If you want to increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, you should conduct a marketing audit. Even when everything in your marketing appears to be functioning well, it’s still worth conducting an audit because it may reveal ways to make your actions more cost-effective, simpler, or significantly more efficient without increasing costs.
What is a marketing audit?
A marketing audit is commonly defined as an analysis of a company’s marketing activities. While this is true, it should encompass much more than what this definition implies. Simply examining how a business conducts its marketing is not enough. You need to understand all the circumstances that influence it, which requires both external and internal analysis. Factors such as the market situation, legal aspects, economic conditions, actions of direct and indirect competitors, and the development of new technologies all impact how you promote your business. Therefore, it’s essential to conduct a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of all the activities of a given business entity. Only then can the strategic recommendations resulting from the audit be valuable, accurate, and lead to significant improvements in either the results or the costs of your actions.
When should you conduct a marketing audit for your company?
The general rule is that you should do it regularly. However, what does that mean in practice? In the past, audits were conducted every two years, for example. But today, new digital information channels can emerge or disappear, and technological innovations can develop much more rapidly. This applies to a full audit often referred to as a comprehensive audit. Whenever you notice any concerning declines in specific advertising channels, it’s worth conducting an audit of that particular aspect. For example, finding out why fewer customers are coming to your company from Facebook or Instagram. This type of action is often called a tool audit, which focuses on a single information channel.
Basic stages of a marketing audit
Each comprehensive marketing audit should have a similar structure. It should include the following fundamental parts:
- Analysis of external factors affecting the type of business – macro and micro factors.
- Internal analysis of the company.
- Summary and conclusions.
- Strategic recommendations.
Your new and improved action strategy should be based on the last point. If the audit was conducted thoroughly, it will likely bring significant increases in sales, often even with the same or lower marketing expenses.
Benefits of conducting a marketing audit
There are several key benefits to performing a good marketing audit – or more accurately, implementing its recommendations. Firstly, it enhances the effectiveness of delivering your marketing message to both existing and potential customers. Secondly, it can lead to cost reductions by identifying ways to execute tasks more affordably or by recommending the elimination of channels that are not essential. Quite often, this also means reducing the workload for marketing employees, allowing them to focus on other tasks that yield better results. In the world of online marketing, recommendations for implementing various tools that were previously unknown to those handling the topic are quite common. These tools can simplify and speed up work significantly.
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Who should conduct a marketing audit in your company?
How should you go about conducting a marketing audit for your business? It’s best to rely on external experts. Why?
This is because the audit is intended to identify deficiencies, weaknesses, or irrational actions, which require both significant knowledge and a lack of bias. It’s challenging to spot your own mistakes and shortcomings. An outside specialist can do this much better and more accurately. The second crucial factor is the breadth of knowledge required in the age of online marketing. Trends and popular platforms or services change quite rapidly, and specialized tools for handling them evolve even faster. Often, an audit reveals that only a small fraction of a medium’s potential is being utilized. With professional support, you can learn how to easily change this, increasing the efficiency of your company’s marketing activities.
