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The Marketing Audit Process
This isn’t a surface-level review of your Instagram feed followed by a list of things you should be doing more of. The Cat Gerke Creative Marketing Audit is a deep dive into your business, brand and marketing to understand where you are now, where you actually want to go, what is getting in the way and what needs to happen next. The result is a practical strategic blueprint built specifically around your business, your customers and, importantly, the kind of business you actually want to run.
STEP ONE:
1 hour discovery call
We start with a 60-minute one-on-one call to understand your business properly.
We’ll talk through:
What your business does and how it currently makes money
Who you serve — and who you would like to serve more of
Your current services, products and offers
What is working well, what feels unclear, frustrating, inconsistent or outdated
Where enquiries and customers currently come from
What you’ve tried before
Where you want the business to go next
The parts of the business you actually enjoy — and the parts you would happily never do again
Good marketing strategy shouldn't just generate more work. It should help create the right kind of work, from the right people, for a business that supports where you want your life and career to go. This conversation gives me the context I can't get from looking at your website or scrolling through your social media. I want to understand not only what your business looks like from the outside, but what you're trying to build behind the scenes.
STEP TWO:
The Questionnaire
Next comes a comprehensive strategic questionnaire. This isn't the usual: Who is your target audience? What are your brand values? Where would you like to be in five years? We go much deeper. The questionnaire is designed to uncover the things sitting underneath your marketing, your objectives, ambitions, frustrations, capacity, customers, positioning, offers, financial priorities and the way you actually want the business to operate.
It's not unusual for clients to tell me: "No one has ever asked me that before." Or: "I've never actually thought about it like that." Before we decide you need a new website, a content strategy or another marketing channel, we need to understand what those things are supposed to achieve.
We look at questions such as:
What kinds of clients or projects do you want more of and less of?
Which parts of your business are most profitable?
Which offers are easiest — or hardest — to sell?
Where are potential clients dropping away?
What are people consistently confused about?
What are you doing simply because you feel like you should?
The aim isn't to put you onto another marketing hamster wheel. It's to work out which marketing activities genuinely deserve your time, money and attention.
STEP THREE:
The Deep Dive
Then I disappear into your business. Using everything we've discussed, I conduct a comprehensive review of your current brand, business positioning and marketing ecosystem. Depending on your business, this may include:
BRAND + POSITIONING
Your positioning / Your point of difference / Brand perception / Visual identity / Messaging / Tone of voice / Brand consistency / How clearly your expertise and value are communicated
AUDIENCE + OFFERS
Your target customer / Current services or products / Offer structure / Pricing and packaging / How easy your offers are to understand / Opportunities to refine, reposition or develop offers / The relationship between what you're selling and what your ideal client actually needs
WEBSITE + CUSTOMER JOURNEY
Website structure / Navigation and user experience / Homepage clarity / Service/product pages / Calls to action / Conversion pathways / Enquiry process / Customer journey / Trust signals and proof / SEO opportunities / Where potential customers may be getting lost.
CONTENT + SOCIAL MEDIA
Current platforms / Content pillars / Content positioning / What you're talking about — and what you're not / Platform suitability / Posting frequency / Discoverability / Calls to action / Content formats / Authority-building opportunities
Whether your content is actually supporting your wider business objectives
MARKETING
Lead generation / Email marketing / Existing databases / Partnerships and collaborations / PR opportunities / Referral opportunities / Campaigns / Marketing funnels
BUSINESS + STRATEGY
How all of the above connects / Where your biggest opportunities sit / Where you're spending energy without enough return / What can be simplified / What should be prioritised / What doesn't need fixing at all
This isn't about finding faults for the sake of filling a report. Sometimes the recommendation will be to leave something alone. Sometimes it will be to stop doing something altogether. Sometimes I'll identify an opportunity you hadn't even realised was sitting in front of you.
STEP FOUR:
YOUR STRATEGIC BLUEPRINT
This is where everything comes together. You receive a comprehensive written Marketing Audit outlining what I found, what it means for your business and what I recommend you do about it. Importantly, the recommendations go beyond: "You need a new website." If your website needs work, I'll explain why, what the website needs to achieve, who it needs to speak to, how the customer journey should work, what the key pages should do and where the opportunities are. That means you can take the strategy to a web designer, build it yourself, brief your existing team — or work with Cat Gerke Creative to bring it to life.
The same applies to social media. I won't simply tell you: "You should post more often." We'll look at what you should be talking about, who it needs to reach, what each type of content is designed to achieve, which platforms matter, how frequently you realistically need to show up and where that content should lead people next.
Strategy sits underneath every recommendation.
What’s included in your report:
Your audit may cover:
Business and brand positioning
Ideal customer and audience clarity
Brand identity and consistency
Services, products and offer positioning
Website structure, UX and customer journey
Search and SEO opportunities
Social media presence
Content strategy and content pillars
Email marketing
Lead generation and conversion
Calls to action and Enquiry pathways
Partnerships, collaborations and referrals
Trust, authority and social proof
Customer retention opportunities
Marketing gaps
Opportunities for growth
Areas where time or money may currently be wasted
You'll receive:
An assessment of where your business, brand and marketing currently sit
What is already working and should be retained
What needs refinement
Areas of confusion or friction
Gaps that may be costing you trust, enquiries or sales
Opportunities you may not currently be leveraging
Practical recommendations for improvement
Strategic recommendations for your website, content and wider marketing
Clear priorities so you know what to tackle first
Longer-term opportunities that don't need your attention yet
A roadmap for what happens next
The idea is not to leave you with a 40-page document containing 100 things to do tomorrow. It's to give you clarity around what matters, what doesn't, what comes first and why.
HOW YOU USE IT:
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
The Marketing Audit is designed to stand on its own. You don't need to engage Cat Gerke Creative for anything further. You can use your audit as:
A DIY roadmap for improving your own marketing
A strategic business and marketing plan for the months ahead
A brief for your internal team or staff
A brief for your designer, copywriter, photographer, web developer or marketing support
The foundation for a rebrand or the starting point for a website redesign
The strategy behind your social media and content
A way to decide where your next marketing investment should go
Or, if the audit identifies work you'd like help implementing, we can use the strategy as the foundation for a larger Cat Gerke Creative project, from branding and websites to content, campaigns or ongoing marketing support.
Either way, you leave knowing what you're trying to achieve and what needs to happen next.
