Most businesses don't have a marketing problem everywhere. They have one leaky step that quietly caps everything after it. A marketing audit is how you find that step. In this guide we walk you through a simple checklist, the numbers to look at, how to run the whole thing yourself in an afternoon, and what to do once you know where people are slipping away.
A marketing audit is a structured look at every step people take from finding you to buying from you, using real numbers, so you can see where you lose the most people. You check traffic, leads, email and sales in turn, find the biggest drop, and fix that step first.
Who this is for: Coaches, consultants and founders whose sales have stalled and who want to know why before spending more.
A marketing audit is a structured look at every step people take from first hearing about you to paying you. You put a number on each step, then look for the place where the most people drop away. That's it. No thick report and no fifty-page strategy deck. Just a clear picture of where people come in, where they leave, and roughly how many you lose along the way.
We think about it in four steps. They find you, through content, social or search. They leave their details, on a landing page or opt-in. They keep hearing from you, through email and automations. They buy, because the offer and the follow-up are clear.
Here's why the order matters. If only a handful of visitors ever leave their details, it doesn't matter how good your emails are. Hardly anyone is reading them. One leaky step caps everything after it. So the real job of an audit isn't to grade everything. It's to find the leakiest step first, because that's where a fix pays back the most.
The honest answer is: earlier than most people do. Usually an audit happens after months of frustration. A few moments make it worth doing straight away.
If you recognise yourself in the first two, don't wait for a quiet week. The longer a leak runs, the more it costs you, and most leaks are cheap to fix once you can see them. Often it's one broken form or one email nobody opens, not your whole approach.
Keep the checklist short and tie every item to a number. If you can't measure it, you can't tell whether it's the leak. Here is the checklist we use, one row per step.
| Step | What to check | The number to look at | Warning sign |
|---|---|---|---|
| They find you | How much traffic you get and where it comes from | Visitors per month, split by source (search, social, referrals) | Almost all traffic from one source, or numbers falling for three months |
| They leave their details | Your opt-in, landing page and the offer you give in return | Visitor-to-lead rate (new leads divided by visitors) | Plenty of visitors but very few sign-ups |
| They keep hearing from you | Your welcome emails, regular emails and whether they reach the inbox | Open rate, reply rate and inbox placement | Opens dropping, no replies, or emails landing in spam or Promotions |
| They buy | Your offer, booking process and follow-up after calls | Lead-to-call rate and call-to-client rate | Lots of leads who never book, or calls that rarely turn into clients |
Don't worry about matching some industry figure. Compare each step with your own past numbers and with the steps either side of it. A sharp drop is usually obvious once it's written down. For the email row, our free email deliverability tester shows whether you're actually reaching the inbox.
You can run a useful audit in an afternoon. You need your analytics, your email platform, your calendar and a notepad. Work through it in this order.
Then comes the part people skip. Fix the biggest leak first, even if another step feels more exciting. And change one thing at a time, so you know what worked. Give it a few weeks, check the same numbers again, then move to the next leak. If the drop is on your landing page, our guide on why your funnel isn't converting goes deeper, and how to increase your conversion rate covers the buying step.
Doing it yourself is a great start. You know your business, you have the logins, and the numbers alone often point straight at the problem. If you've never mapped your path before, our guide on how to set up a sales funnel helps you see the steps clearly.
The trouble is that you're close to it. You know what your headline means, so it reads as clear to you. You know the booking link is in the third email, so it feels easy to find. An outside audit brings fresh eyes that see what a stranger sees. It also brings a sense of what's normal, because someone who has looked at lots of businesses can tell a small dip from a real leak.
That's why we offer a free marketing audit. We go through all four steps, find where you're losing the most people, and tell you in plain English what we'd fix first. No obligation. If you'd rather start on your own, use the checklist above, and come back to us when you want a second pair of eyes.
A simple audit you run yourself takes an afternoon if your numbers are easy to find. A more detailed one, where someone clicks through every page and email, can take a few days. Most of the time goes on gathering numbers. Once they're in front of you, the biggest drop usually jumps out within minutes.
An SEO audit only looks at how well your site shows up in search. A marketing audit looks at the whole path, from how people find you to whether they buy. Search is one part of the first step, so an SEO audit fits inside a marketing audit. Plenty of businesses rank well and still lose people at the opt-in or the sales call.
Once or twice a year is enough for most small businesses. Do one sooner if sales go flat, results drop after a change, or you're about to spend money on ads or a new hire. Keep a note of your numbers each time, so the next audit can compare like with like.
Yes. Unbury offers a free audit that checks every step from finding you to buying and points out the biggest leak. We tell you in plain English what we'd fix first. You can also run the checklist in this guide yourself at no cost.
Send us your setup and we will tell you honestly where it is leaking customers and what to fix first. Free, no pitch.