Marketing & Brand Audit
An expert assessment of whether your brand strategy and marketing are actually built to differentiate and grow your business
Mike Belobradic's Marketing and Brand Audit (MBA) combines 30 years of executive brand and marketing leadership with formal WSET wine credentials, culinary training, and hands-on hospitality experience — delivered as a flat-fee diagnostic service built for wineries and tourism boards.
The Marketing and Brand Audit assesses the entire approach to your brand strategy and marketing — structure, strategy, execution, and efficiency — and tells you honestly whether the strategy (and each component — website, events etc.) is optimized to drive the business results you expect.
Why wineries and tourism boards need an external marketing audit
Most wineries and tourism boards aren't short on marketing activity. Social posts go out, seasonal campaigns run on schedule, a website exists and gets the occasional refresh. What's usually missing isn't effort — it's an honest, structural assessment of whether all that activity adds up to anything measurable from a business perspective: more qualified visitors, stronger club retention, a genuinely differentiated position, actual movement on revenue or KPIs.
That's a hard thing to see from inside your own organization. The people running your marketing day to day are close to every individual piece — this month's promotion, this season's event calendar — and rarely have the vantage point (or the time) to ask whether the whole structure is actually working. An outside audit exists to answer that question directly, without the internal politics or blind spots that come from being too close to your own brand.
What Sets the Marketing & Brand Audit Apart
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Executive Marketing Experience, Not a Checklist Approach
With 30 years of brand and marketing leadership at major financial institutions, this audit is built with the same strategic rigor used to evaluate national-brand marketing structures — a comprehensive strategic assessment with actionable results.
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Formal Wine Credentials, Not Borrowed Enthusiasm
WSET-level wine and spirits training means that the audit also accounts for what's actually happening in the glass and in the tasting room (key components of your brand and unique value proposition) and not just what's happening on the content calendar.
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Genuine Hospitality and Guest-Experience Fluency
Formal culinary training and direct hospitality experience mean the audit also evaluates whether your brand story and your guest experience actually match — a gap that most other marketing reviews never even consider.
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A Niagara-based Perspective on a Globally-minded Category
Based near the Niagara wine region, with a working understanding of how wineries and regional tourism boards operate, market, and compete — a useful perspective whether your organization is in Niagara or benefits from comparison against a well-regarded wine region.
What this Audit Process Assesses
Brand Strategy, UVP and Guest Experience
Whether your organization has a unique value proposition, whether your brand holds together across every touchpoint, and whether your customer experience reinforces that story at all points.
Marketing Strategy and Structure
Who owns what — internal team, agency relationships, and where accountability actually sits.
Strategy Process Development
Whether decisions follow an actual strategy, or a season-to-season string of reactive tactics.
In-Market Activity
Whether what's actually happening on the ground — events, tastings, tourism programming — lines up with the strategic story your marketing is telling.
Implementation Protocols
How campaigns and content actually get executed, tracked, and adjusted once a decision is made.
Efficiency and Spend
Where budget and effort are going without a clear, measurable return.
A Business Approach to Marketing and Brand Strategy
While some wineries and tourism boards may have had someone review their website, or audit their social media engagement. Fewer have had someone sit down to look at the entire structure — strategy, process, execution, and outcome — and assess it against business objectives to give a direct, evidence-based answer to whether the marketing is actually built to support the business, or just built to stay busy.
That gap between marketing activity and marketing results is usually where growth quietly stalls. This audit exists to close it.
FAQs
What is included in the marketing audit?
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A structured review of your marketing organization, strategy development process, implementation protocols, and efficiency, along with prioritized recommendations covering UVP development, brand consistency, customer experience, and in-market activity.
Winery owners, operations leadership, and tourism board decision-makers who want an honest, outside assessment of whether their current marketing is supporting business objectives and driving revenue or KPIs — not marketing managers looking for tactical execution help.
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Who is the audit for?
How is this different from hiring a marketing agency?
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An audit is a flat-fee, defined-scope diagnostic — not an ongoing retainer. It's designed as a lower-commitment entry point that gives clear, prioritized findings, which can then inform whether a longer engagement, an internal fix, or a different agency relationship makes sense.
What happens after the audit is complete?
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You receive a findings report with prioritized recommendations and a clear path forward — whether that means adjustments your internal team can implement directly, or a longer-term brand and marketing strategy engagement.
What is the cost of a Marketing and Brand Audit?
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The Marketing and Brand Audit is offered as a flat fee service, scoped around a defined deliverable rather than billed hourly — which keeps the investment predictable and avoids scope creep. Exact pricing is confirmed after an initial conversation and consultation to understand the size and complexity of your organization. As a benchmark, flat-fee marketing audits of this kind typically range from $2,500 to $10,000+ (for multi-site multi-brand organizations) depending on scope. Please feel free to contact me with any specific questions.