Strategy Audits: A Roadmap for Performance-Driven Marketing

At co&co, we know the benefits of a strategy audit. It helps you to pinpoint what’s working, what’s failing, and what needs a serious overhaul. If you’re currently sitting there thinking, "I need help or I don’t know what to do next," then maybe a strategy audit should be next on your to-do list. A strategy health check is kind of like a brutal reality check for your marketing efforts. It forces you to assess whether your current marketing plan actually aligns with your business goals or if you’re just throwing money away.

Fresh eyes can make all the difference. We don’t just glance at your marketing strategy – we tear it apart, objectively. If it’s sh*t, we’ll say so. We’re a no fluff, no bull agency - it’s how we work. At the end of the day, you need a strategy that works, and that means having someone who isn’t afraid to call out the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let’s break down how strategy audits serve as a roadmap to better marketing outcomes.

Starting with a Strategy Health Check

A strategy health check isn’t just a quick glance at your analytics dashboard – it’s a massive dive into every moving part of your marketing efforts. A strategy audit might be the revamp your brand needs. At co&co, we break the strategy audit process down into key areas.

Key Areas of Focus:

🖤 Business Objectives Alignment – Are your marketing efforts driving business growth, or just falling flat? Every campaign, ad, and piece of content should tie back to clear business goals. If your marketing isn't seeing any return on revenue, brand awareness, or customer retention, then your ‘strategy’ isn’t working.

🖤 Market Positioning & Competitor Analysis – Where do you sit in the competitive landscape? Are you a leader, a follower, or stuck somewhere in the middle with no real edge? We analyse how your brand stacks up and where you can gain an advantage.

🖤 Customer Insights: Are you making decisions based on gut feelings or real customer data? We assess how well you track customer behaviour, needs, and pain points so your marketing efforts aren’t just guesses.

🖤 Budget Allocation: Are you investing in the right places, or are you setting cash on fire? We evaluate whether your spend is optimised for maximum return. For instance, not every social media channel is worth your time (despite what others might tell you) so cut what’s not working and reinvest in what is.

🖤 Digital Presence & SEO Performance – If your brand isn’t showing up where your audience is searching, you don’t exist. Is your SEO strategy working for you, or is your content buried under competitors? Being “online” isn’t enough – you need to be findable, relevant, and ranking in the right places to drive organic traffic and long-term ROI.

🖤 Content Marketing Effectiveness – Content marketing isn’t about churning out blogs and social posts – it’s all about attracting, engaging, and converting your audience. Are you creating content that resonates, or just filling up space? Quality beats quantity every time, and if your content isn’t leading people down the funnel, then what’s the point?.

🖤 Customer Engagement & Retention – It’s cheaper to keep a customer than to win a new one. Are you nurturing relationships, or are customers dropping off after one interaction? Engagement strategies – whether through email, social, or loyalty programs – should be built for long-term retention, not just quick wins.

🖤 Advertising & Campaign Performance – Where is your money actually going? Are your ads generating revenue, or are you just spending for the sake of visibility? Every campaign should have clear KPIs – if you can’t prove ROI, your budget is being wasted. Knowing which platforms, audiences, and messages drive the best results means you can cut what’s not working and reinvest in what is. And no, you don’t need to be on every social media platform.

🖤 Data Analytics & KPI Tracking – If you’re making marketing decisions without data, you’re not marketing, you’re gambling. Are you tracking the right KPIs? Do you know what’s converting, or are you making assumptions? Your marketing strategy should be data-driven, not just guesswork. Without clear analytics, you’re flying blind.

Signs Your Strategy Needs a Health Check:

• Engagement and conversion rates are tanking.
• You’re losing customers faster than you’re gaining them.
• Your marketing campaigns consistently miss key objectives.
• Lead generation is weak, and nurturing efforts are practically non-existent.
• Your brand messaging is inconsistent or fails to differentiate from competitors.
• Your content is not attracting, engaging, or converting your audience.
• Your ad spend isn’t delivering measurable ROI.
• You have no clear visibility on key marketing data or performance analytics.

Unpacking a strategy audit this way will help you diagnose weak spots before they spiral into full-blown disasters. It’s worth knowing that there’s a symbiotic relationship between ROI and strategy audits – the better your audit process, the stronger your ROI. A strategy audit identifies where your marketing spend is working, where it’s being wasted, and how to reallocate resources for maximum impact. In short, regular audits don’t just track performance – they actively drive profitability.

Identifying Bottlenecks and Performance Drags

Onto identifying those bottlenecks and performance drags. A strategy audit is all about identifying the exact points where your marketing efforts are stalling. These bottlenecks could be hiding anywhere, from content production to lead conversion.

Common Performance Drags might look a bit like this:

👉 Misaligned messaging – If your brand voice isn’t consistent across channels, your audience won’t connect with it. Brand identity is all bout owning your sh*t and showing up with a clear, unified message. An audience that doesn’t connect with your brand won’t engage, won’t trust, and definitely won’t buy.

👉 Poor audience targeting – If your ads are reaching the wrong people, you’re burning budget with zero return. Get to know your people – what they want, how they think, where they spend their time. Nail this, and every part of your business will run smoother. Trust us, getting this right will change everything for the better.

👉 Slow sales cycles – If leads are getting stuck in your funnel for too long, your nurturing process needs serious attention. Maybe your follow-ups are too slow, your content isn’t guiding them forward, or your sales team isn’t equipped to close the deal. Every touchpoint should move leads closer to conversion – streamline the journey, or you might just risk losing them to a competitor who does it better.

