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A straight answer on what's working.
Named specifically, not softened. If something's good you should know, so you stop second-guessing it.
The Audit
An audit built to sell you something only ever finds problems. A real one finds what's working too.
The Free Audit
Your site isn't optimized for mobile
Your keywords are underperforming
You're not posting enough
Your competitors are outranking you
Your conversion rate is below benchmark
You're leaving money on the table
Six findings. Six problems. Every one of them solvable by the person who ran the audit.
That's not an audit. That's a pitch with a spreadsheet attached.
The Real Thing
Your email list is more engaged than the industry average and nobody has noticed
Your sales team is genuinely good at the first conversation
The referral relationships are real and underused
Nothing connects marketing activity to closed revenue
You're paying for two tools that do the same thing
The person running marketing has never been given a priority
Roughly two things working for every three worth exploring. That's what it looks like when somebody actually goes and finds out.
If every finding is a problem, nobody looked. They filled in a template.
The Case for Outside
Your marketing person can't objectively assess decisions they made. Your agency can't tell you the channel they run isn't working. Your ops lead who inherited marketing doesn't have the reps to know what good looks like.
Everybody's honest. Everybody's also standing too close to see it.
That's the case for an outside review. Not that outsiders are smarter. That they have nothing riding on the answer.
The Turn
Except most outside reviews do have something riding on the answer.
If the audit is free and the person running it sells the fix, you already know how it ends. Not because they're dishonest. Because you can't evaluate something objectively when one answer pays you and the other doesn't.
Which is why I charge for the audit.
Paying for it is what makes it worth reading. It means I can tell you the thing you're doing is fine. It means I can tell you the fix is a $2,000 contractor and not a $12,000 retainer. It means I can tell you to keep your current agency and just give them better direction.
I've said all three.
The Deliverable
Named specifically, not softened. If something's good you should know, so you stop second-guessing it.
Framed as a gap rather than a failure, but not hedged into uselessness.
Not twenty-three recommendations. The three that matter and the order to do them in.
If the honest next step doesn't involve hiring me, that's what the report says.
The point of an audit isn't to find enough wrong to justify a proposal.
It's to give you a clear picture of what you've actually got, so the next decision you make is an informed one.
Sometimes that decision is working together. Sometimes it isn't.
Either way you know where you stand, which is more than most companies can say about their own marketing.