Digital marketing audit
A digital marketing audit is a structured review of everything currently driving your marketing, scored so you can see which parts are actually broken rather than which parts feel neglected. This one covers eight areas, weighted by how much damage a gap in each causes. Score every item 0, 1 or 2, and the workbook calculates a total out of 100 with a recommended next move.
- CHECKLIST
- TEMPLATE
- XLSX
- FREE
- Best for
- Anyone inheriting a marketing setup they did not build, or reviewing one before planning next year
- Includes
- PDF checklist + Excel workbook with live scoring
- Time to use
- 60–90 minutes
Free to download and use in your own client work. No email address required.
Created by Alston Antony 15+ years in search and digital marketing Updated
Most audit checklists hand you two hundred yes/no questions and no way to tell which failures matter. A missing DMARC record and an unmonitored Instagram account are not the same size of problem, but a flat checklist scores them identically.
This audit is weighted. Each of the eight sections carries a share of the total based on how much damage a gap there actually causes, so the final score points at what to fix first.
How the scoring works
Every item gets one of three scores. The middle option matters most — “partly in place” is where almost all real marketing setups live, and collapsing it into a pass/fail hides the problem.
| Score | Label | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Not in place | Missing entirely, or so broken it produces no value. |
| 1 | Partly in place | Exists but is incomplete, out of date, or not acted on. |
| 2 | In place | Working, current, and someone owns it. |
A section’s score is its total divided by its maximum, multiplied by the section weight. Add the eight weighted sections and you get a score out of 100.
Why the weights are not equal
If your measurement is wrong, every other section’s score is a guess — including the ones that look healthy. That is why measurement carries 20% and social carries 8%. It is not a judgement about which channel matters more commercially; it is about which failure invalidates the most other information.
| Section | Weight | Why it carries this weight |
|---|---|---|
| Measurement and analytics | 20% | If measurement is wrong, every other score is a guess. |
| Website and technical | 15% | The site is the one asset you own outright. |
| Search visibility | 15% | Organic search is usually the cheapest durable channel. |
| Paid media | 12% | Paid is where waste compounds fastest. |
| Content | 10% | Content is the raw material every channel consumes. |
| Email and CRM | 10% | The only audience you are not renting. |
| Social and community | 8% | Cheap to start, expensive to sustain badly. |
| Reporting and governance | 10% | Work that is not reviewed does not improve. |
What your score means
| Score | Band | What to do next |
|---|---|---|
| 85+ | Strong | Focus on growth and testing rather than fixing fundamentals. |
| 65+ | Solid with gaps | Fix the two lowest-scoring sections before adding new channels. |
| 40+ | Fragmented | Stop adding channels. Repair measurement and website basics first. |
| 0+ | Foundational work needed | Treat this as a setup project, not an optimisation project. |
The band matters less than the section breakdown. A score of 72 built on strong measurement and weak social is a completely different situation from a 72 built on excellent social and no working analytics — the second one is not really a 72, because you cannot trust the numbers that produced it.
The audit checklist
Score each item 0, 1 or 2. Be strict: “we set that up once” is a 1, not a 2. The second score is for things that are working and have an owner.
Measurement and analytics 20%
If measurement is wrong, every other score is a guess.
- Analytics is installed on every page and firing once, not twice
- Key conversions are defined and tracked as events
- Traffic from your own team and agencies is excluded
- Google Search Console is connected and verified
- Channel groupings are correct so paid traffic is not counted as organic
- UTM parameters follow one written convention
- Someone can state last month is conversion count from memory
Section score: / 14
Website and technical 15%
The site is the one asset you own outright.
- Every important page returns 200 and is reachable in three clicks
- The site renders and is usable on a mid-range phone
- Core Web Vitals are in the good range in Search Console field data
- HTTPS is enforced and there is one canonical hostname
- An XML sitemap exists and lists only indexable pages
- robots.txt does not block anything important
- Broken internal links and redirect chains have been checked in the last quarter
Section score: / 14
Search visibility 15%
Organic search is usually the cheapest durable channel.
