecard, prioritised recommendations, and a summary action plan. It can include quick wins too, to keep the momentum up as you're working on developing the strategic plan.

It’s the best place to start before rushing into channel audits or tactical changes.

Other Types of Marketing Audits

Once you’ve set the strategic foundation, it can make sense to dive deeper into specific areas. Below are the most common types of marketing audits — with an overview of what they cover, where they help, and how they’re usually approached.

1. Customer Journey / Funnel Audit

A funnel or journey audit looks at how prospects and customers move from first touch with your brand, to closed deal (and beyond to repeat sales, expanded account growth). It helps identify friction, inefficiencies, and conversion gaps across marketing and sales.

Key focus areas:

• Funnel stages and conversion rates

• Key channel and activities at each stage of the journey

• Drop-off points and handoff gaps

• Journey consistency across channels

Typical outcomes:

• Identify funnel leakage

• Visibility into where leads stall or disengage

• Specific areas to improve follow-up, nurture, or conversion

• Stronger sales and marketing alignment

Helpful tools: Your CRM data (e.g. HubSpot), website data (e.g. Google Analytics), call tracking tools

2. Brand & Messaging Audit

This audit explores whether your brand identity, messaging, and story clearly express your value and resonate with your audience. It's foundational for effective positioning.

This audit can readily be broken down further into sub-audit e.g. focussing solely on messaging (for continuity, clarity, etc), brand style and codes, etc. Conversely, this audit can end up overlapping with a content or website audit too, as you dig into detailed messaging and brand style implementation.

Key focus areas:

• Visual identity and consistency

• Message clarity and competitive differentiation

• Tone of voice and resonance across touchpoints

Typical outcomes:

• Improved clarity and confidence in your message

• Adjustments to language or visuals for better market fit

• Ideas to refine positioning against competitors

Helpful tools: Message maps, competitor analysis, brand guidelines, customer interviews

3. Content Audit

A content audit inventories your marketing content (digital and offline) and assesses how well it's performing — and supporting your funnel. It identifies what's working, what's missing, what's out of date and what can be improved or repurposed.

Key focus areas:

• Content by format, purpose, topic, and funnel stage

• Performance by traffic, engagement, and conversions

• Opportunities to consolidate, update, or expand

Typical outcomes:

• Clearer content priorities and gaps to fill

• Recommendations for repurposing or retiring content

• A roadmap for aligning content with customer journey stages

Helpful tools: Build a content database (e.g. Google Sheets), or if you use them already a content library in Canva, Adobe or similar Digital Asset Management (DAM) tools.

4. SEO Audit

This audit examines your site’s organic visibility and search engine performance. It covers technical health, keyword targeting, on-page optimisation, and backlink profile.

Key focus areas:

• Indexing, site speed, crawlability, errors

• Keyword use and page optimisation

• Backlink profile and authority

Typical outcomes:

• Priority SEO issues to fix

• Keyword opportunities and content gaps

• Clear next steps for improving search rankings

Helpful tools: SEMrush, Ahrefs, PageSpeed Insights

5. Website Audit

Your website is often one of your most important business marketing assets. A website audit assesses how well it’s structured (technically and for usability), how clearly it communicates, and how well it converts visitors (or other goals, where conversion is not the focus).

Key focus areas:

• Navigation, structure, usability

• Conversion paths

• Page performance and load speed

Typical outcomes:

• Clear recommendations for UX and content improvements

• Prioritised fixes that improve conversions and usability

• Alignment with your brand and messaging

Helpful tools: Hotjar, Google Analytics, PageSpeed Insights, manual UX heuristics

6. CRM Audit (e.g. HubSpot)

A CRM audit checks the health of your contact data, automation setup, and how you’re using the entire platform (e.g. HubSpot has a number of different hubs for sales, marketing, etc). It’s especially valuable for teams that rely on CRM for pipeline visibility and campaign execution, and where automation and reporting relies upon data accuracy and cleanliness.

Key focus areas:

• Data usage, health, and completeness

• Workflows and automation health

• Reporting, properties, and integration usage

Typical outcomes:

• Improved data cleanliness and actionable data

• Smoother workflows and fewer process gaps

• Stronger ROI from your CRM investment

Helpful tools: HubSpot audit reports, internal dashboards

7. Email Marketing Audit

This audit reviews the quality, effectiveness, and performance of your email marketing setup. It helps uncover deliverability issues, messaging misalignment, or missed automation opportunities.

Key focus areas:

• List segmentation and quality

• Automation flows and nurture logic

• Template performance and frequency

Typical outcomes:

• Quick fixes to improve opens and clicks

• Strategic improvements to automation journeys

• Better segmentation and more relevant campaigns

Helpful tools: HubSpot, Mailchimp, Litmus

8. Social Media Audit

A social media audit helps assess how well your social presence is supporting your marketing and brand goals. It looks at content mix, performance, consistency, and engagement.

Key focus areas:

• Channel selection and audience relevance

• Post cadence, engagement, content types

• Brand voice and consistency

Typical outcomes:

• Recommendations to focus, repurpose or shift effort

• Stronger alignment between content and business goals

• Competitor insights to sharpen your approach

Helpful tools: Native analytics, Buffer, content calendars

9. Paid Media / PPC Audit

This audit reviews your paid advertising accounts to check efficiency, targeting, creative, and alignment with goals. It’s ideal for identifying and optimising wasted spend, or scaling opportunities.

Key focus areas:

• Campaign structure and budget allocation

• Ad copy, audience targeting, and bidding strategy

• Landing pages and conversion paths

Typical outcomes:

• Immediate changes to reduce waste or improve returns

• Clear understanding of what’s performing and why

• Ideas to scale results or test new tactics

Helpful tools: Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager, Looker Studio, Native ad channel analytics

Where to start (and why strategy comes first)

Each audit above can be valuable — but certainly not all at once.

Without a strategic view, it's easy to waste time optimising parts that aren’t the real problem or just getting busy on one of a multitude of things that aren't effectively and sustainably driving your toward your business growth goals. You could pour effort into a new website or a rebrand, when the real issue is unclear targeting or poor product-market fit. Or polish ad creative and ramp up spend, when you've got a badly leaking sales funnel.

That’s why our advice is: start with a Strategic Marketing Audit.

It’s your north star. It gives your team clarity, builds alignment, and helps you focus on what matters most — so that any deeper audit or execution effort has a clear reason behind it.

From there, we can help you:

• Prioritise which deep-dive audits are needed (if any)

• Scope a growth strategy and execution plan

• Build a quarterly roadmap that keeps your team focused and moving