Twelve Things We Check Before Recommending Anything
A business convinced it has a Google Ads problem frequently has a tracking problem, a landing page problem, or a follow-up problem no campaign work will fix.
By Ads Ninza · Published 31 August 2026 · 11 min read
Why diagnosis has to come first
A business arrives convinced it has a Google Ads problem. Frequently it has a tracking problem, a landing page problem, a pricing problem or a sales follow-up problem, and no amount of campaign work will touch any of those.
Starting with an audit means the work recommended afterwards is the work that will actually help. Sometimes that means telling a prospective client their advertising is fine and the constraint sits elsewhere, which loses a retainer and is still the right answer.
What follows is the order we work through, and you can run most of it yourself before hiring anybody.
The economics, before anything in the platform
1. Average order value or deal size. Actual, from the last twelve months, not aspirational.
2. Gross margin. After cost of goods, fulfilment, payment fees and returns. This is where e-commerce audits most often produce a surprise.
3. Close rate on enquiries. By source if possible. Organic and paid frequently close at very different rates and averaging them hides it.
4. Repeat rate and lifetime value. If profit comes from the second order, your acceptable acquisition cost on the first is much higher than the first order suggests.
Without these four, no target cost per acquisition is meaningful and no channel can be judged. This is frequently the most valuable part of an audit on its own, and it is the part clients most want to skip in order to look at the ad account.
Then measurement integrity
5. Every conversion action, individually. What does it represent. Can it double-fire. Would you pay money for it. Expect to find soft actions counted as conversions, one form counted twice through two triggers, and at least one conversion left over from a previous agency nobody can explain.
6. Whether offline outcomes flow back. If your CRM knows which leads closed and the ad platforms do not, bidding is optimising for submissions.
7. Brand versus non-brand separation. If they share a report, brand performance is subsidising everything and you cannot tell whether spend creates demand or intercepts it.
8. Search terms and waste. A full read of what you actually paid for versus what you selected. There is almost always recoverable budget here, and recovering it funds the growth work.
Then the path from click to sale
9. Where traffic lands. Specific commercial queries going to a home page is the most expensive single defect in paid media and one of the most common.
10. Form and mobile friction. Field count, validation behaviour, load speed on a real mobile connection, and where visitors drop out if you have step tracking. If you do not have step tracking, that is itself a finding.
11. Lead handling. Response time to a new enquiry, and what happens to the ones that do not close immediately. Most businesses have no sequence for the second group at all, which discards a meaningful share of pipeline.
12. Search and AI visibility. Technical SEO health, organic position in your commercial categories, local presence, and how you appear when the major AI assistants are asked about your category. That last check takes twenty minutes and most businesses have never run it.
What an audit should not be
Two things worth being direct about, because the word "audit" gets used loosely.
It should not be a tool-generated report. Automated graders flag low quality scores, missing extensions and broad match keywords, and miss everything that matters, because the important problems are about definitions and structure rather than settings. Whether your conversion actions represent real business outcomes is not something a tool can assess.
And it should not always conclude "hire us". An audit whose findings map neatly onto the seller service list is a sales document. Sometimes the work is straightforward enough to do in-house. Sometimes the constraint is pricing, or the offer, or a sales process nobody in marketing controls. We have said all three to prospects and lost the retainer.
What you should get is a prioritised list with commercial impact estimated, evidence for each finding, and a clear view on what does not need fixing. And it should be yours to act on however you like, including by handing it to a different agency.
Frequently asked questions
What does a marketing audit cost?
Our first step is a paid discovery call, charged at a nominal fee so both sides arrive prepared: INR 499 for Indian businesses, $9 elsewhere. That is 45 to 60 minutes with a senior consultant on your actual numbers. The full audit is scoped from there depending on account complexity and channels in play.
Why charge for the discovery call?
Because a free consultation attracts everyone and a paid one attracts people with a real problem. It means the hour goes on your numbers rather than on qualifying you, and it means we prepare beforehand. It also filters enquiries that were never going to become anything, which respects both sides time.
How long does an audit take?
One to two weeks from receiving account access, depending on complexity. Multi-channel accounts across several markets take longer than a single-country Google Ads account. The debrief is scheduled as soon as the document is ready.
What access do you need?
Read-only access to Google Ads, Meta Business Manager, GA4, Search Console and Tag Manager, plus whatever you can share on unit economics and lead outcomes. We work with what exists. If the data is patchy, that is itself a finding.
Will you tell us if we do not need your services?
Yes, and it happens. Sometimes the account is well run and the constraint is the offer, the pricing or the sales process. Sometimes the work is simple enough to do in-house. An audit that always concludes hire us is a sales document rather than an audit.
Do we have to work with you afterwards?
No. The audit is standalone and the findings are yours to act on however you like, including by giving them to another agency. Most clients do continue, but that is a consequence of the audit being useful rather than a condition of it.
Is this different from a free account review?
Substantially. Free reviews are typically tool-generated reports highlighting problems the reviewer can conveniently fix. This is a senior consultant examining your economics, measurement, structure, funnel and sales process, prioritised by what each is worth to you rather than by what is easy to sell.
What if our tracking is so broken there is no reliable data?
That is a common finding and becomes the first recommendation. We can still assess structure, waste, landing pages and process, and we will say plainly that no performance judgement is reliable until measurement is fixed. Knowing your data cannot be trusted is more valuable than deciding as though it can.
Can we run this audit ourselves?
Most of it, yes, and we have listed the twelve checks above deliberately so you can. What is harder without experience is prioritisation: every account has twenty improvable things and knowing which three move the number is the part that comes from having seen many accounts.
How do we start?
Apply through the form on our home page. It asks a series of qualifying questions because we would rather understand your situation before the call than spend the call discovering it. We then send the discovery call payment link by WhatsApp and email and confirm a slot.