BLOG / STRATEGY · 5 min read
Syntri Labs · July 2026
“Marketing audit” is a phrase agencies use to mean anything from a sales call in disguise to a 40-page PDF nobody reads. Ours is neither. It is a free self-assessment: 25 yes/no checkpoints in five categories, about three minutes, instant score, no email gate. Your answers never leave the page.
The list has one rule that makes it work: check what exists today, not what you are planning to build. The gap between “we’re working on it” and “it exists” is precisely where businesses leak money. This article explains what the five categories actually check, and why each earned its place.
The questions are yes/no rather than a score out of ten because owners grade themselves on effort, and effort inflates. A binary question (does a documented follow-up sequence exist, yes or no) cannot be flattered. Twenty-five honest binaries produce a more accurate picture than a hundred generous ratings. It is also why the whole thing takes three minutes: every question already contains its own definition of done.
Five checkpoints on the foundations: a defined target customer beyond “women 25–45”, a one-sentence answer to why someone should choose you, revenue goals traced to specific marketing activities, a competitor analysis from the last 12 months, and consistent positioning across every channel. This category comes first because everything downstream amplifies it. Ads, content and email are amplifiers — point them at a vague message and they amplify vagueness at full budget. Most low scores here explain the low scores everywhere else.
This category separates activity from evidence. Do you know which channels bring qualified leads, with data, not assumptions? Is the website built to convert, or just to look good? If ads run, do you track ROI rather than clicks? Is email a deliberate sequence tied to your funnel, or a newsletter when someone remembers? Is content planned around what buyers actually search for? Every checkpoint here has the same shape: plenty of businesses are busy on these channels; far fewer can show what the busyness produces.
The numbers category: conversion rate at each funnel stage, exact cost per lead, customer acquisition cost and how long it takes to recover, a habit of testing rather than running the same thing for months, and a real retention or referral system. These checkpoints exist because you cannot scale what you cannot measure. An owner who knows their CPL and CAC can make budget decisions in minutes; an owner who doesn’t is negotiating with their own gut. This is usually the weakest category we see, and the most profitable one to fix.
Visual consistency everywhere, a written tone of voice anyone on the team can use, content recognizable without the logo, a brand that attracts the clients you want rather than the ones you’ve had, and a brand promise that means something to the buyer. Brand feels soft until you see what it does to prices. When we rebuilt the brand for a Calgary cleaning client, average prices rose 30% — same service, clearer signal about who it was for. That is what these five checkpoints are protecting.
The last category checks what happens after marketing does its job: a documented customer journey, structured feedback from every client, onboarding that doesn’t depend on the owner personally running it, a follow-up system for leads who didn’t convert the first time, and no surprises about scope or timeline. It exists because marketing only sends people into an experience, and a leaky experience quietly refunds every dollar the marketing earned. The follow-up checkpoint alone catches one of the most common leaks: leads that said “not yet” and were never contacted again.
The score is not a grade. It is a map. Below 15/25 usually means there is one specific place to fix first, and the category breakdown points at it. A high total with one weak category is just as useful: it names the constraint. Either way, you will know more about your marketing in three minutes than most owners learn in a quarter. The audit is here, and we honestly cannot see your result unless you choose to bring it to us.
25 checkpoints, 5 categories, about 3 minutes. No email, no follow-up — just your score and what it means.
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