Marketing audit: what to check before you start

Before launching a campaign, rebuilding a website or opening a new marketplace, one simple question deserves a clear answer: where are you starting from? That is exactly what a marketing audit is for. It is not an exam. It is an honest review that helps you decide where to put your energy and your budget.

Here are the points we review, in the order we usually take them.

1. Your goals and your starting point

An audit always starts with your goals. Do you want more visibility, more quote requests, more online sales, better customer loyalty? Each goal calls for different priorities.

We also check what you already measure. If you don’t know your number of visitors, your traffic sources or your conversion rate today, that’s fine: it is one of the first things to fix. But you need to know, because you can’t improve what you don’t measure.

Questions to ask yourself:

• What is the main goal for the next twelve months?
• Which numbers do you track every month, even roughly?
• What has worked well so far, and why?

2. Your positioning and your message

Next, we look at how you present yourself. A visitor discovering your brand should understand within seconds what you offer, who it is for, and why they should choose you.

We read your main pages, social media and sales materials with an outside eye. Often the message is clear in the founders’ heads but diluted on the website: too much jargon, promises that are too vague, key information hidden at the bottom of the page.

Points to check:

• Can your value proposition be summed up in one sentence?
• Do your target customers recognise themselves in your copy?
• Is your visual identity consistent across every channel?

3. Your website

Your website is often the first point of contact. We analyse it from three angles.

User experience. Is navigation simple? Is key information (your offer, pricing or how you work, contact details) easy to find? Is the site pleasant on mobile, where many visits happen?

Technical performance. A slow site drives visitors away and hurts your search rankings. We check loading speed, image weight and any technical errors.

Conversion. Every page should lead to an action: buy, request a quote, book a call. We check that calls to action are visible, clear and well placed.

4. Your SEO

We check whether your website shows up for the searches that matter to your business. A basic SEO audit covers:

• the keywords you already rank for;
• your page structure (titles, tags, internal links);
• the quality and depth of your content;
• technical errors that may block indexing.

SEO takes time. That is exactly why it pays to identify priority fixes early.

5. Your acquisition and sales channels

Where do customers find you today? Google search, social media, word of mouth, marketplaces, trade shows, resellers? We list your channels and look at what each one brings you, and what it costs you in time and money.

If you sell online, we also review your product listings on your store and on marketplaces: complete information, images, consistent pricing, customer reviews.

6. Your content

Articles, posts, newsletters, visuals: we assess how regular, how good and how consistent your content is. The goal is not to publish everywhere, but to publish where your audience is, in a voice that sounds like you.

7. Your tools and your data

Finally, we look at the tools you use: email platform, CRM, analytics, spreadsheets. Data scattered across several files makes decisions harder. Sometimes a few simple changes save a lot of time every week.

And after the audit?

A good audit doesn’t end with an endless list of problems. It ends with priorities: what to fix now, what can wait, and what isn’t worth it for the moment.

That is the starting point of your action plan. At Ascension Marketing, we call it base camp: the moment we prepare the climb before setting off.

Your first audit is free. We talk about your needs and goals, and you leave with concrete areas for improvement.