Glossary · The audit
Marketing & margin audit
An independent, evidenced review of marketing spend and unit economics that finds where budget leaks, quantifies the margin at stake and hands over a prioritized fix list.
What a marketing and margin audit is
A marketing and margin audit is an independent, evidenced review of where a business's marketing money goes and what it earns back in margin, not in revenue. It reconciles what the ad platforms and agencies report against the ledger, tests which spend is incremental, rebuilds the unit economics behind the offers, and puts an annual figure on every leak it finds.
It differs from a conventional marketing audit in the yardstick. A marketing audit typically reviews channels, messaging and campaign performance against marketing metrics such as reach, click through rate and platform ROAS. A marketing and margin audit measures the same spend against contribution margin, so a campaign that hits its targets while selling orders below their true cost counts as a leak, not a success.
The audit output and an example
The formula and an illustration; the corpus line is the audited figure behind it.
Audit output = where it leaks + the annual figure + the fix list, in priority order
Worked example Illustration, not a client figure
A fixed fee, findings in 5 to 7 working days, one auditor with read only access, and a guarantee floor of findings per tier or the fee comes back.
Corpus 74 audits across 9 industries; the median highlight finding is worth $58k a year.
Why the margin half of the audit matters
The margin half is where most of the money is. The reports a marketing team works from are built to show activity and attributed revenue, and the leaks sit in what those reports leave out: conversions that would have happened anyway, revenue claimed by more than one platform, offers priced below their landed cost, retention that new spend papers over. None of them is visible without the finance data beside the marketing data.
The output is a ranked list, not a scorecard. Each finding states where the money leaks, the evidence, the annual figure and the fix, in priority order by value. Across the 74 published audits a median 18.7% of marketing spend was leaking, and the median highlight finding was worth $58k a year.
Independence is part of the definition. The audit is run by someone who does not buy the media, does not earn a share of the spend and is not selling the fix, so the finding can be that a channel should shrink. At MarginFix it runs on read only access, delivers in 5 to 7 working days for a fixed fee, and every report is reviewed by a senior auditor before it is handed over.
What the audits found, industry by industry
The largest published finding in each of the 9 industries, each with the audited annual figure.
- DTC / Ecommerce
Scaling spend was hiding a $134k annual margin leak
+$134k a year, findings in 6 days.
Read the case → - Manufacturing
Volume rebates were paid on orders that never hit the tier
−$118k a year, findings in 7 days.
Read the case → - Fintech
Incentive spend acquired users who never funded
−$96k a year, findings in 7 days.
Read the case → - B2B SaaS
Late quarter discounting was quietly eroding ACV margin
+$92k a year, findings in 7 days.
Read the case → - Retail
Online ads were paying for in store demand
−$88k a year, findings in 7 days.
Read the case → - Pharma
Congress and KOL sponsorship showed no measurable return
−$88k a year, findings in 7 days.
Read the case → - Marketplace
CAC looked fine, until we split it by cohort
+$82k a year, findings in 7 days.
Read the case → - Subscription
Seat true ups were underbilled as accounts grew
+$63k a year, findings in 6 days.
Read the case → - Services
Intake was dropping a third of qualified calls
+$62k a year, findings in 6 days.
Read the case →
Questions about a marketing and margin audit
What is a marketing and margin audit?
An independent review of marketing spend against unit economics. It reconciles platform and agency reports to the ledger, tests which spend is incremental, rebuilds the margin behind each offer, and hands over a ranked list of leaks with an annual figure and a fix for each.
How is it different from a marketing audit?
A conventional marketing audit judges channels and campaigns on marketing metrics such as reach, clicks and platform ROAS. A marketing and margin audit judges the same spend on contribution margin, so it finds the campaigns that hit their targets while losing money on the orders they win.
What does a marketing and margin audit deliver?
The findings, each with its evidence and an annual figure, ranked by value, and the fix list in priority order. At MarginFix that arrives in 5 to 7 working days for a fixed fee, from read only access. See a sample report →
Know the term. Now measure it in your own numbers.
Your own spend, measured against your own margin in 5 to 7 working days. $10k to $50k of findings, or your money back.
Fixed fee. No retainer. NDA first.
Go deeper
The audit and the wider evidence
- All 14 termsThe full glossary: every term with a formula and a worked example.→
- All 74 findingsRanked by annual value, $58k median, each one a real case.→
- The benchmarkWhere 74 SMB marketing budgets leaked, by share of spend and by industry.→
- Margin leaksThe five leak patterns in depth: what each one is and how an audit finds it.→
- Marketing audit checklistThirty checks across paid media, attribution, pricing, retention and reporting.→
- What an audit costsThe 2026 market ranges with sources, against the fixed fee tiers.→