Marketing Due Diligence Checklist: 15 Critical Areas to Look At When Assessing Your Target Investment
In the last few years, investors have started to recognize marketing as a key driver of revenue. A data-driven marketing due diligence process reveals whether a company’s growth engine is built to scale by exposing inefficiencies that impact revenue.
For investors, this means avoiding costly surprises—and ensuring that marketing is a growth asset, not a liability.
What Is Marketing Due Diligence
Marketing due diligence is the process of evaluating a company’s marketing strategy, efficiency and scalability to assess its impact on revenue growth and profitability. Just as financial due diligence verifies revenue and cost structures, marketing due diligence ensures that growth projections are grounded in data.
The Marketing Due Diligence Checklist
A thorough marketing due diligence process to confirm if a company’s marketing is in good shape includes the following elements.
1. Review revenue model | How much revenue has the company generated each year, and from which sources? |
2. Review product roadmap | Is the marketing team’s vision in line with the company’s vision for the product? |
3. Conduct a TAM analysis | How much of the TAM is left to capture? What’s the current market share relative to that of competitors? |
4. Review funnel metrics | Has the company’s win rate increased or decreased over time? Have their marketing activities become more or less effective over time? |
5. Review deal metrics | How much can the company afford to spend to acquire a customer? How long does it take to recoup customer acquisition costs? |
6. Review marketing spend and activities | Which marketing channels is the company focusing on and how are their resources allocated? |
7. Review marketing pipeline contribution | How much of the sales pipeline is influenced by or generated by marketing? How many dollars of pipeline are generated per dollar of marketing spend? |
8. Analyze channel and campaign performance | Which channels and campaigns drive conversions at the highest rate, and which ones aren’t worth spending additional time and budget on? |
9. Assess potential paid media spend | How has budget historically been allocated to paid media? Is there an opportunity to profitably scale paid media spend? |
10. Assess potential to scale SEO | How is the company’s SEO performing relative to competitors, and is it worth allocating resources to improve this? |
11. Assess opportunities to scale marketing | Can budget be reallocated away from campaigns that are underperforming and into ones that are underleveraged? |
12. Assess strategic growth opportunities | Are there new high-level initiatives that could unlock growth, e.g. changing pricing or expanding into new markets? |
13. Evaluate marketing team and org structure | Are the right team members in place to capture the highest-value opportunities? Or is the team over-resourced in areas that aren’t driving growth? |
14. Evaluate technology stack | How much is being spent on marketing tech? Are there opportunities for efficiencies? Are there platforms that can be used more effectively? |
15. Build financial forecast | What is expected from marketing over the next year? How does this compare with the forecast numbers provided by the team? |
By assessing everything from revenue models and funnel metrics to marketing spend efficiency and team structure, investors can make more confident investment decisions and maximize returns.
For a deeper dive, check out our Ultimate Guide to Marketing Due Diligence, which breaks down every step of the process.
To see how you can get instant, data-driven marketing due diligence reports for your prospective acquisitions, book your custom demo of Inquisio. You’ll learn how to quickly assess if your target acquisition can grow and deliver ROI with millions of proprietary data points that uncover challenges, opportunities and how it compares to competitors.
