Initial GTM Audit Playbook
The full marketing audit we run in week 1 of every new engagement. Ten sections in one consolidated report plus a ranked action list. Runs end-to-end from a single Claude Code prompt.
Get the full Initial GTM Audit playbook
Enter your email. We'll send you the link instantly. Point your Claude Code at it and run the full audit in 20 to 40 minutes.
- What it does: diagnose every marketing function in one report, synthesise cross-cutting themes across sections, rank the highest-impact actions.
- Output: one consolidated Word doc (shareable) plus markdown source (version-controlled in your repo). Ten sections plus Executive Summary, Cross-cutting Themes, Key Findings, Key Action Items, and Conclusion.
- Runs in: 20 to 40 minutes inside Claude Code.
- You need: Claude Code, a handful of API keys for public-data tools, a short CLAUDE.md describing your business, and pandoc for the Word doc export.
- For: founder-led premium DTC brands, AOV $500 or two times category median.
- Cost: free. Your only spend is the API credits your own accounts consume (usually under $10 per run).
- Built by: Nishant Kapoor. Chartered Accountant (EY), INSEAD MBA, ten years operating DTC brands. Scale stories include Suttons & Robertson £1.5M to £5M, consumer wearable $0 to $3.5M, London luxury ecommerce £2M to £6M.
What this playbook does
Most premium DTC brands run into the same wall. Data sits scattered across GA4, Shopify, Klaviyo, Meta, Google Ads, Search Console, Clarity, and a dozen other platforms. Nobody pulls the full picture. Nobody says clearly what the biggest lever is right now. Projects run in parallel with no real order of priority. Revenue grows slowly because every experiment takes weeks to produce data you can act on.
This playbook replaces that with one consolidated audit report you can act on the same day. It pulls public data through our own accounts (DataForSEO, Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, PageSpeed Insights, Meta Ad Library, Serper, public forums, AI search citation checks), then layers your own data on top when you share access (GA4, Shopify, Klaviyo, ad accounts, Clarity, and the rest).
What you get
One consolidated report delivered two ways: a Word doc (shareable with your team) and the markdown source (version-controlled in your GitHub repo). Both land at docs/gtm-audit/YYYY-MM-DD/. Nothing in private dashboards. Nothing locked behind login walls.
The report is front-loaded for skim-readers and deep for operators. Wrapper structure around the ten deliverables:
- Executive summary. 3 to 4 sentences naming the single biggest lever holding revenue back, the top two quick wins, and the biggest access gap.
- Key findings. 5 to 7 one-sentence bullets, one per major section. Skim-readable in 90 seconds.
- Key action items. The top 5 to ship this week pulled to the front with a one-line "why this first" tied back to the cross-pillar synthesis.
- Conclusion. What to do next and what a paid engagement looks like if you want this run for you.
The ten deliverables:
- Audience research and actionable insights. Core tension, recurring language, top objections, positioning angle, belief shift. 15 verbatim quotes mined from Reddit, X, Quora, YouTube comments, and niche forums.
- Founder vision and biggest-lever hypothesis. Twelve-month revenue goal, what has been tried, known constraints, what to bet on next. Captured in a 30-minute conversation or inferred from public signals.
- Actionable competitor gap analysis. 3 to 5 teardowns covering technical SEO, top-100 ranking keywords, content gaps, 30-day Meta Ad Library scan, whitespace map.
- Full site health and opportunity map. Crawl output, keyword footprint, backlink profile, Core Web Vitals, striking-distance queries, low-CTR pages, cannibalisation, site-structure fixes.
- AI search visibility and whitespace. Your presence inside ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overview on the queries your buyers run. Entity-clarity checklist plus citation-boost recommendations per priority page.
- Creative fatigue scoring and starter campaigns. Meta and Google creative audited for fatigue. Competitor creative intelligence (hooks, angles, formats, CTAs). 3 to 5 starter campaigns with objective, audience, budget, and brief.
- Flow coverage and deliverability. Welcome, abandoned cart, win-back, segmentation depth, revenue per flow. Populates once Klaviyo or Brevo access is shared. Stubs with a clear access path otherwise.
- PDP and checkout friction audit. Heatmaps, rage clicks, funnel dropoff, mobile-vs-desktop gap, trust-signal review. Populates once Clarity, GA4, and Shopify access are shared.
- Event integrity and attribution. GA4 event coverage, Meta Pixel health, UTM hygiene, cross-device stitching, attribution model review. Populates once GA4 is shared.
