You Get What You Pay For: The Fallacy of the Free Audit

I can’t be the first person to say this. But here we go.

Free audits are shit. 

Here are the three reasons why:

Ask a plumber why your electricity is out, and he’ll replace a toilet

Free audits are always conducted by specialists. Paid Search, SEO, ABM - whomever is doing your audit is focused on one thing and one thing only - the one thing they’re good at. I’m not saying the audit’s not right, and I’m not saying the audit doesn’t have some value…

Wait - strike that - I am saying the audit has no value - and that’s simply because a specialist is drawing conclusions about a tactic without realizing a complete strategy. They may say they are - but they aren’t - otherwise they’d be ad-versary. 

Every problem you have will be tied to that one tactic. Cancer? You really should up your bid on these keywords. Premature ejaculation? Then you should probably work on your inbound linking strategy. Suicidal tendencies? It definitely has something to do with your landing pages. 

Well, that’s all bullshit. Problems with one thing are interconnected. It’s never that easy. And if you trust an orthopedic surgeon to diagnose your IBS, you’re gonna keep on pooping your pants. 

The leg bone’s attached to the hip bone

Let’s take PPC - because it’s something I’m good at and it’s something that I’ve done alot of free audits on (to eventually get paid). 

PPC audits focus on largely Google - they’ll come in and tell you keywords you’re missing, they’ll tell you about bidding strategies you should be trying, and they’ll tell you about refreshing creative. 

Sometimes the bold will even tell you to replace a landing page. 

But they can’t substantively identify why something is working or not. They can’t truly isolate real, big problems because a) they’re doing it for free and b) they’ve dedicated the exact amount of time necessary to hopefully get paid. It’s pretty craptastic, but to truly understand why certain keywords are or are not working you have to understand the business in a substantive way that a free audit is never going to get to - because it’s FREE. 

At the bottom of this garbage pit is a doubloon

If you don’t know what a doubloon is, what the fuck are you doing reading this?  Google it or fuck off and stop reading my shit. 

(My audience just got cut in half, Michael).

Editor’s note: “Yes. Yes it did.”

But seriously - free audits actually present some good information. BUT  - are you going to sort through all of the useless, obvious shit to get to the interesting, useful shit, and then figure out where it’s connected? 

If the answer to this is yes, you’ve got some real problems. You have a team that’s not catching the right things - and that can happen for alot of reasons. 

Fix that shit, yo. 

At the end of the day, a free audit discovers things you should already know. And if you don’t, you are either suffering a team that should know better and doesn’t, you’ve created a culture where good decisions are countermanded by higher authorities, or you’re just doing it wrong. 

Fix that shit, yo. 

Or click here for a free audit.

*Required plug.

We do audits. But we don’t do them for free.  Why? Read the article. We dive deep to understand your business, your messaging, your brand, and everything in between, even for a simple landing page teardown. We bring in your prospective customers and have them interact with it. Then we write a report, produce a video, and walk you through it like you’re a toddler. Because simple is hard. And we make it simple by understanding the entire picture and doing the hard work for you. 

And that’s helpful.