The 15-Minute Marketing Audit

Set aside time one day a week and try this

Mike Holden
May 25, 2025

In partnership with

Let’s discuss picking one day a week to monitor your marketing progress.

Once you get this process down, you can learn a lot in 15 minutes each week.

The 15-Minute Marketing Audit

In the medical world, this is called triage. You quickly assess what needs immediate attention, what can wait, and what's already fine.

In marketing, our "triage" is the 15-minute audit.

Most business owners think marketing audits require expensive consultants, complex spreadsheets, and hours of analysis. However, the best insights often come from the simplest questions consistently asked.

Let's talk about staying aware

Your marketing is always telling you something. The problem is that most of us are too busy creating new campaigns to listen to what the current ones are saying.

It's like driving while only looking at the GPS, never checking your mirrors, or scanning the road ahead. You might reach your destination but miss the necessary signals along the way.

Marketing is feedback.

Every click, open, comment, and conversion is your audience voting with their attention. But if you're not regularly checking those votes, you're flying blind.

When you audit consistently, you're not just collecting data—you're having a conversation with your results:

What's working better than expected?
What's underperforming despite effort?
Where are people dropping off?
What patterns do I see week over week?

But without regular check-ins, you're just throwing marketing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks.

What makes a good 15-minute audit?

Pick one day each week. Same time, same questions.
Look at 3-5 key metrics max. Don't get lost in data.
Ask "why" before "what next." Understanding beats action.
Document patterns, not just numbers. Trends tell stories.
Take one action based on what you learn. Insights without action are just trivia.

Try checking these weekly:

Email open rates vs. last week/month
Social media engagement patterns
Website traffic sources and top pages
Which content gets shared or saved the most
Customer feedback themes

The goal isn't perfection—it's awareness. You're looking for signals that tell you where to double down, what to fix, and what to stop doing entirely.

Set a weekly reminder and try this for the next month. Let me know what patterns you discover.

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If you have any feedback, just hit reply. I appreciate hearing about what you like and don’t like, and some of my newsletter topics come directly from your feedback.

-Mike
—
Find me online: bio.link/mikeholden

The 15-Minute Marketing Audit

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