What should be included in a contractor marketing audit?

Seven zones. Anything less is a sales pitch.

Category: Audit Checklist

The 7-zone checklist

Document every active channel: Google LSA, Google Ads, GBP organic, website organic, referral, repeat, direct mail, yard signs, other
Pull spend-per-channel for the last 90 days — all-in, including management fees and retainers
Verify each channel has a lead count, a booking count, and a cost-per-booked-job calculation
Flag any channel that's active but has no outcome tracking attached to it

Pull the last 30 days of inbound leads and measure response time from first contact to first human response — by channel and by time of day
Test the web form-to-CRM pipeline: submit a test lead and clock response time
Check after-hours handling — is there a live answering service or does it go to voicemail?
Flag any channel where average response time exceeds 5 minutes

Pull 20 random recorded calls from the last 30 days — not cherry-picked, random
Score each call: greeting, qualification (service + address + timeframe), objection handling, booking close, call disposition accuracy in CRM
Calculate booking rate from inbound calls — total calls vs. total booked jobs, not "appointments set"
Identify top three booking failure patterns (price objection, scheduling friction, unanswered question)

Walk every lead-capture path from ad click to form submission: check mobile load speed (target under 3 seconds), form functionality, and confirmation sequence
Verify Google Ads conversion is firing on booked-job CRM stage — not form submit, not phone call connection
Review post-lead follow-up automation: is there an email or text sequence for unbooked leads?
Check for broken CTAs or dead-end landing pages

Open the CRM and pull source field data for the last 90 days — check fill rate (what % of jobs have a source assigned)
Reconcile ad platform lead counts against CRM lead counts for the same period — if they disagree by more than 5%, attribution is broken
Confirm source field values are standardized (not "Google" and "google" and "G-ads" all meaning the same thing)
Verify there is a defined attribution rule for referrals and repeat customers

Pull customer return rate: what % of customers from 12–18 months ago have a second job on record?
Review post-job follow-up sequence: is there one? What's the timing and channel?
Check whether a maintenance membership or service plan exists and what the conversion rate is
Pull referral volume: how many jobs in the last 90 days were sourced from customer referrals?

For each active vendor, document: contracted deliverable, current reporting format, and whether the KPI in the report is connected to booked revenue
Flag any vendor whose monthly report doesn't include a cost-per-booked-job or booking-rate metric
Review vendor contracts for auto-renewal clauses, spend minimums, and cancellation terms
Note any vendor whose KPI is improving while booking rate or revenue is flat or declining — this is the most common accountability gap