Our Digital Marketing Audit Checklist to Grow Your Business

What do you want to achieve? Every audit should begin with a clear purpose, a North Star that guides how you change your digital marketing strategy for the better. This will also inform the scope, which is just as important: deciding which areas of your marketing you will evaluate, be it just your social media and email, or a full marketing overhaul. Outline a few SMART objectives (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) for the audit. Maybe you want to find out why your conversion rate dropped last year, or improve your return on ad spend this year. Once you know why you’re auditing and what success looks like, you can start to see the steps towards achieving it.

With goals set, it’s time to collect the data. This data forms the core understanding of your situation, so pulling together metrics from all your key platforms and tools. For user behaviour and search performance, use website analytics from Google Analytics and SEMRush. For paid media return on ad spend (ROAS), cost-per-click and conversion rate data can be swiped from your ad platforms of choice. For customer impressions, pull any reviews or ratings from Google Reviews and Trustpilot. Ensure you gather data over a meaningful period (for example, the last 6-12 months) to spot trends rather than one-off spikes, and as you gather information, take note of any tracking gaps: Are all your campaigns tagged correctly? Do you have eCommerce tracking set up for online sales?

Here is a full breakdown of the data you can use for your audit and where to find it:

Before you examine the specifics of your own data, you should look at how you stack up against your industry competitors. This way, you can frame the data around a context, compare it with your competitors and keep an eye on emerging trends. Competitor analysis can be woven into each audit area, but it’s worth consolidating your findings.

Identify up to a handful of key competitors and review their digital presence. How does their website compare in user experience and design? Are they outranking you on important SEO keywords? Use SEO tools to compare domain authority or backlinks, then check their social media – are they getting significantly more engagement or using a platform you’re not on? This benchmarking shows where you are falling behind or where you can differentiate.

Compare your metrics to industry averages if available. As we noted in our email marketing strategy guide[link], generally, an email open rate of 20% is a good bar to set, but this might be great in one industry but below par in another, so be sure to find benchmarks specific to your industry.

During the audit, note any digital marketing trends relevant to your business. Perhaps a new social platform is gaining traction, or simply, there is an industry-wide decrease in demand for a certain type of product. Be aware also adds colour to any stories you find within your data.

Now it’s time to dive in. Between steps 4-9, you can conduct in any order or any amount, depending on what your priorities are.

Customer experience is critical. All your marketing efforts eventually point back to your website, so it must provide an outstanding customer experience. So, put yourself in the customer’s shoes and evaluate each step of the user journey from the main menu to the checkout. Here’s what to look out for:

Your website is your storefront, but SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the road that leads people to it. An SEO audit checks how visible your site is on search engines and identifies ways to attract more ready-to-buy visitors. By auditing SEO, you address the pain point of not being seen by the right people. If competitors outrank you, they’re getting the clicks, leads, and sales that could have been yours.

Start by reviewing your keyword strategy and rankings: are you showing up for the search terms your customers use? Use tools to see your current rankings and where competitors outrank you.

Examine your site’s search performance data on Google Search Console to see which queries are bringing the most traffic, and what click-through rate (CTR) you’re pulling in from search results. A low CTR might mean your title or metadata isn’t enticing, even if you rank. 

Another aspect to look around is duplicate content or pages competing for the same keywords. As we explained in our keyword cannibalisation blog, this can hurt your rankings.

Adjacent to SEO is your content marketing strategy. Content is still king, as it drives SEO, educates customers and even fuels social media and email campaigns in the best strategies. We wrote a handy guide to fixing your content strategy, which goes into further detail.

Start by identifying your top-performing content by views, time on page or conversion actions, and learn why they are doing well and contrast this with content that’s underperforming. This will help you bring the underperforming content up to par.

On top of this, are there any gaps in your content that your customers want? Use keyword tools or customer FAQs to spot these opportunities.

The key piece of advice here is to ensure that every piece of content has a purpose – whether it’s attracting new visitors, educating them, building trust or driving a conversion. If it’s not doing any of that, either improve it or throw it away.

