Marketing Audit — find where the revenue leaks

Most marketing gets fixed at the wrong layer. Teams rewrite ads when the offer is broken, rebuild funnels when the positioning is mush, and buy tools when nobody can name the customer's top pain. This audit scores every layer in dependency order, so effort goes where the leak actually is — not where the work feels most comfortable.

Inputs

• Website, funnel numbers, live channels, recent campaigns, dashboards — whatever exists: $ARGUMENTS
• From marketing-brief.md if present: the whole file. The state of the brief is itself evidence — empty or T3-graded sections are research gaps by definition.

Do this

1. Inventory the evidence before scoring anything. What actually exists: customer research in the buyer's words, a written position, an offer one-pager, channel numbers, funnel numbers by stage, creative samples with results, a weekly dashboard. Missing evidence is a finding, not a reason to guess.
2. Score seven layers 1–5, each with one line of evidence for the score:
   • Research — is the customer known in their own words, or only in the company's words?
   • Positioning — can anyone state who it is for, against what alternative, and the one difference?
   • Offer — clear outcome, price logic, risk reversal, urgency that is real?
   • Channels — one primary channel working, or five half-working?
   • Funnel — stages mapped with numbers, or a website and hope?
   • Creative — enough volume and variety to learn from, with results tracked per piece?
   • Measurement — a north star with drivers, reviewed weekly?
3. Run the dependency check. The layers are ordered: a 2/5 on positioning caps every layer downstream, however polished the creative looks. Flag any high score sitting on a broken upstream layer as unstable.
4. Rank the gaps by revenue impact, not by score. For each gap, weigh the money it touches, how broken it is, and how fast it can be fixed — a small leak at the point of purchase can outrank a big one at the top.
5. Write the 90-day fix order: one fix per fortnight at most, in dependency order, each routed to the skill that does the work — a mushy position to /marketing:positioning-workshop, a weak offer to /marketing:offer-builder, missing customer language to /marketing:customer-deep-dive, no numbers to /marketing:kpi-tree.
6. Name the score you trust least and the single input that would firm it up.

Output

A one-page audit: the seven-layer scorecard with evidence per score, the top three gaps with the revenue reasoning behind their ranking, the 90-day fix order with named skills, and the least-trusted score. An audit that needs a meeting to explain has failed.

Rules

• Scores follow evidence. A layer with no numbers and no written artefact cannot score above 2, however good it feels.
• Diagnose upstream before prescribing downstream. Never recommend creative fixes for a positioning problem.
• The fix order deletes before it adds. If the audit finds five half-run channels, the first fix is killing four, not starting a sixth.
• Revenue impact beats severity. Rank by money, not by how embarrassing the gap is.