Insights · field notes from 74 audits
No thought leadership. Benchmark data, leak patterns and fixes, written from what the audits actually find.
Source: the MarginFix benchmark dataset, 74 published audits.
The report every other guide draws on.
The five leak categories we test for, ranked by average dollar impact. The most common shows up in 68% of the audits.
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Cristian BragauFounder & Lead Auditor · 17 published cases · Reviewed
11 guides, one dataset.
Why Meta, Google and GA4 all claim the same sale, and the three checks that reveal your real blended return.
Read the full guide →The independent second opinion playbook: what to check quarterly, what to ask for, and when a leak is nobody's fault.
Read the full guide →CAC payback, email revenue share, retargeting frequency and five more benchmarks, by industry and spend band. Healthy against flagged.
Read the full guide →Codes, thresholds, plan discounts, rebates and stale prices: where the margin goes after the list price. Mispriced offers turned up in 47% of the audits.
Read the full guide →Geo, audience and on and off holdouts on a small budget, how to read the result in margin, and which channels to test first.
Read the full guide →Six steps from the ledger to one ratio: match GA4 by transaction ID, add up every platform's claim, read the gap. Attribution inflation turned up in 54% of the audits.
Read the full guide →Six checks on Google and Meta in the order to run them, and when to cut, cap or test. Wasted paid spend was 22% of audited spend.
Read the full guide →Two billing exports, three numbers and six recovery levers in order, from the card updater to the end state. Retention leaks turned up in 41% of the audits.
Read the full guide →Eight steps from scope to readout: reconcile the claims to the ledger, test what spend caused, size and rank every finding. The median audit identified $58k a year.
Read the full guide →Agency, DSP and SSP fees, the documents that expose each layer, and your working media share. Across the audits, 22% of audited spend was wasted paid spend.
Read the full guide →What 74 audited SMB marketing budgets have in common.
Every guide draws on the same 74 audits across 9 industries: a median 18.7% of marketing spend leaking, inside an 11% to 28% band, and a median highlight finding worth $58k a year. ✓74 cases ✓The benchmark
MarginFix has audited 74 SMB marketing budgets across 9 industries and identified $4.5M+ in margin.MarginFix, marginfix.ai/insights/
One fixed fee, 5 to 7 working days, every finding tied to your own numbers.
Fixed fee. No retainer. NDA first.
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Audits by industry
The proof
Case studiesAll 74 audits, with figuresSample reportThe full case 01 audit, anonymizedClient reviewsIn their wordsBenchmark reportEvery number, by industryCase 01 · DTC Ecommerce
$134,000
Scaling prospecting spend was losing money on every sale. Found in 6 days.
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