- You know your top 10 pages by impressions and clicks
- Each priority page targets one clear primary intent
- Title tags and meta descriptions are unique and written for the query
- Pages have a visible author or accountable publisher
- Internal links point to your commercially important pages
- Content is reviewed and updated on a schedule, not left to rot
Section score: / 12
Paid media 12%
Paid is where waste compounds fastest.
- Conversion tracking in the ad platform matches analytics within a tolerable margin
- Search term and placement reports are reviewed at least monthly
- Negative keyword or exclusion lists are maintained
- Landing pages match the promise made in the ad
- Budget is allocated by measured CPA, not by habit
- You know your break-even CPA or ROAS
Section score: / 12
Content 10%
Content is the raw material every channel consumes.
- Content maps to a defined audience and a stage of the funnel
- Each piece has one job and one call to action
- There is a written publishing cadence someone owns
- Existing content is refreshed as well as added to
- Assets are reused across channels rather than made once and forgotten
Section score: / 10
Email and CRM 10%
The only audience you are not renting.
- You capture email addresses with clear consent and a reason to subscribe
- A welcome sequence exists and runs automatically
- Lists are segmented by something more useful than sign-up date
- Deliverability records (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) are configured
- Unsubscribe and preference handling works and is honoured
Section score: / 10
Social and community 8%
Cheap to start, expensive to sustain badly.
- Active channels are chosen deliberately, not inherited
- Profiles are complete, current and link to the right page
- There is a response process for comments and messages
- You can name what each channel is actually for
Section score: / 8
Reporting and governance 10%
Work that is not reviewed does not improve.
- A recurring report goes to a named person on a fixed date
- The report contains commentary and next actions, not just numbers
- Goals are written down with a target and a date
- Decisions from the last report were actioned or explicitly dropped
- Someone owns each channel by name
Section score: / 10
The five gaps I find most often
Across unfamiliar accounts, the same five items are unticked far more often than the rest. If you are short of time, check these before anything else:
| Gap | Why it keeps happening | Cost of leaving it |
|---|---|---|
| Internal and agency traffic not excluded | Nobody sets it up on day one, and it is invisible afterwards | Every traffic figure is inflated by an unknown amount |
| Analytics and ad platform conversions disagree | Both are “working”, so nobody compares them | You cannot tell which channel actually produced an outcome |
| Paid traffic landing in the organic bucket | Channel groupings are left at default | SEO looks like it is working while ad budget takes the credit |
| No written UTM convention | It feels too small to document | One campaign splits into three and cannot be merged later |
| Reports sent but not read | No named recipient and no fixed date | Work continues unchanged for months |
None of these are technically difficult. They persist because each one is somebody’s fifteen-minute job and nobody’s responsibility.
What this audit will not tell you
Worth being clear about the limits, because a score invites more confidence than it deserves:
- Whether your strategy is right. The audit checks execution, not choice of direction. A perfectly executed plan aimed at the wrong audience still fails, and would score well here.
- Whether your pricing or product is the problem. Marketing audits routinely surface issues that are commercial rather than marketing — a conversion rate is not fixable by marketing if the price is wrong.
- Whether the numbers are honest. It checks that measurement exists and is configured sensibly. It cannot detect deliberate misreporting.
- How you compare with competitors. The scoring is absolute, not relative. A 60 in an unsophisticated market may be a stronger position than an 80 in a competitive one.
Use it for sequencing work, not for judging strategy.
Turning the audit into a plan
The output of an audit is not a score, it is a decision about sequence. Two rules keep that honest:
- Fix the lowest-weighted-score section first, not the lowest raw score. A section scoring 50% at 20% weight costs you ten points; a section scoring 20% at 8% weight costs you six. The first one is the bigger problem even though the second looks worse.
- Do not add a channel while measurement is below 70%. You will not be able to tell whether the new channel worked, which means you will keep paying for it either way.
Once the audit is done, the report template gives you somewhere to put the numbers each month, and the strategy examples show what a plan built on these findings looks like.
How often to repeat it
Once a quarter is more than most setups need. Twice a year is enough for a stable business, plus one extra whenever something structural changes — a site migration, a new analytics platform, a change of agency, or a new person taking over the channel. Record the date and the score each time; the trend is more useful than any single number.