With billions of people on social platforms, social media can be a goldmine for brand awareness and community building. A social media audit will reveal how well your brand is engaging and where to improve. Start with critically analysing which platforms you’re on versus which platforms you need to be using to reach your audience. If you’re a B2B business, LinkedIn is going to be more effective than Instagram, whereas an eCommerce fashion brand favours visually rich platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

Assess your brand consistency across social media. Your branding – from your logos, banners and bios – should be up-to-date and uniform across channels. This consistency also applies to posts, and how regularly and optimally-timed they are posted, as an abandoned profile may give the impression that you’re no longer in business.

Dig through which pieces of content are performing best, using your platform’s analytical tools. What content types get the most likes, comments, shares, or clicks? The most important metric above all is conversions – 100 highly engaged followers are more valuable than 1,000 silent ones.

Paid marketing is where you often spend significant budget, so ensuring those pounds are driving returns is vital. A pay-per-click (PPC) and advertising audit will uncover if your ads are making money or wasting it. Use this checklist:

If you use multiple platforms, be sure to separate each into separate audits, as it may be that one strategy works wildly differently on Microsoft Ads than Google Ads.

As we detailed in our blog about the role of email marketing in customer experience, email marketing remains one of the most effective channels to turn one-time buyers into loyal customers. A thorough email and retention audit addresses the pain point of businesses focusing too much on acquisition and neglecting existing customers. Remember, it’s far cheaper to retain and re-engage an existing customer than to acquire a new one. Here’s what you should look out for:

Every successful digital marketing strategy starts with a clear understanding of what’s working and what isn’t. This is what an audit gives us access to. In simple terms, a digital marketing audit is a systematic check-up of your online marketing efforts – examining your strategies, channels, and performance to find strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. It’s why it’s often known as a ‘health check’ – it helps you find the direction your goals should point towards.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through a step-by-step digital marketing audit checklist, covering everything from your website’s user experience to your social media strategy. Along the way, we’ll highlight common pain points (like stagnant traffic or wasted ad spend) and how to address them.

An audit is only as good as the action it inspires. The final step is to compile everything you’ve learned and formulate a clear action plan. Start by summarising your findings in each area of the audit, making a list of well-performing areas you want to keep going strong, and weaknesses and gaps you want to prioritise.

Speaking of priority, you should do so by the impact of your actions. If you found your site isn’t mobile-friendly, that’s a critical weakness to address ASAP. On the other hand, maybe you noted your Instagram content could be better; important, yes, but not as urgent as the fact that your site is making iPhones lag.

Another factor in planning is identifying quick wins versus long-term projects. This is so you can plan what you can do now to see rapid results and what can be nurtured in the long term. For instance, fixing broken links is a quick win, whereas redesigning your website’s checkout process is a longer-term project.

For each major action item, set a specific goal and timeline. If one task is to improve website mobile speed, define what success looks like with a SMART goal (for example, mobile page load under 3 seconds within 2 months).

Lastly, establish a plan for monitoring progress, deciding how you will track the results of the changes you implement. Consider setting up a dashboard for your key KPIs so you can easily see improvements (or new issues) in real time. This is an ongoing cycle which continuously means measuring results and refining strategy. Before you know it, you’ll be improving faster than you ever have before. However, digital marketing moves fast, and regular audits help you stay proactive rather than reactive, so be sure to schedule an audit next quarter.

By now, you can see that a comprehensive digital marketing audit covers both customer acquisition and retention, giving you a full 360° view of your marketing health. But it’s also complex and time-consuming, especially if you’re doing it alone. Sometimes an outside perspective finds things you might overlook.

At Brave, we offer a free Digital Marketing Audit that is bespoke and brutally honest – we cut through the noise and pinpoint exactly what’s holding your marketing back. Our team will dive deep into your SEO, CRO, paid media, and email performance, and then work collaboratively with you on an action plan to boost your ROI. So, if you’re ready to take your digital marketing to the next level and want a partner in success, let’s talk. Contact us for a friendly chat about your goals.