Tools to Identify Bottlenecks:

👉 Google Analytics & Heatmaps – See where website visitors drop off, which pages hold their attention, and what content actually drives action. Track user behaviour in real time – are they bouncing immediately, hesitating on key pages, or interacting with those CTAs? These insights help to set up your site for better conversions and a frictionless user experience.

👉 CRM Platforms – Identify where leads stall in your sales pipeline. Are they dropping off after the first touchpoint? Getting stuck in endless follow-ups? Ignoring your emails? A good CRM tracks interactions, highlights weak spots in your sales process, and helps you refine your approach – so you can move leads through the funnel faster and close more deals.

👉 Customer Feedback & Surveys – Find out what’s frustrating your audience, what they love, and what’s stopping them from converting. Direct insights from your customers help you to improve your marketing strategy, better their experience, and ultimately drive more sales.

👉 A/B Testing – Test everything, from subject lines and ad creatives to landing pages and pricing strategies. Whether it’s email campaigns, social ads, or website UX, split testing reveals what resonates with your audience and what falls flat – so you’re making data-backed decisions, not just guessing.

Steps to Diagnose Bottlenecks:

🖤 Analyse Performance Metrics – Look for patterns in declining engagement, conversion rates, and ROI.

🖤 Conduct Team Interviews – When it comes to project management, it helps to get insights from your marketing and sales teams to spot workflow inefficiencies.

🖤 Assess Customer Feedback – Identify common frustrations, questions, or barriers in the customer journey.

🖤 Test and Experiment – Run small tests to validate which changes make the biggest impact.

🖤 Develop an Action Plan – Tackle high-priority issues first and create a timeline for fixes.

Identifying these bottlenecks early means you can course-correct before they start costing you serious revenue.

Driving Positive Change Post-Audit

Finding the issues is one thing – fixing them is where the real work begins. A strategy audit without action is just pointless to begin with.

Key Areas for Change:

👉 Refining Target Audience: Your audience evolves – your marketing should too. Update buyer personas and tailor messaging accordingly.

👉 Optimising Marketing Channels: Shift resources to the channels delivering the highest ROI and cut the dead weight.

👉 Improving Content & Messaging: Align content with what your audience actually wants to engage with. This means understanding their pain points, speaking their language, and delivering value at every stage of their journey

👉 Enhancing Data-Driven Decisions: Stop making assumptions and start making decisions based on real-time insights.

Steps to Implement Changes Post-Audit:

🖤 Prioritise Issues – Focus on changes that will have the biggest impact first.

🖤 Develop an Action Plan – Assign ownership, set deadlines, and make it happen.

🖤 Monitor and Measure Progress – Regularly check key performance indicators (KPIs) to track improvement.

🖤 Adjust Strategies as Needed – Stay agile and tweak your approach based on real-time data.

🖤 Communicate Changes – Ensure your marketing team is aligned so execution is seamless.

A strategy audit is only valuable if you take action. Making incremental changes based on data will keep your brand ahead of the competition.

Beech Holdings x co&co

We know we’re mega at what we do – but don’t just take our word for it. See how we transformed Beech Holdings’ strategy and delivered serious results.

Beech Holdings, a leading property management company, came to us with a problem – loads of enquiries but no clear marketing strategy to track performance, plan ahead, or optimise their marketing efforts. Sound familiar?


The Challenge:

👉 No formal way to report on thousands of monthly enquiries.

👉 No KPIs for the in-house team to measure success.

👉 No long-term strategy for content marketing and engagement.

👉 A disjointed process between lettings and marketing.

👉 A website that was outdated and not aligned with the scale of the business.


The Solution:

We took a no bull approach (as always) and got straight to fixing the cracks. Here’s what we did:

👉 Conducted a full channel audit of the last 12 months to establish clear KPIs.

👉 Created a 12-month marketing budget to streamline approvals and spending.

👉 Launched regular blog articles to balance out sales-heavy emails.

👉 Set up weekly meetings with the lettings team to ensure alignment and effectiveness.

👉 Revamped the website, improving the user experience and expanding content.

👉 Integrated SEO to reduce reliance on paid channels over time.

The Results:

🖤 100% increase in leads per month – now exceeding 10,000.

🖤 150% boost in database engagement.

🖤 £4.5M in revenue generated directly from the website.

🖤 A marketing strategy built around KPIs, data, and long-term goals.

🖤 An in-house marketing team structured like an internal agency.

🖤 Multiple high-profile award nominations and wins within six months.

🖤 A more engaged workforce that understands and contributes to marketing success.

Beech Holdings’ COO, Joanne Beech, said it best:

"The team at co&co have been crucial to the success of our marketing strategy, consistently helping us to achieve our marketing goals, get results, and grow our business. I have been particularly impressed with their creativity, dedication, and graft. They have delivered beyond our expectations and I cannot recommend them highly enough".

That’s the power of a proper strategy audit. We make sh*t happen.

Strategy audits are so underrated. You’ll unearth so many opportunities if you invest in a strategy audit. Too many businesses skip them because they don’t fully understand their impact – or worse, assume everything’s fine until the cracks start showing. We’re here to change that. It’s literally our job. A strategy audit is a must if you want to stop wasting time and money on marketing that doesn’t deliver. A proper audit helps you uncover blind spots, fix inefficiencies, and ensure your strategy is actually working for you, not against you. Don’t forget though, in order for this to work well, you need to regularly audit your marketing strategy. It’s the only way.

Think you might need a strategy audit? Let’s work together.