Quarterly paid media audits for maritime marketing leads

Paid media accounts drift. Three months of unattended changes, platform default updates, creative fatigue and budget reallocation can move an account materially away from where it was set up. Even good maritime accounts benefit from a quarterly audit by the marketing lead, separate from the day-to-day management.

The audit does not need to be a full-day exercise. Two to three focused hours per quarter, working through a defined checklist, surfaces most of the issues that compound when ignored.

This is the checklist we use.

Section 1: account hygiene (30 minutes)

Open each ad platform (Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, LinkedIn Campaign Manager, Meta Ads Manager). For each:

• Are the conversion actions still firing correctly? Run a test conversion if unsure.
• Is the conversion-window setting still set to your defined value, or has the platform reset it to default?
• Are the audience signals (customer match lists, target account lists, retargeting pools) still up to date and within size limits?
• Is the negative-keyword list still applied across every campaign?
• Have any campaign settings reverted (search-partner inclusion, audience-network inclusion, automatic location expansion)?
• Are budget caps still where you set them?

Five to ten minutes per platform. The number of times we find that something has been silently reset is uncomfortable.

Section 2: search-terms report review (45 minutes)

For Google Ads and Microsoft Ads, pull the search-terms report for the last 90 days, sorted by spend.

• Top 20 terms by spend: are these all genuinely relevant maritime queries from real buyers?
• Top 20 terms by clicks with zero conversions: are these obvious negatives that should have been added?
• Top 20 terms by impressions with low CTR: are these mismatched (your ad is showing for the wrong query)?
• New search terms in the last 30 days: any patterns suggesting buyer behaviour shifts (new regulation queries, new technology queries, new geography queries)?

Add negatives where appropriate. Note any new high-intent queries that should be added as exact-match keywords. Note any audience or behaviour shifts to discuss with the team running the account.

Section 3: campaign performance against pipeline (45 minutes)

Pull the cost-per-opportunity figures for each campaign from your CRM-integrated reporting (or build it manually if integration is not yet in place).

• Which campaigns are delivering opportunities at the expected cost band?
• Which campaigns are spending consistently but producing zero or near-zero opportunities?
• Which campaigns have stopped producing impressions despite budget being available?
• Is the budget split across channels still aligned with the strategic intent set at the start of the year?

Note any campaigns that should be paused, rebuilt, scaled or restructured. The quarterly audit is the natural moment to make those decisions; smaller decisions can be made between quarters but structural ones often get deferred indefinitely without a forcing function.

Section 4: creative refresh review (15 minutes)

For each campaign, check creative age:

• Search ad copy: anything older than 4 months should be refreshed
• Sponsored content on LinkedIn: anything older than 6 to 8 weeks should be refreshed (frequency caps notwithstanding)
• Display and YouTube creative: anything older than 12 weeks should be refreshed
• Landing pages: anything not updated in 6 months should be reviewed for relevance, conversion path and current credibility content

Note creative refresh requirements for the next quarter and ensure they are scheduled rather than left to drift.

Section 5: competitive landscape (15 minutes)

Quick scan of the competitive landscape:

• Run incognito searches on your top five maritime keywords and look at who is bidding
• Check Google Ads “auction insights” for the same keywords for impression-share trends
• Check LinkedIn for new sponsored content from named competitors (the LinkedIn ad library shows this if their campaigns target your audience)
• Check competitor websites for new service launches, new geographic expansion or new technology positioning that might be reflected in their paid-media activity

Note any meaningful competitive shifts that should inform positioning or budget allocation.

Section 6: documentation and decisions (15 minutes)

Write up the audit findings in a single page:

• Account hygiene issues found and corrected
• Search-term insights and negatives added
• Performance issues identified and decisions taken (pause, rebuild, scale, restructure)
• Creative refreshes scheduled
• Competitive shifts to respond to
• Open questions for the team running the account
• Budget reallocation for the next quarter, if any

Send it to the team running the account, the wider marketing team and (most importantly) the sales leadership who need to know what is happening with their pipeline source.

When to bring in an external audit

The quarterly audit by the marketing lead is the operational rhythm. Once a year, or when the account is underperforming and you cannot identify why, an external audit by a specialist maritime paid-media practitioner is worth commissioning. The external view catches structural issues that the internal team has stopped seeing because they are too close to the daily work.

External audits done well take three to five working days. They cost between £3,000 and £12,000 depending on account complexity. They almost always pay for themselves within two quarters.

Two hours, repeated

A paid-media account that runs for two years without a quarterly audit will look superficially fine and be operating well below its real potential. Two to three hours per quarter, structured against the same checklist every time, catches the drift before it compounds into a year of underperformance.