If you pay a marketing agency every month but can't say exactly what the money produces, an audit gives you the answer. We compare three things: what the contract promised, what work was actually done, and what that work produced in tracked enquiries and sales.
What a vendor audit is
A vendor audit is a buyer-side review of the agencies, freelancers and marketing software you pay for. It is built on evidence: account settings, change histories, analytics data, invoices and reports. Every finding comes with a screenshot or an export, so you can check it yourself and show it to the vendor.
The audit covers three layers:
- Contract and invoices. What was promised, at what price, and whether invoices match the scope.
- The work. Whether campaigns, content, technical fixes and reporting happened as described, and to a reasonable standard.
- The outcome. How many enquiries, calls and sales can be traced to each channel, and at what cost.
Who it's for
Audits suit owners who feel uneasy about a vendor but can't pin down why. They also suit companies where spend has grown over several years with no fresh review, and new owners or managers who have inherited marketing contracts and want a baseline.
If you're about to sign a new contract rather than review an existing one, a proposal review is the better tool.
What we review
- Account ownership: who owns the ad accounts, analytics, domain, website hosting and content
- Tracking: whether calls, texts, emails and quote requests are counted correctly, without duplicates
- Paid search and social: search terms you pay for, wasted spend, targeting and budget pacing
- Search visibility: what SEO work is visible in the site and in search console data
- Website: speed, mobile usability and whether pages make it easy to call, text or email
- Reporting: whether reports show business results or just activity
- Software stack: overlapping tools, unused licences and contracts on auto-renew
- Value: cost per tracked enquiry and per customer, compared with your target
Three findings that come up again and again
Every business is different, but three problems appear in a large share of the accounts we review.
The first is tracking that flatters. A single enquiry is counted twice, once as a page visit to a thank-you screen and again as a call, or calls under 10 seconds are counted as leads. The report looks healthy while real enquiries are flat.
The second is spend on searches that never convert. Broad keyword settings let ads show for job seekers, do-it-yourself questions or competitors' brand names. A few hours of exclusions can redirect a meaningful share of the budget.
The third is ownership drift. Over the years, accounts get opened under the vendor's login "to save time". Nobody notices until the owner tries to leave and discovers the history belongs to someone else.
Timeline and deliverables
A single-vendor audit usually takes three to four weeks, most of it waiting for access and exports. Multi-vendor audits take longer. You receive a written report with a one-page summary at the front, findings grouped by severity, and a prioritised list of fixes with rough effort for each.
We walk you through the findings on a call, and if you wish, we join a meeting with the vendor to discuss them. That conversation is often where the most value is created, because a specific, evidenced list is hard to brush aside.
How results are measured
An audit succeeds when you can make a confident decision: keep the vendor with a tighter scope, renegotiate, or replace them. Over the following quarter, the measurable signs are cleaner tracking, a lower or steadier cost per enquiry, and reports you can read without help.
Our results page explains why accurate measurement mattered so much in the work behind our HVAC case studies.
Mistakes to avoid when reviewing a vendor
- Judging on traffic alone. Visits and impressions are not customers. Insist on tracked enquiries and closed sales.
- Auditing without the contract. You can't judge delivery without knowing what was promised.
- Sharing passwords. Grant access through platform user settings so it can be removed cleanly.
- Letting the vendor mark its own homework. A self-assessment is useful context, not an audit.
- Waiting for renewal. The right moment to audit is a few months before a renewal date, not the week before.
Our free agency audit checklist lets you run a first pass yourself. Audit pricing is on the pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to tell my agency about the audit?
You will usually need their help to grant access, so yes in most cases. We recommend presenting it as a routine review, which it is. Good agencies welcome a second set of eyes.
What access do you need?
Read-only or analyst access to ad platforms, analytics, search console, your website admin if relevant, and copies of contracts, invoices and the last six to twelve months of reports. We never need your passwords; access is granted through each platform's user settings.
Will the audit tell me to fire my agency?
Only if the evidence supports it, and in our experience that is the minority of cases. More often the outcome is a list of fixes, a tighter scope and clearer reporting.
Can you audit software and tools, not just agencies?
Yes. We review call tracking, CRM, scheduling, review and reporting tools for overlap, unused seats and features you pay for but do not use.