The story behind the score: reading your SME audit properly to improve marketing performance
- Ruth Harvey
- Feb 25
- 4 min read
Completing a marketing audit is a useful first step in understanding how your marketing is really performing - particularly if you're trying to improve your marketing. But the number on its own rarely tells the full story.
A score can highlight strengths and gaps, yet it’s the pattern beneath the number that matters most. Where do the results feel slightly contradictory? Where does perception differ from reality? And what does that reveal about how marketing is being managed, prioritised and measured?
Recently, a larger SME agreed to share their audit results anonymously. The overall score was 61 out of 111, sitting in the ‘mixed picture’ range. At first glance, nothing looked alarming. But, as is often the case in marketing, the headline figure wasn’t the most interesting part, the detail was.
A common growth-stage pattern
The breakdown reflected something I see frequently in growing businesses: plenty of tactical activity, but strategy not evolving at quite the same pace.
In this case, budget and investment thinking were reasonably strong and there was consistent customer communication. However, strategy and planning scored lower. Positioning lacked clarity, products and services weren’t always clearly defined, and visibility in the right channels was inconsistent. Measurement processes were underdeveloped, and resource and ways of working appeared stretched.
None of that suggests a lack of effort, it suggests misalignment.
The contradiction that matters
The most revealing insight sat in the nuance. The SME rated their customer communication reasonably well, yet they felt positioning was lacking clarity and the communications weren’t always seen as relevant. That suggests there’s gap between customer insight, positioning and execution.
When those three elements aren’t fully aligned, businesses can find themselves busy without building real momentum, putting a strain on resources. Messages are sent, campaigns are delivered, content is produced, but without clear positioning rooted in genuine customer insight, relevance suffers and so does your results.
Where to focus if you want to improve marketing performance
If I were working with this business, the priority wouldn’t be to ‘do more marketing’. It would be to strengthen the foundations:
That would begin with introducing clearer measurement and a consistent performance rhythm, because without understanding what’s working and what isn’t, informed decision-making is impossible.
Next, I would revisit customer insight, clarify target segments and refine the ideal customer profile. SMEs are at their strongest when they focus on doing less, but doing it better - prioritising highly relevant, targeted communication over only broad activity.
From there, sharpening positioning and messaging becomes critical. Once you are clear on who you are for and what matters to them, defining what you want customers to think and feel about your business is what drives distinctiveness and relative differentiation in a crowded marketplace.
Finally, I would build a focused strategy aligned to commercial objectives.
That may seem like a backwards sequence, but in an established business the priority is maintaining momentum while gathering the depth of insight required to shape a more robust strategic plan: evolution, not disruption.
How to read your own audit score properly
If you’ve completed the audit yourself, don’t focus on the total - look at these three things:
1: Are your results relatively even across sections, or are there clear highs and lows?
A large variation between areas often tells you more than the overall number. For example, strong budget allocation but weak measurement suggests investment without visibility of return. Strong communication but weak positioning may point to activity without clarity. The imbalance is often where the opportunity sits.
2: Are there any contradictions?
Do any of your answers feel at odds with each other? For example:
Strong customer communication, but low relevance
High activity, but low visibility in priority channels
Clear commercial goals, but no measurement rhythm
Contradictions are rarely accidental. They often signal a disconnect between insight, positioning and execution. That’s where deeper questions need to be asked.
3: Try to distinguish root causes, not the symptoms
Low scores in channels or visibility can be tempting to “fix” quickly. But often those are symptoms. If positioning isn’t sharp or the ideal customer isn’t clearly defined, more channels and activity will simply amplify inconsistency.
In most cases, the right next step isn’t to add activity, it’s to strengthen the foundations beneath it.
What to do next
If you’ve completed the audit, the next step isn’t to change everything at once. It’s to interpret what the results are really telling you.
A sensible place to begin - particularly if you’re not already doing this consistently - is measurement. Are you tracking the metrics that genuinely reflect progress toward your commercial goals? And are you reviewing them regularly enough to inform decisions, rather than just report activity?
With measurement in place, revisit the areas that feel weakest or most uneven. Do the lower scores point to something structural? For example, strong communication but low relevance may indicate unclear positioning. High activity but limited visibility in priority channels could suggest misaligned targeting.
More often than not, these issues signal the need to tighten focus, e.g. clarifying who you want to attract, refining what you want to be known for, and being more deliberate about where time and budget are placed. The aim isn’t to fix everything – that’s unrealistic and impractical. It’s to identify a few foundational adjustments that unlock significant improvement.
Because improving marketing performance rarely comes from adding more activity, it comes from interpreting the signals properly and strengthening the foundations.
Why this matters for SMEs
As businesses grow, marketing teams are under pressure to deliver quickly and consistently. Tactical execution accelerates, while strategy sometimes struggles to evolve at the same pace – as is shown in the example audit.
That gap creates friction, between effort and outcome, communication and clarity, visibility and relevance.
A structured assessment helps surface those tensions. Not as a judgement, but as a diagnostic tool. It gives you the space to interpret what the numbers are really telling you and to decide where focus would make the greatest difference.
Because the real value of a marketing audit isn’t the score itself, it’s what you choose to do next.
If you’re curious what your own score might reveal, you can download the free marketing audit for SMEs
