Marketing Audit Expertise: We Wrote The 100-Page Step-By-Step Guide You Need

Discover why marketing audits are essential to growth. Then, download our free marketing audit template:‍

Free Marketing Audit Template 

First, I gotta say: I normally hate reading and writing posts like this.

“Cool story bro, nobody cares about how and why your company made that thing you want me to use/download/buy.”

It’s true. Most process posts fail to establish the WIIFM.

Acronym for “What’s in it for me?” A question that may be asked about a new idea or method where the benefits are not obvious.

“That new app looks nice, but really, WIIFM?”
—Urban Dictionary

But when I saw Unbounce recount the origins of their Landing Page Analyzer, I said, “Hey, I bet we can make the story of our marketing audit guide compelling and valuable, too.”

Actually, that’s a lie.

Edwin Plotts, our Director of Growth, said that. Then he told me to write this post.

So I grilled Ed.

And now, I’m gonna dish.

What’s In It For You?

You’ll see why our test success rate is 300% higher than market average.

It’s 100% due to the marketing audit process we outline step-by-step. Go ahead, download the growth marketing audit template.

(I won’t stop you.)

But if you need to know the very definition of a growth marketing audit first, I totally get it. Let’s roll.

What is a (growth) marketing audit?

The first thing you need to know about before we dig into this marketing audit thing is funnels.

Here’s a sample funnel with stages and tactics that move targets from one stage to the next.

In short, your funnel is the way new or existing customers come to purchase from you.

Our COO (Michael Taylor) does a cracking job explaining them in plain English here:

• Marketing Analysis For Growth: A Step-By-Step Guide

Here’s what it looks like if you start to break your funnel out by channel, marketing spend, and conversion rate.

How do you get insights like this?

A growth marketing audit.

Marketing audits use data to figure out which KPIs (key performance indicators) you actually need to focus on. That’s why before we engage with a client, we conduct a complete, full-funnel, top-to-bottom analysis. Otherwise, how would we know what part of the funnel to target?

You wouldn’t believe the kind of things our marketing audits turn up.

Examples from our Booking.com marketing audit report:

• Missing Google Analytics on important forms
• Low CTR on paid social ads
• Tiny Hero fonts that were hurting conversions

More examples from an eCommerce brand whose revenue grew 232%:

• Retargeted ads for video posts with low/no views
• Cheap clicks with no intent to purchase
• No email campaigns for abandoned carts

If you have a business, you’ve definitely got opportunities and blindspots you’re not aware of.

Growth marketing audits bring those to light.

They key is not to look at any one channel or tactic in isolation. You’ve got to do a marketing audit across all your customer journeys, all your channels, and all your assets.

How did the marketing audit guide come about?

The same way our Playbook Of 800+ ROI Boosting Tactics did.

Actual clients. Real-life scenarios. Skin in the game.

Our growth marketing audit process — or our growth hacking process as we’ve been known to call it — literally drives everything we do.

We even ran a marketing audit breakdown on ourselves.

Last year, we took a long, hard look at five of our core growth strategies:

• We Analyzed Our SEO. Here’s What We Learned
• We Audited Our Email Marketing Campaigns. Here’s What We Learned
• We Audited Our PPC Ad Campaigns. Here’s What We Learned
• We Audited Our Analytics Setup. Here’s What We Learned
• UX Teardown: What We Learned by Auditing Our User Experience (December 2016 technically, but you get it)

And if you take a look at the landing page, you’ll see The Expert’s Guide to a Growth Marketing Audit covers those same core areas.

That’s not a coincidence. There are no coincidences.

As Ed puts it…

“This is hefty comprehensive look at the exact analysis we use to drive successful strategy.”

It’s our SOP. Our modus operandi. Our bread and butter.

Frankly, it was easier to write this guide than NOT write it.

How many agencies will hand you their strategic playbook — along with their tactical playbook — in the form of a meticulously crafted, “really husky” marketing audit pdf?

And of course we made it free.

Because this stuff is really damn important and you need it in your life.

The importance of a marketing audit

If you had $5 to invest in your business, where would you put it?

(That’s ~ £3.80 for Ladder’s London office, ~ 3.65 zł for Ladder in Poland)

There are a million answers to that question.

A million different ways to invest your money, but only 100 of them are right for your business. Of those 100, there are only 10 you need to do tomorrow. And only one you need to do right this very instant.

Marketing audits are a gateway to see which growth tactics should come first. They illuminate your strong and weak points. That way, you can direct resources safely to scale areas of traction AND find opportunities for 10x growth and test the hell out of them.

Why did we write a 100-page how-to guide on marketing audits? Because they’re the essential foundation of sound growth strategy.

Without a marketing audit, you can’t prioritize your experiments — even if you know your objectives.

9 times out of 10, when we conduct a marketing audit with a client, we look at their business in a way no one ever has before — sometimes even their very own C-Suite. Talk about an exciting way to kick off a new partnership.

Great relationships start with a marketing audit

Here’s another 9 out of 10 stat.

From a post I linked earlier:

The market average for successful tests hovers between 10-15%.

That means 9 out of 10 tests fail. (Even though we do better than average)

Imagine starting a consulting relationship with “90% of the time, I’m going to be wrong. Sign here.”

What would possess someone to take out their pen?

Marketing audits create an understanding between organizations and within organizations. We’re not just looking at random reports, or pointing to numbers we think are good while the client points to numbers they think are bad. We’ve aligned as to what’s working, what’s not, and what the goals are for the business.

These audits also create trust. We get far less pushback from clients because there’s no question of whether or not we understand the way their business works and what success looks like.

Another reason we created The Expert’s Guide to a Growth Marketing Audit is because our marketing audits are the first thing we do for clients that WOWS them.

And, it lays the foundation for all the rewarding risks we take together.

*Hidden Easter Egg >> We just released growth technology that will perform a full growth audit for you – automatically!

Auditception: How did our marketing audit template do?

We released The Expert’s Guide to a Growth Marketing Audit on Product Hunt about a month ago.

In fact, here’s Ed telling you what it’s taken me 1200 words to say:

Since then, we’ve seen awesome qualitative and quantitative responses:

At time of writing, this 100-page beast is approaching 600 downloads.

(And ur landing page is pulling a whopping 30% conversion rate!)

36 of those turned into services inquires.

We value inquiries at ~$163 apiece.

So yeah, this thing has already paid for itself. ?

And it will continue to! At Ladder, we’re not just here to manage your Facebook ads, boost your clicks, or tell you your tracking pixels are busted. We offer full context and growth strategy tied to your bottom-line goals.

So go ahead, download our sterling marketing audit template.

It’s got screenshots, punchy step-by-step copy, pro tips with pictures of Ed’s and Kacper’s (our audit specialist) smiling faces — we hold your hand through the whole thing.

There’s even a marketing audit checklist at the end of each chapter so you can make sure you’ve got all your bases covered.

And once you’ve had a chance to try it yourself, hit us up, and our strategists will uncover even more opportunities for your growth to skyrocket!