# B2B paid media audit: the 10 points that separate generating business from spending budget > Mark each point yes or no. Every no is an active budget leak, and most of them can be fixed in days, not quarters. Source: https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/paid-media-audit Author: Nash Marketing Labs, a paid media agency (Google Ads, Meta Ads, TikTok Ads, LinkedIn Ads). --- This is the on-page version of the audit we use as a first cut on B2B accounts. It is **ten closed questions**: each one is answered yes (it is solved) or no (it is an active leak). At the end you count the yeses, and the scoring scale tells you whether the system is built to generate customers or just to generate reports. If you would rather have an automatic cut on your own data, export your ads report and run it through the [maximum CPL calculator](https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/tools/b2b/) or the [dead spend auditor](https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/tools/dead-spend-auditor/): the file never leaves your browser. **Nash Marketing Labs in numbers:** EUR 18M of media managed, EUR 220M billed by our clients (over EUR 10 for every euro invested, aggregated since 2015), 10+ years in paid media. ## How to use it Answer honestly, point by point. There are no in-between answers, on purpose: a "sort of" on tracking or attribution behaves like a no in practice. Count the yeses and find your band: - **8 to 10 points - robust system.** The acquisition engine is well built. The remaining work is scaling and optimising. - **5 to 7 points - significant leaks.** There are active structural problems. Act this week, not next quarter. - **0 to 4 points - broken system.** The spend isn't generating business. Rebuild from the foundations before adding another euro of budget. ## The 10 audit points ### 01. Conversion tracking: are you measuring what matters? Do you have conversion tracking installed, and are you measuring **qualified leads**, not clicks or visits? **Warning sign:** you only measure clicks or sessions. Without proper tracking your team optimises blind and the whole budget is wasted, because the algorithm learns from the signal you give it. ### 02. Lead quality: are decision-makers coming in, or just the curious? Do the leads your campaigns generate match the profile of whoever makes the buying decision at your target customer? **Warning sign:** lots of leads and few meetings. A high volume of junk leads costs more than a few well-qualified ones: it eats sales time and distorts the data you optimise with. ### 03. Value proposition: does the ad speak to the customer's pain? Does the message describe your ideal customer's specific problem, or does it describe what you do as a company? **Warning sign:** your ads start with "we are", "we offer", "we have X years of experience". B2B buyers aren't looking for suppliers; they are looking for a solution to a specific problem. ### 04. Targeting: are you reaching the right job titles? Does your targeting point at the job titles, industries and company sizes that actually hire you? **Warning sign:** broad targeting by general interests, without excluding competitors or students. The best ad in the world is wasted on the wrong audience. ### 05. Response time: do you get in touch within 5 minutes? Is there an automated process that contacts the lead within the first 5 minutes after sign-up? **Warning sign:** leads are answered by hand, hours later or the next day. The probability of converting a lead drops by 80% once contact goes beyond those 5 minutes. ### 06. Landing page: is there unnecessary friction? Does the landing page have a single, clear goal, with no navigation menu or distractions? **Warning sign:** you send paid traffic to the home page or to a page with several calls to action. Every extra element reduces conversion. ### 07. Attribution: do you know which channel brings your best customers? Can you identify which campaign, ad or channel generated each customer who ended up signing? **Warning sign:** you know which campaigns bring leads, but not which bring customers. You are optimising towards cheap leads instead of profitable customers, and those are different goals. ### 08. Nurturing: what happens to the lead who isn't buying yet? Do leads who don't convert straight away go into an automated follow-up sequence? **Warning sign:** anyone who doesn't reply to the first contact is lost. 80% of qualified leads buy within the next 24 months, just not today. ### 09. Real CPL: do you calculate cost per qualified lead? Do you split leads by quality (MQL, SQL) and measure the cost of each category separately? **Warning sign:** you report a low CPL and the sales team closes very little. A €5 CPL with a 2% close rate is infinitely more expensive than a €50 CPL with a 20% one. ### 10. Reporting: business metrics or vanity metrics? Do your reports include cost per customer, return on ad spend and a comparison against business goals? **Warning sign:** the monthly report talks about impressions, CTR and clicks, but not about what each new customer costs. Vanity metrics make everything look fine while the business stands still. ## What to do with the result The ten points don't carry equal weight. In the B2B accounts we audit, the order of fixes that returns the most money is usually this: - **Tracking and qualified CPL** (points 1 and 9). While the signal is dirty, any other optimisation scales the error. It is the only layer that has to be fixed before everything else. - **Response time** (point 5). It is the cheapest fix of all, and the one you notice in the same week. - **Attribution and reporting** (points 7 and 10). They determine where next month's budget goes. - **Message, targeting and landing page** (points 3, 4 and 6). This is where most of the work happens afterwards, and it only pays off if everything above is in place. If you want the equivalent on a specific account, with findings costed in euros, that is a [full account audit](https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/google-ads-audit): seven areas and a plan prioritised by impact. ## Why this audit looks at the business and not the platform Almost every paid media audit out there reviews the account from the inside: structure, Quality Score, bids. That is necessary but not sufficient in B2B, where between the click and the invoice there is a cycle of weeks or months, a salesperson and a CRM. A system can have a flawless account and still not generate business, because the lead gets a reply the next day or because nobody knows which campaign brought in the customer who signed. That is why half of the ten points sit outside the ads manager. With **€18M+ managed that has returned more than €220M in revenue to our clients** (over €10 for every euro invested, aggregated since 2015), the pattern repeats: the accounts that scale are the ones with a clean chain end to end, not the ones with the best CPC. This is how we work that chain as a [B2B paid media agency](https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/b2b-paid-media-agency). ## Frequently asked questions ### What is a B2B paid media audit? It is a review of whether your ad spend is built to generate customers or just to generate leads and reports. It covers the account and everything that happens after the click: lead quality, response time, nurturing, attribution through to the contract, and reporting on business metrics. ### What score do I need to be in good shape? From 8 to 10 the system is robust and it is time to scale. From 5 to 7 there are active structural leaks worth tackling this week. From 0 to 4 the spend isn't generating business and the foundations need rebuilding before increasing budget. ### Which of the 10 points should I fix first? Conversion tracking (point 1). Google's and Meta's models learn from the signal you send them: if that signal is dirty, they scale the error faster than ever and every other fix rests on false data. ### Does this audit work if I sell to consumers rather than businesses? The points on tracking, landing page, attribution, CPL and reporting apply just the same. The ones on lead quality, response time and nurturing are designed for cycles with a sales team involved, so in pure ecommerce they weigh less than the catalogue and the feed. ### Is there a printable version of the checklist? There is a 5-page PDF designed for printing, marking the ten points and adding up the score, currently available in Spanish only. This page contains the full checklist in English. ### What if I'd rather you ran it on my account? We run it on your account and hand you a concrete action plan. The step before that is the viability audit: free, no strings attached, and if your case doesn't need anything more we will tell you there and then. ## More resources - [Google Ads audit: what each problem costs and in what order to fix it](https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/google-ads-audit) - [B2B paid media agency: better leads, lower CPL](https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/b2b-paid-media-agency) - [Paid media services: what we do and which one fits you](https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/services) - [Cost per lead: benchmarks by industry](https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/blog/cost-per-lead-by-industry) - [How to audit a Google Ads account yourself](https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/blog/how-to-audit-google-ads-account) --- Contact: https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/request-audit - free Viability Audit, no strings attached.