Marketing audit for a 40-to-200-person company: 6 areas to check, from buyer to spend

A marketing audit for 40-to-200-person company checks 6 areas in order: Whether the message matches the buyer now closing, where recent wins came from, whether the pipeline numbers hold, what buyers find when they search, whether sales has the proof it needs, and what the spend and contracts commit you to.

You're the CEO of a company you have just bought, or the operating partner who needs a straight read on the marketing function. The team is capable and busy, and nobody has yet checked what is actually running. An audit answers one question: Which 2 or 3 things should change first?

Key takeaways

• An audit at this size is a week of evidence from tools you already own.
• 6 areas, checked in dependency order: Message, demand sources, systems, search, sales proof, and spend.
• Every area has a quick test you can run without a consultant.
• Score each area red, amber, or green, and fix the reds that others depend on first.
• Repeat it every 6 months, and after any change of buyer, owner, or leader.

A marketing audit at this size is a week of evidence from tools you already own

Most of the evidence already sits in the CRM, the website analytics, the contract folder, and the last few closed deals. One senior person can pull it in 2 days and test it in 2 more, with the marketers supplying context rather than auditing their own work.

If the deal has not closed yet, the same questions can be put to the seller, and the marketing section of a commercial due diligence checklist covers that version. This piece is for the company you already own.

The 6 areas, with the evidence to pull and the quick test for each area

Work through these in order, because each area depends on the one above it.

Each quick test takes under an hour. If one cannot be run at all, that is itself the finding.

Check first whether the homepage describes the buyer who is closing now

The message sits at the top of the order because everything else inherits from it. Take the last 5 closed deals and read the homepage as each of those buyers would. If the page describes a smaller or older customer than the ones now signing, every channel underneath is aimed slightly wrong.

After a deal this is the most common finding, because a company usually moves upmarket faster than its website does. The fix is a position decided from buyer evidence, which portfolio company positioning covers.

Trace where recent wins came from, then test whether the pipeline numbers hold

Export the closed-won deals for the last 24 months and try to name the source of the 20 most recent. The share that arrived through referral or the founder's network shows how much of the pipeline depends on relationships that may not carry over to a new owner. Where the source field is empty, the attribution in any board report is an estimate.

Then test the systems. Rebuild last quarter's pipeline figure from the CRM and see whether it matches the number in the last board report. If it takes more than an hour, or the two disagree, fix the record before trusting any attribution, which GTM modernization after an acquisition covers. The lost deals in the same export are worth reading too, and win/loss analysis explains how to learn from them.

Check your search visibility, sales proof and contract commitments

These 3 areas are quicker to check and cheaper to fix, which is why they come last:

• Search and visibility. Search the 5 questions your buyers ask before they have a shortlist, and note whether the company appears. Companies that grew on word of mouth often have little presence here, which search for B2B companies that grew on word of mouth covers.
• Sales materials and proof. Check that a case study exists for each buyer type in the pipeline, and read the last 3 lost deals for what the buyer could not find.
• Spend and people. List every contract with its notice period, and confirm who owns each domain, ad account, and login. Founders and former providers often still hold these.

Anything the company cannot list in an afternoon belongs on the red list.

Score each area red, amber, or green, then fix the reds in dependency order

A simple scale keeps the result readable for a board:

• Red. The test fails or cannot be run, and other areas depend on it.
• Amber. The test passes with gaps, or relies on one person's memory.
• Green. The test passes, and someone other than the author can repeat it.

Fix by dependency rather than by severity. A red message area comes before a red systems area, because a systems rebuild built around the wrong buyer has to be redone. The top 2 or 3 fixes become the start of your first 30 days.

Why a 60-person Nordic software company fixed its positioning before its systems

Take a newly acquired Nordic software company we work with: Around 60 people, 600+ customers, two marketers, no CMO. The product was strong and demand came almost entirely by word of mouth. The website still spoke to the customer the company was leaving behind, and the systems were close to empty.

Message and systems both scored red, and the pull was to start with the systems. Positioning came first instead, with 15 to 20 buyer interviews, because a rebuild around the old buyer would have been wasted. Content and search followed on the new message, then the systems rebuild, with new markets held for later.

FAQ

Pull the evidence, score the 6 areas, and fix in dependency order

Pull the evidence from tools you already own, run the quick test for each area, score red, amber, or green, and fix the reds that others depend on first. Done in a week, an audit gives you a short list the whole team can act on. No random acts of marketing.

If you would like the audit run with a small senior team for a company you have just bought, the value-creation programme for portfolio companies sets out how the work runs and where to book a strategy session. You will leave with a bird's-eye plan, whether or not we work together.