Initial GTM Audit Playbook
The full marketing audit we run in week 1 of every new engagement. Ten sections covering audience, competitors, SEO, AEO, LLM readiness, paid, CRO, email, and analytics in one consolidated report plus a ranked action list. Runs end-to-end from a single Claude Code prompt.
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- What it does: diagnose every marketing function in one report, synthesise cross-cutting themes across sections, rank the highest-impact actions.
- Output: one consolidated branded report (HTML + PDF), plus a paste-ready email overview, plus the markdown source (version-controlled in your repo). The report covers 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, plus Python (with the
markdownpackage) and Google Chrome for the HTML-to-PDF render. - 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 185% revenue growth on a UK luxury resale brand in two years, a consumer wearable $0 to $3.5M, and consumer electronics $0 to $5M.
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 three ways: branded HTML (Poppins, Montserrat, teal accent, your logo in the cover band), a PDF rendered from the same HTML for email attachment, and the markdown source (version-controlled in your GitHub repo). All three land at docs/gtm-audit/YYYY-MM-DD/. A second deliverable, a paste-ready email overview, lands alongside as reopener-email-draft.txt. The HTML version is also published as a private hosted link (/audits/{client-slug}-{YYYY-MM-DD}.html, noindex) so the founder can read it on a phone without opening an attachment. Nothing in private dashboards. Nothing locked behind login walls.
The report is front-loaded for skim-readers and deep for operators. Plain-English front matter (the founder skim, ten minutes between meetings); technical register in the body for the marketing team. Wrapper structure around the ten deliverables:
- Executive summary. Bulleted constraints holding revenue back, the highest-leverage architectural move (when one exists), and the top two near-term unlocks. Plain English. Skim-readable in two minutes.
- Cross-cutting themes. 3 to 5 bullets, each naming an insight that crosses two or more sections. Produced by the synthesis pass.
- Key findings. 5 to 7 one-sentence bullets, one per major section. Skim-readable in 90 seconds.
- Key action items. The top 5 priorities pulled to the front with a one-line "why this first" tied back to the cross-pillar synthesis. Every action item carries an execution tag —
[Claude](we run it for you with API/MCP access),[Hybrid](we build, you approve and ship),[Human](your team's hands directly), or[Hybrid → Claude on access](flips to fully Claude-executable once specific access is granted). The tag distribution is the speed-thesis made tangible. - Conclusion. What to do next, the execution-tag count summary, 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.
Plus benchmarking tables (when you provide a competitor set). If you confirm 3 to 5 named competitors at the start of the audit, every applicable section also produces a one-glance comparison table: review counts and ratings (you vs. competitors), organic visibility (visits, keywords, position, blog post count), active Meta and Google ads, lifecycle email coverage, and Core Web Vitals. Your brand is always in the first column of every benchmarking table, even when you have no data on a metric yet — the empty cells are the narrative, showing the headroom against the field. Each table grows a dated own-brand row on every weekly review, so you see your progression against the field over time. Powered by Apify Actor pulls (Trustpilot, Google Maps, Meta Ad Library, Instagram, TikTok) with strict per-call cost caps. Skipped cleanly if you don't share a competitor set.
The synthesis pass: what makes this different
A section-by-section analysis gives you findings without a narrative. Ten sections, ten reports, read each in turn. The connections between sections stay invisible.
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 playbook URL. 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, plus Python with the markdown package (pip install markdown) and Google Chrome (the standard install on macOS works) for the HTML-to-PDF render. The bundle includes the CLAUDE.md template, the master prompt, and the render script; the API keys live in your own .env. Full setup instructions in the bundle README.
What makes this different from other marketing audit templates?
Three 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. Third, every action item is execution-tagged — [Claude], [Hybrid], [Human], or [Hybrid → Claude on access] — so you see at a glance which work we run for you with API/MCP access and which needs your team's hands. The tag distribution at the close of every action list shows how many items flip from Hybrid to fully Claude-executable once standard service-account access is wired. The speed-thesis in numbers.
How are action items presented in the report?
Every action item — in the Executive summary, the Key action items front block, and the Section 10 ranked list — carries one of four execution tags at the start of the item. [Claude] means we run it end-to-end with API or MCP access (zero load on your team beyond the one-time access grant). [Hybrid] means we build, you approve and ship (most knowledge work). [Human] means your team's hands are required directly (judgement calls, internal-only credentials, in-person meetings). [Hybrid → Claude on access] means it's currently Hybrid because access is missing but flips to fully Claude-executable once specific access is granted. The Conclusion closes with a count: of N action items today, X are Claude-executable and Y flip to Claude-executable once the standard service-account grant is wired. Buyers find this clarifying because it shows exactly what lands on us versus their team.
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 185% revenue growth on a UK luxury resale brand in two years, a consumer wearable $0 to $3.5M in eighteen months, 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
Open the playbook on EntireCommerce.ai or clone the GitHub repo. Run the audit on your brand in twenty to forty minutes.
Paste this URL into Claude and Claude reads it live.
https://entirecommerce.ai/playbooks/gtm-audit/read
Clone or fork into your project. Standard git workflow.
Copy the playbook URL above. Paste it into Claude Code with:
"Read this and take me through it step by step."
Claude reads the playbook live, interviews you for your business context, walks you through any missing API setup, and runs the full audit. You don't manage any files.
Prefer to do it manually? Run it in three steps
- Get the files. Open the GitHub repo above. It contains the three files behind the playbook:
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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