Compare · vs in house
Marketing audit vs. an in house review
Your team can review the numbers themselves, for free. The question is whether they can see what an outsider sees. Here is how an independent audit compares with an in house review on objectivity, benchmarks, speed and cost.
- 74audits in the corpus
- $4.5M+margin identified
- $58kmedian finding a year
- 5 to 7working days to findings
Source: the MarginFix benchmark dataset, 74 published audits.
Side by side
Independent audit against in house review, row by row. The last row says what each option is built for.
| Criterion | Independent audit | In house review |
|---|---|---|
| Objectivity | Outside view, no internal politics | Knows the context, carries the bias |
| Benchmark | A 74 audit base to compare against ✓the dataset | Only your own history |
| Bandwidth | Dedicated and time boxed | Squeezed around the day job |
| Speed | 5 to 7 working days ✓74 cases | As long as it takes to find the time |
| Cost | Fixed fee, $1,450 to $5,950 | "Free", with a real opportunity cost |
| What it is built for | An objective, benchmarked diagnosis | Continuous monitoring you own |
The verdict
Candid about the alternative. Always the same first step.
Your team knows the context an outsider never will, which is exactly why an in house review is good at spotting known issues and bad at spotting the ones everyone has stopped seeing. An audit brings two things a team cannot easily manufacture for itself: objectivity and a benchmark. Keep the monitoring in house; use an audit when you need an outside, benchmarked read on where the margin is going.
What it is built forIndependent auditAn objective, benchmarked diagnosisIn house reviewContinuous monitoring you own
Median finding across 74 published audits: $58k a year. ✓The case: CAC looked fine ✓74 cases
A MarginFix marketing audit is fixed fee ($1,450 to $5,950) with findings in 5 to 7 working days; the median audit identifies $58k of annual margin.MarginFix, marginfix.ai/compare/
In their words
What clients said after the readout. Every statement sits on a published case; open the case for the audited figure.
“Short version, we were about to cut the wrong thing. Glad we got this done first.”
$134k a year, read a year after a 6 day audit
Contribution margin on the two top campaigns: −7% → +9%
“Revenue grew and cash didn't. Victoria rebuilt margin per order after shipping, returns and payment fees, and our two biggest prospecting campaigns were losing money on every sale. We stopped scaling them.”
Victoria MillerLead auditor on this audit“Founder was on the kickoff call, the auditor who did the work ran the readout. Small thing but I've never had that with a consultancy before. You actually talk to the people who know the answers.”
$118k a year of wasted spend cut in 7 days
Rebates paid on volume never actually earned: 19% → 1%
“Rebate expense outran distributor volume and we could not see why. Cristian reconciled rebates paid against volume actually shipped and paid for, tier by tier: accruals had run off gross purchase orders. Quarterly true ups now catch it.”
Cristian BragauSenior Auditor · signed this audit off“The thing that won me over was a line in the report that basically said "we can't prove this one, so we're not counting it". Nobody does that. Made me trust everything else in there.”
$96k a year of wasted spend cut in 7 days
App installs that funded a real account: 24% → 63%
“Installs looked great and funded accounts stagnated. David followed sign ups through to funding, and the bonus was buying registrations from people who claimed it and never transacted. Incentives now pay on activation, not the download.”
David JacksonSenior Auditor · signed this audit off“I've paid for a few of these "audits" over the years and they usually end with a pitch. This one ended with a list of what to fix and which parts we could do ourselves. Some of it was not what I wanted to hear. All of it was right.”
$92k a year found in 7 days
Enterprise deal margin lost to quarter end: 5 pts lost → 0 pts lost
“Bookings hit target while margin slipped. Cristian split our discounting by timing and rep: concessions spiked in the last days of every quarter because buyers had learned to wait. Approval thresholds fixed it without losing deals.”
Cristian BragauSenior Auditor · signed this audit off“Solid work. Lost a star only because the first week dragged, mostly getting them access on our end so partly our fault. After that it moved fast and the readout was really clear.”
$88k a year of wasted spend cut in 7 days
Paid social proven to lift store visits: ~1 in 3 → 9 in 10
“Our CFO doubted that online ads drove store visits. David's matched market geo lift test proved the doubt right: footfall barely changed where the ads were off. The budget moved to markets and channels that passed the test.”
David JacksonSenior Auditor · signed this audit off$88k annual budget redirection identified in 7 days
Congress spend with a tracked return: 8% → 88%
“Six figures a year in congresses and KOL sponsorships, renewed on habit. Leslie tried to connect it to share of voice, engagement or prescribing and found no instrumentation at all. The unmeasurable part now funds engagement we can track.”
Leslie MartinSenior Auditor · signed this audit off$74k a year of wasted spend cut in 7 days
Courier bonuses paid into already full zones: 22% → 3%
“Incentive spend rose while service levels stayed flat. Alex matched bonus payouts against real time courier availability by zone: in dense areas we paid couriers who would have worked anyway. Bonuses now fire only where coverage is short.”
Alex PopSenior Auditor · signed this audit off$63k a year found in 6 days
Active users actually being billed: 93% → 99%
“Expansion lagged what we saw inside accounts. Victoria reconciled active users against billed seats: many customers used more seats than they paid for. Automated true ups now capture it, and nobody pushed back.”
Victoria MillerSenior Auditor · signed this audit off$62k a year found in 6 days
Qualified inbound calls that became bookings: 2 in 3 → 9 in 10
“Marketing hit every target and revenue stalled. Leslie followed our qualified calls into intake and about a third were dropped at busy times or never followed up. Fixing staffing and call handling converted demand we had already paid for.”
Leslie MartinSenior Auditor · signed this audit offCommon questions
Why can't my team just do the audit?
They can review. But they carry the same assumptions that let the leak form, and they have no outside benchmark. An audit adds an objective view and a 74 audit comparison base, in a dedicated 5 to 7 working day window instead of squeezed around the day job. The eight steps of an in house audit →
What does an audit see that an in house review misses?
Mostly the invisible: paid spend that is not incremental, attribution inflation and mispriced offers that a healthy blended ROAS hides. These are hard to see from inside because the top line looks fine. What attribution inflation is →
Is a one off audit enough, or do I need monitoring?
An audit is the diagnosis; monitoring is the maintenance. Most teams audit to find the leaks, fix them, keep an eye on the metrics in house, and audit again when spend or strategy shifts materially.
Add the outside view.
A 15 minute fit call, no pitch, one auditor. Bring what your team already found.
Fixed fee. No retainer. NDA first.
Go deeper
Keep comparing
- Marketing audit vs. hiring a consultantBoth promise to fix your marketing. Cost, speed, independence and what you actually walk away with.→
- Independent audit vs. your agency reviewing itselfAsking the agency to grade its own spend is asking it to do its own homework.→
- How it worksThe week, day by day: access, analysis, readout and the report.→
- PricingThree fixed fee tiers from $1,450, each with its own findings floor.→
- All 74 findingsRanked by annual value, $58k median, each one a real case.→
- Margin leaksThe five leak patterns in depth: what each one is and how an audit finds it.→