New year, new goals: Kickstart Q1 with a digital marketing audit 

As office celebrations get underway, cheery Christmas campaigns dominate our screens and LinkedIn feeds overflow with festive puns, attention naturally shifts to Q1 preparations. The festive season brings with it an in-built period for personal reflection, but also presents a huge opportunity for business leaders to review what’s worked, what hasn’t, and set clear goals for the year ahead. And all this starts with a digital marketing audit.

Wondering what that looks like exactly? You’re in the right place. We break down what a digital marketing audit is, why it’s important for your business and provide some top tips for getting started. And remember – you can always reach out to Codi to do it for you! 

Ready to thrive, not just survive in 2025? Let’s get going.

 

What is a digital marketing audit? 

A digital marketing audit is a thorough investigation of your current marketing efforts encompassing everything from PPC, Google Ads, email marketing, social media, your website and SEO. An audit looks at what channels are performing well, what tactics are key revenue drivers and where marketing ROI is most optimal. It provides an opportunity to identify areas for improvement and benchmark your performance against competitors.

Conducting a marketing audit is similar to a car mechanic performing an MOT. It allows you to identify what needs fixing and what adjustments are necessary to ensure your marketing engine runs smoothly.

 

Does my business need one?

The short answer – Yes. 

The slightly longer answer – Yes. All businesses need one. If you’re a SaaS start-up founder, CEO or marketer wanting to drive revenue, grow exponentially and get the most out of your marketing efforts in 2025, then a digital marketing audit should be on your Q1 priority list.

Here are just some of the many reasons why:

• Identify core marketing channels: An audit helps pinpoint both high and low-performing marketing channels, which can be extremely helpful when allocating resources.
• Maximise ROI: When you review campaign and channel performance and track ROI accurately, you can allocate your budget more effectively to the channels and tactics that yield the best results.
• Stay competitive: Benchmarking your performance against industry standards or competitors helps you to identify gaps in your own strategy and take inspiration from what’s working elsewhere. Plus, your competitors are probably doing an audit too.
• Inform your marketing strategy: A digital marketing audit should be part of a wider go-to-market strategy. Without a clear review of your current marketing efforts, how can you strategise successfully and set your business up for long-term growth?

 

 

How to conduct a thorough marketing audit 

A couple of caveats before we get going: 

1. We know that most early-stage start-up founders or CEOs don’t have the time to carry out such a lengthy investigation. This section talks about what it SHOULD look like. Need support conducting your digital marketing audit? Codi has the expertise: Get in touch today.
2. Before jumping into your marketing audit you should ensure your business and marketing goals are clearly defined. Only by doing this first can you determine the extent to which your current efforts are in helping to hit those goals.  

All clear? Ok – Here’s what good looks like.

 

Q1: What’s working?

The first question you need to answer is which marketing efforts are truly working? This insight will guide you in deciding where to double down and invest more resources, and where to pull back.

To determine this, marketers within your team (or outsourced experts) should review individual marketing channels to discover:

• Which channels are currently driving demos? 
• How many customers are generated by each channel? 
• What is the first and last channel they engaged with before purchase?
• Which channels are generating SQLs?
• What channels are driving pipeline or closed won deals?

An effective audit looks beyond surface-level metrics. Let’s say you’re targeting highly relevant BoF (bottom of funnel) keywords with PPC (pay-per-click), and the CPC (cost-per-click) is high and the volume of traffic is low. It might be easy to say ‘turn it off’. But if that campaign has driven pipeline deals surmounting to thousands of pounds – it’s a successful campaign and shouldn’t be turned off.

And the same works in reverse for so-called ‘vanity metrics’. To see what is truly driving revenue, marketers must see beyond the stats that may look good, but don’t add any meaningful business value. Brutal honesty is a must.

 

Q2: What are the problem areas? 

Next consider your more troublesome areas. Is your main issue getting new leads? Or do you have a ton of leads sitting in your CRM that aren’t progressing? Where are you investing your budget and seeing little to no return?

Let’s take a common problem area we regularly encounter when working with series A and B start-ups: Too little time spent on closing existing pipeline opportunities. 

All too often SaaS start-ups fall into the trap of focusing all their time and resources on pipeline generation. Some businesses are already having good conversations with potential clients, but are struggling to convert.

Obviously every business is different, but because most marketing teams are measured on lead generation rather than revenue or retention, they don’t bother focusing here. 

The answer? Instead of pumping money into driving new leads, switch your attention to winning open pipeline opportunities and retaining and upselling to their existing customer base. 

 

Q3: How are channels performing compared to industry benchmarks?

The third question to consider within your audit will help to discover top performing channels and decide if the channel is performing to its full potential. Not only does this comparison offer an honest assessment of your efforts, it can also inform goal setting, resource allocation and justify marketing spend. 

For an idea of what good looks like, here are some B2B marketing benchmarks to aim for based on a Series A B2B SaaS company in operation for a couple of years: 

 

Email marketing:

For one-off campaigns:

• Open rate: +25%
• CTR: 2-3%
• Unsubscribe rates: Less than 1%

For lead nurture flows: 

• Open rate: +35%
• CTR: 8%
• Unsubscribe rate: Less than 1%

SEO/ Website:

Domain Authority: 20+ 

Site Health Score: 80+

Organic Traffic (as a % of total traffic): 50%+

Conversion Rate (website): 5%

Conversion Rate (Landing page): Around 20%

Bounce rate: 25-55%

Session duration: Around 4:26 minutes

Average form conversion: 2-3%

Social media:

LinkedIn:

Average engagement rate: Small accounts (< 5,000 followers) 6% & Large accounts  (100,000 + followers) 3%.

Post impressions: 4000-12000 per month

Paid media:

LinkedIn 

Note: These will vary by audience and the type of campaign you’re running

Cost per click: Aim to keep these less than $5, less than $2 is very good (but this varies based on what you’re advertising)

Click-through rate (CTR): 0.5%+

Google Ads:

Cost per click: Under $5 = good, under $2 = very good

Click-through rate (CTR): 5%+ = good, 7%+ = excellent

 

Q4: What are my competitors doing?

As previously discussed, evaluating your competitors is another key ingredient in your digital marketing audit. Gathering competitor intelligence and reviewing their current strategies allows you to identify any lessons that could be drawn from their approaches.

And this goes for industry leaders too. Those companies you aspire to emulate, even if they are not direct competitors. Look at factors like whether their CEO engages frequently on LinkedIn, or whether they host user conferences or conduct regular webinars.

 

Kick-off 2025 with a digital marketing audit by Codi

The value of a digital marketing audit is hard to ignore. Not only does it help to uncover critical business insights relating to the health of your existing marketing efforts and performance, but businesses can allocate resources more effectively and gather valuable direction in helping to build their go-to-market strategy. 

Whether you’re sold on the importance but lack the in-house resources to make it happen, or are keen to find out more about digital marketing audits in general, Codi’s SaaS marketing experts can help. 

Working primarily with Series A and B SaaS start-ups, our experts integrate fully into your existing team to plug the gaps in your marketing expertise and provide flexible, hands-on support. Plus, we kick off all our partnerships with a comprehensive marketing audit to help you identify areas for growth and hit your 2025 revenue goals. 

Ready to finally start seeing results from your marketing? Get New Year ready with Codi.