- Cross-pillar synthesis: correlated insights and highest-leverage moves. A dedicated pass that re-reads the entire draft end-to-end and surfaces the patterns visible only across pillars. 3 to 5 correlated insights plus the top 5 highest-leverage moves for the next 90 days, ranked by ICE. The strategic narrative your business reveals when the whole picture is in view. The deliverable most agencies skip.
The synthesis pass: what makes this different
Most audit deliverables stop at section-by-section analysis. Ten sections, ten reports, read each in turn. You get findings but not the narrative.
This playbookruns a synthesis pass after the ten sections are drafted. Claude re-reads the entire report as one document and asks: what pattern emerges across three or more sections? What does a finding in Section X imply for the recommendations in Section Y? What does the audience language in Section 1 tell us about the SEO cluster in Section 4 that the SEO section missed? That cross-cutting read produces the "Cross-cutting themes" block at the top of every report.
The synthesis pass is the difference between a directory of findings and a story about your business. It is the pass a senior operator does intuitively and a junior consultant misses.
How the audit flexes
Two things shape the run on a given brand.
- How much history the brand has. With three or more months of live traffic, orders, and spend, the audit leans into real patterns in the numbers. Pre-launch or pre-revenue, the audit leans on audience research, founder vision, and competitor intelligence to frame the first hypotheses.
- How much of your data the audit can see. With zero internal access, the audit runs entirely on public data via our API keys and produces a genuinely valuable report (sections 7, 8, and 9 stub with an access path). With full access granted, the internal-layer sections populate with real numbers and the daily dashboard becomes possible.
Tools the audit uses
Public data, through our own accounts.
- DataForSEO and Ahrefs for ranked keywords, traffic estimates, backlinks
- Serper for live SERPs and paid-ad copy
- Keywords Everywhere for search volume and related queries
- Screaming Frog for full site crawls
- Google PageSpeed Insights for Core Web Vitals
- Meta Ad Library for the last 30 days of competitor ads
- Reddit, Quora, Hacker News, X, YouTube comments, niche forums for audience research
- ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overview for AEO citation checks
Your own data, once access is shared.
- GA4 and Google Search Console for traffic, conversions, and organic queries
- Google Ads and Merchant Center for paid search and Shopping feed health
- Meta Ads and the Meta Pixel for paid social and event tracking
- Shopify Admin for orders, products, customers, AOV, LTV
- Klaviyo and Brevo for email flows and revenue per flow
- Microsoft Clarity for session recordings and heatmaps
- Google Tag Manager and Airtable where applicable
Ready to run the audit on your brand?
Enter your email. We'll send you the Google Doc link. Paste it into Claude Code and you'll have a full audit in 20 to 40 minutes.
Questions we get asked
What is a GTM audit?
A diagnostic of every marketing function in your business, pulled into one consolidated report, with the highest-impact actions ranked at the top. It covers audience, positioning, competitors, SEO, AEO, paid ads, email, conversion optimisation, analytics, and a prioritised action list.
How long does it take to run?
Twenty to forty minutes inside Claude Code, depending on how many competitors you audit and how much of your own data the audit can access. Reviewing the report and kicking off the top actions takes another twenty to thirty minutes.
What do I need to run it?
Claude Code installed, a handful of API keys for public-data tools (DataForSEO, Serper, Keywords Everywhere; Ahrefs optional), a short CLAUDE.md file describing your business, and pandoc for the Word-doc export (brew install pandoc on Mac). The bundle includes the CLAUDE.md template and the master prompt; the API keys live in your own .env. Full setup instructions in the bundle README.
What makes this different from other marketing audit templates?
Two things. First, the synthesis pass: after the ten sections are drafted, Claude re-reads the whole report end-to-end and produces three to five cross-cutting insights that span multiple sections. A strategic narrative that threads through every finding. Second, honest stubbing: sections that require your internal tools (Klaviyo, Clarity, GA4) render with a clear access-grant path. No fabricated data, ever.
What is an AI marketing audit?
An AI marketing audit is a diagnostic of every marketing function in a business, produced end-to-end by an AI system (Claude Code, in our case) in a single session. The traditional version runs in Excel and PowerPoint under a human analyst over two to four weeks. Both cover the same ground: audience, competitors, SEO, AEO, paid ads, email, CRO, analytics. Both produce a consolidated report with a ranked action list. The differences are speed and cost: 20 to 40 minutes of Claude Code time plus a handful of dollars of API credits, against two to four weeks and £3,000 to £10,000 in agency fees.
Is this a DTC marketing audit, a brand audit, or a GTM audit?
All three, tuned for founder-led DTC brands. A brand audit covers positioning, audience, and competitor landscape. A GTM audit adds SEO, AEO, paid-ads, email, CRO, and analytics diagnostics on top. A DTC marketing audit is the category-specific version tuned for ecommerce brands with premium AOV. This playbook delivers all three in one consolidated report. If you work in another vertical (B2B SaaS, service business, mass-market retail), the methodology still applies but the DTC-specific benchmarks will be directionally off.
Can I run this as a free marketing audit on my own brand?
Yes. The playbook is free. The only costs are the API credits your own accounts consume during the run (typically under $15 for a full audit). No account required with us, no booking needed, no follow-up sales call unless you want one. Download the bundle, fill in the CLAUDE.md template with your business specifics, and paste the master prompt into Claude Code. If the output is useful and you want us to run a deeper engagement on your behalf, the booking link is at the end of the report.
What does it cost?
Free. Your only spend is the API credits your own accounts consume when the audit runs, typically under $10 for a full run.
Who wrote this?
Nishant Kapoor, founder of EntireCommerce AI. Chartered Accountant (EY), INSEAD MBA, ten-year DTC operator. Scale stories include Suttons & Robertson £1.5M to £5M in three years, a consumer wearable $0 to $3.5M in eighteen months, London luxury ecommerce £2M to £6M in two years, and consumer electronics $0 to $5M in two years.
What do I do with the report once it's produced?
The top five "this week" items merge straight into an actions.md file in your project folder. Start there. The weekly review playbook (publishing separately) turns the audit into a live operating system that refreshes every Monday.
Can I run it myself, or do I need you?
You can run it yourself. Claude Code does the execution; your domain knowledge does the judgment. If you want a senior operator to run this plus the thirty-plus other playbooks in the system for you, book a call.
Your playbook is ready
Three files. Pick your delivery mode below. Drop them into your Claude Code project. Run the audit on your brand in twenty to forty minutes.
Copy the link. Paste into Claude Code with "read this and run it." Zero setup.
Clone or fork into your project. Standard git workflow.
Open the Google Doc above. Copy its URL. Paste it into Claude Code with:
"Read this and take me through it step by step."
Claude handles everything else. Interviews you for your business context. Walks you through any missing API setup live. Runs the full audit. You don't need to manage files or copy prompt content manually.
Prefer to do it manually? Run it in three steps
- Get the files. Open either the Google Doc or the GitHub repo above. Both contain the same three files:
README.md(setup and run instructions),CLAUDE.md(business-briefing template), andgtm-audit.md(the master prompt Claude runs). - Drop them into your Claude project. Copy the three files into a new folder on your machine. Open Claude Code inside that folder. Fill in the
CLAUDE.mdtemplate with your business details: product, audience, competitors, pricing, tool stack. Claude loads this on every run so the audit is grounded in your specifics. - Run the audit. Paste the contents of
gtm-audit.mdinto Claude Code and hit enter. Claude will print its tool inventory, ask for any missing inputs, then write the full report todocs/gtm-audit/YYYY-MM-DD/gtm-audit-report.md. Twenty to forty minutes end to end.
What each file does
README.mdSetup instructions and prerequisite API keys (DataForSEO, Ahrefs, Serper, Keywords Everywhere). Read this first. Takes five minutes to follow.
CLAUDE.mdA business-briefing template. Fill in your positioning, audience, pricing, catalog, and known constraints. Claude reads this on every run so the audit is grounded in your specific business context.
gtm-audit.mdThe master prompt. Claude reads it and runs the audit end to end: mines your audience, tears down your competitors, diagnoses SEO and AEO, scores your creative, and ranks the highest-impact actions.
Sections that need your access to populate
Sections 7 (email and CRM), 8 (conversion optimisation), and 9 (analytics and tracking) require access to your Klaviyo or Brevo, Microsoft Clarity, GA4, and Shopify accounts to populate with real numbers. Without access they stub out honestly with a "grant access to populate this section" note and the exact steps to unlock.
Wiring those accounts cleanly takes thirty to forty-five minutes end to end. Happy to walk you through the setup on a short call. Easier to do together than to chase credentials alone.
What to do with the report once you've run it
Section 10 of the report is a ranked action list. The top five items flagged as "this week" merge straight into an actions.md file in your project folder. Start there. Fix the biggest lever. Let the next one reveal itself.
The weekly review playbook (publishing separately) turns the audit from a one-time snapshot into a live operating system that refreshes every Monday. If you want the full GTM system built on your brand (audit plus the thirty-plus downstream playbooks we run on every engagement), book a call above.
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